Under the Stars and Bars

About midday on Dec. 20, 1860, the writer sat in an audience room in Macon, Ga., listening to an address delivered by Hon. Howell Cobb to the Cotton Planters' Convention, then in session in that city. After all these years my memory retains no trace of that address in either theme or outline. I do recall, however, an interruption in its delivery, remembered, possibly, because it threw a crimson tint over the years that followed it, and for the further reason that if there had been no occasion for such an interruption, these records might never have been written. While Mr.

Cobb was speaking, a messenger entered the hall and handed him a telegram. He broke the seal, glanced over its contents and then read the following message to the audience: "The South Carolina Convention has just passed the Ordinance of Secession from the Union." From that moment the "Cotton Planters' Convention" was no longer in it. The audience became a howling mob. That night there was a torchlight procession with brass band accompaniments. The streets were packed with a solid mass of excited, fevered, yelling humanity. The people were simply wild for Southern independence and the scene was probably duplicated in every Southern city.

In the early months in '61, when all hope of a peaceful separation had passed, the war fever attacked first the towns and cities where the people were in constant touch with each other and where the daily press kept the public pulse at more than normal beat. As the demand for troops increased, the infection spread to quiet country places with their monthly church service and their weekly mail. And so in due time it reached the community in which I lived, a community of quiet, well-to-do farmers, whose knowledge of Jomini and the art of war was decidedly limited. A military organization of thirty of forty men was, however, effected and Mr. John D. Mongin, the only member who knew the difference between "shoulder arms" and "charge bayonet," was elected captain. Our weekly drills at the academy grounds were confined largely to marching in single rank to the music of a rustic drummer and fifer, who seemed in blissful ignorance of anything but "slow time." There was a short-legged Frenchman in the company, whose number was "32" and, who in counting off, always responded with "dirty too." A year or two later those of us, who had seen actual service, could probably have made the same response without impairing in the least our reputation for veracity. As there was not sufficient material in the community to form a full company, my brother and myself, with D. W. Mongin, A. J. and J. H. Rhodes, made application to the Oglethorpe Infantry, 1st Ga. Regiment, then at Laurel Hill, Va., for admission into its ranks, and were accepted. Leaving Augusta July 31, 1861, in company with George Pournelle and Ginnie Hitt, who were returning from a ten days' furlough, we stopped over in Richmond a day and visited the Confederate Congress then in session. Sitting in the gallery of the Senate Chamber looking down upon Alex Stephens in the chair and Bob Toombs, Ben Hill, E. A. Nisbet R. M. T. Hunter and other worthies in the Hall, Luke Lane, an old college classmate, wrote on the fly leaf of the pocket diary, from which these records are partly taken a sort of preface, closing it with these words: "Here's hoping that every Yankee may find a bloody grave;" and Ginnie Hitt, sitting by, wrote beneath it: "Amen, say I." Luke appended my initials to the sentiment, but as it was stronger than my inclinations prompted me to endorse, I erased them. We visited also the prison hospital where the Federals wounded at Manassas, were being cared for. It was my first contact with "grim visaged war."

To a stripling boy, reared in a quiet country home and in a community in which there had never occurred a serious personal difficulty, I had neither inherited nor acquired any taste for carnage or bloodshed, and the scene was not a pleasant one. And yet the battlefield unfortunately soon dulls our natural sensibilities and begets an indifference to suffering that would shock us in civil life.

On reaching Monterey, Va., where the Oglethorpes were recuperating from the hardships of the "Laurel Hill Retreat," we found every tent occupied and we remained at the village inn until quarters could be provided. I remember that I slept, or tried to sleep, on the bare floor of our room as a sort of preparation for the life on which I was entering. In this connection I recall another fact, a peculiarity of this tavern, and that was its capacity for the utilization of green apples as an article of public diet. My experience with hostelries is not claimed to be at all extensive, but among those whose hospitality I have had the good or bad fortune to enjoy, or endure, this particular inn, on the line named, certainly "took the dilapidated linen from the lonely shrub." We were treated to apples baked and stewed and fried, to apple tarts and custards and dumplings, to apple butter and it would probably be no exaggeration to say, "there were others." After paying our bill Dan Mongin remarked, "When green apple season plays out this hotel is going to suspend." In verification of his prophecy, when we passed through Monterey en route to join Stonewall Jackson in December, its doors were closed, its lights were gone and all its halls deserted. Whether its demise was due to the green apple theory, I am unable to say.

My first month in camp was devoid of incident, its monotony being varied only by squad drill, guard duty, foraging for maple syrup and other edibles among the Dutch farmers of that section and digging graves for the unfortunate victims of the campaign just ended. One of the graves which the writer helped to dig in very hard clay, was appropriated by a burial squad from another regiment for one of their own dead. I am not lawyer enough to say whether the act was petty larceny, forcible entry and detainer, or what an old colored friend of mine once diagnosed as "legal mischievous" with the accent on the second syllable.

MY FIRST MARCH.

On Sept. 7, '61, Sterling Eve, Ginnie Hitt, Dan Mongin and the writer, not having been favored with the confidence of Gen. Lee as to his military plans, went into the country on a foraging expedition. This trip was probably inspired by a triumph in the culinary line achieved by Dr. Hitt and George Pournelle in supplying our table with two varieties of dumpling, apple and huckleberry, on the same day. We had no bag, in which to boil the dumpling and were forced to use the mess towel as a substitute. How long it had been subjected to its ordinary uses before being utilized in this way I do not now recall. Dr. Hitt remembers, however, or says he does, that the entire outer surface of the dumplings was towel-marked. The nature of the mark referred to is left without further discussion to the imagination of the reader. In this connection I recall another incident in the culinary line, which may be as well recorded here as elsewhere. About twenty years after the war I met Dr. Hitt in Augusta and taking something from my pocket, I handed it to him and asked if he could give me any information as to its character. He examined it very carefully by sight, touch and smell, and then said very confidently: "Oh, yes, I know what that is. It is a stone taken from a deer's liver." His diagnosis was not "reasonably" correct. The article under examination was a Confederate biscuit baked in our camp at Jacksonboro, Tenn., in 1863, sent to my father's family as a specimen and preserved during all those years. If I had taken the precaution to have immersed it in insect powder it would probably at this date have been still in the ring, though possibly a little disfigured. A few years after Dr. Hitt's examination, I found that it had-

"Like an insubstantial pageant faded

Leaving not a wrack"-

but only a little dust behind.

On our return from the foraging tour with a good supply of potatoes, onions and maple syrup, we found the camp deserted-a camp favored with the purest mountain air and the finest spring water, and yet where Dan Mongin wrote to his father for brandy to counteract the effects of malaria. The entire force at Monterey had been ordered to report to Gen. Henry R. Jackson on Green Brier River, and had broken camp two hours before our arrival. After resting an hour we began the tramp, trudging over the mountain roads for eight miles in the mud and rain and stopping for the night at the residence of a Col. Campbell in Crab Bottom. Here we had the pleasure of meeting the first two heroines of the war, Miss McLeod and Miss Kerr. They had ridden seventy miles on horseback without an escort to notify Gen. Garnett of McLellan's approach. My first day's march, though a short one, had broken me down so thoroughly that I was compelled to tax the kindness of a 3rd Arkansas Regiment wagoner for a ride next day. The entry in my journal for that date begins with these words: "Took the road with a heavy heart and a heavier load." Three years later, under the hardening process of camp life I was enabled to march, on Hood's tramp to Nashville and back to Corinth, Miss., twenty miles a day continuously and rode only one of the eight hundred miles covered in that campaign. During my two days experience as an "Arkansas Traveler" I think I heard more expletive, unadulterated "cussin" from the driver of that wagon than it has ever been my misfortune to listen to. His capacity in this line seemed to be not only double barreled, but of the magazine gun variety. If he had failed to pass his examination in the school of profanity I have never seen a man who was entitled to a diploma. I appreciated the ride, but was glad to reach our new camp, since it relieved me of his presence.

MY FIRST SKIRMISH.

