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•JSp Clifton STobiiBon 
 
 BATTLEGROUND ADVENTURES. Illustrated. 
 A BOOK OF FAIRY-TALE FOXES. Illustrated. 
 A BOOK OF FAIRY-TALE BEARS. Illustrated. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Boston and New York 
 
Battleground Adventures 
 
THE CAPTURE OF JOHN BROWN 
 
BATTLEGROUND 
 ADVENTURES 
 
 THE STORIES OF 
 
 DWELLERS ON THE SCENES OF 
 
 CONFLICT IN SOME OF THE 
 
 MOST NOTABLE BATTLES 
 
 OF THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 COLLECTED IN PERSONAL INTERVIEWS BY 
 
 CLIFTON JOHNSON 
 
 Illustrated by 
 Rodney Thomson 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (3rf)e iSiberisiDe jpcejS? €ambcibge 
 
 1915 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CLIFTON JOHNSON 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published November iqis 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 •^^"^ 22 19/5 V 
 
Preface 
 
 These battleground experiences cover what is probably 
 the only important phase of the Civil War that has not 
 been adequately treated. They view the struggle from the 
 standpoint of the home. Here you see the terror and pa- 
 thos, the hardships and tragedy, through the eyes of those 
 who lived where some of the greatest conflicts of the war 
 occurred. You see how property was destroyed and indus- 
 try disrupted, and how much the people not directly con- 
 cerned in the fighting suffered. There are, besides, glimpses 
 of life as it was antedating the war, and of the aftermath of 
 adjustment to new conditions, and of the superstitions that 
 populate the battlefields with ghosts of the former con- 
 tendants. 
 
 The material for the volume was gathered in 1913, nearly 
 fifty years after the war ended. Some of the narrators were 
 small children in the Civil War days, but whatever their 
 age had been the incidents of that chaotic time were indeli- 
 bly impressed on their memories. They told of what they 
 had seen with convincing vividness, and fortunately, also, 
 with much of humor and picturesqueness. 
 
 I have recorded what they said as frankly as they related 
 it, and in their own language, whether that was one of edu- 
 cation and culture or of rude illiteracy. Possibly some por- 
 tions would be pleasanter reading were certain of the hor- 
 rors omitted. But why should we not face the reality and 
 see war in all its savagery? Nothing can so hasten the com- 
 ing of the time when war as a method of settling disputes 
 
vi Preface 
 
 will not be tolerated as a clear understanding of its essential 
 barbarism. 
 
 Occasionally an informant has misapprehended the 
 character and purposes and acts of the other side, but these 
 misapprehensions are worthy of record because they reveal 
 a mental attitude which was not without its effect in mak- 
 ing the conflict more bitter. Of similar value are the com- 
 ments of the blacks on the whites and those of the whites 
 on the blacks, though sometimes uncharitable and unjust. 
 
 It is all very human, and my purpose has been to get a 
 free and genuine expression of both recollection and feeling 
 and to retain as far as possible the personality of each of the 
 many speakers. 
 
 Clifton Johnson. 
 
 Hadley, Mass. 
 
Contents 
 
 John Brown's Raid 
 
 I. THE storekeeper's SON AT HARPER'S FERRY . 1 
 
 ii. the prisoner 10 
 
 iii. the watchman on the bridge . • . . .22 
 iv. the free jakes 32 
 
 Bull Run 
 
 V. THE farmer's DAUGHTER 37 
 
 vi. the slave blacksmith 54 
 
 Shiloh 
 
 VII. THE widow's son 61 
 
 viii. a battlefield farmer 71 
 
 ix. the refugees 85 
 
 Antietam 
 
 x. the hired man 93 
 
 xi. the slave foreman 104 
 
 xii. the slave woman at the tavern . . . 109 
 
 xiii. the canal boatman 113 
 
 xiv. a maryland maiden 118 
 
 Fredericksburg 
 
 xv. the little rebel 125 
 
 xvi. the colored cooper 143 
 
 xvii. a slave woman's troubles 150 
 
viii Contents 
 
 Gettysburg 
 
 XVIII. THE carriage-maker's BOY 
 
 XIX. the farmer's son 
 
 XX. THE SCHOOL TEACHER . 
 
 XXI. THE COLORED FARM HAND 
 
 XXII. THE COLORED SERVANTMAID 
 
 XXIII. THE BANK CLERK . 
 
 159 
 
 166 
 176 
 
 183 
 
 187 
 192 
 
 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 xxiv. the merchant's son 197 
 
 xxv. the soldier's wife 202 
 
 xxvi. the fighting slave 217 
 
 xxvii. the cave dweller 224 
 
 xxviii. the captain of the junior volunteers . 232 
 
 Chickamauga 
 xxix. the farm lad 239 
 
 XXX. THE soldier's SON 247 
 
 xxxi. a boy on a plantation 251 
 
 xxxii. the runaway slave 255 
 
 xxxiii. the paroled soldier 264 
 
 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 XXXIV. THE girl ON THE MOUNTAIN . . . .270 
 
 XXXV. THE CABINET-MAKER'S DAUGHTER . . .277 
 
 XXXVI. A TENNESSEE BOY 281 
 
 XXXVII. THE MULATTO GIRL 289 
 
 XXXVIII. THE invalid's WIFE 297 
 
Contents 
 
 IX 
 
 The Wilderness 
 
 XXXIX. THE MINER'S SON 305 
 
 XL. A YOUTH ON A FARM 312 
 
 Cold Harbor 
 
 xli. the trucker's lad 31g 
 
 xlii. a rustic slave woman 323 
 
 xliii. a man from the ranks 33o 
 
 XLIV. THE SLAVE BOY 33g 
 
 XLV. THE SUTLER'S LASS 34O 
 
 Atlanta 
 xlvi. the color bearer 35o 
 
 XLVII. THE WIFE OF AN ARMY COOK . . . .354 
 
 XLVIII. THE PLANTER 37q 
 
 XLIX. THE machinist's DAUGHTER . . . .375 
 
 Cedar Creek 
 
 L. A GIRL in the SHENANDOAH VALLEY . . 382 
 
 LI. THE COLORED WOMAN AT HEADQUARTERS . 392 
 
 LII. A COUNTRY YOUTH'S ADVENTURES . . .396 
 
 LIII. THE NEGRO VILLAGE GIRL 406 
 
 LIV. THE BLACK FIDDLER 41g 
 
Illustrations 
 
 THE CAPTURE OF JOHN BROWN .... Frontispiece v' 
 
 THE MOB IN THE TAVERN 28-- 
 
 WATCHING THE BURSTING BOMBS 40 
 
 A RELIC OF THE OLD BATTLE 80 
 
 GENERAL LEE'S BREAKFAST IS INTERRUPTED . .110. 
 
 A NARROW ESCAPE 128. 
 
 COLORED REFUGEES GOING NORTH 144 
 
 WATER FOR THE MARCHING TROOPS 178 
 
 THE RUNAWAY BROILS SOME MEAT 220 
 
 THE SLAVE WIFE JOINS HER HUSBAND . . . .260 
 THE SHARPSHOOTER AFTER THE BATTLE . . . .274 
 
 A FRIENDLY OFFICER 292 
 
 THE WOUNDED MAN AND HIS HARDTACK . . . .310 
 
 A HOSPITAL VISITOR 356 
 
 SETTING FIRE TO THE BUILDINGS 388 
 
 THE SPOOK IN THE BARN 418 
 
Battleground Adventures 
 
 The Storekeeper's Son at Harper's Ferry ^ 
 
 In 1859 Harper's Ferry was one of the nicest towns in the 
 United States. The government had an armory here, and 
 there were fountains all along the streets, and flowerbeds 
 with men tending 'em. No expense was spared to keep 
 things tidy and attractive. The surrounding scenery was 
 beautiful too, for at the lower end of the town the Poto- 
 mac and Shenandoah Rivers met and went on through 
 a gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 
 
 The ground between the two rivers was rough and hilly, 
 and most of the buildings huddled along the streams. 
 Down near where the rivers joined was a bridge across the 
 Potomac that served for both the highway and the Balti- 
 more and Ohio Railroad. A short distance from its town 
 end was the depot and a hotel high up on the bank. 
 
 The railroad continued close along the Potomac on a 
 trestle, and back of the trestle was a long narrow strip of 
 land that the armory buildings occupied. In the armory 
 
 1 This and the other footnotes at the beginning of the chapters give 
 a brief account of the circumstances of each interview and afford a 
 glimpse of the narrators as I met them and listened to their recollec- 
 tions. The "storekeeper's son" told his story as he sat smoking in the 
 office of a Harper's Ferry hotel. He was a fleshy man of hardly more 
 than middle age who apparently had a habit of loitering there for con- 
 templation and to read the new^spaper and discuss with friends the 
 affairs of the town and the world. 
 
2 John Brown's Raid 
 
 yard near the depot stood a small brick fire-engine house. 
 The yard gate was close by, and across the street was the 
 arsenal. Beyond that, right by the Shenandoah River, was 
 a railroad that went down to Winchester. 
 
 That Shenandoah Valley railroad was a very poor one 
 with no ballasting. The ties were laid on top of the ground. 
 Near their outer edges were fastened wooden four by four 
 strips with flat iron rails spiked to 'em. The rails were a 
 sort of strap iron two or three inches wide and hardly a half 
 inch thick. The spikes would work up and the ends of the 
 rails get loose, and the trains had to move very cautiously. 
 They did n't go more'n eight or ten miles an hour, and you 
 could run and catch the blame things anywhere. We boys 
 used to worry the conductors by hollerin' to 'em, "Change 
 oxen!" 
 
 There were as many as five thousand people here. 
 Nearly fifteen hundred were employed by the government, 
 and this was a busy prosperous place, but John Brown put 
 a curse on it. The town went down from the time of his 
 raid, and the war followed soon afterward and just tore up 
 everything. 
 
 Brown came to the vicinity with two of his sons early in 
 July, 1859, and rented a farm in a secluded spot a few miles 
 from the town over on the mountain north of the Potomac. 
 They passed themselves off under the name of Smith and 
 made a bluff at prospectin' for minerals. 
 
 I was eight years old then. My father had a drygoods 
 and grocery store here, and I've seen him and Brown 
 talkin' together in the store. Father even furnished Brown 
 a team to haul some of his supplies over to his log house. A 
 good many boxes came by railroad for him, and he said 
 they contained shovels, picks, and that sort of thing. 
 
The Storekeeper's Son at Harper's Ferry 3 
 
 Really they were full of weapons and ammunition. Those 
 would serve in starting his enterprise, and then, by seizing 
 the arsenal here, he could put guns into the hands of a very 
 formidable force. He expected to recruit an army from the 
 large slave population in the region, and he thought numer- 
 ous whites would also flock to his aid. 
 
 Brown's entire force, when he set forth on his raid on the 
 evening of Sunday, October 16th, consisted of twenty-two 
 men. Six of them were members of his family or connected 
 with it by marriage, and five were colored men. Three of 
 the raiders remained on the north side of the Potomac. 
 The rest took possession of the armory and arsenal and 
 gathered up several prominent slaveholders whom they put 
 in the government fire-engine house with guards over 'em. 
 You see it was a part of Brown's scheme to capture such 
 men and only release 'em on condition that they set free 
 their slaves. 
 
 Every working day the armory bell rang twice each 
 morning. There was a first bell which was a sort of warning 
 to the men to get ijp and eat breakfast. It rang somewhere 
 about half-past five, I reckon. There was a second bell 
 along toward seven, and then the men were supposed to 
 hustle into the armory and begin work. On Monday of the 
 raid the old bell-ringer. Tommy Darr, came to the armory 
 at the usual time, and the raiders made him a prisoner. So 
 the bell did n't ring. By and by the workmen stirred out to 
 see what the trouble was, but Brown had fellers at the ar- 
 mory gates, and they picked the men up and held 'em with 
 the other prisoners. 
 
 Soon after I got out of bed I heard shots, and came out on 
 our front porch. Our house was n't very far from the arm- 
 ory gates, and I could see something of what was going on. 
 
4 John Brown's Raid 
 
 One man had been killed during the night. He was a free 
 negro who bunked at the Baltimore and Ohio depot and 
 took the luggage back and forth between that depot and 
 the one of the Shenandoah Railroad. The second man the 
 raiders killed was my father. He walked down street from 
 the store to the corner, and a feller who had scooched in 
 behind the arsenal wall shot him. Father was a big power- 
 ful raw-boned Irishman, and he could have whipped all the 
 men Brown had if they'd been unarmed. After he was shot 
 he walked back up the hill pretty near home. Then his 
 strength failed, and some of the townspeople brought him 
 into the house. He died two hours later. 
 
 The third man shot by the raiders was Farmer Turner. 
 I seen a black feller do the shootin'. He 'd got into what we 
 called the stock-house where the government rifles were 
 packed. Turner had brought his gun. He was on horse- 
 back, and he rode down too far. Jake Bagent was up the 
 street in a silversmith's shop, and pretty soon after Turner 
 was killed Jake saw the black feller at the arsenal peeking 
 around the corner. So Jake poked his gun out of the door 
 and whacked it into him. Like every one else, Jake had 
 only an old gun that was made for hunting rabbits and 
 other small game, but he had loaded it with a six-inch 
 spike. The spike hit the negro in the neck. It made an 
 awful wound, and he rolled right out into the road, and 
 there he lay till evening. 
 
 The citizens were now shooting all around, and nobody 
 run out on the streets any more. They did n't know what 
 they were up against, for they did n't know how many 
 raiders there were or their object. Everybody had been 
 livin' quiet and peaceful, and why men should come in 
 here at midnight shooting people down was a mystery. I 
 
The Storekeeper's Son at Harper's Ferry 5 
 
 heard men talking about it, and they called it an insur- 
 rection. 
 
 One of the townsmen who got mixed up in the affair was 
 Daddy Molloy. He was a character — a shiftless, but 
 good-natured feller who was never sober when he could get 
 the booze; and yet, when he first came here, you would n't 
 find a nicer-lookin' young man in a thousand miles. He 
 claimed some girl went back on him. After that his head 
 was n't right. 
 
 Daddy wore all sorts of cast-off clothing. If a man three 
 times his size was to say to him: "Here's an old coat of 
 mine. Do you want it?" he was sure to accept it. 
 
 He did odd jobs at a boarding-house for his food and 
 lodging. I s'pose the lady there kept him because she 
 pitied him. Often you'd find him going around and clean- 
 ing up the bar-rooms for a drink. He'd do anything to get 
 liquor. Sometimes, when he saw a stranger in town, he 'd 
 say to one of his friends, "I'll fall down and commence 
 chawin' on the stones, and you tell that man I '11 get well 
 right off if I have a good drink of whiskey." 
 
 So Daddy falls down, and there he lies pufRng away with 
 the white foam coming from his mouth. The stranger 
 looks on very much concerned and says to Daddy's friend : 
 "Do you know that feller? What's the matter with him?" 
 
 "Well," the friend says, "he has spells like that once in a 
 while." 
 
 "Ain't there anything can be done for him?" the 
 stranger says. 
 
 "Yes," the friend answers, "a drink of whiskey would 
 fix him all right." 
 
 " Go get him a pint," the stranger says. 
 
 The whiskey is put in Daddy's hands, and he drinks it. 
 
6 John Brown's Raid 
 
 "Ah!" he says, "if I'd had that before I would n't have 
 had a fit." 
 
 But sometimes the friend Daddy asked to help him in 
 this little game went back on him, and would say to the 
 stranger, "That's just Daddy Molloy, and he's playin' 
 off." 
 
 Then old Daddy would get up and give the friend 
 thunder. 
 
 On the morning that the town learned something was 
 wrong at the armory, Daddy went to investigate, and no 
 sooner did he enter the gate than a man with a gun told 
 him he was arrested. 
 
 "What have I done that you should arrest me?" 
 Daddy says. 
 
 "Ask no questions," the feller says. "You go right along 
 into that engine house." 
 
 "But I want to know what the charge is against me," 
 Daddy told him. 
 
 "Bounce him in," the raider said, and he had one of his 
 comrades shove Daddy into the engine house. 
 
 Brown had a good bunch of other prisoners in there, and 
 Daddy asked old Mr. Graham, who was sitting near the 
 door, what he was there for. He did n't get any satisfac- 
 tion. Graham was a crusty old feller, and Daddy said 
 afterward, "I thought he was goin' to bite my head off." 
 But most of the men were not so close-mouthed. Some 
 said: "There's goin' to be hell here. The citizens will just 
 set fire to this building and burn old Brown and all the rest 
 of us." 
 
 Daddy looked around to see if there was some chance to 
 escape and concluded he might be able to get out through 
 the cupola. There were two fire-engines in the building — 
 
The Storekeeper's Son at Harper's Ferry 7 
 
 the kind that had handles along each side for the men to 
 take hold of and pump the water. Daddy climbed onto 
 one of 'em and reached up to the edge of the cupola. He 
 was very strong in his arms, and he said to himself, 
 " Where I can reach I can pull myself up." And up he 
 went. 
 
 Some cross timbers gave him a resting-place, and after 
 peeking all around he crawled out on the slate roof, slid 
 down to the grass behind the building, and scrambled over 
 the wall around the armory grounds. In the upper stories 
 of the near houses were men on the watch, and they began 
 firing, for Daddy was dressed so rough they thought he was 
 one of Brown's men. ''You ought to have heard those 
 balls spattering against the brick wall," he said afterward. 
 
 Yes, everybody was shooting at old Daddy, and he ran 
 up the street making for the boarding-house where he was 
 the porter; "and if I had n't run zigzag they'd have got 
 me," he declared. 
 
 He used to show an old gray coat that had ten or twelve 
 bullet holes in it, and he claimed those were made during 
 that flight, but I think he may have punched some of 'em 
 himself. 
 
 Daddy was n't bom to be killed. Every train on the rail- 
 roads here hit and knocked him over at one time or an- 
 other; and all the bones in his body had been broken. Once 
 a projecting iron on a car ketched him under the jaw and 
 dragged him across the bridge, and yet he survived. At 
 last, however, he got the smallpox, and he went off all alone 
 to an old canal boat and died there; but he'd have got well 
 if he'd been tended to and given any nourishment. 
 
 A number of the raiders were killed that Monday while 
 trying to escape by wading across the Shenandoah. 
 
8 John Brown's Raid 
 
 Others were killed in the town, or captured, and the few 
 that were left retreated to the engine house. Several com- 
 panies of militia had come from neighboring places to put 
 down the insurrection, and if it had n't been that Brown 
 had his prisoners in the engine house with him they'd have 
 blown the whole thing up. 
 
 Toward evening, after they had the raiders penned up, 
 I went out a little bit. Down at the corner the body of the 
 darky still lay in the road, and old Mrs. Stephenson's sow 
 was just diving into the big hole in his neck. The hogs ran 
 loose here then. They were the Harper's Ferry street scav- 
 engers. The doctors used to argue that it was better to let 
 'em run out because by picking up the refuse that might 
 otherwise be neglected they kept down sickness. It's only 
 of late years that we've made the owners keep 'em up. 
 We 'd vote on the question once in a while at town-meeting 
 — hog in and hog out — same as now we vote wet or dry, 
 whiskey or no whiskey. People would get so hot on the 
 subject that we had several knockdowns on account of it. 
 But in the end the hogs lost. The families that did n't keep 
 hogs had come to be in the majority — that's about the 
 amount of it. 
 
 Well, no decided push was made to end the insurrection 
 until a company of United States Marines came from 
 Washington under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. 
 They arrived early Tuesday morning, and while they were 
 getting ready for business some of the militia decided to be 
 doin' something. One of 'em by the name of Murphy had 
 a few drinks on, and he said he'd go and storm that engine 
 house. So he went into the armory yard with a couple of 
 his comrades follerin' along behind and tellin' him he'd 
 better look out. He had n't gone far when a bullet touched 
 
The Storekeeper's Son at Harper's Ferry 9 
 
 him in the jaw. That settled Murphy. He'd got stung, 
 and he retreated. 
 
 Then the marines tackled the job, and they soon got 
 possession of the engine house, and took Brown and his 
 men prisoners. They put 'em on board a train that carried 
 'em to the jail in Charlestown a few miles south of here. 
 After the marines had disposed of their prisoners they got 
 on a train themselves, and back they went to Washington. 
 
 Of the twenty-two raiders ten were killed, five escaped, 
 and seven were captured, tried and hung. Five of the 
 townspeople were killed and eight wounded. 
 
n 
 
 The Prisoner^ 
 
 My father had a farm two miles west of the town. He 
 owned quite a trac' of land there — seven or eight hundred 
 acres — and was one of the leading men of the county. I 
 suppose he was worth nearly a hundred thousand dollars. 
 That seemed like great wealth then, but it would n't carry 
 ten yards in Wall Street now. 
 
 Harper's Ferry was a dandy town in those days. Oh! it 
 was beautiful, and the government had put up the finest 
 kind of shops for gun-makin'. Dude fellers worked there, 
 and they could earn as high as four or five dollars a day at 
 piece work. They'd go in wearin' their best clothes and 
 shift to their work clothes in a special room. At the end of 
 the day they washed up and changed their clothes, and 
 when they came out you'd think they were just comin' out 
 of church. 
 
 On that Sunday night in the autumn of 1859 when 
 Brown captured the armory I went down to a protracted 
 meetin' at the Harper's Ferry Methodist Church. I was 
 seventeen years old. Me 'n' another young feller rode down 
 
 1 While my host talked we sat in one of the rooms of the farmhouse 
 that had been his father's at the time of the historic raid. The dwelling 
 was rather forlornly neglected in its aspect, and we were in a wing that 
 had been the slave quarters. Walls and ceiling and everything in the 
 room were darkened with an appalling accumulation of smoke and 
 grime. The day was rainy, and my companion wore rubber boots. He 
 was tall and thin, and, though no longer young, was still dark-haired 
 and keen-eyed. 
 
The Prisoner 11 
 
 on horseback. It was a big thing hyar then to have a pro- 
 tracted meetin'. There 'd be a meetin' every evenin' for 
 two or three weeks except Saturday. That evenin' we'd 
 rest up, and we'd have an extra hot time on Sunday night. 
 People would come from all directions, there 'd be several 
 preachers, and the church would be crowded. 
 
 Up in front under the pulpit was a long wooden bench, 
 and the mourners knelt on either side of it tryin' to git re- 
 ligion. Whether people were religious or not they had a 
 curiosity to go and see the mourners; and the ministers 
 used to say, "It'll break up the meetin' if somebody don't 
 come to the mourners' bench." 
 
 Those that went up there were usually all young people 
 from twelve to twenty years old, and perhaps there 'd be a 
 dozen or more down on their knees at the same time 
 shoutin' and prayin'; "0 Lord, have mercy on me! God, 
 help me!" 
 
 While they went on that way the ministers and elders 
 talked among 'em and prayed over 'em. A good many of 
 *em were crjdn', and a heap of the congregation would be 
 cryin', too. There was singin' goin' on all the time, and the 
 leaders would whoop and holler over the mourners, only 
 stoppin' occasionally to ask 'em, "Now do you think 
 you've given up to the Lord?" 
 
 When one of 'em said, "Yes," he'd jump up and go to 
 singin'. 
 
 We had a lively time that Sunday evenin' I was speakin' 
 of, and it was about twelve o'clock when us two fellers 
 got on our horses to ride home. I remember it was a 
 dark night and cool. On the way we overtook half a 
 dozen men walkin', and they had blankets thro wed 
 around 'em. I found out later that they were some of 
 
12 John Brown's Raid 
 
 Brown's raiders and that they wore the blankets to hide 
 their weapons. 
 
 After I got home I went to bed and to sleep, but I had n't 
 been sleepin' long when I heard a rappin' ag'in' the door 
 that opened from the yard into the room where Father and 
 Mother slept. I thought some tramp was there and I ex- 
 pected to hear him ask if he could sleep in the barn. 
 
 "What do you want?" Father said. 
 
 Then a man outside said, "Git up and open the door"; 
 and after some more talkin' back and forth the door was 
 busted right open with a rail, and the man walked in. 
 
 I had a long old country shotgun that I kep' loaded, and 
 I thought I 'd take it down there and order the feller out. 
 Of course, I was some scared, but you 'd want to go and see 
 what was goin' on if some one had broken into your 
 daddy's room, would n't you? 
 
 My aunt and sister had waked up, and they put their 
 heads out of an upstairs window and hollered, "Murder!" 
 But they got back out of the way quick when a colored man 
 in the yard said he'd blow their heads off if they did n't 
 shut that window. 
 
 I slep' up at the head of some steps that went down from 
 the second story right into Father's room, and I had got 
 my gun ready when my aunt peeked down the steps. 
 
 "For gracious sake! don't take that gun down there," 
 she said. "The man in your father's room is all armed. 
 He's got revolvers in his belt, and he's got a gun besides. 
 He'll just think you're goin' to kill him, and he'll kill you." 
 
 So I put back my gun and went along without it. I made 
 a pretty heavy noise goin' down the steps, and the man 
 turned to look and drawed his gun on me — click, click! 
 "Come on," he said, and I came. 
 
The Prisoner 13 
 
 A white man and a big yeller colored feller were there, 
 and they had pine torches, and the sparks flew all over the 
 floor. I stamped some of the sparks out my with foot. 
 
 "What you goin' to do?" I asked. 
 
 "My name is Stevens," the white man said, "and I'm 
 under the orders of Captain John Brown. We're goin' to 
 free all the slaves." 
 
 I talked back to him right smart, and I was a little sassy, 
 for I was on my own ground. 
 
 "Why don't you hush. Tommy?" Mother said. 
 
 "Captain Brown has taken the government works at 
 Harper's Ferry," Stevens told us. 
 
 "That wasn't much to do," I said. "They only have 
 one watchman there." 
 
 "You shut your mouth or I'll blow your brains out," he 
 said. 
 
 Then the colored feller collared me and drawed a revol- 
 ver and held it ag'in' my breast. That made me kind of 
 nervous. I could n't do nothin', and I said to myself, 
 "You've got me now." 
 
 They took Father and me out to the road where four 
 more of their men were and a four-horse farm wagon and a 
 two-horse carriage. They'd been up the road and got 
 Colonel Washington, one of the leading planters of the re- 
 gion, and were takin' him to Harper's Ferry in his own car- 
 riage driven by one of his slaves. The wagon was his, too, 
 and there were a number of his slaves standin' up in it. 
 
 Our slaves lived in a wing of our house. Stevens had 'em 
 roused up, and he selected half a dozen and told 'em he was 
 goin' to set 'em free, and that they must come along with 
 him in the wagon. They kep' very quiet and it did n't 
 seem like they wanted to go. 
 
14 John Brown's Raid 
 
 The raiders were careful not to take their torchlights out 
 to the road, and the neighbors never saw or heard a thing. 
 My mother and sister and aunt came out to the fence, and 
 they were very uneasy. Father and I had to git into the 
 wagon with the slaves. We stood near the front. The pro- 
 cession started with Colonel Washington in his carriage 
 goin' ahead. A colored man drove our horses. He sat on 
 the left wheel horse and did the guidin' with a single line. 
 That's the way we drive our work teams hyar. 
 
 When we got to Harper's Ferry everything was quiet as 
 a mouse. " What's the matter? " Father said. "Is every 
 one in the town killed?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" I said, "I reckon not." 
 
 We drove in the armory yard to the engine house and 
 got out. Then Stevens delivered us over to an old man who 
 was there with a gun, and said, " This is Captain John 
 Brown." 
 
 "Yes, I'm Osawatomie Brown of Kansas," Brown said. 
 
 He was a tolerable large man, rough, and coarse-featured, 
 and a little overbearing and rude in his conversation. He 
 gave each of our colored men a spear. I believe he called it 
 a pike. It had a han'le like a pitchfork, and on one end 
 was an Iron concern the shape of a butcher knife exactly, 
 but sharpened on both edges. Brown had any quantity of 
 'em. "You take these pikes," he said to our slaves, "and 
 don't let the prisoners git off the pavement in front of the 
 engine house." 
 
 But the slaves did n't 'mount to nothin' as a help to 
 Brown. When his back was turned they'd set down their 
 spears, but if they see old John Brown comin' they'd pick 
 'em up and tend to business. 
 
 By and by it got to be time to ring the armory bell, 
 
The Prisoner 15 
 
 and the bell-ringer come right on in. Stevens checked him, 
 and said, "Where you goin'?" 
 
 "I'm goin' to ring that bell," the man said, and started 
 to walk along. 
 
 But Stevens give him a gouge with his gun. The gun 
 was a tamal heavy one, and it broke some of the old man's 
 ribs, and he fell. Later the citizens were allowed to carry 
 him away. 
 
 After it was daylight the townspeople began to come to 
 see what was the matter at the armory, and as soon as they 
 got opposite the yard gate one of Brown's men would say, 
 " Come in hyar," and he 'd run 'em right in so they could n't 
 go back to tell the news. 
 
 Presently Brown had one of his men go and order the 
 hotel landlord to send over breakfast for the raiders and 
 their prisoners — eighty-five in all, I think. He did n't pay 
 then or afterward, and the landlord later got an attach- 
 ment on Brown's horse and wagon and sold 'em for the bill. 
 
 A colored servant brought the food. There was butter 
 and rolls and coffee. Some of the prisoners was so scared 
 they could n't eat. Father was a little afraid there might be 
 poison in the food, and I said to one of our darkies, "Bill, 
 are you goin' to eat this?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, I'm goin' to try it," he answered. 
 
 "Well," I said, "go ahead and I'll see what it does to 
 you." 
 
 It did n't seem to have any bad effect, and then I ate, 
 and I did n't have nothin' more to eat till after Brown's 
 Fort, the fire-engine house, was captured. 
 
 Brown stood around or walked backwards and forwards 
 waiting for reinforcements. That was where he got fooled, 
 you know. The feller who fooled him was one of his own 
 
16 John Brown's Raid 
 
 men by the name of Cook. Cook come hyar peddhn' maps, 
 and he got acquainted with an old widow lady, Mrs. Mc- 
 Gregor. She got him a job of tendin' a lock on the canal. 
 The old lady had a niece named Jane Kennedy who lived a 
 few miles over in Maryland, and this niece come visitin' her 
 Aunt McGregor. Cook got to sparkin' her, and by and by 
 they married. Later he taught m the Harper's Ferry public 
 schools. 
 
 He claimed he had gone around notifyin' the slaves what 
 Brown intended to do, and he made Brown believe that all 
 the darkies in the whole country would rush right in hyar 
 ready to fight for their freedom under Brown's command. 
 But Cook had n't done as much notifyin' as he pretended 
 he had, and the darkies would have been too skeery, any- 
 way. There were too many guns in the road. They are not 
 a fightin' race, and those of 'em who became soldiers in the 
 war only fought well when they had the advantage. Let 
 the enemy bung it into 'em and kill a few, and the others 
 scattered and run. So Brown never had much use for the 
 fourteen hundred spears that he had had made to arm the 
 colored recruits he expected. 
 
 We began to hear shootin' soon after breakfast, and by 
 nine or ten o'clock they were crackin' away fast. The citizens 
 got up in the houses and fired, and they shot down from 
 the hills. If any of the men at the engine house so much 
 as peeped around a corner the citizens let loose at 'em. 
 
 After a while Brown sent Stevens on some errand to the 
 hotel, and had him take along a prisoner so he would n't be 
 fired on. They had nearly reached the hotel when a colored 
 boy at the engine house pointed to an upper window in the 
 tavern not far from the bridge and said, "Look, look! there 
 are two men up there and they're goin' to shoot." 
 
The Prisoner 17 
 
 That same instant one of the men punched a pane of 
 glass out, and pop went his gim. A raider by the name of 
 Coppic had joined the colored boy, and he remarked, 
 "They've shot Stevens." 
 
 "I'm sorry for that," Brown said. "Is he dead?" 
 
 "No," Coppic answered, "he's fallen down, but he's 
 movin' yet. Now he's got up on one knee. His prisoner 
 has walked right on — glad to git away, I guess." 
 
 "Look!" the boy exclaimed, "they're goin' to shoot 
 again." 
 
 They fired, and Stevens did n't git up that time. He lay 
 there near half an hour, and then Miss Foulke, the hotel 
 landlord's sister, who was a very kind-hearted woman, got 
 some men to take him up and put him in bed at the hotel. 
 She arranged, too, for a heavy guard of militia, or the citi- 
 zens would have gone right in there and killed him. 
 He was quite a loss to the raiders, for, next to Brown, he 
 was the ablest man in the bunch. But he was a mean devil 
 and had been rough to the prisoners. Yes, he was a bad 
 one. 
 
 For a while we took refuge in a watchhouse that was 
 joined on to the engine house, but it had a lot of windows, 
 and the balls came through the glass. Then Brown selected 
 fifteen or twenty of the prisoners and took 'em into the 
 engine house. He left the balance to do as they pleased, 
 and pretty soon he said, "Listen at 'em gettin' out." They 
 climbed through a back window and skedaddled. 
 
 We were jammed in the engine house pretty close. There 
 were too many for the space. A dog that belonged to 
 Brown was with us. He was a big black dog with a white 
 stripe down his face, and he had white feet. The bullets 
 was flyin' around there hot, and the raiders fastened the 
 
18 John Brown's Raid 
 
 large double door with ropes so it would only open a little 
 — just enough to shoot through. 
 
 Brown had one of our colored men take a pick and dig 
 three or four portholes through the walls. As the darky was 
 gettin' out the last brick a bullet hit it and knocked it in 
 and keeled him over. 
 
 Early in the afternoon Father was lookin' out, and he 
 says: "There's Colonel Beckham walkin' on the railroad 
 trustle. I wonder what he's doin' that for." 
 
 Beckham was the station-agent and the mayor of the 
 town. Where he was walkin' there was a long platform 
 extendin' from the depot up along the Potomac. That plat- 
 form was the great promenade of the townspeople. Pretty 
 soon Beckham got behind the water-tank and took a peek 
 around the end. Brown had ordered his men not to fire at 
 any one who was unarmed, but Beckham's peeking made 
 Coppic, who was watching, think he was goin' to shoot. So 
 Coppic fired. 
 
 "Did you git him?" Brown asked. 
 
 "No," Coppic said, "but if he peeks again I'll make sure 
 of him by letting my bullet nip a corner of the tank." 
 
 Beckham peeked, and Coppic fired, and Beckham fell 
 right out from behind the tank and lay still. 
 
 The militia could easily have taken the engine house, 
 for there were only five raiders inside, but they did n't 
 have the nerve to storm it. Besides, Brown had the advan- 
 tage of 'em in holding us prisoners. We were kep' for to 
 protect his men. He knew the besiegers would be careful 
 about shootin' and assaultin' lest they hurt their friends. 
 
 Late in the evenin' Watson Brown was lookin' out of the 
 door, and sightin' his gun at a feller just opposite. That 
 feller had seen Watson and was gittin' ready to take a shot. 
 
The Prisoner 19 
 
 too, and Watson did n't shoot quick enough. A bullet hit 
 him, and he jumped back. He had his finger on the trigger 
 of his gun, and in jumping he gave the gun a jerk that 
 made it go off. He was hit in the stomach, and he suffered 
 awfully. 
 
 After Watson was shot the raiders barred the door and 
 pushed one of the fire-engines up ag'in' it, and there we 
 stayed quiet as a lamb all night listenin' to the men jab- 
 berin' outside of the gate and to the shootin' that was done 
 off and on to prevent Brown from attemptin' to git out. I 
 thought that was the longest night ever I spent. We didn't 
 have any light in there, so it was dark as a dungeon, and 
 we just lay on the brick floor, or set down and leaned up 
 ag'in' the wall and nodded. Some of the colored fellers 
 were snorin' away, but the rest of us could n't sleep. 
 
 Young Brown lay in a corner. "Oh kill me and put me 
 out of this sufferin'!" he'd beg his father. 
 
 But old Brown would tell him to quit his noise, and 
 "die like a man." 
 
 Toward momin' old Brown, who was sittin' near the 
 door, called to his son and got no answer. "I guess he's 
 dead," the old man said. 
 
 The marines were on hand in the morning, and an officer 
 came to the engine house door. Brown opened it wide 
 enough to talk to him. The officer said Brown might as 
 well surrender. But Brown said, "I ain't a-goin' to do it." 
 
 "I've got sixty men out hyar, and I'll make you do it," 
 the officer told him. 
 
 "All right," Brown said, and shut the door. 
 
 Then the officer ordered his men to take sledges and 
 batter the door down. That did n't succeed, and they got a 
 heavy ladder and rammed it ag'in' the door. They rammed 
 
20 John Brown's Raid 
 
 a second time, and some of the raiders fired out of the port- 
 holes and killed one of the marines and wounded another. 
 But they rammed again and busted the door wide enough 
 open so a man could squeeze through it. While this was 
 goin' on we prisoners set there scared and shiverin'. 
 
 Lieutenant Green got inside first, and Brown was about 
 to shoot him when the officer cut at the old man with his 
 saber, and by havin' the science he knocked the gun up so 
 it went off above him. His next stroke knocked Brown 
 pretty senseless, and if Green had been a little nearer he'd 
 have taken Brown's head off. That sweeping stroke just 
 grazed my father and cut his hat-band. Green apologized 
 afterward and wanted to git him a new hat, but Father 
 would n't hear to such a thing. 
 
 Coppic and the other raiders threw down their guns and 
 surrendered, except one colored feller. This darky jumped 
 up and said, "I'm one of the citizen prisoners." 
 
 " No you ain't," the officer said, and took him along with 
 the others. 
 
 Brown could n't walk, and the marines carried him out 
 and laid him on the grass. They formed a circle around 
 him with their bayonets ready so he could n't be harmed. 
 "Stand back, men," they'd say to the crowd. 
 
 I went into a store where Father dealt and got some 
 crackers and cheese to eat, and I stayed in the town till 
 night. The people liked to have talked me to death. 
 "Hyar, tell us how you was arrested and all about it," 
 they'd say. They kep' at me and would hardly let me 
 away. 
 
 I got home a little befo' sundown, and I tell you I was 
 sleepy, for I had n't slep' none to speak of for two nights. 
 My father had returned earlier, so Mother and the rest of 
 
The Prisoner 21 
 
 the family knew we were safe, and they were all contented 
 when I arrived. 
 
 One of our colored men was caught at the armory with a 
 gun and was taken to Charlestown jail. He got the typhoid 
 fever in the jail and died there. 
 
 Us young fellers would ride to Charlestown of a Sunday 
 to see the prisoners. The jailer let a squad of four or five of 
 us go in at a time, and he'd say: "Don't make 'em mad. 
 Don't say anything mean to 'em." 
 
 Brown was very quiet and never said much more than: 
 "How do you do. Nice day," or something of that sort. 
 
 I saw Stevens, and I remarked, "S'pose you know me." 
 
 "No, indeed, no, indeed!" he replied. 
 
 "You broke in our house," I said, "and took me and 
 Father prisoners." 
 
 "You're just as much mistaken as if you'd lost your 
 hat," he said. 
 
 He was gritty, and, from all I saw, I can say that Brown 
 and his men were none of 'em cowardly. 
 
Ill 
 
 The Watchman on the Bridge ^ 
 
 I WAS twenty-si ven years old when Brown made his raid, 
 and I was a watchman on the bridge across the Potomac. 
 She was a covered wooden bridge, and the raih*oad trains 
 wint through her, besides teams and people on foot. There 
 were two of us watchmen. My partner would be on duty 
 for twelve hours, and then I'd take my turn for twelve 
 hours. I wint on at midnight and stayed on till noon. We 
 had to tind to a switch, and at night I had to collect the 
 tolls. A regular collector took the tolls in the daytime. 
 
 Brown had rinted a farm on the Maryland side of the 
 Potomac. I knew him as Captain John Smith, and he was 
 as nice a man as you'd want to meet. He bought a horse 
 and a little wagon, and I saw him daily comparatively 
 speakin'. He'd come to the town and go back wid a box 
 that had been shipped to him from the North. We found 
 out afterward that those boxes had revolvers and Sharps's 
 rifles and such things in 'em. Brown 'peared to be very 
 fri'ndly wid me, and he'd be shakin' hands and havin' a few 
 words to say. He claimed he'd found a vein of silver in the 
 mountains. 
 
 I lived at the village of Sandy Hook about a mile down 
 on the north side of the Potomac. On the October Sunday 
 
 ' As I saw him he was a very hearty, friendly old Irishman of alert 
 mind and decided opinions. We spent an evening together in the little 
 sitting-room of his home a short distance from Harper's Ferry. 
 
The Watchman on the Bridge 23 
 
 night that the raid began I got up at the usual time, put on 
 me overcoat, for the air was right cool, and started for work. 
 I carried a lantern, though there were stars in the sky, so 
 the night was n't disperate dark. Me watch showed it was 
 ten minutes past twelve o'clock when I reached the bridge. 
 We had three or four oil lamps in the bridge to guide people 
 across, and I seen that the lights was out, and it sthruck me 
 there was something wrong. 
 
 The watch-box was at the other end of the bridge, and 
 I 'd walked three fourths of the way across when I saw two 
 men wid blankets around their shoulders. They were 
 standin' at a place where the bridge widened out, and 
 where there was a seat at one side wid a banister at each 
 end. One of the men stepped back out of the way, but the 
 other stood there and said, "Halt!" 
 
 I did n't know no more what "Halt" meant than a hog 
 does about a holiday, and I kep' movin' on. Then he said, 
 "Halt!" again, but I wint on till I got close. 
 
 I was n't expectin' to have no trouble, for I was p'ace- 
 able, and I was unarmed. I niver carried a revolver. If I 
 was attacked I 'd rather get a black eye than shoot a man. 
 I did n't believe in a revolver. I don't believe in 'em yet, 
 and I don't believe in war. I seen enough of war and 
 shootin'. 
 
 The man had one of thim pikes that Brown got to arm 
 the nagurs, and a very wicked lookin' weapon it was. He 
 gave me a jab in the side wid the handle, and I wint very 
 near thro win' up. I come to a little, and I said: "What's 
 wrong? I'm the watchman on this bridge. What's the 
 matter?" 
 
 "We'll watch the bridge to-night," he said. 
 
 Just then I noticed six or eight of thim pikes leanin' 
 
24 John Brown's Raid 
 
 ag'in' the seat there, and the sight of thim made me 
 frantic. 
 
 "Come wid me," the man said, but he did n't say where 
 he was goin' to bring me. He reached down his left hand 
 and got hold of the handle of me lantern. "Come," he 
 says. 
 
 About that time I up wid me fist and hit him back of the 
 jaw under his ear and knocked him ag'in' the seat. The 
 lantern dropped and was smashed, and the light wint out. 
 I run, and don't you forget it. Dark as it was in that bridge 
 I wint at the rate of twelve miles an hour, no doubt. The 
 other man shot at me when I passed him, and I lost me hat. 
 
 Near the end of the bridge was a hotel, and the dure was 
 always open for me. You see I often used to go there, just 
 before the eastbound night express arrived, and warn 'em, 
 so whoever wanted to go on the train could get ready. I 
 run to the hotel and found the clerk and a man named 
 Horsey in the office. This Horsey was goin' on the express. 
 I told 'em about the men on the bridge, and Horsey said: 
 "They're some of the town people who want to test your 
 pluck. They're jokin' you." 
 
