HOW PRIVATE GEORGE W. PECK PUT DOWN THE REBELLION
or, THE FUNNY EXPERIENCES OF A RAW RECRUIT.
By George W. Peck
1887
Contents
List of Illustrations
CHAPTER I.
The War Literature of the “Century” is very Confusing—I am
Resolved to tell the True Story of the War—How and Why I
Became a Raw Recruit—My Quarters—My Horse—My First Ride.
For the last year or more I have been reading the articles in the Century magazine, written by generals and things who served on both the Union and Confederate sides, and have been struck by the number of “decisive battles” that were fought, and the great number of generals who fought them and saved the country. It seems that each general on the Union side, who fought a battle, and writes an article for the aforesaid magazine, admits that his battle was the one which did the business. On the Confederate side, the generals who write articles invariably demonstrate that they everlastingly whipped their opponents, and drove them on in disorder. To read those articles it seems strange that the Union generals who won so many decisive battles, should not have ended the war much sooner than they did, and to read the accounts of battles won by the Confederates, and the demoralization that ensued in the ranks of their opponents, it seems marvellous that the Union army was victorious. Any man who has followed these generals of both sides, in the pages of that magazine, must conclude that the war was a draw game, and that both sides were whipped. Thus far no general has lost a battle on either side, and all of them tacitly admit that the whole thing depended on them, and that other commanders were mere ciphers. This is a kind of history that is going to mix up generations yet unborn in the most hopeless manner.
It has seemed to me as though the people of this country had got so mixed up about the matter that it was the duty of some private soldier to write a description of the decisive battle of the war, and as I was the private soldier who fought that battle on the Union side, against fearful odds, viz: against a Confederate soldier who was braver than I was, a better horseback rider, and a better poker player, I feel it my duty to tell about it. I have already mentioned it to a few veterans, and they have advised me to write an article for the Century, but I have felt a delicacy about entering the lists, a plain, unvarnished private soldier, against those generals. While I am something of a liar myself, and can do fairly well in my own class, I should feel that in the Century I was entered in too fast a class of liars, and the result would be that I should not only lose my entrance fee, but be distanced. So I have decided to contribute this piece of history solely for the benefit of the readers of my own paper, as they will believe me.
It was in 1864 that I joined a cavalry regiment in the department of the Gulf, a raw recruit in a veteran regiment. It may be asked why I waited so long before enlisting, and why I enlisted at all, when the war was so near over. I know that the most of the soldiers enlisted from patriotic motives, and because they wanted to help shed blood, and wind up the war. I did not. I enlisted for the bounty. I thought the war was nearly over, and that the probabilities were that the regiment I had enlisted in would, be ordered home before I could get to it. In fact the recruiting officer told me as much, and he said I would get my bounty, and a few months' pay, and it would be just like finding money. He said at that late day I would never see a rebel, and if I did have to join the regiment, there would be no fighting, and it would just be one continued picnic for two or three months, and there would be no more danger than to go off camping for a duck shoot. At my time of life, now that I have become gray, and bald, and my eyesight is failing, and I have become a grandfather, I do not want to open the sores of twenty-two years ago. I want a quiet life. So I would not assert that the recruiting officer deliberately lied to me, but I was the worst deceived man that ever enlisted, and if I ever meet that man, on this earth, it will go hard with him. Of course, if he is dead, that settles it, as I shall not follow any man after death, where I am in doubt as to which road he has taken, but if he is alive, and reads these lines, he can hear of something to his advantage by communicating with me. I would probably kill him. As far as the bounty was concerned, I got that all right, but it was only three-hundred dollars. Within twenty-four hours after I had been credited to the town from which I enlisted, I heard of a town that was paying as high as twelve-hundred dollars for recruits. I have met with many reverses of fortune in the course of a short, but brilliant career, have loaned money and never got it back, have been taken in by designing persons on three card monte, and have been beaten trading horses, but I never suffered much more than I did when I found that I had got to go to war for a beggerly three-hundred dollars bounty, when I could have had twelve hundred dollars by being credited to another town. I think that during two years and a half of service nothing tended more to dampen my ardor, make me despondent, and hate myself, than the loss of that nine-hundred dollars bounty. There was not an hour of the day, in all of my service, that I did not think of what might have been. It was a long time before I brought to my aid that passage of scripture, “There is no use crying for spilled bounty,” but when I did it helped me some. I thought of the hundreds who didn't get any bounty.
I joined my regiment, and had a cavalry horse issued to me, and was assigned to a company. I went up to the captain of the company, whom I had known as a farmer before the war commenced, and told him I had come to help him put down the rebellion. I never saw a man so changed as he was. I thought he would ask me to bring my things into his tent, and stay with him, but he seemed to have forgotten that he had known me, when he worked on the farm. He was dressed up nicely, and I thought he put on style, and I could only think of him at home, with his overalls tucked in his boots, driving a yoke of oxen to plow a field. He seemed to feel that I had known him under unfavorable circumstances before the war, and acted as though he wanted to shun me. I had drawn an infantry knapsack, at Madison, before I left for the front, and had it full of things, besides a small trunk. The captain called a soldier and told him to find quarters for me, and I went out of his presence. At my quarters, which consisted of what was called a pup-tent, I found no conveniences, and it soon dawned on me that war was no picnic, as that lying recruiting officers had told me it was. I found that I had got to throw away my trunk and knapsack, and all the articles that I couldn't strap on a saddle, and when I asked for a mattress the men laughed at me. I had always slept on a mattress, or a feather bed, and when I was told that I would have to sleep on the ground, under that little tent, I felt hurt. I had known the colonel when he used to teach school at home, and I went to him and told him what kind of a way they were treating me, but he only laughed. He had two nice cots in his tent, and I told him I thought I ought to have a cot, too. He laughed some more. Finally I asked him who slept in his extra cot, and intimated that I had rather sleep in his tent than mine, but he sent me away, and said he would see what could be done. I laid on the ground that night, but I didn't sleep. If I ever get a pension it will be for rheumatism caught by sleeping on the ground. The rheumatism has not got hold of me yet, though twenty-two years have passed, but it may be lurking about my system, for all I know.
I had never rode a horse, before enlisting. The only thing I had ever got straddle of was a stool in a country printing office, and when I was first ordered to saddle up my horse, I could not tell which way the saddle and bridle went, and I got a colored man to help me, for which I paid him some of the remains of my bounty. I hired him permanently, to take care of my horse, but I soon learned that each soldier had to take care of his own horse. That seemed pretty hard. I had been raised a pet, and had edited a newspaper, which had been one of the most outspoken advocates of crushing the rebellion, and it seemed to me, as much as I had done for the government, in urging enlistments, I was entitled to more consideration then to become my own hostler. However, I curbed my proud spirit, and after the nigger cook had saddled my horse, I led the animal up to a fence to climb on. From the remarks of the soldiers, and the general laugh all around, it was easy to see that mounting a cavalry horse from off the top of a rail fence was not according to tactics, but it was the only way I could see to get on, in the absence of step-ladders. They let me ride into the ranks, after mounting, and then they laughed. It was hard for me to be obliged to throw away all the articles I had brought with me, so I strapped them on the saddle in front and behind, and only my head stuck out over them. There was one thing, it would be a practicable impossibility to fall off.
The regiment started on a raid. The colonel came along by my company during the afternoon, and I asked him where we were going. He gave me an evasive answer, which hurt my feelings. I asked his pardon, but told him I would like to know where we were going, so as to have my letters sent to me, but he went off laughing, and never told me, while the old soldiers laughed, though I couldn't see what they were laughing at. I did not suppose there was so much difference between officers and privates, and wondered if it was the policy of this government to have a cavalry regiment to start off on a long raid and not let the soldiers know where they were going, and during the afternoon I decided to write home to the paper I formerly edited and give my opinion of such a fool way of running a war. Suppose anybody at home was sick, they wouldn't know where to write for me to come back. There is nothing that will give a man such an appetite as riding on a galloping horse, and along about the middle of the afternoon I began to get hungry, and asked the orderly sergeant when we were going to get any dinner. He said there was a hotel a short distance ahead, and the colonel had gone forward to order dinner for the regiment. I believed him, because I had known the orderly before the war, when he drove a horse in a brickyard, grinding clay. But he was a liar, too, as I found out afterwards. There was not a hotel within fifty miles, and soldiers did not stop at hotels, anyway. Finally the orderly sergeant came along and announced that dinner was ready, and I looked for the hotel, but the only dinner I saw was some raw pork that soldiers took out of their saddle bags, with hard tack. We stopped in the woods, dismounted, and the boys would cut off a slice of fat pork and spread it on the hard tack and eat it. I had never supposed the government would subject its soldiers to such fare as that, and I wouldn't eat. I did not dare dismount, as there was no fence near that I could use to climb on to my horse, so I sat in the saddle and let the horse eat some grass, while I thought of home, and pie and cake, and what a condemned fool a man was to leave a comfortable home to go and put down anybody's rebellion. The way I felt then I wouldn't have touched a rebellion if one lay right in the road. What business was it of mine if some people in the South wanted to dissolve partnership and go set up business for themselves? How was I going to prevent them from having a southern confederacy, by riding an old rack of bones of a horse, that would reach his nose around every little while and chew my legs? If the recruiting officer who inveigled me into the army had come along then, his widow would now be drawing a pension. While I was thinking, dreaming of home, and the horse was eating grass, the fool animal suddenly took it into his head to lay down and roll, and before I could kick any of his ribs in, he was down, and I was rolling off, with one leg under him. The soldiers quit eating and pulled the horse of me, and hoisted me up into the space between my baggage, and then they laughed, lit their pipes and smoked, as happy as could be. I couldn t see how they could be happy, and wondered if they were not sick of war. Then they mounted, and on we went. My legs and body became chafed, and it seemed as though I couldn t ride another minute, and when the captain came along I told him about it, and asked him if I couldn t be relieved some way. He said the only way was for me to stand on my head and ride, and he winked at a soldier near me, and, do you know, that soldier actually changed ends with himself and stood on his head and hands in the saddle and rode quite a distance, and the captain said that was the way a cavalry soldier rested himself. Gracious, I wouldn t have tried that for the world, and I found out afterwards that the soldier who stood on his head formerly belonged with a circus.
I suppose it was wrong to complain, but the horse they gave me was the meanest horse in the regiment. He would bite and kick the other horses, and they would kick back, and about half the time I was dodging the heels of horses, and a good deal of the time I was wondering if a man would get any pension if he was wounded that way. It would seem pretty tough to go home on a stretcher, as a wounded soldier, and have people find out a horse kicked you. I never had been a man of blood, and didn't enlist to kill anybody, as I could prove by that recruiting officer, and I didn t want to fight, but from what I could gather from the conversation of the soldiers, fighting and killing people was about all they thought about. They talked about this one and that one who had been killed, and the hundreds of confederates they had all shot or killed with sabres, until my hair just stood right up. It seems that twelve or fifteen men, more or less, had been shot off the horse I was riding, and one fellow who rode next to me said no man who ever rode that old yellow horse had escaped alive. This was cheering to me, and I would have given my three hundred dollars bounty, and all I could borrow, if I could get out of the army. However, I found out afterwards that the soldier lied. In fact they all lied, and they lied for my benefit. We struck into the woods, and traveled until after dark, with no road, and the march was enlivened by remarks of the soldiers near me to the effect that we would probably never get out of the woods alive. They said we were trying to surround an army of rebels, and cut them off from the main army, and the chances were that when tomorrow's sun rose it would rise on the ghostly corpses of the whole regiment, with jackals and buzzards eating us. One of the soldiers took something from his pocket, about the size of a testament, pressed it to his heart, and then kissed it, and I felt as though I was about to faint, but by the light of a match which another soldier had scratched on his pants to light his pipe, I saw that what I supposed to be a testament, was a box of sardines the soldier had bought of the sutler. I was just about to die of hunger, exhaustion, and fright at the fearful stories the veterans had been telling, when there was a shout at the head of the regiment, which was taken up all along the line, my horse run under the limb of a tree and raked me out of the saddle, and I hung to the limb, my legs hanging down, and
CHAPTER II.
I Am Rudely Awakened from Dreams of Home—I Go on Picket—
The Foe Advances—A Desperate Conflict—The Union—
Confederate Breakfast on the Alabama Race-Track—A Friendly
Partin
The careful readers of this history have no doubt been worried about the manner in which the first chapter closed, leaving me hanging to a limb of a tree, like Absalom weeping for her children, my horse having gone out from under me. But I have not been hanging there all this time. The soldiers took me down, and caught my horse, and the regiment dismounted and a council of war was held. I suppose it was a council of war, as I noticed the officers were all in a group under a tree, with a candle, examining a map, and drinking out of a canteen. I had read of councils of war, but I had never seen one, and so I walked over to the crowd of officers and asked the colonel if there was anything particular the matter. I never saw a crowd of men who seemed so astonished as those officers were, and suddenly I felt myself going away from where they were consulting, with somebody's strong hand on my collar, and an unmistakable cavalry boot, with a man in it, in the vicinity of my pantaloons. I do not know to this day, which officer it was that kicked me, but I went away and sat under a tree in the dark, so hungry that I was near dead, and I wished I was dead. I guess the officers wished that I was, too. The soldiers tried to console me by telling me I was too fresh, but I couldn't see why a private soldier, right from home, who knew all about the public sentiment at the north in regard to the way the war was conducted, should not have a voice in the consultations of officers. I had written many editorials before I left home, criticising the manner in which many generals had handled their commands, and pointed out to my readers how defeat could have been turned into victory, if the generals had done as I would have done in their places. It seemed to me the officers of my regiment were taking a suicidal course in barring me out of their consultations. A soldier had told me that we were lost in the woods, and as I had studied geography when at school, and was well posted about Alabama, it seemed as though a little advice from me would be worth a good deal. But I concluded to let them stay lost forever before I would volunteer any information. It was crawling along towards midnight, of my first day in the army, and I had eaten nothing since morning. As I sat there under the tree I fell asleep, and was dreaming of home, and warm biscuit, with honey, and a feather bed, when I was rudely awakened by a corporal who told me to mount. I asked him what for, and told him that I didn t want to ride any more that night. What I wanted was to be let alone, to sleep. He said to get on the horse too quick, and I found there was no use arguing with a common corporal, so the boys hoisted me on to the horse, and about nine of us started off through the woods in the moonlight, looking for a main road. The corporal was kind enough to say that as soon as we found a road we would put out a picket, and send a courier back to the regiment to inform the colonel that we had got out of the woods, and the rest of us would lay down and sleep till morning. I don't think I was ever so anxious to see a road in all my life, because I did want to lay down and sleep, and die. O, if I could have telegraphed home, how I would have warned the youth of the land to beware of the allurements held out by recruiting officers, and to let war alone. In an hour or so we came to a clearing, and presently to a road, and we stopped. The corporal detailed me to go up the road a short distance and stand picket on my horse. That was not what I had expected of the corporal. I used to know him before the war when he worked in a paint shop in a wagon factory, and I had always treated him well, and it seemed as though he ought to favor me by letting somebody else go on picket. I told him that the other boys were more accustomed to such work than I was, and that I would resign in their favor, because what I wanted was rest, but he said I would have to go, and he called me “Camp and Garrison Equipage,” because I carried so much luggage on my horse, a name that held to me for months. I found that there was no use kicking against going on picket duty that night, though I tried to argue with the corporal that it would be just as well to all lay down and sleep till morning, and put out a picket when it got light enough to see. I was willing to work during the day time for the government, but it seemed as though it was rushing things a little to make a man work day and night for thirteen dollars a month. So the corporal went out on the road with me about a quarter of a mile, and placed me in position and gave me my instructions. The instructions were to keep a sharp lookout up and down the road for Confederate cavalry, and if I saw anybody approaching to sing out “halt!” and if the party did not halt to shoot him, and then call for the corporal of the guard, who would come out to see what was the matter. I asked him what I should do if anybody came along and shot me, and he said that would be all right, that the boys would come out and bury me. He said I must keep awake, for if I got to sleep on my post I would be court-martialed and shot, and then he rode away and left me alone, on a horse that kept whinnying, and calling the attention of possible Confederates to my position.
I do not think any reader of these papers will envy me the position I was in at that time. If I remained awake, I was liable to be killed by the enemy, and if I fell asleep on my post I would be shot anyway. And if I was not killed, it was probable I would be a murderer before morning. Hunger was gnawing at my stomach, and the horse was gnawing at my legs, and I was gnawing at a hard tack which I had found in the saddle-bag. Every little while I would hear a noise, and my hair would raise my hat up, and it would seem to me as though the next minute a volley would be fired at me, and I shrunk down between the piles of baggage on my saddle to be protected from bullets. Suddenly the moon came out from behind a cloud and around a turn in the road a solitary horseman might have been seen coming towards me. I never have seen a horse that looked as high as that horse did. He seemed at least eighteen feet high, and the man on him was certainly twelve feet high. My heart pounded against a tin canteen that I had strung around my shoulder, so I could hear the beating perfectly plain. The man was approaching, and I was trying to think whether I had been instructed to shoot and then call for the corporal of the guard, or call for the corporal and then ask him to halt. I knew there was a halt in my instructions, and wondered if it would not conciliate the enemy to a certain extent if I would say “Please Halt.” The fact was, I didn t want to have any fuss. If I could have backed my horse up into the woods, and let the man go by, it seemed as though it would save precipitating a conflict. It is probable that no military man was ever in so tight a place as I was that minute. The enemy was advancing, and I wondered if, when he got near enough, I could say “halt,” in a commanding tone of voice. I knew enough, then, to feel that to ask the stranger to halt in a trembling and husky voice would give the whole thing away, that I was a recruit and a coward. Ye gods, how I suffered! I wondered if I could hit a man with a bullet. Before the war I was quite a good shot with a shotgun, shooting into flocks of pigeons and ducks, and I thought what a good idea it would be if I could get that approaching rebel into a flock. The idea seemed so ridiculous that I laughed right out loud. It was not a hearty, happy laugh, but it was a laugh all the same, and I was proud that I could laugh in the face of danger, when I might be a corpse any minute. The man on the horse stopped. Whether he heard me laugh it is impossible to say, but he stopped. That relieved me a great deal. As he had stopped it was unnecessary for me to invite him to halt. He was welcome to stay there if he wanted to. I argued that it was not my place to go howling around the Southern Confederacy, ordering people to halt, when they had already halted. If he would let me alone and stay where he was, what sense was there in picking a quarrel with him?
Why should I want to shoot a total stranger, who might have a family at home, somewhere in the South, who would mourn for him. He might be a dead shot, as many Southern gentlemen were, and if I went to advising him about halting, it would, very likely cause his hot Southern blood to boil, and he would say he had just as much right to that road as I had. If it come right down to the justice of the thing, I should have to admit that Alabama was not my state. Wisconsin was my home, and if I was up there, and a man should trespass on my property, it would be reasonable enough for me to ask him to go away from there, and enforce my request by calling a constable and having him put off the premises. But how did I know but he owned property there, and was a tax-payer. I had it all figured out that I was right in not disturbing that rebel, and I knew that I could argue with my colonel for a week, if necessary, on the law points in the case, and the courtesy that I deemed proper between gentlemen, if any complaint was made for not doing my duty. But, lordy, how I did sweat while I was deciding to let him alone if he would let me alone. The war might have been going on now, and that rebel and myself might have been standing there today, looking at each other, if it hadn't been for the action of the fool horse that I rode. My horse had been evidently asleep for some time, but suddenly he woke up, pricked up his ears, and began to prance, and jump sideways like a race horse that is on the track, and wants to run. The horse reared up and plunged, and kept working up nearer to my Southern friend, and I tried to hold him, and keep him still, but suddenly he got the best of me and started towards the other man and horse, and the other horse started, as though some one had said “go”.{*}
* [Before I get any further on this history of the war, it
is necessary to explain. The facts proved to be that my
regiment had got lost in the woods, and the scouting party,
under the corporal, who had been sent out to find a road,
had come upon the three-quarter stretch of an old private
race track on a deserted southern plantation, instead of a
main road, and I had been placed on picket near the last
turn before striking the quarter stretch. A small party of
Confederates, who had been out on a scout, and got lost, had
come on the track further down, near the judges' stand, and
they had put a man, on picket up near where I was, supposing
they had struck the road, and intending to wait until
morning so as to find out where they were. My horse was an
old race horse, and as soon as he saw the other horse, he
was in for a race and the other horse was willing. This will
show the situation as well as though I had a race track
engraved, showing the positions of the two armies. The
Confederates, except the man on picket, were asleep beside
the track near the quarter stretch, and our fellows, except
myself, were asleep over by the three-quarter pole.]
I do not suppose any man on this earth, or any other earth, ever tried to stop a fool horse quite as hard as I did that one. I pulled until my arms ached, but he went for all that was out, and the horse ahead of me was buckling in as fast as he could. I could not help wondering what would happen if I should overtake that Southern man. I was gaining on him, when suddenly eight or nine men who were sleeping beside the road, got up and began to shoot at us. They were the friends of the rebel, who believed that the whole Union army was making a charge on them. We got by the shooters alive, and then, as we passed the rickety old judge's stand, I realized that we were on a race track, and for a moment I forgot that I was a soldier, and only thought of myself as a rider of a race horse, and I gave the horse his head, and kicked him, and yelled like a Comanche Indian, and I had the satisfaction of seeing my horse go by the rebel, and I yelled some more. I got a glimpse of my rebel's, face as I went by him, and he didn't look much more like a fighting man than I did, but he was, for as soon as I had got ahead of him he drew a revolver and began firing at me on the run. I thought that was a mean trick, and spoke to him about it afterwards, but he said he only wanted me to stop so he could get acquainted with me.
Well, I never could find any bullets in any of the clothes strapped on the back of my saddle, but it did seem to me as though every bullet from his revolver hit very near my vital parts. But a new danger presented itself. We were rapidly approaching the corporal and his men, with whose command I belonged, and they would wake up and think the whole Confederate army was charging them, and if I was not killed by the confounded rebel behind me, I should probably be shot all to pieces by our own men. As we passed our men they fired a few sleepy shots towards us, and took to the woods. On went the two night riders, and when the rebel had exhausted his revolver he began to urge his horse, and passed me, and I drew my revolver and began to fire at him. As we passed the judge's stand the second time a couple of shots from quite a distance in the woods showed that his rebel friends had taken alarm at the frequent charges of cavalry, and had skipped to the woods and were getting away as fast as possible. We went around the track once more, and when near the judge's stand I was right behind him, and his horse fell down and my horse stumbled over him, and I guess we were both stunned. Finally I crawled out from under my horse, and the rebel was trying to raise up, when I said, “What in thunder you want to chase a man all around the Southern Confederacy for, on a dark night, trying to shoot him?” He asked me to help him up, which I did, when he said, “Who commenced this here chasing? If you had kept whar you was, I wouldn't a had no truck with you.” Then I said, “You are my prisoner,” and he said, “No, you are my prisoner.” I told him I was no hand to argue, but it seemed to me it was about a stand off, as to which was 'tother's prisoner. I told him that was my first day's service as a soldier, and I was not posted as to the customs of civilized warfare, but I was willing to wait till daylight, leaving matters just as they were, each of us on the defensive, giving up none of our rights, and after daylight we would play a game of seven-up to see which was the prisoner. That seemed fair to him, and he accepted the situation, remarking that he had only been conscripted a few days and didn't know any more about war than a cow. He said he was a newspaper man from Georgia, and had been taken right from the case in his office before his paper could be got out. I told him I was only a few days out of a country printing office my-self, the sheriff having closed out my business on an old paper bill. A bond of sympathy was inaugurated at once between us, and when he limped along the track to the fence, and found that his ankle was hurt by the fall, I brought a bottle of horse liniment out of my saddle-bags, and a rag, and bound some liniment on his ankle. He said he had never seen a Yankee soldier before, and he was glad he had met me. I told him he was the first rebel I had ever met, and I hoped he would be the last, until the war was over. By this time our horses had gone to nibbling grass, as though there were no such thing as war. We could hear occasional bugle calls off in the woods in two directions, and knew that our respective commands had gone off and got lost again, so we concluded to camp there till morning. After the excitement was over I began to get hungry, and I asked him if he had anything to eat. He said he had some corn bread and bacon, and he could get some sweet potatoes over in a field. So I built a fire there on the track, and he hobbled off after potatoes. Just about daylight breakfast was served, consisting of coffee, which I carried in a sack, made in a pot he carried, bacon fried in a half of a tin canteen, sweet potatoes roasted in the ashes, and Confederate corn bread, warmed by holding it over the fire on a sharp stick. My friend, the rebel, sat on my saddle, which I had removed from my horse, after he had promised me on his honor to help me to put it on when it was time to mount. He knew how to put on saddles, and I didn t, and as his ankle was lame I gave him the best seat, he being my guest, that is, he was my guest if I beat him in the coming game of seven-up, which we were to play to see if he was my prisoner, or I was his. It being daylight, I could see him, and study his character, and honestly he was a mighty fine-looking fellow. As we eat our early breakfast I began to think that the recruiting officer was more than half right about war being a picnic. He talked about the newspaper business in the South, and before breakfast was over we had formed a partnership to publish a paper at Montgomery, Ala., after the war should be over. I have eaten a great many first-class meals in my time, have feasted at Delmonico's, and lived at the best hotels in the land, besides partaking pretty fair food camping out, where an appetite was worked up by exercise and sporting, but in all my life I have never had anything taste as good as that combination Union-Confederate breakfast on the Alabama race track, beside the judges stand. After the last potato peeling, and the last crumb of corn bread had been “sopped” in the bacon gravy and eaten, we whittled some tobacco off a plug, filled our pipes and leaned up against the fence and smoked the most enjoyable smoke that ever was smoked. After smoking in silence a few minutes my rebel friend said, as he blew the smoke from his handsome mouth, “War is not so unpleasant, after all.” Then we fell to talking about the manner in which the different generals on each side had conducted things. He went on to show that if Lee had taken his advice, the Yankees would then be on the run for the North, and I showed him, by a few well-chosen remarks that if I could have been close to Grant, and given him some pointers, that the Confederates would be hunting their holes. We were both convinced that it was a great mistake that we were nothing but private soldiers, but felt that it would not be long before we were called to occupy high places. It seemed to stand to reason that true merit would find its reward. Then he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and said if I had a pack of cards we would go up in the judges stand and play seven-up to see whether I was his prisoner, or he was mine. I wanted to take a prisoner back to the regiment, at I thought it would make me solid with the colonel, and I played a strong game of seven-up, but before we got started to playing he suggested that we call it a stand-off, and agree that neither of us should be a prisoner, but that when we got ready to part each should go hunt up his own command, and tell the biggest lie we could think of as to the fight we had had. That was right into my hand, and I agreed, and then my friend suggested that we play poker for money. I consented and he put up Confederate money, against my greenbacks, ten to one. We played about an hour, and at the close he had won the balance of my bounty, except what I had given to the chaplain for safe keeping, and a pair of pants, and a blouse, and a flannel shirt, and a pair of shoes, which I had on my saddle. I was rather glad to get rid of some of my extra baggage, and when he put on the clothes he had won from me, blessed if I wasn t rather proud of him. A man could wear any kind of clothes in the Confederate army, and my rebel looked real comfortable in my clothes, and I felt that it was a real kind act to allow him to win a blue suit that I did not need. If the men of both the armies, and the people of both sections of the distracted country could have seen us two soldiers together, there in the judges stand, peacefully playing poker, while the battles were raging in the East and in the West, that would have felt that an era of good feeling was about to dawn on the country. After we had played enough poker, and I had lost everything I had that was loose, I suggested that he sing a song, so he sung the “Bonnie Blue Flag.” I did not think it was right for him to work in a rebel song on me, but it did sound splendid, and I forgot that there was any war, in listening to the rich voice of my new friend. When he got through he asked me to sing something. I never could sing, anyway. My folks had always told me that my voice sounded like a corn sheller, but he urged me at his own peril, and I sung, or tried to, “We'll Hang Jeff Davis to a Sour Apple Tree.” I had no designs on Mr. Davis, honestly I hadn't, and it was the farthest thing from my thoughts to hurt the feelings of that young man, but before I had finished the first verse he took his handkerchief out and placed it to his eyes. I stopped and apologized, but he said not to mind him, as he was better now. He told me, afterwards, in the strictest confidence, that my singing was the worst he ever heard, and gave it as his opinion that if Jeff Davis could hear me sing he would be willing, even anxious, to be hung. If I had been sensitive about my musical talents, probably there would have been hard feelings, and possibly bloodshed, right there, but I told him I always knew I couldn't sing, and he said that I was in luck. Well, we fooled around there till about ten o'clock in the morning, and decided that we would part, and each seek our respective commands, so I put some more horse liniment on his sprained ankle, and he saddled my horse for me, and after expressions of mutual pleasure at meeting each other, and promises that after the war we would seek each other out, we mounted, he gave three cheers for the Yanks, and I gave three cheers for the Johnnies, he divided his plug of tobacco with me, and I gave him the bottle of horse liniment, he turned his horse towards the direction his gray coats had taken the night before, while I turned my horse towards the hole in the woods our fellows had made, and we left the race track where we had fought so gamely, eat so heartily, and played poker so disastrously, to me. As we were each about going into the woods, half a mile apart, he waved his handkerchief at me, and I waved mine at him, and we plunged into the forest.