Gen. Jackson's force on the Green Brier consisted of the 1st and 12th Ga., the 3rd Ark. and the 23rd and 37th Va. Regiments. Ten or twelve miles northwest of us, on Cheat Mountain, lay a Federal force of 5,000 men under Gen. Reynolds. Gen. Lee had planned an attack to be made on this force on the morning of Sept. 12th, two days after our arrival at the Green Brier. On the evening of the 11th an advance guard of ninety men from the 1st and 12th Ga. under command of Lieut. Dawson was formed with instructions to flank, by a night march, the Federal picket, secure a position in their rear, capture them and thus prevent notice to Gen. Reynolds of the intended attack. For this guard there were detailed from the Oglethorpes, Wilberforce Daniel, Joe Derry, Tom Burgess, W. H. Clark and the writer. Leaving camp at 7:30 p. m., under the pilotage of a citizen of that section we reached a position within half a mile of the Federal camp about sunrise, after a fatiguing march in the rain and mud, being compelled to draw ourselves up the slippery mountain side by the undergrowth that lay in our route. Soon after reaching our place of ambush we heard the drums beat for "Guard Mount" and then the bands began to play "Annie Laurie," "Run, Nigger Run," and "Jordan is a Hard Road to Trabble," were three of the selections rendered. The first suggested pleasant memories of our far away homes; the second, the possibility that in a little while there might be a practical illustration of the refrain, while the tramp we had just taken satisfied us that "Jordan" was not the only hard road to travel. The selection of these airs recalls the singular fact that in actual service military bands do not as a rule play national or military music. The writer had other opportunities than the one named of hearing Federal bands during his term of service, but does not recall a single instance in which a national air was rendered. Lulled by the music and overcome by fatigue and loss of sleep, I fell into a doze, from which I was awakened by the accidental discharge of a gun in the hands of one of the guard. A Federal sergeant from the picket post, hearing the noise, came down the road to investigate. On reaching a point opposite the left of our line he heard the ominous click of the rifle hammers and started in full run for his camp. Six or eight balls crashed through him and the poor fellow fell dead in the road. Attracted by the firing, about twenty-five of the Federal pickets came hurriedly down the road and on seeing their dead comrade fired a volley into the woods, which concealed us, but failed to do any execution. "Charge!" sang out our commander, and we broke for the road. Before reaching it, the pickets had scattered into the woods beyond. Tom Burgess, as he leaped into the road saw one of them rise from a stump behind which he had been hiding, and run. Tom raised his rifle, took deliberate aim and fired. As he fell, Tom pointed his finger at him and said, "Got you." I was standing only a few feet from Tom and it has always been a matter of gratification to me that my gun had been fired before reaching the road and that I had no opportunity to reload. At such close range it would have been almost impossible to have missed my man, and whatever my feeling at the time may have been it would have been a source of life-long regret to me to know positively that "some mother's boy" had fallen by my hand, even in war. Several others were killed as they ran through the woods. No member of the guard received even a scratch, and the affair had more the appearance of a rabbit hunt than a skirmish. After the firing had ceased, Lieut. Dawson, feeling that it was unsafe to remain so near the Federal camp with so small a force, reformed the guard and we began our march down the mountain. We were expecting to meet the reserve picket of the enemy and in a sharp curve in the road were confronted by a column of troops marching in fours and only a hundred yards away. One of the guard sang out, "Here they are boys," and the firing began. Three men were shot down and seeing that we were outnumbered, Dawson gave the command: "Fall below the road." Believing that implicit obedience to orders was the first requisite of a soldier, I responded with considerable promptness. The fire slackened a moment and then came the order: "Charge 'em." Up into the road we clambered again, when we discovered that we were fighting our own regiment, and "Cease firing, we are Georgians," rang out from nearly a hundred throats. Ed Johnson, then in command of the 12th Ga., afterwards a Major General, was riding towards the head of the column and hearing our cry, sang out: "They are liars, boys. Pop it to 'em! Pop it to 'em." The mistake was soon discovered, however, and the firing ceased. Three men had been killed and a number wounded by this mutual and unfortunate error. After the skirmish had ended and order had been restored, Dr. Hitt told me that he had drawn a bead, squirrel or otherwise, on my anatomy, and was in the act of firing when Col. Ed Johnson, in his anxiety to reach the front, rode directly between us and possibly saved him the horror of having killed a comrade and messmate. One of the victims of that encounter, Felder, of the Houston Guards, told his mess on leaving camp that he would be killed, a presentiment that was unfortunately too true. Another poor fellow was shot through the thigh, the ball cutting an artery. He lay there until the blood ran down the road for a distance of fifteen feet. The sight caused another soldier to have a nervous chill and he begged piteously to be moved away.

After the wounded had been cared for, the guard was reformed in front of the brigade and we were marched back to a position in front of the Federal camp to await the attack on its rear by the 3rd Ark. and the 23rd Va. Why this attack was never made seems to be a sort of unsolved problem. Gen. Lee is said to have made a verbal explanation to President Davis, but if there has been any published statement of the reason I have failed to see it. As the attack on the rear had for some reason failed to materialize, Gen. Jackson, after remaining on the mountain for four days, returned to his old camp.

In connection with this, my first skirmish I am glad to have the opportunity of paying deserved tribute to a comrade, who has since passed over the river, but who, on that day, as on every other in which I had the honor to serve with him in time of peril, was conspicuous for his courage and his cool indifference to danger. When the order was given to fall below the road in order to secure some protection from the rocks and trees, Will Daniel refused to do so and kept his exposed position, coolly loading and firing until the skirmish was over. In devotion to the cause, for which he fought, in readiness to accept the gravest personal risks, in apparently absolute unconsciousness of danger, he was every inch a soldier.

And now what were my own sensations in this, my first baptism of fire? A candid confession is said to be good for the soul, but whether it would be good for the reputation in this particular case is another matter. Under the law of testimony a witness is not compelled to incriminate himself. Besides, after the lapse of nearly forty years, my memory can not be expected to retain very accurately such minor details. I will only say, therefore, that while the excitement produced by the crack of the rifles and the hiss of the minies did in some degree lessen the sense of personal danger, I have been able, even in my limited experience as a traveler, to find quite a number of places that were to me equally as pleasant as being under fire even for the first time. I speak, of course, only for myself. Men's tastes differ in this as widely perhaps as in other matters, and I do not claim that mine was a universal or even a common experience. I only claim that while I had been curious to know how I would feel under such circumstances, my curiosity was satisfied in a little while, in a very little while. This may have been due to the fact that my temperament is conservative and that I did not care to be an extremist even in a little matter of this kind-possibly, ah, yes, possibly.

MY FIRST PICKET DUTY.

For several miles in our front, the road leading towards Cheat Mountain ran through a narrow valley and then crossing the river, wound up the mountain side. On an outpost near this road my first picket service was rendered. From an aesthetic, rather than a military point of view the scenery from this post was really enchanting. Just beyond the river lay a range of mountains broken in its contour by a partial gap. In its rear and forming a background, rose a loftier range, the whole constituting in appearance a mammoth alcove. The foliage of the forest growth, that studded the slopes from base to summit, alchemized by the autumn frosts had changed its hues to gold and crimson and with its blended tints forming to the eye an immense bouquet, the picture was worthy an artist's brush and has lingered in my memory during all these years. But the scene changes. Night comes on cold and drizzly and starless. No fire is allowed by the officer of the guard. Standing alone on an outpost in Egyptian darkness and numbed with cold, while the muffled patter of the rain drops on the fallen leaves continually suggests the stealthy footfall of an approaching foe, I reach the conclusion that it subjects a man to some inconvenience to die for his country.

A few nights afterwards the picket at this post was attacked by the enemy and driven in. As they retired under fire Joe Derry was knocked down by a buck and ball cartridge that riddled his cap and grazed his scalp but inflicted no wound. When they had rallied on the reserve post and Joe had opportunity to take his bearings he found that while unwilling to remain and extend to his Northern friends any social courtesies, he had been kind enough to leave with them a lock of his hair. The clipping was made without pecuniary charge, but Joe has probably preferred since to patronize a professional barber even at the expense of his bank account.

MY FIRST BATTLE.