 That made me kind of angry, but I soon cooled off, and 
 then I wint to the depot. A very big, stout colored man 
 named Haywood handled the baggage and slept in the of- 
 fice there. He was a free nagur and worth some sixteen or 
 eighteen thousand dollars. I woke him up. He had a pistol 
 wid a knife attached to the end of it, and I borrowed it from 
 him and wint to the house where me partner lived. I 
 knocked at the dure and called to his wife. She knew me 
 voice, and she said, "Is that you, Mr. Higgins?" 
 
 I asked her was her husband at home, and she said, 
 "No." 
 
The Watchman on the Bridge 25 
 
 I did n't want to scare the woman, and I said, "Well, 
 I'll see him down town." 
 
 Then I wint right back to the depot, and pretty soon the 
 express come. I told the conductor that two men held the 
 bridge, and I would n't be responsible if the train wint out 
 there. He was a tall, powerful man, and he hollered to the 
 baggage-master on the train, "Let me have a lantern." 
 
 As soon as he had the lantern in his hand he told me to go 
 wid him. I did n't care about goin', but I wint, for I niver 
 was a coward and I did n't like to refuse. It seemed best 
 though to keep a little behind him so if a bullet came our 
 way he'd get it first. The baggage-master follered. We got 
 onto the bridge, and bang wint a gun, but I suppose it was 
 just fired in the air as a warnin'. 
 
 "Boys, what's wrong?" the conductor says. 
 
 "The town is taken," was the reply. "Advance no 
 further." 
 
 The conductor told 'em who he was, and they said he 
 could go on with his train, but he did n't want to risk it. 
 We had turned to leave the bridge when the baggage- 
 master picked up something and looked at it by the light of 
 the lantern. "Pat, here's your hat," he said, "and there's 
 a hole in it." 
 
 I put me hand up to me head and found blood in me hair. 
 A bullet had just grazed the skin on the top of me head. I 
 did n't know I was hit at the time of the shootin' I was that 
 bad skeered. It was a close shave. 
 
 When the passengers learned that the train was goin' to 
 stay there they got off and filled up the ticket office. Then 
 Haywood, the colored man, wint out toward the bridge 
 lookin' around, and the men there shot him through the 
 body. He walked back and lay down on his couch in the 
 
26 John Brown's Raid 
 
 depot. A doctor in the town had heard the shootin', and he 
 came to see what the trouble was. We had him look at 
 Haywood, and he said the wounded man could n't live. 
 Oh, poor feller! he suffered awful. 
 
 The train stayed there on the trestle till daylight in the 
 morning. Then John Brown himself came and walked with 
 the conductor ahead of the train across the bridge, and the 
 conductor jumped on and proceeded. 
 
 After I 'd watched the train go I wint to see if there was 
 anything more I could do for Haywood. "For God's sake, 
 Mr. Higgins, will you go and get me a drink of water? " 
 he said. 
 
 There had been a big stone pitcher full of water in the 
 waiting-room, but the people from the train had n't left a 
 drop in it. So I took the pitcher and wint down to a pump 
 in the street and drew the water. As I was goin' back a 
 man come out of the bridge eatin' a cracker, and he asked 
 me very politely would I let the men on the bridge have 
 a drink. I said, "Yes," and wint along wid him. 
 
 He was the one who had shot at me, and I learned that 
 his name was Thompson, and that the man I had hit was 
 Oliver Brown. They had been reinforced by a chunky little 
 mulatto who sat on the bench whittling a stick. I mistook 
 the mulatto for a white man at first in the gloom of the 
 bridge. 
 
 Brown said, "You're the laddie buck who sthruck me 
 here last night, ain't you?" 
 
 I told him I was. 
 
 "Well, you acted very impudent," he said. 
 
 Then Thompson said, "I'm proud that I did n't kill or 
 cripple you when you ran and I fired." 
 
 "What does it all mean?" I asked Oliver. 
 
The Watchman on the Bridge 27 
 
 He said, "It's a darky scrape." 
 
 "Well, Where's the darkies?" I asked. 
 
 "I am one," Oliver said; and Thompson said, "I am 
 another"; but the mulatto niver opened his mouth at all. 
 
 Then I said: "For myself, I ain't rich enough to own a 
 darky. I work twelve hours a day for a dollar." 
 
 "Yes," Brown said, "I know these slave states are not 
 as good as the free states for you working-men. We're 
 goin' to free the blacks, and that will help such as you. 
 There'll be blood shed, but it 's not our object to hurt any 
 one who don't take up arms against us." 
 
 "I'm not very fond of fightin'," says I, "and I'm takin' 
 this water over here to the depot to give to a nagur that 
 you shot." 
 
 " It was his fault," Brown said. " He ought to have done 
 as we told him to do." 
 
 I wint along wid the water. By this time the men in the 
 town had begun to come to their work in the armory, and I 
 could see a crowd of prisoners down there. The people soon 
 became greatly excited over the state of affairs, and rumors 
 flew far and wide. My wife got word of the raid, and she 
 thought I'd lost an arm or a leg, or maybe was dead. So 
 she leaves her four-months-old baby, and off she starts to 
 find me. She passed the men on the bridge, and they put 
 their hands to their hats very polite. 
 
 After she found me and knew I was all right, then she 
 would n't go back alone wid herself. Nothing would do but 
 I must go along, too. The baby needed her, so I wint. As 
 we crossed the bridge I told Thompson I would be back in a 
 few minutes. You see, it was me duty as watchman to look 
 after things there. If I did n't the bridge owners might 
 discharge me. 
 
28 John Brown's Raid 
 
 I walked down the road a ways toward Sandy Hook, and 
 then I told me wife I must return. She took on cryin' and 
 said she was sure I 'd be killed or at least taken prisoner. 
 
 But I had to go. It was now about eight o'clock, and I 
 remember the weather was kind of a little misty. As I wint 
 along I could see a half dozen or more people comin' down 
 the mountain on the Maryland side of the river, which was 
 the side I was on, and I took notice some of 'em had guns. 
 I waited for 'em at the entrance to the bridge, and I told 
 'em how I was obliged to go across, but that if they wint 
 they'd be captured. 
 
 Then I left thim, and soon I was back in the office at the 
 depot. I was sittin' there, watchin' and condolin' to myself 
 what was goin' to be when those fellers across the river 
 fired on the men who held the bridge. Oliver and the other 
 two run like sheep. But a bullet stopped Oliver, and 
 Thompson halted and tried to make a treaty wid the men. 
 They would n't make any treaty, and they just tied his 
 wrists together in front of him wid strong cord and took 
 him to the hotel, where they held him a prisoner. 
 
 The colored man was so panic-stricken that instead of 
 goin' to the armory he ran and jumped into the arsenal 
 yard. By and by, when he was tryin' to get from the ar- 
 senal across the street to the armory gate he was shot in the 
 neck and fell dead. I seen men come along afterward and 
 take out their knives and cut off a piece of his ear for a relic 
 and put it in their pockets. He had no ears left by night. 
 
 In the middle of the morning Stevens was shot. He was 
 a fine-lookin' man, and it 'pears to me he was no coward. 
 He fell behind the station warehouse. "0 Lord! is there no 
 one will take me out of here?" I heard him say. 
 
 I wint to where he was and turned him over, and I saw 
 
THE MOB IN THE TAVERN 
 
The Watchman on the Bridge 29 
 
 he had a Colt's revolver in his inside pocket, and I took it. 
 While I was stoopin' over him they fired on me from the 
 engine house. The bullets sthruck the wall behind me, and 
 pieces of the brick flew and hit me head. A lady in a build- 
 ing right across from the depot called out of a window, 
 "Fall back, fall back!" and I hurried to shelter. 
 
 My goodness! the excitement was terrible. The country 
 people were flockin' in from all directions. Men broke into 
 the saloons and got drunk, and they wint to the arsenal 
 and everybody had plenty of guns. They were firin' cross- 
 ways, and it's my opinion they wounded some of thim- 
 selves. The wonder is that more were n't hurt. 
 
 In the afternoon the nagur at the depot died, and I wint 
 to the hotel and told Beckham, who was the station-agent 
 and the mayor of the town. I could see the tears come in 
 his eyes he thought so much of that darky. Me 'n' him 
 walked back to the depot office and looked at Haywood, 
 and then Beckham told me to lock the office and put the 
 key in me pocket. We wint along the trestle to the water- 
 tank. Says I : " Squire, don't go any further. It ain't safe." 
 
 He leaned over and looked around the end of the tank, 
 and while he was lookin' a bullet sthruck him. He took a 
 step forward and said, "Oh!" and fell on his face. They'd 
 shot him through the heart, and he lay there quiet and 
 niver quivered. I stood twinty minutes or so lookin' at the 
 poor feller, afeared to get him. Then I returned to the 
 depot. 
 
 His death all but crazed the townspeople, and they made 
 a rush in at the hotel to get Thompson. The landlord and 
 Miss Foulke, his sister, fought hard for Thompson and 
 plead and prayed for him. Tables and chairs were upset 
 and there was an awful racket. The mob did n't leave the 
 
30 John Brown's Raid 
 
 hotel till they had the prisoner in their possession. They 
 took him up to the depot platform at the entrance to the 
 bridge. 
 
 George Chambers had become the actin'-mayor, and he 
 wanted me to go get a rope to hang Thompson. In thim 
 days I did n't care for Chambers or no man, and I would n't 
 go. 
 
 Then Chambers said to Thompson: "I'll tell you what 
 will save you. Give us a history of the Abolitionist pro- 
 ceedings that led to this insurrection, and we'll spare you." 
 
 But Thompson niver had a word to say. Chambers was a 
 blood-thirsty feller, and he took a revolver, put it to 
 Thompson's breast, and shot him. I always thought that 
 was a cowardly act, and I niver liked Chambers so much 
 afterward. They throwed the body over the wall, and it 
 fell partly in the water and partly on the land, and during 
 the day a good many men came and shot at it. That 
 seemed brutal. The carcass laid there nearly all that week. 
 
 After dark some of us wint to get Beckham. Guns were 
 still bein' fired, and we did n't like to expose ourselves. 
 So I took hold of Beckham's feet and pulled him back a 
 little till he was behind the tank. Then we lifted and 
 carried him away. 
 
 Finally I wint home to Sandy Hook, and about two 
 o'clock that night the marines from Washington got off the 
 cars there. They walked the rest of the way to Harper's 
 Ferry, and I wint wid 'em. When it was daylight their com- 
 mander. Colonel Lee, said to the people: "The first one of 
 the citizens that fires a shot will be put under arrest. This 
 is government property and we will take care of it." 
 
 After a while an officer pulled out a white handkerchief 
 and waved it up and down where it could be seen from the 
 
The Watchman on the Bridge 31 
 
 engine-house portholes. Then he wint and had a talk wid 
 Captain Brown. He stayed not more than ten minutes 
 and came back and said: "He will not surrender. It's 
 old Osawatomie Brown." 
 
 So they got a long, heavy ladder, and as many of the 
 marines took hold of it as could, and they ran and rammed 
 it ag'in' the big iron dure. That made an awful noise. At 
 the third charge the dure wint in, and soon the raiders were 
 all captured. They'd have been lynched by the citizens, 
 and there 'd niver have been a bit of a trial if the troops 
 had n't been here to protect 'em. 
 
 After Brown was hung I helped put his remains on the 
 express at our depot for his wife to take North, and I 
 couldn't help thinkin' what a mistake he'd made. He 
 seemed a sinsible man in most respects, but he was a 
 maniac on this question of slavery. The effect of the raid 
 was just the opposite of what he hoped, even on the slaves. 
 He had killed a nagur here the first thing, and that shocked 
 thim. You couldn't get one of 'em out after dark till 
 weeks and months had gone by, they were so skeered. 
 
 Well, the Monday of John Brown's Raid bate anything 
 I iver seen, and I seen desperate times during the war — 
 bridges burnt and government buildings a-fire — but niver 
 no such excitement as that day. It was a dreadful time. 
 
IV 
 
 The Free Jakes ' 
 
 My folks lived eight miles south of Harper's Ferry at 
 Charlestown. I was a boy comin' up fourteen or fifteen 
 years old at the time of the Brown Raid. The first I knew 
 of it two men playin' a drum and a fife marched up the 
 street. Then the bell at the courthouse rang, and the 
 people all gathered there to learn the cause of the unusual 
 summons. Half a dozen prominent men spoke. They said 
 something was wrong at Harper's Ferry, and that an 
 armed body had taken possession of the armory. 
 
 Some of us boys had organized a sort of juvenile militia 
 company. We had wooden guns and called ourselves Free 
 Jakes. But there was no nonsense about the way we 
 drilled, and I 've never forgotten the manual. I could drill a 
 company now right up to the scratch. There was an old 
 Revolutionary cannon in the place — a smooth-bore six- 
 pounder. Most of the time it just set around on a vacant 
 lot anywhere, but the boys and young men always used to 
 fire it on Christmas Day. That was the biggest time of the 
 year with us. We celebrated Christmas the same as the 
 Fourth of July was celebrated up North. We'd start in the 
 morning along about daylight and fire the cannon at every 
 
 1 Most of the Free Jakes are no more. The survivor who related their 
 history was at the time of this interview a hotel landlord at Harper's 
 Ferry — a thin, active man, getting gray. Sometimes, while he talked, 
 he was behind the ofiice counter, but in his more leisurely intervals he 
 occupied one of the row of chairs along the opposite wall. 
 
The Free Jakes 33 
 
 comer. The concussions would break all the windows in 
 Charlestown, but no one ever complained. We made a fuse 
 by soaking brown paper in salt petre, and when it was dried 
 we tied it in a loose little roll on the end of a three-foot 
 stick to use in touching off our cannon. The cannon kicked 
 like the Old Harry and at every discharge jumped back 
 eight or ten feet. 
 
 The jailer of our prison told us Free Jakes to get our can- 
 non ready to go to Harper's Ferry. We needed some am- 
 munition, and we got a number of oyster cans that would 
 hold 'bout a pint and were just the right size for the muzzle 
 of our gun, and we filled 'em with powder. Then we picked 
 little holes in the bottom with a nail and a rock so the 
 powder would ignite. Another set of cans we filled with 
 clippings from horseshoes. The clippings were square slugs 
 as big as large chestnuts and made fine missiles. We took 
 a stick and rammed one of each of the cans home in the 
 gun and filled up the touchhole with powder. After that we 
 put ropes to the cannon and started along the pike. I guess 
 fifty or sixty boys had hold of the ropes. Anyway there was 
 a dickens of a bunch of us. We had two men for wheel- 
 horses. They were big and strong, and we kept them full 
 enough of whiskey to encourage them to work well. We 
 had to stop now and then to rest, and it took us quite a 
 while to travel the hilly eight-mile road. 
 
 As we neared the town we began to move very quietly, 
 feelin' our way, and not knowin' what we had to contend 
 with. It was afternoon when we got here. Everything was 
 in a bustle, and we could see people lookin' down from the 
 high ground all around. We planted our cannon up on 
 Camp Hill to bear on the bridge across the Potomac. That 
 bridge was a mile away, mind you, but we expected to 
 
34 John Brown's Raid 
 
 keep out any enemy that attempted to cross it; and I 
 suppose, if we had actually fired our cannon, the slugs in 
 the oyster can would have been scattered all over the 
 world. 
 
 But there seemed to be no immediate occasion for artil- 
 lery, and we left our cannon, and each boy knocked around 
 to suit himself and see what he could see. Our movements 
 were cautious, however, for we did n't know when we 
 might run into an ambuscade, and we were particularly 
 careful not to go too near the engine house because Brown's 
 men had made portholes in it through which they could 
 sight and pop at us. 
 
 We all had friends livin' here who gave us something to 
 eat, and quite a number of the Free Jakes stayed overnight. 
 I know I did. I was at the home of a cousin of mine where 
 a bunch of us fellows slept together on the floor. 
 
 The next morning the raiders were captured, and I saw 
 Brown as they put him on the train to take him to the 
 Charlestown Jail. He appeared to me like a very rough- 
 lookin' old farmer. 
 
 Late in the day it was reported that a big crowd was 
 comin' from the North somewheres, to rescue the raiders. 
 We heard they were murdering and playing the mischief 
 all along the line, and there was the blamedest excitement 
 around here that night you ever saw. Some people out in 
 the country gathered up what belongings they could carry 
 in their arms, or perhaps put their stuff in a wheelbarrow 
 and came into the town. Nobody slept. In fact, I tell you 
 there was very little sleep here, or work either, for the bal- 
 ance of that week. What with the funerals and all kinds of 
 reports, and the crowds that come in to look around, the 
 town was in constant turmoil. 
 
The Free Jakes 35 
 
 Thursday we dragged our cannon back, and we did n't 
 have so many to help pull then, by golly! 
 
 My mother was a very philanthropic woman who made 
 it a point to hunt up things for the needy and afflicted, and 
 several times she sent me to the jail with a basket of food 
 for Brown. The poor old fellow had a bayonet wound in 
 his side and a sabre gash on the side of his head, and he was 
 always lying down. They tried him soon after he was cap- 
 tured, and the jail guards carried him across the street to 
 the courthouse on a stretcher. A crowd was sure to be 
 lookin' on, and it was kept back on either side by a file of 
 soldiers. 
 
 I was a little shaver, but I was at the trial every day, I 
 reckon. I 'd run off from school to go. They could n't keep 
 me away. You'd think Brown was pretty near dead to 
 look at him on his stretcher. Sometimes he'd sit up a little 
 bit, but he did n't talk much. 
 
 He was condemned to be hung, and the appointed time 
 came. It was a mild, pleasant day in early December. 
 That morning Brown's wife visited him, and I was standing 
 just opposite when she came out of the jail. She was 
 dressed in deep black, with a heavy black veil over her 
 face. 
 
 The place of execution was an open field on the edge of 
 the town. The country people flocked in, and a good many 
 strangers were present from a distance. The town was 
 under martial law that day, and Ashby's Black Horse 
 Cavalry was scouting all around. You know Brown had 
 said he never would be hung, and we thought an attempt 
 might be made to liberate him. 
 
 Brown rode from the jail to the gallows in a two-horse 
 undertaker's wagon sitting on his coffin, and the sheriff sat 
 
36 John Brown's Raid 
 
 on it with him. As they went along Brown remarked to his 
 companion, "This is nice country through here." 
 
 On the seat in front were the driver and the undertaker. 
 All around the wagon rode an escort of cavalry, and on 
 ahead marched a troop of infantry, and more infantry fol- 
 lowed behind. When the procession reached the field the 
 soldiers formed a hollow square around the scaffold. I sat 
 up on a fence. The crowd was very quiet. It was a solemn 
 occasion, and yet not specially dreadful. We all thought 
 Brown was getting just what he'd worked for, and there 
 was more or less joking at his expense. 
 
 After the hanging the body was put in the coffin and sent 
 to Harper's Ferry in the undertaker's wagon under a cav- 
 alry guard. There Brown's wife was waiting to take the 
 remains back North with her. 
 
 Six other raiders had been captured — four of them 
 white men and two coons — and their trials and executions 
 followed within a few months. 
 
 Some one made up a song soon after Brown was captured. 
 
 It was sung to the tune of "Happy Land of Canaan," and 
 
 was very popular at the time of the trial and all through 
 
 the war. It ran along like this: 
 
 There was an insurrection in Harper's Ferry section — 
 John Brown thought the niggers would sustain him; 
 But old Governor Wise put the goggles on his eyes 
 And sent him to the happy land of Canaan. 
 
 Chorus. Old John Brown, don't you see — 
 Never will do to set a nigger free? 
 People are a-comin' — comin' from all aroun' 
 They '11 take you and hang you in old Charlestown. 
 
 Old Governor Wise, to Washington he went 
 
 And brought the marines on their own consent. 
 
 He marched them to the Ferry, he marched them all aroun', 
 
 He marched them to the engine house and took John Brown. 
 
The Farmer's Daughter^ 
 
 When the battle of Bull Run was fought back in 1861 my 
 people lived hyar where I do now in this same little ol' 
 farmhouse. Well, it 's funny, I live hyar by myself, and 
 this is a very retired place, but every now and then some 
 stranger walks in on me. So you 're from way up in Yan- 
 kee land. Do you see that old white gobbler out there 
 on the woodpile in the yard? He 's my watchdog, and he 
 warned me some one was comin' befo' you got to the gate. 
 
 What wet weather we're havin'! My stove always 
 smokes such days. I wish somebody would stick their hat 
 up in that hole in the sky where the water comes from so 
 the rain would stop and give me a chance to work in my 
 garden. I reckon this rain has played the mischief with a 
 heap of people. My brother was tellin' me he drove 
 through the ford down hyar at the battlefield, and the 
 water come right up into his buggy. That stream is only a 
 common little old branch, too. 
 
 Sunday, July 21st, was the date of the battle. The 
 
 1 Her home was an old, low-roofed farmhouse. It was small and 
 much patched and stood in a thin grove of trees where the wild flowers 
 grew in the grass, and the turkeys and chickens rambled freely about. 
 We sat in the little kitchen the greater part of one mild, showery day. 
 The door was open, and we could look forth on the misty fields and 
 woodlands. My hostess had reached the age of three score years and 
 ten, but her tall form was unbent, her features retained their natural 
 ruggedness, and there was all the fire of youth in her lively and uncon- 
 ventional conversation. 
 
38 Bull Run 
 
 Henry farm, where there was the hottest fightin' is about 
 two miles from hyar. The Yankees had marched out from 
 Washington a few days earher, and our men had been 
 gettin' ready for 'em ; so we knew the battle was comin' off. 
 The railroad passed along the edge of our farm, and the 
 trains were runnin' all Saturday night bringin' Southern 
 troops. The rumblin' of the wheels and the whistle for the 
 crossin' hyar would wake us up every few minutes. 
 
 Sunday came, and we did our mornin' work as usual. I 
 was eighteen then, and I had four brothers, the youngest 
 only three years old. We kept our horses and cattle out in 
 the pasture, and the little boys would drive the cows up the 
 first thing every mornin', and we'd milk 'em and let 'em 
 go. Another thing we did befo' breakfast was feeding the 
 fowls and the calves. I do that yet. All the animals have 
 got to be fed befo' I'm fed. 
 
 The mornin' was one of the prettiest I ever see in my 
 life, and for a while everything was very still, but about 
 six o'clock, just as breakfast was ready, a Yankee cannon 
 that we called 01' Tom let loose. Paw had the boys go and 
 get the colt from the pasture and put the saddle on him, 
 and as soon as Paw was through eating he got on the colt 
 and went down to the Henry house. If he had n't been too 
 old and his health too bad he'd have been in the army. 
 Anyway, he did what he could to help, and he never went 
 to camp that he did n't carry something to the soldiers. 
 This time he took along a tall black bottle of wine and a 
 little glass to drink from. That glass belonged to me. 
 Grandmother gave it to me when I was a little bit of a tot. 
 I have it yet, and I 'm goin' to hang on to it as long as I 
 live. The wine was blackberry wine. Maw made a lot of 
 that every year. 
 
The Farmer's Daughter 39 
 
 Paw got in with some Southern soldiers, and they went 
 half a mile west along the pike. Then a battery at the 
 Henry house mistook 'em for Yankees and fired a six 
 pound cannon at 'em. The soldiers thought they'd better 
 go back to where that battery was at. So Paw got out his 
 wine and gave 'em each a drink, and away they went. 
 
 After Paw had put the glass and bottle in the saddle- 
 pockets he mounted his horse and came over in this direc- 
 tion through a wheatfield. The wheat had been cut and 
 stood there in shocks. As he was a-goin' along in the 
 stubble he was close enough to the Union lines to hear the 
 officers givin' commands, but they did n't seem to notice 
 him. Paw was a man of mighty cool nerve and he did n't 
 get frightened. 
 
 On this side of the wheatfield was the Widow Dogan's 
 pasture with a great, big, right-new worm fence around it. 
 The colt would n't jump the fence, and Paw took off the 
 top rail. But the colt balked just the same, and he had to 
 take a whole panel down except two rails. The widow's 
 cows were in the pasture, and Paw thought it would n't do 
 to leave the fence down, because the cattle would get into 
 the wheat. So he put up every bit of the fence as he found 
 it and came on up to Groveton. The ground is high there, 
 and the people from the scattered farmhouses were out on 
 the hills watchin.' 01' Mrs. Dogan was there with all her 
 children, and other women with their children, and lots of 
 darkies were lookin', too. 
 
 Some of the Yankees came across there later, and they 
 picked up Mrs. Dogan's overseer. He had all the house- 
 keys, and I don't know what she'd have done if they 
 had n't let him go so he got home in time for supper. 
 
 All through the early mornin' there was an artillery shot 
 
40 Bull Run 
 
 every now and then, and about nine o'clock firin' com- 
 menced with small arms. The first round had the funniest 
 sound — just like thro win' a whole lot of lumber down. 
 From that on the battle was hot. 
 
 I was hyar with the children and Maw, and I was sittin* 
 on the stake and rider fence out in front of the house when 
 that first volley was fired. We had a tremendous wheat 
 rick, and a great long ladder was leanin' against it. The 
 children and I climbed up and stood on the top of the 
 stack. But the trees down below hyar shut off all sight of 
 the battlefield, and we could only see the bombs exploding. 
 They were n't very near, though, and I don't remember 
 hearin' a bomb whiz. 
 
 The trains were still comin' on the railroad, but by and 
 by a Union scout stopped one of 'em hyar at the crossin'. 
 He'd slipped around from Sudley, and the rascal stayed 
 two or three days in the woods near by. He told the officers 
 on the train some story that he thought would keep their 
 troops from gettin' to the battlefield, but he failed to ac- 
 complish his purpose. The soldiers left the train and some 
 of 'em came right down the road that passes our house and 
 stopped to ask where they could fill their canteens. 
 
 I directed 'em to our spring at the foot of the hill. I 
 always was spokesman when Paw was away, and there 
 were a few times I had to be spokesman when he was at 
 home and 'fraid to open his mouth. A woman somehow 
 has her wits about her and can get around an enemy the 
 way a man can't. Often, during the war, if Paw was goin* 
 somewhere on his horse, he'd take me up behind him rather 
 than go unprotected alone. 
 
 Those soldiers who spoke to me that July morning were 
 so anxious to get in the fight that they double-quicked it to 
 
WATCHING THE BURSTING BOMBS 
 
The Farmer's Daughter 41 
 
 the spring, and they went on from there at a gallop down 
 as far as I could see. They were Jackson's foot cavalry, and 
 Jackson's men always did double-quick. There was an offi- 
 cer among 'em who rode the prettiest dapple-gray I ever 
 see, and the men on foot were running in front of him and 
 pulling the fences down. 
 
 Another train full of troops was stopped by a man who 
 lived two miles back hyar at Gainesville. He got on his 
 horse and rode clear up to Thoroughfare Gap, six or seven 
 miles, and told the officers on the train that our men were 
 whipped. The man was just actin' the traitor, for he knew 
 better. Well, he was always mean from the time he was 
 little. The South Car'linians found out his trickery later 
 in the day, and they was huntin' for him, but he was hid. 
 They'd 'a' swung him up there in Gainesville in front of his 
 mother's house. They would n't 'a' cared. You know 
 they 're hotheaded people, anyhow. 
 
 While the fightin' was goin' on that momin' the children 
 and I rambled all over the place hyar, and then I did some- 
 thing I guess nobody else on earth would do — I went up- 
 stairs and lay down and had a good sleep. When I get tired 
 I want a nap. The battle was n't a-botherin' me. Early in 
 the day, when it was first startin', the thought came into 
 my head — " Oh my God, if the Yankees should whip us! " 
 
 But I said to myself, " They 're not a-goin' to do it " ; and 
 I was just as easy the rest of the day as if there was nothin' 
 goin' on. I was confident they was n't goin' to whip us 
 noway. 
 
 We had our dinner at the usual time, and we sat hyar 
 watchin' the bombs explode. They exploded mighty high 
 in the sky. I thought they was n't doin' much damage. 
 Father was still away, but we set there laughin' and talkin', 
 
42 Bull Run 
 
 and Mother never let on that she was anxious. He got 
 home about two, and said the Yankees had driven our men 
 more 'n a mile till they came to Jackson's brigade. That 
 was where Jackson earned his nickname. His men stood 
 like a stone wall. 
 
 'Bout the time Paw finished eatin' dinner, hyar comes a 
 Southern soldier to the house for water. He 'd been carryin* 
 the wounded, and the front of his pants was all bloody 
 where one of the wounded men had fallen against him. 
 
 After he'd gone my two oldest brothers hitched up our 
 ol' Jim horse; and he was a mighty good ol' horse, too, and 
 he was n't so old either. They hitched him to the spring 
 wagon, and they helped Paw put in a keg and a ten gallon 
 lard can and fill 'em with water. Besides, they put in a 
 basket with some victuals in it. There was a ham we'd 
 cooked, and a whole lot of light bread — that's bread made 
 with yeast. 
 
 Paw took all those things in his wagon and drove around 
 a back way and got two citizens to go along with him. 
 They were nearly down to Wheeler's house when they saw 
 some cavahy around there, and they did n't know whether 
 the cavalrymen were Southerners or Northerners. One of 
 the citizens rolled out of the wagon in a hurry to get away. 
 He was 'fraid the Yankees was goin' to ketch him. Paw was 
 left in the road with the other man. They concluded it was 
 safe to proceed, and they kept on toward the battlefield. 
 Pretty soon they saw a wounded Yankee lyin' in a fence 
 corner, and he was beggin' for water. They gave him a 
 drink and fixed him as comfortable as they could and went 
 on. After that it was wounded and wounded all along. 
 
 By that time the fightin' was over. The Union troops 
 had kept chargin' up the hill at the Henry farm, but our 
 
The Farmer's Daughter 43 
 
 side was constantly receivin' reinforcements, and finally 
 our men charged. The Yankees fell back, and presently 
 they got panic-stricken. They thought the Confederates 
 were chasing 'em, and they hurried on till late in the night, 
 and some never stopped short of Washington, which is 
 thirty miles from the battlefield. 
 
 In the afternoon we were settin' around the house till it 
 was time to do the evenin' work, and we could see the 
 black smoke and the red dust on the Sudley road where 
 our men had got the Yankees runnin' — and if 't was n't 
 the biggest dust ever kicked up! 
 
 Paw never come home till just befo' day, and he found us 
 all asleep. We knew he knew how to take care of himself. 
 He 'd been haulin' wounded off the field in his wagon. Lots 
 of people's teams was doin' the same. Every house in all 
 that country was a hospital, and they had field hospitals, 
 too. 
 
 Monday morning, after Paw had slept a while, he went 
 back to the battlefield. My oldest brother wanted to go 
 with him, but Paw said the sights were too horrid for a boy 
 of sixteen. All the wounded had been picked up when Paw 
 got there except some of the Yankees. They'd crawled 
 everywhere they were so afraid the Rebels were goin' to 
 murder 'em. If they'd stayed where they were at when 
 they were shot they'd have been cared for. Some crawled 
 to the wheat shocks and pulled the bundles down over 'em. 
 They hid in all sorts of places. More than twenty years 
 afterward a couple of men out huntin' found a Yankee, way 
 in a thick clump of pines, fallen between two trees. It 
 looked like he'd been settin' leanin' against one of the trees 
 till his strength failed him; and there were his bones and 
 shoes and some scraps of clothing. 
 
44 Bull Run 
 
 Soon after the battle ended one of our officers noticed 
 something in the hand of a Yankee who was lyin' on the 
 ground apparently dead. The officer got down and opened 
 the man's hand, and in it was a white kid glove. The man 
 happened to still have a little life left, and he opened his 
 eyes. Then the officer put the glove back, and the fingers 
 closed over it again. I suppose the man had married just 
 befo' he left home. 
 
 A second battle was fought hyar the next summer. 
 Some of the fightin' was done right around our place and I 
 had a chance to hear the Rebel yell. It sounded like a 
 whole lot of schoolboys runnin' a rabbit. Indeed, the 
 Southern soldiers were mo' like schoolboys runnin' a rabbit 
 than anything else. They were full of mischief — cram full 
 of it. 
 
 A great many men were killed in that battle, and there 
 were places where the ground was so soaked with blood 
 that not one thing would grow on those spots for years. 
 
 You 'd be surprised how careless the Yankees were about 
 burying their dead. The Confederates did their part all 
 right. Our men were buried so deep no ploughshare or 
 anything will ever touch 'em. There they'll stay till the 
 Day of Judgment. Some soldiers were sent hyar from 
 Washington to bury the Union dead, and they just joked 
 and talked politics with the old men in the neighborhood, 
 and run on foolishness with the little white boys and little 
 niggers. Of co'se they made some pretense at doin' their 
 work, but often they'd leave a corpse right on top of the 
 ground and throw on a little dirt, or turn half a log over it. 
 One man had rocks piled on him, and another they put in a 
 little narrow ravine and laid some rails on top. A detach- 
 ment of artillery drove across the rails afterward, but a day 
 
The Farmer's Daughter 45 
 
 or two later the man was removed — I reckon by soldiers 
 who knew him. They buried him near an oak tree and cut 
 his initials on the tree-trunk. 
 
 Frequently I'd go to walk over the battlefield just to 
 be at it, and I'd always pass a place where one of those 
 men was layin' half buried on top of the ground. Enough 
 dirt had been thrown over him to cover all except his head 
 and one arm that was stretched out from his body. There 
 was a road near him, and a big pear tree. I 'd go and look 
 at him out of curiosity. He was a sharp-featured man with 
 a long face and sandy hair and a sandy moustache. His 
 eyes were closed, and he lay there just like he was asleep. 
 
 Our men buried some of the Yankees. A railroad had 
 been begun hyar and abandoned, and they gathered up six 
 hundred and eighty-three Yankees and piled 'em up good 
 at the end of this railroad embankment and then threw dirt 
 down on top of 'em and covered 'em deep. Along in '64 and 
 later Northern people used to come out hyar all in a cahoot 
 from Washington to see the battlefield. They had it in their 
 heads that a lot of Rebels were buried at the end of that 
 embankment, and they went on their horses and hawhawed 
 and rode all over the spot just for the fun of it. You people 
 don't know how they behaved down hyar. I don't think 
 devils could have been so mean. They wore the dirt off the 
 bodies, and the citizens would go and throw it back on. 
 
 One day I was standin' by the roadside with some 
 friends down at Groveton when a Yankee doctor come 
 ridin' along on his horse, and he had a leather strap full of 
 skulls. The strap was run through at the ears. He held it 
 up and said to us laughing, "Look at these Rebel skulls 
 I've got." 
 
 " Where 'd you get 'em?" I asked. 
 
46 Bull Run 
 
 " Out hyar at the end of the embankment," he said. 
 
 "Indeed, then, they're not Rebel skulls," I said. 
 "They're skulls of your own men." 
 
 But he took 'em along just the same. I hope they were 
 always grinning at him and would n't let him sleep nights. 
 
 Plenty of Yankees in the army, too, were no more a 
 credit to the North than those people from Washington. 
 If you knew what we know about the letters found on your 
 dead and wounded hyar on the battlefield you'd be 
 ashamed to say that any of your ancestors were in the 
 Northern army. One letter was from a woman who asked 
 her husband to send her some Rebel furniture, because she 
 was tired of boarding and wanted to go to housekeeping. 
 The top of the man's head was blown off, and my brother 
 said, "He's got the Rebel furniture all right." 
 
 The letters were written by people who had no education 
 scarcely. We hear tell 'bout New England education and 
 how Boston is the top of the pot, but the writers of those 
 letters could n't even spell. 
 
 From what I 've heard of the folks who live in Vermont 
 and New Hampshire and your Northern mountains a stran- 
 ger can hardly get a civil answer to a question. It's differ- 
 ent down hyar. Our mountain people are polite and nice. I 
 can tell you another thing — when I get on a train and set 
 with a stranger I always know which section of country the 
 stranger is from. If he's chatty he's Southern — if not, 
 Northern. 
 
 There's a lot mo' class distinction in the North than in 
 the South. An officer come hyar one evening and wanted 
 supper, and he had his orderly with him. Well, the hateful 
 old thing kept the orderly settin' out on his horse while he 
 himself was in gettin' warm by the fire. We were havin' 
 
The Farmer's Daughter 47 
 
 misty, damp, foggy, wet weather just as we always do in 
 the fall of the year, and Paw spoke to the officer 'bout the 
 man outside. 
 
 "Oh! he's only an orderly," the officer said. 
 
 But Paw went out and told the man to come in. He 
 came, and yet as long as he was in the room with the officer 
 he looked just like he was on a hot griddle. 
 
 Quite a lot of your Northern men was hyar some six or 
 seven years ago to dedicate a monument, and they was 
 wantin' whiskey, whiskey all the time. They had puffy 
 bodies and purplish cheeks, and I never saw such a funny- 
 lookin' set of people in my life. It seemed as if you might 
 touch a match to some of 'em, and they'd be set on fire. 
 
 In the spring of '65 the government sent men to dig up 
 the remains of the Northern soldiers and carry 'em to 
 Arlington, but they only just took the big bones, and not 
 all of those. There were lots of arm and leg bones out hyar 
 in the woods where the doctors did their amputating that 
 they never got at all. It seems to me I don't want to be 
 livin' at the resurrection when all the people's bones will 
 get together to make their bodies complete. I might get 
 hit. They 'd be flyin' around so thick it would be dangerous 
 — it would so. 
 
 I remember there was one skull layin' out on the pike a 
 long time. The boys thought it was fun to see how far they 
 could kick it. They could n't break it to save their lives, 
 and everything that come along — horses and all — give 
 that skull a kick and never broke a piece off of it. I don't 
 know whatever became of it — whether it got kicked in the 
 branch, or what happened to it, but it disappeared. 
 
 Once some of us young people were goin' along side of 
 Bull Run through the bushes. I was ahead, and the first 
 
48 Bull Run 
 
 thing I knew I was face to face with a Yankee skull some 
 one had set up there on a black stump about five feet high. 
 I could n't help but laugh. It did n't scare me. I 'd seen 
 too many. Yes, some of the most ridiculous things hap- 
 pened during the war, and some of the saddest and some of 
 the meanest. 
 
 We had the Yankee soldiers around hyar most of the 
 time, and some of 'em were posted as guards close by at the 
 railroad crossin'. They would n't allow any citizen to go 
 over the crossin' imless they were satisfied he was all right. 
 In order to stop any one who might try to go along after 
 dark they fixed wires across the road to take a man riding 
 on horseback just below the chin. But our boys found out 
 about the wires, and they'd duck their heads and ride 
 under 'em. 
 
 Black Frank Lewis had an ol' hog that used to ramble all 
 about the country, and one night the hog was rootin' in the 
 leaves near the crossin', and the Yankees swore it was the 
 Rebels. They caught a glimpse of it by the light of their 
 lantern and shot and killed it. Then they skinned it right 
 there, and some wrote home that they had shot a panther 
 which measured five feet from the tip of its nose to the end 
 of its tail. 
 
 A good many of these Yankees had joined the army to 
 get a bounty with the understanding that they'd only be 
 used to protect the capital. But you know the United 
 States government never kept a promise, and they were 
 awful afraid they'd be sent down to fight around Rich- 
 mond. Some of 'em cut up Jack and were mean as the 01' 
 Scratch, but we tried our best not to have any trouble 
 with 'em. "Better have the good will of a dog than the 
 bad," Mother said. 
 
The Farmer's Daughter 49 
 
 Tongue-lashin' 'em did n't pay. Sometimes my youngest 
 brother made us anxious, for he was the greatest little ras- 
 cal, and he'd say things befo' 'em. But he lisped, and they 
 could n't understand him. The rest of us would n't never 
 say much to 'em, but if they got cuttin' up too high and 
 stealin' we'd save what we could. 01' Doctor Stewart up 
 hyar kept a hatchet sharpened to split their heads open, 
 and he let 'em know it. They told him if there was mo' 
 ready that way, they'd behave themselves. 
 
 Once a prowler come round to where we had all our fowls 
 fastened in the paddock. The wretch started to crawl in 
 there and had got half way under the high log fence when 
 my little brother saw him. The boy took a good stout apple- 
 stick and gave him the biggest lamming I ever looked at, 
 and the feller was glad to back out and slink off. 
 
 Another time I found a Yankee in our yard chasin' the 
 chickens, and I told him to let 'em alone. He said: "I'll 
 leave you two. You can be thankful I won't take 'em all. 
 You can raise a dom sight from two." 
 
 But he didn't carry off any at all. He'd got 'em to 
 runnin' and he could n't ketch 'em. We had some guineas, 
 but the soldiers never bothered them. They thought guin- 
 eas was n't fit to eat, and that we just kept 'em to scare off 
 hawks. 
 
 For a while we had our hens underneath the kitchen. 
 There was forty or fifty — a whole gang of 'em. The 
 kitchen was underpinned all around, but some of the rocks 
 were loose near the back door so we could pull 'em out, and 
 my younger brothers would get in there and hunt for the 
 eggs. They were little chaps who could crawl everywhere. 
 Under the stove was a hole that had got burnt through the 
 floor, and we'd laid a piece of board over it. We threw the 
 
50 Bull Run 
 
 chickens' feed down that hole. A guard who had been 
 detailed to stay at the house and protect our property 
 heard one of the chickens squawk when another pecked it, 
 and he said; "Oh! you-all got your chickens under hyar. I 
 never knew that befo', and I been hyar with you nearly 
 three weeks." 
 
 Besides our ol' Jim horse we had another horse named 
 Barney. It was funny to see Barney sometimes. Once 
 some Yankee cavalrymen got after him and chased him 
 into our potato patch. We saw 'em racin' around there and 
 doin' their best to ketch him, and he was so smart he 
 would n't let 'em do it. He'd stop short off and they'd go 
 on past him, and he played that same trick on 'em again 
 and again. It's a wonder they did n't shoot him. They did 
 some tall cussin', and if every oath had been a Parrott shot 
 they would have killed all the people within range. Pretty 
 soon an officer came, and he made 'em go away. If I 'd been 
 him I'd have taken my saber and whacked some of 'em. 
 Barney went down in the woods and stayed there till they 
 were all out of the country. 
 
 One of Barney's hoofs was too long. I don't know what 
 had happened to him. He was n't lame, but that hoof made 
 him walk lame, though we could work him anywhere and 
 ride him. I 've ridden him many a time. After bein' chased 
 by the Yankees he never could bear the sight of a blue coat. 
 It would make him jump like he was goin' to jump out of 
 his skin. We had a neighbor who wore an old blue army 
 overcoat he'd picked up on the battlefield. Once I went to 
 where he lived on some errand, and I rode Barney. I got to 
 the man's gate, and he come out of the house wearin' that 
 coat, and I told him to stop where he was. But he walked 
 right along to the gate, and Barney drew himself up in a 
 
The Farmer's Daughter 51 
 
 hump and bucked. If I'd had a sidesaddle I could have 
 stayed on, but I had a cavalry saddle, and I went over 
 backwards onto a pile of stones. I hurt my thumb — that 
 was all. When the ol' fool in the blue overcoat saw what 
 he'd done he kept back, and the horse stood still. I got 
 on Barney and rode away. I could have killed that man, 
 but I never said no mo' to him. I 'm one of these that treat 
 a man with silent contempt when they have no use for him. 
 
 This was such a small ol' house that most of the soldiers 
 thought there was nothin' inside worth takin', but we had 
 some silver spoons and a few other small articles that were 
 of value. Women wore hoops then, and I made a big pocket 
 and put our valuables in it and wore it under my hoops 
 when the Yankees were around. 
 
 They used to help themselves to the potatoes in our po- 
 tato patch. They did n't get many, though, for they only 
 had bayonets and spoons and such things to dig with. 
 