After riding for an hour or so, alone in the woods, thinking up a good lie to tell about where I had been, and what I had been doing, I heard horses neighing, and presently I came upon my regiment, just starting out to hunt me up. The colonel looked at me and said, “Kill the fat prodigal, the calf has got back.”
CHAPTER III.
I Describe a Deadly Encounter—Am Congratulated as a Warrior
With a Big “W”—The Chaplain Gives Good Advice—I Attend
Surgeon's Call—Castor Oil out of a Dirty Bottle—Back to
the Chaplain's Tent—I am Wounded in the Canteen.
The last chapter of this history left me facing my regiment, which had started out to hunt me up, after my terrible fight with that Confederate. The colonel rode up to me and shook me by the hand, and congratulated me, and the major and adjutant said they had never expected to see me alive, and the soldiers looked at me as one returned from the grave, and from what I could gather by the looks of the boys, I was something of a hero, even before I had told my story. The colonel asked me what had become of all the baggage I had on my saddle when I went away, and I told him that I had thrown ballast over-board all over the Southern Confederacy, when I was charging the enemy, because I found my horse drew too much water for a long run. He said something about my being a Horse-Marine, and sent me back to my company, telling me that when we got into camp that night he would send for me and I could tell the story of my capture and escape. I rode back into my company, and you never saw such a change of sentiment towards a raw recruit, as there was towards me, and they asked me questions about my first fight. The corporal who had placed me on picket, and stampeded at the first fire, was unusually gracious to me, and said when he saw a hundred and fifty rebels come charging down the road, yelling and firing, he knew it was no place for his small command, so he lit out. He said he supposed of course I was shot all to pieces. I didn't tell him that it was me that did all the yelling, and that there was only one rebel, and that he was perfectly harmless, but I told him that he miscalculated the number of the enemy, as there were, all told, at least five hundred, and that I had killed fourteen that I knew of, besides a number had been taken away in ambulances, wounded. The boys opened their eyes, and nothing was too good for me during that march. We went into camp in the pine woods late in the afternoon, and after supper the colonel sent for me, and I went to his tent. All the officers were there, and as many soldiers as dared crowd around. The colonel said the corporal had reported where he left me, and how the enemy had charged in force, and he supposed that I had been promptly killed. That he felt that he could not hold his position against such immense odds, so he had fallen back slowly, firing as he did so, until the place was too hot for him, and now he wanted to hear my story. I told the colonel that I was new at the business, and may be I did not use the best judgment in the world, by remaining to fight against such odds, but I meant well. I told him I did not wish to complain of the corporal, who no doubt was an able fighter, but it did seem to me that he ought at least to have waited till the battle had actually commenced. I said that the first charge, which stampeded the corporal and his men, was not a marker to what took place afterwards. I said when the enemy first appeared, I dismounted, got behind a tree, and poured a murderous fire into the ranks of the rebels, and that they fell all around. I could not tell how many were killed, but probably ten, as I fired eleven shots from, my carbine, and I usually calculated on missing one out of ten, when shooting at a mark. Then they fell back and I mounted my horse and rode to their right flank and poured it into them red hot from my revolver, and that I saw several fall from their horses, when they stampeded, and I drew my saber and charged them, and after cutting down several, I was surrounded by the whole rebel army and captured. They tied me to the wheel of a gun carriage, and after trying to pump me as to the number of men I had fighting against them, they left me to hold a council of war, when I untied myself, mounted my horse, and cut my way out, and took to the woods. I apologized to the colonel for running away from the enemy, but told him it seemed to me, after the number I had killed, and the length of time I had held them at bay, it was no more than right to save my own life, as I had use for it in my business. During my recital of the lie I had made up, the officers and soldiers stood around with mouths open, and when I had concluded my story, there was silence for a moment, when the colonel stepped forward and took me by the hand, and in a few well chosen remarks congratulated me on my escape, and thanked me for so valiantly standing my ground against such fearful odds, and he said I had reflected credit upon my regiment, and that hereafter I would be classed as a veteran instead of a recruit. He said he had never known a man to come right from the paths of peace, and develop into a warrior with a big “W” so short a time. The other officers congratulated me, and the soldiers said I was a bully boy. The colonel treated to some commissary whisky, and then the business of the evening commenced, which I found to be draw poker. I sat around for some time watching the officers play poker, when the chaplain, who was a nice little pious man, asked me to step outside the tent, as he wished to converse with me. I went out into the moonlight with him, and he took me away from the tents, under a tree, and told me he had been much interested in my story. I thanked him, and said I had been as brief as possible. He said, “I was interested, because I used to be something of a liar myself, before I reformed, and studied for the ministry.” It occurred to me that possibly the chaplain did not believe my simple tale, and I asked him if he doubted my story. “That is about the size of it,” says he. I told him I was sorry I had not told the story in such a manner that he would believe it, because I valued the opinion of the chaplain above all others. He said he had known a good many star liars in his time, some that had national reputations, but he had never seen one that could hold a candle to me in telling a colossal lie, or aggregation of lies, and tell them so easy. I thanked him for his good opinion, and told him that I flattered myself that for a recruit, right fresh from the people, who had never had any experience as a military liar, I had done pretty well. He said I certainly had, and he was glad to make my acquaintance. I asked him to promise not to give it away to the other officers, which he did, and then I told him the whole story, as it was, and that I was probably the biggest coward that ever lived, and that I was only afraid that my story of blood-letting would encourage the officers to be constantly putting me into places of danger, which I did not want to be in. I told him I believed this war could be ended without killing any more men, and cited the fact that I had been a soldier nearly forty-eight hours, and nobody had been killed, and the enemy was on the run. I told the chaplain that if there was one thing I didn't want to see, it was blood. Others might have an insatiable appetite for gore, but I didn't want any at all. I was willing to do anything for this government but fight; and if he could recommend to me any line of action by which I could pull through without being sent out to do battle with strangers who could shoot well, I should consider it a favor. What I wanted was a soft job, where there was no danger. The chaplain looked thoughtful a moment, and then took me over to his tent, where he opened a bottle of blackberry brandy. He took a small dose, after placing his hand on his stomach and groaning a little. He asked me if I did not sometimes have a pain under my vest. I told him I never had a pain anywhere. Then he said I couldn't have any brandy. He said the brandy came from the sanitary commsssion, and was controlled entirely by the chaplains of the different regiments, and the instructions were to only use it in case of sickness. He said a great many of the boys had pains regularly, and came to him for relief. He smacked his lips and said if I felt any pain coming on, to help myself to the brandy. It is singular how a pain will sometimes come on when you least expect it. It was not a minute before I began to feel a small pain, not bigger than a man's hand, and as I looked at the bottle the pain increased, and I had to tell the chaplain that I must have relief before it was everlastingly too late, so he poured out a dose of brandy for me. I could see that I was becoming a veteran very fast, as I could work the chaplain for sanitary stores pretty early in the game. Well, the chaplain and me had pains off and on, for an hour or two, and became good friends. He told me of quite a number of methods of shirking active duty, such as being detailed to take care of baggage, acting as orderly, and going to surgeon's call. He said if a man went to surgeon's call, the doctor would report him sick, and he could not be sent out on duty. The next day we went back to our post, where the regiment was stationed, and where they had barracks, that they wintered in, and remained there several weeks, drilling. I was drilled in mounting and dismounting, and soon got so I could mount a horse without climbing on to him from a fence. But the drill became irksome, and I decided to try the chaplain's suggestion about going to surgeon's call. I got in line with about twenty other soldiers, and we marched over to the surgeon's quarters. I supposed the doctor would take each soldier into a private room, feel of his pulse, look at his tongue, and say that what he needed was rest, and give him some powders to be taken in wafers, or in sugar. But all he did was to say “What's the matter?” and the sick man would tell him, when the doctor would tell his assistant to give the man something, and pass on to the next. I was the last one to be served, and the interview was about as follows:
Doc.—What's the matter?
Me—Bilious.
Doc.—Run out your tongue. Take a swallow out of the black bottle.
That seems very simple, indeed, but it nearly killed me. When he told me to run out my tongue, I run out perhaps six inches of the lower end of it, the doctor glanced at it as though it was nothing to him anyway, and then he told me to take a swallow out of the bottle. In all my life I had never taken four doses of medicine, and when I did the medicine was disguised in preserves or something. The hospital steward handed me the bottle that a dozen other sick soldiers had drank out of, and it was sticky all around the top, and contained something that looked like castor oil, for greasing a buggy. He told me to take a good big swallow, and I tried to do so. Talk about the suffering brought on by the war, it seems to me nobody ever suffered as I did, trying to drink a swallow of that castor oil out of a two quart bottle, that was dirty. It run so slow that it seemed, an age before I got enough to swallow, and then it seemed another age before the oil could pass a given point in my neck. And great Caesar's ghost how it did taste. I think it went down my neck, and I just had strength enough to ask the steward to give me something to take the taste out of my mouth. He handed me a blue pill. O, I could have killed him. I rushed to the chaplain's tent and took a drink of blackberry brandy, and my life was saved, but for three years after that I was never sick enough to get farther than the chaplain's quarters.
I suppose the meanest trick that was ever played on a raw recruit, was played on me while we were in camp at that place. It seemed to me that some of the boys got jealous of me, because I had become a hero, accidentally. May be some of them did not believe I had killed as many of the enemy as I had owned up to having killed. Anyway every little while some soldier would say that he thought it was a mean man that would go out and kill a lot of rebels and not bury them. He said a man that would do that was a regular pot-hunter, who killed game and left it on the ground to spoil. They made lots of such uncharitable remarks, but I did not pay much attention to to them. I had a tent-mate who took a great interest in me, and he said no soldier's life was safe who did not wear a breast-plate, and he asked me if I did not bring any breast-plate with me. I told him I never heard of a breastplate, and asked him what it was. He said it was a vest made of the finest spring steel, that could be worn under the clothes, which was so strong that a bullet could not penetrate it. He supposed of course I had one, when he heard of the fight I had, and said none of the old boys would go into a fight without one, as it covered the vital parts, and saved many a life. I bit like a bass. If there was anything I wanted more than a discharge, it was a breast-plate. If the chaplain should succeed in getting me a soft job, where there was no danger, I could get along without my breast-plate, but there was no sure thing about the chaplain, so I asked the soldier where I could get a breastplate. He said the quartermaster used to issue them, but he didn't have any on hand now, but he said he knew where there was one that once belonged to a soldier who was killed, and he thought he could get it for me. I asked him how it happened that the soldier was killed, when he had a breast-plate, and he told me the man was killed by eating green peaches. Of course I couldn't expect a breastplate to save me from the effects of eating unripe fruit, and I felt that if it would save me from bullets it would be worth all it cost, so I told the soldier to get it for me. That evening he brought it around, and he helped me put it on. I learned afterwards that it was an old breast-plate that an officer had brought to the regiment when the war broke out, and that it had been played on raw recruits for two years. After I had got it on, the soldier suggested that we go out with several other dare devils, and run the guard and go down town and play billiards, and have a jolly time. I asked him if the guard would not shoot at us, and he said the guards would be all right, and if they did shoot they would shoot at the breast-plates, as all the boys had them on. So about six of us sneaked through the guards, went to town and had a big time, and came back along towards morning, each with a canteen of whisky. It was not easy getting back inside the lines, as the moon was shining, but we got by the guards, and then my friends suggested that we take our breast-plates off and put them on behind us, as the guards, if they shot at all, would be firing in our rear. I took mine off and put it on behind my pants, and just then somebody fired a gun, and the boys said “run,” and I started ahead, and the firing continued, and about every jump I could hear and feel something striking my breast-plate behind, which seemed to me to be bullets, and I was glad I had the breast-plate on, though afterwards I found that the boys behind me were firing off their revolvers in the air, and throwing small stones at my breast-plate. Presently a bullet, as I supposed, struck me in the back above the breast-plate, and I could feel blood trickling down my back, and I knew I was wounded. O, I hankered for gore, before enlisting, and while editing a paper, and now I had got it, got gore till I couldn't rest. The blood run down my side, down my leg, into my boot, and I could feel I was wading in my own blood. And great heaven's, how it did smell. I had never smelled blood before, that I knew of, and I thought it had the most peculiar, pungent, intoxicating odor. I ran towards my quarters as fast as possible, fainting almost, from imaginary loss of blood, and finally rushed into my tent, threw myself on my bunk and called loudly for the doctor and chaplain, and then I fainted. When I came to I was surrounded by the doctor, and a lot of the boys, all laughing, and the chaplain was trying to say something pious, while trying to keep a straight face. “Have you succeeded in staunching the blood, doc?” I asked, in a trembling voice. He said the blood was quite staunch, but the whisky could never be saved. I did not know what he meant, and I turned to the chaplain and asked him if he wouldn't be kind enough to say something appropriate to the occasion. I told him I had been a bad man, had lied some, as he well knew, and had been guilty of things that would bar me out of the angel choir, but that if he had any influence at the throne of grace, and could manage to sneak me in under the canvass anyway, he could have the balance of my bounty, and all the pay that might be coming to me. The chaplain held up the breast-plate that had been removed by kind hands, from the back portion of my person, and said I had better take that along with me, as it would be handy to wear when I wanted to stand with my back to the fire in hades. I could not understand why the good man should joke me, on my death bed, and I rolled over with my back to the wall, to weep, unobserved, and I felt the blood sticking to my clothes and person, and I asked the doctor why he did not dress my wound. He said he should have to send the wound to the tin-shop to be dressed, and then they all laughed. This made me indignant, and I turned over and faced the crowd, and asked them if they had no hearts, that they could thus mock at a dying man. The doctor held up my canteen with a hole in it, made by a stone thrown by one of my companions, and said, “You d——d fool, you are not wounded. Somebody busted your canteen, and the whiskey run down your leg and into your boot, and you, like an idiot, thought it was your life blood ebbing away. Couldn't you tell that it was whiskey by the smell?” I felt of myself, where I thought I was wounded, and couldn't find any hole, and then I took off my boot, and emptied the whisky out, and felt stronger, and finally I got up, and the boys went away laughing at me, leaving the chaplain, who was kind enough to tell me that of all the raw recruits that had ever come to the regiment, he thought I was the biggest idiot of the lot, to let the boys play that ancient breast-plate and canteen joke on me. I asked him if the boys didn't all wear breast-plates, and he said “naw!” He told me that was the only breast-plate in the whole Department of the Gulf, and it was kept to play on recruits, and that I must keep it until a new recruit came that was green enough to allow the boys to do him up. So I hid the breast-plate under my bunk, and went to bed and tried to dream out some method of getting even with my persecutors, while the chaplain went out, after offering to hold himself in readiness, day or night, to come and pray for me, if I was wounded in the canteen any more.
CHAPTER IV.
I Yearn for a Furlough—I Interview the General—I am
Detailed to Carry a Rail—I Make a Horse-trade With the
Chaplain—I am Put in Charge of a Funeral.
I had now been fighting the battles of my country for two weeks, and felt that I needed rest, and one day I became so homesick that it did seem as though it would kill me. Including the week it had taken me to get from home to my regiment, three weeks had elapsed since I bid good-bye to my friends, and I wanted to go home. I would lay awake nights and think of people at home and wonder what they were doing, and if they were laying awake nights thinking of me, or caring whether I was alive, or buried in the swamps of the South. It was about the time of year when at home we always went off shooting, and I thought how much better it was to go off shooting ducks and geese, and chickens, that could not shoot back, than to be hunting bloodthirsty Confederates that were just as liable to hunt us, and who could kill, with great ease. I thought of a pup I had at home that was just the right age to train, and that he would be spoiled if he was not trained that season. O, how I did want to train that pup. The news that one of my comrades had been granted a furlough, after three years' service, and that he was going home, made me desperate, and I dreamed that I had waylaid and murdered the fortunate soldier, and gone home on his furlough. The idea of getting a furlough was the one idea in my mind, and the next morning as I took my horse to the veterinary surgeon for treatment,{*} I had a talk with the horse doctor about the possibilities of getting a furlough. I had known him before the war, when he kept a livery stable, and as I owed him a small livery bill, I thought he would give it to me straight. The horse doctor had his sleeves rolled up, and was holding a horse's tongue in one hand while he poured some medicine down the animal's throat out of a bottle with the other hand, which made me sorry for the horse, as I remembered my experience at surgeon's call, in drinking a dose of castor oil out of a bottle, and I was mean-enough to be glad they played it on horses as well as the soldiers. The horse doctor returned the horse's tongue to it's mouth, kicked the animal in the ribs, turned and wiped his hands on a bale of hay, and said:
“Well, George, to get a furlough a man has got to have plenty of gall, especially a man who has only been to the front a couple of weeks. There is no use making an application in the regular way, to your captain, have him endorse it and send it to regimental headquarters, and so on to brigade headquarters, because you would never hear of it again. My idea would be for you to go right to the general commanding the division, and tell him you have got to go home. But you mustn't go crawling to him, and whining. He is a quick-tempered man, and he hates a coward. Go to him and talk familiar with him, and act as though you had always associated with him, and slap him on the shoulder, and make yourself at home. Just make up a good, plausible story, and give it to him, and if he seems irritated, give him to understand that he can t frighten you, and just as likely as not he will give you a furlough. I don't say he will, mind you, but it would be just like him. But he does like to be treated familiar like, by the boys.”
* I neglected to say, in my account of the battle at the
race-track, that when firing with my revolver, at my friend
the rebel, I put one bullet-hole through the right ear of my
horse. I was so excited at the time that I did not know it,
and only discovered it a week later when currying off my
horse, which I made a practice of doing once a week, with a
piece of barrel-stave, when I noticed the horse's ear was
swelled up about as big as a canvas ham. I took him to the
horse doctor, who reduced the swelling so we could find the
hole through the horse's ear, and the horse doctor tied a
blue ribbon in the hole. He said the blue ribbon would help
heal the sore, but later I found that he had put the ribbon
in the ear to call attention to my poor marksmanship, and
the boys got so they made comments and laughed at me every
time I appeared with the horse.
I thanked the horse doctor and went away with my horse, resolved to have a furlough or know the reason why. The general's headquarters were about half a mile from our camp, and after drill that morning I went to see him. I had seen him several times, at the colonel's headquarters, and he always seemed mad about something, and I had thought he was about the crossest looking man I ever saw, but if there was any truth in what the horse doctor had told me, he was easily reached if a man went at him right, and I resolved that if pure, unadulterated cheek and monumental gall would accomplish anything, I would have a furlough before night, for a homesicker man never lived than I was. I went up to the general's tent and a guard halted me and asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to see “his nibs,” and I walked right by the guard, who seemed stunned by my cheek. I saw the general in his tent, with his coat off, writing, and he did look savage. Without taking off my hat, or saluting him, I went right up to him and sat down on the end of a trunk that was in the tent, and with a tremendous effort to look familiar, I said:
“Hello, Boss, writing to your girl?”
I have seen a good many men in my time who were pretty mad, but I have never seen a man who appeared to be as mad as the general did. He was a regular army officer, I found afterwards, and hated a volunteer as he did poison. He turned red in the face and pale, and I thought he frothed at the mouth, but may be he didn't. He seemed to try to control himself, and said through his clenched teeth, in a sarcastic manner, I thought, in imitation of a ring master in a circus:
“What will the little lady have next?”
I had been in circuses myself, and when the general said that I answered the same as a clown always does, and I said:
“The banners, my lord.”
I thought he would be pleased at my joking with him, but he looked around as though he was seeking a revolver or a saber with which to kill me finnally he said:
“What do you want, man?”
It was a little tough to be called plain “man,” but I swallowed it. I made up my mind it was time to act, so I stood up, put my hand on the shoulder of the general familiarly, and said:
“The fact is, old man, I want a furlough to go home. I have got business that demands my attention; I am sick of this inactivity in camp, and besides the shooting season is just coming on at home, and I have got a setter pup that will be spoiled if he is not trained this season. I came down here two weeks ago, to help put down the rebellion; but all we have done since I got here is to monkey around drilling and cleaning off horses, while the officers play poker for red chips. Let me go home till the poker season is over, and I will be back in time for the fall fighting. What do you say, old apoplexy. Can I go?”
I do not now, and never did know, how I got out of the general's tent, whether he kicked me out, or threw his trunk at me, or whether there was an explosion, but when I got outside there were two soldiers trying to untangle me from the guy ropes of the general's tent, his wash basin and pail of water were tipped over, and a cord that was strung outside with a lot of uniforms, shirts, sabers, etc., had fallen down, and the general was walking up and down his tent in an excited manner, calling me an escaped lunatic, and telling the guards to tie me up by the thumbs, and buck and gag me. They led me away, and from their conversation I concluded I had committed an unpardonable offense, and would probably be hung, though I couldn't see as I had done much more than the horse doctor told me to. Finally the officer of the day came along and told the guards to get a rail and make me carry it. So they got a rail and put it on my shoulder, and I carried it up and down the camp, as a punishment for insulting the general. I thought they picked out a pretty heavy rail, but I carried it the best I could for an hour, when I threw it down and told the guards I didn't enlist to carry rails. If the putting down of this rebellion depended on carrying fence rails around the Southern Confederacy, and I had to carry the rails, the aforesaid rebellion never would be put down. I said I would fight if I had to, and be a hostler, and cook my own food, and sleep on the ground, and try to earn my thirteen dollars a month, but there must be a line drawn somewhere, and I drew it at transporting fences around the sunny South. The guards were inclined to laugh at my determination, but they said I could carry the rail or be tied up by the thumbs; and I said they could go ahead, but if they hurt me I would bring suit against the government. They were fixing to tie me up when the colonel of my regiment rode up to see the general, and he got the guards to let up on me till he could see the general. The general sent for me after the colonel had talked with him, and they called me in and asked me how I happened to be so fresh with the general; and I told them about the horse doctors' advice as to how to get a furlough; and then they both laughed, and said I owed the horse doctor one, and I must get even with him. The colonel told the general who I was, that he had known me before the war, and that I was all right only a little green, and that the boys were having fun with me. The colonel told the general about my first fight the first day of my service, and how I had, single-handed, put to flight a large number of rebels, and the general got up and shook hands with me, and said he forgave me for my impertinence, and gave me some advice about letting the boys play it on me, and said I might go back to my company. He was all smiles, and insisted on my taking a drink with himself and the colonel. When I was about leaving his tent, I turned to him and said: “Then I don't get any furlough?” “Not till the cruel war is over,” said the general, with a laugh, and I went away.
The guards treated me like a gentleman when they saw me taking a drink with the general, and I went back to my regiment, resolved not to go home, and to get even with the horse doctor for causing me to make a fool of myself. However, I was glad I visited the general, for, after getting acquainted with him, he seemed a real nice man, and he kept a better article of liquor than the chaplain.
