SERVICE WITH THE THIRD
Hood's army, which they said had robbed them of everything that could be carried off, with the excuse that the Yankees would steal it anyway. They were agreeably disappointed to find that the Yankees did not rob them of a thing.
Immense quantities of tobacco were abandoned by the Secessionist citizens who left town. This fact ruined the sutlers' trade in that article. On the day before Atlanta fell, tobacco sold in our camps at a dollar a plug, and fifteen cents for cigars. On the day after, plug tobacco passed about for five cents, and cigars were twenty-five cents a hundred. Our men found tobacco in every conceivable place. One lot of twenty boxes was dug out from under a big ash-heap. It was, however, the only plunder obtained, for the most stringent orders were issued against pillaging occupied houses.
The effects of the Union bombardment could everywhere be seen in the city. Almost every house had the marks on it of shot and shell. One man showed me a dozen shells that had struck in his garden. The families remaining in the city had all built in their yards bombproofs, to which they
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