On Oct. 3rd, '61, Gen. Reynolds, thinking, possibly, that military etiquette required that he should return the call we had made him on Sept. 12th, came down, attended by his entire force and knocked at the door of our outer picket posts in the early morning hours with the evident purpose of making an informal visit to our camp. The knock was loud enough to arouse Col. Ed. Johnson, who went out and took command of the pickets in person in order that the reception given our visitors might be sufficiently warm and cordial. Under his personal direction every foot of the Federal advance was stubbornly contested. A little fellow belonging to our regiment finally grew tired of falling back and running up to Johnson said: "Colonel, let's charge 'em." Johnson, with that peculiar nervous twitching of the lip that characterized him in battle, commended the little fellow for his grit, but did not think it good military judgment to charge an entire army of five thousand men with a squad of fifty pickets. By 8 a. m. Gen. Reynolds had taken position in our front and his artillery had opened on our line. The main attack was expected on our right, and to its defence the 1st and 12th Ga. were assigned. Forming into line and lying down to escape the shot and shells from the Federal batteries, we awaited the attack. A nervous officer in the regiment kept walking up and down the line saying: "Keep cool, boys, keep cool," until Lieut. Ben Simmons of the Oglethorpes, suggested to him that he was wasting his breath, that the boys were cool. Gen. Jackson came down to our position to overlook the field, and while there a courier rode up and said: "General, the wagoners are cutting the traces and running off with the horses." The General grew very much excited and turning to his son, Harry Jackson, said, "Go up there, Henry and shoot the first wagoner that cuts a trace or leaves his team." Harry galloped off, trying to get his pistol from the holster. After the cannonade had lasted several hours an infantry attack was made on our left and was repulsed. Then Gen. Reynolds ordered an assault on our right. As the attacking column debouched from the woods on the further bank of the shallow Green Brier, we were double-quicked to the front to oppose their passage. Just then Shoemaker's Va. Battery began to throw grape shot into their ranks and the men refused to cross. The officers stormed at them and rode their horses into the ranks in the effort to force them to advance, but without avail. The column fell back to the road where they were joined by their right wing and by 1 p. m. the entire force was making tracks for Cheat Mountain. Thus ended my second lesson in "Jomini," or my first battle, if battle it can be called. The losses on both sides, probably, did not aggregate two hundred. The official report of the engagement was, however, so elaborate that it was subjected to criticism and ridicule by the merciless pen of Jno. M. Daniel, of the Richmond Examiner. It was reported that he said that there were more casualties from overwork and exhaustion in setting up type for that report than from shot and shell in the battle.

Among the wounded that day was a member of the Bainbridge company of our regiment, who had been shot down in the early morning as the pickets were retiring before the Federal advance and, whose comrades were forced to leave him where he fell. As the Union troops passed him again on their return a surgeon was asked as to the propriety of taking him along as a prisoner. "No," said he. "Give him a canteen of water. He'll be dead in a few hours." The wounded man looked up at him and quoting, as Dr. McIntyre would say, very liberally from profane history, told him that he didn't intend to die. They left him, nevertheless, and when, at 3 o'clock next morning, he was brought into camp, both of our surgeons pronounced his wound fatal. He dissented very strongly from their opinions, was sent to the hospital and came out a well man, saved largely, as I believe, by his dogged determination not to die.

A NIGHT STAMPEDE.

There are panics commercial and panics military, bearing no special relation to each other and yet produced possibly by similar causes. One is attributed to a lack of confidence in others; the other is possibly due to a want of the same mental condition in regard to ourselves. In war fear as well as courage is contagious. The conspicuous bravery of a single soldier has sometimes steadied a wavering line, while one man's inability to face the music has begun a rearward movement that ended in a rout. Gen. Dick Taylor says that in Jackson's Valley Campaign he one day quieted the nervousness of his men under a heavy fire by standing on the breastworks and coolly striking a match on the heel of his boot to light a cigar. His apparent indifference to the danger was probably feigned but it produced the desired result. Heroism in battle and out of it is probably not so much the result of what is termed personal courage as it is the effect of lofty pride of character, backed and strengthened by a God-like sense of duty. Napoleon once ordered one of his colonels to charge a battery that was playing havoc with his lines. The officer turned pale as the order came from his commander's lips, but he went to his post promptly and led the charge and Napoleon said to his staff: "That's a brave man, he feels the danger, but is willing to face it." There are times, however, in war, when men, from some cause, real or imaginary, lose their self-control and give way to an unreasonable and unreasoning fear, when the instinct of self-preservation is uppermost and patriotism and pride alike lose their power. A few occasions of this kind I recall in my term of service. One of them occurred on the night of Oct. 26, '61, at Green Brier River. A picket from one of the outposts came in and reported the presence of a body of Federal troops near his post. Two companies from the 1st and 12th Ga. and 37th Va. each, were aroused from sleep and sent out to capture or disperse these disturbers of our dreams. Few occasions in war test a man's nerves more thoroughly than being suddenly awakened at night by an alarm. I have known men at such a time to suffer from nervous chills and on one occasion it brought on a member of the regiment an attack of cholera morbus. As this was the only instance within my observation when such a result was produced, I am not prepared, without further evidence, to recommend it to the medical profession either as an emetic or an aperient.

The six companies, including the Oglethorpes, had passed the last vidette post and crossing Green Brier River had begun the ascent of the mountain beyond. We had reached the point where the enemy had been seen and the location was an ideal one for an ambuscade. The dense forest growth overarching the road, shut out the starlight and we were unable to see six feet in our front. The head of the column had passed a sharp bend in the road and was doubling back, after the manner of mountain highways, when a soldier near the front stepped on a stick and it broke with a sharp snapping sound resembling the click of a rifle hammer. Some one in his rear, not knowing that the column had changed direction, and mistaking the sound for evidence of an ambush, said: "Look out boys," and stepped to the side of the road. The next file followed suit and the movement increased in volume and force as it came down the line, until the hurried tramp of feet sounded like a cavalry charge, as most of the men thought it was. For a few minutes everything was in confusion and panic reigned supreme. There was an undefined dread in every man's mind of a danger whose character and extent was hidden by the darkness. Several guns were fired, but fortunately there were no casualties save a few skinned noses from too sudden contact with the undergrowth that walled in the road. Order was finally restored and the command proceeded on its mission, but failed to locate an enemy, which had probably never existed except in the perverted vision of a nervous picket.

THREE LITTLE CONFEDERATES.

Thomas Nelson Page has written very charmingly of "Two Little Confederates," but an incident that occurred during our stay at Green Brier shows that "there were others." On Nov. 14, '61, three Virginia boys living in vicinity of our camp, and all under fifteen years of age, were out squirrel hunting on the Green Bank road, which led partly in the direction of the Federal camp on Cheat Mountain. Rambling through the woods in search of game, they came in sight of Yankee soldier, who was out on a similar errand, or possibly on an independent scouting expedition. As he was a "stranger" they decided to "take him in." He had laid aside his gun and cartridge box and was sitting by a tree eating his lunch. Slipping up noiselessly in his rear they captured his arms and then presenting their squirrel rifles they offered to serve as an honorary escort to our camp. He was rather loth to comply with the request of his youthful captors, but the muzzles of their guns were very persuasive, and with true Virginia pluck, they marched their mortified prisoner to Gen. Jackson's quarters. I regret that I failed to preserve the names of those three brave little Confederates.

But few other incidents worthy of record in these memories occurred during our stay on the Green Brier. On Nov. 17 there was a hotly contested snow ball fight between the 1st and 12th Ga. Regiments, resulting in a drawn battle. Two days later at 2 a. m., in response to the rattle of musketry at the picket post, we were aroused and marshalled into line in the wintry night air to repel an expected attack on our camp. It was on this occasion that the cholera morbus incident, to which allusion has been made, occurred. The alarm proved groundless, as the pickets had mistaken an old grey mare and her colt for a body of the enemy. As the animal was clothed in grey, the Confederate color, the mistake was all the less excusable.

* * *

For some weeks rumors, or "grape vine" bulletins, as they were called, had been afloat in camp that our regiment was to be transferred to coast service. To boys reared in the milder climate of Georgia the taste we were having of a Virginia winter rendered these rumors very palatable. And when, on Nov. 21, orders came to break camp we felt rather confident that we were bidding a long farewell to "Traveler's Repose" and Northwest Virginia, and were off for Georgia. The baggage wagons, of which the 1st Ga. had at that stage of the war, enough, in Gen.

Loring's opinion, to equip a division, were loaded and went their way. All the afternoon we lay around the dismantled camp awaiting order to "follow pursuit," as a friend of mine once said, but they failed to come. Night settled down cold and cheerless, with our tents and blankets ten miles away, and we had to make the best of it. My bedfellow and I slept on an oilcloth, covered with an overcoat, and tied our four feet up together in a flannel shirt. Next day we crossed Allegheny Mountain and after three days' march, buoyed with the hope of spending the winter under a warmer sun, we reluctantly turned our faces Northward again, with the feeling in our hearts if not voiced upon our lips,

"O, ever thus from childhood's hour

I've seen my fondest hopes decay."