For several days nothing occurred that was worthy of note, except that the chaplain took a liking to my horse, and wanted to trade a mule for him. I never did like a mule, and didn't really want to trade, but the chaplain argued his case so eloquently that I was half persuaded. He said the horse I rode, from its friskiness, and natural desire to “get there, Eli!” would eventually get me killed, for if I ever got in sight of the enemy the horse would rush to the front, and I couldn't hold him. He said he didn't want to have me killed, and with the mule there would be no danger, as the mule knew enough to keep away from a fight. The chaplain said he had always rode a mule, because he thought the natural solemnity of a mule was in better keeping with a pious man, but lately he had begun to go into society some, in the town near where we were camped, and sometimes had to preach to different regiments, so he thought he ought to have a horse that put on a little more style, and as he knew I wanted an animal that would keep as far from the foe as possible, and not lose its head and go chasing around after rebels, and running me into danger, as my spiritual adviser he would recommend the mule to me. He warranted the mule sound in every particular, and as a mule was worth more than a horse he would trade with me for ten dollars to boot. He said there was not another man in the regiment he would trade with on such terms, but he had taken a liking to me, and would part with his mule to me, though it broke his heart. At home there was a sentiment against trading horses with a minister, as men who did so always got beat, but I thought it would be an insult to the chaplain to refuse to trade, when he seemed to be working for my interests, to prevent me from being killed in a fight by the actions of my horse, so I concluded to trade, though it seemed to me that if I couldn't shoot off a horse without hitting its ears, I would fill a mule's ears full of bullets. I spoke to the chaplain about that, and he said there was no danger, because whenever fighting commenced the mule always wore his ears lopped down below the line of fire. He said the mule had been trained to that, and I would find him a great comfort in time of trial, and a sympathizing companion always, one that I would become attached to. I told him there was one thing I wanted to know, and that was if the mule would kick. I had always been prejudiced against mules because they kicked. He said he knew mules had been traduced, and that their reputations were not good, but he believed this mule was as free from the habit of kicking as any mule he had ever met. He said he would not deny that this mule could kick, and in fact he had kicked a little, but he would warrant the mule not to kick unless something unusual happened. He said I wouldn't want a mule that had no individuality at all, one that hadn't sand enough to protect itself. What I wanted, the chaplain said, was a mule that would treat everybody right, but that would, if imposed upon, stand up for its rights and kick. I told the chaplain that was about the kind of mule I wanted, if I had any mule at all, and we traded. The chaplain rode off to town on my horse, on a canter, as proud as a peacock, while I climbed on to the solemn, lop-eared mule and went out to drill with my company. I do not know what it was that went wrong with the mule while we were drilling, but as we were wheeling in company front, the mule began to “assert his individuality,” as the chaplain said he probably would, and he whirled around sideways and kicked three soldiers off their horses; then he backed up the other way and broke up the second platoon, kicked four horses in the ribs, stampeded the company, and stood there alone kicking at the air. The major rode down to where I was and began to swear at me, but I told him I couldn't help it. He told me to dismount and lead the mule away, but I couldn't dismount until the mule stopped kicking, and he seemed to be wound up for all day. The major got too near and the mule kicked him on the shin, and then started for the company again, which had got into ranks, kicking all the way, and the company broke ranks and started for camp, the mule following, kicking and braying all the way. I never was so helpless in all my life. The more I spurred the mule, the more it kicked, and if I stopped spurring it, it kicked worse. When we got to camp, I fell off some way, and rushed into the chaplain's tent, and the mule kicked the tent down, and some boys drove the mule away, and while I was fixing up the tent the chaplain came back looking happy, and asked me how I liked the mule. I never was a hypocrite, anyway, and I was mad, so I said: “Oh, dam that mule!”
Of course it is wrong to use such language, especially in the presence of a minister, but I couldn't help it. I could see it hurt the chaplain, for he sighed and said he was sorry to hear such words from me, inasmuch as he had just got me detailed as his clerk, where I would have a soft thing, and no drilling or fighting. He said he had wanted a clerk, one who was a good-hearted, true man, and he had picked me out, but if I used such language, that settled it. He said he didn't expect to find a private soldier that was as pious as he was, but he did think I would be the best man he could find. I wanted a soft job, with no fighting, as bad as any man ever did, and I told the chaplain that he need not fear as to my swearing again, as it was foreign to my nature, but I told him if he had been on the hurricane deck of a kicking mule for an hour, and seen comrades fall one by one, and bite the dust, and be carried on with marks of mule shoes all over their persons, he would swear, and I would bet on it. So it was arranged that I was to be the chaplain's clerk, and I moved my outfit over to his tent, and for the first time since I had been a soldier, I was perfectly happy. There was no danger of being detached for guard duty, police duty, drilling, or fighting, and the only boss I had was the chaplain. The chaplain and myself sat that evening in his tent, and ate sanitary stores, drank wine for sickess, and smoked pipes, and didn't care whether school kept or not, and that night I slept on a cot, and had the first good night's rest, and in the morning I awoke refreshed, and with no fear of orderly sergeants, or anybody. I had a soft snap.
The next morning I asked the chaplain what my duties were to be, and he said I was to take care of the tent, write letters for him, issue sanitary stores to deserving soldiers who might need them, ride with him sometimes when he went to town, or to preach, go to funerals with him occasionally, set a good example to the other soldiers, and make myself generally useful. He said I would have to attend to the burial of the colored people who died, and any such little simple details. He went out and left me pondering over my duties. I liked it all except the nigger funerals. I had always been a Democrat, at home, and not very much mashed on our colored brothers, and one thing that prevented me from enlisting before I did was the idea of making the colored men free. I had nothing against a colored man, and got to think a great deal of them afterwards, but the idea of acting as an undertaker for the colored race never occurred to me. I made up my mind to kick on that part of the duties, when the chaplain came in and said the colored cook of one of the companies was dead, and would be buried that afternoon, and as he had to go to a meeting of chaplains down town, I would have to go and conduct the services, and I better prepare myself with a little speech. I was in a fix. I told the chaplain that it might not have occurred to him, but honestly, I couldn't pray. He said that didn't make any difference. I told him I couldn't preach hardly at all. He said I didn't need to. All I had to do was to go and find out something about the life of the deceased, what kind of a man he was, and say a few words at the grave complimentary of him, console the mourners, if there were any, and counsel them to try to lead a different life, that they might eventually enter into the glory of the New Jerusalem, or words to that effect. Well, this made me perspire. This was a tighter place than I was in when I met the rebel. The idea of my conducting the funeral exercises of such a black-burying party, made me tired. The chaplain said a good deal depended on how I got through this first case, as if I succeeded well, it would be a great feather in my cap. His idea, he said, was to try me first on a nigger, and if I was up to snuff, and carried myself like a thoroughbred, there would be nothing too good for me in that regiment.
I went to the orderly sergeant of the company where the man died, to get some points as to his career, in order to work in a few remarks appropriate to the occasion, and I said to the orderly:
“I understand your company cook has gone to that bourne from whence no traveler returns. I thought that was pretty good for a green hand, for a starter.”
“Yes,” said the orderly, as he looked solemn, “The old son-of-a-gun has passed in his chips, and is now walking in green pastures, beside still waters, but he will not drink any of the aforesaid still waters, if he can steal any whisky to drink.”
“You astonish, me,” said I to the orderly. “The fact is, the chaplain has sawed off on to me the duty of seeing to the burial of our deceased friend, and I called to gather some few facts as to his characteristics as a man and a brother. Can you tell me of anything that would interest those who may attend?”
“O, I don't know,” said the orderly. “The deceased was a liar, a thief, and a drunkard. He would steal anything that was not chained down. He would murder a man for a dollar. He was the worst nigger that ever was. If there was a medical college here that wanted bodies, it would be a waste of money to bury him. But when he was sober he could bake beans for all that was out, and there was no man that could boil corned mule so as to take the taste of the saltpetre out, as he could.”
This was not a very good send off for my first funeral, but I clung to the good qualities possessed by the late lamented. Though he might have been a bad man, all was not lost if he could bake beans well, and boil the salt horse or corned mule that soldiers had to eat, so they were appetizing. Many truly good men of national reputation, could not have excelled him in his chosen specialties, and I made a memorandum of that for future use. I made further inquiries in the company, and found that the deceased had a bad reputation, owed everybody, had five wives living that he had deserted, and was suspected of having murdered two or three colored men for their money. His death was caused by delirium tremens. He had stole a jug of whisky from the major's tent, laid drunk a week, and when the whisky was gone he had tremens, and had gone to the horse doctor for something to quiet his nerves, and the horse doctor had given him a condition powder to take, to be followed with a swallow of mustang liniment, and the man died.
This was the information I got to use in my remarks at the grave of the deceased, and I went back to my tent to think it over. I thought perhaps I had better work in the horse doctor for mal-practice, in my discourse, and thus get even with him for sending me to the general after a furlough. While I was thinking over the things I would say, and trying to forget the bad things about the man, the orderly sent word that the funeral cortege was ready to proceed to the bone yard. I looked down the company street and saw the remains being lifted into a cart, and I went out and put the saddle on my mule, and with a mental prayer that the confounded mule wouldn't get to kicking till the funeral was over, started to do the honors at the grave of the late company cook.
CHAPTER V.
The Funeral of the Colored Cook—I Plead for a Larger
Procession—The Funeral Oration—The Funeral Disturbed—I am
Arrested—My Fortunate Escape.
This last chapter of these celebrated war papers closed with me saddling my mule to ride to the funeral of the colored cook, at which I was to act as chaplain. The mule evidently knew that it was a solemn occasion, for there was a mournful look on its otherwise placid face, the ears drooped more than usual, and there seemed a sweet peace stealing over the animal, which well became a funeral, until I began to buckle up the saddle, when the long-eared brute began to paw and kick and bite, and it took six men to get me into the saddle. I rode down the company street where the cart stood with the remains, and a colored driver sitting on the foot of the plain pine box, asleep. I woke the driver up with the point of my saber, when another colored man came out of a tent with a shovel in one hand, and a hardtack with a piece of bacon in the other. He climbed into the cart, sat down on the coffin and began to eat his dinner. This was my funeral. All that seemed necessary for a funeral was a corpse, a driver of a cart, and a man with a shovel. I rode up to the orderly's tent and asked him where the mourners were, and he laughed at me. The idea of mourners seemed to be ridiculous. I had never, in all my life, seen so slim a funeral, and it hurt me. In the meantime the nigger with the shovel had woke up the driver of the cart, and he had followed me, with the remains. I told them to halt the funeral right there, until I could skirmish around and pick up mourners enough for a mess, and a choir, and some bearers. As I rode away to the colonel's tent, the driver of the cart and the man with the shovel were playing “mumbleypeg,” with a jack-knife, on the coffin, which shocked me very much, as I was accustomed to living where more respect was paid to the dead. I went to the colonel's tent and yelled “Say! The colonel, who was changing his shirt, came to the door with his eyes full of soap, rubbing his neck with a towel, and asked what was the row. I told him I would like to have him detail me six bearers, seven or eight mourners, a few singers, and fifteen or twenty men for a congregation. He asked me what on earth I was talking about, and just then the cart with the corpse in was driven up to where I was, the orderly having told the driver to follow me with the late lamented. I pointed to the outfit, and said:
“Colonel, in that box lie the remains of a colored cook. The chaplain has appointed me to conduct the funeral service, and I find that the two colored men on the cart are the only ones to accompany the remains to their last resting place. No man can successfully run a funeral on three niggers, one of whom is dead, one liable to go to sleep any minute, and the other with an abnormal appetite for hardtack. It is a disgrace to civilization to give a dead man such a send off, and I want you to detail me some men to see me through. I have loaded myself with some interesting remarks befitting the occasion, and I do not want to fire them off into space, with no audience except these two coons. Give me some mourners and things, or I drop this funeral right where it is.”
While I was speaking the general rode up to visit with the colonel, with his staff, and the colonel came out with his undershirt on, and his suspenders hanging down, and he and the general consulted for a minute, and laughed a little, which I thought was disgraceful. Then the colonel sent for the sergeant-major and told, him to detail all the company cooks and officer's servants, to attend the funeral with me, and he said I could divide them off into reliefs, letting a few be mourners at a time. In the meantime, he said, I could move my procession off down by the horse-doctor's quarter's, as he did not want it in front of his tent. That reminded me that the horse-doctor had prescribed for the deceased, and had given him condition powders, and I asked the colonel to compel the horse-doctor to go with me. It had always seemed to me at home that the attending physician, under whose auspices the person died, should attend the funeral of his patient, and when I told the colonel about it, he called the horse-doctor and told him he would have to go. It took half an hour or so to get the colored cooks and servants together, but when all was ready to move, it was quite a respectable funeral, except that I could not help noticing a spirit of levity on the part of the mourners. All the followers were mounted, the officer's servant's on officer's horses, and the cooks on mules, and it required all the presence of mind I possessed to keep the coons from turning the sad occasion into a horse race, as they would drop back, in squads, a quarter of a mile or so, and then come whooping up to the cart containing the remains, and each vowing that his horse could clean out the others. I rode in front of the remains with the horse-doctor, and tried to conduct myself in as solemn a manner as befitted the occasion, and tried to reason with the horse-doctor against his unseemly jokes, which he was constantly getting on. He told several stories, better calculated for a gathering where bacchanalian revelry was the custom, and I told him that while I respected his calling, he must respect mine. He said something about calling a man on a full hand, against a flush, but I did not pretend to know what he meant. We had to go out of town about two miles, to the cemetery. Unfortunately we were in the watermelon growing section, and the horse-doctor called my attention to the fact that my procession was becoming scarce, when I looked around, and every blessed one of the cooks and servants, and the man with the shovel, had gone on into the field after melons, and I stopped the cart and yelled to them to come back to the funeral. Pretty soon they all rode back, each with a melon under his arm, and every face looked as though there was no funeral that could prevent a nigger from stealing a watermelon. After several stops, to round up my mourners, from corn fields and horse racing, we arrived at the cemetery, and while the grave was being dug the niggers went for the melons, and if it had been a picnic there couldn't have been much more enjoyment. The horse-doctor took out a big knife that he used to bleed horses, and cut a melon, and offered me a slice, and while I did not feel that it was just the place to indulge in melon, it looked so good that I ate some, with a mental reservation, however. It was all a new experience to me. I had never believed that in the presence of death, or at a funeral, people could be anything but decorous and solemn. I had never attended a funeral before, except where all present were friends of the deceased, and sorry, but here all seemed different. They all seemed to look upon the thing as a good joke. I had read that in New York and other large cities, those who attended funerals had a horse race on the way back, and stopped at beer saloons and filled up, but I never believed that people could be so depraved. I tried to talk to the coons, and get them to show proper respect for the occasion, but they laughed and threw melon rinds at each other. Finnally the colonel and the general, with quite a lot of soldiers, who were out reconnoitering, rode to where we were, and the coons acted a little better, but I could see that the officers were not particularly solemn. They seemed to expect something rich. They evidently looked upon me as a star idiot, who would make some blunder, or say something to make them laugh: I made up my mind that in my new position I would act just as decorous, and speak as kindly as though the deceased was the president. During all my life I had made it a practice never to speak ill of any person on earth, and if I could not say a good word for a person I would say nothing, a practice which I have kept up until this writing, with much success, and I decided that the words spoken on that occasion should not reflect against the poor man who had passed in his checks, and laid down the burden of life. The grave was completed, and with a couple of picket ropes the body was let down, and there was for a moment a sort of solemnity. I arose, and as near as I can remember at this late day, spoke about as follows:
“Friends: We have met here today to conduct the last rites over a man, who but yesterday was among us but who, in an unguarded moment drank too much whisky, and paid the penalty. (There was a smile perceptible on the faces on the officers.) The ignorant man who died, did not know any better, but I see around me men who know better, but who drink more than this man did, and if they are not careful they will go the same way. (There was less smiling among the officers.) It is said of this man that he was bad, that he would steal. I have investigated, and have found that it is true, but that his peculations consisted of small things, of little value, and I am convinced that the habit was not worse with him than with any of us. In war times, everybody steals. We are all thieves to a certain extent. The soldier will not go hungry if he can jay-hawk anything to eat. The officer will not go thirsty if he can capture whisky, nor will anybody walk if he can steal a horse. The higher a man gets the more he will steal. Shall we harbor unkind thoughts against this dead man for stealing a pair of boots, and honor a general who steals a thousand bales of cotton? (No! no! shouted the cooks and servants, while the officers looked as though they were sorry they attended the funeral.) Friends let us look at the good qualities of our friend. I say, without fear of successful contradiction, that a man, however humble his station, who can bake beans as well as the remains could bake them, is entitled to a warm place in the heart of every soldier, and if he goes to the land that is fairer than this,-and who can say that he will not,—he is liable to be welcomed with 'well done, good and faithful servant,' and he will be received where horse doctors can never enter with their condition powders, and where there will never be war any more. To his family, or several families, as the case may be, I would say——”
At this point I had noticed an uneasiness on the part of my mourners and bearers, as well as the officers. Nine of the negroes fell down on the ground and groaned as if in pain, and the general and his stall looked off to a piece of woods where a few shots had been fired, and rode away hurriedly, the colonel telling me I had better hurry up that funeral or it was liable to be interrupted. The horse-doctor went to the negroes who were sick, and after examining them he said they had been poisoned by eating melons that had been doctored, and he advised them to get to town as quick as possible. They scrambled on their horses the best way they could, and just then there was a yell, and out of the woods came half a dozen Union soldiers followed by fifteen or twenty Confederates, and all was confusion. The niggers scattered towards town, the driver of the cart taking the lead, trying to catch the general and his start, who were hurrying away, leaving the horse-doctor, myself and the deceased. The horse-doctor seized the shovel and threw a little dirt on the coffin, then mounted his horse, I mounted my mule, and away we went towards town, with the rebels gaining on us every jump. The horse-doctor soon left me, and with a picket I had pulled off the fence of the cemetery, I worked my passage on that mule. I mauled the mule, and the more I pounded the slower it went. There was never a more deliberate mule in the world. I forgot all the solemn thoughts that possessed me at the grave, and tried to talk to the mule like a mule-driver, but the animal just fooled along, as though there was no especial hurry. Occasionally I could hear bullets 'zipping' along by me, and the rebels were yelling for all that was out. O, how I did wish I had my old race horse that the chaplain had beat me out of. In my first engagement my horse was too fast, and there was danger that I would catch my friend, the rebel, and I complained of the horse. Now I had a mule that was too slow. What I wanted was a 'middling' horse, one that was not too confounded fast when after the enemy, and one not so all-fired slow when being pursued. The Johnnies were coming closer, but we were only half a mile from town. Would they chase us clear into town? At that critical moment the blasted mule stopped short, never to go again, and began to kick. What on earth possessed that fool mule to take a notion to stop right there and kick, is more than I shall ever know, but it simply kicked, and I felt that my time had come. The Union soldiers that were being chased by the Confederates passed me, and told me I better light out or I would be captured, but I couldn't get the mule to budge an inch. It just kicked. The good Lord only knows, what that mule was kicking at, or why it should have been scheduled to stop and kick at that particular time, when every minute was precious. I saw the rebels very near me, and as it was impossible to get the mule to go a step farther, I raised the large, flat, white-washed picket which I had torn on the cemetery fence to maul the mule with, in token of surrender, and the Confederate boys surrounded me, though they kept a safe distance, after my mule had kicked in the ribs of one of their horses. The rebs had gone about as far towards the town as it was safe to go, and and they knew the whole garrison would be out after them pretty soon, so they laughed at me for being armed with a whitewashed picket, and asked me if I expected to put down the rebellion by stabbing the enemy with such things. I told them I had been burying a nigger. One of my captors run the point of his saber into my mule, to stop its kicking, and then he said to his comrades, “Boys, we came out here with the glorious prospect of capturing a Yankee general and his staff, and instead of getting him, we have broken up a nigger funeral and captured the gospel sharp, armed with a picket fence, and a kicking mule. Shall we hang him for engaging in uncivilized, warfare, by stabbing us with pickets poisoned with whitewash, or shall we take the red-headed slim-jim back with us as a curiosity.” The boys all said not to hang me, but to take me along. I saw that it was all day with me this time. I felt that I was helping put down the rebellion rapidly, as I had been a soldier four weeks, been captured twice, and not a drop of blood had been spilled. The rebels started back, with me and my mule ahead of them, and they kept the mule ahead by jabbing it with a saber occasionally. I felt humiliated and indignant at being called slim-jim, sorrel-top, and elder. They seemed to think I was a preacher. I stood it all until a cuss reached into my pocket and took my meershaum pipe and a bag of tobacco, filled the pipe and lit it, then I was mad. I had paid eight dollars of my bounty for that pipe, and I said to the leader: “Boss, I can stand a joke as well as anybody, but when you capture me, in a fair fight, you have no right to jab my mule with a saber, or call me names. I am a meek and lowly soldier of the army of the right, and want to so live that I can meet you all in the great hereafter, but by the gods I can whip the condemned galoot that stole my meershaum pipe. You think I am pious, and a non-combatant, but I am a fighter from away back, and don't you forget it.” The young man who seemed to be in command told me to dry up, and he would get my pipe. He went and took it away from the one who had stolen it, filled it and lit it himself, and said it was a good pipe, and then he passed it around among them all. We moved on at a trot, and were getting far away from my regiment, and I realized that I was a captive, and that I should probably die in Andersonville prison. I looked at the dozen stalwart rebels that were riding behind me, and knew I could not whip them all with one picket off the cemetery fence, and so I resolved to remain a captive, and die for my country, of scurvey, if necessary. I turned around in my saddle to ask if it wasn t about time for me to have a smoke out of my own pipe, and as I looked up the road we had come over I saw a large body of our own cavalry, coming like the wind toward us. I said nothing, but my face gave me away. I looked so tickled to see the boys coming that the rebels noticed it, and they looked back and saw the soldiers in pursuit, they yelled, “The Yanks are coming!” put spurs to their horses, stabbed my mule and told me to pound it with the picket, and hurry up, and then they passed me, and away they went, leaving me in the road alone between them and my own soldiers, I yelled to the leader to give me back my pipe, and I can hear his mocking laugh to this day, as he told me to “go to hell.” This made me mad, and drawing my picket I dashed after the retreating rebels, knowing that the men of my regiment would soon overtake me, and they would think I had chased the rebels three miles from town, armed only with a picket off the fence, and saved the garrison from capture. The thing worked to perfection, and when our command came up, the horses panting and perspiring, and the boys looking wild, the captain in command asked me how many there was of em, and I told him about forty, and he said I had done well to drive them so far, and he charged by me after them. I yelled to the captain to try and kill that long-legged rebel on the sorrel horse, and get my meershaum pipe, but he didn't hear me. I hurried along as fast as I could, but before I caught up, there was a good deal of firing, and when I got there flankers were out in the woods, and there was sorrow, for three or four boys in blue had been killed in an ambush, and the rebels had got away across a bayou. As I rode up on my mule, with the picket still in my hand, I saw the three soldiers of my regiment lying dead under a tree, two others were wounded and had bandages around their heads, and for the first time since I had been a soldier, I realized that war was not a picnic. I could not keep my eyes off the faces of my dead comrades, the best and bravest boys in the regiment, boys who always got to the front when there was a skirmish. To think that I had been riding right amongst the rebels who had done this thing but a few minutes before, and never thought that death would claim anybody so soon. I wondered if those rebels were not sorry they had killed such good boys. I wondered, as I thought of the fathers and mothers, and sisters of my dead companions, whether the rebels would not sympathize with them, and then I thought suppose our fellows had not been killed, and we had killed some of the Confederates, wouldn't it have been just as sorrowful, wouldn't their fathers, mothers and sisters have mourned the same.
Then I made a resolve that I would never kill anybody if I could help it; I even decided that if I should meet the rebel that had my meershaum pipe, I would not fight him to get it. If he wasn't gentleman enough to give it up peaceably, he could keep it, and be darned. Just then some of our skirmishers came in carrying another dead body, and we were all speculating as to which one of our poor boys had fallen, when we noticed that the dead soldier had on a gray suit, and it was soon found that he was one of the Confederates. He was laid down beside our dead boys, and I don't know but I felt about as bad to see him dead, as it was possible to feel. It is true he had told me, half an hour before, when I asked him for my pipe, to go to hades, but I did not have to go unless I wanted to. And he was gone first. I saw something sticking out of the breast pocket of the dead Confederate, and could see that it was my pipe. Then I thought of the foolish remark I made to the captain, to kill that long-legged rebel and get my meershaum. God bless him, I didn't want anybody to kill him for a bad smelling old pipe, and I wondered if that remark would be registered up against me, in the great book above, when I didn't mean it. I tried to make myself believe that my remark did not have any influence on the man's fate. He just took his chances with his comrades, and was killed, no doubt, and yet it was impossible to get the idea off my mind that I was responsible for his death. Anyway, I would never touch the confounded old pipe again, and if I ever heard of his mother or sister, after the war was over, I would stand by them as long as I had a nickel. An ambulance was sent for and the dead and wounded were placed in it, and we went back to town, a sad procession. There was no need to detail any mourners for this occasion, and there was no straggling for watermelons. Everybody was full of sorrow. The next day there was a Union funeral in that Southern town, and the three Union boys were laid side by side, while a little, to one side my Confederate was buried, receiving the same kind words from the chaplains. As a volley was about to be fired over the graves, I picked a handful of roses, buds and blossoms, from a rose bush in the cemetery, and went to the grave of the Confederate and tenderly tossed them upon the coffin. The horse doctor saw me do it, and in his rough manner said,
“What you about there? It ain t necessary to plant flowers on the graves of rebels.
“O, no, it isn't necessary, I said, as the volley was fired over the graves, but it will make his mother or his sister feel better to know that there are a few roses in there, and it won't hurt anybody. I will just play that I am the authorized agent of that Confederate soldier's sister.
“O, all right if you say so, said the horse-doctor, as he drew the sleeve of his blue blouse across his eyes, which were wet. The last volley was fired, and the soldiers returned to camp, leaving the dead of two armies sleeping together. As I went in the chaplain's tent and sat down to think, the chaplain handed me something, saying:
“Here's your pipe. They found it on that Confederate soldier that captured you.”
