In late July, 1864, the 13th Regiment was in the trenches at Petersburg where they’d been since late June. So some of them may have been able to receive mail from home, including newspapers.
But many of those newspapers, if they were available, were no longer in Mississippi. They had moved on to safer environs not over-run by the Yankees. It was a common problem, according to a page one story in the “Richmond Whig” of July 22:
“Fugitive Papers.—We have in our southern and southwestern exchanges constant evidence of the extent to which our people have been driven from their homes and forced to seek refuge at some other point.
“The ‘Memphis Appeal,’ now published in Atlanta, has made three moves, starting from Memphis to a point in Northern Mississippi, from which point it moved to Jackson, Mississippi; from Jackson it moved to Atlanta, and this may not be its last move, since Sherman threatens to drive it out of its pleasant place of refuge.
“‘The Chattanooga Rebel’ being driven out when we gave up Tennessee, retired to Marietta, and finding Sherman lately in too close proximity to that town, has made another move and is now in Griffin, Ga. ‘The Knoxville Register,’ after visiting sundry places is now in Charlotte, N. C.
“Of course the Mississippi papers are very much fugitives, there being but one published regularly within the State, we think—the ‘Clarion,’ published at Meridian. The Jackson papers are gone to Selma, Alabama, and elsewhere. Northern Alabama papers spring up to greet us from unexpected places, still holding on to their old names.
“There has indeed been a scattering and a dispersion. The columns of the press have literally become ‘movable columns,’ and work their way from one side of the Confederacy to another in search of a resting place.—Wilmington Journal.”
13TH MISSISSIPPI INFANTRY REGIMENT 