After a week's march my feet grew very sore and as I limped through Harrisonburg, a sweet-faced Virginia matron, with music in her voice and the light of heaven in her eye, beckoned to me from the window where she was sitting and gave me a nice pair of woollen socks. Passing through Newtown, Middletown, Kernstown and a number of other towns in a section made famous afterwards by Jackson's Valley Campaign, we reached Winchester Dec. 8, 1861. A few days later a supply of blankets contributed by the good ladies of Augusta, was received by the Oglethorpes. One of the contributors had no blankets, and in lieu of them, donated a handsome crumb-cloth, which like Joseph's coat, was of many colors, red and green being the prevailing tints. In the distribution this fell to Elmore Dunbar, the wag of the Company. Not needing it as a blanket he took it to a tailor in Winchester, had it transformed into a full suit, cap, coat and pants, and donning it had an innumerable company of gamins, white and black, following in his wake all over the town.

He and Harrison Foster were messmates. There was no discount on either of them as soldiers. Enlisting at the first call to arms, they were always among the first to toe the line at every beat of the longroll and in the closing months of the war, when hope of success had well nigh passed and so many were dropping by the wayside, they held out bravely and manfully to the end. But as cooks they were not a brilliant success. One evening Harrison had gathered a few brush to make a fire, when he called on Dunbar to assist in his preparations for the evening meal, an appeal, to which the latter failed to respond. "Well," said Harrison, "if you don't help, I'll swear I won't cook any supper." "All right," said Dunbar, "My supper's cooked," and fishing out of his coattail pocket an antiquated biscuit of uncertain age, he began to nibble. "Well," said Harrison, "I won't build any fire. You'll have to freeze," and Dunbar gently drew from his haversack an old-fashioned silk beaver hat, that he had worn in the march up the valley and quietly placed it on the fire as his contribution to the evening's comfort.

A SOLILOQUY-(NOT HAMLET'S.)

Among the original members enlisting with the Oglethorpes, was one H- H-, who, in civil life, was so scrupulously careful with his dress that in these latter days he would have passed a creditable examination as a dude. Camp life is not specially conducive to personal neatness and eight month's service had left to him on this line only the memory of better days. Returning from Winchester one night in a condition not promotive of mental equilibrium, he failed to find his tent and spent the night around the camp fire. He awoke next morning with his head in a camp kettle and his clothing soiled and blackened by contact with the cooking utensils, that had been his only bed-fellows. Running his hand through his matted locks and surveying his discolored uniform he was overheard to indulge in the following soliloquy: "Is this the gay and fascinating H- H-, that once perambulated the streets of Augusta in faultless attire? When I think of what I am and what I used to was, I feel myself blamed badly treated without sufficient cause."

"LIABLE TO DISAPPINTMENTS."

On a Saturday afternoon in my boyhood days, in company with a schoolmate, I was rambling through the woods in the enjoyment of the hebdomadal relief from the restraints of the school room and the unpalatable mysteries of the three R's taught with a hickory attachment. Reaching a country bathinghouse half-filled with water and used by a neighboring colored Baptist church for baptismal purposes, we proceeded to draw off the water in order to catch the tadpoles that were enjoying their otium cum dignitate on its mud-lined bottom. On the next day the preacher and congregation assembled at the place to administer the rite of baptism to a number of applicants for membership. Owing to our tadpole hunt of the preceding day, they found that unlike the place mentioned in the Scriptures, there was not "much water there," and they were compelled to defer the ceremony to a more convenient season. In dismissing the congregation the colored brother took occasion to remark that "We are liable, brethren, to disappintments in this life." On Christmas day in '61, in our camp, near Winchester, the mess to which the writer belonged found sad occasion to verify the truth if not the orthography of our dusky brother's observation. With a laudable desire to celebrate the day in appropriate style we had arranged with a colored caterer to supply our mess table with the proverbial turkey and such other adjuncts as the depleted condition of our financial bureau would permit. The day dawned and in the early morning hours our appetites for the coming feast were whetted by an eggnog kindly furnished the entire company by Lieut. J. V. H. Allen. The Christmas sun passed its meridian and traveled on toward its setting with no Joshua to stay its course. The appointed dinner hour came, as all appointed times do, but the proverbial turkey came not, with adjuncts or without. With our gastronomic hopes knocked finally into pi, but not mince pie, we sat down at last to our hardtack and bacon, lamenting in our hearts the uncertainty of "aught that wades, or soars, or shines beneath the stars." Whether the roost, from which our caterer expected to supply our larder was too well guarded on the preceding night, or whether the rating given our mess by the commercial agencies was unsatisfactory has remained through all these years an unsolved problem.

A TRAMP WITH STONEWALL JACKSON.

After our arrival in Winchester the "grape vine" service was again brought into requisition and rumors were current that we were going into winter quarters. But this was not "Stonewall Jackson's Way." His headquarters were in Winchester. Bath and Romney, in his department, were occupied by Federal troops and he determined to oust them. On Jan. 1, '62, our division, with Ashby's cavalry, began the march to Bath. It was a bright, warm day, with a touch of spring in the air. On the evening of the 3rd it began to snow and for thirty-one days the sun did not show his face again. If any reader of these memories should be disposed to question the accuracy of this statement, I can only say that it is so written in the chronicles of the First Georgia Regiment as recorded in my journal for the month named. That evening the wagons failed to reach our camp and our supper was confined to a single course-parched corn. Not relishing a repetition of the menu for breakfast, I dropped out of the ranks soon after the march began and tramping across the freshly fallen snow to a residence not far from the roadside, I found a trio of pretty Virginia girls engineering the first cooking stove I had ever seen. Reared in a country home and accustomed to rely for my daily bread on the culinary skill of old "Aunt Hannah," the presiding genius of an old-fashioned kitchen fire place six feet wide, where, with the tact born of long experience, she piled the ruddy coals on the biscuit oven lid, or fried in a skillet the home-made sausage and spare rib with home made lard, or broiled on a gridiron the juicy beefsteak, or piled the burning "chunks" under the mammoth kettle that hung from the crane, while from its cavernous depths the air was laden with the aroma of ham and cabbage, this innovation on old-time methods was something of a revelation. But its novelty did not diminish the relish with which I hid away in my empty anatomy the steaming pan cakes dished out by fair and shapely hands to a squad of hungry soldier, one of whom, as Bill Arp would say, I was glad to be which.

On the morning of Jan. 4th we were halted in front of Bath, while a portion of the division was deployed on the left of the road for an attack upon the enemy. As the line of battle advanced through the snow, over a mountain ridge, and in plain view of us, Capt. Sam Crump, who had seen service in Mexico, said: "Well, boys, the ball will open now in fifteen minutes." I was only a stripling boy, with but limited experience as a soldier, and I remember with what reverent respect and implicit faith I received the utterance. But the ball did not open. The Federals retired without resistance to Hancock, Md., six miles away, and we hurried forward in pursuit. Reaching the hills overlooking the Potomac and the town after dark, we were standing in the road awaiting orders when a sudden flash illuminated the heavens and the regiment sank as one man into the snow. We thought we had struck a masked battery, but it was our own guns throwing grape shot into the woods in front. After standing an hour or two in the snow without fire we bivouacked and I slept, or tried to sleep, on three rails with their ends resting on a stump. We had built a fire of rails, a favorite army fuel in those days. I do not remember from what species of timber they were made, but I do recall the fact that it was a popping variety when subjected to heat. All through the night our sleep was disturbed by the necessity of rising at frequent intervals to extinguish our burning blankets, and one man had his cap nearly burned from his head before it awoke him.

Next morning Turner Ashby went over under flag of truce to demand the surrender of the town. During his absence on this mission it was rumored that he had been held as a prisoner and his cavalry were preparing to storm the town to secure his release. The report proved a fake and he returned, bringing Gen. Lander's refusal to comply. An artillery duel ensued. The Federal guns had to be elevated to reach our position and their balls striking the frozen ground would rebound. Some of the boys, who had played "town ball" at school would pretend to catch them, and would sing out: "Caught him out," when another would reply: "Don't count, 'twas second bounce." It seemed more like a frolic than a fight. That night I laid aside my shoes and found them next morning filled with snow, while my blanket was covered with an inch or two of the same white mantle. Water was scarce and I tried to secure enough for a cup of coffee by melting snow in a tin cup, but found it a tedious process.

On the morning of the 7th the force was withdrawn to operate against Romney. The weather at this time recalls an old rhyme learned in my boyhood, which fits the case better than any description I could give and which runs thus,

"First she blew,

Then she snew,

And then she thew,

And then she friz."