I pushed it away and said, “I don't want it. I have quit smoking.”
CHAPTER VI.
I Capture “Jeff”—I Get Back at the Chaplain—The Chaplain
Arrested—Off on a Raid—I Meet the Relatives of the Dead
Confederate—My Powers of Lying are Brought into Play.
The winding up of the last chapter of this history, with its sad incidents, deaths and burials, was unavoidable, but it shall not occur again. The true historian has got to get in all the particulars. I think I never felt quite as downhearted as I did the day or two after the skirmish, when our boys were killed. It had seemed as though there was no danger of anybody getting hurt, as long as they looked out for themselves, but now there was a feeling that anybody was liable to be killed, any time, and why not me? Of course the old veterans of the regiment were the ones who would naturally be expected to take the brunt of the battle, but there was a habit of sending raw recruits into places of danger that struck me as being mighty careless, as well as very bad judgment. Then there were great preparations being made for an advance movement, or a retreat, or something, and my mind was constantly occupied in trying to find out whether it was to be an advance or a retreat. If it was an advance, I wanted to arrange to be in the rear, and if it was a retreat, it seemed to me as as though the proper place for a man who wanted to live to go home, was in front. And yet what chance was there for a common private soldier to find out whether it was an advance or a retreat. Finally I decided that when the regiment did start out, I would manage to be about the middle, so it wouldn't make much difference which way we went. When that idea occurred to me I pondered over it a good deal and told the chaplain, and he said it was a piece of as brilliant strategy as he had ever heard of, and he was willing to adopt it, only being a staff officer it was necessary for him and me to ride with the colonel, and the colonel most always rode at the head, though his place was about the middle. He said he would speak to the colonel about it. It made my hair stand to see the preparations that were being made for carnage. Ammunition enough was issued to kill a million men, and the doctors were packing bandages and plasters, and physic, and splints and probes, until it made me sick to look at them. When I thought of actual war, my mind reverted to my mule, the kicking brute that was no good, and I decided to get a horse. I had got so, actually, that I could hear bullets whistle without turning pale and having cold chills run over me, and it seemed as though a horse was none too good for me, so I went to the colonel and told him that a soldier couldn't make no show on a kicking mule and I wanted a horse. I told him I supposed, as chaplain's clerk. I should have to ride with him and his staff on the march, and he didn't want to see as nice a looking fellow as I was riding a kicking mule that would kick the ribs of the officers horses, and break the officers legs. The colonel said he had not thought of that contingency. He had enjoyed seeing me ride the mule, because I was so patient when the mule kicked. He said they used that mule in the regiment to teach recruits to ride. A man who could stay on that mule could ride any horse in the regiment, and as I had been successful, and had displayed splendid mulemanship, I should be promoted to ride a horse, and he told the quartermaster to exchange with me and give me the chestnut-sorrel horse that the Confederate was shot off of. I went with the quartermaster to the corral, turned out my mule, and cornered the beautiful horse that had been rode so proudly a few days before by my friend, the rebel. It took six of us to catch the horse, and bridle and saddle him, and the men about the corral said the horse was no good. He hadn't eaten anything since being captured, and his eyes looked bad, and he wanted to kick and bite everybody. I told them the poor horse was homesick, that was all that ailed him. The horse was a Confederate at heart, and he naturally had no particular love for Yankees. I remembered that once or twice when I was riding with the rebels, after they captured me, the young fellow on this horse patted him on the neck and called him “Jeff”, so I knew that was his name, so I led him out of the corral away from the other fellows, where there was some grass growing, and made up my mind I would “mash” him. After he had eaten grass a little while, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes as though he didn't know whether to kick my head on, or walk on me, as I sat under a tree, I got up and patted him on the neck and said, “Well, Jeff, old boy, how does the grass fit your stomach?”
You may talk about brute intelligence, but that horse was human. He stopped eating, with his mouth full of grass, looked astonished at being addressed by a stranger without an introduction, and turned a pair of eyes as beautiful and soft as a woman's upon me, and then began to chew slowly, as though thinking. I rubbed his sleek coat with, my bare hands, and did not say much, desiring to have Jeff make the first advances. He looked me over, and finally put his nose on my sleeve, and rubbed me, and looked in my face, and acted as though he would say, “Well, of course this red-headed fellow is no comparison to my dead master, but evidently he's no slouch, and if I have got to be bossed around by a Yankee, as he is the only one that has spoken a kind word to me since I was captured, and he seems to know my name, I guess I will tie to him,” and the intelligent animal rubbed his nose all over me, and licked my hand. I rubbed the horse all over, petted him, took up his feet and looked at them, and spoke his name, and pretty soon we were the best of friends. I mounted him and rode around and it was just like a rocking chair. That poor, dead Confederate had probably rode Jeff since he was a kid and Jeff was a colt, and had broken him well, and I was awfully sorry that the original owner was not alive, riding his horse home safe and sound, to be greeted by his family with loving embraces. But he was dead and buried, and his horse belonged to me, by all the laws of war. And yet I had not become a hardened warrior to such an extent that I could forget the hearts that would ache at his home, and I made up mind that horse would be treated as tenderly as though he was one of my family. I rode Jeff around for an hour or two, found that he was trained to jump fences, stand on his hind feet, trot, pace, rack, and that he could run like a scared wolf, and everything the horse did he would sort of look around at me with one eye as much as to say, “Boss, you will find I have got all the modern improvements, and you needn't be afraid that I will disgrace you in any society.” I was fairly in love with my new horse, and, except for a feeling that I was an interloper with the horse, and sorry for the poor boy that had been shot off him, I should have been perfectly happy.
The chaplain had got in the habit of wearing a nice, blue broadcloth blouse which I had brought from home, which had two rows of brass buttons on it. I had paid about twenty dollars of my bounty for the blouse, and had found that the private soldiers did not wear such elaborate uniforms in active duty, so I kept it in the chaplain's tent. I thought if I was killed and my body was sent home, the blouse would come handy. The chaplain wore it occasionally, and he said any time I wanted to wear any of his clothes to just help myself. An order had been issued to move the following day, with ten days' rations, and some of the boys asked for passes to go down town and have a little blow-out before we started. They wanted me to go along, and so I got a pass, too. We were to go down town in the afternoon and stay till nine o clock at night, when we had to be in camp. I saddled up Jeff and looked for my blouse, but it was gone, the chaplain having worn it to visit the chaplain of some other regiment, so I took his coat and put it on, as he had told me to. The coat had the chaplain's shoulder-straps on, but I thought there would be no harm in wearing it, so about a dozen of us privates started for town to have a good time, and I with chaplain's-straps on. It was customary, when soldiers went to town on a pass, to partake of intoxicating beverages more or less, as that was about the only form of enjoyment, and I blush now, twenty-two years afterward, to write the fact that we all got pretty full. It seemed so like home to be able to go into a saloon and drink beer, good old northern beer, and who knew but tomorrow we would be killed. So we ate, drank, and were merry. One of the boys said when the officers got on a tear, they would ride right into billiard saloons, and sometime shoot at decanters of red liquor behind the bar, and he said a private was just as good as an officer any day, and suggested that we mount our horses and paint the town. We mounted, and rode about town, racing up and down the streets, and finally we came to a billiard saloon, and half a dozen of us rode right in, took cues out of the rack, and tried to play billiards on horse-back. It was a grand picnic then, though it seems foolish now. My horse Jeff would do anything I asked him, and when I rode up to the bar and told him to rear up, he put both fore feet on the bar, and looked at the bartender as much as to say, “set up the best you have got.”
The chaplain's shoulder-straps gave the crowd a sort of confidence that everything was all right, and after exhibiting in a saloon for a time, there was something said about horse-racing, and I said my horse could beat anything on four legs, so we adjourned to the outskirts of town for a race, followed by half the people in town. We had a horse-race, and Jeff beat them all, and wherever I went the crowd would cheer the chaplain. They said they liked to see a man in that position who could unbend himself and mix up with the boys. There never was a chaplain more popular than the “Wisconsin preacher” was. It did not occur to me that I was placing the chaplain in an unfavorable position before the public, by wearing his coat. Nothing occurred to me, that day, except that we were having a high old time. Finally, after dark, one of our boys got into a row with a loafer in a saloon, and picked the loafer up and tossed him through the window, to the sidewalk. This was very wrong, but it couldn't be helped. There was a great noise, cries for the provost guard, and we knew that the only way to get out of the scrape honorably, would be to get out real quick, so we mounted and rode to our camp. My horse was the fastest and I got home first, unsaddled my horse and went to the tent, took off the chaplain's coat and hung it up carefully, and was at work writing a letter, and thinking how my horse acted as though he had been on sprees before, he enjoyed it so, when I heard a noise outside, and it was evident that the provost guard had followed us to camp, and were making complaint to the colonel about our conduct down town. Finally the guard went away, and shortly the colonel and the adjutant called at our tent and inquired for the chaplain. I told them the chaplain had been away most of the day, and had not returned. The colonel and the adjutant winked at each other, and asked me if he wasn t away a good deal. I told them that he was away some. They asked me if I never noticed that his breath had a peculiar smell. I told them that it was occasionally a little loud. They went away thoughtfully. Now that I think of it I ought to have explained that the peculiarity of the chaplain's breath was caused from eating pickled onions of the sanitary stores, but it did not occur to me at the time. After a while the chaplain came back, asked me if anybody had died during the day, took a drink of blackberry brandy for what ailed him, and we retired. The next morning there was a circus. The little town boasted, a daily paper, and it contained the following:
“The community is prepared to overlook an occasional scene
of hilarity among the Federal soldiers stationed in this
vicinity, but when a gang of roysterers is led by a
chaplain, as was the case yesterday, all right-minded people
will be indignant. It is said by our informant that the
chaplain of a certain cavalry regiment was the liveliest one
of the crowd, that he rode into a billiard room, caused his
horse to place its forefeet on the bar, and that he played a
better game of billiards on horseback than many worldly men
can play on foot. It is the duty of the commanding officer
to discipline his chaplain. The chaplain also beat the boys
several horse races while in town, and they say he is a
perfect horseman, and has one of the finest horses ever
seen here, which he probably stole.”
I had a boy bring me a paper every morning, and I read the article before the chaplain awoke, and destroyed the paper. Early the next morning the colonel sent for the chaplain, placed him under arrest, and the good man came back to the tent feeling pretty bad. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he was under arrest for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. He said charges were preferred against him for drunkenness and disorderly conduct, horse-racing, playing billiards on horse-back, riding his horse into a saloon and trying to jump him over the bar, and lots of things too numerous to mention. I felt sorry for him, and told him I had been fearful all along that he would get into trouble by going away from me so much, and associating with the chaplains of the other regiments, but I had never supposed it would come to this.
“Wine is a mocker,” said I, becoming warmed up, “and none of us can afford to tamper with it. With me, it does not make so much difference, as I have no reputation but that which is already lost, but you, my dear sir, think of your position. Go to the colonel and confess all, and ask him to forgive you,” and I wiped my eyes on my coat sleeve.
“But I was not drunk,” said the chaplain, indignantly. “I was not in a saloon, and never saw a game of billiards in my life. I was over to the New Jersey regiment, talking with their chaplain about getting up a revival, among the soldiers,” and the good man groaned as he said, “it is a case of mistaken identity.”
“Bully, elder,” said I. “If you can make the court-martial believe you, you will be all right, and you will not be cashiered. But it looks dark, very dark, for you. May heaven help you.”
The chaplain was worried all the morning, and the officers and men joked him unmercifully. At noon the chaplain was released from arrest, as we were to move at four p. m., and he begged so to be allowed to accompany the regiment. The colonel told him he could be tried when we got back, and he was happy. There was a great commotion as the regiment broke up its camp and got ready to move. There was the usual crowd of negresses who had been doing washing for the soldiers, to be paid on pay day, and we were going away, no one knew where, and no one knew when we would meet pay day. There were saloon-keepers with bills against officers, and standing-off creditors was just about as hard in the army as at home. I couldn't see much difference. But finally everything was ready, the ammunition wagons, wagon train of stores, and a battery of little guns, about three pounders, had been added. I didn't like the battery. It seemed to me hard enough to kill our fellow citizens with revolver balls, without shooting them with cannon. At 4 p.m. the bugle sounded “forward,” and with the clanking of sabers, rattling of hoofs and wagons, we marched outside the picket line, past the cemetery where my deceased friends were buried, and were going towards the enemy. The chaplain and myself were riding behind the colonel, when the colonel asked the good man to ride up to a log that was beside the road, and make his horse put his forefeet upon it, as he did on the bar in the saloon. I felt sorry for the chaplain, and I rode up to the log, and had Jeff put his feet up on it. Then I rode back and saluted the colonel and told him it was I who had done the wicked things the chaplain was accused of, and I told him how the chaplain was using my coat, so I put on his, with the shoulder straps on, and all about it. He laughed at first and then said, “Then you are under arrest. You may dismount and walk and lead your horse until further orders.” I dismounted, like a little man, and for five miles I walked, keeping up with the regiment. Finally the colonel sung out, “gallop, march,” and I got on my horse. I reasoned that the order to gallop was “further orders,” and that as he knew I couldn't very well gallop on foot he must have meant for me to get on. We galloped for about ten miles, and were ordered to halt, when I dismounted and led my horse up to the colonel, and saluted him. “Well, you must have had a hard time keeping up with us on foot,” said he. I told him it rested me to go on foot. We were just going into camp for the night, and the colonel said, “Well, as you are rested so much from your walk, you may go out with the foraging party and get some feed for your horse and the chaplain's.” I was willing to do anything for a quiet life, so I fell in with a party of about forty, under a lieutenant, and we rode off into the country to steal forage from a plantation, keeping a sharp lookout for Confederates who might object. I guess we rode away from camp two or three miles, when we came to a magnificent plantation house, and outhouses, negro quarters, etc. The house was on a hill, in a grove of live oaks, and had immense white pillars, or columns in front. As we rode up to the plantation the boys scattered all over the premises. This was the first foraging expedition I had ever been with, and I thought all we went for was to get forage for our horses, so I went to a shock of corn fodder and took all that I could strap on my saddle, and was ready to go, when I passed a smoke house and found some of the boys taking smoked hams and sides of bacon. I asked one of the boys if they had permission to take hams and things, and he laughed and said, “everything goes,” and he handed me a ham which I hung on to my saddle. Then the lieutenant told me to go up in front of the house and stand guard, and prevent any soldier from entering the house. I rode up to the house, where there was an old lady and a young married woman with a little girl by her side. They were evidently much annoyed and frightened, though too proud to show it, and I told them they need have no fear, as the men were only after a little forage for their horses. The old lady looked at the ham on my saddle and asked me if the horses eat meat, and I said, “No, but sometimes the men eat horses.” I thought that was funny. The young woman was beautiful, and the child was perfectly enchanting. They were on the opposite side of the railing from me, and my horse kept working up towards them, rubbing his nose on the pickets, and finally his nose touched the clasped hands of the mother and child. The little girl laughed and patted the horse on the nose, while the mother drew back. It was almost dark and the horse was almost covered with corn fodder, but the little girl screamed and said:
“Mamma, that is Jeff, papa's horse!”
The mamma looked at me with a wild, hunted look, then at the horse, rushed down the steps and threw her arms around the neck of the horse and sobbed in a despairing manner:
“O, where is my husband? Where is he? Is he dead?
“My son, my son!” cried the old lady.
“Bring me my papa, you bad man!” said the little child, and I was surrounded by the three.
Gentle reader, I have been through many scenes in my life, and have been many times where it was not the toss of a copper whether death or life was my portion, and I had some nerve to help me through, but I never was in a place that tried me like that one. I had been captured by the father of this little child, the husband of this beautiful, proud woman, the son of this charming old lady. I had seen him brought in, dead, had seen him buried, and had thrown a bunch of roses in his grave. Now I was surrounded by these mourners, mourners when they should know the worst. Cold chills run all over me, and cold perspiration was on my brow.
“Is he dead?” they all shouted together.
I hate a liar, on general principles, and yet there are times when a lie is so much easier to tell than truth. I did not want to be a murderer, and I knew, by the dreadful light in the eyes of that lovely wife, as she looked up at me from the neck of the horse, her face as white as snow, that if I told the truth she would fall dead right where she was. If I told the truth that blessed old lady's heart would be broken, and that little child's face would not have any more smiles, during the war, for mamma and grandma, and, with a hoarse voice, and choking, and trying to swallow something that seemed as big as a baseball in my throat, I deliberately lied to them. I told them the young man who rode this horse had been captured, after a gallant fight, unharmed, and sent north. That he was so brave that our boys fell in love with him, and there was nothing too good for him in our army, and that he would be well taken care of, and exchanged soon, I had no doubt, and bade them not to worry, but to look at the discomforts and annoyances of war as leniently as possible, and all would be well soon.
“Thank heaven! Take all we have got in welcome,” said the old lady, as a heavenly smile came over her face. “My boy is safe.”
“O, thank you, sir,” said the little mother, as a lovely smile chased a dimple all around her mouth, and corraled it in her left cheek, while a pair of navy-blue eyes looked up at me as though she would hug me if I was not a Yankee, eyes that I have seen a thousand times since, in dreams, often with tears in them.
“You are a darling good man,” said the little girl, dancing on the gravel path. The mother blushed and said,
“Why, Maudie, don't be so rude;” and there was a shout:
“Fall in!”
The lieutenant rode up to me and asked, as he noticed the glad smiles on the faces of the ladies, if this was a family reunion, and, apologizing for being compelled to raid the plantation, we rode away. I was afraid they would mention the news I had brought them, and the lieutenant would tell the truth, so I was glad to move. I was glad to go, for if I had remained longer I would have cried like a baby, and given them back the horse, and walked to camp. As we moved away, I took out my knife and cut the string that held the smoked ham on my saddle, and had the satisfaction of hearing it drop on the path before the house. I could not give back the husband of the blue-eyed woman, the son of the saintly Southern mother, the father of the sweet child, but I could leave that ham. As we rode back to camp that beautiful moonlight night, I did not join in the singing of the boys, or the jokes. I just thought of that happy home I had left, and how it would be stricken, later, when the news was brought them, and wondered if that fearful lie I had been telling, them was justifiable, under the circumstances, and it it would be laid up against me, charged up in the book above. That night I slept on the ground on some corn fodder and dreamed of nothing but blue-eyed mamma's and golden-haired Maudie's and white-haired angel grandmothers.
CHAPTER VII.
“Boots and Saddles”—“I am the Colonel's Orderly”—Riding
Fifty Miles on an Empty Stomach—The Chaplain Appears—I am
Wounded by a Locomotive and a Piece of Coal—I Nearly Kill
an Old Man.
When our foraging party got back to camp, and I unloaded the corn fodder from my horse, I was about as disgusted with war as a man could be. The faces of those people I had met at the plantation rose up before me, and I could imagine how they would look when they heard that the Confederate soldier who was their all, was dead. I hoped that they would never hear of it. While I was thinking the matter over, and grooming my horse, the chaplain came along and took nearly all the fodder I had brought in, and fed it to his horse, and asked me where the chickens and hams, and sweet potatoes were. I told him I didn't get any. Then he spoke very plainly to me, plainer than he had ever spoken before, and told me that fodder for horses was not all that soldiers got when they went out foraging. He said I wanted to snatch anything that was lying around loose, that could be eaten. I asked him if the government did not furnish rations enough for him to live comfortably, in addition to the sanitary stores. He said sometimes he yearned for chicken. Then I told him his salary was sufficient to buy such luxuries. He was hot, and talked back to me, and told me he didn't propose to be lectured by no red-headed private as to his duties, or his conduct, and he wanted me to understand that I was expected to forage for him as well as myself, and not to let another soldier come into camp with a better assortment of the luxuries afforded by the country, than I did. He said that he picked me out as a man that would fill the bill, and do his duty. I told him if he had selected me from all the men in the regiment as being the most expert sneak thief, he had made a mistake, and I would be teetotally d——d if I would go through the country stealing hens and chickens for any chaplain that ever lived, and he could put that in his pipe and smoke it. It was pretty sassy talk for a private soldier to indulge in towards a chaplain, but I was so disgusted to hear a man who should discountenance anything unsoldierly, talk so flippantly about taking from the women and children of the country what little they had to live on, because we had the power, their men folks being away in the army, that I got on my ear, as it were. I told him that I was not much mashed on war, and hoped I would never have to fire a gun at a human being, but now that I was into the business, I would fight if I had to, or do any duty of a soldier, but I would be cussed if I would rob henroosts, and he didn't weigh enough to compel me to. Then he said I could go back to my company, as he didn't want a man around him that hadn't sand enough to do his duty. I asked him if I hadn't better wait till after supper, it being after dark, but he said I could go right away, and he would have another man detailed to take my place. I was discharged, because I struck against stealing hens. I saddled my horse, took my share of the fodder, and started for my company to return to duty as a soldier. On the way to my company I saw a half a dozen soldiers, covered with mud, and their horses covered with foam, ride up to the colonel's tent, and I stopped to see what was the matter. A sergeant gave the colonel a dispatch, which he tore open, read it, looked excited, and then he turned to 'me and said, “Ride to every commanding officer of a company and say with my compliments, that 'Boots and Saddles' will be sounded in ten minutes, and every man must be in line, mounted, within five minutes after the call is sounded, then come back here.” Well, I was about as excited as the colonel, and I rode to every captain's tent and gave the command. Some of the captains, who were just sitting down to supper, asked, “What you giving us,” thinking it was some foolishness on my part. One captain said if I came around with any more such orders he would run a saber through me and turn it around a few times; another said to his lieutenant, “That is the chaplains idiot, that the boys play jokes on; some corporal has probably told him to carry that message.”
I got all around the companies, and went back to the colonel, and told him that I had delivered his invitation, but the most of the captains sent regrets in one way and another, and one was going to jab me with a saber. He called the bugler, and told him to blow “Boots and Saddles,” and in five minutes to sound, “To Horse;” then he turned to me and said, “You will be my orderly tonight, and you will have the liveliest ride you ever experienced. Buckle up your saddle girth and lead my horse out here.” I told the colonel I should have to buckle up my own belt a few holes, as I hadn't had any supper, when he told his servant to bring me out what was left of his supper, which he did, one small hard tack. I eat pretty hearty, and let my horse fill himself all he could on corn stalks, and in a short time the bugle calls were echoing through the woods, men were saddling up and mounting, and picking up camp utensils in the dark, and swearing some at being ordered out in that unceremonious manner when they had got all ready to have a night's rest. There was not near as much swearing as I had supposed there would be, but there was enough. The chaplain came rushing up to where I was with his coat off, and asked me what was the matter, and the colonel having gone to the major's tent, I answered him that we were going to have the liveliest ride he ever experienced, and not to forget it, and that probably before morning we would have the biggest fight of the season.
“Come and help me catch my horse,” said the chaplain, “I turned him loose so he could roll over, and he has stampeded.”
“Go catch your own horse,” said I with lofty dignity, “and steal your own chickens. I am serving on the start of the commanding officer, sir. I am the colonel's orderly.”
I thought that would break the chaplain all up, but it didn't. “The devil you say,” remarked the chaplain, as he went off in the darkness, whistling for his horse. Gentle reader, did you ever ride on horseback fifty miles in one night, on an empty stomach, after having ridden thirty miles during the day? If you never have accomplished such a feat, you don't know anything about suffering. O, to this day I can feel my stomach freeze itself to my backbone. We started soon after orders were given on a gallop, and if we walked our horses a minute during the whole night, I did not know it. We marched by “fours,” but I had the whole road to myself, as I rode behind the colonel. I wanted to know where we were going and what for, and once, when the colonel fell back to where I was, while he was taking a drink out of a canteen, I said, “This is a little sudden, ain't it?” My idea was to draw him out, and get him to tell me all about the destination of the expedition, and its object. The colonel got through drinking, and as he knocked the cork into the canteen, he said, “Yes, this is a little spry.” That was all he said, and evidently he wanted me to draw my own inference, which I did. Pretty soon the orderly sergeant of the company that was on the advance, directly behind the colonel, rode up to me and asked me if I had any idea where we were going. He said he had seen me talking with the colonel, and thought maybe he had told me the programme. He added that he thought it was a shame that men couldn't be allowed a little rest. I told him that I had just been talking with the colonel about it, but I had no authority to communicate what he said. However, I would assure the orderly that we were going to have the liveliest ride he ever experienced. I knew I was safe in saying that, and the orderly remarked that he had about come to that conclusion himself, and he left me. I had never expected to rise, on pure merit, to that proud position of colonel's orderly, and I made up my mind if that night's ride did not founder me, or drive my spine up into the top of my hat, or glue the two sides of my empty stomach together, so they would never come apart, that I would try to conduct myself so that the commanding officers would all cry for me and want me on their starts. I argued, to myself, as we rode along, that the position of colonel's orderly could not be so very unsafe, as it did not stand to reason that a colonel would go into any place that was particularly dangerous, as long as he could send other officers. I knew that colonels in action should ride behind their regiments, and wondered if this colonel knew his place, or would he be fool enough to go right ahead of his men? I was going to speak to him about it, if we ever stopped galloping long enough, but everything was jarred out of my head.