 The Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois men — they were the 
 meanest — except the riffraff from the cities, and one regi- 
 ment from Michigan. The colonel of that regiment was as 
 mean as the men were, and there was a major who was 
 meaner 'n any of 'em. Long after dark, one warm Septem- 
 ber night, that major and two or three of his men come in 
 hyar without knockin'. I was up, but Maw and the chil- 
 dren had gone to bed. Paw was away. An officer had sent 
 for him to come and pilot some of the troops on an expedi- 
 tion they were makin' that night, and Paw said they were 
 shootin' at every cedar bush along the way takin' it for a 
 Rebel. 
 
 The major wanted to boil some coffee, and I said, "I'll 
 boil it for you." 
 
 I was n't goin' to let 'em in the kitchen to save their 
 
52 Bull Run 
 
 necks, because I and my third brother had a pet sheep 
 fastened up there. She kept mighty mum that night and 
 never bleated once. 
 
 The coffee had n't hardly come to a boil when the men 
 wanted it. I brought it to 'em, and they sat around a table 
 on the porch and drank it. They'd brought brown sugar 
 for sweetening and they had some ol' crackers to eat. I 
 gave 'em a lamp. That was befo' coal oil days, and we 
 burnt butter in it. While they sat there they were makin' 
 mean remarks ' bout one of the local women. I wish she'd 
 heard what they said. She would jaw and abuse the Yan- 
 kees and say all sorts of hateful things to 'em, and yet 
 later she turned right around and married a Yankee 
 soldier. 
 
 Those men stayed hyar till morning. We had a great big 
 stack of hay next to the barn, and they would have fed 
 their horses at it, but Paw had put briery hay on the out- 
 side on purpose, and when they got their hands into it they 
 thought it was no good. Half of our garden was full of the 
 biggest cabbages I ever see, and they just stripped that 
 garden of cabbages and everything else. Besides they 
 killed all the turkeys on the place. It was n't that they 
 wanted the things for food, but they thought they were 
 starvin' us Rebels. When they left they loaded themselves 
 up, and they scattered turkeys and cabbages along the road 
 half way to Gainesville. 
 
 We see hard times in the war. The women had to turn 
 their dresses upside down and wrongside fore and inside 
 out to make 'em last. My youngest brother had pants 
 made out of pretty gray cloth that had been some Southern 
 soldier's saddle-blanket, and his jacket was made out of a 
 blue army overcoat. The battlefields was quite a help to 
 
The Farmer's Daughter 53 
 
 us, for you could find almost anything on 'em — all but a 
 steam engine. I never went out on 'em that I did n't bring 
 back a load of plunder. That 's where we got materials for 
 our shoes. Cartridge boxes were good for soles, tent canvas 
 would turn water and was all right for the upper part, and 
 we tipped 'em with patent leather from soldiers' belts. 
 Paw could make the rougher shoes. But a fellow who lived 
 out across the battlefield made shoes for all over the coun- 
 try. We took the stuff for our best shoes right to his house 
 to be made up. 
 
 Well, I've told you 'bout the fightin' round hyar. It 
 makes me mad when people talk in favor of war. I 've got 
 no use for it, and I 've got no use for battle vessels or big 
 guns. It would pay a heap better to put the money into 
 missions. 
 
VI 
 
 The Slave Blacksmith ^ 
 
 I BEEN in this region all my life — eighty years. In my 
 young days I belonged to Mr. Lewis, and I had a little 
 blacksmith's shop right hyar at Groveton where I live now 
 at the cross-roads. There was only two or three houses 
 hyar then just as there are to-day. 
 
 The Confederates had been kickin' up around hyar for 
 some time befo' the battle. Oh land, yes! and they had 
 fo'ts six miles from hyar at Manassa' and had held fo'th 
 there a good while. 
 
 We colored people knew that the war was on foot, and we 
 thought slavery would n't be allowed any mo' if the North 
 won. Very few of us could read at all or even knew the 
 alphabet, and our masters would have kept us ignorant 
 about the meaning of the war, but the news leaked out so 
 we got hold of it slightly. As the war went on the North 
 had enough well-wishers among the colored people for 
 them to be twenty-five thousand strong in its armies on the 
 field. I heard one colored man say that he 'd rather lose his 
 wife from his family than have the North beaten. 
 
 We wanted liberty — we wanted to be free men and 
 women, and not like the Children of Israel in bondage in 
 Egypt. We wanted to inherit the promised land. In the 
 
 1 He was a courteous, intelligent man, white-haired and spectacled. 
 I visited him at his house, which, though weather-worn, was clean and 
 comfortable. 
 
The Slave Blacksmith 55 
 
 old slave times I've known men to freeze to death they 
 were so thinly clad. They'd have ragged jackets and no 
 undershirt, and old patched trousers with no drawers un- 
 derneath. Exposure and poor living made the slaves get 
 pleurisy — what we call pneumonia now — and they'd have 
 rheumatic pains. Planters from farther South would come 
 hyar to market and buy up laborers for their tobacco and 
 cotton plantations, and I've seen those slaves goin' along 
 handcuffed, and they'd be put in jail at night to keep 'em 
 from trjan' to escape. We was n't allowed to go visitin' 
 from house to house. They had paterollers who went about 
 on horseback at night and patrolled all the roads. Those 
 paterollers would come to your house to see who you'd got 
 there, and who was out of place. If they found you on the 
 highway without a pass from your boss, and you could n't 
 give a satisfactory account of yourself, they'd lay on so 
 many lashes. 
 
 Well, as I was sayin', we had Confederate soldiers all 
 around this north coast befo' the battle of Bull Run, and 
 we were a-lookin' for a battle but did n't know which way 
 it would be comin' in. Things kept kind o' quiet till the 
 middle of July. Then, on a Thursday, mind you, the Union 
 troops come down through a little village called Center- 
 ville, six miles east of hyar, and a long-range cannonade 
 was begun. There was no musketry. It was just a little 
 artillery skirmish with guns stationed on both sides of the 
 Run firing back and fo'th. 
 
 Our employers took a big lot of us slaves down in the 
 Bull Run bottom to blockade the road by chopping down 
 trees. The trees were great big oaks, and four men would 
 chop at a single one at the same time. After we 'd cut a tree 
 till it would n't take much to throw it we'd let it stand, but 
 
56 Bull Run 
 
 of co'se some few trees fell without our intending to have 
 'em. When we'd got enough fixed we sat down right there 
 waiting for orders. If the enemy got too strong we was 
 expected to bounce up, throw the trees, and escape. We 
 stayed on the field Thursday night just as the soldiers did. 
 Friday the Union troops fell back to their camp, and we 
 slaves went home. 
 
 Sunday morning come around. Everything was calm, 
 and the sun was shining bright and hot. I'd had my 
 breakfast and was standing in the yard bef o' my shop door 
 lookin' to see what I could see when I heard the boom of a 
 cannon. I looked down the Fairfax Road and seen a smoke 
 raisin' above the trees. Then I heard the pop of a return 
 shot from the Southern side. The cannon kept on firin', 
 and the people around hyar were all lookin' on from their 
 houses. This is high ground and we had a beautiful view. 
 
 About ten o'clock the Union infantry crossed Bull Run, 
 and then I could see 'em goin' helter-skelter crossways and 
 every way hardly a mile distant. Yes, I could see both 
 gangs and the whole maneuvering. My Lord ! I was lookin' 
 right at the smoke blazin' out of the guns. There was a 
 constant flicker of firin', and the noise was mo' like a hail- 
 storm on a roof than anything else I can compare it to. I 
 did n't go home to get any dinner that day. I had some- 
 thing else to think about. It was a very exciting time, I 
 tell you. It was, indeed! 
 
 The fighting that I could see was over in an hour or so, 
 but the bombooing and bumming continued until about 
 two. Then the whole Northern army retreated. We 
 could n't see the men, but we could see a mountainous 
 cloud of dust rising up through the tops of the trees from 
 the roads they were on. The Southern troops followed 'em 
 
The Slave Blacksmith 57 
 
 across the Run and kept up their cannonading until about 
 four o'clock. 
 
 When we colored people knew the Northern army had 
 been beaten we felt just like we were worse off than we ever 
 was, and we thought we'd be barbarously treated. The 
 South knew in its soul that our sympathy was on the other 
 side. I've heard our masters talkin' that way, and they 
 used to tell us so. Whatever they said we had to keep silent 
 and take the wink as good as a nod. We could n't argue. 
 We just let a still tongue carry a wise head — that's all. 
 
 On Monday lots of people come from all directions and 
 went perusin' on the battlefield, and I went over that way 
 myself, but I soon turned back after I began to come 
 across dead men. I'd seen enough. I heard the Southern 
 soldiers say that some of their men were killed with poi- 
 soned bullets. The poison was in a thin piece of some dif- 
 ferent metal at the big end. I reckon I 've seen a thousand 
 of those bullets that have been picked up around hyar. 
 When the ball went into a plank or a sapling or a man's 
 body that poisonous plate stayed there and let loose the 
 poison, even if the lead part went on and out. But North- 
 ern soldiers have told me that such bullets were just an 
 invention for cleaning out the gun barrel as they were fired. 
 
 We saw a good deal of the soldiers all through the war — 
 coming and going and camping and fighting. Once a Fed- 
 eral officer stopped at my shop, and his men stood lined up 
 out in the road. While he was talking with me one of the 
 men fell dead as a beef, shot by a bullet from the Con- 
 federates who were a full quarter of a mile away. 
 
 If the soldiers were camped anywhere near they'd be 
 comin' to our houses to buy milk, butter, pies, or anything. 
 I 've had 'em in my house many a time, both Northern and 
 
58 Bull Run 
 
 Southern soldiers. Some were just as genteel as if they'd 
 been born in a church. But you'd find scalawags, too — 
 men who were filthy and with no behavior about 'em. 
 They was n't accustomed to behaving, and no doubt they 
 was rough in their own homes. Some of 'em was convicts 
 cut loose from the Richmond Penitentiary. They were 
 sent out hyar with the stripes on 'em to throw up breast- 
 works, and they were just as mean and dirty people as the 
 sun ever shone on. 
 
 We lost considerable in the line of things to eat. The sol- 
 diers would milk our cows out in the field and take the milk 
 away, and they'd steal our chickens, geese, and turkeys. 
 The Northern and Southern men was alike about takin' 
 those things — one side stole just as much as the other. 
 But I don't blame 'em for stealin' chickens — why cer- 
 tainly not. I'd do the same thing myself in their place. 
 Yes, if I 'd been for weeks and months out on the field eat- 
 ing only beef and hardtack, and I found a good fat hen 
 I 'd take that hen sure. 
 
 But of co'se we did n't like to have our things carried off, 
 and if we could ketch a man stealin', and could overpower 
 him, we saved our property; and if we were not able to do 
 that the things had to go 'long. There was no civil law then, 
 and you could n't do anything more about it. When people 
 refugeed and left their houses vacant the soldiers would go 
 in and take the wearin' clothes and whatever else they 
 pleased. Often though it was the neighbors instead of the 
 soldiers that did such pilfering. Clothing was very skurce 
 among the Rebels in the last part of the war, and they wore 
 anything they could get on except United States blue. 
 That was n't allowed. They had on a general mixture of 
 clothing of all sorts, and they were ragged and dirty. 
 
The Slave Blacksmith 59 
 
 Sometimes we'd go to an officer at the army headquar- 
 ters and say, "Sir, I wish to have a guard on my place." 
 
 The officer would say, "All right, but you'll have to be 
 responsible for him and see that he's not jerked up by the 
 enemy." 
 
 So a soldier would be detailed to go and protect your 
 place, and he'd stay right there till he was ordered in, even 
 if the balance of his troop went away. 
 
 After the Emancipation Proclamation I set up my own 
 blacksmith shop and went to work. I felt like a man then, 
 and as if I had something to work for. But some, as soon as 
 they were free, quit work, and away they went, which was . 
 a great mistake. I have to acknowledge there 's mo' loafing 
 now than befo' the war. The slave had a man behind him 
 with a bull whip, arid was made to work whether he wanted 
 to or not. But you go to the towns and villages now, and 
 you'll find big, able-bodied men standing around doing 
 nothing. A man I knew was offered a dollar and a quarter 
 a day. He said he could n't board himself for that, and 
 because the money was n't comin' fast enough he kep' on 
 loafin'. But no man is wise to walk around a small job 
 when he 's out of work. Freedom ain't made us all thrifty, 
 and though some colored men are worth thirty-five or forty 
 thousand dollars others ain't worth a decent suit of clothes. 
 
 Perhaps you'd be interested to know that I seen a ghost 
 on the battlefield once. There was a woman in the neigh- 
 borhood whose company I was very fond of, and I often 
 went to call on her. It was a lonesome road to where she 
 lived and it went across the battlefield. One night I was 
 startin' out to call on her, and I picked up my double- 
 bar'led gun to carry along. I thought some dog might 
 bother me, or I might see a wild turkey up a tree. I 'd been 
 
60 Bull Run 
 
 out in the evenin' a while befo' and seen a turkey, and I 
 came cl'ar home, got my gun, and crep' back and killed 
 him. 
 
 Anyway, the gun was company, and I took it on my 
 shoulder and started. The night was pleasant and the 
 stars was shining, but the air was cool and the wind was 
 blowin' pretty high. I walked along until I saw somethin' 
 like a big black dog comin' across the battlefield. " If that 
 dog attacks me I '11 give him both bar'ls " I thought. 
 
 I felt pretty safe with that gun in my hands, for I'd 
 never known it to miss fire. After cocking it ready for 
 business I checked up to let the animal go by if it wanted 
 to; but as soon as I stopped that stopped, too. Then, in a 
 minute or so, it started on again. The country was all 
 ripped up and the fences gone, and the dog came straight 
 along from the field down in the hollow of the road. 
 So I walked out on the edge of the road with my gun 
 pointed right at where the animal was. I 'd got within ten 
 feet of it when, Blessed Lord! I saw it was nothing but a 
 cedar bush. It was kind of a goose-egg shape and had been 
 cut off, and the breeze of the air had made it roll. There's 
 many a man would have run and always thought afterward 
 he'd seen a mystery. 
 
 When I found out what it was I let the hammers down, 
 throwed my gun up on my shoulder, and went on. Anyhow 
 I had a good story to tell when I made my call. 
 
VII 
 
 The Widow's Son ^ 
 
 They fought the battle of Shiloh hyar early in the month 
 
 of April back in 1862, when I was seventeen years old. My 
 
 father was dead, and I helped Mother run our farm. This 
 
 was a very rough, thinly-settled region then. Oh! there 
 
 wasn't near the people livin' hyar that there are now. 
 
 Five miles north was Shiloh Church, the little log building 
 
 which gave the battle its name, and two miles farther on 
 
 was Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River where the 
 
 Union troops got off the steamboats. The nearest town was 
 
 Corinth, and so it is still. That's fifteen miles to the 
 
 south. 
 
 We had a rather rude, old-fashioned, hewed-log house, 
 
 but it was a great big one, about twenty by twenty-two 
 
 feet, and two stories high. Near by was an outdoor kitchen 
 
 with a hearth in it that went from one side to the other. If 
 
 it had n't been for that wide hearth the little colored fellers 
 
 would have got the building afire when they were left 
 
 in there. The slaves liked to congregate in the outdoor 
 
 kitchen after supper and sit around a big log fire and talk 
 
 and laugh till bedtime. They lived in four or five one-room 
 
 log cabins about sixteen feet square. The cracks between 
 
 ^ The narrator was a large-framed, stoop-shouldered man with a 
 long white beard. I met him in his home yard and observed that his 
 failing eyesight compelled him to feel his way about with a cane. While 
 he told his story we sat on the porch of his large, plain farmhouse. 
 Roxmdabout were irregular fields in thin oak woods. 
 
62 Shiloh 
 
 the logs was daubed with mud, and the cabins was right 
 comfortable. 
 
 The slaves was n't mistreated hyar, and they seemed 
 contented. Farther south, where there were big quanti- 
 ties of 'em, they were bossed by overseers who were often 
 pretty rough. But I don't think it was the general custom 
 to abuse 'em anywhere. They were property, and it was for 
 the owner's interest to keep 'em in good condition, and to 
 send for the doctor if they were sick so they'd be cured and 
 get back to work quicker. 
 
 The crops on our farm were principally corn, oats, and 
 wheat; and we raised some horses and cows. There was a 
 good range hyar, and we let the farm animals all run out. 
 We fed our cows some so they'd give more milk and we'd 
 have better butter, but the balance of the stock never got 
 any home feeding unless in a real cold time in winter. 
 
 The hogs picked up their own living, too. They found 
 plenty of mast, such as beech and hickory nuts and acorns, 
 and in the fall there were muscadines all over the bottoms. 
 The hogs loved those grapes, and they had no trouble get- 
 ting 'em, for after the grapes got ripe the wind would shake 
 'em down. We called the hogs up often enough to keep 'em 
 gentle. They'd have gone plumb wild if we had n't tended 
 to 'em. Pork time come along about November, and then 
 we'd get the hogs together by carrying corn to drop along 
 and toll 'em all up into a fenced lot. We'd mark the ears of 
 the young ones so they would n't be taken by other people, 
 and we'd pick out the ones we wanted to butcher and put 
 'em in a pen and feed 'em. When the weather got good 
 and cold, and the hogs were fat enough we butchered 'em. 
 Then we'd have bacon and sausage, and we'd have souse 
 made out of the feet and head. That souse was a kind of 
 
The Widow's Son 63 
 
 jelly. Hit was seasoned all up with different ingrediences 
 and pressed, and the women would slice it out about like 
 tobacco plugs and put it on the table cold. 
 
 The folks hyar went a hundred miles to Memphis 
 or Nashville to market. Hit took two weeks to go and 
 come. They'd carry cotton and a heap of eggs, poultry, 
 and things like that, and bring provisions back. The prod- 
 uce was loaded into a covered wagon with a bottom that 
 bowed down low in the middle. Four yoke of oxen were 
 hitched to it, and the farmer and a nigger man would set 
 back under the cover and guide the steers by hollerin', 
 "Gee," and, "Whoa, come," to 'em. 
 
 Not much land had been cleared, and we had as fine tim- 
 ber in the bottoms as ever you see anywhere in the world. 
 Some of the oak trees would make a thousand rails. A heap 
 of good oak timber grew on the uplands, too, but it was 
 more knotty and not so large. The uplands have been pow- 
 erfully butchered. We'd deaden the trees — girdle 'em, you 
 know — and when they fell we'd roll 'em up in a heap and 
 bum 'em to get 'em out of the way. There was lots of 
 squirrels jumpin' about in the woods, and game of all kinds 
 was plenty. 
 
 Before the battle our Confederate army was stationed at 
 Corinth, and our cavalry would come out hyar tryin' to no- 
 tice if the Federals had made any inroads. There were boys 
 from this region in both armies. We used to call those that 
 were fighting on the Northern side "homemade Yankees." 
 One of the officers in Grant's army was a man who had 
 been quite prominent in our local politics, and his troops 
 captured a young cavalryman whose home was in this 
 neighborhood. So the prisoner's father went to that officer 
 and said: "I'd love to have you let my boy off. I've 
 
64 Shiloh 
 
 always voted for you"; and the officer allowed the boy 
 to go. 
 
 The first little bad time we had was one day about a fort- 
 night before the battle. I was down hyar at the creek with 
 a nigger or two. We were clearing new land, and the nig- 
 gers was girdling trees and cuttin' bushes, and I was bossin' 
 'em. We was close to the road, and by and by I heard some 
 one call out, "Halt!" 
 
 Hit was the first time I 'd heard that word. I looked and 
 saw a Confederate soldier and two citizens sitting on their 
 horses out on the road. They'd been after the mail. A little 
 farther off were some Yankees who called out, "Advance!" 
 
 "I'll be blessed if I'll advance," the Confederate soldier 
 said, and he and the citizens started to ride away. 
 
 Then I heard a shot singing, and it went through and 
 through one of the citizens. He tumbled to the ground and 
 the other two galloped off. The man who was shot called 
 me, but I was afraid to go to him, and the Yankees come 
 and took him to the nearest house. They had one of their 
 doctors tend to his wound, and after that the neighbors 
 carried him on a litter about four miles to his home. 
 
 When I come on up from the creek to the house hyar it 
 looked to me like the whole face of the earth was covered 
 with Yankee cavalry and soldiers. As soon as I could I 
 went to where the man who'd been shot was, and he 
 whispered to me that he'd been bringin' a bunch of letters 
 that our soldiers at Cumberland Gap had written to their 
 home folks around hyar. After he fell off his horse he'd 
 crawled to the fence and poked those letters through a 
 crack, and he wanted me to get 'em. So I went right 
 straight there and took 'em away. 
 
 The Union troops camped that night near our house, but 
 
The Widow's Son 65 
 
 evacuated back to Pittsburg Landing the next day. More 
 and more of 'em kept congregating there, and some of 'em 
 were out hyar every day or two. By the 6th of April they 'd 
 increased to forty thousand. They did n't throw up any 
 earthworks or take any special precautions because Gen- 
 eral Grant was expectin' the Confederates would stay at 
 Corinth till he got ready to attack 'em. But General 
 Johnston, the Confederate commander, brought his army 
 out hyar. They had an awful time comin' with their wag- 
 ons and cannon. Hit had been rainy, and the roads was so 
 bad the cannon kept miring down, and the men had to be 
 prizing 'em out with poles all the way. On some of these old 
 bare knobs, where the ground is full of lime and nothing 
 ever grows, the mud rolls up as a wagon goes over it and 
 makes solid wheels and has to be cut out from between the 
 spokes. The mud delayed the army so much it staved the 
 battle off one day. 
 
 We knew there was goin' to be a hard fight, and I went 
 to bed Saturday night expectin' it would come in at any 
 minute. I did n't sleep a wink. I heard the first guns at 
 four-fifty-five the next morning, and the sound was like the 
 popping of com. The firin' got heavier and heavier, and 
 soon the roaring of cannon was jarring the window sashes, 
 and the musketry became a constant sound like a storm. 
 But later the firin' would once in a while sort of cease, and 
 we'd think maybe they was done. Pretty soon, though, 
 they 'd break out again. 
 
 The fightin' had n't been goin' on long when the 
 wounded began to come back. Some walked, and some 
 was hauled in ambulances. As many as could be accom- 
 modated come to our house. We moved the beds from the 
 lower rooms upstairs, and the wounded were laid in there 
 
66 Shiloh 
 
 on pallets. They were arranged in rows with aisles for the 
 doctors to go along and see what they needed, and they 
 were groanin' and takin' on, and it was mighty bad. Some 
 had to have limbs taken off, and the doctors did the ampu- 
 tating on a table in the hall. The veranda was crowded 
 with wounded, too, and so was the yard. They lay on the 
 ground with just their blankets under 'em, though it was 
 chilly weather and the ground was wet. 
 
 Quite a lot of soldiers come to the house askin' for food, 
 and our old cook went to cookin' for 'em. She was a 
 mighty good cook, old Nancy was. She 'd pass out the food 
 and the soldiers would eat it in their hands. Some had little 
 pans in their haversacks to put food in. Nancy kept cookin' 
 the biscuit and ham-meat and bacon, and things like that, 
 till she cooked all that we had. 
 
 I was just a-standin' around there skeered right smart. 
 Mother and I and my two little brothers went to a neigh- 
 bor's house to stay that night. 
 
 The Yankees had been driven way back to the banks of 
 the river, and most likely they'd all been captured if 
 twenty-five thousand fresh troops hadn't arrived. Hit 
 looked to me next day as if our soldiers was runnin' away. 
 They come scattering along two or three in a bunch at first, 
 but by and by so many were retreatin' back that they were 
 everywhere. All the time the ambulances was goin' 
 through the mud to Corinth with the wounded, and the 
 blood was shakin' out hke the drivers was haulin' hogs just 
 butchered. About two thousand men had been killed and 
 eight thousand wounded on each side. I recollect it was 
 several days before all the wounded were taken away from 
 our house. I come up there every day to help wait on 'em, 
 carryin' water or any little nourishment. 
 
The Widow's Son 67 
 
 There was a right smart fight near by on Tuesday. A few 
 of the Union troops come out hyar, and our men tackled 
 'em, and they went back faster 'n they 'd come. After that 
 the Union army moved very cautiously, but before long 
 they established a camp about half a mile from us, and they 
 were there as late as June. Some of 'em come into our 
 house and looked around, but they spoke noways harsh to 
 nobody. 
 
 Our hogs used to go to the camp right in among the tents, 
 and they got very fat feeding on the litter, wastage, and 
 slop, and the soldiers would knock 'em in the head on the 
 sly and clean 'em and eat 'em. The soldiers killed a good 
 many cattle that they picked up around the country. 
 They got all of ourn. I don't think we had ary head left. 
 But you could n't hardly blame 'em for takin' things to 
 eat. I heard one soldier say his colonel would steal right 
 in the middle of a battle if he had a chance. The soldier 
 said he 'd seen the colonel ridin' around with his troops in 
 action and a side of bacon under his arm. 
 
 That was a lawless time, and the army swept the country 
 just like a cyclone. Hit took everything there was. Some 
 of the soldiers was honest and would pay for what they got, 
 but most would take things and go on. Often they would 
 walk into a house and order the women to cook 'em a meal 
 of victuals, but they never done us that-a-way. 
 
 We could n't make no crops that year. The troops went 
 all through the fields, and where they marched they tore 
 the fences down, and lots of the rails was burnt up in their 
 campfires. An old rail burnt pretty good in a wet time. We 
 took the rails that were left and condensed our fences. 
 There was only enough to go around a couple of acres, and 
 by the time we'd got the land ploughed and our corn 
 
68 Shiloh 
 
 planted it was the last of June, I reckon. We raised some 
 roas'in' years, but the frost come before the corn was 
 ripe. 
 
 The wagoners was drawing from Pittsburg Landing past 
 our place to the camp, and they'd get off and help them- 
 selves to our roas'in' years. I'd holler at 'em, and they'd 
 run like lightning, but that was all a pretence. Mother 
 knew they would n't listen at me much, and she com- 
 plained to the wagon-master that they was takin' what 
 little we had to live on. Then he give the teamsters an 
 awful cussin' and scoldin', but I reckon that was pretence, 
 too. 
 
 All our hogs had been taken, so I went off and bought two 
 shoats and brought 'em hyar. The army wagons was 
 haulin' com, and so much fell out of the sacks and dribbled 
 along the ground that our shoats would foller the wagons 
 and get all they wanted to eat. We missed 'em one day and 
 my brothers and I went to look to see where they was. We 
 did n't know what in the world had become of 'em. Pretty 
 soon we found their hides and entrails by the wayside. 
 The teamsters had skinned 'em and thrown 'em on their 
 wagons. 
 
 Two of our horses was took and we'd have lost the other 
 two if we had n't kept 'em locked up. By spring we had 
 nothing to feed 'em on, and we would let 'em graze down in 
 the creek bottom where we was commencin' to try to make 
 a crop. They shrunk up and got pretty thin, but they 
 picked up enough to keep alive. 
 
 One noon, after we'd been to the house and eaten dinner, 
 we come back and the best horse was gone. I follered 
 around the fence till I come to a place where it was let 
 down, and there was the horse's tracks. He was tolerably 
 
The Widow's Son 69 
 
 fresh shod, and I knew those tracks was his, and I did n't 
 have no doubt that the soldiers had got him. 
 
 I was afraid to go over to the camp because I might be 
 shot for a spy before I got there. But I kept a-studyin' 
 about it, and I decided I must go. Hit was a dangerous 
 errand, and I thought I ought to avoid suspicion by lookin' 
 as much hke a citizen as I could. So I got my little brother 
 and put him up on the horse behind me. I had a saddle and 
 he had a blanket to sit on. As we went on through the camp 
 we met a feller comin' out ridin' the stolen horse. The horse 
 had a cavahy rig on, but the little horse I was on and the 
 stolen horse knew each other and tried to smell noses. I 
 just jerked my horse away and proceeded on to head- 
 quarters. 
 
 The general was sitting out on the veranda of the house 
 with officers all around, and I was too green and skeered to 
 say anything. Pretty soon the general noticed that I was 
 hangin' around anxious for something, and he asked what 
 I wanted. I told him one of his men had taken a horse out 
 of my field, and I could n't make a crop with the one 
 little horse I had left. 
 
 "You come back to-morrer," the general says. 
 
 On the way home I passed the place where the army 
 horses was grazin', and one of the men asked me if I'd got 
 what I went after. He'd sort o' smelt a mouse, and he 
 swore I 'd better keep out of the camp. But the next day 
 I put my little brother behind me and went to the general. 
 He turned to one of his officers dhectly, and said "Lieu- 
 tenant, you go with this boy and look over the camp, and 
 if you find a horse he says is his bring the feller who has it 
 hyar." 
 
 We found the horse tied to a stake among the tents, and 
 
70 Shiloh 
 
 the officer said to the man who had stolen it, "You go with 
 me. 
 
 We went to the general leadin' the horse, and the man 
 said, "I found him out hyar on the commons." 
 
 "Well, old man," I says, "I don't know as I know what 
 commons are, but you got him in the field where I was 
 ploughin'." He was n't an old man, but that was what I 
 called him. 
 
 Then the general said, "Lieutenant, you take this man 
 away and we'll punish him." 
 
 I went back home with the horse, but he was so good- 
 lookin' I was afraid he'd be stole again, and I sold him after 
 I 'd made a crop. You had to have some old shag with his 
 back skinned, and pore and boney, if you wanted to keep 
 him. 
 
VIII 
 
 A Battlefield Farmer^ 
 
 I LIVED in a log house on the main road half a mile south of 
 Shiloh Church. So I was right plumb in the worst danger 
 thar was at all. I'd bought the place in '59 and paid two 
 hundred and fifty dollars on it, and I gave my note for two 
 hundred and fifty more. The land was already cleared, and 
 thar was a cotton gin on the place. I chopped down trees 
 and built the house myself. We did n't have no such thing 
 as a lumber house in this country then much. My house 
 had jist one room and no loft. The roof was made of thin 
 oak boards, three feet long, split out by hand, and put on 
 like shingles. Close by was a smokehouse and a little 
 barn. 
 
 I was young them days — not much over thirty at the 
 time of the battle — and I had a wife and two children. 
 
 After the Yankees begun to gather hyar early in March, 
 
 1862, some of 'em was pretty generally around my place 
 
 every day. I had some fodder stacked in the field — two 
 
 big stacks — and they tuck that the first thing. They tuck 
 
 nineteen bales of cotton, which was all I had ginned, and 
 
 carried it down to their steamboats, and I never saw any 
 
 more of it. That same day they tuck my corn, and I says 
 
 1 He was a slight, smooth-faced old man, who was much more 
 lively mentally than he was physically. I found him living with a son- 
 in-law off on a half-wild by-road near the battlefield. The day I visited 
 him was warm, and we sat in the open passage between the two sec- 
 tions of the one-story dwelling. 
 
72 Shiloh 
 
 to the feller that drove up to the crib, "I'd ruther you'd 
 jist shoot me down than take my corn." 
 
 He told me I did n't know what war was. Well, I did n't, 
 and I don't want to know what it is no more. 
 
 They gave me vouchers for the truck they carried off, 
 and I was hopin' I might git money for them vouchers; but 
 one mornin' some soldiers broke into my house while I was 
 away. Thar was a key lock on the front door, but only a 
 thumb bolt on the back door. By poundin' off a board that 
 was nailed over a space between the logs near the back door 
 they reached in and slid the bolt. When I got home at noon 
 I found six of 'em in thar cookin' dinner. I threatened to 
 complain of 'em, and they told me they'd pay me a gold 
 dollar for their dinner. So I said, "All right." 
 
 But after they'd gone I found they'd taken my vouchers 
 and every paper I had on top of the earth, and they tuck 
 the old woman's scissors and needles, and they tuck my 
 razor, and they tuck my clothes so I did n't have an ex- 
 tra suit or nothing. One feller put on my drawers, and I 
 found his under the house full of body lice. 
 
 I moved my family a few days before the battle right 
 across the hill to my father-in-law's. I did n't want to be at 
 home. The Yankees was camped thick as blackbirds all 
 around my place, and things looked too scarey thar. 
 
 On Saturday morning, April 5th, some of their cavalry- 
 men stopped at my father-in-law's and said they was 
 thirsty and hungry, and we gave 'em water and food. 
 Then they went along, and they'd hardly got out of sight 
 in the next holler when two Confederates spurred up to the 
 gate and wanted to know if any Yankees had been thar. 
 "Yes, and they've jist gone," I said. 
 
 Whichever side come to me for information I told the 
 
A Battlefield Farmer 73 
 
 truth and did n't hide anything. Northern or Southern, 
 they was alike to me. I was n't nary one of 'em. 
 
 The Confederates asked which way the Yankees went, 
 and I replied, "They went down the hill." 
 
 The men questioned me some more and found out I'd 
 been livin' inside of the Union lines, and then they said, 
 "You come along with us." 
 
 Thar was two of 'em, and I did n't have a gun, so I 
 could n't do anything but go. They went straight to the 
 head man, Sidney Johnston, and lit off their horses. 
 They'd been out scouting, and one of 'em said to the 
 general, "We've brought you a man who's been in the 
 Yankee camps." 
 
 Johnston wanted to know how things looked thar, and I 
 said: "The Yankees' battle line stretched out in the woods 
 so far I could n't see any end to it. Their tents made as 
 pretty a city as I ever looked at." 
 
 "Have they got any rifle-pits out?" he asked. 
 
 "No, I did n't see any," I told him. 
 . "Do you know the country back hyar?" he said. 
 
 I told him I did, and he sent me off to show his men some 
 roads that was n't so muddy as the main roads. In about 
 an hour by the sun I got back to Johnston, but they did n't 
 let me leave till it was gittin' dark. So I stopped that night 
 at my Uncle Peter's on the other side of the creek from my 
 father-in-law's. 
 
 The battle began the next morning jist at daylight. I 
 was already awake, but I was n't out of bed yet. As soon as 
 I could git to the stable I saddled up, and I 'd ridden down 
 as far as the creek when the first cannon was fired. An old 
 turkey gobbler answered it. Another cannon fired, and he 
 gobbled again, and that was what he did every time till 
 
74 Shiloh 
 
 they was firing so fast he could n't keep up. Then he got 
 ashamed of himself and quit. 
 
 About that time some Confederate soldiers caught me, 
 and they did n't turn me loose till ten o'clock. When I was 
 free I hurried to whar my family was and I found a world 
 of soldiers around the house. An officer said to me: "You 
 git the women and children out. Thar's liable to be a fight 
 hyar." 
 
 I decided to take 'em to Squire Greer's, a mile above, and 
 I was on the way when some troops stopped me. Their 
 colonel said, "We want you to pilot us across to whar 
 they're fightin'." 
 
 But I told him, " I got to take these women and children 
 to a house up hyar a little ways." 
 
 "All right," he said, "take 'em along, and then come 
 back." 
 
 I did n't have no notion to go back, and after I got to 
 Squire Greer's me 'n' my family — every one — went on 
 down in the swamp. We found a dry place to sit on, and 
 we stayed thar that day. None of us older ones e't any din- 
 ner, but I expect my wife had brought along something for 
 the children so they did n't go hungry. 
 
 I might perhaps have got some idea of how the battle 
 was goin' by climbin' a tree, but I did n't want to be seen. 
 We was n't a quarter of a mile from Squire Greer's black- 
 smith's shop. He was busy shoein' the soldiers' horses as 
 fast as he could shoe, but every half hour, or as often 
 as he got news of the battle, he'd come whar we was to 
 report. 
 
 Thar was a continual roar of small arms and cannon all 
 day long, and I could tell by the sound that the Yankees 
 was bein' pushed back to the last jump-off. That suited 
 
A Battlefield Farmer 75 
 
 me well enough. I did n't care which side whipped, and 
 I was n't anxious except to see the thing closed out. I jist 
 wanted to git 'em to quit. That was what I was after. I 
 did n't want no war. 
 
 In the evenin', about sundown, after the firin' had 
 stopped, I tuck my family up to Squire Greer's, and we 
 spent the night thar. He had plenty of beds, and I slept 
 tolerably good. 
 
 I waked up about day and went to my father-in-law's 
 house. Things looked pretty bad thar. Under a big oak 
 tree in the yard lay a man flat on his back with a blanket 
 over him, and I pulled the blanket up enough to see that he 
 was dead. The house was full of wounded men, and dead 
 men was piled up in the little hall jist like hogs. You see 
 perhaps the wounded wouldn't more'n git thar in the 
 ambulances than they was dead, and I reckon the hall was 
 a convenient place to pile their bodies. The bullets was 
 fiyin' thick thar for a part of the day, and a cannon ball 
 had knocked off the chimney, and a good many trees and 
 limbs were shot off. Thar was blood everywhar all over 
 the place. Hit was most too much for me, but by the end 
 of the week I got so hardened to such things I could have 
 eaten my dinner off a dead man. 
 
 Thar was n't no doctor at my father-in-law's that Mon- 
 day — nary a one — and the first thing I done I waited on 
 the wounded men the best I could. I give 'em some water 
 which I carried around to 'em in a canteen. Afterward I 
 cooked bacon and cornbread for 'em. The armies was 
 fightin' again and I could hear the cannon very plain, but 
 it had begun to rain, and the drops a-spottin' the house 
 made so much noise I could n't hear the smallarms. About 
 two o'clock the Confederates formed a line of battle right 
 
76 Shiloh 
 
 through the yard. I tuck that as a notice to leave, and 
 I went to whar my family was stayin'. 
 
 On the first day of the battle the Confederates captured 
 everything the Fed-erals had in their encampment. They 
 drew the things back two or three miles, but the next day, 
 when they retreated, they had to abandon 'em. So they 
 broke the flour barrels, and they piled up the tents and 
 guns and touched a match to 'em to destroy 'em. But thar 
 was stuff that they did n't have time to destroy scattered 
 all along the road with dead men and dead horses and 
 mules lyin' about. On Chuesday thar was n't any soldiers 
 on that part of the battlefield, and the people come from all 
 around and gathered up as much as they could carry off. 
 In places thar was great piles of bacon, and I heard of one 
 family that got enough of that bacon to do 'em the rest of 
 the year. 
 
 Hit had rained a-Monday night a big one, but Chuesday 
 was tolerable pleasant, and I started about sun-up to go 
 back to my father-in-law's. The creek was up and out of 
 the banks in places, but I got over on a log. When I 
 reached the house I found the wounded as thick as they 
 could lie in thar. I could n't hardly git around among 'em, 
 and thar was nobody to care for 'em except one soldier. Jist 
 as I was makin' ready to give 'em somethin' to eat a troop 
 of Federal cavalry come and wanted me to pilot 'em. I told 
 'em I could n't go because I had to cook for the wounded, 
 and besides I had no horse. 
 
 "Yes, you can go, too," they said. "We'll have men to 
 take care of the wounded, and we'll furnish you a horse." 
 
 So I had to go along, and I was with 'em all day. We 
 went up the road a piece and they marched into an old 
 field. Some of us stayed behind on the edge of it, and the 
 
A Battlefield Farmer 77 
 
 rest galloped on across and in among the trees beyond. 
 But in a few minutes back they come out of the woods, offi- 
 cers and men all mixed up together, and the Rebels drivin' 
 'em. 
 
 I spoke to those I was with and said: "What in the 
 world have you fellers got me out hyar for? I ain't no 
 fighter." 
 
 A major who was right next to me says, "That beats 
 anything I ever see." 
 
 They fought in that old field, and I looked on. Over a 
 hundred men were killed thar, and the wagons ran till deep 
 dark bringin' back the wounded. Hit was way in the night 
 that I reached my father-in-law's house. A soldier come 
 with me. I was ridin' a powerful big horse, and this soldier 
 went off with it and his, too. He ran away with 'em. I 
 found that out the next day when his colonel come to the 
 house and asked, " Whar is that horse you rode yesterday?" 
 
 I said, "Your man tuck him away." 
 
 "If you don't bring me that horse we'll have to hang 
 you," he said. 
 
 "Well," I says, "git your rope and go to work. I can't 
 bring you the horse." 
 
 He did n't talk any more about hangin', but advised me 
 to move across the river. 
 
 I said, "I've stood it this far hyar, and I'm goin' to 
 tough it out." 
 
 Later that day me'n' a Yankee doctor went down to my 
 farm. The cotton gin had been burned with about forty 
 thousand pounds of cotton seed and enough cotton that 
 was in the lint room to make three bales. The doctor 
 picked up a piece of shell, and he said a bomb had burst in 
 the gin-house and set it on fire. But a soldier told me that 
 
78 Shiloh 
 
 he was lyin' in the lint room wounded when a big, red- 
 complected man come in and tuck him out. The next thing 
 he knew the gin was on fire. I had a neighbor who was jist 
 sich a man as he'd described, and this neighbor had told 
 me if I did n't burn the gin the Confederates would do so 
 to keep the Yankees from gittin' the cotton. Hit 's my 
 guess that he set the fire, but I could n't prove it. 
 
 My house was used as a hospital during the battle. The 
 surgeons worked thar, and the arms and legs that they 
 cut off was buried in a great pit near the back door. After 
 the wounded was all carried away the soldiers tore the 
 house down and left the pieces scattered around. 
 
 I had 'bout thirty acres in wheat, and the wheat was 
 already headed. I 'd put a lot of work into it, and when I 
 was ploughin' in the seed I had often kept goin' till ten 
 o'clock at night. The cavalrymen tied their horses all 
 through the field to stakes that they set as close together as 
 they could and not have the horses kick each other, and 
 those horses had e't off the wheat and stomped it down so 
 I never got nary a bit. 
 
 Before the battle I had twenty-four head of nice hogs, 
 and I only saw one afterward, and that was crippled. Hit 
 was done shot, but they did n't git it. They killed the rest 
 of 'em and cut off their heads, and threw the heads down in 
 the well. I looked and I could see the noses and years 
 stickin' up out of the water. Hit was fine water, but I ain't 
 never tried it since. Yes, they got my hogs, but plague it 
 all! you could n't blame soldiers for killin' hogs. 
 
 I had a cow and a calf, and the cow ran off over on Lick 
 Creek. The timber was budding out a little, and she went 
 whar she could git some buds. But the soldiers caught her, 
 and they kept her in camp about a week and milked her. 
 
A Battlefield Farmer 79 
 
 Then she got away, and I found her with twelve feet of 
 grass rope on her horns. So I knew she'd been tied up. 
 Her calf had done starved to death at home. 
 
 My mare run away and went up whar she was raised, 
 and before I could go after her another army passed 
 through and she disappeared for good. 
 
 One of the wounded men at my father-in-law's had been 
 hit by a cannon ball in the ankle so his foot was jist hangin'. 
 He was shot Sunday, and he did n't git no medical atten- 
 tion till Thursday. Then the doctors cut his leg off just 
 above the knee, and I tuck his leg and foot and buried 'em 
 in the garden. The man said he was a flag-bearer, and that 
 the soldiers always shot at the flag-bearers mo' than at 
 others. One day I noticed a change had come over him, 
 and I said to the doctor, "That man's a-dyin'." 
 
 "Oh, no!" the doctor said, "he's gittin' along the best 
 kind." 
 
 But in a few minutes he was dead, and I and three Fed- 
 eral soldiers carried him out in his blanket, each hold of a 
 corner. We dug a pit 'bout two feet deep, lowered him into 
 it, folded the blanket over him, and covered him up. His 
 bones are thar yet out on the hillside. 
 