The roads were as slick as glass. The horses had to be rough-shod and the wheels rough-locked with chains to cut the frozen sleet and snow in descending the hills, and even with these precautions the horses would fall and be dragged to the bottom of the descent before a halt could be made. Twelve horses would be hitched to a single piece of artillery and details were made from each company to push the wagons up the hills. To men not inured to such hardships the experience was a pretty rough one and the criticisms of the winter campaign made by some of them would not look well in a Sunday school book. Osborne Stone's Presbyterian training would not allow him to use any cuss words, but I remember that his "dog-on-its" were frequent and emphatic. On January 8 we reached the "Cross Roads," and those who were pronounced by the surgeons unfit for further winter service were returned to Winchester. With them went the writer, to worry for four weeks with typhoid fever, while the command went on to Romney. Of the Romney trip I can not speak from personal knowledge, but from the accounts given by those who can, it was a repetition of the return from Hancock with its hardships, perhaps intensified.

Jackson accomplished his purpose, to drive the enemy from his department, though at the expense of a good deal of exposure and suffering to his men.

ASHBY AND JACKSON.

As hard as the service was, I am glad to have had the opportunity of sharing it with such a man as Turner Ashby. He was then a colonel of cavalry. Mounted on his milk white steed, with the form of an athlete; coal black hair, a silky brown beard reaching nearly to his waist and a velvety, steel-grey eye, he was, in soul as well as body, an ideal cavalier. His command embraced some of the best blood of Virginia and he and they were fit types of the Old South, worthy representatives of a civilization, that in culture, courtesy and courage, in honor and in honesty, the past had never equalled and the future will never repeat.

Jackson had not then developed the military genius that afterwards rendered him so famous. The campaign furnished but little field for generalship, but it gave evidence of one trait in his character-to halt at no obstacle in the accomplishment of a purpose to benefit the cause for which he fought. In personal appearance and bearing he and Ashby differed widely. Without grace as a rider, and indifferently mounted, there was nothing in his appearance to indicate or foreshadow the height to which he afterwards attained. And yet I can but cherish with pride the recollection that in this campaign I had the privilege of serving under one, who in the blood-stained years that followed "went down to a soldier's grave with the love of the whole world, and the name of Stonewall Jackson."

"AUNT HANNAH."

In this connection my heart prompts me to pay its earnest tribute to one, whose memory the sketch above recalls. Dear old Aunt Hannah. How her name brings back to my heart and life today the glamour of the old, old days, that will never come again-days when to me a barefoot boy, life seemed a long and happy holiday. I can see her now, her head crowned with a checkered handkerchief, her arms bared to the elbows, her spectacles set primly on her nose, while from her kindly eyes there shone the light of a pure white soul within. She was only an humble slave, and yet her love for me was scarcely less than that my father and mother bore me and when on a summer's day in '61 my brother and myself left the old homestead to take our humble places under a new born flag, there was not a dry eye on the whole plantation and old Aunt Hannah wept in grief as pure and deep as if the clods were falling on an only child.

Long years have come and gone since she was laid away in the narrow house appointed for all the living. No marble headstone marks the spot, yet I am sure the humble mound that lies above her sleeping dust, covers a heart as honest and as faithful, as patient and as gentle, as kindly and as true as any that rest beneath the proudest monument that art could fashion, or affection buy. She reared a large family of sons and daughters, Rev. Charles T. Walker, the "Black Spurgeon," among them, transmitting to them all a character for honesty and virtue marked even in those, the better days of the republic.

Wisely or otherwisely, in the order of Providence, or in the order of Napoleon's "heavier battalions," we have in this good year of our Lord not only a New South, but a new type of Aunt Hannah. The old is, I fear, a lost Pleiad, whose light will shine no more on land, or sea, or sky.

A RIDE WITH BELLE BOYD, THE CONFEDERATE SPY.

On a page of the writer's scrap book, underneath a roll of the Oglethorpes and in friendly contact with the parole granted me at Johnston's surrender, is a slip of paper pocket-worn, and yellow with age, which reads as follows: "Winchester, Va., Mar. 1, 1862. Pass W. A. Clark and brother today on Valley Road. By order Maj. Gen. T. J. Jackson. M. M. Sibert, Captain and Provost Marshall." Thereby hangs the following tale: On my return to Winchester, after the tramp to Hancock, I had secured lodgings at the home of a Mrs. Polk, where for nearly four weeks, I lay with my pulses throbbing with fever. From that sick bed two incidents come back vividly today over the waste of years that have intervened. My hostess, whose kindness I shall never forget, had a daughter, Nellie, who, as a rustic friend of mine would say, was something of a "musicianer." Patriotic songs were all the rage and one evening as I lay on my bed restless from fever and trying to sleep, she began in the parlor below to sing the "Bonnie Blue Flag." The copy used had, I think, eleven verses, and in my nervous condition the entertainment seemed endless. Just as I had congratulated myself on its conclusion, a young gentleman called and insisted on a repetition of the program with his vocal accompaniment, and she was kind enough to comply, without skipping a verse. I can not recall a musical entertainment that my condition forced me to appreciate less though cheerfully acquitting her of any malice aforethought in the matter.

As I lay on my bed during all those weeks and looked on the white-mantled hills that environed the town I remember distinctly how intensely my parched lips craved the cooling touch of the pure white snow. But like Tantalus, I was forced day after day to gaze on a luxury I could not enjoy, for the medical science of that day said nay. Tempora mutantur, and doctors change with them.

Before I had recovered sufficiently to leave my bed Stonewall Jackson decided to evacuate Winchester and ordered all the convalescent sick to be moved. Having no desire to complete my recovery in a Federal prison my brother secured the pass above referred to and seats in the hack to Strasburg. There were nine passengers and among them was Belle Boyd, the Confederate Spy. Her home was in Martinsburg and her father a Major in the Confederate army. Her mother had forced her to leave home on the approach of the Federal army. On its first visit to Martinsburg she had remained there. Having a soldier friend in the hospital and uncertain as to the treatment he would receive from the enemy, she had taken two of her father's servants to the hospital with a stretcher, had him placed upon it and walked by his side through the streets to her home with a loaded pistol in her hand to protect him from insult or injury at their hands. A few days later a Federal soldier attempted to place a Union flag over the door of her home and she persuaded him to desist by the use of a leaden argument from her pistol. Another attempt to remove a Confederate flag that waved over the mantel in her parlor met with a similar counter-irritant, and she was molested no further. Fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, neither of her shots hit their mark. In view of these facts her mother thought it prudent to send her away before the Union forces occupied the town again, and she was en route to the home of a relative in Front Royal. To protect myself from the chilly air during the stage ride I was wearing a woollen visor knitted for my brother by Miss Lucy Meredith, of Winchester, and covering my head and throat, leaving only my eyes exposed. With a woman's instinct she saw that I was too weak to sit up and arranged to give me possession of an entire seat, improvised a pillow of a red scarf she was wearing on her shoulders and in every way possible contributed to my ease and comfort. On reaching Strasburg she aided my brother in getting me into the hotel, arranged a lounge in the parlor for me, brought my supper and entertained me during the meal, refusing to eat anything herself until I had finished. After supper she sat by me and talked to me for an hour, and then, thinking I was weary, she moved the lamp in a corner of the room shading it from my eyes with her scarf, so that I might sleep. After all these years my memory retains some incidents of that conversation. I remember that she told me something of her child life; that when a little girl she had been a member of Dave Strother's party in his tour through Virginia, which he described so charmingly in the early numbers of Harper's Magazine over the nom de plume of "Porte Crayon;" that Gen. Lander, who commanded the Federal troops, that we had driven from Bath into Maryland, was an old sweetheart of hers; that Dave Strother was a member of his staff, and she intended to cut his acquaintance.

I remember that she said further that she had been hurt by a remark made to her that day by a soldier about the seeming boldness of Virginia girls; that soldiers mistook kindness and the expression of a desire to serve them for boldness; that she intended coming to Georgia after the war to get married. She left on the next train for her destination, and I saw her no more. She had impressed me as one of kindest and gentlest of women and yet a year or two later she forded the Potomac alone in a storm at midnight to carry important information to her brother in Stuart's cavalry. Perhaps with woman as well as man

"The bravest are the tenderest,

The loving are the daring."

If necessity had required it I believe she would have led the charge of Pickett's Division at Gettysburg without a tremor.