A fellow can think of a good many things, riding on a gallop at night, and I guess I thought of about everything that night. There were few interruptions of the march. There were about four stops, two being caused by horses falling down and being run over by those behind them, and two by carbines going off accidentally. One man was dismounted and run over by half the horses in the regiment, and when he was pulled out from under the horses he asked for a chew of tobacco, and saying he was marked for life by horse shoes, he kicked his horse in the ribs for falling down, climbed on and said the procession might move on. He was all cut to pieces by horse's hoofs, but he was full of fight the next morning. Another soldier had his big toe shot off by the accidental discharge of a carbine, and when the regiment stopped, and the colonel asked him if he wanted to stop there and wait for an ambulance to overtake him, he said, not if there is going to be a fight. I don't use a big toe much, anyway, and if there is a fight ahead, I want to be there, if I haven't got a toe left on my feet. The colonel smiled and said, all right, boy. I never saw fellows who were so anxious to fight, and I wondered how much money it would take to induce me to go into a fight when I was crippled up enough to be excused. Along toward morning everybody felt that we were so far into the enemy's lines that there must be some object in the long ride, and the probabilities of a fight seemed to be settled in every man's mind. Up hill and down we galloped, until it seemed to me I should fall off my horse and die. About half an hour before daylight the command was halted, and the officers of each company were sent for, and they surrounded the colonel, separated from the men, and he said: “There is a town ahead, about four miles, garrisoned by confederate troops. We are to charge it at daylight, drive the enemy out the other side of town, kill as many as possible, and when they go out they will be attacked by another Union regiment that has been sent around to the rear. There is a railroad there, and a bridge across a river, Confederate stores of ammunition, provisions, cotton, etc. The stores are to be burned, the railroad bridge destroyed, the track torn up, engines, if there are any, are to be ditched, and everything destroyed except private residences. You understand?” The officers said they did, and they went back to their companies and ordered the men to get a bite to eat. When the officers had gone I was pretty scared, and I said, “Colonel, suppose the rebels do not get out of that town.” The colonel was chewing a hard-tack when he answered. Daylight was just streaking up from the East, and he held a piece of the hard-tack up to the light to pick a worm out of it, after which he answered: “If they don't get out, we will, those of us who are not killed. I always like to eat hard-tack in the dark, then I can't see the worms.” To say that I was reassured would be untrue. I admired a man who could mingle business with pleasure, as he did when talking of possible death and worms in hard-tack, but death was never an interesting subject to me. I wanted to talk with the colonel more, and asked him if colonels often get killed, and if an orderly was exactly safe in his immediate vicinity, but he leaned against a tree and went to sleep, and I stood near, as wide awake as any man ever was. I wondered whose idea it was to send us fifty miles into the Confederacy to destroy provisions and railroads.
Did they suppose the Confederates didn't want anything to eat. I thought it was a mean man or government that would burn up good wholesome provisions because they couldn't eat them themselves. And who owned this railroad that was going to be torn up? Why burn a bridge that probably cost several hundred thousand dollars. As I was thinking these things over and finding fault with the persons responsible for such foolishness, the chaplain, who had not showed up during the night, came up to where I was, without any hat, leading his horse, which was lame. The first thing he asked me how I would trade horses. They all wanted my Jen, but he was not in the market. The chaplain said he had caught up with the regiment about midnight, and had rode at the rear, with the horse-doctor. He said this expedition was foolish, and had no object except to try the endurance of the horses and men. I told him that we were going to have a fight in less than an hour, and burn a town, and probably we would all be killed. The chaplain turned pale and looked faint.
I had read about hell, and seen pictures of it, from the imagination of some eminent artist, but the hell I had read of, and seen pictured, was not a marker to the experience of the next three hours. In a few minutes the colonel woke up, and the regiment mounted and moved on. An advance guard was put further out than before, with orders to charge the rebel picket almost into town, and then hold up for the rest of us. As we neared the town it was just light enough to see. The advance captured the picket post without a shot being fired, and moved right into town, followed by the regiment, and we actually rode right into the camp of the boys in gray, and woke them up by firing. They scattered, coatless and shoeless, firing as they ran, and in five minutes they were all captured, killed, gone out of town, or were in hiding in the buildings. Then began the conflagration. Immense buildings, filled with goods, or bales of cotton, were fired, and soon the black smoke and falling walls made a scene that was enough to set a recruit crazy. A train came in just as the fire was at its greatest, and a squad of men was sent to burn it, and the colonel told me to go and capture the engineer and bring him to the headquarters.
I rode up as near to the engine as my horse would go and told the engineer I wanted him. He turned a cock somewhere, and a jet of steam came out towards me that fairly blinded me and the horse, and I couldn't see the engine any more. My horse turned tail, the engineer threw a lump of coal and hit me on the head, and I went away and told the colonel the engineer wouldn't come, and beside had scalded me with steam, and hit me with a lump of coal. The colonel said the engineer could be arrested for such conduct. Pretty soon the train was on fire, and one of our boys clubbed the engineer, got on the engine and run it on to a side track and ditched it, and brought the engineer up to headquarters, where I had quite a talk with him about squirting steam and throwing lumps of coal at peaceable persons. Then the railroad, bridge was set on fire, and it looked cruel to see the timbers licked up by flames, but when the burning trestle fell into the river below, it was a grand, an awful sight. I came out of the fight alive, but with a lump on my head as big as a hen's egg, so big I couldn't wear my hat, and a firm determination to whip that engineer who threw the lump of coal when I could catch him alone. We cooked a late breakfast on the embers of the ruins, and after eating, I noticed a sign, “Printing Office,” in front of a residence just outside the burnt district, and asked permission to go there and print a paper, with an account of the fight, and the destruction of the town. Permission was granted, and I went to the office and found an old man and two daughters, beautiful girls, but intensely bitter rebels. The old man was near eighty years old, and he said he could whip any dozen yankees. I told him I would like to use his type and press, but he said if I touched a thing I did it at my peril, as he should consider the type contaminated by the touch of a yankee. The girls felt the same way, but I talked nice to them, and they didn't kick much when I took a “stick” and began to set type. I worked till dinner time, when they asked me to take dinner with them, which I did. During the conversation I convinced them that I was practically a non-combatant, and wouldn't hurt anybody for the world. I worked till about the middle of the afternoon, when I noticed that the girls, who had been up on the house, looked tickled about something, and presently I heard some firing at the edge of the town, some yelling, more firing, bugle calls among our soldiers, and finally there was an absence of blue coats, and I looked for my horse, and found the old man leading him away. I halted the old man, and he stopped and told me that the Confederates had come into town from the East and driven our cavalry out on the other side, and I would be a prisoner in about five minutes, and he laughed, and the girls clapped their hands, and I felt as though my time had come. I had never killed an old man in my life, but I made up my mind to have my horse or kill him in his traces, so I drew my revolver and told him to let go the horse or he was a dead man. It was a question with me whether I could hold my hand still-enough to kill him, if he didn't let go the horse, and I hoped to heaven he would drop the bridle. He looked so much like my father at home that it seemed like killing a near relative, and when I looked at the two beautiful daughters on the gallery, looking at us, pale as death, I almost felt as though it would be better to lose the horse and be captured, then to put a bullet through the gray head of that beautiful old man. How I wished that he was a young fellow, and had a gun, and had it pointed at me. Then I could kill him and feel as though it was self-defense. But the rebels were yelling and firing over the hill, and my regiment was going the other way on important business, and it was a question with me whether I should kill the old man, and see his life-blood ebb out there in front of his children, or be captured, and perhaps shot for burning buildings. I decided that it was my duty to murder him, and get my horse. So I rested my revolver across my left forearm, and took deliberate aim at his left eye, a beautiful, large, expressive gray eye, so much like my father's at home that I almost imagined I was about to kill the father who loved me. I heard, a scream on the gallery, and the blonde girl fainted in the arms of her brunette sister. The sister said to me, “Please don't kill my father.” He was not ten feet from me, and I said, “Drop the horse or you die.” The old man trembled, the girl said: “Pa, give the man his horse,” the old man dropped the bridle and walked towards the house. I mounted the horse and rode off towards the direction my regiment had taken, thanking heaven that the girl had spoken just in time, and that I had not been compelled to put a bullet through that noble-looking gray head. The face haunted me all the way, as I rode along to catch my regiment, and when I overtook it, and rode up to the colonel, and asked him what in thunder he wanted to go off and leave me to fight the whole southern Confederacy for, he said, “O, get out! There were no rebels there. That was the Indiana regiment that started out day before yesterday, to get on the other side of the town. The fellows were shooting some cattle for food. What makes you look-so pale?” I was thinking of whether a man ever prospered who killed old people.
CHAPTER VIII.
Three Days Without Food!—The Value of Hard Tack—A Silver
Watch for a Pint of Meal—I Steal Corn from a Hungry Mule—
The Delirium of Hunger—I Dine on Mule—I Capture a Rebel
Ram.
After overtaking my regiment, and enjoying a feeling of safety which I did not feel in the presence of that violent old man who laid savage hands on my horse, and the girls, I began to reflect. Of course the old man was not armed, and I was, but how did I know but those Confederate girls had revolvers concealed about their persons, and might have killed me. To feel that I was once more safe with my regiment, where there was no danger as long as they did not get into a fight, was bliss indeed, and I rode along in silence, wondering when the cruel war would be over, and what all this riding around the country, burning buildings and tearing up railroad tracks amounted to, anyway. I didn't enlist as a section hand, nor a railroad wrecker, and there was nothing in my enlistment papers that said anything about my being compelled to commit arson. The recruit-officer who, by his glided picture of the beauties of a soldier's life, induced me to enlist as a soldier, never mentioned anything that would lead me to believe that one of my duties would be to touch a match to another man's bales of cotton, or ditch a locomotive belonging to parties who never did me any harm, and who had a right to expect dividends from their railroad stock. If I had the money, that was represented in the stuff destroyed by our troops that day, I could run a daily newspaper for years, if it didn't have a subscriber or a patent medicine advertisement. And who was benefitted by such wanton destruction of property. As we rode along I told the colonel I thought it was a confounded shame to do as we had done, and that such a use of power, because we had the power, was unworthy of American soldiers. He said it was a soldier's duty to obey orders and not talk back, and if he heard any more moralizing on my part he would send me back to my company, where I would have to do duty like the rest. I told him I was one of the talking backest fellows he ever saw, and that one of my duties as a newspaper man was to criticise the conduct of the war. Then he said I might report to the captain of my company. It seemed hard to go into the ranks, after having had a soft job with the chaplain, and again as colonel's orderly, but I thought if I got my back up and showed the captain that I was no ordinary soldier, but one who was qualified for any position, that maybe he would be afraid to monkey too much with me. I knew the captain would be a candidate for some office when the war was over, and if he knew I was on to him, and that I should very likely publish a paper that could warm him up quite lively, he would see to it that I wasn't compelled to do very hard work. So I rode back to my company and told the captain that the colonel and the chaplain had got through with me, and I had come back to stay, and would be glad to do any light work he might have for me. The captain heaved a sigh, as though he was not particularly tickled to have me back, and told me to fall in, in the rear of the company. I asked if I couldn't ride at the head of the company. He said no, there was more room at the rear. I tried to tell him that I was accustomed to riding at the head of the regiment, but he told me to shut up my mouth and get back there, and I got back, and fell in at the tail end of the company, with the cook and an officer's servant, and the orderly sergeant came back and wanted to know if the company had got to have me around again. Here was promotion with a vengeance. From the proud pinnacle from which I had soared, as chaplain's clerk, and colonel's orderly, I had dropped with one fell swoop to the rear end of my company, and nobody wanted me, because I had kicked against stealing hens in one instance, and burning buildings and tearing up railroads in the other. We rode all day, and at night laid down in the woods and slept, after eating the last of our rations. I slept beside a log, and before going to sleep and after waking, I swore by the great horn spoons I would not steal anything more while I was in the army, nor do any damage to property. In the morning the soldiers had scarcely a mouthful to eat, and an order was read to each company that for three or four days it would be necessary to live off the country, foraging for what we had to eat. I asked the captain what we would do for something to eat if we didn't find anything in the country to gobble up. He said we would starve. That was an encouraging prospect for a man who had taken a solemn oath not to steal any more. I told the captain I did not intend to steal any more, as I did not think it right. Then he said I better begin to eat the halter off my horse, because leather would be the only thing I would have to stay my stomach. The first day I did not eat a mouthful, except half of a hard-tack that I had a quarrel with my horse to get. In throwing the saddle on my horse, one solitary hard-tack that was in the saddle-bag, fell out upon the ground, and the horse picked it up. I did not know the hard-tack was in the saddle, and when it fell upon the ground I was as astonished as I would have been had a clap of thunder come from the clear sky, and when the horse went for it, my stomach rebelled and I grabbed one side of the hard-tack while the horse held the other side in his teeth. Something had to give, and as the horse's teeth nor my hands would give, the hard-tack had to, and I saved half of it, and placed it in the inside pocket of my vest, as choice as though it were a thousand dollar bill.
I have listened to music, in my time, that has been pretty bad, and which has sent cold chills up my back, and caused me pain, but I never heard any bad music that seemed to grate on my nerves as did the noise my horse made in chewing the half of my last hard-tack, and the look of triumph the animal gave me was adding insult to injury. Several times during the day I took that piece of hard-tack from my pocket carefully, wiped it on my coat-sleeve, and took a small bite, and the horse would look around at me wickedly, as though he would like to divide it with me again. People talk about guarding riches carefully, and of placing diamonds in a safe place, but no riches were ever guarded as securely as was that piece of hard-tack, and riches never took to themselves wings and new, regretted more than did my last hard-tack. Each bite made it smaller, and finally, the last bite was taken, with a sigh, and nothing remained for me to eat but the halter. Some of the boys went out foraging, and were moderately successful, while others did not get a thing to eat. The country was pine woods, with few settlers, and those that lived there were so poor that it seemed murder to take what they had. One of the men of our company came back with about two quarts of corn meal, that night, and I traded him a silver watch for about a pint of it. I mixed it up in some water, and after the most of the men had fallen asleep, I made two pancakes of the wet meal, and put them in the ashes of the camp-fire to bake, but fell asleep before it was done, and when I woke up and reached into the ashes for the first pancake, it was gone. Some Union soldier, whom it were base flattery to call a thief, had watched me, and stole my riches as I slept, robbed me of all I held dear in life. With trembling hands I raked the ashes for my other pancake, hopelessly, because I thought that, too, was gone, but to my surprise I found it. The villain who had pursued me as I slept, had failed to discover the second pancake, and I was safe, and my life was saved. I have seen a play in a theater in which a miser hides his gold, first in one place, then in another, looking to the right and to the left to see if anybody was watching him. I was the same kind of a miser about my pancake. If I hid it in the woods I might fail to find the place, in the morning, where I had hid it, and besides, some soldier that was peacefully snoring near me, apparently, might have one eye on me, and commit burglary. If I put it in my pocket, and went to sleep, I might have my pocket picked, so I concluded to remain awake and hold it in my hands. There appeared to be nothing between me and death by starvation, except that cornmeal pancake, and I sat there for an hour, beside the dying embers of the campfire, trying to make up my mind who stole my other pancake, and what punishment should be meted out to him if I ever found him out. I would follow him to my dying day. I suspected the captain, the colonel, the chaplain, and six hundred soldiers, any one of whom was none too good to steal a man's last pancake if he was hungry. To this day I have never found out who stole my pancake, but I have not given up the search, and if I live to be as old as Methuselah, and I find out the fellow that put himself outside my pancake that dark night in the pine woods, I will gallop all over that old soldier, if he is older than I am. That is the kind of avenger that is on the track of that pancake-eater. I sat there and nodded over my remaining pancake, clutched in my hands, and finally started to my feet in alarm. Suppose I should fall asleep, and be robbed? The thought was maddening. I have read of Indians who would eat enough at one sitting to last them several days, and the thought occurred to me that if I ate the pancake my enemies could not get it away from me, and perhaps it would digest gradually, a little each day, and brace me up until we got where there were rations plenty. So I sat there and deliberately eat every mouthful of it, and looked around at the sleeping companions with triumph, laid down and slept as peacefully on the ground as I ever slept in bed.
There may be truth in the story about Indians eating enough to last them a week, but it did not work in my case, for in the morning I was hungry as a she wolf. The pancake had gone to work and digested itself right at once, as though there was no end of food, and my stomach yearned for something. I walked down by the quartermaster's wagons, about daylight, and there was a four-mule team, each with a nose bag on, with corn in it. The mules were eating corn, unconscious of a robber being near. At home, where I had lived on good fresh meat, bread, pie, everything that was good, nobody could have made me believe that I would steal corn from a government mule, but when I heard the mules eating that corn a demon possessed me, and I meditated robbery. I did not want to take all the corn I wanted from one mule, so I decided to take toll from all of them. I went up to the first one, and reached my hand down into the nose bag beside the mule's mouth and rescued a handful of corn, then went to another to do the same, but that mule kicked at the scheme. I went to two others, and they laid their ears back and began to kick at the trace chains, so I went back to my first love, the patient mule, and took every last kernel of corn in the bag, and as I went away with a pocket full of corn the mule looked at me with tears in its eyes, but I couldn't be moved by no mule tears, with hunger gnawing at my vitals, so I hurried away like a guilty thing. While I was parching the corn stolen from the mule, in a half of a tin canteen, over the fire, the chaplain came along and wanted to sample it. He was pretty hungry, but I wasn't running a free boarding house for chaplains any more, and I told him he must go forage for himself. He said he would give his birthright for a pocket full of corn. I told him I didn't want any birthright, unless a birthright would stay a man's stomach, but if he would promise to always love, honor and obey me, I would tell him where he could get some corn. He swore by the great bald headed Elijah that if I would steer him onto some corn he would remember me the longest day he lived, and pray for me. I never was very much, mashed on the chaplain's influence at the throne, but I didn't want to see him starve, while government mules were living on the fat of the land, so I told him to go down to the quartermaster's corral and rob the mules as I had done. He bit like a bass, and started for the mules. Honestly, I had no designs on the chaplain, but he traded me a kicking mule once, and got a good horse of me, because I thought he wanted to do me a favor. As he was familiar with mules, I supposed he would know how to steal a little corn. Pretty soon I heard a great commotion down there, and presently the chaplain came out with a mule chasing him, its ears laid back, and blood in its eyes. The chaplain was white as a sheet, and yelling for help. Before I could knock the mule down with a neck-yoke, the animal had grabbed the chaplain by the coat tail, with its mouth, taking some of his pants, also, and perhaps a little skin, raised him up into the air, about seven feet, let go of him, and tried to turn around and kick the good man on the fly as he came down. We drove the mule away, rescued the chaplain, tied his pants together with a piece of string, cut off the tail of his coat which the mule had not torn off, so it was the same length as the other one, and made him look quite presentable, though he said he knew he could never ride a horse again. It seems that instead of reaching into the nose bag, and taking a little corn, he had unbuckled the nose bag and taken it off. I told him he was a hog, and ought to have known better than take the nose bag off, thus leaving the mule's mouth unmuzzled, while the animal was irritated. He accused me of knowing that the mule was vicious, and deliberately sending him there to be killed, so rather than have any hard feelings I gave him a handful of my parched corn.
A few Sundays afterwards I heard him preach a sermon on the sin of covetousness, and I thought how beautifully he could have illustrated his sermon if he had turned around and showed his soldier audience where the mule eat his coat tail. Soon we saddled up and marched another day without food. Reader, were you ever so hungry that you could see, as plain as though it was before you, a dinner-table set with a full meal, roast beef, mashed potatoes, pie, all steaming hot, ready to sit down to? If you have not been very hungry in your life, you can not believe that one can be in a condition to see things. The man with delirium tremens can see snakes, while the hungry man, in his delirium, can see things he would like to eat. Many times during that day's ride through the deserted pine-woods, with my eyes wide open, I could see no trees, no ground, no horses and men around me, but there seemed a film over the eyes, and through it I could see all of the good things I ever had eaten. One moment there would be a steaming roast turkey, on a platter, ready to be carved. Again I could see a kettle over a cook-stove, with a pigeon pot-pie cooking, the dumpings, light as a feather, bobbing up and down with the steam, and I could actually smell the odor of the cooking pot-pie. It seems strange, and unbelievable to those who have never experienced extreme hunger or thirst, that the imagination can picture eatables and streams of running water, so plain that one will almost reach for the eatables, or rush for the imaginary stream, to plunge in and quench thirst, but I have experienced both of those sensations for thirteen dollars a month, and nary a pension yet. It is such experiences that bring gray hairs to the temples of young soldiers, and cause eyes to become hollow and sunken in the head. Today, your Uncle Samuel has not got silver dollars enough in his treasury to hire me to suffer one day of such hunger as to make me see things that were not there, but twenty-two years ago it was easy to have fun over it, and to laugh it off the next day. When we stopped that day, at noon, to rest, the company commissary sergeant came up to the company, with two men carrying the hind quarter of an animal that had been slaughtered, and he began to cut it up and issue it out to the men. It was peculiar looking meat, but it was meat, and every fellow took his ration, and it was not long before the smell of broiled fresh meat could be “heard” all around. When I took my meat I asked the sergeant what it was, and where he got it. I shall always remember his answer. It was this:
“Young man, when you are starving, and the means of sustaining life are given you, take your rations and go away, and don't ask any fool questions. If you don't want it, leave it.”
Leave it? Egad, I would have eaten it if it had been a Newfoundland dog, and I took it, and cooked it, and ate it. I do not know, and never did, what it was, but when the quartermaster's mule teams pulled out after dinner, there were two “spike teams;”—that is, two wheel mules and a single leader, instead of four-mule teams. After I saw the teams move out, each mule looking mournful, as though each one thought his time might come next, I didn't want to ask any questions about that meat, though I know there wasn't a beef critter within fifty miles of us. I have had my children ask me, many times, if I ever eat any mule in the army, and I have always said that I did not know. And I don't. But I am a great hand to mistrust.
It was on this hungry day, when filled with meat such as I had never met before that I did a thing I shall always regret. The captain came down to the rear of the company and said, so we could all hear it. “I want two men to volunteer for a perilous mission. I want two as brave men as ever lived. Who will volunteer? Don't all speak at once. Take plenty of time, for your lives may pay the penalty!” I had been feeling for some days as though there was not the utmost confidence in my bravery, among the men, and I had been studying as to whether I would desert, and become a wanderer on the face of the earth, or do some desperate deed that would make me solid with the boys, and when the captain called for volunteers, I swallowed a large lump in my throat, and said, “Captain, here is your mule. I will go!” Whether it was that confounded meat I had eaten that had put a seeming bravery into me, or desperation at the hunger of the past few days, I do not know, but I volunteered for a perilous mission. A little Irishman named McCarty spoke up, and said, “Captain, I will go anywhere that red headed recruit will go.”
So it was settled that McCarty and myself should go, and with some misgivings on my part we rode up to the front and reported. I thought what a fool I was to volunteer, when I was liable to be killed, but I was in for it, and there was no use squealing now. We came to a cross road, and the captain whispered to us that we should camp there, and that he had been told by a reliable contraband that up the cross road about two miles was a house at which there was a sheep, and he wanted us to go and take it. He said there might be rebels anywhere, and we were liable to be ambushed and killed, but we must never come back alive without sheep meat. Well, we started off. McCarty said I better ride a little in advance so if we were ambushed, I would be killed first, and he would rush back and inform the captain. I tried to argue with McCarty that I being a recruit, and he a veteran, it would look better for him to lead, but he said I volunteered first, and he would waive his rights of precedence, and ride behind me. So we rode along, and I reflected on my changed condition. A few short weeks ago I was a respected editor of a country newspaper in Wisconsin, looked up to, to a certain extent, by my neighbors, and now I had become a sheep thief. At home the occupation of stealing sheep was considered pretty low down, and no man who followed the business was countenanced by the best society. A sheep thief, or one who was suspected of having a fondness for mutton not belonging to him, was talked about. And for thirteen dollars a month, and an insignificant bounty, I had become a sheep thief. If I ever run another newspaper, after the war, how did I know but a vile contemporary across the street would charge me with being a sheep thief, and prove it by McCarty. May be this was a conspiracy on the part of the captain, whom I suspected of a desire to run for office when we got home, to get me in his power, so that if I went for him in my paper, he could charge me with stealing sheep. It worked me up considerable, but we were out of meat, and if there was a sheep in the vicinity, and I got it, there was one thing sure, they couldn't get any more mule down me. So we rode up to the plantation, which was apparently deserted. There was a lamb about two-thirds grown, in the front yard, and McCarty and myself dismounted and proceeded to surround the young sheep. As we walked up to it, the lamb came up to me bleating, licked my hand, and then I noticed there was a little sleigh-bell tied to its neck with a blue ribbon. The lamb looked up at us with almost human eyes, and I was going to suggest that we let it alone, when McCarty grabbed it by the hind legs and was going to strap it to his saddle, when it set up a bleating, and a little boy come rushing out of the house, a bright little fellow about three years old, who could hardly talk plain. I wanted to hug him, he looked so much like a little black-eyed baby at home, that was too awfully small to say “good bye, papa” when I left. The little fellow, with the dignity of an emperor, said, “Here, sir, you must not hurt my little pet lamb. Put him down, sir, or I will call the servants and have you put off the premises.” McCarty laughed, and said the lamb would be fine 'atin for the boy's, and was pulling the little thing up, when the tears came into the boy's eyes, and that settled it. I said, “Mac, for heaven's sake, drop that lamb. I wouldn't break that little boy's heart for all the sheep-meat on earth. I will eat mule, or dog, but I draw the line at children's household pets. Let the lamb go.” “Begorra, yer right,” said McCarty, as he let the lamb down. “Luk at how the shep runs to the little bye. Ah, me little mon, yer pet shall not be taken away from yez,” and a big tear ran down McCarty's face. The boy said there was a great big sheep in the back yard we could have, if we were hungry, and we went around the house to see. There was an old black ram that looked as though he could whip a regiment of soldiers, but we decided that he was our meat. McCarty suggested that I throw a lariet rope around his horns, and lead him, whiles, he would go behind and drive the animal. That looked feasible, and taking a horse-hair picket rope off my saddle, with a slip noose in the end, I tossed it over the horns of the ram, tied the rope to the saddle, and started. The ram went along all right till we got out to the road, when he held back a little. Mac jabbed the ram in the rear with his saber, and he came along all right, only a little too sudden. That was one of the mistakes of the war, Mac's pricking that ram, and it has been the source of much study on my part, for twenty-two years, as to whether the Irishman did it on purpose, knowing the ram would charge on my horse, and butt my steed in the hind legs. If that was the plan of the Irishman, it worked well, for the first thing I knew my horse jumped about eighteen feet, and started down the road towards camp, on a run, dragging the ram, which was bellowing for all that was out. I tried to hold the horse in a little, but every time he slackened up the ram would gather himself and run his head full tilt against the horse, and away he would go again. Sometimes the ram was flying through the air, at the end of the rope, then it would be dragged in the sand, and again it would strike on its feet, and all the time the ram was blatting, and the confounded Irishman was yelling and laughing.