 Some of those who was killed on the battlefield never 
 had any graves dug. They lay whar they fell, and a little 
 dirt was thrown over 'em. I saw sixteen Confederates lyin' 
 flat on their backs side by side, and not a speck of digging 
 was done except to git enough dirt to cover 'em out of 
 sight. Lots of bodies had the dirt washed off 'em by rain, 
 or the hogs rooted 'em out; and then the hogs and buz- 
 zards and other varmints would devour 'em. The bones 
 lay thar and sun-dried, and a heap of 'em was carried off by 
 people who come hyar to look around. I saw a skull only 
 
80 Shiloh 
 
 the other day that a man had found while ploughing. He 
 had gathered it up and brought it in the house to keep for 
 a show. Oh! I've seen lots of different bones in houses. 
 
 When the last of the wounded were moved away from 
 my father-in-law's 'bout the only food we had left was half 
 a flour barrel of bolted meal. I went to the general for a 
 pass to go to mill, but he would n't give me one. He did n't 
 want to have me go outside of the Union lines. I told him 
 I did n't see what I was goin' to do for something to eat. 
 
 "Well," he said, "if we starve to death, you will, too. If 
 we don't, you won't." 
 
 I went back to the house, and I had n't been thar long 
 when an old Irishman walked in and said, "Hyar's some 
 bread the general sent." 
 
 He had an armful of crackers — great big hard fellers. 
 " I can't eat those things," I said, but he showed me how to 
 soak 'em in hot water and fry 'em in fat, and they were good. 
 
 All the chickens on the place had been sold or stolen 
 except one rooster, and a soldier come to the door and 
 wanted to buy him. 
 
 " I tell you p'int blank you can't have him," I said, " I 'm 
 goin' to keep him to crow for me"; and the soldier turned 
 away. 
 
 The same old, long-legged Irishman who brought me the 
 hardtacks happened to be callin' on me, and a minute or 
 two later he looked out of the window and said. "Thar's 
 that man tryin' to ketch your rooster." 
 
 He went to the door and said, " I'll shoot you down right 
 thar if you don't let that chicken alone." 
 
 Of course the feller quit chasin' the rooster then and 
 went about his business. I could n't ask for a better friend 
 than that Irishman was. 
 
A RELIC OF THE OLD BATTLE 
 
A Battlefield Farmer 81 
 
 In the North you taught your children that the Rebels 
 were idiots and did n't have no mo' sense than to kill little 
 boys and girls"; and in the South we taught our children 
 that the Yankees had horns. Well, that did for talk, and 
 talk 's cheap. I know I struck some as clever fellers in the 
 Yankee army as I ever met in my life. Really, you can't 
 git as many men together as thar is in an army but thar'U 
 be some mean ones and some good ones. 
 
 The soldiers found out that I could cook, and they brang 
 me their bakin' powder and corn meal and salt, and I'd 
 bake 'em corn bread to halves. Then one of the officers 
 asked me if I could wash, and I told him, "Yes." 
 
 So they brang me their fine shirts and drawers and stock- 
 ings, and I done washing. By that time I 'd got my family 
 thar. I washed all day long as hard as I could, and my old 
 woman would starch and iron. We had all we could tend 
 to, and we was paid in gold. 
 
 But after a while the last of the army got away, and we 
 moved out on the creek. I spent the summer hunting squir- 
 rels and turkeys. We had a little bit of a split-log house we 
 stayed into, and the next year I rented some land and 
 raised a crop of corn. 
 
 I was always afraid the recruiting officers would ketch 
 me, and I'd be conscripted. I slept out a couple of nights 
 to avoid 'em. Hit was in October, and I carried along some 
 bed quilts and found a dry place under a tree and slept fine. 
 People who knowed me did n't want to interrupt me be- 
 cause I made shoes for 'em and water vessels, chums, and 
 tubs. 
 
 A cousin of mine slept out till he was wild as a buck. He 
 and two other fellers hid together in the woods all the time 
 of the war. They had blankets, and they'd move about 
 
82 Shiloh 
 
 from one swamp to another, and in bad weather they would 
 slip to some old waste house to sleep. I reckon they 
 sponged most of their food, but they made a little com crop 
 every year, and they shot some game that they 'd cook over 
 a fire among the trees. In the daytime they'd mostly jist 
 lie in their nest, but one of 'em would keep on the watch for 
 any soldiers or conscripters who might come in. 
 
 I was n't as lucky as they was. One day, in the fall of 
 '63, the conscripters caught me, and they kept me in the 
 army a couple of months. Then I got a slow fever. I had a 
 brother in the army, and he brought me home, and I was 
 never out of the house until the next March. By that time 
 I was able to work a little. I expected to be ordered back 
 to my regiment, but the summons did n't come, and I 
 stayed on and on and got the crops laid by. I 'd jist finished 
 when a mule throwed me and broke my arm. After that 
 the army had no use for me. 
 
 The guerillas got to be kind o' troublesome late in the 
 war. They was mostly Confederates, and they'd a heap 
 rather rob a Republican than a Democrat, but none of us 
 was safe. A few of the Yankee deserters joined the guerilla 
 bands. I reckon some of those fellers may be livin' yet, and 
 if they are I'll be bound they're drawin' pensions, the same 
 as all the other Northern soldiers. 
 
 Them guerillas was about as lawless a set as there was 
 on the face of the earth. I knowed one old man who did n't 
 have much sense, and they shot him off the fence whar he 
 was settin', jist to see him die. 
 
 I got into a nest of guerillas myself one evenin' down the 
 river. Me 'n' my wife's brother, Hiram, was a-goin' across 
 country on foot when we see a lot of cavalry, as we tuck it 
 to be. Thar was six or eight or ten of 'em. They discovered 
 
A Battlefield Farmer 83 
 
 us and turned to ride in our direction. That made Hiram 
 anxious, and he wanted to run, but I would n't. 
 
 "They'll git us shore," he said, "and I'm a-goin' to 
 throw my pocket-book away." 
 
 "I would n't do that," I said. "I don't think they are 
 guerillas." 
 
 They soon got to whar we was, and without gittin' off 
 their horses they commenced gougin' their hands in our 
 pockets. I could n't help bein' sort of skeered then. I 
 did n't like their appearance. In my coat pocket I had a 
 home-made twist of tobacco, and they got that. Thar was 
 a three-dollar bill in my vest pocket, and it was every cent 
 of money I had. They did n't happen to find that, and I 
 was afraid they'd be so mad at not gittin' any money from 
 me that they'd shoot me. 
 
 But in a few minutes they rode off. Hiram had lost his 
 pocket-book, and he said he wished he had not tuck my 
 advice. We both went home after we got into that yaller- 
 jacket's nest. 
 
 The war left this region in pretty bad shape. Every farm 
 had suffered, and Corinth, our market town, was tetotally 
 wiped out. I jist went to work by the day. That war 
 ruined me financially forever, and now that I'm old and 
 can't work any mo' I don't know what's goin' to become 
 of me. 
 
 I think perhaps the last war will be fought within fifty 
 years. I 've been readin' the Bible and watchin' the signs, 
 and I believe the end of all time is near. Thar's a heap of 
 fightin' right now across the big deep, and troubles are 
 growin' on people jist as the Bible described it. "When ye 
 shall see these things the end is nigh," the Bible says. 
 " There shall be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes " 
 
84 Shiloh' 
 
 — we know those are hyar — "and pestilence and troubles 
 of all kinds, and men shall grow worse and worse unto the 
 end." Any man with two eyes ought to see that the state 
 of things at present is like what the Bible words describe. 
 
 But some people claim that wars and famines and disas- 
 ters don't indicate nothing in partickerler. They say that 
 human bein's are multiplyin' so fast that the world can't 
 hold 'em, and it's necessary to have some means to destroy 
 and thin 'em out. That sort of argument only shows their 
 ignorance. They think the world is jist the same size now 
 as it always has been and always will be. But they're 
 wrong. Thar's mo' foolish ideas about creation than about 
 anything else. The world ain't over-populated and never 
 will be. It's growin' in size as fast as the people increase in 
 number. 
 
 I dug wells in my young days. Once I went down nine- 
 teen feet through as pretty earth as I ever saw and found 
 some blue mud that had a hickory log in it with the bark 
 on. I've dug a well sixty-three foot deep and found clam 
 shells down thar. All that earth has formed over those 
 places since the trees and the clams was alive. 
 
 That makes me say the world grows, and I shore ain't 
 afraid it will be over-crowded — no, sir, not a bit of it. If 
 God created the world in the first place He can easy make 
 it twice as large to take care of the people. 
 
IX 
 
 The Refugees ^ 
 
 I WISH my old man was hyar to visit with you. He suffered 
 a great deal in the war, and he'd rather talk about it than 
 eat. Those was powerful troublesome times — scarey 
 times. Me 'n' him was young folks then with a little family 
 of three or four children. We did n't live in this country 
 hyar. Our home was fifteen mile up the river. He 'd went 
 into the Rebel army, but early in 1862 he come home on a 
 furlough. I s'pose he stayed two months. I ain't certain. 
 You see that's a long time for a person old as I am to 
 ricolect. I 'm goin' on eighty now. 
 
 His captain come and wanted him to go back into the 
 army and would have rushed him right down hyar where 
 they was about to have a fight. My old man said he would 
 go, but he did n't say when he was a-goin' — he did n't tell 
 him that at all. "Fanny," he said to me afterward, "I've 
 made up my mind to see my father and mother once more 
 while I'm a-livin'." 
 
 1 She was fleshy and elderly. Her home was a primitive, white- 
 washed log dwelling on the battlefield about a quarter of a mile from 
 the river. Now and then, as we sat in the kitchen talking of the long- 
 gone war days, she would pause in her reminiscences to refresh herself 
 with some snuff from a tin spice box. She swabbed it up on the frayed 
 end of a slender stick, put the snuff end of the stick in her mouth, and 
 there the stick stayed with the other end protruding. After she had 
 absorbed a satisfying amount of the snuff she put the stick back in the 
 box and spit tobacco juice into a wooden box of sawdust on the floor 
 with a persistence and precision_that would have done credit to a mas- 
 culine expert. 
 
86 Shiloh 
 
 Their home was somewhere near four miles from ourn, I 
 reckon. He started, and he was ridin' slowly along when he 
 saw a sight of men down the road on horses — awful large 
 horses. The men was all dressed in blue, and the first thing 
 he knew they charged right up to him and said, "Throw 
 up your hands, sir." 
 
 They asked him where he was a-goin', and where he 
 lived, and what was his name, and he told 'em. Then they 
 wanted to know if he was a Rebel soldier. Well, there was 
 no use to deny it. 
 
 " Do you want to go back to the Rebel army? " they asked. 
 
 He said he did n't want to go back if he could help him- 
 self. So they asked him to take the oath of religion, I be- 
 lieve they called it. He taken that all right, and they wrote 
 him a great long paper and turned him loose and told him 
 to go where he pleased. They did n't order him to join the 
 Union army because they had plenty of good drilled people, 
 and he was n't. 
 
 He went on and seen his father and mother, and then he 
 come back home and bid me good-by. Hit was his inten- 
 tion to go right straight hyar to be near the Yankee army 
 and keep out of the way of the Rebels gittin' him. He come 
 down the river in a bateau with some other men, and when 
 they got nearly hyar they landed on the opposite bank. 
 The next day the battle begun. My old man was on yon 
 side of the river scouting that morning when he heard some 
 men hollerin' to him from this side. The Rebels had house- 
 pitals above Pittsburg Landing, and there was a sight of 
 sick folks in them housepital camps. Several of the sick 
 men had come out on the river bank. They wanted to git 
 out of the way of the fightin', and they hollered, "Come 
 over hyar and git us with them boats there." 
 
The Refugees 87 
 
 My husband, he thought so much of the pore sick folks 
 that he went right into a boat and started to row across — 
 and them armies a-fightin' there. About middle ways of 
 the river was a gunboat throwin' shells over into the woods, 
 and the men on it hollered at him, "Halt!" 
 
 Well, he just stopped rowin' and floated down onto the 
 gunboat, and the men reached their hands and pulled him 
 in. He was n't scared, for he knowed they would n't jump 
 on him and beat him to death, but so many were blobbin', 
 blobbin' to him that he did n't have no sense. They were all 
 private men, and they kept jabbering to him till an officer 
 came and told 'em to go set down. This officer was the 
 head man, and my husband showed him his papers and told 
 him what he was doin'. 
 
 "You can take that little craft of yours," the officer said, 
 "and go git those men there. Take 'em over to the other 
 bank and report back." 
 
 My husband went, and tuck the men across to yon side. 
 Then he rowed to the gunboat, and the gunboat men 
 helped him on board. "Hyar's that same man," they said 
 to the commander. 
 
 "Yes, I know he is," the commander said, "I recognize 
 his coimtenance." 
 
 Then he said to my husband: "Don't git away from the 
 river. These are terrible times right now." 
 
 He gave him a pass to go on shore, and ordered him to 
 report back there the next morning. That night my hus- 
 band went to his Uncle Tom's about two mile back from 
 the other side of the river, and early the next day he re- 
 turned to the gunboat and asked the captain could he come 
 out hyar on the battlefield. The captain said he could, and 
 he done so. He knowed he was in danger, but he had a 
 
88 Shiloh 
 
 brother in the Rebel army, and he wanted to look and see 
 if he'd been killed or hurt. 
 
 My old man did n't find his brother, though he seen 
 many others that he knowed among the dead and crippled. 
 He tried to pick up and tote the wounded, but he could n't 
 stand the blood and the scent, and the groans, and the 
 hollerin' for water. That was what hurt him. Hit made him 
 sick, and for quite a while he was n't able to sleep at night 
 for imaginin' he heard the cries of those wounded men. 
 
 He went back to his uncle's, and after the battle, when 
 things was sort of settled up, he brought me down there. 
 Aunt Mary had butter and milk and eggs and chickens, and 
 he peddled 'em to the soldiers. Oh law! the soldiers was 
 great hands for such things. He ran a ferryboat, too, and 
 carried across a sight of people and wagons and horses. 
 We was used to skiffs and boats, for we was raised beside 
 the river just like a duck. My husband had a man to help 
 him run the boat in the daytime. One of 'em pulled with 
 the great long paddles, and the other steered. I 've guided 
 the boat a-many a time on a moonshiny night. I 'd leave 
 the littlest children with the biggest and go to help. 
 
 My husband got some land and made a fine crop. Hit 
 was bottom land, and he raised mighty good corn. Some- 
 times he'd go off down the river, and he'd bring back sich 
 things as cloth, pepper, and especially coffee and salt. You 
 could n't hardly git salt at all them times. Thar was 
 nothin' hyar, and he was tryin' to help people all he could. 
 He bought cheap and sold high, and he was makin' money. 
 
 We was prosperin', but my old man taken a flux hyar 
 because he had to drink the river water. He like to have 
 died of fever and chills. So the next season we moved to 
 Corinth, and there the old man had yaller jaundice. Hit 
 
The Refugees 89 
 
 like to have killed him, and we did lose one child. Corinth 
 was full of Northern soldiers, and it was sich a nasty place 
 they was a-goin' to vacate. Yes, Corinth was powerful 
 sickly for 'em. 
 
 We did n't like it any better than they did, and we 
 moved seventeen mile to Purdy. About a dozen families 
 went at the same time. Hit was March, and the coldest 
 kind of weather, and there was awful deep mud. We was 
 three days on the road. Often a wagon would stick in the 
 mud, and we'd have to pry it out, or double up teams and 
 pull it out. At night we 'd camp in the woods and make log- 
 heap fires to cook by and warm us. We slept in the wagons. 
 Our horses was tied to the wheels or the trees. A robber 
 come into our camp and stole a horse one night. We'd 'a' 
 lost a good deal more, I reckon, if we had n't had dogs 
 along to git after people and drive 'em off. 
 
 At Purdy the only building we could git to live in was a 
 little old blacksmith's shop. It was pretty cold weather to 
 stay in that old shop, but we stuck in there for three or four 
 months. The building had only a dirt floor, and you 
 could n't say anything good about such a floor except that 
 the wind did n't come up through. Yes, the old plank * 
 blacksmith shop had a tight floor, and that was the only 
 tight thing about it. 
 
 While we was livin' in that shop my old man was sick of 
 the diptheria. He had it bad, too, and like to have died. 
 We moved again and went to Savannah on the Tennessee 
 River near where we lived when the war begun. The doctor 
 there waited on the old man about two years before he got 
 well. He was sick all that time, but he was able to work 
 
 1 The word "plank" as used in the South is equivalent to "board" 
 as understood in the North. 
 
90 Shiloh 
 
 some, and he tried to make a crop in the fields right around 
 the house. 
 
 We had a sight of trouble with the guerillas while we was 
 livin' in Savannah. They run in there two or three times a 
 week, and they'd whip people and they'd burn up a heap 
 of things for spite. Yes, what they could n't carry off 
 they'd throw in the fire just from meanness. They was 
 powerful folks to drink and was always wantin' whiskey. 
 If they could n't git whiskey they'd drink vinegar, and 
 vinegar got so gone people hardly ever had any. We put 
 ourn in jugs and hid it so those fellers would n't git it. 
 They'd come in and take all our food, and at last we 'lowed 
 to keep only one meal ahead. 
 
 If there was a skirmish with the guerillas anywhere 
 around, all the men in the place, except the very old ones, 
 would run and git out of the way and hide hyar and yonder. 
 
 Part of the guerillas was Rebels and part was Yankees. 
 Sometimes they'd fight each other, and sometimes they'd 
 git friendly and go together. I suppose we would n't have 
 had guerillas if it had n't been for the war, but this war 
 never made all the rogues. Some were rogues afore, I guess, 
 though I don't doubt the war give many a one a big start 
 in roguery who did n't work for it. 
 
 We was n't afraid of the regular soldiers, for we knew 
 they was n't a-goin' to hurt us. But it was different with 
 the guerillas. We dare n't open our doors on a dark night 
 because maybe a robber or somethin' would be standin' 
 out there, and we dare n't talk above a whisper hardly. 
 The whole country was alive with them guerillas, and 
 they'd be about and hear you when you did n't see 'em. 
 
 One day we looked out of the window just at nightfall, 
 and there was a party of guerillas off in the distance comin' 
 
The Refugees 91 
 
 along the road. My old man had bought him a new pair of 
 shoes a short time before. We was mighty pore folks, and 
 he said, "Fanny, I believe I'll put those shoes on or they'll 
 take 'em." 
 
 So he sat down and put 'em on, and by that time nine of 
 the guerillas was in the house. Two of the village men who 
 was settin' in the next house jumped up and run out of the 
 back door through the briers and one thing another, and 
 the guerillas shot at 'em. Then the guerillas went from our 
 house over to that one, and my old man said: "I expect 
 those old mean men will come back hyar. So give me a 
 couple of quilts and I'll go lay out for to-night." 
 
 He took the quilts, and I did n't see him again till the 
 next day. It was a cle'r, pretty night, and he slept in a 
 cotton patch under a big persimmon bush. 
 
 Them robbers bolted in soon after he left. They was 
 dressed in black and armed with pistols. " We know you 've 
 got some money hyar," they said, "and we're goin' to have 
 it or burn the house." 
 
 "Well," I says, "burn the house, if you want to." 
 
 But I was scared so bad I just went and got the bucket 
 of water I'd hid the money in and handed it to the head 
 robber. There was ten dollars in silver, and I said, "If the 
 money '11 do you any good take it and leave." 
 
 He put his hand down in the bucket and got the money. 
 My old man had a rifle gun hanging up in a rack, and he 
 thought a heap of it. Well, one of the robbers took that 
 gun down and bent the barrel and broke the stock. 
 
 Then he goes off and the others with him to the next 
 house. The only people there were old Mr. Webb and his 
 wife, and they were cripples who could n't walk to do no 
 good. One of the robbers put his pistol to the old man's 
 
92 Shiloh 
 
 breast and said, "I want that money you're takin' care of 
 for your neighbor." 
 
 My husband thought they wouldn't trouble the old man, 
 and he 'd given him his pocketbook. But they knowed he 'd 
 done it, and they made Mr. Webb hand the pocketbook 
 over to 'em. 
 
 They went to another house and took a young feller and 
 hung him to an apple tree till he was black in the face. 
 They was pretty near drunk, and that was their way of 
 makin' the feller's folks pay 'em money. His mother gave 
 'em two dollars, and they hung him again till she gave 
 'em five dollars. 
 
 They stopped at every house in the neighborhood, and 
 by and by they went to Mr. Owens' and hollered to him to 
 open the door, and he did so. "We want you to give up 
 that fifty-dollar bill you've got," they said. 
 
 "Well, I won't do it," he told 'em, and shut the door 
 and would n't let 'em in. 
 
 It was gittin' daylight, and they started off, but before 
 they was out of the yard they got into some dispute and 
 began shootin', and one of the robbers was killed. The next 
 day it rained one of the hardest rains you ever saw, and 
 that dead robber was lyin' there with his brains droppin' 
 out of a bullet hole in his head. My old man said, "I'd 
 throw him out of the yard and let the hogs eat him, only it 
 might poison 'em he was so mean." 
 
 We could n't leave him there, and we dug a grave. Hit 
 was n't fur away, and it was n't very deep. Then we tuck 
 him and rolled him into an old box and tied some lines to 
 the box and drug it to the grave and buried him. 
 
 Well, that's the way things went in that old war, and we 
 did n't have any comfort until it was over. 
 
X 
 
 The Hired Man.^ 
 
 This village, where I 'm livin' now, is right on the southern 
 edge of the battlefield, and it 's only two or three miles from 
 the Potomac. Back in war time it had twelve hundred 
 inhabitants. 
 
 Lee had been winnin' some victories in Virginia that 
 made him think he could whip any army the Federals could 
 get together to oppose him. So early in the autumn of 1862 
 he crossed the Potomac and called on the people of Mary- 
 land to rally to his standard. But they did n't rally worth 
 a cent. Most of us favored the other side. It wa' n't long 
 before Lee and the Yankees come to grips. They met on 
 the hills hyar, where the battle was fought on September 
 17th. It took its name from Antietam Creek, which, at the 
 beginning of the fight was between the two armies. 
 
 Some of the hottest fighting was done around a Dunkard 
 church, out north of the town on the Hagerstown Pike. 
 Three quarters of a mile farther on, right out on that same 
 pike, was where I lived. I was twenty-two years old. I 'd 
 been raised by a man by the name of Jacob Nicodemus, 
 and I was still workin' for him. He had a log house with 
 
 1 I was at Sharpsburg, a very picturesque old place in a region of 
 flowing hills and quaint farmhouses. The hired man and I spent an 
 evening together in one of the village homes. There was a piano in the 
 room, and the grizzled old man drew the piano stool up by the stove 
 and sat there bolt upright telling his story and chuckling over its 
 humorous and unusual phases. 
 
94 Antietam 
 
 two rooms downstairs and just a sort of loft divided by a 
 partition up above. There was what we called a bat-house 
 with a couple of bedrooms in it attached to the rear like a 
 shed. In winter we used a room in the house for a kitchen, 
 but in summer the kitchen was in another building off a 
 little piece from the house. We had one of these old Ger- 
 man barns with a roof that had a long slant on one side and 
 a short slant on the other. The roof was thatched with rye 
 straw. 
 
 At the time of the battle we 'd thrashed our rye and oats, 
 but our wheat was standing in stacks beside the farmyard. 
 Our corn was on the stalk in the field, and there was sixteen 
 acres of it. 
 
 We had 'bout a dozen large hogs and mebbe eighteen or 
 twenty pigs that run with their mammy yet in the fields 
 and woods. We never penned any of 'em up till after we'd 
 done seedin' wheat. Even our fattening hogs did n't get 
 any feed till after that time. Ourn was a pretty good breed 
 of hogs. Up in the mountains they had razor-backs. Them 
 razor-backs looked like two slabs off a log put together, and 
 they would n't weigh more'n' a hundred and fifty dressed. 
 But the meat was good, and they were all right if you 
 had enough of 'em. They were so wild that the owners 
 would n't see 'em sometimes hardly for a month. The 
 mountains were full of these hyar wild sweet potato roots, 
 and the hogs would eat those roots, and they'd eat chest- 
 nuts and acorns and would come home fat in the fall. 
 
 We had quite a few cattle. I suppose there was over 
 twenty head — countin' steers and everything together, 
 you know. 
 
 There was six horses on our place and not one of 'em 
 but what we could both work and ride. All the people 
 
The Hired Man 95 
 
 round had good ridin' horses then — lopers, rackers, and 
 pacers. There wa' n't no buggies much. Horseback ridin' 
 was the go of the day. Men and women, too, would travel 
 anywhere on their horses. Ridin' was healthy and it was 
 fun. The country people would take a ride to town, and 
 the town people would take a ride to the country. The 
 young ladies had their horses brought out as regular as 
 clockwork, and they wa' n't afraid of a little mud. If they 
 come to a wet place in the road they'd try to see who could 
 do the most splashing. They wore great long skirts that 
 would almost touch the ground, and they looked much 
 better than ladies do on horseback now. Sometimes three 
 or four of 'em would ride up in the mountains among the 
 bushes to get flowers, and when they come back the horses 
 would be so trimmed up with laurel and honeysuckle you 
 could n't tell what color they were. 
 
 On the Sunday before the battle of Antietam the Feder- 
 als and Confederates fit over hyar on South Mountain. 
 We could hear the guns, but we could n't figure out what 
 was goin' on, and thinks I, "Dog-gone it! I'll go and see 
 this fightin'." 
 
 So two or three of us young fellers started. We went 
 afoot 'cross the fields to Keedysville and then to Boonsboro, 
 a matter of five or six miles in all. As we went along we 
 kept pickin' up recruits till there was a dozen of us. A 
 hotel man in Boonsboro spoke to us and said, "You 
 fellers '11 get right in the fight and be killed if you keep 
 on." 
 
 But we was nosey and wanted to nose in. We wa' n't 
 afraid, and we'd 'a' went till we heard the bullets whistle 
 if we had n't met a wounded soldier. He 'd been shot in 
 his hand, and he told us the troops was hot at it up there 
 
96 Antietam 
 
 on the mountain. So we thought we'd let well enough 
 alone, and we went back home. 
 
 We expected there was goin' to be another battle, but we 
 did n't know where or when it would be fought. Nobody- 
 was a-workin' the next day. They was ridin' around to find 
 out what was goin' to happen. By afternoon the Rebel 
 army was gettin' into position on the south side of Antie- 
 tam Creek. Some of the troops was posted off on the edge 
 of our farm, and I went over where they was and walked 
 right up and talked with the pickets. None of 'em did n't 
 offer to do me no harm. They asked me for some tobacker. 
 I had a right good plug in my pocket, and I divided it up 
 among 'em. They took it all, and they chewed and spit and 
 felt pretty good. An officer lent me his glasses, and I could 
 see the Union army maneuvering over on the hills beyond 
 the creek. By and by, while I was layin' there talkin' to the 
 pickets, a shell landed in a fence 'bout thirty yards from 
 me. I 'd never seen no battle nor no war, and I was scared, 
 and I said, "Ain't you fellers afraid?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" they said, "a shell has to come closer than 
 that to make us afraid." 
 
 But I got up and says I, "Good-by, boys, I'm goin' to 
 take care of my horses." 
 
 I went to the house, and a feller named Hines helped me 
 bridle 'em up. Then he mounted one, and I mounted an- 
 other, and we each led two and rode eight miles north to 
 the place of a farmer we knew. We shut the horses up in his 
 bam and stayed there that night. 
 
 The next day I set out to walk home, but when I got 
 most to our farm the pickets would n't let me pass, and I 
 had to return the same way I 'd come. While I was gone my 
 horses had been stolen. Hines seen the Union soldiers 
 
The Hired Man 97 
 
 takin' 'em, and he heard 'em braggin' how much they was 
 goin' to get for 'em. He went to the fellers, and, says he, 
 "Them there belongs to a farmer down near Sharpsburg"; 
 but they took 'em just the same. 
 
 Hines said that the fellers belonged to the command of 
 Cap'n Cowles who was stationed at Williamsport, three or 
 four miles away. I follered 'em right up and Hines went 
 along with me. We found Cap'n Cowles and told him what 
 had happened. 
 
 "Well," he said, "come with me to the corral where we 
 keep our horses, and if you see yourn there, take 'em." 
 
 We found 'em, and the soldiers stood around and looked 
 at us pretty hard while we rode off with 'em. 
 
 There was some cannonadin' and fightin' on Tuesday, 
 and they were at it again the next day at sunrise and fought 
 pretty savage way on into the night. They tell me that 
 was the bloodiest day in American history. More than 
 twenty- three thousand men was killed or wounded. Dur- 
 ing the night Lee got away across the Potomac. It had 
 been only two weeks since he started north with an army of 
 fifty thousand, but he lost so heavily in the battle and by 
 straggling that he went back with scarcely half that number. 
 
 On Thursday morning I walked home. None of the fam- 
 ily was there. The soldiers had taken the children and the 
 old man and old woman off the battlefield before day on 
 Wednesday. The house was full of wounded Northern 
 soldiers, and the hogpen loft was full, and the barn floor. 
 The wounded was crowded into all our buildings. 
 
 I looked around to find something to eat, but there 
 wa' n't enough food in the house to feed a pair of quail. 
 We 'd left fifty pounds of butter in the cellar and seventy- 
 five pounds of lard and twenty gallons of wine — fine 
 
98 Antietam 
 
 grape wine — and half a barrel of whiskey. We had just 
 baked eight or ten loaves of bread the day before, and pies, 
 and I don't know what else. Those things was all gone. So 
 was every piece of bacon from the smoke-house. When the 
 family went away there was the big end of a barrel of flour 
 in the house, and I reckon the soldiers had used half of it in 
 making shortcakes. They'd mixed up flour and lard and 
 water in a tin that we called a washall — we washed dishes 
 in it — and they'd rolled the cakes out thin and greased 
 the whole top of the cookstove and baked 'em on that. 
 After bakin' a cake on one side they'd take a-hold of it and 
 turn it over to bake the other side. I did n't hardly know 
 the stove when I come home. 
 
 We had four geese and 'bout sixty chickens, and the sol- 
 diers got 'em all except one hen. She was settin' under the 
 woodpile, and with all that thunderin' and crackin' goin' 
 on she kept settin'. Tears to me that was providential. 
 The Lord seen fit to let us have some chickens. She had 
 seventeen eggs, and every one hatched. We did n't know 
 she was there till she come out with the chickens; and they 
 all lived. I never see chickens grow so fast in my life. We 
 had n't no time to tend to 'em, and the hen raised 'em 
 herself. 
 
 The soldiers had done their chicken-killin' in the room 
 where we had our winter kitchen. They'd taken the dough 
 scraper and put it on a chicken's neck and hit it a whack 
 with the rollin'-pin, and that rollin'-pin was all bruised up. 
 They were dirty butchers, and the floor was ankle deep 
 easy with heads and feet, entrails and feathers. It just 
 happened that they could n't cook in there or they'd have 
 burnt the house up, I reckon. The stove was in the summer 
 kitchen. 
 
The Hired Man 99 
 
 What we called our cellar was a large cave, 'bout fifteen 
 yards from the house, with a ten by twelve log buildin' 
 settin' on it. The buildin' had been made for a shop, but 
 we 'd repaired it up and plastered it, and we kept our parlor 
 furniture in it. If we had visitors of a Sunday we invited 
 'em in there to set and talk. Our best chairs was in there — 
 mohair chairs with black, stuffed seats, — and a six-dollar 
 lookin'-glass, mahogany finish, and a nice bed. It was a 
 cord bed with the woodwork of sycamore all through, and 
 it had two feather-beds, one to lay on, and one to cover you. 
 There was two sheets of home-made linen, and these hyar 
 old-time coverlids wove by the women on a loom, blue on 
 one side and red on the other, with flowers of all kinds on 
 'em. That was what you 'd call a fine bed in them days, and 
 you could n't buy one like it now, with the pillows and 
 bolsters and sich-like stuff on it, for one hundred dollars. 
 
 A shell come in at the northeast corner of that buildin* 
 and hit the bureau and took the top off and went out the 
 southeast comer. Another shell went through the gable 
 ends, and it struck the bed and knocked the headboard and 
 footboard out and took the feathers and sheets and carried 
 'em right along. 
 
 The big house did n't escape either. A shell went 
 through the roof and cattycornered across and went out the 
 other side. Great large limbs were knocked off the trees, and 
 sometimes the whole top of a tree had been carried away. 
 Oh! the trees was knocked to pieces considerable. Yes, 
 indeed ! 
 
 Our wheatstacks was full of shells, and we picked 'em 
 out while we was thrashing. There was grapeshots in the 
 stacks too. We could n't see 'em, and they broke down the 
 machine several times and made us a lot of expense. 
 
100 Antietam 
 
 The soldiers stole a good many of our potatoes, which 
 they dug out of the ground, but we still had enough to do 
 us over the winter. We did n't get pay for anything except 
 some hay and rye and oats and two colts. 
 
 A good deal of our corn was broken down. The soldiers 
 had two batteries right in the middle of it, but we got 
 enough at the ends of the field to see us out the year. 
 
 Our cattle strayed down in the woods by the river. I 
 reckon they got wild at the noise and the sight of the troops 
 and jumped out of their pasture. They did n't none of 'em 
 get killed, but it was three or four days before we found 
 'em. Our hogs went down by the river, too. Part of 'em 
 come home after the battle, but some was shot. The 
 soldiers took the hams off and let the rest of the carcass 
 lay. More was wasted than was saved. 
 
 Fully one third of the fences on our farm was gone. 
 Some of the rails had been used to bum the dead horses, 
 and the soldiers always took rails whenever they wanted a 
 campfire to cook with. It was quite a job to make them 
 rails, and quite a job to lay a fence up again. Yes, sir! 
 
 On Friday morning I fetched our horses. I had n't seen 
 the old man and old woman since the battle, but him and 
 her got back that day. They did n't like the looks of things 
 very much. The house had been looted. The dishes was 
 gone, and we had no beds and no bed-clothing. There 
 wa' n't a pillow in the house, and no sheets, no blankets, no 
 quilts or coverlids. There was only bedticks — just them 
 left. The soldiers had taken every stitch of mine and the 
 old man's clothing, and they'd torn up the old woman's 
 clothing and used it for bandages. We got gray-backs and 
 bedbugs and everything on us, and the first thing we did 
 was to renovate the house. It took us three weeks with 
 
The Hired Man' 101 
 
 hire to get in shape. I never want to see no war no more. 
 I 'd sooner see a fire. 
 
 Thursday I had come on down half way to Sharpsburg 
 to Bloody Lane, and I went all around as far as I had time 
 to go. I saw a heap of dead men of both sides. The soldiers 
 was buryin' 'em as fast as they could gather 'em together. 
 They'd dig trenches 'bout six or seven feet wide and eigh- 
 teen inches deep, and those trenches was dug right straight 
 along a considerable distance unless the diggers come to a 
 rock. Each dead man was first laid on a blanket, then put 
 in the trench and the blanket spread over him, and there 
 the bodies was buried side by side. The trenches was so 
 shallow that after the loose dirt which was thrown back had 
 settled down heads and toes sometimes stuck out. 
 
 All over the fields the bodies was picked up, but those 
 right around the buildings was left. I suppose the soldiers 
 thought that the people who owned the buildings would 
 bury the bodies to get rid of 'em. It was a warm Septem- 
 ber. Yes, sir, some days was very hot, and we had to bury 
 them bodies or stand the stench. By Saturday night I had 
 all those on our place buried, but the smell hung on for a 
 month, there was so many dead men and horses that was 
 only half covered. The stench was sickening. We could n't 
 eat a good meal, and we had to shut the house up just as 
 tight as we could of a night to keep out that odor. We 
 could n't stand it, and the first thing in the morning when 
 I rolled out of bed I 'd have to take a drink of whiskey. If I 
 did n't I 'd throw up before I got my clothes all on. 
 
 I buried three bodies right behind our smokehouse, then 
 four layin' at the back bam doors, and one near the well. 
 A lane for our stock run through the middle of our farm, 
 and I buried three in that lane, and I buried fifteen in a 
 
102 Antietam" 
 
 corner of a field that we'd ploughed and got ready to seed. 
 Those fifteen were government soldiers, and they were very 
 near all Massachusetts men. The flesh of the dead men had 
 discolored so they looked like they was black people, except 
 one. He lay close by our well. He had a wound in his neck, 
 and an army doctor who saw him said to me, "Judgin' 
 from his looks and the len'th of time he's been layin' hyar, 
 he must have bled all the blood he had in him." 
 
 I took cotton and tied up my mouth and nose and dug a 
 grave right where he was a-layin'. He was an awful big 
 man, and that was the only thing I could do. Then I 
 shoved a board under him and got him to rollin', and he 
 went into the grave. I'd rather not have buried him so 
 near the well, but the water wa' n't very good anyhow. In 
 the heat of midsummer it seemed stagnant like, and we'd 
 haul water from a neighbor's well, a bar'l or two at a 
 time. 
 
 'Bout a year later that body was dug up to put in the 
 cemetery, and we found a pocket in the back of the man's 
 coat up between his shoulder blades with a ten-dollar bill 
 in it. But the bill was so rotten it fell to pieces, and we 
 could n't make nothin' out of it, only on one comer we 
 could see it was a government ten-dollar bill. All his other 
 pockets was wrong side out, and that was the way with the 
 pockets of every dead soldier I saw on the battlefield. 
 They'd all been robbed. 
 
 The battle made quite a change in the look of the coun- 
 try. The fences and other familiar landmarks was gone, 
 and you could n't hardly tell one man's farm from another, 
 only by the buildings, and some of them was burnt. You 
 might be out late in the day and the dark would ketch you, 
 and things was so torn and tattered that you did n't know 
 
The Hired Man 103 
 
 nothin'. It was a strange country to you. I got lost three 
 or four times when I thought I could go straight home. 
 
 Another queer thing was the silence after the battle. You 
 could n't hear a dog bark nowhere, you could n't hear no 
 birds whistle or no crows caw. There wa' n't no birds 
 around till the next spring. We did n't even see a buzzard 
 with all the stench. The rabbits had run off, but there was 
 a few around that winter — not many. The farmers 
 did n't have no chickens to crow. Ourn did n't commence 
 for six months. When night come I was so lonesome that I 
 see I did n't know what lonesome was before. It was a 
 curious silent world. 
 
XI 
 
 The Slave Foreman^ 
 
 Well, sir, if I live to see the first day of May, I'll be 
 eighty-one years old. I was thirty when the battle of An- 
 tietam was fought. My home hyar in Sharpsburg is only 
 about two miles from Calamus Run where I was born. 
 When I was ten months old my mother and I was bought 
 by Mr. Otto, who lived a little outside of the town down 
 toward Antietam Creek, and I've worked for the Otto 
 family ever since. 
 
 My boss was a slaveholder. Yes, he belonged to that 
 sec', but he was a good man to his black people. I '11 tell 
 any one that. I was foreman on his place for twenty-odd 
 years. His colored people lived in the same house the 
 white people did, and they e't the same food as the white 
 people did. But we had our table in the kitchen, and they 
 had theirs in the dining-room. When I worked in harvest 
 all day cradling wheat I was paid as much as anybody else, 
 and if I went with the horses to do teaming for a neighbor 
 the money for what I done was mine. That's the kind of a 
 boss I had. There was not many like that — no, sir, not in 
 this country. 
 
 After emancipation his son said to me, "Now, Hilary, 
 
 ^ As I saw him he was a white-haired patriarch who lived in a log 
 cabin on a narrow, uncared-for back lane. On the same lane were 
 numerous other rude negro homes and a primitive little church. I 
 visited with the old man in his dirty, odorous kitchen where he was 
 working at a broom machine. 
 
The Slave Foreman 105 
 
 you're your own man. Pap wants to hire you, but you can 
 go and work wherever you please. If you decide to go away, 
 and it happens that by and by you have nothin' to do, 
 come back and make your home with us." 
 
 I stayed there, and later, when I was draughted to be a 
 soldier, my boss said, "Do you want to go?" and I told 
 him, "No, sir." 
 
 So me'n' him went to Frederick and he paid three hun- 
 dred dollars to keep me out of the army. 
 
 John Brown, at the time he was condemned to death, 
 said, " You Southern people can hang me, but the cause I die 
 for is goin' to win, and there '11 soon be a man hyar for every 
 strand of hair I got in my head fightin' to free the slaves." 
 
 That was the truth. There 's a good many strands of hair 
 in a man's head, but a right smart of Union men left their 
 homes to fight in the war. 
 
 Early in the morning of the Monday before the battle of 
 Antietam the Rebels come in hyar, and the hill at our place 
 was covered with 'em. They'd walk right into the house 
 and say, "Have you got anything to eat?" like they was 
 half starved. 
 
 We'd hardly fix up for a couple when a lot mo' would 
 come in. The white people and my mother was in the 
 kitchen givin' 'em bread and bacon. They was great fellers 
 for milk, too. Some sat down at table, and some would just 
 take a chunk of food in their hands. They e't us out 
 directly. 
 
 The Union troops, who come onto our place a few days 
 later, was n't so hongry. That was the difference between 
 the two armies. The Rebels was always hongry, and the 
 men were miserable dirty. They certainly looked pretty 
 rough. 
 
106 Antietam 
 
 Monday night I went up to the village to see my wife 
 who was workin' for a family there. She was skeered up a 
 little but had n't got into no trouble. 
 
 When I went back home the Rebels was sleepin' along 
 the edge of the road same as a lot of hogs might. I stum- 
 bled over some of 'em, but they did n't say anything. 
 Their guns was laid aside, and they did n't know they had 
 'em, I reckon. 
 
 On Tuesday all the Otto family left and went down coun- 
 try for safety. I stayed on the place. Once I fastened up 
 the house tight and walked up in the field. By and by I 
 had a feelin' that I 'd better go back, and I went. I found 
 some one had broke a pane of glass in a window and 
 reached in and took out the nail that kept the sash down. 
 Then he'd raised the window and crawled in. Close by, 
 inside of the room, was a washbench, and he 'd set a crock 
 of preserves and a crock of flour on it ready to carry away. 
 I took the things and put 'em where they belonged and 
 started on the trail of the thief. It was easy follerin' him, 
 for he left all the doors open which he went through. In the 
 dining-room he 'd poured out a lot of sugar on a handker- 
 cher to take along, and he'd gone into my old boss's room 
 and strewed his papers around over the floor. Next he'd 
 gone upsteps, and I went up 'em, too, and hyar he was in a 
 little pantry. He was a Rebel soldier — a young feller — 
 and not very large. I was skeered, but he was mo' skeered 
 than I was — certainly he was; and I said, "You dirty 
 houn' you, I have a notion to take you and throw you down 
 those steps." 
 
 Oh! I could have mashed him, for I saw he had no 
 revolver. He did n't say anything. He left. I reckon I was 
 too big for him.' 
 
The Slave Foreman 107 
 
 " I 'm goin' to have a guard hyar befo' night," I said, and 
 pretty soon an officer come down there and I told him how 
 one of his men had been carryin' on after we'd give the 
 soldiers so much to eat. So he sent three men with guns to 
 guard the place. 
 
 That evening the old boss come in and said, "General 
 Toombs is goin' to be hyar over night, and he will be up to 
 supper." 
 
 "Who in the name of the Lord will get the supper?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "You and his waiter will have to get it some way or 
 'nother," he said. 
 
