May 26, 1862

2d Lieut. Elliot:
Diary:

     May 26-Monday

     Pleasant and warm day as usual.

     Nothing of importance to day all still and quiet as usual. fast learning the ways of New Orleans.

     Organizing the police force quite fast and no doubt they will have a better set of officers than has been in New Orleans for some years. I have admin-istered the Oath of Allegiance to some 200 of the old Policemen, and a most villainous lot of men I ever came across. Mostly low miserable Irishmen who would sell their very souls for a Pieagune, and most of them have already done so if reports are true murder is no crime at all among them.

     I have often heard of the vice and cor-ruption in New Orleans, but never realized it until I came here. Sunday is the Holiday of the week, go down and walk up the Levie and every Groy shop will be open, and doors wide open so that anyone going by can look in and see a crowd around a table set out openly in the room playing cards, money laying loose on the table, no one thinks of troubling them at all, in another they will be dancing, low places, low women, poor rum , and degradation are sights often seen. Liquors and poorer kinds are the principal attrac-tions of this section of the City. In the other portions will be found the same things but the Genteel instead of the miserable.

Corpl. B. B. Smith:

Diary:

      Monday 26
     Fine morn.  we sailed up the lake
     To fort pike and took some of Co B
     Of 7th Vermont and went up the
     Lake into a bayou and landed in
     The swamp where we waded about
     Hip deep about 1/2 mile.  come into
     A clearing.  travelled all day towards
     Night.  we found a steamer and took
     Possesion of her.  put her in order.
     The Grey Cloud.