We went into the camp that way, and the whole regiment, hearing the noise, turned out to see us come in. As my horse stopped, and the ram was caught by a colored man, who tied its legs, I realized the ridiculousness of the scene, and would have gone off somewhere alone and hated myself, or killed the Irishman, but just then I saw the captain, and I said, “Captain, I have to report that the perilous expedition was a success. There's your sheep,” and I rode away, resolved that that was the last time I should ever volunteer for perilous duty. The Irishman was telling a crowd of boys the particulars, and they were having a great laugh, when I said:
“McCarty, you are a villain. I believe you set that ram on to me on purpose. Henceforth we are strangers.”
“Be gob,” said the Irishman, as he held his sides with laughter, “yez towld me to drive the shape, and didn't I obey?”
CHAPTER IX.
Bacon and Hard-tack—In Danger of Ague—In Search of Whisky
and Quinine—I Am Appointed Corporal—I Make a Speech—I Am
the Leader of Ten Picked Men—I Am Willing to Resign.
The next day we arrived at a post where rations were plenty, and where it was announced we should remain for a week or two, so we drew tents and made ourselves as comfortable as possible. It did seem good to again be where we did not have to depend on our own resources, of stealing, for what we wanted to eat. To be able to draw from the commissary regular rations of meat, tea, coffee, sugar, baker's bread, and beans, was joy indeed, after what we had gone through, and we almost made hogs of ourselves. There was one thing—those few days of starvation taught us a lesson, and that was, when ordered on a trip with two days' rations, to take at least enough for six days, especially of coffee and salt pork or bacon. With coffee and a piece of old smoked bacon, a man can exist a long time. I remember after that trip, wherever I went, there was a chunk of bacon in one of my saddle-bags that nobody knew anything about, and many a time, on long marches, when hunger would have been experienced almost as severe as the time written about last week, I would take out my chunk of bacon, cut off a piece and spread it on a hard-tack, and eat a meal that was more strengthening than any meal Delmonico ever spread. It was at this post that the boys in the regiment played a trick that caused much fun throughout all the army. There were a few men in each company who had the chills and fever, or ague, and the surgeon gave them each morning, a dose of whisky and quinine. It was interesting to see a dozen soldiers go to surgeon's call, take their “bitters,” and return to their quarters. The boys would go to the surgeon's tent sort of languid, and drag along, and after swallowing a good swig of whisky and quinine they would walk back to their quarters swinging their arms like Pat Rooney on the stage, and act as though they could whip their weight in wild cats. I got acquainted with the hospital steward, and he said if the boys were not careful they would all be down with the ague, and that an ounce of prevention was worth more than a pound of cure. I thought I would take advantage of his advice, so I fell in with the sick fellows the next morning, and when the doctor asked, “What's the matter?” I said “chills,” and he said, “Take a swallow out of the red bottle.” I took a swallow, and it was bitter, but it had whisky in it, more than quinine, and the idea of beating the government out of a drink of whisky was pleasure enough to overcome the bitter taste. I took a big swallow, and before I got back to my quarters I had had a fight with a mule-driver, and when the quartermaster interfered I had insulted him by telling him I knew him when he carried a hod, before the war, and I shouted, “Mort, more mort!” until he was going to lather me with a mule whip, but he couldn't catch me. As I run by the surgeon's tent, somebody remarked that I had experienced a remarkably sudden cure for chills. The whisky was not real good, but as I had heard the hospital steward say they had just put in a requisition for two barrels of it, to be prepared for an epidemic of chills, I thought the boys ought to know it, so that day I went around to the different companies and told the boys how to play it for a drink. There are very few soldiers, in the best regiment, that will not take a drink of whisky when far away from home, discouraged, and worn out by marching, and our fellows looked favorably upon the proposition to all turn out to surgeon's call the next morning. I shall never forget the look on the face of the good old surgeon, as the boys formed in line in front of his tent the next morning. The last time I saw him, he was in his coffin, about five years ago, at the soldier's home, and a few of the survivors of the regiment that lived here had gone out to the home to take a last look at him, and act as mourners at the funeral. He looked much older than when he used to ask us fellows the conumdrum, “What's the matter?” but there was that same look on his white, cold face that there was the morning that nearly the whole regiment reported for “bitters.”
There must have been four hundred men in line, and it happened that I was the first to be called. When he asked me about my condition, and I told him of the chills, he studied a minute, then looked at me, and said, You are bilious, David, give him a dose of castor oil. I know I turned pale, for it was a great come down from quinine and whisky to castor oil, for a healthy man, and I kicked. I told him I had the shakes awfully, and all I wanted was a quinine powder. I knew they had put all their quinine into a barrel of whisky, so I was safe in asking for dry quinine. The good old gentleman finally relented on the castor oil, and told David to give me a swallow of the quinine bitters, but there was a twinkle in his eye, as he noticed what a big swallow I took, and then he said, “You will be well tomorrow; you needn't come again.” I dropped out of the ranks, with my skin full of quinine and whisky, and watched the other fellows.
There were men in the line who had never been sick a day since they enlisted, big fellows that would fight all day, and stand picket all night, and who never knew what it was to have an ache. And it was amusing to see them appear to shake, and to act as though they had chills. Some of them could not keep from laughing, and it was evident that the doctor had his doubts about there being so many cases of chills, but he dosed out the quinine and whisky as long as there was a man who shook. As each man took his dose, he would show two expressions on his face. One was an expression of hilarity at putting himself outside of a good swig of whisky, and the other was an expression of contempt for the bitter quinine, and an evident wish that the drug might be left out. When all had been served, they lingered around the surgeon's quarters, talking with each other and laughing, others formed on for a stag quadrille, and danced, while a nigger fiddled. Some seemed to feel as though they wanted some one to knock a chip off their shoulders, old grudges were talked over, and several fights were prevented by the interference of friends who were jolly and happy, and who did not believe in fighting for fun, when there was so much fighting to be done in the way of business. The old doctor walked up and down in front of his tent in a deep study. He was evidently thinking over the epidemic of ague that had broken out in a healthy regiment, and speculating as to its cause. Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he walked up to a crowd of his patients, who were watching a couple of athletes, who had just taken their quinine, and who had put on boxing gloves and were pasting each other in the nose. “One moment,” said the old doctor. The boys stopped boxing, and every last “sick” man listened respectfully to what the old doctor said; “Boys,” said he, “you have got it on me this time. I don't believe a confounded one of you have got ague at all. You 'shook me' for the whisky. After this, quinine will be dealt out raw, without any whisky, and now you can shake all you please.” Some one proposed three cheers for the boys that had made Uncle Sam stand treat, and the cheers were given, and the boys separated to talk over the event. The next morning only the usual number of sick were in attendance at surgeon's call. The healthy fellows didn't want to take quinine raw.
About this time an incident occurred that was fraught with great importance to the country and to me, though the historians of the war have been silent about it in their histories, whether through jealousy or something else I do not know, and modesty has prevented me from making any inquiries as to the cause. The incident alluded to was my appointment as corporal of my company. I say the incident was “fraught” with importance. I do not know the meaning of the word fraught, but it is frequently used in history in that connection, and I throw it in, believing that it is a pretty good word. The appointment came to me like a stroke of paralysis. I was not conscious that my career as a soldier had been such as to merit promotion, I could not recall my particularly brilliant military achievement that would warrant my government selecting me from the ranks and conferring honors upon me, unless it was my lasooing that ram and dragging him into camp, when we were out of meat. But it was not my place to inquire into the cause that had led to my sudden promotion over the rank and file. I thought if I made too many inquiries it would be discovered that I was not such an all-fired great soldier after all. If the government had somehow got the impression that I was well calculated to lead hosts to victory, and it was an erroneous impression, it was the governments' place to find it out without any help on my part. I would accept the position with a certain dignity, as though I knew that it was inevitable that I must sooner or later come to the front. So when the captain informed me that he should appoint me Corporal, I told him that I thanked him, and through him, the Nation, and would try and perform the duties of the exacting and important position to the best of my ability, and hoped that I might not do anything that would bring discredit upon our distracted country. He said that would be all right, that he had no doubt the country would pull through. That evening at dress parade the appointment was read, and I felt elated. I thought it singular that the regiment did not break out into cheers, and make the welkin ring, though they may not have had any welkin to ring. However, I thought it was my duty to make a little speech, acknowledging the honor conferred upon me, as I had read that generals and colonels did when promoted. I took off my hat and said, “Fellow soldiers.” That was the end of my speech, for the captain turned around and said to the orderly sergeant, “Stop that red-headed cusses mouth some way,” and the orderly told me to dry up. Everybody was laughing, I supposed, at the captain. Anyway, I felt hurt, and when we got back to camp the boys of all the companies surrounded me to offer congratulations, and I was called on for a speech. Not being in the ranks, nobody could prevent me from speaking, so I got up on a barrel, and said:
“Fellow Soldiers:—As I was about to remark, when interrupted by the captain, on dress parade, this office has come to me entirely unsought. It has not been my wish to wear the gilded trappings of office and command men, but rather to fight in the ranks, a private soldier. I enlisted as a private, and my ambition has been to remain in the ranks to the end of the war. But circumstances over which I have no control has taken me and placed me on the high pinnacle of Corporal, and I must bow to the decree of fate. Of course, in my new position there must necessarily be a certain gulf between us. I have noticed that there has been a gulf between me and the officers, and I have thought it wrong. I have thought that privates and officers should mingle together freely, and share each others secrets, privations and rations. But since being promoted I can readily see that such things cannot be. The private has his position and the officer has his, and each must be separate. It is not my intention to make any radical changes in the conduct of military affairs at present, allowing things to go along about as they have, but as soon as I have a chance to look about me, certain changes will be made. All I ask is that you, my fellow soldiers, shall stand by me, follow where I shall lead and—”
At this point in my address the head of the barrel on which I stood fell in with a dull thud, and I found myself up to the neck in corned-beef brine. The boys set up a shout, some fellow kicked over the barrel, and they began to roll it around the camp with me in it.
This was a pretty position for a man just promoted to the proud position of Corporal. As they rolled me about and yelled like Indians, I could see that an official position in that regiment was to be no sinecure. All official positions have more or less care and responsibility, but this one seemed to me to have too much. Finally they spilled me out of the barrel, and I was a sight to behold. My first idea was to order the whole two hundred fellows under arrest, and have them court-martialed for conduct unbecoming soldiers; but on second thought I concluded that would seem an arbitrary use of power, so I concluded to laugh it off. One fellow said they begged pardon for any seeming disrespect to an official; but it had always been customary in the regiment to initiate a corporal who was new and too fresh with salt brine. I said that was all right, and I invited them all up to the chaplain's tent to join me in a glass of wine. The chaplain was away, and I knew he had received a keg of wine from the sanitary commission that day, so we went up to his tent and drank it, and everything passed off pleasantly until the chaplain happened in. The boys dispersed as soon as he came, and left me to fight it out with the good man. He was the maddest truly good man I have ever seen. I tried to explain about my promotion, and that it was customary to set em up for the boys, and that there was no saloon near, and that he had always told me to help myself to anything I wanted; but he wouldn't be calm at all. I tried to quote from Paul's epistle about taking a little wine for the stomach-ache; but he just raved around and called me names, until I had to tell him that if he kept on I would, in my official capacity as corporal, place him under arrest. That seemed to calm him a little, for he laughed, and finally he said I smelled of stale corned-beef, and he kicked me out of his tent, and I retired to my quarters to study over the mutability of human affairs, and the unpleasant features of holding official position.
That night I dreamed that General Grant and myself were running the army in splendid shape, and that we were in-receipt of constant congratulations from a grateful country, for victories. He and I seemed to be great chums. I dreamed of engagements with the enemy, in which I led men against fearful odds, and always came out victorious. I woke up before daylight and was wondering what dangerous duty I would be detailed to lead men upon, when the orderly poked his head in my tent and told me I was detailed to take ten picked men, at daylight, for hard service, and to report at once. I felt that my time had come to achieve renown, and I dressed myself with unusual care, putting on the blouse with two rows of buttons, which I had brought from home. I borrowed a pair of Corporal's chevrons and sewed them to the sleeves of my blouse, and was ready to die, if need be. I placed a Testament I had brought from home, inside my blouse, in a breast pocket, as I had read of many cases where a Testament had been struck with a bullet and saved a soldier's life. I placed all my keepsakes in a package, and told my tent mate that I was going out with ten picked men, and it was possible I might never show up again, and if I fell he was to send the articles to my family. I wondered that I did not feel afraid to die. I was no professor of religion, though I had always tried to do the square thing all around, but with no consolation of religion at all, I felt a sweet peace that was indescribable. If it was my fate to fall in defence of my country, at the head of ten picked men, so be it. Somebody must die, and why not me. I was no better than thousands of others, and while life was sweet to me, and I had anticipated much pleasure in life, after the war, in shooting ducks and holding office, I was willing to give up all hope of pleasure in the future, and die like a thoroughbred. I was glad that I had been promoted, and wondered if they would put “Corporal” on my tombstone. I wondered, if I fell that day at the head of my mem, if the papers at the North, and particularly in Wisconsin, would say “The deceased had just been promoted, for gallant conduct, to the position of Corporal, and it will be hard to fill his place.” With these thoughts I sadly reported to the orderly. The ten picked men were in line. They were four of them Irishmen, two Yankees, two Germans, a Welshman and a Scotchman. The orderly gave me a paper, sealed in an envelope. I turned to my men, and said, “Boys, whatever happens today, I don't want to see any man show the white feather. The world will read the accounts of this day's work with feelings of awe, and the country will care for those we leave behind.” We started off, and it occurred to me to read my instructions. I opened the envelope with the air of a general who was accustomed to receive important messages. I read it, and almost fainted, It read “Report to the quartermaster, at the steamboat landing, to unload quartermaster's stores from steamer Gazelle.” Ye gods! And this was the hard service that I was to lead ten picked men into. They had picked out ten stevedores, to carry sacks of corn, and hard-tack boxes, and barrels of pork, and that was the action I was to engage in as my first duty as corporal.
I almost cried. We rode down to the landing, where a dozen teams were waiting to be loaded. It was all I could do to break the news to my picked men that they were expected to lug sacks of corn instead of fight, and when I did they kicked at once. One of the Irishmen said he would be teetotally d——d if he enlisted to carry corn for mules, and he would lay in the guard-house till the war was over before he would lift a sack. There was a strike on my hands to start on. I was sorry that I had permitted myself to be promoted to Corporal. Trouble from the outset. One of the Yankees suggested that we hold an indignation meeting, so we rode up in front of a cotton warehouse and dismounted. The Scotchman was appointed chairman, and for half an hour the ten picked men discussed the indignity that was attempted to be heaped upon them, by compelling them to do the work of niggers.
They argued that a cavalry soldier's duty was exclusively to ride on horseback, and that there was no power on earth to compel them to carry sacks of corn. One of the Dutchmen said he could never look a soldier in the face again after doing such menial duty, and he would not submit to it. The Scotch chairman said if he had read the articles of war right there was no clause that said that the cavalry man should leave his horse and carry corn. I was called upon for my opinion, and said that I was a little green as to the duties of a soldier, but supposed we had to do anything we were ordered to do, but it seemed a little tough. I told them I didn't want any mutiny, and it would be a plain case of mutiny if they refused to work. One of the Irishmen asked if I would help carry sacks of corn, and I told him that as commander of the expedition it would be plainly improper for me to descend to a common day laborer. I held it to be the duty of a corporal to stand around and see the men work. They all said that was too thin, and I would have to peel on my coat and work if they did. I told them I couldn't lift a sack of corn to save me, but they said if that was the case I ought not to have come. The quartermaster was looking around for the detail that was to unload the boat, and he asked me if I had charge of the men detailed to unload. I told him that I did have charge of them when we left camp, but that they had charge of me now, and said they wouldn't lift a pound. He thought a minute, and said, “I don't like to see you boys carrying corn sacks, and rolling pork barrels. Why don't you chip in and hire some niggers.” The idea seemed inspired. There were plenty of niggers around that would work for a little money. One of the Irishmen moved that the Corporal hire ten niggers to unload the quartermasters stores, and the motion was carried unanimously. I would have voted against it, but the Scotchman, who was chairman, ruled that I had no right to vote. So I went and found ten niggers that agreed to work for fifty cents each, and they were set to work, the quartermaster promising not to tell in camp about my hiring the work done. One of my Dutchmen moved that, inasmuch as we had nothing to do all day, that we take in the town, and play billiards, and whoop it up until the boat was unloaded. That seemed a reasonable proposition, and the motion carried, after an amendment had been added to the effect that the Corporal stay on the boat and watch the niggers, and see that they didn't shirk. So my first command, my ten picked men, rode off up town, and I set on a wagon and watched my hired men. It was four o clock in the afternoon before the stuff was all loaded, and after paying the niggers five dollars out of my own pocket, some of my bounty money, I went up to town to round up my picked men to take them to camp. I found the Scotchman pretty full of Scotch whisky. He had found a countryman who kept a tailor shop, who had a bag pipe, and they were having a high old time playing on the instrument, and singing Scotch songs. I got him on his horse, and we looked for the rest. The two Germans were in a saloon playing pee-nuckel, and singing German songs, and their skins were pretty full of beer and cheese. They were got into the ranks, and we found the Irishmen playing forty-five in a saloon kept by a countryman of theirs, and they had evidently had a shindig, as one of them had a black eye and a scratch on his nose, and they were full of fighting whisky. The Yankees had swelled up on some kind of benzine and had hired a hack and taken two women out riding, and when we rounded them up each one had his feet out of the window of the hack, and they were enjoying themselves immensely. The Welchman was the only one that was sober, but the boys said there was not enough liquor in the South to get him drunk. When I got them all mounted they looked as though they had been to a banquet. We started for camp, but I did not want to take them in until after dark, so we rode around the suburbs of the town until night drew her sable mantle over the scene. They insisted on singing until within half a mile of camp, and it would no doubt have been good music, only the Scotchman insisted on singing “The March of the Cameron Men,” while the Irishmen sung “Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake,” and the German's sung “Wacht am Rhine.” The Yankees sung the “Star Spangled Banner,” and the Welchman sung something in the Welch language which was worse than all. All the songs being sung together, of course I couldn't enjoy either of them as well as a Corporal ought to enjoy the music of his command. Arriving near camp, the music was hushed, and we rode in, and up to the captain's tent, where I reported that the corn was unloaded, all right. He said that was all right. Everything would have passed off splendidly, only one of the Irishmen proposed “three cheers” for the dandy Corporal of the regiment, and those inebriated, picked men, gave three cheers that raised the roof of the colonel's tent near by, because I had hired niggers to do the work, and let the men have a holiday. I dismissed them as quick as I could, but the colonel sent for me, and I had to tell him the whole story. He said I would demoralize the whole regiment in a week more, and I better let up or he would have to discipline me. I offered to resign my commission as Corporal, but he said I better hold on till we could have a fight, and may be I would get killed.
CHAPTER X.
Yearnings for Military Fame—What I Want is a Chance—I Feel
I Could Crush the Rebellion—My Chance Arrives—I am
Crushed—The Rebellion Remains Pretty Well.
As I could get no one to accept my resignation as corporal, which I tendered after my first service in that capacity, unloading a steamboat, I decided to post myself as to the duties of the position, so I borrowed a copy of “Hardee's Tactics,” and studied a good deal. Every place in the book that mentioned the word “corporal,” had a particular and thrilling interest for me, and I soon got so it would have been easy for me to have done almost anything that a corporal would have to do. But I was not contented to study the duty of a corporal. I read about the “school of the company,” and the “school of the regiment,” and “battalion drills,” and everything, until I could handle a regiment, or a brigade, for that matter, as well as any officer in the army, in my mind. This led me to go farther, and I borrowed a copy of a large blue book the colonel had, the name of which I do not remember now, but it was all military, and told how to conduct a battle successfully. I studied that book until I got the thing down so fine that I could have fought the battle of Gettysburg successfully, and I longed for a chance to show what I knew about military science and strategy. It seemed wonderful to me that one small red-head could contain so much knowledge about military affairs, and I felt a pity for some officers I knew who never had studied at all, and did not know anything except what they had picked up. I fought battles in my mind, day and night. Some nights I would lay awake till after midnight, planning campaigns, laying out battle-fields, and marching men against the enemy, who fought stubbornly, but I always came out victorious, and then I would go to sleep and dream that the President and secretary of war had got on to me, as it were, and had offered me high positions, and I would wake up in the morning the same red-headed corporal, and cook my breakfast. Sometimes I thought it my duty to inform the government, in some round about way, what a bonanza the country had in me, if my talent could only be utilized by placing me where I would have a chance to distinguish myself, and bring victory to our arms. I reflected that Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan, and all of the great generals, were once corporals, and by study they had risen.
There was not one of them that could dream out a battle, and a victory any better that I could. All I wanted was a chance. Just give me men enough, and turn me loose in the Southern Confederacy, with that head of mine, and the result would be all an anxious nation could desire.
My first chance came sooner than I expected. The next day a part of the regiment went out on a scout, to be gone a couple of days, and my company was along. I was unusually absorbed in thought, and wondered if I would be given a chance to do anything. It seemed reasonable that if any corporal was sent out with a squad of men, to fight, it would be an old corporal, while if there was any duty that was menial, the new corporals would get it. The second day out we stopped at noon to let our horses rest, when little scouting parties that had been sent out on different roads during the forenoon, began to come in. Many of them had picked up straggling rebels, and brought them to damp, and they were carefully guarded, and the major, who was in command of our party, was asking them questions, and pumping them to find out all he could. I went over and looked at them, and they were quite a nice looking lot of fellows, some being officers, with plenty of gold lace on their gray suits. They were home from the Confederate army on a leave of absence, probably recruiting. After talking with a rebel officer for a time the major turned to the adjutant and said, “send me a corporal and ten men.” The adjutant started, on, and I followed him. I used to know the adjutant when he taught a district school, before the war, and I asked him as a special favor to let me be the corporal. He said the detail would be from my company, and if I could fix it with the orderly sergeant of my company it was all right. I rushed to my company and found the orderly, and got him to promise if there was a detail from the company that day, I could go. Before the words were out of his mouth the detail came, and in five minutes I reported to the major with ten men. The major simply told me that a certain rebel captain, from Lee's army, was reported to be at home, and his plantation was about four miles east, and he described it to me. He told me to ride out there, surround the house, capture the captain, and bring him into camp.
No general ever received his orders in regard to fighting a battle, with a feeling of greater pride and responsibililty than I did my orders to capture that rebel. We started out, and then for the first time I noticed that there was another corporal in the squad with, me, and at once it occurred to me that he might claim a part of the glory of capturing the rebel. I had heard of the jealousy existing between generals, and how the partisans of different generals filled the newspapers, after a battle, with accounts of the part taken by their favorites, and that the accounts got so mixed, up that the reader couldn't tell to whom the credit of success was due, and I decided to take prompt measure with this supernumerary corporal, who had evidently got in by mistake, so I told him he might go back to the regiment. He said he guessed not. He had been detailed to go on the scout, and he was going, if he knew himself, and he thought he did. He said when it come right down to rank, he was an older corporal than I was, and could take command of the squad if he wanted to. I told him he was mistaken as to his position. That if the major had wanted him to take charge of the expedition, he would have given him the instructions, but as the major had given me the instructions, in a low tone of voice, nobody but myself knew where we were going or what we were going for, and that I was responsible, and the first intimation I had from him that he wanted to mutiny, or relieve me from my command, I would have him shot at once. I told him he could go along, but he must keep his mouth shut, and obey orders. He said he would obey, if he felt like it. We moved on, and I would have given a month's pay if that corporal had not been there. In a short time we were in sight of the house, and at a cross road I told the corporal to take one man and stop there, until further orders, and if any rebel came along, to capture him. He was willing enough to stay there, because there was a patch, of musk melons just over the fence. I moved my remaining eight men to a high piece of ground near the house, and halted, to look over the field of battle. Pulling a spy glass from my pocket, which I had borrowed from the sutler, I surveyed, as near like a general as possible, the situation. On one side of the house was a ravine, which I decided must be held at all hazards, and after studying my copy of tactics a moment, I sent an Irishman over there to hold the key to the situation, and told him he might consider himself the Iron Brigade. The lay of the ground reminded me much of pictures I had seen of the battle of Bull Run, and the road on which I had left the corporal and one man, was the road to Washington, on which we would retreat, if overcome by the enemy. To the right of the ravine, which was held by the Iron Brigade, I noticed a hen-house with a gate leading back to the nigger quarters, and I called a soldier and told him to make a detour behind a piece of woods, and at a signal from me, the waving of my right arm, to charge directly to the gate of the hen-house, and hold it against any force that might attempt to carry it, and to let no guilty man escape. Fifteen years afterwards Gen. Grant used those self-same words, “Let no guilty man escape,” and they became historic, but I will take my oath I was the first commander to use the words, when I sent that man to hold the gate of the hen-house. That man I denominated the First Division. Farther to the right was a field of sweet potatoes, in which was a colored man digging the potatoes. I sent a Dutchman to hold that field, with their right resting on the left of the First Division, located at the gate of the hen-house, whose right was supposed to rest on the left of the Iron Brigade, the Irishman who commanded the ravine. Then I turned my attention to the left of the battle-field, placed one man at the milk-house, with his left resting on the right of the Irishman, and a man at the smoke-house. This left three men, one of whom I appointed an aid de camp, one an orderly and the other I held as a reserve, at a cotton gin. When I had got my army into position, I sat under a tree and reflected a little, and concluded that the Iron Brigade was in rather too exposed a position, so I sent my aid de camp to order the Iron Brigade to move forward, under cover of the ravine, and take a position behind a mule-shed. The aide soon returned and reported that the Iron Brigade had taken off his shirt and kanoodled a negro woman to wash it for him, and would not be able to move until the shirt was dry.