 Well, we fried some meat and made some biscuit, and the 
 old general got his supper, but he did n't get no breakfast 
 there. The firin' commenced so strong on Wednesday 
 morning that he had to hurry to his post, and the waiter 
 took his breakfast out to him. 
 
 My boss went down in the country to get under the hill 
 where they would n't shoot him. The shells soon begun 
 flyin' over the house and around hyar, and while I was out 
 in the yard there was one that 'peared like it went between 
 our house and the next, and busted. I could see the blue 
 blaze flyin', and I jumped as high as your head, I reckon. 
 I 've ploughed up a many a shell in our fields since the bat- 
 tle. You'd find 'em most anywheres. Often, I've broke 
 'em in two. It'sa wonder I was n't killed. There was balls 
 inside and brimstone and stuff. 
 
 I did n't like those shells a-flyin', and I got on one of the 
 horses and led some of the others and went off across the 
 Potomac to the place of a man who was a friend of my boss. 
 There I stayed all day listenin' to the cannon. 
 
 Thursday I come home. Befo' I got there I began to see 
 
108 Antietam 
 
 the Johnnies layin' along the road, some wounded and 
 some dead. Men was goin' over the fields gatherin' up the 
 wounded, and they carried a good many to our bam, and 
 they'd pulled un threshed wheat from the mow and covered 
 the floor for the wounded to lay on. In the barnyard I 
 found a number of Rebels laid in our straw pile and I told 
 'em the Yankees was comin' to ketch 'em. But they said 
 that was what they wanted — then they'd get a rest. 
 
 I was goin' over a stone wall on my way to the house, and 
 there, leanin' against the wall was a wounded Yankee. I 
 asked him when the Rebs left him. 
 
 "Last night about twelve o'clock," he said. 
 
 I asked him how they'd treated him, and he said: " They 
 found me wounded, and I reckon they did the best they 
 could, but that was n't much. They did n't have much to 
 do with." 
 
 For a while I carried water to the wounded in the barn, 
 and then I went on to town. I wanted to see where my 
 wife was, and after I found she had n't been hurt I felt 
 considerable better. 
 
 A week later the wounded was moved off our place to a 
 camp hospital, and the family come home. The house, as 
 well as the barn, had been used as a hospital, and what- 
 ever had been left in it was gone. Besides, every bit of our 
 hay and stuff had been taken to feed the army horses. 
 We did n't lose any of our own horses, but the next year 
 some Rebel raiders got 'em all except two blind ones. 
 
XII 
 
 The Slave Woman at the Tavern^ 
 
 I WAS the cook at Delaney's Tavern hyar in Sharpsburg 
 when the battle was fought. That was a big time,^ yes, a 
 big time, and I never want to see no such time again. 
 
 The day befo' the battle the two armies was jest a-feelin' 
 for one another. That was on a Tuesday. The Rebels was 
 keepin' the Yankees back while mo' of their men was 
 crossin' the Potomac. 
 
 In the evenin' the tavern family was all in the kitchen 
 when a young feller come in and asked for somethin' to eat. 
 My old boss said: "We ain't got nothin' fo' our own selves. 
 You soldiers have e't us all out." 
 
 The feller went out the do', and it was n't ten minutes 
 befo' the bam was a-fire. The men jest had to get up on 
 top of the house and spread wet blankets all over the roof 
 to keep the tavern from burning. We could n't save the 
 bam. That burnt down to the ground, and the chickens 
 and everything in it was bumt up. Ohl it was an awful 
 time. 
 
 1 She was seated in her rocking-chair in her tiny sitting-room with a 
 little shawl over her turbaned head. Her mind was still clear, but her 
 body was bent and decrepit. A cat lay sleeping on the lounge. Oppo- 
 site the lounge was a table on which a family Bible was conspicuous. 
 The walls of the room were adorned with a few framed photographs 
 including an enlarged portrait, and there was a colored representation 
 of the crucifixion, a picture of Lincoln, and one of Wilkes Booth with 
 the devil looking over his shoulder. 
 
110 Antietam 
 
 General Lee come to the house early the next morning. 
 He was a fine-lookin' man, and he was the head general of 
 'em all in the Rebel army, you know. Our old boss was a 
 Democrat, too; so he gave the general his breakfast. But 
 while the officers was eatin' there in the dining-room a 
 shell come right thoo the wall and busted and scattered 
 brick and daubin' all over everything. There was so much 
 dirt you could n't tell what was on the table. I was bringin' 
 in coffee from the kitchen and had a cup and saucer in my 
 hand. I don't know where I put that coffee, but I thro wed 
 it away, and we all got out of there in a hurry. 
 
 I went out to the gate. An old colored man was comin' 
 down the pavement with an iron pot on his head. He said 
 the Yankees had got the Rebels on the run, and there 'd be 
 fightin' right in the town streets. He was goin' to get away, 
 and he was carryin' that pot so he'd have somethin' to 
 cook in. 
 
 Pretty soon I was back workin' in the kitchen, but the 
 soldiers told me I 'd better get out, and then all of us in the 
 house went into the cellar. We carried boards down there 
 and spread carpets on 'em and took chairs down to set on. 
 There was seven or eight of us, white and black, and we 
 was all so scared we did n't know what we was doin' half 
 the time. They kept us in the cellar all day while they was 
 fightin' backwards and forwards. My goodness alive! there 
 was cannon and everything shootin'. Lord 'a' mercy, man! 
 we could hear 'em plain enough.. The cannon sounded jest 
 like thunder, and the small-arms the same as pop-guns. 
 Sometimes we'd run up and look out of a window to see 
 what was happening, but we did n't do that often — not 
 the way them guns was firin'. 
 
 By and by word was sent in for the women and children 
 
GEXERAL LEE'S BREAKFAST IS INTERRUPTED 
 
The Slave Woman at the Tavern 111 
 
 to all leave town. That was about — le 's see — between ten 
 and 'leven o'clock, I reckon. We went out on the street, and 
 there lay a horse with his whole backbone split wide open. 
 The ambulances was comin' into town, and the wounded 
 men in 'em was hollerin', "0 Lord! Lord! Lord!" 
 
 Poor souls! and the blood was runnin' down thoo the 
 bottom of the wagons. Some of the houses was hospitals, 
 and the doctors was cuttin' off people's legs and arms and 
 throwin' 'em out the do' jest like throwin' out old sticks. 
 
 We had n't gone only a couple of houses when a shell 
 busted right over our heads. So we took back to the cel- 
 lar in a hurry. The way they was shootin' and goin' on 
 we might have been killed befo' we was out of town. 
 
 After they'd fit all day and it got to be night they ceased 
 fightin' and was n't doin' much shootin', and then we come 
 up and got a little mouthful of food. We did n't have 
 nothin' to eat in the cellar, and, indeed, we was glad to be 
 there ourselves, and was n't botherin' about no dinner or 
 no supper. 
 
 At last the Rebels retreated and we heard 'em hollerin'. 
 I spoke to one of 'em who was passin', and said, "Did you 
 have a hard fight to-day?" 
 
 "Yes, Aunty," he said, "the Yankees give us the devil, 
 and they'll give us hell next." 
 
 I went in the house and laid down, but I could n't sleep 
 none because I did n't know when they'd break in on me. 
 Oh Lordy! that was a squally time — squally, squally 
 time — squally time, sure ! 
 
 The Rebels all got away the next morning early. They 
 run in every direction. You could n't hardly tell what 
 direction they was n't runnin' to get across the Potomac 
 into Virginia. 
 
112 Antietam 
 
 We was afraid there would be mo' fightin', and we went 
 out of the town tereckly and stayed with a farmer till the 
 next day. My old boss got a pass. There was pickets all 
 along the road who would stop you. Yes, sir, they stopped 
 every one that come along and asked where they was goin' 
 to. We come home Friday, and then we had everything to 
 clean up. But we thanked the Lord we was n't killed, and 
 we did n't mind the dirt. 
 
 Well, my time is pretty near out now. I can't do a day's 
 work no mo', and I jest have to depend on the mercy of 
 people. I'm goin' on eighty-seven years old, and I'm 
 pretty near blind and can't hardly see any one. I have to 
 go around with a cane, and mostly I jest set in my chair 
 and do nothin'. 
 
XIII 
 
 The Canal Boatman ^ 
 
 I FOLLOWED boating on the canal, but at the time of the 
 battle I was here at Sharpsburg where I had a home on the 
 outskirts of the town. I was a young fellow then, twenty- 
 eight years old. In the early part of the war, when I did n't 
 think it was goin' to be much of anjrthing, I felt toward the 
 South because I had a brother in the Confederate army. 
 He liked soldierin' as well as eatin', but he got knocked to 
 pieces pretty well before the war was over. His side was 
 mashed in, and he lost an arm. The doctors never could 
 get his broken ribs into shape so but that he was one-sided, 
 and yet he got through the war sound enough to travel for 
 a firm sellin' goods. Things was very much unsettled in the 
 South where he made his trips, and one time he left us and 
 started on a trip as usual, and we've never heard anything 
 of him since. He had to wear good clothes, and he looked 
 like a prosperous man with money. Maybe he was killed 
 and robbed, or maybe he died of yellow fever in New 
 Orleans. 
 
 As I said, I favored the South early in the war, but later 
 I did n't care which side won if only they put a stop to the 
 fightin', though it did seem to me it would be better to have 
 one country. 
 
 ' 1 I spent part of a rainy day with him in a Sharpsburg home. He 
 was a large-featured, full-whiskered man, still in vigorous health in 
 spite of his age. 
 
114 Antietam 
 
 The Southern troops began to come in here on the Mon- 
 day before the battle, and on Tuesday the wagons and 
 artillery and men were goin' back and forth, and there was 
 continual noise all the time. We was havin' a drouth, and 
 the weather was very hot. They did n't pay any attention 
 to the regular highways, but went across the fields the 
 nearest way to where they wanted to go, and the dust on 
 those roads they made was ankle deep. 
 
 There was cannonading all day, and the people was hidin' 
 and gettin' away as fast as they could. But we'd had word 
 that any one who owned a good house had better stay and 
 take care of it because in an army there 's always fellows who 
 will plunder houses left unprotected. So I stayed at home. 
 
 On Wednesday morning the artillery opened up before 
 day, and it made such a racket you'd think the earth was 
 opening up. I went out to feed my horse, and on the way 
 back a shell come mighty near gettin' me. It bursted over 
 my head and stunned me right smart. My brother-in-law 
 was in the house, and when I got in there he said, "What's 
 the matter, Jake, that you look so pale?" 
 
 I took him out and showed him the pieces of shell scat- 
 tered all around, and he said, "There's goin' to be a fight, 
 and a big one." 
 
 The sound of the shells was like wind blowing over the 
 telephone wires. When the cannonade ceased, then I could 
 hear the bullets buzz like bees. Pretty soon the balls com- 
 menced comin' in the house, and I thought it was time to 
 get somewhere else. The hotel here belonged to my brother, 
 and I thought I'd go down there. So I run from behind 
 one big house to another till I got to the hotel. I could look 
 right around the corner of it and see the Confederate artil- 
 lery on the hill. I see one of the gunners drug away from 
 
The Canal Boatman 115 
 
 the cannon down in a hollow where the reserves were, but I 
 don't know whether he was crippled or killed. Two other 
 men was with me, and we was the only citizens in sight 
 around the town. 
 
 We had n't been there but a very short time when half a 
 dozen Confederates come down a cross street with eleven 
 prisoners. One of the prisoners had his jaw shot off. I shall 
 never forget how he looked. 
 
 A shell went into a hogpen near us and killed two hogs. 
 Another shell struck the heel of a soldier in the street and 
 turned him over and over like a wagon wheel. 
 
 About one o'clock I started to go back to my own place 
 to look at my horse. But after I 'd dodged along a ways the 
 cannonading got so heavy I thought I'd go into a cellar 
 till it ceased a little. I was behind an old log house, and I 
 took hold of the basement door. At the first pull it did n't 
 come open, and the second pull yanked the door off its 
 hinges. Then I saw that the basement was full of Confed- 
 erate soldiers. I went down in there, and about that time a 
 shell struck the end of the house and knocked out some 
 logs and bricks. I heard a scuffling in the room above. 
 Another lot of Confederate soldiers was up there, and they 
 came down to the basement for better protection. 
 
 One of 'em had a splinter — a piece of a log, you know — 
 in his arm. He asked some of his comrades to pull it out, 
 and they would n't. Then he asked me, and I did n't dare 
 refuse. I pulled him off his feet before I got it out. The ex- 
 plosion had skun his back from his neck down and tore his 
 clothes pretty near off of him. He must have been lying 
 down on his stomach. He fared worse than some who 
 fought in the battle. There was skulkers on both sides, 
 but I saw only Confederate skulkers in that old house. 
 
116 Antietam 
 
 I had just one lot to cross to get to my stable, and when 
 the firing slacked up and I went, I did n't go very slow, I 
 tell you. But I found my horse was gone, and the stable 
 was full of cavalry horses. A fellow was there lookin' after 
 'em, and I said, "Where's mine?" 
 
 "He's out there hitched to the fence," the fellow an- 
 swered. 
 
 I looked, and I did n't know the horse at first because he 
 had on a cavalry saddle and bridle. " I 've been riding him," 
 the fellow said, "and he's a good horse. Sell him to me." 
 
 He seemed to be a gentleman — that fellow, and he 
 offered me three or four times what the horse was worth, 
 but it was Confederate money. The horse was a fine one 
 for any purpose, and only six years old, and I did n't want 
 to part with him for Confederate money. I told the fellow 
 I'd be back in an hour or so, and then I'd sell the horse 
 to him. That was the only way I could save my horse. I 
 took the rig off, put on a bridle of my own, and rode up an 
 alley to the hotel. The stable there was full of straw, but I 
 pulled out some and got the horse in. Then I tucked the 
 straw around so he could n't be seen, and there he stayed 
 till the battle ended. A month afterward, when the straw 
 was being used, a shell was found in it that had come in 
 through the log walls. If that shell had exploded, the straw 
 would have been set on fire, and my horse would have been 
 killed. 
 
 Stragglers were running around robbing the houses of 
 people who 'd gone away, and they got in my house and 
 just took everything. Besides, they took five mules of mine 
 out of a field where I kept 'em. Them were mules that did 
 my towing on the canal. 
 
 Some of the houses in the town were used for hospitals. 
 
The Canal Boatman 117 
 
 The doctors would huddle the family all into one little 
 room, or turn 'em out. The house across the way from 
 mine was a hospital, and the family there got what the 
 doctors called camp fever, and some of 'em died. 
 
 For three or four days the soldiers was busy out on the 
 battlefield burying the dead. Lots of dead men got pretty 
 strong before they was buried, the weather was so hot; and 
 the stench was terrible — terrible! 
 
 On Friday I was engaged in helping drag the dead horses 
 out of town. A farmer with four horses and a black man 
 and myself did that work. We'd hitch a log-chain around a 
 dead horse's neck, and it was all that the four horses could 
 do to drag the carcass over the hills. We burnt what we 
 could on the edge of the town, but fence rails was the only 
 fuel and most of those had been used for campfires. I 
 s'pose we burnt ten or twelve, and we drug nearly as many 
 more out on the farms so as to get the stench away from 
 the town. 
 
 One trouble, after the battle, was to get feed for our 
 stock. I had to ride a whole day to buy some hay, and 
 there 'd been a lot made, too, but it had been taken for the 
 army horses. 
 
 I don't care about ever seein' a war again, but of co'se I 
 would n't stand havin' another country pitch onto us. 
 Why, in that case, if I was a young man, I 'd fight as sure 
 as you're bom. 
 
XIV 
 
 A Maryland Maiden ^ 
 
 We were all up in the Lutheran Church at Sunday-school 
 on the Sunday before the battle when the Rebel cavalry 
 came dashing through the town. The whole assembly 
 flocked out, and there was nothing but excitement from 
 that on. We just imagined something was going to happen, 
 and the children ran home from church in terror. There 
 was no dinner eaten that day. The people were too fright- 
 ened. We'd go out the front door and stand waiting to 
 see what would be next to come. 
 
 I was twenty years old then. My father was a black- 
 smith, and we lived in this same big stone house on the 
 main street of the town. I suppose the house was built a 
 hundred and fifty or more years ago. 
 
 Most of us in this region favored the Union, and the 
 ladies had made a big flag out of material that the towns- 
 people bought. For a while we had it on a pole in the 
 square, but some of the Democratic boys cut the flag rope 
 every night. So we took the flag down and hung it on a 
 rope stretched across from our garret window to that of 
 the house opposite. In pleasant weather it was out all the 
 time. But when we heard that Lee had crossed the Poto- 
 mac Pa began to be uneasy, and he says, "Girls, what 
 
 * We chatted in one of the old-fashioned, wood-panelled rooms of 
 her ancestral village home. She was a slender, elderly gentlewoman, 
 but though the years had left their mark they had in nowise subdued 
 her natural alertness and enthusiasm. 
 
A Maryland Maiden 119 
 
 you goin' to do with that flag? If the Rebels come into 
 town they'll take it sure as the world." 
 
 He thought we 'd better hide it in the ground somewhere. 
 So a lady friend of mine and I put it in a strong wooden 
 box, and buried it in the ash pile behind the smokehouse 
 in the garden. 
 
 When the Rebel cavalry went through that Sunday we 
 had no idea what they were up to, and we could n't help 
 being fearful that we were in danger. We expected 
 trouble that night, but all was quiet until the next day. 
 Then more Rebels came, and they nearly worried us to 
 death asking for something to eat. They were half fam- 
 ished and they looked like tramps — filthy and ragged. 
 
 By Tuesday there was enough going on to let us know 
 we were likely to have a battle near by. Early in the day 
 two or three Rebels, who 'd been informed by some one that 
 a Union flag was concealed at my father's place, came right 
 to the house, and I met 'em at the door. Their leader said : 
 " We've come to demand that flag you've got here. Give 
 it up at once or we'll search the house." 
 
 "I'll not give it up, and I guess you'll not come any 
 farther than you are, sir," I said. 
 
 They were impudent fellows, and he responded, " If you 
 don't tell me where that flag is I '11 draw my revolver on 
 you." 
 
 "It's of no use for you to threaten," I said. "Rather 
 than have you touch a fold of that starry flag I laid it in 
 ashes." 
 
 They seemed to be satisfied then and went away without 
 suspecting just how I 'd laid it in ashes. 
 
 Tuesday afternoon the neighbors began to come in here. 
 Our basement was very large with thick stone walls, and 
 
120 Antietam 
 
 they wanted to take refuge in it if there was danger. There 
 were women and children of all ages and some very old men. 
 Mostly they stood roundabout in the yard listening and 
 looking. The cannonading started late in the day, and 
 when there was a very loud report they scampered to the 
 cellar. 
 
 A lot of townspeople run out of the village to a cave 
 about three miles from here near the Potomac. The cave 
 was just an overhanging ledge of rocks, but shells and 
 cannon balls would fly over it and could n't hurt the peo- 
 ple under the cliff. I reckon seventy-five went to that 
 cave. 
 
 Before day, on Wednesday, a cannon ball tore up the 
 pavement out in front of our house. Oh my soul! we 
 thought we were gone. There was no more sleep, but most 
 of us were awake anyhow. After that, you know, we all 
 flew to the cellar. Very little was stored in there at that 
 time of year. We carried down some seats, and we made 
 board benches around, and quite a number of us got up on 
 the potato bunks and the apple scaffolds. We were as 
 comfortable as we could possibly be in a cellar, but it 's a 
 wonder we did n't all take our deaths of colds in that damp 
 place. 
 
 We did n't have any breakfast — you bet we did n't — 
 and no dinner was got that day, or supper — no, indeed ! 
 We had to live on fear. But a few of the women thought 
 enough to bring some food in their baskets for the children. 
 The battle did n't prevent the children from eating. They 
 did n't understand the danger. 
 
 A number of babies were there, and several dogs, and 
 every time the firing began extra hard the babies would cry 
 and the dogs would bark. Often the reports were so loud 
 
A Maryland Maiden* 121 
 
 they shook the walls. Occasionally a woman was quite un- 
 nerved and hysterical, and some of those old aged men 
 would break out in prayer. 
 
 In the height of the fighting six Rebel soldiers opened 
 the basement door and said, "We're comin' in, but we're 
 not a-goin' to hurt you." 
 
 We had a spring in the cellar. The water filled a shallow 
 tank, and that was where our family got what water was 
 used in the house. Those refugee soldiers went back in a 
 little nook right next to the spring. There they stood like 
 sardines in a box, and every once in a while one would slip 
 down into the water. 
 
 We had two cows and a horse in our stable, and at dinner 
 time Mother and I went to feed 'em. We climbed up to pull 
 down some hay and found the haymow just full of Rebels 
 a-layin' there hiding. 
 
 "Madam, don't be frightened," one of 'em said to 
 Mother. "We're hidin' till the battle is over. We 're tired 
 of fightin'. We were pressed into service, and we're goin' 
 to give ourselves up as soon as the Yankees get here." 
 
 And that was what they did. When the Yankees rushed 
 into town these Rebels came through the garden and gave 
 themselves up as prisoners. 
 
 There were deserters hid in every conceivable place in 
 the town. We had a lot of sacks of seed wheat on our back 
 porch, and some of the skulkers piled the sacks up on the 
 outside of the porch three or four feet high, as a sort of 
 bulwark, which they lay down behind to shelter them- 
 selves. How they did curse their leaders for bringing them 
 into this slaughter pen. They said they hoped the hottest 
 place in hell would be their leaders' portion. 
 
 Some of the townsmen in the cellar would come up and 
 
122 Antletam 
 
 venture out under the porch, but they were afraid to stay- 
 out ; and the danger was n't just fancied either. A shell 
 exploded right out here at our front gate and killed or 
 wounded seven men. 
 
 And yet, mind you, on Wednesday afternoon, another 
 girl and myself went up to the attic, and though the bullets 
 were raining on the roof, we threw open the shutter and 
 looked out toward the battleground. We were curious to 
 know what was going on. The bullets could have struck us 
 just as easy, but we did n't seem to fear them. On all the 
 distant hills around were the blue uniforms and shining 
 bayonets of our men, and I thought it was the prettiest 
 sight I ever saw in my life. Yes, there were our men, ad- 
 vancing cautiously, driven back again and again, but per- 
 sistently returning and pushing nearer. My! it was lovely, 
 and I felt so glad to think that we were going to get them 
 into town shortly. We stayed up there I suppose a couple 
 of hours at that little window, and then old Dr. Kelsey 
 came himting for us and made us come down. I shall 
 always remember what we saw from that window, and 
 many times I go up to the attic and look out, and the view 
 brings it all back. 
 
 In the evening mother and I slipped down to the stable 
 and did the milking. But afterward we went back to the 
 cellar, for the firing kept up till ten o'clock. Then we came 
 up and snatched what little bit we could to eat. We did n't 
 cook anything but took what was prepared, like bread and 
 butter and milk. Our neighbors who had been in the cellar 
 did n't attempt to go home. Some of the older ones we ac- 
 commodated in beds, others lay on the floors, but the best 
 part of the people sat up all night and watched, for we 
 did n't know what was going to come on us. 
 
A Maryland Maiden 123 
 
 About midnight we heard the Rebels retreating. Oh ! the 
 cannon just came down the hill bouncing. And the cavalry 
 — my! if they didn't dash through here! The infantry, 
 too, were going on a dead run, and some of the poor, hungry 
 fellows were so weak they were saying to their stronger 
 comrades, "Take hold of my hand, and help me along." A 
 lot of 'em were drownded in going across the Potomac. 
 
 We were overjoyed to know that our men had won — 
 yes, we certainly were happy. Well, the next morning 
 everything was quiet. It was an unearthly quiet after all 
 the uproar of the battle. The people who had taken refuge 
 with us saw that the danger was over, and they scattered 
 away to their homes. Father and I went out on the front 
 pavement. We could see only a few citizens moving about, 
 but pretty soon a Federal officer came cautiously around 
 the comer by the church. He asked Father if any one was 
 hurt in the town and said they had tried to avoid shelling 
 it, and he was awful sorry they could n't help dropping an 
 occasional shell among the houses. 
 
 I lost no time now in getting our flag from the ash heap 
 so I could have it where it would be seen when our men 
 marched into the town. I draped it on the front of the 
 house, but I declare to goodness! I had to take that flag 
 down. It made the officers think our house was a hotel, 
 and they'd ride up, throw their reins to their orderlies, and 
 come clanking up the steps with their swords and want 
 something to eat. So I hurried to get it swung across the 
 street, and after that, as the officers and men passed under 
 it they all took off their hats. Their reverence for the flag 
 was beautiful, and so was the flag. 
 
 I had a little flag in my hand, and while I was waving and 
 waving it and cheering our victorious troops some prison- 
 
124 Antietam 
 
 ers marched by, and, bless your soul! among them I saw the 
 very men who had demanded the big flag that was now 
 suspended across the street. They looked at the flag and 
 at me and shouted, "You said it was burned!" and they 
 cursed me till some of our men drew their swords and 
 quieted 'em down. "We'll settle with you when we come 
 through here again," they called back, but they never came. 
 
 Our men were much cleaner and better fed than the 
 Rebels, and their clothing was whole. The trains soon ar- 
 rived with the hardtack, and there were baggage wagons 
 and ambulances and everything. We had our men here 
 with us quite a while camped in the town woods, and so 
 constant was the coming and going of troops and army con- 
 veyances on the highways that we did n't get to speak to 
 our neighbors across the street for weeks. Those were ex- 
 citing times, but we felt safe. Of course there were some 
 common, rough fellows among the soldiers, but as a general 
 thing we found them very nice and we became much at- 
 tached to them. When they went away it left us decidedly 
 lonely here. 
 
 As for the day of the battle, it was tragic, but after the 
 fighting was all over and I just sat and studied everything 
 that had transpired a good deal was really laughable. 
 
 Well, the region was dreadfully torn to pieces by the con- 
 flict, but now you see no trace of it only the cemeteries. 
 
XV 
 
 The Little Rebel ' 
 
 My father used to be a bookkeeper in a Fredericksburg 
 store, and for two years before the war he had just been 
 dying of dispepsia. He did n't weigh over one hundred and 
 twenty pounds and was nothing on earth but a frame of 
 bones. One day he came home from work and said, "Well, 
 war has been declared, and I must join the army." 
 
 He got an appointment as quartermaster. We thought he 
 could never stand army life, but he had to go out foraging, 
 and the knocking about did him good. He recovered from 
 his dispepsia, put on flesh, and became hearty and strong. 
 
 However, after he'd been in the army about a year he 
 was taken sick with typhoid fever down in Richmon'. 
 Presently he began to get better, and he felt that he must 
 come home. The Yankees had control of Fredericksburg 
 at that time. So he did n't dare come straight here, but 
 stopped a few miles away at the home of a Mrs. Smith, 
 who was a friend of ours. He asked her to get word to Maw, 
 and she sent her little boy with the family carriage and a 
 
 1 At the time of my acquaintance with her she was a gray, slight 
 little woman, whose closest companions seemed to be two dogs. She 
 was living in a small, old-fashioned weoden house that the Northern 
 bombshells had battered, and the passing years had warped the walls 
 and floors so that the doors were troublesome about opening and shut- 
 ting. Dressmaking furnished her a livelihood, and while we talked she 
 sat with her work scattered all about and her sewing-machine close 
 at hand. 
 
126 Fredericksburg 
 
 note that said: "Come at once. Have a surprise in store 
 for you." 
 
 We lived in a nice large house on the main street in the 
 business part of the town. I was sixteen then, and I had 
 two brothers who were both younger, and a sister who was 
 a little tot just beginning to walk. 
 
 The carriage that our friend sent was drawn by one 
 horse, but it had two seats, and me and Maw and my little 
 sister got in and went along. When we reached Mrs. 
 Smith's house, there was Father, and he looked like death 
 itself he was so white and thin, for he'd been ill a long time. 
 I suppose his full black beard and long black hair made 
 him appear all the paler. We got there in time for supper, 
 and we stayed two days. It was on a Sunday afternoon 
 that we started for home. Father walked along with us as 
 far as the road gate to bid us good-by. We got in the car- 
 riage and left him standing there, and Mother called back, 
 "When you get to Richmon' be sure to write." 
 
 He was a great home body, and it like to have killed him 
 to have to part from us. He just thought to himself, "Can 
 I give them up and not see the others?" and instead of 
 going to our friend's house he came right on toward Fred- 
 ericksburg. The railroad track made a short cut into the 
 town, and he followed that. He had on citizens' clothes, 
 and nobody paid any attention to him. So he walked on 
 and on, and at last came in at the front gate of his own 
 home. That was shortly after we'd got here, and Mother 
 had just gone across the street to tell some of the neighbors 
 that she'd seen him. We sent for her, and when she came 
 and found out who was there she was perfectly miserable. 
 Of course she was glad to see him, but she was just wild she 
 was so 'fraid the Yankees would ketch him. 
 
The Little Rebel 127 
 
 The Yankee suttlers had stores m the town, and we 
 knew a little Northern drummer boy who worked for one 
 of them. He had been sick a while before, and Maw was so 
 sorry for him that she had him stay at our house where 
 she could take care of him. On the day after Paw came 
 into town this drummer boy spoke to me and said he'd 
 like to give my father some oranges and bananas. 
 
 "You're foolish, boy," I said. "You have n't seen any 
 man in our house." 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I saw one go m yesterday, and I 
 thought he looked like you." 
 
 "Oh, no!" I said, "but you can bring that fruit to me. 
 I'll eat it myself." 
 
 Father stayed in town a week, but he went to the house 
 of a friend for the last three days, we were so fearful he 
 would be discovered if he remained with us. Sunday came, 
 and about seven o'clock in the morning he went out on the 
 street carrying a little bucket in his hand as if he was going 
 blackberrying. Mother had told him good-by the night be- 
 fore. "Don't come again, please, till after the war," she 
 begged. 
 
 Things were getting too hot here, and it was certainly 
 high time that he made his way out. The town was just 
 filled with Confederate soldiers spying, and we'd heard 
 there was goin' to be a general search for 'em. Sure enough, 
 on Sunday afternoon, when Paw had only been gone a few 
 hours, a dozen men with an officer came to the house, and 
 the officer said to Maw, "Have you seen Captain Turner?" 
 
 "No," she said, and she considered that she was tellin' 
 the truth because she called him Jim. 
 
 But the officer insisted on searching the premises. Maw 
 was nervous, and I did most of the talking, and I followed 
 
128 Fredericksburg 
 
 the officer as he went about. He noticed that I wore a 
 breastpin with a man's portrait on it, and he said, " Is that 
 Captain Turner's picture on your breastpin? " 
 
 "You can find out, sir, if you are able," I retorted. 
 "You're lookin' for Captain Turner, and you ought to 
 know whether this is the picture of the person you're 
 after." 
 
 "Is n't that your father?" the officer asked. 
 
 " I have n't told you who it is," I answered. 
 
 "You're a saucy little minx," he said. 
 
 There we were — only him and me — up on the third 
 floor jawing. He searched from the cellar to the roof. 
 There was n't any place he did n't search in, I tell you. He 
 turned up the beds, and he looked in the wardrobes and 
 closets. He even pulled open the bureau drawers, and I 
 said, "Do you think Captain Turner is small enough to 
 get in there?" 
 
 At last he climbed out of a dormer window onto the slate 
 roof, crawled up to the ridge, and looked down the chimney. 
 I don't know how on earth he ever got up there. When he 
 was comin' back his feet slipped, and I leaned out of the 
 window and just managed to ketch him by his two arms. I 
 held on and hollered, "Help!" 
 
 One of his men come rushing up the steps, and Maw 
 come, too. They helped pull him in. "Oh!" he gasped, 
 ** you have saved my life." 
 
 He was speakin' to me. "I did n't do it from choice," I 
 said, "but because I did n't want a dead Yankee on the 
 place on Sunday afternoon." 
 
 That was a close call for him. If he'd fallen three stories 
 onto our brick-paved yard he'd have been killed. 
 
 Father had started off as if he was goin' berrying, and he 
 
A NARROW ESCAPE 
 
The Little Rebel 129 
 
 did n't meet a soul. He went right out the plank road west 
 of the town, and kept on walkin', walkin', till he just had 
 to sit down to rest himself. But finally he got to Mrs. 
 Smith's where he was before. 
 
 "Well, for heaven's sake! where are you goin' now?" 
 she asked, when she found him at her door. 
 
 "I'm tryin' to make Richmon'," he said. 
 
 He stayed at Mrs. Smith's over night. Next morning, 
 while he was eating breakfast, he looked out and saw a 
 dust rising from the road in the distance. "I believe there 
 are soldiers comin'," he said. 
 
 But Mrs Smith told him the dust was raised by cattle, 
 and Father went on eating. Presently he heard the sound 
 of horses' hoofs and saw from the window a whole com- 
 pany of cavalry entering the yard. He dodged out of a back 
 door and started down the hill toward the woods. The 
 cavalrymen saw him, and five of them charged after him. 
 By the time he'd crossed the yard they were so close they 
 struck at him with their sabers. He made a dive through 
 the barnyard gate, and the gate closed after him. His pur- 
 suers had to stop and open it, and that gave him a chance 
 to jump the barnyard fence into a field. Then he ran on 
 down the hill to a little spring branch in among a right 
 heavy growth of trees. The cavalrymen had a little diffi- 
 culty in getting their horses over the fence, and their 
 leader was very angry. He stood up in his saddle and 
 shouted to his followers: "Circle to the right two abreast. 
 We'll find that man if we find him in hell to-night." 
 
 Father had got into the woods, and he lay down right in 
 the water of the little branch — and him gettin' over the 
 typhoid fever. The cavalrymen dashed about huntin' for 
 him, and if he'd had a three foot stick in his hand he could 
 
130 Fredericksburg 
 
 have touched them with it they came so close, but they 
 did n't find him. 
 
 By and by, the men gave up their search, and Mrs. Smith 
 sent a negro woman to get some water down at the spring, 
 which was near where she'd seen Father disappear among 
 the trees. " If you see Captain Turner," she said, " tell him 
 to keep on in the woods and not try to come back to the 
 house." 
 
 The woman went to the spring, and Father crawled out 
 of the branch and spoke to her, and she said, "Ain't they 
 done killed you?" 
 
 She was excited and talked louder than he thought was 
 necessary. "Hush!" he said. "Where are those men who 
 were chasin' me?" 
 
 "Their commander called 'em back to the house," she 
 answered. 
 
 "Well," he said, "you can tell Mis' Lizzie I'm safe so 
 far." 
 
 Then the colored woman gave him the message her 
 mistress had sent, and walked off with the bucket of water 
 on her head as if nothing had happened. The cavalrymen 
 were still at the house, and they questioned her, but 
 did n't discover her secret. She was right smart not to 
 give it away. 
 
 Father kept out of sight on the wood roads till he got 
 way up country, and in the end he reached Richmon' in 
 safety. 
 
 The front room of our house was made for a store, and a 
 man by the name of Jones rented it and kept groceries. He 
 often sold things to the Union soldiers who were camped 
 on the other side of the Rappahanock for several months 
 before the battle. We had burnt the bridges in '61, but a 
 
The Little Rebel 131 
 
 wire bridge for foot passengers had been fixed up, and the 
 soldiers would come over on that, eighteen or twenty in a 
 bunch, to visit the city. Sometimes the streets would be 
 thronged with 'em. 
 
 One day a soldier came into the grocery store and went 
 behind the counter and took a piece of tobacco, and he 
 was n't goin' to pay. The tobacco only cost ten cents, and 
 he took it for a projec' more than anything else. That was 
 his idea of fun. "Stop!" Mr. Jones said. "Pay for what 
 you've taken or I'll have you arrested, sir." 
 
 But the man went off with the tobacco. Then Mr. Jones 
 just spoke to a guard, and the soldier was locked up for a 
 certain number of days as a punishment. The officers were 
 right strict with the men and tried to make 'em behave 
 themselves, but in a crowd like that, you know, there 's 
 bound to be some rowdies. 
 
 Early in December that soldier hollered across the river 
 to our pickets: "You tell Roy Jones he'd better get out of 
 town. We're goin' to hang him if we ketch him, and we're 
 goin' to burn his store." 
 
 The threat was reported to my mother, and she was 
 very uneasy. Mr. Jones had begun to move his business to 
 a town farther south, things were so unsettled at Freder- 
 icksburg, and Mother said to him, "Please take your sign 
 along with your goods." 
 
 "Oh, yes!" he said, "I'll sure take that. I'll need it 
 where I 'm goin'." 
 
 He got it off from the store front and put it inside, and 
 there he left it while he went with a load of goods to his 
 new location. He'd got to come back for another load, and 
 then he intended to carry along the sign. But a couple of 
 days later our minister came to the house and said to 
 
132 Fredericksburg 
 
 Mother: "Sister Turner, orders are bein' sent around that 
 we must leave before daybreak to-morrow. The Yankees 
 are goin' to shell the town." 
 
 The Northern commander and General Lee had con- 
 sulted under a flag of truce, and they'd agreed to give the 
 citizens that warning. Maw did n't want to leave. Our 
 soldiers were in the town then, and she vowed she would 
 stay cookin' and handin' out things to 'em. 
 
 But it seemed as if everybody else was gettin' out of here. 
 They went up the road by the dozen carrying bundles of 
 clothes. I set up there in our second story window, and 
 watched 'em. One man went past with such a large bundle 
 I could n't help laughing. I pointed him out to Maw and 
 said, " It looks to me as if that man had a feather bed on 
 his back." 
 
 " Mary, I believe you 'd laugh at your own funeral," 
 Maw told me. 
 
 "Well," I said, "I reckon I'm half -past silly." 
 
 Lots of people went out of town on the cars. Others 
 went in teams, and they hired everything in the world in 
 the shape of a vehicle that was available. They were 
 branchin' out from the town anywhere they could get. 
 There were families of means that took refuge in little log 
 cabins — even in the negro cabins — and were glad of the 
 shelter. 
 
 At last Maw consented to leave, but when I went for a 
 carriage I could n't get one, nor a cart, nor a vestige of any- 
 thing. But General Lee sent in ten big canvas-covered 
 army wagons, late that night, and I got one of those. We 
 put in a bed and some provisions, and then got in ourselves. 
 My aunt, who lived across the street, went with us. It was 
 just getting daylight in the morning when we started. I 
 
The Little Rebel 133 
 
 had a Confederate flag hanging out of the rear of the wagon, 
 and my aunt was scared to death because the batteries 
 across the river had a direct Une on us. She was afraid the 
 Yankees would shoot us as we was drivin' up the street. 
 
 " I don't care," I said; " I 'm goin' to fly my colors. They 
 have no business makin' us go out of town. If they don't 
 want me to fly my flag they can let us stay here." 
 
 We 'd gone a mile or two, and I was settin' there in the 
 wagon when we met some troops comin' up the road. 
 General Lee and his staff were with 'em, and I waved my 
 flag and the general saluted it. About three miles farther 
 on we got beyond the firing line, and the captain of the 
 wagon train spoke to us and said, "Now here's where 
 I'm ordered to dump everybody, and you'll have to get 
 out." 
 
 "No, indeed," I said, "you'll not put us out here. I'm 
 Captain Turner's daughter." 
 
 All the army men knew Captain Turner, and the wagon 
 master said he'd ta.ke us wherever we wanted to go. A 
 friend of ours, Mr. Holliday, lived eight miles from town 
 out on that road. He had a big farm and was quite a 
 wealthy man before the war. He must have owned hun- 
 dreds of slaves. Their cabins were all around his house, al- 
 most like a village, and each family had a little garden 
 spot. The first time I was ever there I went with Father, 
 and we met some little darkies as we approached the house. 
 Father asked them who they belonged to. 
 
 "We belong to Mr. John Holliday," they said, "and he's 
 a mighty nice man." 
 
 "Doesn't he whip you?" Father said. 
 
 "No, sir," the oldest child replied, "and he wouldn't 
 let my mammy whip me if he knew it." 
 
134 Fredericksburg 
 
 When we refugeed I had the army wagon take us to Mr. 
 Holliday's. I only weighed sixty-eight pounds, but I'd 
 put on three dresses that morning — in fact, I was wearing 
 nearly all the clothes I possessed ; and the colored man who 
 helped us out of the wagon thought I looked so big and 
 strong that I did n't need any assistance, and I just flopped 
 out. 
 
 A good many others had flocked to Mr. Holliday's, and 
 when night came we had to sleep anjrwhere we could. I 
 shared a room with twelve others. We arranged blankets 
 and quilts on the floor so we could he side by side, one 
 right after the other. When they had all lain down except 
 me I counted 'em and said :"I won't be the thirteenth. I 'm 
 goin' to sit up in a chair." 
 
 Don't you know, speakin' of that, the war was a sad 
 thing, and it was often a hardship bein' knocked around as 
 we were, but we had right much fun. 
 
 We did n't have pillows that night, and we tipped chairs 
 down so the backs would slant up for us to rest our heads 
 on. But after the first night we arranged things so we were 
 more comfortable. 
 
 Mr. Holliday's house was heated only by fireplaces, and 
 I shall never forget how cold it was there in those days 
 of early winter. We had great big fires, but you had to sit 
 right on top of 'em to keep warm. I said to Maw, "I 
 feel like my face was burning up and my back freezing up 
 here before this fire." 
 
 We 'd been at Mr. Holliday's nearly a week and there 'd 
 been no bombarding yet; so I decided to go to town and 
 see if I could save some furniture. I walked, and two other 
 ladies came with me. A part of the way we went around by 
 paths and through strips of woods to flank the pickets. But 
 
The Little Rebel 135 
 
 we finally met a picket down here back of the town, and he 
 says, "Ladies, where are you goin'?" 
 
 We told him what we wanted to do, and he let us come 
 on in. The place was almost deserted. There were just a 
 few people about, and all the stores were closed except one 
 or two and the eating-places for the soldiers to get a lunch. 
 I went to an officer, and he ordered two men to take a four 
 horse wagon and go with me. He said I could fill that with 
 whatever we wanted to carry off, and he would provide an 
 ambulance for me and my friends to ride back in. I packed 
 away some of the things at the house, and had the men put 
 in the wagon such articles as we needed for every-day use. 
 I know the load included considerable clothing, several 
 chairs and beds, and a couple of bureaus. Later in the day 
 we returned to Mr. Holliday's. That was December 12th. 
 
 The next morning, about five o'clock, I reckon, I was 
 waked by the report of a cannon. It shook the glassware 
 in the china closet that stood in the room where we were 
 sleeping. The gun was fired by the Confederates to an- 
 noimce that the Yankees were attempting to cross the 
 river. After some sharp fighting the Federals succeeded 
 in making pontoon bridges, and in order to drive back the 
 Confederates they shelled the town off and on all day. 
 Finally they got across and our men retreated. 
 
 When the town fell into their hands some of them went 
 into a house near ours and asked a negro servant, who was 
 the only person at home there, for a firebrand. He wanted 
 to know what they intended to do with it. 
 
 They said, "We're goin' to bum that house across the 
 way because Roy Jones, who treated us so bad has his 
 grocery store in it." 
 
 "But Jones has moved away/' the negro told 'em. 
 
136 Fredericksburg 
 
 "You can't fool us," they said. "We've looked through 
 the window, and we can see his sign inside." 
 
