Private William R. Higgins (Company F) from Greenville died today in Memphis.
It wasn't just the soldiers in Memphis who were dying from disease. An unusual amount of serious illness spread throughout all the armies that winter. One reason was the great amount of rainfall, particularly in the western and southwestern theaters of operations.
Another was the very large build-up of new troops. Charles Johnson looked at it this way:
For six months after enlistment a new regiment has to pass through a sort of winnowing process, in which the chaff, so to speak, is separated from the wheat; when the weaklings, the soft, tender, susceptible ones, either die, or, becoming unfit for duty, are discharged, leaving the command with a lot of tried men, as it were a veritable "survival of the fittest."