This altered my plans a little, but I was equal to the emergency, and ordered my reserve to make a detour and take the mule-shed, and hold it until relieved by the Iron Brigade, which would be as soon as his shirt was dry, and then to report to me on the field. Then I took my aide and orderly, and galloped around the lines, to see that all was right. I found that the First Division, holding the gate of the hen-house, was well in hand, though he had killed five chickens, and had them strapped on his saddle, and was trying to cut off the head of another with his sabre. He said he thought I said to let no guilty hen escape. I found the Iron Brigade dismounted, his shirt hung on a line to dry, and the colored woman had been pressed into the Federal service, and was frying a chicken for the Brigade. I told him to get his shirt on as soon as it was dry, and move by forced marches, to relieve the force holding the mule-shed, and the Iron Brigade said he would as soon as he had his dinner. I found the Division composed of the Dutchman, stubbornly holding the sweet-potato field, and he was eating some boiled ham and corn-bread he had sent the nigger to the house after, and he had a bushel of sweet-potatoes in a sack strapped to his saddle. The force at the milk-house had a fine position, and gave me a pitcher of butter-milk, which I drank with great gusto. I do not know as there is anything in butter-milk that is stimulating, but after drinking it my head seemed clearer, and I could see the whole battle-field, and anticipate each movement I should cause to be made. I was so pleased with the butter-milk, on the eve of battle, that I ordered the second Division to fill my canteen with it, which he did. Then I rode back to my headquarters, where I started from, having ridden clear around the beleaguered plantation. Presently the reserve returned to me and reported that he had been relieved by the Iron Brigade at the mule-shed, whose shirt had become dry, and who had given the reserve a leg of fried chicken, and a corn dodger. I took the leg of chicken away from my reserve, eat it with great relish, and prepared for the onslaught, the reserve picking some persimmons off a tree and eating them for lunch. I was about to order the different divisions and brigades of my army to advance from their different positions, and close in on the enemy, when a colored man came out of the house and moved toward me, signalling that he would fain converse with me. I struck a dignified attitude, by throwing my right leg over the pommel of the saddle, like a hired girl riding a plow-horse to town after a doctor, and waited. When he came up to me, he said, “Massa wants to know what all dis darn foolishness is about. He says if you all don't go away from here he will shoot de liver outen you all.” I told the negro to be calm, and not cause me to resort to extreme measures, and I asked him if his master was at home. He said he was, and he was a bad man wid a gun. He had killed plenty of men before the war, and since the war he had killed more Yankees than enough to build a rail-fence around the plantation. I did not exactly like the reports in regard to the enemy. I told the colored man to take a flag of truce to his master, and tell him I would like an interview. The colored man went to the house, and I sent for the Iron Brigade to report to me at once, in light marching order, and the Irishman came riding up without any shirt on. I caused the Brigade to put on his shirt, when I sent him to the house, to follow the nag of truce and feel of the enemy. He went to the house, and was evidently invited in, for he disappeared. I waited half an hour for him, and as he did not show up, I called the Second Division, and sent the Dutchman to the house. The Second Division went in, and did not come out. I ordered the whole right wing of my army to deploy to my support, and the fellow at the hen-house gate came, and I sent him in after the Irishman and the Dutchman. He didn't come back, and I sent an orderly after the force stationed at the milk-house, and he came, and I sent him, with the same result. It was evident I was frittering away my command, with no good result, so I looked at my tactics, and decided to hold a council of war. My aide, orderly, and reserve, three besides myself, composed the council of war. We three were in favor of ordering up the other corporal and man from the cross-roads, but I opposed it. I did not want the other corporal to have any finger in the pie. So I decided that the four of us would go in a body to the house and demand the surrender of the rebel captain. We rode down the lane where the other men had gone, and it was a question whether we ever came back alive. I thought they had a trap door in the house, which probably let the soldiers down suddenly into a dungeon. Certainly unless there was something of the kind my men would have come back. As we dismounted at the door; and walked up the steps, the door opened and a fine looking rebel officer appeared smiling.
“Come in, Captain, with your men, and join me in a glass of wine,” said the rebel.
I had never been called “Captain” before, and it touched me in a tender spot. The rebel evidently thought I looked like a captain, and I was proud. He had probably watched my maneuvers, and the way I handled my men, and thought I was no common soldier.
“Well, I don't care if I do,” said I, and we walked into a splendid old room, and were bidden to be seated.
“Hello, Corp,” said my Iron Brigade, as he took his legs down from a table, and poured out a glass of whisky from a bottle near him, “This is the divil's own place for an aisy life.”
“Gorporal,” said my Dutch fellow soldier, as he poured out a glass of schnapps, “Led me indroduce you mit dot repel. He is a tasy, und don'd you forgot aboud it. Mishder repel, dot ish der gorporal fun my gumpany.”
The rebel smiled and said he was glad to see me, and hoped I was well, and would I take wine, or something stronger. I took a small glass of wine, but the rest of the fellows took strong drink, and my Iron Brigade was already full, and the Dutchman was getting full rapidly. Finally I told the rebel officer that I did not like to accept a man's hospitality when I had such an unpleasant duty to perform as to arrest him, but circumstances seemed to make it necessary. He said that was all right. In times of war we must do many things that were unpleasant. We took another drink, and then I told him I was sorry to inconvenience him, but he would have to accompany me to camp. He said certainly, he had expected to be captured ever since he saw that the house was surrounded, and while at first he had made up his mind to take his rifle and kill us all from the gallery of the house, he had thought better of it, and would surrender without bloodshed. What was the use of killing any more men? The war was nearly over, and why not submit, and save carnage. I told him that was the way I felt about it. Then he said if I would wait until he retired to an adjoining room and changed his linen, he would be ready. I said of course, certainly, and he went out of a door. I waited about half an hour, until it seemed to me the rebel had had time to change all the linen in the state of Alabama. The Iron Brigade had gone to sleep on a lounge, and the German troop was full as a goat, and some of the others were beginning to feel the hospitality.
“I beg your pardon for intruding,” said I, as I opened the door and walked into the room the rebel had entered. “Great Scott, he is gone!”
My army, all except the Iron Brigade and the Dutchman, followed me, and the room was empty. A window was up, through which he had escaped. We searched the house, but there was no rebel captain. On going to the front door I found that the horse belonging to the iron brigade was gone, and that the saddle girths of all the other horses had been unbuckled, so we would be delayed in following him. The Irishman was awakened, and when he found his horse was gone, he sobered up and went to the pasture and borrowed a mule to ride.
It took us half an hour to fix our saddles, so we could ride, and then we sadly started for camp. How could I face the major, and report to him that I had met the rebel captain, talked with him, drank with him, enjoyed his hospitality, and then let him escape? I felt that my military career had come to an inglorious ending. “We rode slow, because the Iron Brigade was insecurely mounted on a slippery bare-backed mule. As we neared the corporal and one man, that I had left to guard the cross-roads, I noticed that there was a stranger with them, and on riding closer what was my surprise to find that it was the rebel captain, under arrest. So the confounded corporal, whom I had left there so he would be out of the way, and not get any of the glory of capturing the rebel, had captured him, and got all the glory. I was hurt, but putting on a bold military air, like a general who has been whipped, I said:
“Ah, corporal, I see my plan has worked successfully. I arranged it so this prisoner would run right into the trap.”
“Yes,” said the corporal, throwing away a melon rind that he had been chewing the meat off of, “I saw his nibs coming down the road, and I thought may be he was the one you wanted, so I told him to halt or I would fill his lungs full of lead pills, and he said he guessed he would halt. He said it was a nice day, and he was only trying one of the Yankee cavalry horses, to see how he liked it.” “Here, you murdherin' divil, get down aff that harse,” said the Iron Brigade, who had got awake enough to see that the rebel was on his horse. “Take this mule, and lave a dacent gintleman's harse alone.”
The rebel smiled, dismounted, gave the Irishman his horse, mounted the mule, and we started for camp. I was never so elated in my life as I was when I rode into camp with that rebel captain beside me on the mule. The object of the expedition had been accomplished, a little different, it is true, from what I had expected and planned, but who knew that it was not a part of my plan to have it turn out as it did? I reflected much, and wondered if it was right for me to report the capture of the Confederate and say nothing about the part played by the other corporal. That corporal was no military strategist, like me. It was just a streak of luck, his capturing the rebel. He was leaning against the fence where I left him, eating melons, and the rebel came along, and the corporal quit chewing melon long enough to obey my orders and arrest the fellow. By all rules of military law I was entitled to the credit, and I would take it, though it made me ashamed to do so. How-ever, generals did the same thing. If a major-general was in command, and ordered a brigadier-general to do a thing and it was a success, the major-general got the credit in the newspapers. So I rode into camp and turned my prisoner over to the major as modestly as possible, with a few words of praise of my gallant command. Hello, Jim, said the major to the rebel.
Hello, Maje, said the rebel.
“Better take off them togs now, and join your company, said the major.
“I guess so,” said the rebel, and he took off his rebel uniform, and the major handed him a blue coat and pair of pants, and he put them on.
I was petrified. The fact was, the rebel was a sergeant in our regiment, who had been detailed as a scout, and had been making a trip into the rebel lines as a spy. I had made an ass of myself in the whole business, and he would tell all the boys about it. I went back to my company crushed.
CHAPTER XI.
I am Detailed to Build a Bridge-It Was a Good Bridge, but
Over the Wrong Stream—The General Appears—I am Crushed, in
Fact Pulverized!—I am Attacked with Rheumatism.
After the episode, related last week, in which I foolishly organized a regular battle, to capture a supposed rebel, who turned out to be a member of my own regiment, I expected to be the laughing stock of all the soldiers, and that my commission as corporal would be taken away from me, and that I would be reduced to the ranks, and when, the next morning, the colonel sent for me to come to his tent, it was a stand-off with me whether I would take to the woods and desert, in disgrace, and never show up again, or go to the colonel, face the music, and admit that I had made an ass of myself. Finally I decided to visit the colonel. On the way to his tent I noticed that our force had been augmented greatly. The road was full of wagons, the fields near us were filled with infantry and artillery, and there were fifty wagons or more loaded with pontoons, great boats, or the frame-work of boats, which were to be covered with canvass, which was water-proof, and the boats were to be used for bridges across streams. The colonel had not told me anything about the expected arrival of more troops, and it worried me a good deal. May be there was a big battle coming off, and I might blunder into it unconscious of danger, and: get the liver blowed out of me by a cannon. I felt that the colonel had not treated me right in keeping me in ignorance of all this preparation. I went to the colonel's tent and there was quite a crowd of officers, some with artillery uniforms, several colonels, and one general with a star on his shoulder straps, and a crooked sword with a silver scabbard, covered with gold trimmings. I felt quite small with those big officers, but I tried to look brave, and as though I was accustomed to attending councils of war. The colonel smiled at me as I came in which braced me up a good deal.
General, this is the sergeant I spoke to you about, said the colonel, as he turned from a map they had been looking at. I felt pale when the colonel addressed me as sergeant, and was going to call his attention to the mistake, when the general said:
Sergeant, the colonel tells me that you can turn your hand to almost anything. What line of business have you worked at previous to your enlistment?
“Well, I guess there is nothing that is usually done in a country village that I have not done. I have clerked in a grocery, tended bar, drove team on a threshing machine, worked in a slaughter house, drove omnibus, worked in a-saw-mill, learned the printing trade, rode saw-logs, worked in a pinery, been brakeman on a freight train, acted as assistant chambermaid in a livery stable, clerked in a hotel, worked on a farm, been an auctioneer, edited a newspaper, took up the collection in church, canvassed for books, been life-insurance agent, worked at bridge-building, took tintypes, sat on a jury, been constable, been deck-hand on a steamboat, chopped cord-wood, run a cider-mill, and drove a stallion in a four-minute race at a county fair.”
“That will do,” said the general. “You will be placed in charge of a pioneer corps, and you will go four miles south, on the road, where a bridge has been destroyed across a small bayou, build a new bridge strong enough to cross artillery, then move on two miles to a river you will find, and look out a good place to throw a pontoon bridge across. The first bridge you will build under an artillery fire from the rebels, and when it is done let a squad of cavalry cross, then the pontoon train, and a regiment of infantry. Then light out for the river ahead of the pontoon train, with the cavalry. The pioneer corps will be ready in fifteen minutes.”
The colonel told me to hurry up, but I called him out of his tent and asked him if I was really a sergeant, or if it was a mirage. He said if I made a success of that bridge, and the command got across, and I was not killed I would be appointed sergeant. He said the general would try me as a bridge-builder, and if I was a success he would try me, no doubt, in other capacities, such as driving team on a threshing machine, and editing a newspaper.
When, I went on after my horse, being pretty proud. The idea of being picked out of so many non-commissioned officers, and placed in charge of a pioneer corps, and sent ahead of the army to rebuild a bridge that had been destroyed, with a prospect of being promoted or killed, was glory enough for one day, and I rode back to headquarters feeling that the success of the whole expedition rested on me. If I built a corduroy bridge that would pass that whole army safely over, artillery and all, would anybody enquire who built the bridge. Of course, if I built a bridge that would break down, and drown somebody, everybody would know who built it. The twenty men were mounted, and ready, and the general told me to go to the quartermaster and get all the tools I wanted, and I took twenty axes, ten shovels, two log chains, and was riding away, when the general said:
“When you get there, and look the ground over, make up your mind exactly at what hour and minute you can have the bridge completed, and send a courier back to inform me, and at that hour the head of the column will be there, and the bridge must be ready to cross on.”
I said that would be all right, and we started out. In about forty minutes we had arrived, at the bayou, and I called a private soldier who used to do logging in the woods, and we looked the thing over. The timber necessary was right on the bank of the stream.
“Jim,” I said to the private, “I have got to build a bridge across this stream strong enough to cross artillery. I shall report to the general that he can send, along his artillery at seventeen minutes after eight o clock this evening. Am I right?”
“Well,” said Jim, as he looked at the standing timber, at the stream, and spit some black tobacco juice down on the red ground, “I should make it thirty-seven minutes after eight. You see, a shell may drop in here and kill a mule, or something, and delay us. Make it thirty-seven, and I will go you.”
We finally compromised by splitting the difference, and I sent a courier back to the general, with my compliments, and with the information that at precisely eight o clock and twenty-seven minutes he could start across. Then we fell to work. Large, long trees were cut for stringers, and hewn square, posts were made to prop up the stringers, though the stringers would have held any weight. Then small trees were cut and flattened on two sides, for the road-bed, holes bored in them and pegs made to drive through them into the stringers. A lot of cavalry soldiers never worked as those men did. Though there was only twenty of them, it seemed as though the woods were full of men. Trees were falling, and axes resounding, and men yelling at mules that were hauling logs, and the scene reminded me of logging in the Wisconsin pineries, only these were men in uniform doing the work. About the middle of the afternoon we had the stringers across, when there was a half dozen shots heard down the stream, and bullets began “zipping” all around the bridge, and we knew the rebels were onto the scheme, and wanted it stopped. I got behind a tree when the bullets began to come, to think it over. My first impulse was to leave the bridge and go back and tell the general that I couldn't build no bridge unless everything was quiet. That I had never built bridges where people objected to it. I asked the private what we had better do. He said his idea was to knock off work on the bridge for just fifteen minutes, cross the stream on the stringers, and go down there in the woods and scare the life out of those rebels, drive them away, and make them think the whole army was after them, then cross back and finish the bridge. That seemed feasible enough, so about a dozen of us squirreled across the stringers with our carbines, and the rest went down the stream on our side, and all of us fired a dozen rounds from our Spencer repeaters, right into the woods where the rebels seemed to be. When we did so, the rebels must have thought there was a million of us, for they scattered too quick, and we had a quiet life for two hours. We had got the bridge nearly completed, when there was a hissing sound in the air, a streak of smoke, and a powder magazine seemed to explode right over us. I suppose I turned pale, for I had never heard anything like it. Says I, “Jim, excuse me, but what kind of a thing is that?”
Jim kept on at work, remarking, O, nothing only they are a shellin on us. And so that was a shell. I had read of shells and seen pictures of them in Harper's Weekly, but I never supposed I would hear one. Presently another came, and I wanted to pack up and go away. I looked at my pioneers, and they did not pay any more attention to the shells than they would, to the braying of mules. I asked Jim if there wasn't more or less danger attached to the building of bridges, in the South, and he, the old veteran, said:
“Corp, don't worry as long as they hain't got our range. Them 'ere shell are going half a mile beyond us, and we don't need to worry. Just let em think they are killing us off by the dozen, and they will keep on sending shells right over us. If we had a battery here to shell back, they would get our range, and make it pretty warm for us. But now it is all guess work with them, and we are as safe as we would be in Oshkosh. Let's keep right on with the bridge.”
I never can explain what a comfort Jim's remarks were to me. After listening to him, I could work right along, driving pegs in the bridge, and pay no attention to the shells that were going over us. In fact, I lit my pipe and smoked, and began to figure how much it was going to cost the Confederacy to “celebrate” that way. It was costing them at the rate of fourteen dollars a minute, and I actually found myself laughing at the good joke on the rebels. Pretty soon a courier rode up, from the general, asking if the shelling was delaying the bridge. I sent word back that it was not delaying us in the least; in fact, it was hurrying us a little, if anything, and he could send along his command twenty-seven minutes sooner than I had calculated, as the bridge would be ready to cross on at eight o'clock sharp. At a quarter to eight, just as the daylight was fading, and we had lighted pine torches to see to eat our supper, an orderly rode up and said the general and staff had been looking for me for an hour, and were down at the forks of the road. I told the orderly to bring the general and staff right up to the headquarters, and we would entertain them to the best of our ability, and he rode off. Then we sat down under a tree and smoked and played seven up by the light of pine torches, and waited. I was never so proud of anything in my life, as I was of that bridge, and it did not seem to me as though a promotion to the position of sergeant was going to be sufficient recompense for that great feat of engineering. It was as smooth as though sawed plank had covered it, and logs were laid on each side to keep wagons from running off. I could see, in my mind, hundreds of wagons, and thousands of soldiers, crossing safely, and I would be a hero. My breast swelled so my coat was too tight. Presently I heard some one swearing down the road, the clanking of sabres, and in a few moments the general rode into the glare of the torch-light. I had struck an attitude at the approach of the bridge, and thought that I would give a good deal if an artist could take a picture of my bridge, with me, the great engineer, standing upon it, and the head of the column just ready to cross. I was just getting ready to make a little speech to the general, presenting the bridge to him, as trustee of the nation, for the use of the army, when I got a sight of his face, as a torch flared up and lit the surroundings. It was pale, and if he was not a madman, I never saw one. He fairly frothed at the mouth, as he said, addressing a soldier who had fallen in the stream, during the afternoon, and who was putting on his shirt, which he had dried by a fire:
“Where is the corporal, the star idiot, who built that bridge?”
I couldn't have been more surprised if he had killed me. This was a nice way to inquire for a gentleman who had done as much for the country as I had, in so short a time. I felt hurt, but, summoning to my aid all the gall I possessed, I stepped forward, and, in as sarcastic a manner as I could assume, I said:
“I am the sergeant, sir, who has wrought this work, made a highway in twelve hours, across a torrent, and made is possible for your army to cross.”
“Well, what do you suppose my army wants to cross this confounded ditch for? What business has the army got in that swamp over there? You have gone off the main road, where I wanted a bridge built, and built one on a private road to a plantation, where nobody wants to cross. This bridge is of no more use to me than a bridge across the Mississippi river at its source. You, sir, have just simply raised hell, that's what you have done.”
Talk about being crushed! I was pulverized. I felt like jumping into the stream and drowning myself. For a moment I could not speak, because I hadn't anything to say. Then I thought that it would be pretty tough to go off and leave that bridge without the general's seeing what a good job it was, so I said:
“Well, general, I am sorry you did not give me more explicit instructions, but I wish you would get down and examine this bridge. It is a daisy, and if it is not in the right place we can move it anywhere you want it.”
That seemed to give the general an idea, and he dismounted and examined it. He said it was as good a job as he ever saw, and if it was a mile down the road, across another bayou, where he wanted to cross, he would give a fortune. I told him if he would give me men enough and wagons enough, I would move it to where he wanted it, and have it ready by daylight the next morning. He agreed, and that was the hardest nights work I ever did. Every stick of timber in my pet bridge had to be taken off separately, and moved over a mile, but it was done, and at daylight the next morning I had the pleasure of calling the general and telling him that the bridge was ready. I thought he was a little mean when he woke up and rubbed his eyes, and said:
“Now, you are sure you have got it in the right place this time, for if that bridge has strayed away onto anybody's plantation this time, you die.”
The army crossed all right, and I had the proud pleasure of standing by the bridge until the last man was across, when I rode up to my regiment and reported to the colonel, pretty tired.{*} He was superintending the laying of a pontoon bridge across a large river, a few miles from my bridge, and he said:
“George, the general was pretty hot last night, but he was to blame about the mistake in the location, and he says he is going to try and get you a commission as lieutenant.”
* A few weeks ago I met a member of my old regiment, who is
traveling through the South as agent for a beer bottling
establishment in the North. He was with me when we built the
corduroy bridge twenty-two years ago. As we were talking
over old-times he asked me if I remembered that bridge we
built one day in Alabama, in the wrong place, and moved it
during the night. I told him I wished I had as many dollars
as I remembered that bridge. “Well,” said my comrade, “on
my last trip through Alabama I crossed that bridge, and paid
two bits for the privilege of crossing. A man has
established a toll-gate at the bridge, and they say he has
made a fortune. I asked him how much his bridge cost him,
and he said it didn't cost him a cent, as the Yankees built
it during the war. He said they cut the timber on his land,
and when he got out of the Confederate army he was busted,
and he claimed the bridge, and got a charter to keep a toll-
gate.” My comrade added that the bridge was as sound as it
was when it was built. He said he asked the toll-gate keeper
if he knew the bridge was first built a mile away, and he
said he knew the timber was cut up there, and he wondered
what the confounded Yankees went away off there to cut the
timber for, when they could get it right on the bank. Then
my comrade told the toll-gate keeper that he helped build
the bridge, the rebel thanked him, and wanted to pay back
the two bits. Some day I am going down to Alabama and cross
on that bridge again, the bridge that almost caused me to
commit suicide, and if that old rebel-for he must be an old
rebel now—charges me two bits toll, I shall very likely
pull off my coat and let him whip me, and then as likely as
not there will be another war.
I felt faint, but I said, “How can he recommend a star idiot for a commissioned office?”
“O, that is all right,” said, the colonel, “some of the greatest idiots in the army have received commisssions.” As he spoke the rebels began to shell the place where the pontoon bridge was being built, and I went hunting for a place to borrow an umbrella to hold over me, to ward off the pieces of shell. Then a battery of our own opened on the rebels, so near me that every time a gun was discharged I could, feel the roof of my head raise up like the cover to a band box. It was the wildest time I ever saw. Cavalry was swimming the river to charge the rebel battery, shells were exploding all around, and it seemed to me as though if I was to lay a pontoon bridge I would go off somewhere out of the way, where it would be quiet. Finally my regiment was ordered to swim the river, and we rode in. The first lunge my horse made he went under water about a mile, and when we came up I was not on him, but catching hold of his tail I was dragged across the river nearly drowned, and landed on the bank like a dog that has been after a duck I shook myself, we mounted and without waiting to dry out our clothes we went into the fight, before I could realize it, or back out. Scared! I was so scared it is a wonder I did not die. That was more excitement than a county fair. Bullets whizzing, shells shrieking, smoke stifling, yelling that was deafening. It seemed as though I was crazy. I must have been or I could never, as a raw recruit, with no experience, have ridden right toward those guns that were belching forth sulphur and pieces of blacksmith shop. I didn't dare look anywhere except right ahead. All thought of being hit by bullets or anything was completely out of my mind. Occasionally something would go over me that sounded as though a buzz saw had been fired from a saw mill explosion. Presently the firing on the rebel side ceased, and it was seen they were in retreat. I was never so glad of anything in my life. We stopped, and I examined my clothes, and they were perfectly dry. The excitement and warmth of the body had acted like a drying-room in a laundry. Then I laid down under a fence and went to sleep, and dreamed I was in hades, building a corduroy bridge across the Styx, and that the devil repremanded me for building it in the wrong place. When I awoke I was so stiff with rheumatism that I had to be helped up from under the fence, and they put me in an ambulance with a soldier who had his jaw shot off. He was not good company, because I had to do all the talking. And in that way we moved towards the enemy.
CHAPTER XII.
I am Instructed to Capture and Search a Female Smuggler—
I Protest in Vain—The Terrible Ordeal—Beauty Behind the
Pulpit—Pills, Plasters, Quinine—The Pathetic Letter—
We Meet Under Happier Stars.
It was at this time that the hardest duty that it was my lot to perform during my service, fell to me, and the only wonder to me is that I am alive today to tell of it. If I ever get a pension it will be on account of night sweats, caused by the terrible and trying work that was assigned to me. One day the colonel sent for me, and I knew at once that there was something unusual in the wind. After seating myself in his tent he opened the subject by asking me if I wasn't something of a hand to be agreeable to the ladies. I told him, with many blushes, that if there was one thing on this earth that I thought was nicer than everything else, it was a lady, and that a good woman was the noblest work of God. He said he was on to all of that, but it wasn't a good woman that he was after. That startled me a little. I had heard the officers had a habit of fooling around a good deal with certain females, and I told the colonel that any duty that I was assigned to I would perform to the best of my poor ability, but I could not go around with the girls as officers did, because I couldn't afford it, and it was against my principles, anyway. He showed me a picture of a beautiful woman, and asked me if I would know her if I saw her again. I told him I could pick her out of a thousand. He said she was a smuggler. She had a pass from a general, who seemed to be under her influence to a certain extent, for some reason, and went in and out of the lines freely. The general didn't want to order her arrest, because she would squeal on him, but he wanted her arrested all the same, and the idea was to have some corporal in charge of a picket post take the responsibility of arresting her without orders, refuse to recognize her pass, take the quinine and other medicines, and money away from her, and then be arrested himself for exceeding his authority. He said they wanted a corporal who had every appearance of being a big-headed idiot, and yet who knew what he was about, who knew something about women, and who could do such a job up in shape, and never let the woman know that the general or anybody had anything to do with her arrest. The idea was to catch her in the act of smuggling quinine through the lines to the rebels, by the act of a fresh corporal who took the matter into his own hands, and who claimed that the pass she had from the general was a forgery. When the general could, when the woman was brought before him, be indignant at the corporal for insulting a woman, and order him arrested, and he could also go back on the woman, and have her sent away, after which he would release the corporal, and perhaps promote him, and all would be well. It was as pretty a scheme as I ever listened to, and I consented to do the duty, though I wouldn't do it again for a million dollars. The colonel told me to take four men and go to a particular place on an unfrequented road, near a school house, and put out a picket. The female would be along during the afternoon, on horseback, and when she showed her pass, one of the men must take hold of her horse and hold him, while I kicked about the pass, made her dismount, and searched her for quinine. I turned ashy pale when the colonel said that, and I said to him:
“Colonel, for heaven's sake don't compel me to search a woman. I have a family at home, and they will hear of it. My political enemies will use it against me at home when I run for office, after the war. Let me bring her here to your tent, and you search her.”