 So they took a chunk of fire from the kitchen fireplace 
 and went into our cellar and started a blaze. We had thir- 
 teen cords of wood in the cellar and the greatest quantity 
 of groceries that my Paw had put in to last two or three 
 years. He was a splendid provider. When he was buying 
 supplies for the army he would get supplies for us, and we 
 had everything in the world we wanted. There were three 
 barrels of flour, two barrels of sugar, a sack of coffee, and a 
 barrel of corned beef, and there were the hams and shoul- 
 ders of three hogs hung up ready cured. All that was 
 burned, and so was our china-ware and library and every- 
 thing. I never bothered with any deep literature then, but 
 Father said he had books he could n 't replace to save his 
 life. The house of our nearest neighbor caught fire from 
 ours, and went up in flames; and all that destruction was 
 the result of the soldiers' antipathy toward one man — our 
 tenant, Jones. 
 
 On the night of the twelfth the ladies who were at the 
 Hollidays' scraped lint, and I haven't made any since. I 
 got my share of makin' it then. We certainly did work 
 hard. I scraped two tablecloths into lint with my pen- 
 knife. Indeed, I scraped right down through my clothing 
 to the flesh, and I said to the others, "It's time I was 
 dressin' my own wounds." 
 
 After the fightin' began the next day I walked with a 
 lady friend up to within three miles of the town. The 
 bullets were flying, and there were lots of wounded who 
 needed attention, and we thought we would help take 
 care of them. We came to a field hospital where they had 
 amputation tables all about among the trees of an orchard 
 
The Little Rebel 137 
 
 close to the main road. The doctors were cutting off arms 
 and legs, and the amputated limbs lay in piles by the 
 tables. It was such a terrible sight that we didn't stay 
 there long. We couldn't stand it, and we returned to 
 Mr. Holliday's. 
 
 All day the ambulances were going past the house on 
 their way to the nearest railroad station. You could hear 
 the wounded men in them groanin' a quarter of a mile 
 away, it hurt the poor things so to jolt over the road. A 
 good many of the ambulances stopped in front of the 
 house to have the men's wounds dressed, and sometimes 
 the men would be laid out on the grass. The rags on their 
 wounds got so dry they chafed them, and we had to wash 
 the wounds and put on clean cloths. I don't know how 
 many sheets we tore up. 
 
 "0 lady! we do thank you so much," they'd say when 
 they were leaving. They were taken six miles farther to 
 the railroad and sent on to Richmon'. 
 
 The sight of blood makes me faint. I can't bear it. I 
 can't even cut a piece of fresh meat for my dogs. But I 
 think you can get used to anything when you have to; and 
 it seems to me, on that battle day, I got to helping with the 
 wounded before I knew it, and I was n't affected by what I 
 saw at all. 
 
 Most of the fighting was done just back of the town 
 where the Yankees tried to force the Confederates from 
 their position on Marye's Hill. Lines of cannon crowned the 
 height, and the sides were covered with rifle-pits which con- 
 cealed a host of sharpshooters, and at the base of the hill 
 was a stone wall behind which crouched several regi- 
 ments of infantry. Six assaults were made, but not a 
 single Yankee could get beyond that wall. The Union 
 
138 Fredericksburg 
 
 loss was twelve thousand, and ours less than half that 
 number. 
 
 You have no idea what a wreck this town was after the 
 battle — so many buildings burned, and so many battered 
 by the balls and shells, and so many of them pillaged. The 
 soldiers went into the house of an old lady who lived the 
 second block from us, and they took her haircloth parlor 
 suite out into the street and some of the things were broken 
 all to pieces. They pulled a lot of clothing out of the ward- 
 robe, emptied the oil can and two or three cans of preserves 
 onto the clothes, mopped 'em around, and threw 'em in a 
 comer, I reckon they did the same thing in all the houses. 
 They seemed to want to ruin whatever they could lay their 
 hands on. I don't think they found much silver in their 
 rummaging. Our people connived every way in the world 
 to hide and keep that. 
 
 I heard a man tell how at his house they made batter in a 
 bureau drawer and opened the piano and poured the batter 
 all over the wires. He never saw such a mess in his life. 
 He'd refugeed, but he came back right after the battle to 
 find out how things were lookin' at his place. He had a 
 mirror that his daughters could see themselves in full 
 length from head to foot, and the soldiers had busted that 
 all to pieces, and they had taken an axe and split a ward- 
 robe from end to end. He was a real ignorant old man, 
 but he had sense enough to make plenty of money. Oh, 
 yes indeed! 
 
 It was the fall of '63 when we moved back to town. The 
 place looked pretty desolate. There were a good many 
 women here, but only a few men and those all old. Sup- 
 plies were scanty and prices way up in G. We toasted 
 wheat and rye and used it for coffee. Some one from the 
 
The Little Rebel 139 
 
 country told me the other day that at his house they had 
 drank wheat coffee ever since the war. They liked it better 
 than the real coffee and thought it was much healthier. 
 Another substitute for coffee was made out of sweet pota- 
 toes. We peeled the potatoes and sliced them very thin, 
 then toasted the slices in the oven and ground them up, 
 and that potato coffee tasted splendid. 
 
 The first year of the war Mother took a tin box that had 
 two compartments, and filled one side with Java coffee, 
 and the other with crushed loaf sugar. Each compartment 
 had a lid and held about five pounds, I reckon. We'd just 
 use the coffee once in a while when we wanted it for extra 
 occasions. 
 
 Once we went to Richmon', and Mother took her box 
 of coffee and sugar along. The baggage master who put it 
 on the train for her said, "You surely must have all your 
 gold and silver in this, it is so heavy." 
 
 " What I 've got in there is just as precious as gold to me," 
 Maw said, and she told him what the box contained. 
 
 We used to buy things of an old gentleman who ran the 
 blockade. He never would tell how he managed it, but I 
 know he went up to Alexandria to get the goods. He just 
 brought shoes and drygoods and articles of that sort. To- 
 ward the end of the war Mother got a pair of Congress 
 gaiters from the old man. He said they would be two dol- 
 lars in silver, or two hundred dollars in Confederate money. 
 Mother said she did n't have the silver, so she paid him the 
 two hundred dollars. About the same time she paid twen- 
 ty-four dollars for a pound of sugar. My brothers went 
 barefoot. They had good shoes, but they did n't want to 
 wear them out because they were 'fraid they would n't get 
 any more. 
 
140 Fredericksburg 
 
 When Grant was fighting in this region in 1864 a boy 
 roomed with us who carried newspapers and writing ma- 
 terials on to the front to sell to the Northern soldiers. He 
 went back and forth on horseback. One day he brought 
 me a haversack of French patent leather and the skh't of a 
 saddle that he'd picked up on the Wilderness battlefield. 
 "You can make a pair of shoes out of these," he said. 
 
 I took them to a shoemaker and paid twenty dollars to 
 have him make me some shoes. The leather was very nice 
 and soft, and I had those shoes yet after the war was over. 
 
 A good many of the Northern wounded and stragglers 
 came here at the time of the Wilderness fight. They'd 
 hardly begun to arrive when some of the officers went to the 
 stores and got all the casks of whiskey they could find and 
 broke the heads and emptied the whiskey into the gutters. 
 The officers were fearful, if the men got to drinking, they'd 
 tear up the town. I remember looking out of the window 
 and seeing some of the soldiers with cups and canteens 
 trying to save what they could of the whiskey from the gut- 
 ters, and I said," Maw, will you please look at that." 
 
 At last the war ended, and Paw came home directly af- 
 terward. He had bought a lot of tobacco in Richmon' just 
 before the surrender, but lost it in the fire that burned the 
 city. If it had escaped the fire he could have sold it for 
 thirty-five thousand dollars. When he reached home he 
 said, "Richmon' has gone up, my tobacco's gone up, and 
 I'm goin' up." 
 
 Pretty soon the Union troops were passing through the 
 town going home North. There was cavalry, artillery, and 
 men on foot. We had some nice meat, and we went to cook- 
 ing for 'em. Mother and the servant and I sat up all one 
 night cooking. We got ready ham and beef sandwiches and 
 
The Little Rebel 141 
 
 coffee and pie and hot rolls and lightbread. My two little 
 brothers stood at the window and sold the things. Father 
 was in back of the boys watching to see that everything 
 was all right. " The idea of my settin' here," he said, "and 
 sellin' to Northern people who've whipped us!" 
 
 I told him, "Don't say whipped — just overpowered." 
 
 The men were pretty well worn out, and it seemed to be 
 quite a treat to 'em to get soft bread. Well, that was not 
 to be wondered at considering how long they'd been living 
 on hardtack. 
 
 One of the men had a mule that he said he'd sell us, sad- 
 dle and all, for twenty-five dollars. It was the prettiest 
 thing I ever laid my eyes on — just like a butter ball. Paw 
 told him he s'posed he'd stole it, but the man said, "No, I 
 only want to sell the mule because I can't conveniently 
 take it North." 
 
 Mother and I had the money, and we bought the mule. 
 Father had rode a horse home, and now that we had the 
 two creatures it gave us a little impetus. He rented a piece 
 of ground and put in a crop of corn, and then he secured 
 the position of bookkeeper in a flour mill, and we got along 
 very well. 
 
 We had a Northern man who was wounded in the Battle 
 of the Wilderness staying at our house for three weeks after 
 the battle. I was always telling him funny things. "You 
 want to kill me laughing," he'd say. 
 
 He was wounded in the cheek bone, and it hurt him to 
 laugh. To retaliate and tease me, he'd say, "You'll marry 
 a Yankee." 
 
 "Never in the kingdom!" I'd declare. "I'm too much 
 of a Rebel." 
 
 Just before he left us an army friend of his who 'd called 
 
142 Fredericksburg 
 
 to see him remarked to me: "I've seen you before. One 
 day you were down by the river, and I was on the other 
 side. You wore a brown dress and had a Uttle slat bonnet 
 in your hand. I was looking through my field glasses." 
 
 I recalled the time. Some men on horses across the river 
 had called out: "Hello, sis! Want a cup of good coffee?" 
 
 They thought I was a child, I reckon, I was such a little 
 bit of a midget. 
 
 "Want a hot biscuit?" I called back, and pointed to a 
 cannon that was near me. 
 
 It's curious, but after the war I met the Northern soldier 
 who saw me that day through his field glasses as he looked 
 across the Rappahannock, and we married. I've spent a 
 good deal of my life since up in Connecticut, but I have n't 
 become a Yankee. My friends there call me, "The Little 
 Rebel." 
 
XVI 
 
 The Colored Cooper ^ 
 
 Me and my wife was both free born. We could have gone 
 away befo' the battle, but we had a house hyar in Freder- 
 icksburg and four small chil'en, and I had work in town 
 makin' barrels. So we stayed all the whole time. There 
 was n't many who did that. 
 
 As soon as the Yankees got hyar the slaves begun to run 
 away from their mistresses and masters. They went by 
 hundreds. You 'd see 'em gittin' out of hyar same as a rab- 
 bit chased by a dog. Some carried little bundles tied up, 
 but they could n't tote much. Often one of the women 
 would walk along carrying a child wrapped up in a blanket. 
 Fifteen miles from hyar they got to the Potomac, and the 
 Yankee gunboats would take 'em right to Washington. 
 Then they 'd pile in wherever they could git. They never 
 come back this way. 
 
 A good many of the Rebel soldiers stole off, too, so they 
 could git into the Yankee lines, and not have to fight. 
 
 We had such cold weather that December when the bat- 
 tle was fought that the ice formed quite thick on a pond up 
 hyar in the early days of the month. I promised Mr. Roe, 
 who carried on butchery, that I 'd help draw to fill his ice- 
 
 ^ That his years were many was evident in his stooping form and 
 thin white hair, but he was still working. I visited him in the shop 
 where he was making barrels as of yore, and he continued at his task 
 while he told his story. 
 
144 Fredericksburg 
 
 house. He was to start work on the 13th. The night before 
 was cold — bitter cold. I wanted to be at the pond early, 
 and when a noise waked me, after I 'd been asleep a good 
 long time, I. thought it must be near about daybreak. So 
 I got up and went to the barn and fed my horse. But what 
 I 'd heard was the Yankees fixin' to come over hyar from 
 the other side of the Rappahannock on pontoon bridges. 
 
 Colonel Lang was camped up the lane, and pretty soon 
 he marched right past my door with one thousand Con- 
 federate troops. They went down in intrenchments along 
 the river. Then the old signal gun went off, and there was 
 somethin' doin'. I did n't know what it meant — a gun 
 goin' off at that time in the morning. Lang killed about 
 seventy-five men who were makin' the pontoon bridges — 
 swept 'em off clean as a whistle — but later in the day the 
 Yankees come across in their boats and swept him off. 
 
 Early in the morning word was sent around that they 
 was goin' to shell the town, and they done it, too. But I 
 did n't git no warning and did n't know a thing of it till I 
 saw people running. Some ran with their nightclothes on. 
 They did n't have any time to play, I tell you. All that 
 could, got out into the country and the woods was full of 
 'em — white and colored. But I stayed in the town. I 
 think there was two hundred Yankee cannon over the river 
 . on the hills. The shelling begun about five o'clock, as near 
 as I can come at it, and the gunners could shoot the bombs 
 and balls just where they wanted to. I know two people 
 was killed dead in bed that morning — an old man and an 
 old woman. We had rough times hyar. I don't want any 
 mo' of that bumbarding in this world. I don't want it in 
 the next world either, if I 'm ever able to git there. 
 
 Tom Kjiox who owned the hotel had a narrow escape. 
 
COLUKED REFUGEES (iOlNU XORTH 
 
The Colored Cooper 145 
 
 He got up when the signal gun fired and put on his clothes 
 as quick as he could and got out of town on foot. He left 
 everything he had behind him, and he was hardly out of 
 the house when a shell come in and split his pillow open. 
 It did n't hurt the bed, but they tell me a knife could n't 
 have cut that pillow into two parts any better than the 
 shell did. The shell was lookin' for Mr. Knox, but it did n't 
 git him. It would have split him open if he'd stayed there. 
 Yes, fifteen or twenty minutes longer in his bed would 
 have fixed him. 
 
 The neighbors come into my house when the shells be- 
 gun to fly. Oh! we had the greatest quantity of women and 
 children there. The house was full. They all wanted to 
 have plenty of company so if any of 'em got hurt the others 
 could help 'em. By and by a solid shot — a twelve-pounder 
 — come right through my house. The Yankees had been 
 firin' a right smart while, and I s'pose the sun was 'bout 
 half an hour high. I was settin' up by the fire with some of 
 the others in my bedroom. The ball cut one of the big 
 house timbers plumb in two, and I never saw so much dirt 
 flyin' around in my life. It took the end off the bureau just 
 as clean as you could with a circular saw, and it left dust 
 and everything else all over the room as if some one had 
 been sowin' seed. Ah, man! I never want to see that pass 
 over no mo'. It was terrible. 
 
 I had a splendid cellar under my house, and we all went 
 down into that. We did n't have no breakfast. But I did 
 n't bother my mind at all about that. I was n't hungry a 
 bit. I was already filled up with skeer. The chil'en would 
 have liked breakfast, but 'deed and they did n't git it. 
 They was not so skeered as the grown folks because they 
 did n't know the danger. The older people was just skeered 
 
146 Fredericksburg 
 
 to death, all hands of 'em, and some was mo' uneasy 'bout 
 the chil'en than they was 'bout themselves. We had a 
 tejious time of it with nothin' to do but talk of how the 
 shells was running. 
 
 That was an awful day — awful day, but the firin' 
 stopped up some by noon, and we all come up and took a 
 peep. I went out in the back yard where I could look and 
 see the Yankees like bees on them heights across the river. 
 A ball had struck a haystack I had piled up in my lot, and 
 I expected my horse would be killed tied right there in the 
 stable, but he wa'n't hurt a bit. The town seemed to be 
 deserted. I walked up as far as the corner, and looked up 
 and down and could n't see a soul — man or woman, cat or 
 dog. The neighbors stayed at our house until night, and 
 then they went home and give the chil'en something to eat, 
 I reckon. 
 
 Next day the place was full of Yankee troops. One of the 
 citizens had a good deal of whiskey in his cellar, and I had 
 helped hide it. The cellar had a brick floor, and we took up 
 a part of it and dug a hole. All the liquor was in jimmy- 
 johns, and we put the whole parcel of 'em down in the 
 ground, covered 'em up with dirt, and laid back the bricks. 
 Nobody would have known anything was buried there if 
 they 'd walked over that hyar cellar floor all day. Some one 
 must have told, for the Irish brigade found the whiskey, 
 and the men got so drunk they did n't know what they was 
 doing. 
 
 The Rebels was on Marye's Heights. That was a hot 
 place — a hot place! The Yankees never had no chance to 
 win there. They kept chargin' a stone wall at the foot of 
 the Heights. But Lord 'a' mercy! they was all cut to pieces 
 every time. Some got up to the wall so they could put their 
 
The Colored Cooper 147 
 
 hands on it, but they could n't git no further. That wall 
 still stands, and when there comes a rain they say the blood 
 stains show on it even yet. 
 
 One of the leading Southern generals in this fight was 
 Stonewall Jackson — you've heard talk of him. He was 
 a plague, he was a honey, old Stonewall was — he was a 
 honey! He wanted his men to take off their pants and just 
 have on drawers so he'd know 'em. They would n't do it, 
 and I don't blame 'em. They did n't have much to take 
 off nohow, I reckon, and it was winter weather. Jackson's 
 men did n't wear no shoes. Instead, they had on each foot 
 a piece of leather tied up behind and before with leather 
 strings. I found one of those foot protectors where they 
 camped. Old Stonewall was a terrible man. He did n't 
 think anything of marching his troops thirty mile in a 
 night. They had the hardest time of any soldiers I heard 
 of in the war. Ha, ha! do you know what kind of food he 
 gave 'em? Three times a day each man got one year of 
 corn — a raw year of com. They did n't have to stop 
 marching to eat it, but gnawed and chewed it as they 
 tramped along. 
 
 I went to the battlefield and took a look around when 
 things got cool, and I can tell you I don't never want to see 
 no mo' war in my day. The battlefield 'peared like some- 
 body had been doin' something — it 'peared awful bad! 
 The dead was scattered around, and some looked like they 
 was fast asleep. When a man had been hit by a shell that 
 exploded it bust him up in such little pieces you would n't 
 'a' known he was ever the shape of a man. A good many 
 bodies was all laid in a row side of the stone wall with blan- 
 kets over their faces. I saw some old gray fellers among 
 the dead. They had no business to be in the war at their 
 
148 Fredericksburg 
 
 age. Out in front of the stone wall was the Yankees where 
 they'd fallen one 'pon top of t' other. 
 
 The Southern troops took possession of the town after 
 the battle. Some of 'em was so smoked up I did n't know 
 whether they was white men or black men. They was 
 nasty and dirty, and their clothes was dreadful. If a Rebel 
 wanted a good pair of pants or shoes he had to shoot a 
 Yankee to git 'em. Every Union man that was killed was 
 stripped, and you often could n't tell the Rebels in their 
 borrowed clothing from the Northern soldiers. 
 
 A heap of 'em on both sides suffered mightily for food. 
 Some had the rashions but no chance to cook what they 
 had. 'Bout noon one day two Rebel soldiers come up 
 to our house off of the river, and they said to my wife, 
 "Aunty, we've got some fish we want you to fry." 
 ' They'd been on picket duty. The Rebel pickets was on 
 this side of the river and the Yankee pickets on the other 
 side layin' there watchin' one another, and these fellers had 
 put in some of their time fishing. They 'd caught a mess of 
 herrings, but they did n't have no salt nor nothing to 
 cook 'em with. So my wife took a piece of meat and 
 fried the herrings nicely and gave the men some bread 
 to eat with their fish. Their rashions could n't have been 
 much. Some of the soldiers pulled up wild onions and 
 e't 'em. 
 
 I had to work for Confederate money during the war, 
 and I know that one time I paid five hundred dollars for a 
 barrel of flour. Well, that old Confederate money wa'n't 
 no account to me. It did n't amount to anything, and I 
 did n't care what I paid. I had a hundred dollars of it when 
 the war ended. There was some one dollar bills, some fives, 
 and some tens. Union soldiers going North liked to have a 
 
The Colored Cooper 149 
 
 few of those bills to take home to show to their wives, and 
 I just divided mine out among 'em. 
 
 We used to pick up bayonets, guns, and other things 
 regular out on the battlefield, but the woods have been pil- 
 laged so we don't find 'em any mo'. Occasionally, though, 
 bones are found when digging is being done in the back 
 streets. 
 
 There's a national cemetery now on the slope of Marye's 
 Heights beyond the stone wall, and you could n't give some 
 people in this town fifty dollars to go in the cemetery at 
 night. Once we had a kind of public meetin' hyar for elec- 
 tion, and the candidate had furnished a jug of whiskey and 
 a little crackers and cheese, or something like that for re- 
 freshments. I s'pose there was a gallon in the jug, and it 
 had n't been passed to mo' than two or three when a feller 
 grabbed it and ran. O man! there was excitement then. 
 Every one taken out after him. But he ran to the cemetery 
 and jumped over the fence, and the rest stopped right there. 
 They certainly were feared of ghos'es. He had whiskey for 
 a number of days, and I guess he drank it all himself. No- 
 body remembered sharing it with him. 
 
XVII 
 A Slave Woman's Troubles^ 
 
 I BELONGED to Mr. Sam Gordon, and I nursed and took 
 entire care of his sister's children. They'd always go with 
 me everywhere I went, and I loved 'em, and they were jus' 
 as dear to me as my own. They e't with me and slep' in the 
 room with me, and the little ones, up to three or four or five 
 years old, slep' in my bed. I dressed 'em and waited on 'em, 
 and their mother jus' come to see 'em when she felt like it. 
 In them times, if the family went traveling, I went, too. 
 I was kep' busy, and I seldom had any Sunday at all. But 
 I had a good mistress and master. They did n't push their 
 slaves in work, and they did n't put 'em to work young — 
 not till they were fifteen. 
 
 I was raised right in the house with the white people. 
 My mistress raised me jus' like she raised her own children, 
 except that I did n't get no book education, no, sir. I 
 wish to the land I had some. But my old mistress learned 
 me how to work and to be clean and genteel. When night 
 come she'd say: "Now I'm goin' to learn you a few things 
 for your own benefit. You'll thank me when you're big." 
 
 ^ She was a spectacled, kindly old body of whom every one in Fred- 
 ericksburg spoke highly. All her family had the reputation of being 
 self-respecting and industrious. Her daughter's house, where she 
 lived, was very neat and suggestive of prosperity. There I spent an 
 evening in the kitchen. The old woman sat in a comer by the stove. 
 It was plain that she enjoyed recalling her early experiences, even if 
 there had been much of sorrow and hardship in them. 
 
A Slave Woman's Troubles 151 
 
 Sometimes she'd keep me working till about ten or 
 *leven o'clock. I did n't like to work at night, but I 'm glad 
 I got to understand how to act and how to weave, spin, 
 wash, iron, sew, knit, and everything of that kind. 
 
 I was nearly forty years old when the war begun. I'd 
 been married a right smart while and was living in a cabin 
 with my own family. Mr. Gordon's place was ten miles be- 
 low the town. Befo' the battle it was jus' like a city. The 
 Southern soldiers were camped all around us, and they had 
 little old stoves back in the woods to keep them warm and 
 to do their cooking. Often they'd exchange some of their 
 army food for what I had. They'd bring me a bag of flour 
 and I 'd give 'em corn meal for it, and I 'd let 'em have milk 
 and buttermilk and all such things. Perhaps they would 
 n't have any tea or coffee to use with their sugar, and 
 they'd give the sugar to me. A good deal of the time they 
 did n't have salt, and they were so pitiful I felt right sorry 
 for 'em. Yes, the Southern soldiers were hungry. They e't 
 every chicken we had, and a cavalryman got our hog — 
 took it right out of the pen, then cut it in two, and hung 
 half on each side of his horse and rode off. 
 
 I would n't let the soldiers come into the house, and my 
 mistress would say, "Fanny, you ought not to be so hard- 
 hearted." 
 
 "Well," I said, "I ain' gwine let 'em come in. I have a 
 whole parcel of children hyar, and those men are lousy. 
 They'd be droppin' their lice all around. Besides, the first 
 thing they'd do they'd pick up my two little children that 
 are twins and want to take 'em out to camp." 
 
 One day a soldier started to walk in, and I said, "Yo* 
 cain' come in hyar." 
 
 He asked for a drink. 
 
152 Fredericksburg 
 
 "What's the matter with yo' neck?" I says. "YouVe 
 got diptheria. I cain' let yo' drink out of any of my 
 cups." 
 
 So he went along to the next house, and drank out of a 
 cup there. Some of the family used it afterward, and two 
 of the children died of diptheria. Oh! we had terrible times 
 in the war. 
 
 I tol' yo' we lost our chickens. Some Northern gunboats 
 come up the Rappahannock a few days later and knocked 
 off two or three tops of houses near hyar. A number of the 
 gunboat people come to my house. I heard a rap on the do' 
 and looked out, and there was three of 'em, standin' around 
 the do'step and a whole row mo' was settin' on the plank 
 fence next the gate. One of the three at the do' spoke and 
 said they would like to buy a few chickens. 
 
 " Gen'lemen," I said, "there 's the henhouse. Walk right 
 in and he'p yo'selves." 
 
 Our soldiers had done wringed the chickens' heads off, 
 and when the men looked into the henhouse, they called 
 back, "We don't see anything hyar but chickens' heads." 
 
 "No," I says, "the Southern soldiers done took all my 
 chickens and turkeys and geese, and put 'em in a bag and 
 carried 'em off. That's what they done — and me with 
 seven children to feed." 
 
 Then one of the men down on the fence said, " Come on, 
 boys; no game hyar." 
 
 Another time some Confederates come to the house late 
 in the night. I was the only one up, and the commander 
 said, "Where is yo' husband?" 
 
 "In bed," I answered. 
 
 "Well," he said, "we want him to show us the way to yo' 
 master's house." 
 
A Slave Woman's Troubles 153 
 
 So I toF my husband to git up. 
 
 He had on a white nightshirt, and he was skeered and 
 forgot to take it off when he put on his pants. They went 
 along up the lane, and he was all the time watchin' for a 
 chance to git away. Pretty soon he dodged through a gate, 
 slipped his white nightshirt off and ran. They could n't see 
 him in the dark after he got that shirt off, and he heard the 
 officer sayin', "Where in thunder did the nigger go?" 
 
 He come home, and they did n't trouble him no mo'. 
 
 The Northern soldiers lay over the river. Our men had 
 burnt down the Fredericksburg bridges, and there wa'n't 
 nothin' but a scow to git across from one side to the other. 
 But when those Yankees got ready to come across they 
 came. They were the wildest people I ever see. While the 
 battle lasted we could hear the cannon and the musketry. 
 Oh, yes! and it was a perfect judgment. The hills back 
 hyar were jus' washed in blood, and the town was all filled 
 up with the wounded. 
 
 The signal corps had a telegraph in a shop at our place, 
 and they got the news every minute. Old Mr. Cobb lived 
 up on the hill. He had been worth a million dollars, but 
 now he'd spent it all and had to do his own garden work. 
 He was deef, too, as yo' had to holler at him to make him 
 hear. Mr. Gordon was gwine to carry him the news of the 
 battle, and he started to ride up there on his horse. It was 
 a right smart ways, and some very bad soldiers from North 
 Carolina — Tarheels they was called — was up in the 
 woods. Those soldiers wanted to have a little fun with Mr. 
 Gordon, and they threw rocks at him and knocked off his 
 hat. So he turned back and come home a-flyin'. 
 
 When the battle ended and I heard that the Union army 
 had been defeated, I could n't believe it. My mistress said 
 
154 Fredericksburg 
 
 to me, "Yo' know the Northern soldiers cain' fight ns 
 hyar." 
 
 But I said: " Ain' God the captain? He started this war, 
 and he's right in front. He may stop in his career and let 
 yo' rest up a little bit now, but our Captain ain' never been 
 beaten. Soon He '11 start out ag'in, and yo '11 hear the bugle 
 blow, and He '11 march on to victory. Where the Bible says, 
 'Be not afraid; yo' shall set under yo' own vine and fig 
 tree,' that means us slaves,- and I tell yo' we're goin' to be a 
 free people. You-all will be gittin' yo' pay sho' for the way 
 you've done treated us pore black folks. We been killed 
 up like dogs, and the stripes you've laid on us hurt jus' as 
 bad as if our skin was white as snow. But I ain' gwine to 
 run away or frow my children in the river as some slaves 
 have, for I 'm as certain this war will set us free as that I 
 stand hyar." 
 
 I tol' her jus' what I thought, and my mistress said, 
 "Fanny, you is foolish," and my master said, "You ain't 
 got no sense." 
 
 And I said to my master, "When I was a young girl yo' 
 sold ninety-six people at one time to pay a debt." 
 
 Then I sat down and cried, and the white people stood 
 there and laughed at me. "Lord," I said, "I'd rather be 
 dead than have my children sold away from me." 
 
 They sold my brother and three sisters down in Ala- 
 bama, and I was left entirely. My brother would go 
 around and preach, and the gen'leman that owned him 
 did n't want him to preach and would n't have no meetin's 
 or preachin' on the place at all. So they beat my brother 
 and whipped him with a cowskin. That killed him tereckly. 
 He could n't stand it. He was not used to that up hyar. 
 His master was one bad man. 
 
A Slave Woman's Troubles 155 
 
 My oldest sister was owned by that same man, and she 
 ran away from him. She had a baby boy that she left be- 
 hind with a daughter who had been used so bad it made her 
 crazy. While her mother was gone the baby died. They 
 found him there in the cabin presently, and the foolish 
 daughter said, "He's been sleepin' a week, and I'm glad 
 of it, because I ain't bothered with him." 
 
 She was a field hand, but not much good. Once they put 
 her to ploughing and gave her an old sleepy mule. The 
 mule wanted to go slow, and she wanted to go fast. So she 
 put a nail in a stick and struck him, and he jus' jerked the 
 plough and her, too. That made her mad, and she drove 
 him into a hornet's nest. The hornets lit all over him, and 
 he ran. " Go to Jerusalem! " she said, and she give him the 
 plough. He went jus' sailin', plough and all, as far as she 
 could see him. 
 
 The overseer scolded her and said, "I'm goin' to kill 
 you." 
 
 "Kill me then," she said, but he did n't do anything to 
 her at all. 
 
 After the war we was free and could go where we pleased, 
 and I talked with my husband about movin' to Fredericks- 
 burg. He said, "If yo' live in the city yo' have to pay for 
 the breath you breathe." 
 
 But I toF him, "Yo' have to pay for yo' breath any- 
 where," and I got him to come because they had good 
 schools hyar. Down there the children had to walk three 
 miles to school. As soon as we moved I got all the washin' 
 I could do, and me and my husband worked and got this 
 house. I would be up half of the night ironing, but I did n't 
 mind that, for I was used to long hours. About the only 
 time I 'd leave my work was when some sick person needed 
 
156 Fredericksburg 
 
 my help. Once a neighbor woman had dropsy, and she 
 was sick even unto death. Her children were wild and 
 rattle-brained, and for quite a while I went to her house 
 every night. 
 
 Some claimed that after dark they could see people in 
 the soldiers' cemetery goin' along without any heads. 
 Others said the ghos'es looked like cows or horses. Some 
 told, too, of hearin' a band playin' over where the army 
 had camped. The strangest story of all was that way about 
 midnight a man in soldier's clothes was in the habit of 
 ridin' a horse through the street back of the depot. People 
 said they could see his buttons and everything, and that 
 they could hear the horse's hoofs — ker-flop-up, ker-flop- 
 up — jus' as plain as could be. They'd hear him a while, 
 and then they would n't hear a thing. 
 
 My husband said to me: " I should think you'd be afraid 
 to go to that sick woman's in the dark the way you do. 
 Some night that ghos '11 skeer you to death." 
 
 " I 'm gwine on jus' the same," I said, "for I never knew 
 the dead to hurt the livin'. That ghos' can keep on with 
 his racket and go on about his business." 
 
 So I done my duty, though sometimes I heard things and 
 felt kind o' funny about it. 
 
 Of co'se people are often skeered by what they imagine. 
 Once we had a revival hyar, and a young man attended the 
 meetin's who could n't seem to git religion. So the old folks 
 tol' him he sho' would git religion if he'd go and pray in the 
 woods away from the wickedness of the town. He thought 
 he'd try it, and he went way out toward the Wilderness 
 onto an old battlefield. Then he got down on his knees, and 
 he'd started praying when something tol' him to look be- 
 hind him. He looked, and there was a skull, and he got up 
 
'A Slave Woman's Troubles 157 
 
 and flew. He did n't try to git religion no mo', and he ain' 
 got it yet — no, indeed ! 
 
 There certainly was spirits in ol' times. I heai*d of a 
 house where every night the china and other things on the 
 sideboard kep' up such a ratthng that the people who lived 
 there could n't hardly sleep. "What is anybody gwine to 
 do with this house?" they said. 
 
 By and by they went to some ol' prophet, and he had 'em 
 turn every do' the other way up and make new keyholes. 
 The ghos'es could n't find their way in after that, and the 
 things on the sideboard stopped rattlin'. 
 
 I 'm ninety years ol' now. When I was little some of the 
 colored people lived till they got mighty near two hundred 
 years ol'. But they're weaker these days and don't live 
 half so long. Hyar I am crippled up so I cain' do anything, 
 and I cain' see hardly at all. But never mind, I can take 
 my stick and walk. 
 
 I 've had twelve children and they all growed up. I ain't 
 had no trouble with 'em. They were good children, and I 
 call that a blessing. I learned 'em all to love the way of sal- 
 vation and to hate the ways of sin. Now I 've got twenty- 
 two grandchildren and five great grandchildren. 
 
 I 'fessed religion when I was fifteen years ol', and I got 
 a strong belief in the almighty God, our Captain. He knew 
 I meant to treat everybody right and myself right. So He 
 let me live till I was ol', and He's goin' to take me to hea- 
 ven. I ain't afflicted, and there's nothin' I ask for that I 
 don't git it. I 'm trustin' in the Lord. When night comes I 
 kneel down and say: "I thank yo' Lord, that I've passed 
 through one mo' day. Now I lay my head on the pillow, 
 and I pray yo' will enable me to go through the night and 
 see the light of day ag'in." 
 
158 Fredericksburg 
 
 When morning comes I say: "Well, Lord, I'm hyar yet, 
 no pain, and I don't wish nobody no harm in this world. 
 I'm too ol' for that. I take it all with patience." 
 
 I 'm happy, and I can't thank Him enough, and soon I '11 
 cease from trouble, and then I will reap my reward. 
 
XVIII 
 The Carriage-Maker's Boy ^ 
 
 Lee crossed the Potomac early in June, 1863, and the 
 battle was fought here on the first three days of July. I 
 was only seven or eight years old, but you know when a boy 
 is that age things stick in his memory as they don't when 
 he grows older. I could n't tell you nearly as well about 
 what happened a couple of years ago as I can tell about 
 what I saw and did at the time of that battle. 
 
 When the war began this was a town of between three 
 and four thousand inhabitants. It was a trading center, 
 and there was a flourishing stove-manufactory located 
 here, and quite a business was done in making carriages. 
 My father had a two-story carriage shop near our house 
 on the borders of the town. 
 
 We're only a few miles from the division line between 
 the North and the South, and we were a good deal exposed 
 to raids. Again and again we'd get a report: "The Rebels 
 are coming! The Rebels are coming! " and any one that had 
 stock would hurry to get it out of the way so it would n't 
 be carried off by the enemy. You'd see the farmers one 
 week running away with their stock and the next week 
 coming back with it. 
 
 1 He had followed his father's trade, and I chatted with him in his 
 shop amid a variety of vehicles, one of which he was painting. At the 
 time of the battle he had been only a little fellow and his aspect was as 
 yet that of a man still in middle life. 
 
160 Gettysburg 
 
 I had two older brothers nearly men grown, and they 
 went off with our horse several times; but the alarms 
 proved to be mostly false, and at last Father said, "Boys, 
 don't you go again until I tell you to go." 
 
 It got to be the 26th of June. That afternoon Father 
 went up street, and in a few minutes he was back in a great 
 hurry, and said, "The Rebels are right out west of the 
 town coming in this direction." 
 
 So the boys hitched into a buggy and drove off as fast as 
 they could go. They wanted to get on the other side of the 
 Susquehanna River. There we thought they'd be safe. It 
 was a forty mile ride, and they had n't been gone a great 
 while when some of the Rebels came galloping down our 
 street — a whole lot of 'em. They were after the people 
 who were flying with their stock. 
 
 Just one square above us lived a butcher who had a little 
 Dutch feller by the name of Charlie Supann working for 
 him. He sent Charlie off with his horse before our boys got 
 started, but they overtook Charlie out here by the toll- 
 gate house. Charlie was drivin' along pretty leisurely, and 
 they told him he 'd better hurry. 
 
 "But my orders are not to drive fast," he said. 
 
 Well, our boys went on and left him behind, and the 
 Rebels caught him and took his horse. While they were 
 parleying with him our boys hurried along as fast as they 
 could, and they escaped. They got to the big covered 
 bridge at Columbia over the Susquehanna, and they told 
 us afterward that people were going through there with 
 their horses just like a cavalcade — chasing through one 
 after the other all the time. At the far end were some 
 Union officials stopping every one that had a good horse, 
 and if the horse suited 'em they'd take it and give in return 
 
The Carriage-Maker's Boy 161 
 
 a slip of paper entitling the owner to pay from the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Right in front of our boys was a young feller on an awful 
 nice horse, and the officer said, "Is that a good riding 
 horse?" 
 
 "Yes," the feller says, "Father keeps him for that." 
 
 "Then you jump right off," the officer said. "He's just 
 what I want." 
 
 Next he spoke to our boys and asked if theirs was a rid- 
 ing horse. 
 
 "No, you can't do anything with her for riding," they 
 said. 
 
 "Then get out of this," he told 'em. "We don't want 
 her." 
 
 They were lucky to get across the bridge when they did, 
 for the pursuing Rebels were close behind, and the Federals 
 burnt part of the bridge just before the enemy got there to 
 keep them from going farther. 
 
 Our boys were now strangers in a strange country. But 
 they soon located on a farm with a man who was starting 
 harvesting, and they got right out in the harvest field, and 
 went to work. 
 
 The next excitement that I remember at Gettysburg was 
 the arrival of four thousand Union cavalry on the night of 
 June 30th. They camped west of the town on Seminary 
 Ridge, a low hill that got its name from a theological Sem- 
 inary located there. South of the town was a similar hill 
 known as Cemetery Ridge, which had Little and Big 
 Round Top at one end, and Gulp's Hill on the banks of 
 Rock Grick at the other end. 
 
 Not far from my father's shop was another carriage shop 
 that was no longer used for its original purpose. Hay was 
 
162 Gettysburg 
 
 stored in it, and we boys often went in there to play. A 
 number of us were in there on the morning of July 1st. 
 You know how boys would do — well, we had a lot of fun 
 jumping on the hay. But pretty soon we came outside to 
 watch some soldiers and older town boys riding the cavalry 
 horses out north of the town to the crick to water 'em. 
 Then we went back into the old carriage shop and got into 
 the hay business again. We were still at it when my sister 
 ran in there and said to me: "You're to come home now. 
 The fighting has begun." 
 
 Yes, the battle had begun, but it was a small affair at 
 first, for both of the armies were very much scattered. 
 Some of the troops were forty miles away, and they kept 
 arriving all that day and the following night. 
 
 I went home with my sister, but some of the other boys 
 tried to get where they could see things. 
 ^ By and by a Union officer came through the street warn- 
 ing every one that our men were falling back toward the 
 town, and the bullets were likely to be flying right among 
 the houses. 
 
 "I'm goin' to stay here to watch our buildings," my fa- 
 ther says to Mother, "but you'd better get to some safer 
 place." 
 
 " Well, I guess I '11 go," Mother says. 
 
 My sister and I went with her, and my sister carried 
 along some of our belongings in a basket. We were passing 
 the schoolhouse when a man who was a cousin of mine says 
 to my mother, "Aunt Susan, where are you goin'?" 
 
 She says, "I don't know where I'm goin'." 
 
 "Quite a number of us are in the schoolhouse cellar," he 
 said. "You'd better come in there, too." 
 
 But instead she went on up what we call Baltimore Hill 
 
The Carriage-Maker's Boy 163 
 
 to the part of the town that was farthest away from the 
 fighting. A woman standing in a door there spoke to 
 mother and said, "Susan, you'd better stop right here 
 with me." 
 
 "Lizzie, I guess I will," my mother said. 
 
 Pretty soon the Union artillery came up the street and 
 went down over the hill about as fast as the horses could 
 go. They anchored out here just south of the town on 
 Cemetery Ridge. The next we knew the street was filled 
 with Rebel cavalry, and we rushed to the cellar. The cellar 
 had a door out in front on the pavement, and a Rebel lifted 
 it up and said to some of his comrades, "It's full of Yan- 
 kees down here." 
 
 " There is n't anybody in this cellar but women and chil- 
 dren," my sister said, and he let down the door. 
 
 We stayed where we were till things quieted down late 
 in the day, and then Father came to get us. He said that 
 after we left he had gone up in the cupola of the Lutheran 
 Church with several other men. They watched from there 
 till the Union troops began to run, and then they took 
 refuge in the cellars of the houses. 
 
 On our way back I see some dead horses and a number of 
 dead men layin' around on the pavement. 
 
 The enemy had possession of the town, and just before 
 dark, when Mother was out behind the house feeding the 
 chickens, one of the Rebels came along and asked her to 
 lend him an ax. 
 
 "Will you bring it back?" she said as she handed it to 
 him. 
 
 "Oh, yes, indeed!" he told her, but he never did. 
 
 We slept that night on the parlor floor. We did n't 
 know what might happen, and it seemed safer there than 
 
164 Gettysburg 
 
 in our beds upstairs. And I slept all right — oh, yes! a kid 
 can sleep when older people can't. 
 
 Two doors from our house lived a Presbyterian preacher, 
 and the next day he said to us: "Come over to our cellar. 
 It's got a floor in it." 
 
 So we spent that day in his cellar. There was no very 
 fierce fighting until the latter part of the afternoon. Then 
 General Sickles out on the Union left made an advance and 
 was driven back with great loss of life across the "Valley of 
 Death." 
 
 Night came, and we went home to sleep again on the par- 
 lor floor. But we returned to the preacher's cellar in the 
 morning. After the war he went around lecturing as an 
 "Eye-Witness of the Battle of Gettysburg." Well, he did 
 go up several times and look out of the trap-door. 
 
 Our second day in his cellar was drawing to a close when 
 some one came and said, " The Rebels are gone, and the 
 battle seems to be over." 
 
 That gave us courage to come out. I was a little boy 
 with pockets in my pants, and I went along the street and 
 filled those pockets with bullets that lay scattered about. 
 Right square in front of our house, in the middle of the 
 street, was a dead mule. He'd been in the artillery out 
 on Cemetery Ridge, and when he was wounded they cut 
 him loose, and he had wandered into town. As he went on 
 he got weaker and weaker till he tumbled over and died. 
 Several Rebel sharpshooters had stationed themselves in 
 our shop, and the Union cannon made it a target to drive 
 'em out. I think eleven shells went into the place. It was 
 full of finished buggies and carriages, and vehicles that 
 were being repaired. The shells knocked some of 'em into 
 kindling wood. 
 
The Carriage-Maker's Boy 165 
 
 Day after day, following the battle, the army wagons 
 were going out on the roads to gather up the government 
 property that was strewn around on the battlefield. Men 
 were busy, too, carousing around and getting together the 
 crippled horses. Such of the horses as were n't likely to be 
 of any further use in the army were disposed of here at 
 sales. Some could hardly walk, and it was possible to buy 
 a horse for as small a sum as twenty-five cents. 
 