In the years that followed she became a noted spy, going into the Federal lines and securing information, which she sent or carried to the Confederate army. She was finally arrested and sent to Washington as a prisoner. It was reported that she married the Federal officer, to whose oversight she had been entrusted and that he joined the Confederate army. Some of her methods as a spy subjected her to harsh and hostile criticism, but in grateful memory of her kindness to one, who was only a private soldier, without rank or social prestige, one who had no claim upon her service save that in an humble way he had tried to serve the cause she loved and in that service had grown sick and helpless, her name has never passed my lips except in tones of fervent gratitude and reverent respect.

VIRGINIA.

As my service as a soldier on Virginia soil was now about to end and as that service carried me afterwards into six other states of the Confederacy, in four of them lengthening into months or years, it may not be amiss to say in this connection that judged by that experience, Virginia stood above them all in kindly feeling and hospitable treatment to the Confederate soldier. Furnishing to the army perhaps a larger quota of her sons than any other State, her territory tracked by the tread of hostile armies for four bloody years, her homes destroyed and her fields laid waste, her generous kindness and her active sympathy for the suffering soldier never wavered to the end.

While the South as a whole gave to the world the highest type of civilization it had ever known, Virginia, as I believe, stood at its head, the capstone in the fairest structure the sun has gilded since the morning stars sang together, and garlanding its summit like a glistening coronal, bright with the light of immortality stands the name and fame of Robert Edward Lee.

HOME AGAIN.

The 1st Ga. Regiment was the only infantry organization from this State mustered out at the expiration of its first year's service. The Conscript Act became effective in the spring of '62, and succeeding regiments, whose terms expired later were under its provision retained in the service. On the return of the command from Romney the 1st Ga. was ordered to Tennessee. Going by rail to Lynchburg, a railroad accident occasioned some delay at that point and as their time would have expired in a few days they were sent to Augusta to be mustered out.

My brother, knowing that I would not be strong enough to rejoin the command before its term of service ended, decided to take me directly home. And so by stage and rail, with tiresome delays at every junction, in the deepening twilight of a fair spring day, weak and weary, I came in sight of the old homestead once more. Over the joy and gladness of such a meeting after an absence, every day of which had seemed to those I had left behind, an age of agony and dread, it is meet that the mantle of silence should fall. The halo that came to fathers and mothers hearts in those old days when their "boys" came home from the war, seemed like a breath from Heaven. It was sacred then and to me it is sacred still. Loving lips, that gave me glad welcome that spring day have long been cold and silent, and eyes that shone through misty tears are dim in death. Some time in the coming months or years, I know not when, and yet in God's good time, in weakness and in weariness at even-tide on some spring day again, it may be, I shall, I trust, go "home again;" not to the old homestead hallowed as it is by a mother's love and a father's prayers, and yet to find hard by the River of Life from lips long silent, a welcome just as loving in "a city, whose builder and maker is God."

ROSTER OF OGLETHORPE INFANTRY,

Co. D, 1st Ba. Regt.

Capt. J. O. Clarke, promoted Lieut. Col. 1st Ga. Reg.

Capt. Horton B. Adams.

1st Lieut. J. V. H. Allen.

2d Lieut. Geo. W. Crane.

3d Lieut. S. B. Simmons.

1st Serg. A. J. Setze.

2d Serg. W. S. Holmes.

3d Serg. S. C. Foreman.

4th Serg. L. A. Picquet.

1st Corp. O. M. Stone.

2d Corp. Jesse W. Rankin.

3d Corp. Chas H. Roberts.

4th Corp. Burt O. Miller.

PRIVATES.

Alfred M. Averill.

Dillard Adams.

A. E. Andrews.

A. W. Bailey.

F. A. Beall.

A. W. Blanchard.

R. M. Booker.

Jno. M. Bunch.

Thos. Burgess.

Milton A. Brown.

A. J. Burroughs.

Wm. Bryson.

Chas. Catlin.

H. A. Cherry.

H. B. Clark.

F. W. Clark.

Wm. H. Clark.

Walter A. Clark.

W. J. Cloyd.

Jno. R Coffin.

E. F. Clayton.

C. S. Crag.

Wm. Craig.

J. B. Crumpton.

Wilberforce Daniel.

Ed. Darby.

Joseph T. Derry.

J. J. Doughty.

C. W. Doughty.

W. R. Doyle.

B. B. Doyle.

Jno. P. Duncan.

S. H. Dye.

E. A. Dunbar.

Geo. W. Evans.

Robert C. Eve.

Sterling C. Eve.

L. F. Flming.

H. Clay Foster.

W. Harrison Foster.

John P. Foster.

Willie Goodrich.

J. P. Goodrich.

C. M. Goodwin.

W. A. Griffin.

A. G. Hall.

E. H. Hall.

Wm. Haight.

J. J. Harrell.

Frank M. Hight.

Jno. C. Hill.

Harry Hughes.

Jno. T. Hungerford.

V. G. Hitt.

H. B. Jackson.

W. F. Jackson.

A. M. Jackson.

Whit G. Johnson.

W. H. Jones.

W. E. Jones.

G. A. Jones.

Matt Kean.

W. H. Kennedy.

W. T. Lamar.

Jas. Lamar.

Geo. G. Leonhardt.

D. W. Little.

P. E. Love.

A. D. Marshall.

C. O. Marshall.

Geo. W. McLaughlin.

C. E. McCarthy.

J. T. McGran.

D. W. Mongin.

R. B. Morris.

W. B. Morris.

Z. B. Morris.

W. J. Miller.

Josiah Miller.

Geo. D. Mosher.

M. C. Murphey.

W. E. Peay.

A. Pilcher.

J. T. Newberry.

F. M. Pope.

Geo. P. Pournelle.

W. P. Ramsey.

J. T. Ratcriff.

J. H. Revill.

A. J. Rhodes.

J. A. Rhodes.

J. P. Roberts.

J. C. Roebuck.

W. A. Roll.

J. W. Rigsby.

S. H. Sheppard.

L. W. Shed.

L. W. Stroud.

Fred W. Stoy.

Jno. W. Stoy.

Alonzo Smith.

Miles Turpin.

Thomas J. Tutt.

J. E. Thomas.

Geo. J. Verdery.

R. W. Verdery.

G. F. Wing.

B. H. Watkins.

C. D. Wakins.

Jas. E. Wilson.

Jas. D. Wilson.

Walter A. Wiley.

Wm. T. Williams.

W. T. Winn.

Wm. Whiting.

* * *

REORGANIZATION WITH 12th GA. BATTALION.

On May 1, 1862, the Oglethorpes were re-organized at Camp Jackson, on the Carnes Road, near Augusta, Ga., as an artillery company under Capt. J. V. H. Allen. Three other companies from the 1st Ga. Regiment, and the "DeKalb Rifles" from Stone Mountain, joined us and the 12th Ga. Battalion was formed, with Major Henry D. Capers as commander. We remained at this camp drilling for two months, and our parade ground became a favorite afternoon resort for the young ladies of Augusta.

A "LITTLE LONG."

Among the fair visitors, who honored us by their presence, were the Misses Long, two pretty and attractive girls, who were guests at the Savage Place, near our quarters. Miles Turpin, one of the company wits, fell a victim to the charms of the younger one, who in physical make-up was rather petite. When his attack had reached the acute stage, he was being joked about it one day and gave vent to his feelings in the following revised version of Goldsmith's familiar lines:

I want but little here below,

But want "that little Long."

Miles was not the only wit in the Company. Every branch in Phil Schley's family tree must have shed puns as an ordinary tree sheds leaves when touched by the breath of winter. Lon Fleming was crossing the grounds at Camp Jackson one day with a chair slung over his left shoulder, when he was hailed by Phil. "Lon, you are most cheerful man I've seen today." "Yes," said Lon, "over the left." Lest some of my readers may fail to see the point, it may be prudent to say that when Phil and I were boys, "chair" in the piney woods was pronounced "cheer." This was not one of Phil's best nor, perhaps, one of his worst. It would probably grade about "strict low middling." Aside from this hereditary punning propensity, from which my old comrade has reasonably recovered, I am glad to recall his unfailing good humor and his readiness to meet the dangers and hardships of the service bravely and without a murmur.

THE 12th GA. BATTALION FLAG.

On July 4th, '62, Miss Pinkie Evans, of Augusta, presented to the battalion a beautiful silk battle flag made, it was said, from her mother's wedding robe. Her patriotic address in making the presentation was responded to by Maj. Capers, who accepted the colors for the battalion.