“No, that would spoil all,” said the colonel. “We want her searched right there at the little school house, by a corporal without apparent authority, and every last quinine pill taken off of her. If she was brought here she would cry, and rave, and we should weaken, because we know her, and have been entertained at her house. You are supposed to be a heartless corporal, with no sentiment, no mercy, no nothing, just a delver after smuggled quinine. Besides, I too, have a family, and I don't want to search no females. By the way, one of the general's start saw her last night, and drew the cartridges from her revolver, and put in some blank cartridges. If the worst comes, she will draw her revolver on you, and perhaps fire at you, but there are no balls in her revolver, so you needn't be afraid.”
“But suppose she has two revolvers,” I asked, “and one is loaded with bullets?”
“I don't think she has,” said the colonel. “But we have to take some chances, you know. Now go right along. Treat her like a lady, disbelieve everything she says and insist on searching her. The general says she wears an enormous bustle, and probably that is full of quinine. Use your judgement, but get it all. Pretend to be an ignorant sort of a corporal who feels that the success of the war depends on him, act as though you outranked the general, and tell her you would not let her pass with that quinine if the general himself was present. Just display plenty gall and when you have go the quinine, bring the girl here, and I will abuse you, and you take it like a little man, and all will be well. If she bites and scratches, some of you will have to hold her, but the best way will be to argue with her, and persuade her by honied words, to come down with the quinine. Go!”
“One word, colonel, before I go,” I said. “About how many men should you think it would take to hold this woman? You suggested three, but if one holds her horse, it seems to me, from my knowledge of female kicking, biting and scratching, that I would need one man for each arm and foot, one to hold her head and choke her, if necessary, and one with a roving commission to work around where he would be apt to make himself useful. What do you say if I take five men!”
“All right, take six,” said the colonel. “One may be disabled, or have his jaw kicked off, or something. But don't detail anybody to search her. Do that yourself, and do it like a gentleman. And above all things, do not let her kanoodle you with soft words and looks of love, because she is full of em. If she can't scare you, with her indignation at the outrage of arresting and searching her, she will try to capture you and make you love her. You must be as firm as adamant. Now hurry up.”
I picked out six men, four of whom were young Americans, rather handsome, and very polite, regular mashers.
Then I had an Irishman named Duffy, and a German named Holzmeyer, who was a butcher. We went out on the road, to the school house, and I put the Irishman on picket, and instructed the German about taking the horse by the bridle at the proper time. Then the rest of us got behind the school house and waited. For two hours we waited, and I had a chance to think over the situation. Here I was, putting down the rebellion, laying for a woman, who was loaded. At home, I was a polite man, and full of fun, a person any lady might be proud to meet and talk with, but here I was expected to do something, for thirteen dollars a month, to put down the rebellion, which there was not money enough in the whole state of Wisconsin to hire me to do. Was it such a crime to carry a little quinine to a sick friend? Suppose a rebel was sick with ague, and I had quinine, would I see him shake himself out of his boots and not give him medicine? No, I would divide my last quinine powder with him. So would any soldier. If it was not treason to give one rebel a quinine powder, when he was sick, why should it be treason to take along enough for a whole lot of sick rebels? Did our government want to put down the rebellion by keeping medicines away from a sick enemy? Were we to gloat over the number of rebels who died of disease, that we could save by sending them medicines? It seemed to me, if I was in command of the army, instead of arresting women for carrying medicine to their sick brothers, I would load up a wagon with medicine and send it to them, and say, “Here, you fellows, fire this quinine down your necks, and get well, and then if you want to fight any more, come out on the field and we will give you the best turn in the wheel-house.” It seemed to me that would be the way to win the enemy over, and that they would be thankful, take the medicine, get well, and then say, “Boys, these Yankees are pretty good fellows after all. Let's quit fighting, and call it quits.” But I was not running the war, and had got to obey orders, if I broke heartstrings and corset strings. I would have given anything to have got out of the job. The idea of arresting a woman and searching her, and seeing her cry, and have her think me a hard-hearted wretch, was revolting, and I found myself wishing she would take some other road. May be she looked like somebody that I knew at home, and may be she had a big brother in the Confederate army who would look me up after the war and everlastingly maul the life out of me for insulting his sister. I made up my mind if anything of that kind happened I would tell on the general and the colonel, and get them whipped, too.
“Phat the divil is it coming,” said the Irishman. “Corporal of the guaod, the quane of all the South is coming down the road, riding a high stepper. Phat will I do, I dunno?”
“Stop her,” I yelled with my teeth chattering.
“Halt right fhere yez are,” said the Irishman, with a look on his face that showed he was—well, that he was an Irishman, and had an eye for beauty. The German had taken the horse by the bit, and I stepped out from behind the school house.
Great heavens, but she was a beautiful woman, and she sat on her horse like a statue. I had never seen a more beautiful woman. She was a brunette, with large black eyes, and her face was flushed with the exercise of riding.
She smiled and showed two rows of the prettiest teeth that ever were put into a female mouth, and one ungloved hand, with which she handed me the pass had a dimple at every knuckle, and was as white as paper, and soft as silk. I know it was soft, because it touched my red, freckled hand when I took the pass. I did not blame the general for being in love with her, or for wanting to saw off the unpleasant duty of breaking up her smuggling, on to a poor orphan like me. She said:
“Captain, I have a pass from the general, to go through the lines at any time, unmollested.”
“It is no good,” I said, examining it. “This pass is evidently a forgery.”
“But, my dear captain,” she said, with a smile that I would give ten dollars for a picture of, “The pass is not a forgery. I have used it for months.”
“I am not a dear captain, only a cheap corporal,” I said, with an attempt to be at my ease, which I wasn't.
“There has been at least a wagon load of quinine smuggled through the lines on this pass, and it has got to stop; you cannot go.”
“The dickens you say,” said she as she drew her revolver, and sung out, “let go that horse,” and firing at the German.
“Kritz-dunnerwetter,” said the German, as he got down by the horse's fore feet, and held on to the bridle, “vot vor you choot a man ven he holt your horse?”
“Madame,” I said, “your revolver is loaded with blank cartridges, and you can do no harm. Try another one on the Irishman.”
“Hold on,” said the Irishman, “and don't experiment on a poor man who has a wife and six children. Shoot the corporal.”
But I had reached up and taken the revolver from her, and she was weak as a kitten. Her nerve had forsaken her, and when I told her to dismount she was like a rag, and had to be helped down. If she was beautiful before, now that she had started her tear mill, she was ravishingly radiant, and I felt like a villain. She leaned on my shoulder, and it was the loveliest burden a soldier ever held. I seated her on the steps of the schoolhouse, and I thought she would faint, but she didn't. She was evidently taken by surprise, and wanted a little time to think it over, and form a plan. So did I. As I looked her over, and thought what I was expected to do, I wondered where it would be best to commence. She began to recover, smiled at me and asked me to have the other soldiers go away, so she could talk with me. I wished she wouldn't smile like that, because it unnerved me. She asked me what I was going to do with her, what caused me to suspect her, if I would not believe her if she told me she was not a smuggler, if I had orders to arrest her, and all that. I said, “Madame, my orders are to arrest all quinine smugglers, and you are one. I am Hawkshaw, the detective. For months I have shadowed you, and I know you have concealed about your person a whole drug store. In that innocent looking bustle I feel that there is quinine for the million. Your heaving bosom contains, besides love for your friends and hatred of your enemies, a storehouse of useful medicines, contraband of war. In your stockings there is much that would interest the seeker after the truth, your corset that fits you so beautifully is liable to be full of revolver cartridges, while in your shoes there may be messages to the rebels. I shall search you from Genesis to Revelations, and may the Lord have mercy on both of us. To begin, please let me examine the hat you have on.”
With some reluctance she took off a sort of half-stovepipe hat, and covered her face with her handkerchief while I looked into it. I found a package of newly printed confederate bonds, and a quantity of court plaster. That settled it. She cried a little, and wanted to go into the schoolhouse. I went in with her, and two of my soldiers.
I told her that it was a duty that was pretty tough, but it was necessary for her to disrobe, as I must have every article she had. She cried, and said if I searched her, or molested her, I would do it at my peril, and that I wouldn't know how to go to work to take off her clothes, anyway, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself. I told her I felt as ashamed as any gentleman could, and though I knew little about the details of the female apparel, I had some general ideas about bustles, polonaise, socks, skirts, and so forth, and while I might be awkward, and uncouth, and nervous, as long as there were buttons to unbutton, hooks to unhook, and safety-pins to unpin, I thought I could eventually get to the quinine, if she would give me time, and I did not faint by the wayside, but my idea was that it would save all trouble, her modesty would not receive a shock, nor mine either, if she would go behind the little pulpit in the schoolhouse, out of sight of us, take off her clothes, and hand them over the pulpit to us to examine. She said she would die first, besides, she knew we would peek around the pulpit at her. I was getting very nervous, and perspiring a good deal, and wishing it was over, and I swore, upon my honor, that if she would go behind the pulpit and disrobe, she should be as safe from intrusion as though she was in her own room. She swore she would not, and I went up to her to commence unraveling the mystery. Her dress hooked up in the back, which I always did think a great nuisance, and I began to unhook it. I wondered that she stood so quietly and let me unhook it, but after it was unhooked from the neck to the small of her back, and I was wishing I was dead, she said:
“There, now that you have got my dress unhooked, a feat I never could accomplish myself, I will go behind the pulpit and take off my dress, if you will promise not to look, and that you will help me hook up my dress when this cruel quinine war is over.”
I told her by the great Jehosephat, and the continental congress, I would help her, and that I would kill anybody who looked, and she went behind the schoolhouse pulpit, where a country preacher, very likely, preached on Sundays, and bent over out of sight, and it wasn't half a minute before she handed the dress over to me. In the pockets I found several papers of some kind of medicine, and a few small bottles, sealed up with red sealing-wax.
“Now, the bustle, please, I said, in a voice trembling with emotion.
“Take your old bustle,” she said, as she whacked it on the top of the pulpit.
Well, if anybody had told me that a bustle could be made to hold stuff enough to fill a bushel-basket, I would not have believed it. We filled three nose-bags, such as cavalrymen feed horses in, with paper packages and bottles of quinine. There were thirty bottles of pills, and salves and ointments, and plasters.
“This is panning out first rate,” I said, with less emotion. The emotion was somehow getting out of me, and the affair was becoming more of a mercantile transaction. It was like a young druggist going from the side of his beloved, to the drug store, to take an inventory. “Now hand out that other lot.”
She evidently knew what I referred to, for she handed out over the pulpit a package just exactly the shape of what I had supposed, in my guileless innocence, was a portion of the female form. That is, I had suspected it was not all human form, but didn't know. That was also full of medicines, of which quinine was the larger part, though there was about a pint of gun caps.
“Speaking about stockings,” I said, “please take them off and hand them over.”
She kicked about taking off her shoes and stockings, and said no gentleman would compel a lady to do that. I said I would wait about two minutes, and then, if it was too much trouble for her to take them off, I would come around the pulpit and help. Bless you, I wouldn't have gone for the world, as I was already more than satisfied with what I had found. She said I needn't trouble myself, as she guessed she could take off her shoes without my help. I heard her unlacing her shoes, and pretty soon two dainty shoes and two very long stockings, came over the pulpit, the heel of one shoe hitting me in the ear. As I picked up the shoes I heard the crumpling of a letter behind the pulpit, and I told her I must have all the messages she had. She said it was only a letter to one she loved. I told her I must have it, and she handed it over. I read, “My darling husband,” and handed it back, saying I would not pry into her family secrets. She began to cry, and insisted on my reading it, which I did. It was to her husband, an officer in the Confederate army, and was about as follows:
“My Darling Husband:—This life of deception is killing me.
I want to do all in my power to help our cause, but I am
each day more nervous, and liable to detection. The Yankee
officers are frequently at our house, and I have to treat
them kindly, but it is all I can do to keep from crying, and
I am expected to laugh. I fear that I am suspected of
smuggling, as the subject is frequently brought up in
conversation, and I feel my face burn, though I try hard not
to show it. I think of you, away off in Virginia, with your
armless sleeve, our children in New Orleans, and I wonder if
we will ever be united again. O, God, when will this all
end. I have no fault to find with the Federal troops. The
officers are very kind and through one fatherly general I am
allowed to pass into our lines. I feel that I am betraying
his kindness every trip I make, and only the urgent need
that our dear boys have for medicines could induce me to do
as I do. After this trip I shall go to New Orleans,{*}
where I fear Madge is sick, as shew as not at all well the
last I heard from her. Pray earnestly, my dear husband,
every day, as I do, that this trouble may end soon, some
way, and I beg of you not to have a feeling of revenge in
your heart towards your enemies, on account of the loss of
your arm, as there are thousands of federals similarly
afflicted. I shall love you more, and I will wrap your empty
sleeve about my neck, and try never to miss the strong arm
that was my support. Adieu.
“Your loving wife.”
That letter knocked me out in one round. I had begun to enjoy the unpacking of the smuggled goods, and the discomfiture of my female smuggler, but when I read that loving letter, breathing such a Christian spirit, and thought of the poor wife-mother behind the pulpit unravelling herself, I was ashamed, and I said to myself, “she shall not take off another rag. So I handed back the letter and the dress, and all of the things she had taken off, and I said:
“Put everything right back onto yourself, and come out at your leisure, and we took the medicines and went out of the schoolhouse. Presently She came out, and I told her it was my duty to take her back to headquarters, but if she had no objections to my taking the letter to the general, with the medicines, she could go back to the house where she boarded, and I thought if she took the first boat for New Orleans, it would be all right, and I would see that the letter was sent through the lines to her husband. I helped her on her horse, and I said:
“You can escape. Your horse is better than ours, and though you are a prisoner, we would not shoot at you if you tried to escape. I hope your prayers will have the effect you desire, and that the trouble will soon be over. I hope you will and the children well, and that the husband will be spared to be a comfort to you.”
She bowed her head, as she sat in the saddle, and the look of defiance which she had shown, was gone, and one of thankfulness, peace, hope, purity, took its place. She handed me the letter, and asked:
“Can I go?”
I told, her she was free to go. She turned her horse; towards town, touched him with the whip, and he was; away like the wind. I stood for two minutes, watching her, when I was recalled to my senses by the Irishman, who said:
“Fhat are we to do wid the quinane and the gun caps?” We packed the smuggled goods in our saddle-bags and elsewhere, and rode back to headquarters. The colonel and the general were in the colonel's tent, and I took the “stuff” in and reported all the occurrences.
“But where is the lady?” inquired the general, after reading the letter and wiping his eyes.
“As we were about to start back,” said I, “after taking the smuggled goods from her, she gave her horse the whip, and rode away. I had no orders to shoot a woman, and I let her go.”
“Thank God,” said the general. “That's the best way,” said the colonel. “She will quit smuggling and go to her children.”
*Eighteen months after the lady rode away from me, “leaving”
her quinine, I was in New Orleans, to be mustered in as
Second Lieutenant, having received a commsssion. I had
bought me a fine uniform, and thought I was about as cunning
a looking officer as ever was. I was walking on Canal
street, looking in the windows, and finally went into a
store to buy some collars. A gentleman came in with a gray
uniform on, and one sleeve empty. He was evidently a
Confederate officer. He asked me if I did not belong to a
certain cavalry regiment, and if my name was not so and so.
I told him he was correct. He told me there was a lady in an
adjoining store that wanted to see me. I did not know a
soul, that is, a female soul, in New Orleans, but I went
with him. Any lady that wanted to see me, in my new uniform,
could see me. As we entered the store a lady left two little
girls and rushed up to me, threw her arms around my neck and
—(say, does a fellow have to tell everything, when he writes
a war history?) Well, she was awfully tickled to see me, and
she was my smuggler, the Confederate was her husband, and
the children were hers. The officer was as tickled as she
was, and they compelled me to go to their house to dinner,
and I enjoyed it very much. We talked over the arrest of the
“female smuggler,” and she said to her husband, “Pa, it
was an awfully embarrassing situation for me and this
Yankee, but he treated me like a lady, and the only thing I
have to find fault about, is that he forgot to help me hook
up my dress, and I rode clear to town with it unhooked.” The
Confederate had been discharged at the surrender, and I was
on my way to Texas, to serve another year, hunting Indians.
I left them very happy, and as I went out of their door she
wrapped his empty sleeve around her waist, drew the children
up to her, and said, “Mr. Yankee, may you always be very
happy.”
CHAPTER XIII.
The Female Smuggler Episode Makes Me Famous—I am Sent Forth
in Women's Clothes—My Interview with the Bad Corporal—A
Fist Fight—The Rebellion is Put Down Once More—I Reveal My
Identity.
It was not twenty-four hours before the news spread all over my regiment, as well as several other regiments, that a certain corporal had captured a female smuggler, while on picket, had searched her on the spot and found a large quantity of quinine and other articles contraband of war, and there was a general desire to look upon the features of a man, not a commissioned officer who had gall enough to search a female rebel, from top to toe, without orders from the commanding officer, and I was constantly being visited by curiosity-seekers, who wanted to know all about it. Of course it was not known that I had been ordered to do as I did, and they all wondered why I was not made an example of; and many privates, corporals and sergeants wondered if they would get out of it so easily if they should do as I did. There were a great many women passing through the lines, and I am sure many soldiers decided that the first woman who attempted to pass through would get searched. It was talked among the men, and for a day or two a lady would certainly have stood a poor show to have rode up to a picket post with a pass to go outside. The soldiers had so long been away from female society that it would have been a picnic for them to have captured a suspicious looking woman who was pretty. I was pointed out, down town, as the man who captured the woman loaded with quinine, and women with rebel tendencies would look at me as though I was a bold, bad man that ought to be killed, and they acted as though they would like to eat me. But I tried to appear modest, and not as though I had done anything I was particularly proud of. The next evening the colonel sent for me and said he had got something for me to do that required nerve. I told him that my experience in putting down the rebellion had shown me that the whole thing required nerve. That I had been on my nerve until my nerves were pretty near used up, and I asked him if he couldn't let some of the other boys do a little of the nervous work. He said he had one more woman job that he would like to have me undertake.
I was sick of the whole woman business, and told him I did not want to be aggravated any more; that arresting women and searching them, was nothing but an aggravation, and I wanted to be let out. He said in this case I would not have to arrest anybody of the female persuasion, but that I would have to be arrested, and that it would be the greatest joke that ever was. I told him if there was any joke about it he could count me in. Then he went on to say that my success with the female smuggler had excited all the boys to emulate my deeds, and they were all laying for a female smuggler, and that he feared it wouldn't be safe for a woman to be caught on the picket line. There had got to be a stop put to it, and he and the general had thought of a scheme. He said there was a corporal in one of the companies who had made his brags that he would arrest the first female that came to his picket post, and search her for smuggled goods, and they wanted to make an example of him. He asked me if I wasn't something of a boxer, and I told him for a light weight I was considered pretty good. Then he asked me if I could ride on a side saddle. I told him I could ride anything, from a hobby to an elephant. He said that was all right, and I would fill the bill. Then he went into details. I was to go to the town with him, and be fitted out with a riding habit of the female persuasion, false hair, side saddle, and a bustle as big as a bushel basket. That I was to ride out on a certain road, where the corporal would be on picket with two men. He would stop me, and search me, I was to cry, and beg, and all that, but finally submit to be searched, and after the corporal had got started to search me, I was to haul off and give him one “biff” in the nose, another if it was necessary to knock him down, paste one of the men in the ear, if he showed any impudence, jump on my horse and come back to town, and leave the corporal to find his mistake.
I didn't half like the idea of dressing up in such a masquering costume, but of course if I could help put down the rebellion that way, it was my duty to do it, and besides, I had a grudge against that corporal, anyway, because he called me a “jay” and a “substitute,” and a “drafted man,” when I came to the regiment. The colonel took me to the residence of a lady friend who rode on horseback a good deal, and as he let her into the secret, she helped fix me up. All I had to do was to remove my cavalry jacket, and she put the dress on over my head. I always supposed they put on these dresses the same as men put on pants, by walking into them feet first, but she said they went over the head. I felt as though my pants were going to show, but she gave me some instructions about keeping the dress down, and I began to feel a good deal like a woman. The dress fit me around the waist as though it was made for me, and when it was all buttoned up in front I felt stunning. She and the colonel made a bustle out of newspapers, and a small sofa cushion of eider down was placed where it would do the most good. After the dress was all fixed, she got a wig and put it on my head, and a hat, with a feather in it, and then pinned a veil on the hair, so it reached down to my rose-bud mouth. Then she took a powder arrangement and powdered my face, put on a pair of long gauntlets which she usually wore, and told me to look in the glass. When I looked into the glass I almost fainted. The deception was so good that it would have fooled the oldest man in the world.
The colonel said he was almost inclined to fall in love with me himself, and he did put his arm around me and squeeze me, but I didn't notice any particular feeling, such as I did when his lady friend was fooling around me. That was different. Well, I was an inveterate smoker at that time, so I took my pipe and a bag of tobacco, and put it in a pocket of the dress, and some matches, and we went out doors. The colonel took my tiny number eight boot in his hand and tossed me lightly into the saddle, then he mounted his own horse and we rode around the suburbs of the town, so I could get used to the side-saddle. I got him to stop behind a fence and let me have a smoke out of my pipe, and then I told him I was ready. He gave me a pass, and told me to go out on the road the corporal was on, and if he let me pass out of the lines to go on to a turn in the road, where a squad of our men were on a scout, and to report to the officer in charge, who would bring me in all right, by another road, but if the corporal attempted to search me, to do as I had been told to do. After I had knocked the corporal down, if I would give a yell, the officer who was outside would come and arrest us all and bring us to headquarters, where the colonel could reprimand the corporal, etc. I threw a kiss to the colonel and started out on the road. It was about a mile to the picket post, and I had time to reflect on my position. This was putting down the rebellion at a great rate. I was an ostensible female, liable to be insulted at any moment, but I would maintain the dignity of my alleged sex if I didn't lay up a cent. I put on a proud, haughty look, full of purity and all that, and as I neared the picket post, I saw the corporal step out into the road, and as I came up he told me to halt. I halted, and handed him my pass, but he said it was a forgery, and ordered me to dismount. I turned on the water, from my eyes, and began to cry, but it run off the bad corporal like water off a duck.
“None of your sniveling around me,” said the vile man. “Get down off that horse.”
“Sir,” I said, with well feigned indignation, “you would not molest a poor girl who has no one to defend her. Let me go I prithe.”
I had read that, “Let me go I prithe,” in a novel, and it seemed to me to be the proper thing to say, though I couldn't hardly keep from laughing.
“Prithe nothing,” said the corporal. “What you got in that bustle?” said the corporal.
“Bustle,” I said, blushing so you could have touched a match to my face. “Why speak of such a thing in the presence of a lady. I want you to let me go or I shall think you are real mean, so now. Please, Mr. Soldier, let me go,” and I smiled at him and winked with my left eye in a manner that ought to have paralyzed a marble statue. “O, what you giving us,” said the vile man. “Get down off that horse and let me go through you for quinine. Do you hear?”
I was afraid if he helped me down he would see my boots or pants, which would be a give-away. So I gathered my dress in my hands and jumped down in pretty good shape. I had sparred with the corporal several times in camp, and I knew I could knock him out easy, and I made up my mind that the first indignity he offered me I would just “lam him one. It was all I could do to keep from pasting him in the nose, when I first landed on the ground, but I had a part to play, and it would not do to go off half cocked. So I looked sad, pouted my lips, and wondered if he would kiss me, and feel the beard where I had been shaved.
“Now, shuck yourself,” said he.
“Do what? I asked, with apparent alarm.
“Peel,” said he, as he put his hand on my back,
“Sir,” I said with my eyes flashing fire, and my heart throbbing, and almost bursting with suppressed laughter, “you are insolent. I am a poor orphan, unused to contact with coarse men. I have been raised a pet, and no vile hand has ever been laid upon me until you just touched me. If you touch me I shall scream. I shall call for help. What would you do, you wicked, naughty man.”
“Unbutton,” said he as he pointed to my dress in front. “Call for help and be darned. You are a smuggler, and I know it.”
“O, my God,” said I, with a stage accent, “has it come to this? Am I to be robbed of all I hold dear, by a common Yankee corporal. Has a woman no rights which are to be respected? Am I to be murdered in cold bel-lud, with all my sins upon my head. O, Mr. Man, give me a moment to utter a silent prayer.”
“O, hush,” said he, “and hold up your hands. There ain't going to be any bel-lud. All I want is to go through you for quinine.”
“Spare me, I beseech you,” I said, as I held up my hands, and got in position to knock him silly the first move he made. “I am no walking drug store, I am a good girl.” Around my awful form I draw an imaginary circle. “Step but one foot within that sacred circle, and on thy head I launch the cu-r-r-r-se of Rome, Georgia.”