XIX 
 
 The Farmer's Son ^ 
 
 The very month that the battle was fought I was nineteen 
 years old. My people lived in a small stone house, just 
 across Rock Creek from Gulp's Hill. 
 
 On Monday night, June 29th, a neighbor called on us, 
 and said : " The Rebel army is close by. Why, there's miles 
 of campfires along the mountains back here." 
 
 He went away with his horses that night, and my 
 brother and I went off with ours. We rode about five 
 miles down on the Baltimore Pike and stayed there till 
 morning. Then a lot of Union cavalry passed along the 
 pike in the direction of Gettysburg. We had n't a doubt 
 but that they would stop the Rebels, and we returned 
 home and put our horses in the stable. 
 
 Wednesday morning came, and everything was appar- 
 ently quiet. So we went to ploughing and grubbing just as 
 if there was n't a Rebel this side of the Potomac River. 
 
 One of the Gettysburg warehouse men at that time was a 
 Mr. Spangler, and this man Spangler came out to our place 
 that morning to buy some flour. We had fourteen barrels 
 
 1 His age was close to the fourscore mark, but he was hearty and 
 vigorous, and he spoke with ardor as he related those far-gone incidents 
 of the battle. We had walked out to the borders of the town, and while 
 we visited we sat on the parapet of a convenient stone bridge. Off 
 across the fields was the place where he had dwelt as a boy, and he used 
 his cane to point out various features of the vicinity that came into his 
 story. 
 
The Farmer's Son 167 
 
 of it on a wagon just as they had come from the mill, and 
 Father agreed to hitch his horses to the wagon and take the 
 flour right up to Spangler's warehouse. Spangler went off, 
 and Father was soon ready to start with the load of flour. 
 He was driving out of the yard when the first two shells of 
 the Battle of Gettysburg were fired. But that did n't pre- 
 vent him from going on with his load. When he said he'd 
 do a thing he 'd just go and do it, no matter what the diffi- 
 culties or the dangers. He got to the town square and met 
 Spangler. The battle had broken loose and everything was 
 in a tumult. "Suppose you take your load back home," 
 Spangler said, and that was what Father did. 
 
 The noise of the battle excited me greatly, and I went up 
 on Gulp's Hill and climbed a tree and watched. The wea- 
 ther had been quite dry, but the firing of the guns stirred 
 up a rain, and it rained like sixty for a little spell. I was in 
 my shirtsleeves, and of course the rain chilled me. So I 
 come back to the house. There I found two or three town 
 families had taken refuge with us. They 'd been scared out 
 of their own homes, and you bet they did n't go back till 
 the battle was over. Later in the day, when the Rebels 
 drove our men through the town, there was a great rush of 
 citizens out in our direction to get away. Some went empty- 
 handed, and some carried clothes and stuff of that kind, 
 and they were going like anything. They cut right across 
 our farm and through our wheat that was just ready to 
 harvest. 
 
 We made those who stopped with us as comfortable as 
 we could that night. The next morning we got up as usual 
 about daylight, and there was nothing in sight to indicate 
 the likelihood of anything but an ordinary, uneventful sum- 
 mer day. We were all at sea and did n't know what was 
 
168 Gettysburg 
 
 goin' to happen. On Gulp's Hill we could hear a sound of 
 chopping and guessed that the soldiers were building breast- 
 works. 
 
 Some of the farm fencing had been pulled down the day 
 before, and a neighbor's cows had got into our wheat. 
 Father thought he would drive them out. The wheat was on 
 a hillside, and he walked up the slope to get a good look over 
 the field. On its upper side was a fringe of brush and trees 
 and a stone wall with a couple of rails on top. He was 
 within twenty or thirty feet of this fence when he discov- 
 ered some men standing behind it. Father would have 
 liked to get away, but he concluded he would be safer to 
 go forward. One of the men was a Rebel general. He had 
 glasses that he was looking through, and he asked Father 
 about the Federals. Father told him he did n't know any- 
 thing about them, and then he started for home, but the 
 general said: "Oh, no! you can't go back. You'll have to 
 stay inside of our lines." 
 
 So they sent him to the nearest house, which happened 
 to belong to Father's brother Dan. We did n't know what 
 had become of him, and we did n't dare risk going to look 
 for him. 
 
 Shortly after mid-day I was standing in our lane with 
 Mr. Martin, one of the townsmen who was stopping at our 
 house, when here comes a Union soldier. He held his gun 
 all ready to fire, and he was a savage-lookin' chap, too. 
 "I had a notion to pull on you fellers," he said. "You 
 wear gray clothes, and I did n't know but you were Rebels. 
 My colonel wants to talk with you." 
 
 We went with him down the lane to where the colonel 
 was sitting on a rock beside the creek. He questioned us as 
 to the location of the Rebels, but we were just as ignorant 
 
The Farmer's Son 169 
 
 about that as a newborn babe. We were n't accustomed to 
 armies, and we did n't understand their movements and 
 had n't attempted to find out where they were or what 
 they were doing. The soldier went back up the lane with 
 us, and we'd gone about half way when Martin's little boy 
 came running toward us waving his hands as if he wanted 
 us to stop. He did n't say anything until he got to where 
 we were. Then he told us some Rebels were at our house. 
 At that our soldier dropped back, but we went on and 
 found two Southern soldiers in our kitchen. They were 
 after food, and we let 'em have some. 
 
 The latter part of the afternoon we had just sat down to 
 supper when the battle opened out right close by. We 
 did n't finish eating. I went upstairs and looked out of a 
 gable window. Some of our men were in the orchard de- 
 ployed behind the trees. They'd take and load their guns 
 and fire and then fall back. They were only a skirmish 
 line, and did n't pretend to fight the Rebels, who had cut 
 loose on them at a terrific rate. 
 
 Presently, by George! zip went a bullet right past my 
 nose. I thought it was just a chance shot until later I was 
 down in the kitchen, and a big Rebel came walking in. 
 "Who was firin' out of the gable window at our soldiers 
 when they were passin' here?" he asked. 
 
 Mr. Martin spoke up and said: "Nobody thought of 
 such a thing. It's doubtful if there's a gun in the house." 
 
 "Well, I saw somebody up there," the man said, "and I 
 took a shot at him." 
 
 I knew then how that bullet happened to come so close 
 to me. 
 
 We saw the Rebels driving our men across the open fields 
 to the woods. Every time they got within a couple of rods 
 
170 Gettysburg 
 
 of a rail fence* they'd lie flat on the ground, except a few 
 who would run forward and jerk the fence down. Then the 
 rest would jump up, and on they'd go. The sound of the 
 volleys they fired was just like you'd take a handful of 
 gravel and throw it on a roof. They yelled like the mischief 
 when they charged. I could n't distinguish any words, but 
 it was kind of an ugly yell. 
 
 Soon the wounded began to be brought back. They laid 
 'em on the floor of our kitchen, and up in the barn, and out 
 in the yard. Some were groaning and others would swear. 
 The sight of the first wounded man was dreadful, but it is 
 remarkable how quickly one gets hardened to such things. 
 In a little while I could see a man's leg sawed off, or 
 his head sawed off, for that matter, without being dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 I talked with a wounded North Carolina man. He spoke 
 sort of regretfully of the war. "We got nothing against 
 you people," he said, ''but the war came on and we were 
 forced to go.'.' 
 
 Beside our kitchen wall was a big half hogshead that 
 water flowed into from a spring, and the Rebels were all the 
 time coming to fill their canteens there. They were seen by 
 the Yankees, who began shelling 'em. The shells would 
 strike in the meadow and throw up the dirt, and one went 
 through the seat of a horserake in the orchard. Another 
 came into the kitchen. A Rebel was leaning against the 
 doorframe, and the shell cut off the jamb opposite and 
 keeled him over into the yard. But he picked himself up 
 and walked in brushing the dust off his trousers, no more 
 concerned than if the accident was a mere trifle. The 
 shell went into the chimney and exploded and scattered 
 some pretty big stones among the wounded men lying on 
 
The Farmer's Son 171 
 
 the floor. But that did n't seem to alarm them. They made 
 no ado whatever. 
 
 After a while the firing ceased and three ambulances 
 came to get the wounded at our place. They drove in 
 around our hogpen, and the drivers had got out when the 
 shells began to fly again. Immediately the drivers jumped 
 back in and went off in a great hurry. A little major came 
 into the house and asked for some red cloth to make a hos- 
 pital flag, and Mother got him a piece. He tied the cloth 
 to a stick and had a soldier climb up a ladder and nail it on 
 the roof so our men would stop their firing in that direction. 
 "Those Yankees are a lot of brutes or they would n't shell 
 ambulances," he said to me. 
 
 "Well," I said, "that's no worse than what your fellers 
 did at Chancellorsville when they set the woods on fire and 
 burnt our wounded." 
 
 It was kind of risky for me to talk so, for he could have 
 put me out of the way, and that 's all there would have been 
 of it. 
 
 After dark that evening they put blankets up to the win- 
 dows so the lights would n't be seen and perhaps be fired at 
 by the Federals. Nine o'clock came, and then, to our sur- 
 prise, in walked Father escorted by a Rebel soldier. 
 
 Friday morning the wounded were still on the place, and 
 across the lane was a bunch of six or eight Union prisoners 
 lying asleep. By and by a Rebel came into the room where 
 our folks were and asked, "Who's the man of the house?" 
 
 " I am," Father says. 
 
 " I 'm goin' to take the first horse inside of your stable," 
 the feller said, "and here's one hundred and twenty-five 
 dollars to pay for him." 
 
 "Well, all right," Father says, "I can't help myself. 
 
172 Gettysburg' 
 
 You'll take the horse anyway. I guess it don't matter 
 whether you pay or not. Confederate money ain't very 
 valuable." 
 
 "That money '11 be just as good as yours after this bat- 
 tle," the feller said. 
 
 Father took it, and we've had it ever since. The bills 
 were new and nice, and they're nice yet. 
 
 Later that day the Rebels told us they were goin' to 
 place a battery on the knoll back of our buildings, and we 
 had better move out. So we gathered up a few of our things 
 and went to Uncle Dan's. We were at his house when the 
 two armies cannonaded each other in the afternoon over 
 beyond the town. That was something terrific. I declare! 
 I just thought the earth would go down. It did n't sound 
 good to the soldiers either. Lots of 'em sneaked away from 
 the ranks, and I '11 tell you this much — there are skedad- 
 dlers out of every fight. Oh, by gosh ! yes! I found that out, 
 and there wa'n't no distinction in that respect between the 
 two armies. Some of the Rebel officers came and hunted 
 the men up. "Why ain't you with your regiment?" they 
 said. 
 
 "We don't know where our regiment is," the men re- 
 plied. 
 
 "Well, you go find it," the officers told 'em. But the fel- 
 lers would contrive not to get back till the danger was 
 over. 
 
 The Rebels left after the third day's fight, and I heard 
 their wagons going all night. Next morning we went back 
 home and found two Rebels in our shed eating chicken. 
 They seemed to think it was time for them to get out of 
 there, and they slipped away down the lane. 
 
 Pretty soon our soldiers began to arrive on the farm, and 
 
The Farmer's Son 173 
 
 Mother went to bakin' pancakes to give 'em. She made the 
 pancakes out of flour and salt. The Rebels had taken 
 everything else in the food line. Oh, bless you, yes! they 
 just took all that they could make use of. The whole house 
 was mussed up and turned upside down. It looked like 
 they'd gone to the bureau drawers and pulled 'em out and 
 dumped what was in 'em on the floor. They took only a 
 part of our flour, but they got all our meat and all our 
 chickens, and our five horses. Our field of wheat was trod- 
 den down, and so was our grass and oats. The soldiers had 
 dropped their guns here and there, and we often mowed 
 into those guns with our scythes afterward. At first we 
 thought we'd lost our cattle. They strayed away during 
 the battle, and there seemed small chance of our seeing 
 them again, but we got them together in a few days. The 
 thing that troubled us most was the being left without 
 horses. They were a dead loss to us, and besides it was a 
 great handicap not to have 'em for working the farm. 
 Father was a man who did n't often say anything, but 
 when we came home after the battle and looked around 
 he said, "I feel just like starting off and never looking 
 back." 
 
 My mother was subject to severe attacks of headache, 
 and she had one on that Saturday. In the evening she said 
 to me, " I guess you'll have to go to the doctor's and get me 
 some medicine." 
 
 So I went to town, and I found the streets barricaded 
 and our fellers uncertain whether the Rebels had gone for 
 good or whether another attack would be made. By the 
 time I got home it was dark, and the soldiers on picket 
 duty around our buildings called out, "Who's coming?" 
 But they let me pass when I told 'em I belonged there. 
 
174 Gettysburg 
 
 We had found two dead Rebels lying back of our barn, 
 and no one came to bury 'em till late the next day. They 'd 
 been left with a blanket spread over 'em. One had bis 
 thumb and every finger on his right hand shot off. 
 
 At the house next to ours on the road to town a Rebel 
 sharpshooter had climbed up in a tree in the yard and 
 buckled himself fast to a limb with his belt. He was pick- 
 ing off our men, and of course it was n't easy for them to 
 make out where he was because the thick leaves hid him. 
 But at last they noticed a puff of smoke, when he'd sent a 
 bullet in among 'em, and don't you forget it — that was the 
 last shot he fired. They aimed at the place the smoke came 
 from and killed him, and after the battle, I '11 be dog-goned 
 if he was n't still in the tree hanging by his belt. 
 
 I went over to Gulp's Hill Sunday. They were burying 
 the dead there in long narrow ditches about two feet deep. 
 They'd lay in a man at the end of the trench and put in the 
 next man with the upper half of his body on the first man's 
 legs, and so on. They got 'em in as thick as they could and 
 only covered 'em enough to prevent their breeding disease. 
 All the pockets of the dead men were turned out. Probably 
 that was done by the soldiers who did the burying. They 
 thought they might find a ring, or money, or something 
 else of value. 
 
 A neighbor of ours — old Mr. Tawney — came to get 
 some flour on Tuesday, and he said, "Over here in the 
 woods I found a dead man." 
 
 So Father and I took a mattock and a shovel and went 
 along with Mr. Tawney to the spot where he'd come across 
 the body. There it was, all bloated up, seated leaning 
 against a tree. We had to make the grave a rod or so away 
 on account of the tree roots. It was impossible to handle 
 
The Farmer's Son 175 
 
 the man to get him there, he was so decayed like, and we 
 hitched his belt to his legs and dragged him along, and no 
 sooner did we start with him than his scalp slipped right off. 
 We just tm^ned him in on his side and covered him with 
 earth. 
 
 That was awful, was n't it? Well, the whole fighting 
 business is awful; and I'm a-goin' to tell you this — war is 
 a reflection on Christianity and civilization. It seems to 
 me, in the case of nearly every war, after each side has done 
 its worst and perhaps fought to the point of exhaustion and 
 bankruptcy, they go back to the original question and be- 
 gin to settle it by reason, good sense, and so on. Really, 
 they might as well have done that in the first place without 
 the terrible slaughter. 
 
XX 
 
 The School Teacher ^ 
 
 My father was a justice of the peace, and I was a teacher in 
 the town schools. Our home was here on Baltimore Hill not 
 far from where I live now. The sentiment in Gettysburg 
 was strongly Union, but at the same time we had in the 
 community a good many Democrats, or Copperheads as we 
 called them, who naturally affiliated with the South. They 
 were not very open in upholding the Southern cause, but 
 just seemed to think the South was right, and we often 
 squabbled on that subject. 
 
 Raids and rumors of raids were frequent. Whenever we 
 saw a farmer come into town on horseback, or in a wagon, 
 leading a couple of horses we knew he had heard that a raid 
 was imminent. It seemed to be the great worry of the 
 farmers that their horses would be taken. 
 
 Every report of raiding, too, would set the darkies to mi- 
 grating, they were so afraid they'd be carried off into slav- 
 ery. They looked very ragged and forlorn, and some exag- 
 gerated their ills by pretending to be lame, for they wanted 
 to appear as undesirable as possible to any beholder who 
 might be tempted to take away their freedom. That illus- 
 trates the natural ingenuity of the race. 
 
 During the month preceding the battle we were excited 
 
 * She was a refined, elderly woman living in one of the comfortable 
 homes in the better part of the town. There I talked with her in the 
 parlor. 
 
The School Teacher 177 
 
 all the time. The dangers of our situation kept us in con- 
 stant turmoil, and not much work was done. We were like 
 Micawber "waiting for something to turn up," or like those 
 people the Bible tells of who "spent their time in nothing 
 else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing." Oh, 
 those were awful times! 
 
 On the last Friday in June the raiders really came, and 
 they occupied the town for a day and a night and had their 
 headquarters in the courthouse. We had a vague idea that 
 the Rebels were a dreadful set of men, and we did n't know 
 what horrid things they might do. So we mostly kept in 
 our houses out of their way. They demanded a great sum of 
 money of the townspeople. We could n't give it to them, 
 and we were nearly scared to death. 
 
 The following Tuesday evening we knew the Rebel army 
 was near because we could see their campfires from our up- 
 per windows off on the borders of the mountains to the 
 west. Those campfires looked very ominous. 
 
 The next morning, along about nine o'clock, I was iron- 
 ing when I heard a shell fired out west of the town. The bat- 
 tle had begun. All of us townspeople betook ourselves to 
 the streets and stood around in groups or sat on doorsteps. 
 We could hear the guns and cannon and we were nearly 
 frightened out of our wits. Presently a bloodstained horse 
 was led along our street, and then a soldier with a bandaged 
 head went past, supported on either side by one of his 
 comrades. It was sickening. 
 
 Troops were constantly arriving hurrying to the battle- 
 field, and we brought out some buckets of water and several 
 tin cups. There were five of us girls in our family, and we 
 handed the water to the soldiers as they double-quicked 
 through the town. They drank without ever stopping and 
 
178 Gettysburg 
 
 threw the cups back to us. Besides giving them water, we 
 handed them cake, bread and butter, and anything at all we 
 could find in the house that was good to eat. 
 
 About four o'clock in the afternoon our artillery dashed 
 through the streets retreating, and some officers as they 
 rode along shouted: "Women and children, to the cellars! 
 The Rebels will shell the town!" 
 
 Our cellar was large and well-lighted, and it served as a 
 refuge for some of the neighbors as well as ourselves. We 
 spent two hours in it. There we were — a huddle of 
 women and children — some crying, and some praying — 
 praying more, maybe, than we ever did before. That was 
 the awfullest time I ever experienced — listening to the 
 screeching of the shells, and the helter-skelter retreat of our 
 men, and the unearthly yelling of the pursuing Rebels. But 
 the town was n't shelled, though a good many missiles acci- 
 dentally came into it during the battle. 
 
 The Union troops retreated through the town in a regu- 
 lar stampede. Some of them came up an alley behind our 
 house and in at the rear door and out at the front. After- 
 ward we found in our back yard a number of guns loaded 
 and capped that they'd thrown away. They could easily 
 have pillaged the house, but the only thing we missed was 
 a little linen apron I 'd been ironing. I think perhaps a sol- 
 dier took it for a handkerchief. 
 
 As we were looking out of one of the cellar windows we 
 saw some of our men who'd been taken prisoners, and they 
 were standing so near that we spoke to them. They said 
 they expected to be sent off South and wished we would 
 write to their home people. Then, one after the other, they 
 gave us their names, and the addresses of the persons to 
 whom we were to write. 
 
AVATER FOR THE MARCHING TROOPS 
 
The School Teacher 179 
 
 The town was full of Rebels when we came up from the 
 cellar, and we could see a Union soldier lying out in the 
 street with his head cut off. He had probably been over- 
 taken by the enemy's cavalry. 
 
 Early next day one of the doctors came to our house and 
 said to us girls: "You must come and help take care of the 
 wounded. The men are suffering, and you are needed." 
 
 It did n't seem as if I could do such work, but I went. 
 The doctor led the way to the Catholic church, which, like 
 all the other public buildings, had been turned into a hospi- 
 tal. Some of the wounded lay in the pews, and some lay on 
 the floor with knapsacks under their heads, and there were 
 very few persons to do anything for the poor fellows. Every- 
 where was blood, and on all sides we heard groans and cries 
 and prayers. 
 
 I knelt by the first wounded man inside of the door and 
 asked, "What can I do for you?" 
 
 He looked up with mournful, tearless eyes and answered: 
 "Nothing. I am going to die." 
 
 That was too much for me, and I went hastily out and sat 
 down on the church steps and cried. But I soon controlled 
 myself and returned to the wounded man. He told me his 
 name was Stewart and that he had an aged father and 
 mother and a wife. Then he asked me to read the fourteenth 
 chapter of John, which his father had read the last time 
 they had all gathered around the family altar. Later in the 
 day he and eleven other wounded men were removed to our 
 house. 
 
 Meanwhile the battle was going on, but I was too busy to 
 be afraid. The only time I realized the danger was on the 
 afternoon of the third day. The heat was stifling and I sat 
 on a low chair by Mr. Stewart in the back parlor fanning 
 
180 Gettysburg 
 
 him. He had begged me to go to the cellar for safety, but 
 I would not. Presently I changed my position, and I had 
 scarcely done so when a bullet came in through a shutter 
 and a window pane, and struck the floor just the other side 
 of where I had been sitting. 
 
 Everything was very quiet the night following the battle, 
 except for the squawking of chickens. The Rebels were 
 leaving, but so far as I know it was only chickens and other 
 things to eat that they took from the houses in the region. 
 They were all gone the next morning. 
 
 The wounded remained in the town buildings till toward 
 the end of the month. Those who could stand a railroad 
 journey were then taken to the city hospitals, and the others 
 out east of the town to a camp hospital which was contin- 
 ued till autumn. Up to the time of this readjustment I min- 
 istered to the wants of the "boys" quartered in our house, 
 and went daily through the hospitals with my writing ma- 
 terials to read and answer letters. All the other townspeople 
 were busy in similar ways. They constantly visited the 
 wounded soldiers, took them dainties, and did everjrthing 
 they could for them. 
 
 Quite a number of the wounded had friends come to see 
 them, and we accommodated as many of these strangers as 
 possible at our house. All our rooms were kept full, and I 
 slept on the floor in the hall upstairs with a roll of carpet for 
 my pillow. That was the only bed I had, and for weeks I 
 did n't have my clothing off at night. Our ordinary house- 
 hold routine was very much broken up. We came in and ate 
 when we wanted anything, and it was a long time before we 
 all sat down together. 
 
 One of the soldiers in our house had lost a leg. My two 
 youngest sisters often sang for him, and he would tell them 
 
The School Teacher 181 
 
 stories of his experiences. I remember he said he was once 
 in a battle where the troops were exposed to such a storm of 
 bullets that the general ordered them to lie down. So down 
 they lay, all except the general, who was very short and fat. 
 Some of them shouted for him to lie down also, but he re- 
 sponded: "Why should I lie down? I'm as tall then as 
 when I 'm standing up." 
 
 This wounded soldier seemed to be getting along very well 
 until one night, in his restlessness, his bandages became loose, 
 and by the time the fact was discovered and a surgeon had 
 been summoned, he had lost so much blood that he only 
 lived an hour or two. A few days later his wife came. She 
 was young, and had left at home a babe the father had never 
 seen. She learned of her husband's death after she arrived 
 here, and her grief was heart-rending. 
 
 Some of the wounded boys whom our home sheltered 
 were presently well enough to rejoin their regiments, and one 
 was killed in his next engagement. 
 
 Mr. Stewart lingered till the Monday following the battle. 
 The next summer his widow and his brother visited us, and 
 the acquaintance with that brother led to my marrying him. 
 He, too, had been a soldier, and he had come out of the army 
 an invalid. We had been married only eleven months when 
 he died. He had been educated for the ministry, and his 
 brother was to have inherited their parents' farm; but the 
 war took them both, and left the father and mother desolate 
 in their old age. 
 
 I had five uncles and eight first cousins in the Union 
 armies — all from this town. When they enlisted they 
 thought they would get back in two or three months. One of 
 my cousins starved to death in Andersonville Prison. An- 
 other was shot in the throat and never spoke a loud word 
 
182 Gettysburg 
 
 afterward, but made himself understood chiefly by motions. 
 A brother of his had both feet shot off and died in an ambu- 
 lance that picked him up on the battlefield. Another brother 
 was killed at Cold Harbor. Their father would n't let the 
 youngest son go into the army, and the boy ran off and died 
 in camp of measles. 
 
 Practically all the young men in Gettysburg who were 
 able went into the army, and I don't suppose any other town 
 suffered as this town did. 
 
XXI 
 
 The Colored Farm Hand ' 
 
 At the time of the battle I was workin' for a farmer down in 
 the coimtry about four mile from the town. But I heard 
 the firin' — oh my, yes indeed! just like continuous thunder; 
 and the whole country was full of black smoke. I could 
 smell that smoke way down where I was. It certainly was 
 a hard fight, and there was no eatin' or sleepin' hardly for 
 the people around here durin' the three days it lasted. We 
 did n't have no feelin' for shuttin' our eyes. 
 
 A great many people had skedaddled, but the man I 
 worked for stayed. We'd run off before when there 'd 
 been false alarms, and had our trouble for nothin'. So 
 the man I lived with said to me, " Isaac, we won't run no 
 more." 
 
 We were right there when the battle begun, and then we 
 loaded up a wagon with provisions and grain, and got away 
 with seven or eight of our horses down an old road into the 
 woods. After we'd gone far enough to be well out of sight 
 and hearing we unhitched the horses that drew the wagon, 
 
 1 He showed a courtesy and an intelligence that were quite attrac- 
 tive. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of his personal appearance 
 was the large-checked pattern of his trousers. The house in which he 
 dwelt in the negro quarter of the town was fairly large and substantial, 
 though not without touches of shabbiness. The door knob, for instance, 
 was so loose and wobbly I wondered that it could be used at all. But I 
 fancy that such flaws did not disturb the occupants of the house much, 
 and that on the whole they were serenely content with the free and 
 easy comfort of their way of living. 
 
184 Gettysburg 
 
 and tied them and some of the others to wheels, and the 
 rest we tied to the trees. 
 
 There I stayed fearin' and tremblin', and looked after the 
 horses. If the Rebels had happened to come through they'd 
 have took 'em and me, too, but they did n't git there. Feed- 
 ing and watering the horses did n't take long, and most of 
 the time I just loafed around. At night I lay in the wagon. 
 The man's son come back'ards and for'ards to bring me some- 
 thing to eat and make sure eveiything was all right. Once he 
 took my place, and I went toward Gettysburg to get a sight 
 of the battle. But I had n't gone more 'n half way when I 
 found wagon trains stickin' in the woods with guards to pro- 
 tect 'em, and there were men movin' every which-a-way. It 
 wa'n't safe to travel, and I turned back. 
 
 The armies just about ruined the country here. Harvest 
 tune had come, but we had n't cut our wheat, and a lot of 
 troops marched through it and laid it flat as a board. They 
 chopped down trees to make breastworks, and they dug deep 
 trenches and made walls of earth to git behind and shoot. 
 The soldiers was bound to take the nearest way to where 
 they wanted to go, and they hacked the fence posts off and 
 tilted the fences over so they could git into the fields quick. 
 Most of the fences were burned in the campfires to make 
 coffee and roast meat, but they burned some fences just for 
 fun. They were wasteful in a good many ways. When a beef 
 had been killed, a man would start in and skin back a little so 
 he could git a piece of meat, and then he'd quit and put the 
 meat on the point of a bayonet gun and hold it over the fire. 
 If he had enough for himself that's all he cared about, and 
 the other men got their meat just as he did. 
 
 Lots of farmers who were well-to-do befo' the battle were 
 poor afterward. Their hay and feed was gone, their growing 
 
The Colored Farm Hand 185 
 
 crops ruined, their cattle stolen, and on some places all the 
 boards had been ripped off the bams for firewood. A good 
 many who had lost their horses went to the condemned 
 sales of army horses and mules and stocked up with those 
 old cripples, all lame, or collar sore, or used up in some way. 
 
 I visited the battlefield three days after the fight, and it 
 made me sick the bodies were so numerous and so swelled 
 up, and some so shot to pieces — a foot here, an arm there, 
 and a head in another place. They lay so thick in the Valley 
 of Death that you could n't walk on the ground. Their flesh 
 was black as your hat — yes, black as the blackest colored 
 person. I been told that come from drinkin' whiskey with 
 gunpowder in it to make 'em brave. A man would face 
 anything then. 
 
 There were thousands of the very prettiest kinds of mus- 
 kets layin' around, and any amount of blankets, and lots of 
 other stuff. Clearin' up was a hard job, and any one who 
 wanted to work could make big money. A man would n't 
 turn around less'n you gave him half a dollar. As quick as 
 they could they throwed a little dirt over the horses, and 
 they dug long, shallow trenches, and buried the men in 'em. 
 The work was done in a hurry, and in some places you'd 
 see feet or arms stickin' out. But within another week 
 men and horses were all buried down decent. 
 
 For years afterward farmers ploughing would once in a 
 while find a skull, and they'd take those skulls home and 
 have 'em settin' up on the mantelpiece for relics. But I 
 did n't want no such relics as that. 
 
 With all those dead men and horses buried close around 
 the town, and the awful smell that was in the air for quite a 
 time after the battle, it's a wonder we did n't die like flies. 
 I guess we must have been saved from a pestilence by the 
 
186 Gettysburg 
 
 buzzards. There were multitudes of 'em — and oh, my! 
 they were the biggest ever seen. At night they'd go to the 
 woods to roost and you could n't walk through under the 
 trees they was so thick. It would n't have been pleasant, 
 for they was throwin' up and everything else. 
 
 Soon after the battle ended we had a rain. It just poured 
 down; and all the streams were floatin', and the roads were 
 nothin' but mud. The Rebel cavalry went through Em- 
 metsburg with the Union cavalry pell-mell after 'em, and 
 the horses' hoofs spattered the buildings up to the second 
 story so you could n't tell what color they were. Deep ruts 
 were cut in the roads by the heavy wagons and cannon, and 
 for some time after the troops left we had to drive carefully 
 in order not to have trouble. One day I was hauling a big 
 load of hay to town. Probably there was much as three ton, 
 and I had six horses to draw it. By and by the wheels on 
 one side went into a cannon rut, and the wagon upset and 
 turned over on top of the hay. The feller 's livin' yet that 
 helped me right my wagon and get the hay back on again. 
 
 The worst feature of the battle was the way the Rebels 
 was allowed to escape. The water was so high in the Poto- 
 mac that they lay on the north bank thirteen days waiting 
 for it to go down so they could cross, and yet we let 'em git 
 away. I think there was trickery. You see General Lee 
 was a high Mason, and lots of our men was Masons, too, 
 and they was bound to show him all the favors they could. 
 If we'd been fighting with a foreign nation I don't believe 
 the war would have lasted a year. 
 
XXII 
 
 The Colored Servantmaid ^ 
 
 My home was at a farmhouse a mile out of town on the 
 Chambersburg Pike, where I worked for Mrs. Hartzell. 
 She was a widow woman with two small children — a boy 
 and a girl. I was about twenty years old then. 
 
 The Rebels knew this country well, and some time before 
 the battle they come ridin' all around here dressed in 
 women's clothes spyin' out. We had a militia troop in 
 the town but the Rebel raiders druv our militia clean out 
 of sight. 
 
 On the mornin' the fightin' begun there were pickets on 
 horses all up and down the pike. We were standin' at the 
 gate watchin' 'em, when suddenly they come tearin' along 
 shoutin' that there was goin' to be a battle, and we were 
 ordered to go to the next house. I was bakin' that day, but 
 I left my bread in the oven, and we did n't take nothin' we 
 were so scairt. Mrs. Hartzell ran along with the little girl, 
 and I gathered up the little three-year-old boy and hurried 
 after her. We got up to the high ground and stopped to 
 look back — and oh! there was the beautifulest sight — 
 the Union army all in line of battle. The blue coats and 
 
 ^ She was a fleshy woman who looked much younger than she really 
 was. I spent an hour in the late dusk of an afternoon in her sitting- 
 room. She had politely made me welcome and then disappeared. But 
 she soon returned with her cap adjusted and her apron turned to pre- 
 sent a clean side and sat down on the sofa after removing a sticky fly 
 paper that was covered with flies. 
 
188 Gettysburg 
 
 guns and flags stretched away a long distance as fur as we 
 could see. 
 
 The Rebels fired the first shell, and I pointed it out to the 
 little boy way up in the air. After a while it busted. The 
 Rebels fired twice befo' our people turned loose. Then we 
 ran, and I fell. Mrs. Hartzell thought I was shot. But we 
 got safely to the house of an old gentleman named Chriss. 
 He and his family, and the rest of us went down in the cel- 
 lar where we'd be mo' safer; and how that poor old soul did 
 pray! My laws! you never heard such prayin' in your life, 
 and I think the Lord heard his prayers and took care of us. 
 The children and nearly every one was cryin'. Once a ball 
 come in through a window and rolled down in the middle 
 of the floor. I was thankful it did n't hit us. I wanted to 
 see my mother then, but I was satisfied to stay there till 
 they were done fighting. 
 
 Once I looked out. The Rebels were charging, and when 
 the Union troops fired their volleys I see men among the 
 Rebels stumble and pitch forward and fall as if they were 
 tripping over briars. 
 
 We were inside the Rebel lines, and the soldiers were all 
 the time running in and out of the house. You 'd hear 'em 
 load their guns — clicky-click, and push 'em out the win- 
 dows and fire. We did n't know what they was goin' to do 
 with us. 'Long about five o'clock the noise stopped for a 
 while, and the old gentleman said, " I b'lieve I '11 go up and 
 see what's goin' on." 
 
 In a minute he run back and says, "Women and chil- 
 dren, fo' the Lord's sake come up!" 
 
 We went up and looked out of the kitchen door, and 
 down a little way toward the town there was a bayonet 
 charge in a wheatfield. They were just cuttin' and jaggin'; 
 
The Colored Servantmaid 189 
 
 and of all the hollerin' and screamin' and rattlin' of swords 
 and bayonets I never heard the like. It was the awfullest 
 thing to see! They had ambulances there, and as fast as 
 the men fell they were picked up and carried off. Pretty 
 soon they commenced firin' again, and we all fell right back 
 down in the cellar. Then some one come and told us we 
 must get out of there and go across the fields to another 
 house. That house was Dave Hankey's. His place was 
 thronged with Rebels, and they stopped me, and said to 
 Mrs. Hartzell: "Hey, what you doin' with her? She's got 
 to go along with us." 
 
 "You don't know what you're talkin' about," Mrs. 
 Hartzell said, and I was so scairt I hung onto her skirts. 
 
 We got down into the cellar, and I crawled way back in 
 the darkest comer and piled everything in front of me. I 
 was the only colored person there, and I did n't know what 
 might happen to me. Up in the kitchen was a sick officer, 
 and he wanted the women to come up out of the cellar to 
 take care of him and do some cooking, and he promised 
 they should be well treated. Mr, Hankey says to him, 
 "Would you see a colored person protected if she was to 
 help with the work here? " 
 
 He said he would, and he sent out a written somethin' or 
 'nother orderin' the men to keep out of the kitchen, and he 
 had the door boarded up half way so they could hand in 
 things to be cooked and we could hand 'em out afterward. 
 No one could go out and no one could come in. The officer 
 must have been pretty sick. 'Deed, I don't know what was 
 the matter of him, but he just lay on the broad of his back. 
 I had to comb his head, wash his face, and take off his shoes 
 and stockings. We stayed up all night doin' nothin' but 
 cook and bake for the Rebels. Good land ! they killed cows 
 
190 Gettysburg 
 
 and calves and chickens and everything they come across, 
 and brought the things to us to cook. I heard Mr. Hankey 
 pleading with 'em not to kill his calf, but it did n't do no 
 good. 
 
 By morning we were pretty near dead. There was no 
 chance to sleep, and I could n't have slept anyway for 
 hearin' them miserable wounded men hollerin' and goin* 
 on out in the yard and in the barn and other buildings. 
 They moaned and cried and went on terribly. "Oh! take 
 me home to my parents," they'd say. 
 
 The battle was at a distance the second day, and late on 
 the third day the Confederates left. They'd just heard of 
 some great army comin', and they run. I never seen such a 
 sight of goin' people with their wagons, cannons, ambu- 
 lances, and horses. Nobody has an idea of the excitement 
 and noise. But in a little while the place was rid out. We 
 were free souls then. Our army did n't pursue 'em. The 
 people that was in the battle needed a rest, and the people 
 that was n't in it was satisfied to take a rest, too. 
 
 When we got back to Mrs. Hartzell's we found everything 
 either thrown out of the house, or all broken up, and the 
 garden all tramped and mashed down. She had relatives 
 who give her some things so we got fixed up after a while. 
 
 Near us was a brick tavern, and in this here tavern a com- 
 pany of soldiers put up after the battle. We used water 
 from the tavern well, but it got so ugly and smelt so bad we 
 could hardly drink it. The soldiers was sick, and we was 
 sick. They thought there was dead frogs down in the well, 
 and so one day they pumped and pumped to clear it out, 
 and by and by here comes up a little piece of a wrist and 
 thumb. They'd been cookin* with that water, and so had 
 we; and now that they knew what was the matter there was 
 
The Colored Servantmald 191 
 
 a lot of gaggin' done among 'em, but what was down they 
 could n't git up. We did n't use that well no mo', and to 
 this day I could n't drink a drop out of it just for the 
 thoughts of what was found in it so long ago. 
 
 I knew of another well that was half filled with dead sol- 
 diers. That was an easy way to bury 'em. Those was rough 
 times — rough times — and I'm sure of one thing — if 
 they ever fight again in this country I don't want to be 
 around. 
 
XXIII 
 
 The Bank Clerk ^ 
 
 I WAS a clerk in the Savings Institution. There was one 
 other bank in town. Whenever the bank officials got fear- 
 ful that the place would be raided one or two of us would go 
 away with the funds. We had scares all along from the fall 
 of 1862 until late in 1864, and we carried off the funds eight- 
 een or twenty times. On several occasions I went alone, 
 and there was once I took as much as one hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand dollars. I 'd drive with a horse and 
 buggy by the old pike twenty-eight miles to York and then 
 ship the funds by railroad to Philadelphia. 
 
 We were particularly uneasy before the Battle of Gettys- 
 burg, for we'd heard that Stonewall Jackson had threat- 
 ened to lay waste the country when he got into Pennsyl- 
 vania and not leave one brick on top of another. But none 
 of the whites were scared quite as badly as were the darkies. 
 I remember a nigger named Jack who worked on a fai-m 
 near the town. At a time when a troop of raiders was 
 known to be swooping in our direction he said, "They'll 
 kill all us niggers, or take us back to slavery." 
 
 He was a bow-legged nigger who could n't make much 
 speed, and he did n't have any confidence in his ability to 
 
 1 In his maturer years he had risen to the position of bank president, 
 and his residence was the finest in town. There I spent an evening with 
 him in one of the handsome rooms. Roundabout were beautiful and 
 costly mementoes of foreign travel, and in cases ranged along the walls 
 was a wonderful collection of colonial china. 
 
The Bank Clerk 193 
 
 outrun the raiders. So he crep' under a haystack and stayed 
 without a morsel to eat for three or four days. He almost 
 starved. 
 
 A great many refugee darkies passed through Gettys- 
 burg going northward. Some would have a spring wagon 
 and a horse, but usually they were on foot, bui'dened with 
 bundles containing a couple of quilts, some clothing, and a 
 few cooking utensils. In several instances, I saw 'em trun- 
 dling along their little belongings in a two-wheeled hand- 
 cart. Occasionally there 'd be one who was driving a single 
 sheep, or hog, or a cow and a calf. They were a God-for- 
 saken looking people. The farmers along the roads shel- 
 tered them nights. Most of these here poor runaways would 
 drift into the towns and find employment, and there they'd 
 make their future homes. 
 
 Just before the raid that occurred in the last week of 
 June, 1863, 1 went off with the bank funds, and when I re- 
 turned I found the Rebels in possession of the town. They 
 took me to the bank and made me show 'em that we had n't 
 any money there, and one of 'em threatened to send me and 
 the treasurer to Richmond. They had demanded that Get- 
 tysburg should give 'em twenty-five thousand dollars in 
 money, ten thousand barrels of flour, and a lot of mess pork 
 and other things, but they did n't get the money or much 
 else in the town. The stores would have yielded them a lot 
 of plunder if the proprietors had n't guarded against that 
 possibihty by carrying just as small a stock as they could. 
 However, the raiders went out into the country around and 
 stole every farm animal that walked, and secured a great 
 deal of corn, oats, hay, meat, etc. Their teams were going 
 all the time taking the stuff south into the Confederate lines. 
 
 A few days after this raid some four thousand of our 
 
194 Gettysburg 
 
 cavalry came here, and, although we knew Lee was near 
 by, we felt then as if everything was safe. Oh, my goodness, 
 yes! our belongings were under Uncle Sam's protection, 
 and they were all right. 
 
 The following morning the battle began on the edge of 
 the town, and all the time more of our troops were arriving. 
 They went through the streets in the double-quick step, 
 which is next thing to a run. Some of 'em had marched 
 thirty-two miles. It was very hot weather, and they'd 
 thrown away much of their clothing. Often they had very 
 little on but their pants, and went right into the engage- 
 ment, hatless, shirtless, and shoeless. Some of 'em had 
 welts around their bodies, where they wore their belts, 
 three inches wide of blood and gore. Their supplies never 
 got here till that night or the next morning, and they made 
 breastworks by digging with their knives and spoons and 
 plates. 
 
 A good many of us citizens went out to the battlefield 
 with food. Some of us carried baskets of pies and cake, but 
 mostly we took bread in flour bags and broke it up and gave 
 it to the soldiers. The heat and the smoke there on the 
 battle line were suffocating, and at times the smoke was so 
 thick it obscured the sun and hid the enemy from sight. 
 
 About four in the afternoon we food-carriers were or- 
 dered back to the town, and soon afterward our men re- 
 treated and the place fell into the hands of the Rebels. 
 Many Union soldiers took refuge in the houses. They were 
 hidden all over town. We had two in our cellar until after 
 the battle was over. They came in completely worn out, 
 and left their guns and knapsacks by the dining-room fire- 
 place. Mother had just time to throw the knapsacks out of 
 sight back of the fireboard, and to lay the guns down and 
 
The Bank Clerk 195 
 
 push them under the lounge with her foot when there was a 
 rap at the door. She opened it, and on the steps stood some 
 Rebels who asked, "Are there any Yankees here?" 
 
 "Do you see any?" she said. 
 
 That did n't satisfy 'em, and they searched the house, 
 upstairs and down, but they did n't happen to go to the 
 cellar. We gave the fugitives some blankets to sleep on. 
 One of 'em had been wounded in the face by a piece of shell. 
 He ought to have gone right to the hospital, but he had 
 such a horror of falling into the clutches of the Rebels 
 that he would n't leave the house. Mother put hot water 
 and camphor on the wound to relieve the inflammation, and 
 when her supply of camphor ran out she grated potato and 
 used it with cold water from the well. But the treatment 
 was n't effective, and when the fellow did get to the hospi- 
 tal it was too late, and he died. 
 