As the Oglethorpes were transferred from the battalion in the fall of 1862, we had no opportunity of fighting under their banner save at the skirmish at Huntsville, Tennessee. It was afterwards bravely borne on many a bloody battlefield, under Evans and Gordon in Maryland and Virginia. Seven color-bearers were shot down under its silken folds. During the second heavy bombardment of Fort Sumter, lasting from Oct. 26 to Dec. 6, 1863, the 12th Ga. Battalion formed a part of its garrison. On Oct. 31st the flag of the fort was shot down and was replaced by Serg. Graham, Will Hitt and Bob Swain, of Augusta, then serving with the 12th Ga. Batt. It was shot down again on the same day and its staff so badly shattered that it could not be hoisted. The same brave men went up on the parapet, amid the storm of solid shot and shell and raised their own 12th Ga. flag. When the Confederate line was broken at Cedar Creek, Serg. Hopps of Crump's company, bore this flag, and disdaining to fly, he held his ground alone, waving his colors defiantly at the advancing line of blue until he was killed. Afred Wallen, of the same company, a beardless boy, but a brave one, saw him fall and running back at the risk of his own life, tore the flag from its staff and brought it in safety to his command. It is said these colors were not surrendered at Appomatox, but were returned to their fair donor unstained save by the blood of the gallant Baker and King and Stallings and Hopps, who in the shock of battle had gone down to death under their silken folds.

OFF TO THE FRONT

Buell was threatening Chattanooga, and Maj. Capers was ordered to report with his battalion to Gen. McCown at that point. Leaving Augusta July 5th in two special trains, we were detained at Ringgold, Ga., for a day or two by a collision with a freight train, which resulted in the death of ten or twelve men and fifteen or twenty horses, and in injuries more or less serious to a larger number. Reaching Chattanooga July 8, we remained there ten days and were then transferred by N. & C. R. R. to a point near Shell Mound, Ala. Picketing here for two weeks in front of Buell's army we returned to Chattanooga Aug. 1, and on the next day left for Knoxville with the intention, I suppose, of accompanying Kirby Smith's army into Kentucky. Two days at Knoxville and we are off for Clinton. En route a courier brings information that the enemy has attacked our forces at Tazewell, twenty miles away, and we are ordered to hurry forward to reinforce Gen. Stevenson at that point. An hour later another dispatch is received that the attack has been repulsed and we are sidetracked at Clinton to aid in the capture or dispersion of the 7th Tenn. Federal regiment, then occupying a fortified camp near Huntsville, Tenn.

COL. HOGELAND AND HIS WAR DIARY.

How strangely human events sometimes shape themselves without apparent effort to control them. Sitting in my home some weeks ago in the dreamy haze of an October Sunday afternoon, there chanced to fall under my eye in the editorial column of a Sunday school paper the statement that Col. Alexander Hogeland of Louisville, Ky., had visited Nashville, Tenn., in the interest of the "Curfew Law." Other items in the column caused a momentary disturbance of my brain cells, then passed away to be recalled no more. But this one lingered in my memory and would not down, for thereby hangs the following tale:

The expedition against the Federal force at Huntsville was commanded by Col. Gracie, of Alabama, and consisted of the 12th Ga. Battalion, a portion of an Alabama regiment, and a few cavalry. Leaving Clinton at 4 p. m., Aug. 12, we camped near Jacksonboro on the night of the 13th and on the morning of the 14th started for Huntsville by a rough mountain path that crossed a spur of the Cumberland range. After a toilsome tramp we halted at 9 p. m. and after an hour's rest were again on the march. The path is narrow and the overarching trees shut out every ray of starlight. Groping along in the dark we follow the tramp of the feet in front, reaching out occasionally to touch the file just ahead, lest our ears have deceived us. Our pathway passes on the edge of a precipitous bluff and my brother in Crump's company loses his footing and topples over it. The fall fails to disable him, but he loses his hat and in the darkness is unable to recover it. Hatless he rejoins the command and the procession moves on. Just before daylight we halt for another rest. At 5 a. m. we resume the march and in the early morning reach the vicinity of the Federal camp. Deploying into line of battle we advance through a belt of woodland and entering a cornfield beyond, our right is fired upon by the Federal pickets. As we drive them in a scattering fire is kept up until we come in sight of their camp and near it a rude log fort built upon the crest of a tall hill, over whose precipitous slope the forest trees have been felled, making an almost impassable abattis. While arrangements are being made for an attack upon the fort, Tom Tutt and the writer, who are both on the color guard, see a thin line four or five hundred yards to our right, near a church, and whom we take to be the pickets, who had been resisting our advance. Tom, whose rule is to shoot at everything in sight, selects his man and fires and the writer follows suit. We load and fire again. After a few rounds I become convinced that it is a portion of Capt. Crump's company, which had been detached and sent to the right and in which I have two brothers. As Tom raises his gun again I said, "Hold on, Tom, you are shooting at your own company." He made no reply and continued firing until the order to advance was given. A deep gully lay partially in our front and as its passage caused some confusion in the ranks, we halted to reform the line. Crump's company was hurrying forward to join us and before they had reached their position in line Col. Gracie gave the command, "Charge." From underneath the head logs of the fort the Belgian rifles were barking at us and the heavy balls they carried whistled by us like young shells. We were waiting for Crump, and Gracie, ignorant of the cause of the delay, shouted: "What is the matter with the 12th Ga. Battalion?" Just then a lone cavalryman passed the line on foot and with drawn sabre made his way towards the fort with the evident intention of capturing the whole business himself. Crump's company came up at a "double quick" and the whole line moved forward with a yell. Sergeant Harwell, our color-bearer, had never been under fire and the boys, uncertain as to his grit, had asked Tom Tutt, who did not know what fear meant, to take the colors when the charge began. Tom made the effort to seize them, but Harwell, a tall, gaunt man, and brother of two honored Methodist preachers, declined to give them up and bore them forward bravely. As we advanced the fire from the fort suddenly ceased and we thought they were waiting to see the whites of our eyes. Reaching the steep ascent we climbed up over logs and brush until the fort was gained. Lieut. Joe Taliaferro, of Augusta, was the first to enter, and with his sword cut down the floating flag. The fort was empty-not a Yankee to be seen. Under cover of the thick forest growth in their rear they had hid to other haunts, under the idea, perhaps, that

"He who fights and runs away,

Will live to fight another day."

Their camp, located just below the fort gave ample evidence of their hasty exit. Our attack was something of a "surprise party" and their unfinished morning meal was boiling, baking and frying on the camp fires. We were unexpected and uninvited guests and yet our reception was warm, although unfriendly. Our all-night tramp enabled us to do full justice to the breakfast they had prepared, as well as the sugar cured hams and other supplies their commissary had kindly left for our use. We appropriated an ample outfit of blankets, canteens, haversacks, etc., and burned what we could not carry away.

The skirmish on our side, and probably on theirs was almost bloodless. W. W. Bussey, of the Oglethorpes, and Garyhan, of Crump's company, were slightly wounded. I recall no other casualty except the killing of a nice horse ridden by Col. Gracie.

And now what has all this to do with the item I read in a Sunday school paper? Simply this: Among the assets and effects secured that day by the writer from the officer's tent and administered upon without "Letter's Testamentary" was a pocket diary belonging to Capt. Alexander Hogeland, of the 10th Indiana Regt. On reading the paragraph referred to, the coincidence in names suggested the possibility that Col. Alexander Hogeland, of Louisville, Ky., "Father of the Curfew," might have been Capt. Alexander Hogeland, of the 10th Ind. Regt., whose property had been in my possession for thirty-seven years. To test the matter, I wrote Col. Hogeland and from his reply the following extract is taken: "Your deeply interesting favor of the 4th inst received and for the information it contains accept my hearty thanks. I am the identical person referred to in your letter. Was first lieutenant Co. D, 10th Indiana Regiment in the West Virginia campaign and afterwards Captain of Co. G. In May, '62, was made lieutenant-colonel of 7th East Tennessee Regiment, commanded by Col. Wm. Cliff, and stationed at Huntsville, Tenn., in August, '62. We lost everything on the occasion you refer to and this is the first information I have received as to the whereabouts of my effects. I am very glad to avail myself of your proffer to return my diary and enclose herewith necessary postage." Col. Hogeland's diary was duly returned to him and in acknowledging its receipt he took occasion to thank me for looking him up after all these years and assured me that he would endeavor to return that kindness by visiting Augusta in the early future and giving the citizens of this goodly city the benefit of the "Curfew Law." It will furnish additional evidence of the truthfulness of the opening statement in this sketch if the capture of a war diary nearly forty years ago, should result in the adoption of a "Curfew" ordinance in Augusta.

In illustration of the adage that "Every dog has his day," it may not be amiss to say that Col. Hogeland's escapade from Fort Cliff at the instance of four companies of the old First Georgia Regiment, was only partial compensation for the 100-mile run made by those self-same companies from Laurel Hill, Va., in '61, with Capt. Hogeland's regiment as one of the exciting causes.

JACKSBORO.

On our return from Huntsville, Joe Derry and J. W. Lindsay, of the Oglethorpes, unable to keep pace with the command, straggled and were captured by "bush-whackers." Joe was exchanged a few days, later, Lindsay preferring to remain a prisoner. After a short stay at Clinton we moved up to Jacksboro and remained there until Oct. 9th, guarding Bragg's line of communications. Our service at this place was uneventful. Buell's army had retreated into Kentucky and there was nothing to disturb our "otium cum dignitate" save a moderate amount of picket duty and the one subject ever uppermost in the soldier's mind-"rations." The following incidents of our stay at this camp furnish some illustrations of this fact:

THE PARSON AND THE GRAVY.

A continuous diet of salt bacon had made the boys ravenous for fresh meat and as war has no tendency to strengthen respect for property rights where a soldier's appetite is involved, they were not, as a rule, very scrupulous as to the methods adopted to procure a supply. The means most in use at the date referred to were known in camp parlance as "flip ups." As no encyclopedia of my acquaintance describes this mechanical contrivance and its specifications have never encumbered the records of the patent office, it may not be amiss to say that it consisted of a bent sapling, a slip noose with a trigger attachment and a bait of corn. The unsuspecting porker, tempted by the bait, sprang the trigger and the sapling freed from its confinement, sought to resume its normal position, while the shote caught in the noose and partially suspended in the air gave noisy notice that the game was up.

On one occasion the catch, by right of discovery or otherwise, fell to a mess, of which Parson H--, a minister of the Presbyterian persuasion, was a member. When dinner was served that day a dish of smoking pork chops was passed to the Parson, but he declined with the remark that his conscience did not allow him to eat stolen meat. As the meal progressed the fragrant odor from the dish struck his olfactories with increasingly tempting force and he finally passed up his tin plate and said: "I'll take a little of the gravy if you please." He had made a brave fight for principle and his final compromise was probably due to the fact that Paul's vow, "If meat make my brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world standth," failed to include gravy in its inhibition. He may have been further influenced by the reflection that his refusal to indulge could not possibly restore the porker to life again. As Jim Wilson said,

"'Twas Greece (grease), but living Greece no more."

This incident recalls the fact that Jim and the writer had on this subject the same scruples as the Parson, and in order to place ourselves on the line of strongest resistance we entered into an agreement with each other binding ourselves to total abstinence from all meat of questionable origin until mutually released from the obligation. The compact was religiously observed until Hood's campaign in Tennessee in the winter of '64. Transportation was scarce and rations were scarcer. On one occasion two ears of corn were issued to each soldier. Some wag in the company, probably Elmore Dunbar, seeing that horse rations were being furnished sang out, "come and get your fodder." On another occasion beef was issued but no bread. We had neither lard to fry nor salt to season, but our digestive apparatus was not then fastidious as to condiments. It was unimportant whether it was taken "cum grano salis" or without, so the void was filled.

A fire was built of dried limbs from a brush pile and the beef placed in a shallow frying pan to stew, Frank Stone being the chef de cuisine. The mess sat around with anxious faces and whetted appetites. Finally one of them, in shifting his position, struck the end of a limb on which the pan was resting and dumped the whole business into the dirt and ashes. The catastrophe placed us rather than the beef in a stew and we went to bed supperless.

Under such conditions it is, perhaps, but natural that the case should be re-opened, a new trial granted and a verdict rendered to follow Paul's other injunction, "Whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no questions for conscience sake."

I can not recall positively that either of us ever indulged even as to gravy, but I think I can say that neither of us was particepts criminis in the act of impressment. If guilty, we were only accessories after the fact.

"THEM MOLASSES."

During our stay at Jacksboro the farmers in that section were making sorghum syrup, which most of them called "them molasses." Near one of our picket posts lived a Baptist minister named Lindsay, from whose better half we purchased vegetables and other edibles. On one occasion I was unable to make exact change and left owing her 12 1-2 cents in Confederate money. Two weeks later I was on picket again and paid her the balance due. She was so much surprised that a soldier should have the moral sense to recognize and meet such an obligation that she formed a very exalted estimate of my honesty and when I afterwards went to buy some of "them molasses" she requested her husband to take it from a barrel she had reserved for her own use "for," he said "she likes 'em powerful thick." I had occasion to regret her kindness, for it was so thick that it was with difficulty that I could get it either into or out of my canteen, and in view of her partiality I did not have the heart to suggest that a thinner grade would be preferred. She was a kind and motherly soul, and yet some of the soldiers would steal from her. To prevent or minimize their depredations she cooped a noisy rooster underneath her bedroom as a sort of watch dog to notify her of any midnight foragers. A few mornings afterwards she awoke to find, aside from other losses, that her feathered sentinel had been caught asleep upon his post by some soldier, who was chicken-mouthed, if he was not chicken-hearted.

RATIONS.

Rations as one of the sinews of war, deserve something more than incidental mention in these memories and as no more favorable opportunity may occur, it may be as well to give them more extended notice in connection with the incident just related.

Confederate rations during the early years of the war were as I recollect them, not only fair in quality but ample in quantity. As evidence of this fact I remember that the boys were sometimes so indifferent when rations hour arrived that it was difficult to induce them to draw their allowance promptly. Charles Catlin was our company commissary and I can hear now his clear, sharp tones as they rang out on the frosty evening air among the Virginia mountains in '61, "Come up and get your beef. Are you going to keep a man standing out here in the cold all night?"

As the war progressed the resources of the Confederacy, limited to its own production by the cordon of hostile gunboats that girded its ports, became more and more heavily taxed and its larder grew leaner and leaner. But little wheat was raised in the Gulf States and few beeves except in Texas. We were reduced largely to meal and bacon rations, and the supply of these sometimes recalled the instructions in regard to loading a squirrel rifle given by its owner to a friend to whom he had loaned it: "Put in very little powder, if any." Cooking squads were detailed from each company and once a day the wagons would drive up and issue three small corn pones to each man. Some of the boys, whose hunger was chronic, would begin on theirs and never stop until the last pone had been eaten.

Bob Winter belonged to this class and eight or ten hours after his daily rations had disappeared Dick Morris would draw a pone or half a pone from his haversack and say, "Bob, here's some bread if you want it," and Bob would reply, "Dick, I don't want to take it if you need it," and Dick would answer, "Bob, I've told you a thousand times that I wouldn't give you anything that I wanted," and Bob would succumb and so would the bread.

When our changes of base were rapid the squads would cook up two or three days' rations and in hot weather the bread would mould and when broken open the fungus growth looked very much like cobweb. Some of the pones had also the appearance of slow convalescence from chill and fever. Under such conditions it could hardly be considered very palatable except upon the idea of a rustic friend of mine, who, in commending the virtues of India Cholagogue, was asked as to its palatability. "O," said he, "it's very palatable, but the meanest stuff to take you ever saw."

Most of the boys had left well-to-do homes to enter the service and while they bore privation and hunger without a murmur, there would sometimes come into their hard lives a craving for the good things they had left behind. Gathered about the camp-fire, cold and tired and hungry, they would discuss the dish that each liked best and their lips would grow tremulous as they thought of the day when hope would become realization. Joe Derry, I remember, could never be weaned away from the memory of his mother's nice mince pies and black-berry jam. I can see his eyes dance now as he magnified their merits. Bob Winter's ultimate thule in the gastronomic line was sliced potato pie, while Jim Thomas would never tire of singing the praises of 'possum baked with potatoes. Louis Picquet said to him one day, "Jim, if I ever get home again I am going to have one dinner of 'possum and 'taters if it kills me." But it was left to the epicurean taste of John Henry Casey to reach the acme of these unsatisfied longings when, recognizing the value of quantity as well as quality he declared that nothing less would satisfy him than "a chicken pie big enough to trot a horse and buggy around on."

But for extending this ration sketch to an irrational length I might have said something of the May Pop leaves that we cooked for "greens" in North Georgia, of the half hardened corn transformed into meal by means of an improvised grater prepared by driving nails through the side of a tin canteen, of the pork issued to us in Tennessee with the hair still on it, of the hog skins that we ate at Inka, Miss., and of many other such things, but they would probably fail to interest the reader as they did the actors in those far off days.

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