 All our schoolhouses, churches, and other public build- 
 ings had been converted into hospitals, and I was one of 
 the helpers in them during the second and third days of the 
 battle, and for some weeks afterward. Sunday morning, 
 the fifth of July, the hospital stewards went with wagons 
 and doctors to search for any wounded who might have 
 been overlooked. There had been a good rain Friday night 
 that was very refreshing to the wounded on the field, and 
 it no doubt saved many of their lives. 
 
 You can't conceive what a sight the battleground pre- 
 sented with all its devastation and wreckage, and its strew- 
 ing of dead horses and dead men. Where there had been 
 severe fighting in woodland the trees were all splintered 
 and broken, and some that had been a foot or more through 
 were shot away till they looked like pipe-stems. 
 
 On my uncle's farm, just below Big Round Top, eighteen 
 
196 Gettysburg 
 
 hundred of the dead were buried in a single trench. They 
 were covered very shallow, and at night you could see 
 phosphorescent light coming out of the earth where they 
 were buried. You might think the buzzards would have 
 swarmed to the battlefield, and we used to have a popular 
 guide here who declared that they gathered from the four 
 corners of the earth to prey on the dead. He described 
 how, when they rose from their horrid feast, they dark- 
 ened the sky. Some one asked him why he told such a 
 yarn as that. 
 
 "Oh, well!" he says, "it amuses the people. They want 
 things made exciting." 
 
 Really there were no buzzards here, probably because 
 they were frightened away by the smell of the powder and 
 the noise of the cannonading. They never made their ap- 
 pearance till several months later. 
 
 Such of the wounded as were able to crawl dragged them- 
 selves to the streams and to the shade of bushes, and they 
 often got to spots so secluded that they were not easily dis- 
 covered. Moving them sometimes opened their wounds 
 afresh, and they bled to death. We found two on Tuesday 
 afternoon. One of them, with a compound fracture of his 
 leg, lay in a swamp where he had sucked water from the 
 mud. 
 
 A year passed away, and Lincoln came and made his 
 great speech in dedicating the national cemetery here. I 
 was within thirty feet of him when he spoke, and I remem- 
 ber distinctly how he looked — a tall, awkward figure with 
 one of his trouser's legs hitched up on his boot. But his 
 words made a tremendous impression, and that immortal 
 speech goes far to compensate for the horrors of the battle. 
 
XXIV 
 
 The Merchant's Son^ 
 
 Father had a store here in Vicksburg, but the war mined 
 him. He was getting to be an old man when the war began, 
 and after two years of it he had to quit. That was true of 
 dozens of other merchants. They could n't get goods, and 
 a great many of their customers had left town to go to 
 places twenty, thirty, and forty miles distant where they 
 thought they would be safer. 
 
 There was an increasing stringency in merchandise from 
 the time that intercourse with the North ceased. Very 
 soon our coast was blockaded, and then our lack of manu- 
 factories became a serious matter. The supplies brought in 
 by blockade runners were scanty in amount and high in 
 price. Clothing of all descriptions, dress-goods, millinery, 
 and shoes were very scarce. So were tinware and crockery 
 and other household utensils. Not much flour was to be 
 had, and no raisins or dates, and seldom any oranges, lem- 
 ons, or bananas. We were cut off from all kinds of oil and 
 light. Kerosene had come into common use here, and when 
 that was no longer to be had we got out our candle molds 
 and made candles. Some made dipped candles. 
 
 No one who was n't here can realize the privations we 
 
 1 He was a white-haired, serious man of affairs, of New England 
 ancestry, but ardently Southern in his point of view. We sat and 
 chatted one morning in his upstairs office on the main business street 
 of the city. 
 
198 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 went through. We made coffee out of crusts of bread that 
 we toasted brown and ground up, and we made it out of 
 burnt sugar. Rye coffee was quite a drink, and there was 
 sweet potato coffee, which was better than nothing at all. 
 I 've drank many a cup of it and was glad to get it; and I Ve 
 put many a dab of butter in my coffee instead of milk, be- 
 cause milk was so scarce. Lots of people who ordinarily 
 would have used considerable flour ate com bread for 
 months and months and months. Pies and cakes and things 
 of that kind were a luxury. At our house we made pound 
 cake by mixing a little flour with cornmeal, adding butter, 
 eggs, and sugar, and cooking it in a round tin dish. 
 
 Most of our young men joined the army. One crack 
 company of them left here one hundred and fifty strong. 
 When that company returned it numbered only twenty- 
 eight. 
 
 For a long time we had large numbers of Confederate 
 troops in or about the city. They were not a desirable ele- 
 ment in the community. Soldiers never are, even in times 
 of peace. Environment is more important than heredity 
 in determining a man's character. You cut a man off from 
 his family and home surroundings, and he is not in his 
 proper element. With the natural restraints gone man re- 
 turns to his brute instincts. An army is a big drain on the 
 region where it is quartered or through which it moves, 
 whether it consists of friends or enemies. And the meeting 
 of troops in battle is hell for them, and it is hell for the 
 people living there. 
 
 When Vicksburg became a center of military activity 
 troops occupied the courthouse and were in tents and hast- 
 ily-built barracks all around town. Marauders always 
 abound among soldiers, and though the officers tried to con- 
 
The Merchant's Son 199 
 
 trol their men and prevent lawlessness, that was impossible. 
 Our orchards were raided and our chickens taken. The sol- 
 diers were up to every deviltry you can think of. They 
 would come into a store, get hold of the end of a ball of 
 twine, then go outside and pull the twine till they had all 
 there was in the ball. Another favorite joke was to unscrew 
 a nut from the wheel of a buggy that was standing on the 
 street. They put the nut into the buggy, and when the un- 
 suspecting owner got in and drove away the wheel would 
 come off. 
 
 Grant arrived in this vicinity in January, 1863, to at- 
 tempt the task of capturing the city. The Mississippi made 
 a great bend opposite Vicksburg, and he tried to dig a canal 
 across the peninsula, which was only a mile wide, so that 
 vessels could go up and down the river without coming in 
 range of the city guns. But after six weeks of the hardest 
 kind of work a flood drowned many of his horses and forced 
 the men to fly for their lives. He made other unsuccessful 
 experiments, and there was a general demand in the North 
 for his dismissal. At length he sent his army below Vicks- 
 burg by a route west of the river, and on the night of April 
 16th three supply boats, protected by Admiral Porter's 
 ironclads, set out to run past the eight miles of batteries 
 here. All the vessels were damaged, but with the exception 
 of one transport that was burned they got away down the 
 river. A week later another supply fleet ran past the bat- 
 teries. 
 
 The army met the boats twenty-five miles south of here, 
 crossed the river, and after a succession of fierce battles ar- 
 rived on the heights around the city on May 18th. They 
 assaulted the works the next day, and again three days 
 later, but gained no advantage of consequence and lost 
 
200 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 many lives. Then they settled down to starve us out, and 
 Porter's fleet bombarded the place incessantly. 
 
 Many of the streets were cut through hills, and there 
 were clay banks on either side of them. These clay banks 
 offered an opportunity for making caves to shelter us from 
 the missiles that the enemy was hurling into the place. So 
 there was much burrowing in the earth, and many of us 
 spent a large portion of our time in the underground domi- 
 ciles which we made. 
 
 My home was on a hill in the better residence section, 
 and we dug a cave just outside of the yard in the bank by 
 the public road. We made the roof out of railroad iron and 
 crossties. The iron rails supported the crossties, which 
 were laid close together, and the crossties were covered 
 with dirt. The cave was as large as a fair-sized room and 
 high enough so a person could stand up. There was a board 
 floor and we had mattresses and pillows in there, and sev- 
 eral chairs, including one rocking-chair. We kept eandles 
 in the cave to furnish light. Its gi'eatest lack was perhaps 
 in the matter of ventilation, and the atmosphere was 
 stifling to some extent. Often we slept in the cave, but we 
 rarely stayed in it during the daytime unless there was a 
 hot bombardment. 
 
 We were n't afraid of the big shells. They went over the 
 town, and we 'd see them at night like shooting stars. As 
 a matter of fact the bombarding was all of it more spectac- 
 ular than dangerous. The Yankees could have shelled 
 Vicksburg till hell froze over, or the termination of all time, 
 and not have captured the place. But think of all we had 
 to contend with — our lack of food and the shabby equip- 
 ment of our troops. I never have understood why so much 
 credit was given to General Grant for capturing the city. 
 
The Merchant's Son 201 
 
 We were on the verge of starvation. There were no deli- 
 cacies even for the wounded, and the surgeons did n't have 
 chloroform half the time. Many of the garrison and the 
 citizens perished from sickness and exhaustion. 
 
 So on July 3d, about the middle of the morning, white 
 flags were unfurled on the parapet of our fortifications, and 
 the cannon ceased to roar. Grant and the Confederate 
 commander, Pemberton, met that afternoon and arranged 
 the terms of surrender, and the next day the Union troops 
 took possession of the city. 
 
 I recall that the Confederate prisoners were driven bare- 
 foot through the streets. That looked rather rough to us, 
 but I believe the North thought the Union prisoners who 
 fell into Southern hands during the war were hardly treated, 
 too. Probably it was about six of one and half a dozen 
 of the other. 
 
 What hurt us worst in connection with the war was the 
 aftermath — the days of reconstruction. Many of the sol- 
 diers came home to a standing chimney. There was no 
 house, no fences, no slaves, no anything to do with; but 
 there was a wife and children to be supported. Perhaps 
 the man had never worked in his life — did n't know how 
 — that was the tragedy. 
 
XXV 
 
 The Soldier's Wife ^ 
 
 This old house here on the heights of Fort Hill overlooking 
 Vicksburg and the river and all the surrounding country 
 v/as where my father and husband lived at the time they 
 went away to join the Southern army. The hill was forti- 
 fied by the Confederates, and you might think that fact 
 accounts for its name, but really the name is inherited from 
 an old Spanish fort that was here long, long before on the 
 topmost height — a ridge known as the Devil's Backbone. 
 After the war had dragged on for about two years the 
 Yankees began to close in around the town. They had a 
 fleet of war vessels up beyond the turn of the Mississippi, 
 and one day a curious thing happened. A Northern gun- 
 boat came down the river with a white flag a-flying. I 
 watched her. Presently she approached the shore, and 
 down went the flag. The commander stood with one foot 
 raised ready to spring off, and right behind him were his 
 men all armed and prepared to follow him. Evidently the 
 plan was to come so close with the boat that the water- 
 batteries could n't depress their guns enough to hit her. A 
 few moments more and the troops would have landed, but 
 just then a ball was sent through the boat's hull, and she 
 
 ^ She said she was seventy, yet was so youthful in appearance and 
 so sprightly in manner that I would more readily have assented to 
 thinking her fifty. I called on her in a pleasant farmhouse on the sub- 
 urbs of the city. We sat and talked in the parlor one warm afternoon 
 while a grateful breeze blew in at the open windows. 
 
The Soldier's Wife 203 
 
 backed out and started up the river. They hoisted their 
 white flag again, but our batteries kept firing till she went 
 in among the willows across the river and sank. It was an 
 unfair deception to use a white flag that way. 
 
 Our people were always on the lookout for attempts to 
 run boats down past the batteries, and of course we wanted 
 to thwart any such undertaking and destroy the boats. 
 We had what was called the "Mosquito Fleet" which con- 
 sisted of several skiffs rowed by men belonging to the river 
 batteries. As soon as the enemy's boats were detected 
 coming the Mosquito Fleet was to row to the opposite shore 
 and set fire to some houses there. That would light up the 
 whole river like day, and then our guns could be aimed at 
 the Yankee vessels. I recall the first alarm. We were in 
 bed and asleep way in the night, and the signal cannon 
 boomed. It had hardly fired when the Mosquito Fleet men 
 had the houses across the river blazing. We jumped up and 
 ran out on the gallery. First the Yankees sent down some 
 scows filled with hay and that sort of thing. They waited 
 to see how those dummies would fare, and afterward, on 
 two different nights, started out with gunboats and trans- 
 ports. We looked on while some of the vessels burned or 
 sank and the cannon balls flew back and forth. 
 
 When the enemy began to bombard the town we fixed up 
 a shelter over in a gully hardly a stone's throw from the 
 house. Mother did n't want to have a cave. She was afraid 
 the roof would come down on her, and she said she'd rather 
 be killed and buried than be buried alive. So we shoveled 
 away enough dirt to make a level place like a shelf on the 
 side of one of the steep slopes there in the hollow. Then we 
 laid a floor and leaned some good long plank against the 
 hill and drove stubs into the ground at the lower ends of the 
 
204 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 plank to hold 'em in place. We put mattresses inside, and 
 we generally slept in the shelter at night and were often 
 there in the daytime. 
 
 One morning I was going along a cattle path on my way 
 to the hollow when the Yankees commenced shooting. I 
 stopped and said, "Never mind, I'm going to stay here 
 and see what you are doing." 
 
 About a minute later a shell dropped so close that the 
 dirt it threw up buried me nearly to my knees. 
 
 We had so many hairbreadth escapes! Our house was in 
 an exposed position, and by the end of the siege the north 
 side was like a pepper box with holes made by the Minie 
 balls that had passed through it. When those balls were 
 flying thick it just sounded like the biggest hail I ever 
 heard. But I was n't frightened. I never thought a bullet 
 was made for me. 
 
 I remember the soldiers told us, "Ladies, this is no place 
 for you," but we would n't desert our home. 
 
 Late one day as I was in the front part of the house get- 
 ting ready to go over to our night rendezvous, a shell came 
 down in our kitchen. I thought from the sound that it had 
 smashed the stove all to pieces. So out I rushed to the 
 kitchen to investigate, and I fell through a gaping hole in 
 the floor. I did n't get out of there till they chopped me 
 out with an axe. I bear the scars yet. 
 
 Another time two of us girls were at the table eating. 
 The Yankees were firing, and Mother had sent the younger 
 children over to the hollow. Suddenly she said, " Get right 
 up and come out because I know something is going to 
 happen." 
 
 She was so earnest about it that we thought we would 
 humor her, and we stepped out to the gallery. Almost 
 
The Soldier's Wife 205 
 
 instantly a shell passed right through the room. It would 
 have taken our heads off where we had been sitting. It's 
 very strange — those warnings to get out of danger. I 
 s'pose we have to thank the good angel that is always 
 with us. 
 
 I used to have a little fun with two of the guns that were 
 firing from the other side of the point. They were what 
 were called Columbiads. I don't think they ever did any 
 damage. They had a certain range and I soon learned just 
 where the balls from each would fall. I 'd get on my horse 
 to ride, and the Yankee gunners would see me and imagine 
 I was a courier. Bang! would go the first gun and the ball 
 would fall in a near gully. At once I would gallop on till 
 I approached the range of the second gun. Then I 'd stop 
 till the gun fired, and afterward I 'd canter along about my 
 business. 
 
 Blackberries were plentiful all aroimd us, and one after- 
 noon I went out back of the house to pick some. I wanted 
 them to take to the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospi- 
 tals. As I was stooping down reaching for some a Minie 
 ball passed in front of my face and took off a piece of the 
 bush I was picking from. Oh! I 've felt the wind of many a 
 Minie ball. I had about a quart of berries, but that was n't 
 enough, and I did n't go to the house till I had filled my 
 pail and eaten all I wanted besides. 
 
 One day I went to call on a woman who lived over on the 
 Jackson Road, a mile and a half away. I walked, and 
 Mother told me just how long I could stay. We never 
 thought of disobeying our mother. It so happened that I 
 had a curiosity to go to some other place, and in order not 
 to overrun my allotted time I cut short my call. Hardly 
 five minutes after I left the woman a shell came into 
 
206 The Siege of VIcksburg 
 
 her house and struck her and scattered her brains about. 
 People who were there said I had n't got out of sight. 
 Mother heard that shell explode and knew pretty near 
 where it fell, and she never had a moment's peace till I 
 came home. I got there on time. 
 
 My husband was in a detachment at the extreme right 
 of the Confederate lines. I used to ride over there on my 
 horse three times a week. He was sort of a dudish fellow, 
 and I liked to see him look nice. So I always carried him 
 some clean clothes, and I'd cook up biscuit and meat to 
 take. I had an old-fashioned carpetbag that would hold a 
 bushel, and I put the things into that and hung it to the 
 pommel of my side-saddle. There were five men in my hus- 
 band's mess. He divided the food I brought with his com- 
 rades, and they watched for my approach as much as he 
 did. "Your wife's coming," I'd hear them holler to him. 
 
 Firing from both sides was common, and their situation 
 was not very safe, though it was protected by entrench- 
 ments. Sometimes the lieutenant would tell me to go way 
 back behind a large tree. Then I 'd go and sit down in the 
 rear of their tent for a few minutes, but as soon as the lieu- 
 tenant's attention was engaged I'd return. 
 
 We saw hard times during the war. We did n't have 
 very much to begin with, and a good deal of that was 
 stolen. But let me tell you — I've seen the armies of both 
 sides, and there's a class that follows the troops and steals 
 things even if they don't want 'em, and the blame is put on 
 the soldiers. Of course, though, the soldiers took a good 
 deal, too. 
 
 Once we filled some candle molds full of tallow that had 
 a little beeswax in it to make it harder, and we set 'em out 
 to cool. We left 'em there till after dark. Then I went to 
 
The Soldier's Wife 207 
 
 get one of the candles to light, and the molds and all were 
 gone. I suppose some of our soldiers had candles up at 
 camp that night. 
 
 Sometimes they would be shooting and hit a cow or a 
 calf, and then they 'd have fresh meat. They were quite apt 
 to accidently kill a beef creature when they got very hun- 
 gry. We managed to keep our cow. But chickens! oh my 
 heavens! they disappeared long before the surrender. The 
 last survivor was a pet hen. My Httle girl, only two years 
 old, just loved that chicken. One day a soldier came along 
 and saw the hen, and he stopped and wanted to buy it for 
 a sick comrade who could n't eat anything but chicken 
 soup. I called the little girl and said: "Gerty, a poor sick 
 man wants your chicken. He's mighty hungry, and this 
 friend of his will pay you two dollars for it. That's enough 
 money to buy you a pretty dress." 
 
 She consented to part with the hen, but she did n't want 
 to see the man ketch it, and she run out of sight. 
 
 Once we 'd just finished churning and had taken the but- 
 ter out and put it away when the shells came so thick that 
 we went over to the hollow. We left the churn with the 
 buttermilk in it on the table in the dining-room. While we 
 were gone it was taken. No doubt the buttermilk was 
 what was wanted, and we'd have been glad to spare that 
 if we could have retained the churn. 
 
 That made us more careful than ever. We had a barrel 
 and a half of flour, and I said, " It would be a good plan to 
 put our flour in two different places." 
 
 So we set the half barrel in the back hall where it would 
 be most convenient, and we put the full barrel in one of the 
 bedrooms and threw some soiled clothes over it. The next 
 morning we came over from the hollow to cook breakfast, 
 
208 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 and there was only enough flour left of the half barrel for 
 one meal. We tracked the thieves to camp, and then I 
 said: "Oh Ma! it's the soldiers. Let 's go back." 
 
 By the end of the siege not a fence was left in the sub- 
 urbs. They'd been taken for kindlings. The soldiers be- 
 gan destroying them, and then the people saw that the 
 fences were doomed and concluded they might as well use 
 them for firewood themselves. We could n't get wood 
 hauled in from the farm districts. When the war began the 
 town was surrounded with great forest trees — wa'nut 
 trees, oaks, and sycamores. But the soldiers cut them 
 down because they were in the way, or because they needed 
 them for firewood or breastworks. The camps were every- 
 where, and the stumps were to some degree a convenience. 
 A soldier could build a fire against one and it served for 
 a backlog as long as it lasted. 
 
 We had a garden plot, but we could n't raise anything in 
 it. Somebody was sure to pull every sprig that came up. 
 However, there was a kind of wild onion that grew over 
 back of the garden near the stable where the soldiers did n't 
 get hold of it. We secured enough of those wild onions to 
 flavor hash and things like that. 
 
 At last our flour got reduced to three pounds and our 
 cornmeal to a single half bushel. Until nearly that time we 
 had rice, and we could always buy brown sugar and mo- 
 lasses and cowpeas. We ground up the cowpeas and made 
 mush and baked bread out of it. But the bread did n't taste 
 done. It tasted like it was raw. For variety we boiled up 
 the cowpeas with water till they fell to pieces. We had no 
 meat or salt to put in, but we called it soup. I don't eat 
 many beans now like I used to in my young days because 
 they remind me of the war and cowpeas. 
 
The Soldier's Wife 209 
 
 Toward the end of the siege the soldiers, sick and well, 
 did n't have much else. Just think of a man lying there 
 with chronic dysentery and fed with cowpeas! No wonder 
 the soldiers died. I heard of an instance where three of 
 them who were brothers starved to death in a tent out in a 
 field here. 
 
 One evening a soldier came along the road to our house, 
 and spoke to me. "Madam," he said, "could you give me 
 a piece of bread?" 
 
 He was actually staggering for want of food. I got a 
 plate of bread, and the children came out with me to see 
 him. There were five of them. "Do all these children be- 
 long here?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes," I replied. 
 
 " I have a houseful of children myself at home," he said, 
 "and I 'd want to murder any man who'd go there and eat 
 their bread. Save every crumb you have. You don't know 
 how long this siege will last." 
 
 He turned and walked off as fast as he could go, appar- 
 ently in haste to get away from the food which he might be 
 tempted to accept. Two of the little girls ran after him, 
 each with a slice of the bread, and urged him to take it. 
 But he refused to do so in spite of his sore need. I consider 
 him one of the bravest men among the defenders of Vicks- 
 burg. 
 
 His was not an isolated case either. When the Federals 
 got into the city they broke open the warehouses and were 
 dumbfounded to find in them great quantities of provisions. 
 Our starving troops had never touched them because they 
 were private property. 
 
 After a siege of about seven weeks poor Vicksburg was 
 humiliated into a surrender, and we sat in sackcloth and 
 
210 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 ashes. The surrender occurred on the Fourth of July, a 
 day that belonged to North and South alike. It could just 
 as well have taken place on the third, but Grant wanted the 
 big thing of capturing the stronghold on the Fourth, even 
 though men were suffering here for lack of food. Many a 
 good fellow starved to death because of that delay. It was 
 a mean thing in Grant to demand such an arrangement and 
 a mean thing in Pemberton to agree to it. I 've never for- 
 given them. They both got their reward. Grant himself 
 starved to death — not because he did n't have food but 
 because he could n't eat; and Pemberton died in obscurity 
 and no one had any respect for him. 
 
 The Federal troops marched into town right past our 
 place. Among the rest were some colored troops, and every 
 last one of those negro men had on a big blue army over- 
 coat. It was a hot midsummer day and they were sweating 
 to beat the band, but no doubt they were happy in their 
 gay military attire and proud of their release from slavery. 
 They were Uncle Sam's children now, and every man was 
 going to get forty acres and a mule — at least that was what 
 they were told as an inducement to enlist. 
 
 One of the niggers was carrying an American flag. He 
 had it over his shoulder and it was trailing along in the dirt. 
 The road was very dusty. I don't believe it had rained but 
 once during the entire siege. That sight took away all the 
 respect I had for the flag and I said, " They've turned their 
 flag over to the niggers — let the niggers have it." 
 
 Ever since the Union forces closed in about the city 
 there had been one of their flags over on their breastworks 
 that we could see from our house. I used to point to it and 
 say to our soldiers: "If you capture that flag treat it with 
 respect. Roll it up and bring it to me. I '11 take care of it." 
 
The Soldier's Wife 211 
 
 But after what I saw of the way its defenders allowed it 
 be mistreated when they were marching into Vicksburg 
 I can't think of it with affection any more. I 've made up 
 my mind, too, that it is not nearly so beautiful as our 
 original Confederate flag — the one that had three broad 
 stripes and a blue field of stars. Really, the American flag 
 looks like an old bedquilt. 
 
 The Confederates had a cannon on this hill that they 
 called "Whistling Dick," because its discharge was always 
 accompanied by a pecuhar whistle. No matter how many 
 other guns were firing you could distinguish that sound; 
 and, besides, the gun had individuality in its appearance, 
 for it was very, very long. We could depend on its accu- 
 racy, and it was a pet with the soldiery, and the citizens 
 thought a whole pile of it, too. The troops hated to have 
 Whistling Dick fall into the hands of the Federals, and on 
 the night of July 3d they disposed of it. The story is that 
 it was taken out in the Mississippi and sunk. 
 
 Another thing the soldiers did was to roll some of thecas- 
 sions down into the gullies along here. There was a good 
 deal of powder on the cassions, put up in red flannel sacks, 
 and the boys got hold of it. They 'd learned from the sol- 
 diers how to lay a string of powder and touch it off so as to 
 make a kind of fireworks. The boys stored the powder 
 around here and there where they would have it handy. 
 One day, by some mischance, a lot of it went off. It tore a 
 great hole in the ground and blackened a near house and 
 injured some of the boys. 
 
 My little brother Lem, six years old, was one of the boys 
 who was there. Mother had started out to find him and 
 call him to dinner when she heard the explosion. Some 
 colored people got to the spot first. Lem and a colored boy 
 
212 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 of about the same age had been bio wed up. The powder 
 was damp or it would have killed them. One of those who 
 hurried to the spot, alarmed by the explosion and the 
 screams, was the mother of the colored boy. His clothes 
 were on fire, and she stripped him. Next she stripped Lem, 
 for his clothes were smoldering, too. Then one of the col- 
 ored people brought some molasses and put it on the boys' 
 burns, and another put on some flour. 
 
 They had started to carry Lem home when Mother and I 
 met them, and I could n't help but laugh to save my life, 
 Lem was such a sight. His face was scorched and his eye- 
 brows burnt off. Usually he wore a palmetto hat that we 'd 
 woven ourselves, but some soldier had given him an army 
 cap, and all his hair was singed off right up to the edge of 
 that cap. His fingernails were bio wed off, and we thought 
 he'd lost his sight. "Are your eyes burnt out?" Mother 
 asked. 
 
 " No," he said, " I can see," and he opened his eyes, " but 
 you better go and find my shoes. I left 'em down there 
 where the powder blew up." 
 
 Lem's fingers had to be tied up separately, and he 
 could n't feed himself for six weeks. We had to pick the 
 powder out of his face or he'd have been marked for life. 
 The colored boy was permanently disfigured because he 
 took a knife and scraped his scabs off. 
 
 Unexploded shells were numerous all around here, and a 
 free darky named David Foot gathered 'em up out on the 
 line, took the powder out, and sold 'em for old iron. But 
 one day, as he was digging up a shell, he struck it in such a 
 way that it exploded and blew his legs off. He died shortly 
 afterward. 
 
 I had one serious war-time adventure a year after the 
 
The Soldier's Wife 213 
 
 surrender. I was out with my horse riding on the battle- 
 field. It was all grown up with tall weeds, and I was push- 
 ing along through 'em when I heard a negro's voice call, 
 "Halt!" 
 
 I did n't want to be stopped by a negro, even if he was a 
 government guard, and I pulled my horse aside down into 
 a trench out of sight. I knew some of those ditches ran 
 a mile. That was farther than I cared to ride through a 
 jungle of weeds. So after I had gone a short distance I 
 urged the horse till he jumped with me up on the bank. 
 Again I heard the negro shout, "Halt!" 
 
 I rode up to him and said : " Uncle, I 'm lost. My patience 
 alive! how these weeds do hide everything! Won't you 
 please show me the way to the road? " 
 
 "Lady," he said, "if it had n't been for the wind blowing 
 your veil just as you came up out of the gully so I knew 
 you was a woman I should have shot you." 
 
 I suppose it was his duty to take me to headquarters, 
 but I persuaded him to show me the road, and then I gal- 
 loped back home as fast as I could. 
 
 Father had left the army and returned to us. He owned 
 a wagon and two horses and for a while he drove regularly 
 out into the country making trips that were ostensibly for 
 the Yankees. But his main purpose was to smuggle medi- 
 cine and things to the Confederates. The Union authori- 
 ties caught onto his game presently, and confiscated his 
 team. 
 
 Mrs. Vinton, a friend of ours, was another blockade run- 
 ner. She was such a sweet-toned person you would n't 
 think sugar would melt in her mouth. Oh! she'd be so 
 sweet to those Federal officers up at the courthouse that 
 they'd do anything on earth for her; and yet she'd have 
 
214 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 helped the Confederacy to the last drop of blood in her 
 body. She lived two or three miles out and drove back 
 and forth in a little spring wagon. Apparently she was 
 making her living by carrying the mail and bringing in 
 vegetables, but all the time she was smuggling supplies to 
 the Confederates and getting information for them. 
 
 My mother was born in Ohio, and that was one thing 
 she was ashamed of and would n't tell unless she had to. 
 She came South when she was twelve, and she and all the 
 rest of us were thorough-going Rebels. 
 
 Half a dozen Federal officers boarded with us for a time, 
 and I was quite spiteful to them, and they were spiteful to 
 me. We were always saying cutting things back and forth. 
 But our family did n't have better friends in the world than 
 some of those Northern men. Once Mother was very ill and 
 my sister went for help to a neighbor's and found a Federal 
 doctor there seeing a sick child. She got him to come to 
 our house, and as soon as they arrived she took me aside 
 and told me who he was. 
 
 "H'm!" I said, "you call that man a doctor — that 
 rough-looking feller! He can't come in to see my mother." 
 
 The man needed shaving very badly, and his hat was 
 crushed in, and he was in his shirt sleeves. But my sister 
 urged, and I yielded; and he certainly did bring Mother 
 through her illness without any serious consequences. 
 
 We've kept up a correspondence with him ever since, 
 and he always calls us "Dear Girls" in starting his letters. 
 Not long ago he was here to a reunion and called on us. I 
 saw him at the gate, and, thinks I, "In the name of sense, 
 who is that great tall feller comin' in our yard?" 
 
 "You don't know me, do you?" he said when he got to 
 the door. 
 
The Soldier's Wife 215 
 
 "Hold on," I responded, " ril place you in a minute. 
 Yes, you're our Yankee doctor." 
 
 In one of the later battles of the war my husband was 
 shot in the neck. When the men who were picking up the 
 wounded found him they looked at his wound and said: 
 "It's no use carrying him off. He can't live." 
 
 He held a cloth to the wound and lay there with the bat- 
 tle still going on. By and by a cavalryman took pity on 
 him and got him onto his horse. The cavalryman sat in 
 front and my husband behind. They had n't gone far 
 when the cavalryman was shot and fell off dead. My hus- 
 band fell off, too, and then he crawled and crawled until he 
 got to a hospital. The doctors thought his was a hopeless 
 case, and he lay there two days before he got any attention. 
 They never probed for the bullet. He could n't talk above 
 a whisper for a year afterward, and he always had to speak 
 very slowly. 
 
 Do you know, that ball was the cause of his death? It 
 shifted and pressed on a nerve going to the brain and grad- 
 ually paralyzed him, but that was after he'd got to be a 
 rather old man. We had to lead him around, and he did n't 
 recognize any one but me. He coughed right hard and 
 choked, and he'd perhaps get only one meal a day. The 
 rest of what he ate all came up. Besides, he had the rheu- 
 matism caused by walking in the army on ice and things 
 without shoes. 
 
 Suddenly, one Friday afternoon, his paralysis left him, 
 and he asked me how I was getting along and if I had kept 
 up his life insurance. I knew he was failing and I talked 
 with him about the things he might like to have done. One 
 question I asked him was whether he wanted the minister 
 to come to see him. "I can get the Episcopal minister," I 
 
216 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 said, "but there is n't a Presbyterian minister in the town 
 just now." 
 
 "The Episcopal minister need n't call," he said. "I was 
 born a Presbyterian and I '11 die a Presbyterian." 
 
 The next morning, while I was getting breakfast, he wan- 
 dered outdoors, and we found him in the yard dazed and 
 helpless. He lived for three months, but he never knew 
 anything again. 
 
XXVI 
 
 The Fighting Slave ^ 
 
 I 'm seventy-four years old now. I ain't young no mo', but 
 thar's nothin' the matter with me except I've got the heat 
 and hit makes me scratch. I don't know how I come to be 
 alive when so many others have died. Hit mus' be God is 
 savin' me for some good purpose. 
 
 I 've lived right hyar on Fort Hill on the edge of Vicks- 
 burg ever since war-time, and that's long enough. Hit's 
 longer 'n a man ought to stay in one place. 
 
 I was raised in Kaintucky, and was thar until five years 
 befo' the war. Then a man bought me who had a place 
 near Vicksburg. I was sixteen years old and a good worker, 
 but thar was one thing I would n't stand — that was 
 beatin' up. If any man was tryin' to jump on me I 'd fight. 
 I don't do so no mo'. I've got kind o' ca'm since the war, 
 but I was a devil when I was growin' up. Oh, Lord! I was a 
 finished-out little rascal then. I'd fight tryin' to git away 
 from Dad when he was punishin' me. If a boy bigger 'n me 
 was to whop me he'd better look out. I'd git a rock and 
 
 ^ He was a gray, sinewy old negro in a two-room shack in the ridge 
 of a rough hill that was only separated from the business section of 
 Vicksburg by a deep ravine. Roundabout were other shacks with 
 their tiny garden patches. They clung to the steep slopes in a curious 
 helter-skelter, linked together by irregular, narrow lanes. The old man 
 lay half-clothed on a low bed and tossed about and scratched while he 
 talked. The odors of the place were not very delectable, and I sat as 
 close as I conveniently could to an open door. 
 
218 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 slip aroun' and cut his head to the fat. Yes, I was up to all 
 such didoes as that. I 'd fight white and black. 
 
 Generally an overseer would have the slaves so cowered 
 that when he snapped his whip they'd go right down on 
 their knees ready for a whippin'. But I would n't. I was a 
 fighter, and besides I was from Kaintucky, yo' see, whar 
 they treated yo' like yo' was people. But hyar, if yo' was 
 out in the cotton patch ploughin' or doin' somethin' else, 
 and did n't work to suit 'em, they'd whip you and cut your 
 back all to pieces. Hit would take five or six men to put me 
 down. I did n't believe in so many pitching onto one. If 
 thar was goin' to be any whippin' they ought to have had 
 two men stan' up and fight man to man and let the best 
 man beat. But a whole parcel of 'em would pile onto me 
 and git me down and tie me to stakes, and I 'd cuss 'em and 
 tell 'em that I 'd kill 'em when I got up. 
 
 If I could git hold of an axe befo' they pounced on me I'd 
 go to chop 'em up like I was choppin' up wood, and then 
 they were 'fraid to come at me. After that perhaps I 'd run 
 out in the woods to stay. They 'd think that I 'd be starvin' 
 and that I would soon come back, but I 'd git all I wanted 
 to eat. Plenty of hogs was feedin' in the woods, and I would 
 n't let a hog pass me if I was hungry. I 'd use a club on him. 
 They were not wild at all because they were used to havin' 
 some one feed 'em once in a while. I could take a year of 
 corn and go in my master's lot and call every hog thar. 
 
 When I was ready to fry a piece of pork I 'd steal some- 
 body's skillet, and I didn't care whether I stole it from 
 white or black, so I got it. Nobody didn't hide anything 
 them days, and I could always git a skillet without much 
 trouble. Perhaps I could n't very well carry it along with 
 me, and I 'd leave it. Then I 'd steal another when I needed 
 
The Fighting Slave 219 
 
 one, or it might be I'd go and speak to some colored man 
 at his cabin and say, "Partner, let me have a skillet so I can 
 cook something to eat." 
 
 "All right," he'd say, "I've got two or three, and I'll 
 bring you one." 
 
 I'd make a fire way down in the swamp in the cane 
 thicket and brile or boil my meat, and the next day I 'd be 
 way off somewhar else among the bears and painters. Oh, 
 yes! thar was wild animals in the woods, but they never 
 bothered me; and if they had thar'd been a fight just as 
 sure as God made Moses. I wa'n't scared of nothin'. 
 
 Often I'd watch whar some black folks was workin' in 
 the field, and I 'd wait till the cart come with their dinner. 
 As soon as the white man who brought the dinner was out 
 of the way I 'd step over whar the hands were and git some- 
 thing to eat. But I had to be careful about meetin' folks. 
 If I was talkin' with anybody in a field, and hit look like my 
 talk did n't suit him I 'd git away. 
 
 Once in a while I 'd go to a mill and git meal, and then I 'd 
 make ash cake as nice as ever yo' e't. If I could git cabbage 
 leaves I 'd wrap the ash cake up in 'em bef o' I put it in the 
 hot ashes. The cabbage leaves gave it a good scent, and a 
 good taste. Any one who 's eaten ash cake baked like that 
 would n't want it no other way; and if I was startin' gittin' 
 such an ash cake ready yo'd holler, "Quick! I want some 
 in a hurry." 
 
 I used to carry along a little saw and a tin bucket and a 
 spoon. Sometimes I would n't have the spoon, and I 'd use 
 a stick instead. 
 
 If it rained I 'd crawl into a holler log. I 'd stay in thar 
 all night, and all day, too, if I did n't want to walk. It was 
 a good place to keep any one from seein' me. Snakes and 
 
220 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 things would be slippin' along by me to git up farther, but 
 thar was room for them and me, too. Yo 'd git a wild scent 
 after yo'd stayed in the woods a while, and if yo' did n't 
 bother the animals they 'd never bother you. — I know 
 that. Co'se, if I'd done got scared and made a rustle 
 they'd 'a' bit me. But yo' got to git entangled with 'em — 
 that's all the way yo' can git 'em to bother you. 
 
 In nice weather I 'd hide in a thicket, and I 'd hear the 
 birds sing and holler, "Skip-a-ree!" 
 
 If people come hunting me I knowed I could see as far 
 as they could, and I was able to dodge 'em anywhar. But 
 one time they dodged me and hid and let me come right up 
 to 'em. 
 
 I was goin' along a road that day and hit took me right 
 thoo a man's field. He was ploughin' his com, which was 
 knee-high. Two or three colored boys and men were hoe- 
 ing. The man saw me, and I started to run. "Halt!" he 
 cried, but I kept on as fast as I could go. 
 
 I passed thoo the man's yard and on into the thick woods. 
 I was sure I could give him the dodge in the woods. 
 
 He went to his house and got a gun, and him and another 
 man follered me. By and by they saw me when I did n't 
 see them, and they hid and let me come up to whar they 
 was, like I tol' you. 
 
 "Stop!" the man called, "stop or I'll shoot." 
 
 "Shoot and be hanged!" I shouted, and I started to run. 
 He fired at me and I heard the shots flyin' past my head. 
 I stopped in about ten mile, I reckon. 
 
 But that same day I got betrayed. They never did ketch 
 me fairly. I was betrayed by my own color. I'd gone 
 to a house to git something to eat, and the people thar 
 sent word to their master that I was at their house. I 
 
THE RUNAWAY BROILS SOME ^lEAT 
 
The Fighting Slave 221 
 
 did n't know nothin' 'bout that, and I stayed around and 
 stayed around till they asked me to spend the night. So I 
 went to bed, and I'd been in bed long enough to git asleep 
 when I heard a knocking. Up I jumped and went to climb 
 out of the winder, but I found two men standing outside 
 with sticks ready to knock me down. 
 
 Then I ran to the do', and I couldn't git out thar either. 
 A man and a great big dog were in the way. The dog would 
 have torn me to pieces. I had to give up that time. Yes, 
 that's what I done. The dog backed my judgment about 
 fightin'. So I just made myself easy and gin up. They 
 crossed my hands and tied 'em with a rope. When they fix 
 yo' that way they can carry yo' anywhar they want. They 
 took me down to the gin house and tied me inside to one of 
 the timbers of the building and locked the do'. 
 
 The next day the man what cotch me carried me home in 
 his buggy, and he had me tied to the seat so I could n't 
 hurt him nor git away nohow. I 'd been gone near a month. 
 I went off when they were choppin' cotton, and when I 
 come back they was pullin' fodder in June. My master 
 blamed the overseer for bein' so rough with me as to make 
 me run away, and he turned him off and made him pay for 
 ev'y day I 'd lost. 
 
 I was whipped a little bit for runnin' away, but that was 
 the last whippin' ever I had. My master got so he liked me, 
 and he would n't let no overseer hit me. " That man is 
 smart," he'd say. "He'll do what yo' tell him, but he'll 
 fight if yo' try to lay on the lash." 
 
 After the war began my master let me go down to Vicks- 
 burg Sundays to work on the wharves. I got forty cents an 
 hour in Secesh money. I 'd help git the cotton and the sugar 
 on and off the boats. Yo' know I must have been a pretty 
 
222 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 stout feller to roll those cotton bales and those hogsheads 
 of sugar. Any time a hogshead broke yo' could eat all the 
 sugar yo' wanted and take home as much as yo' pleased, 
 too. 
 
 When the army commenced to fortify the place ev'y 
 planter had to send so many hands to dig trenches. The 
 officers would come and press you. I was one of those that 
 had to go. We camped a little outside of the town. They 
 kep' us workin' pretty hard diggin' pits and makin' forts. 
 But I was a man then, and they could n't hurt me with no 
 work. We were out thar in the camp till the Yankees come 
 and run us away. They 'd th'ow balls over disaway from 
 the river thoo the co'thouse steeple, and they'd th'ow 'em 
 right into camp and git us runnin' worse 'n dogs. We'd 
 done camped five miles from whar their mortar boats were 
 over yander beyond the bend of the river hid out of sight 
 under the banks. So we thought we was out of their reach, 
 but we was n't. 
 
 They th'owed those grape and canister just for a pas- 
 time. Yo' could see the shells comin' in the night red as 
 blood, and we'd hide behind trees. If a shell bust whar 
 some people was it would kill ev'ybody around. Sometimes 
 a solid shot would hit and cut off a tree, or it might cut off 
 a big branch which would fall and kill the people down be- 
 low. They fired solid balls bigger 'n yo' head. 
 
 The Rebels kep' us in that camp until they was ready to 
 let us go, and hit looked like they wanted to have us git 
 killed. We could n't leave the camp at night without 
 strikin' a picket line, and them pickets would shoot the 
 heart out of you. 
 
 Thar was one gun back up hyar on Fort Hill that the sol- 
 diers called "Whistling Dick." She growled when she fired 
 
The Fighting Slave 223 
 
 like she was goin' to eat yo' up. Yo' could hear her twenty 
 mile. I was hyar when they put that gun up thar, befo' 
 the Yankees got so bad. Well, Whistling Dick sot up thar 
 keepin' the Yankees back, and I did n't think they 'd ever 
 git her, but they did. They th'owed a ball right plumb in her 
 mouth and plugged her. That was done with one of their 
 little jackass pieces, as they called 'em, — a gun that fired 
 a steel-p'inted ball. The ball wa'n't larger 'n yo' arm, but 
 the front end was finished like an augur. When it struck 
 anything hit would turn and go in. Even if hit struck 
 mighty thick iron hit would bore its way thoo. 
 
 I done run away from hyar at last. That was n't a week 
 befo' the surrender, I reckon. As soon as Vicksburg went 
 up I started back. I come in of a night and brought my wife 
 and three or fo' children. We wanted to be whar we'd 
 have the Union soldiers for protection. I put my family in 
 the ol' Prentiss House, which was a big hotel with twenty 
 or thirty rooms. Mo' than three hundred black people was 
 in thar. They died like sheep, and we lost all our children 
 but one. 
 
 Then I j'ined the army and had to go away. I sent my 
 wife money, but after a while the letters was returned to me. 
 In June, 1866, I was mustered out down in Mobile, and 
 I ain' never been thar no mo' since. I come back hyar, and 
 the Prentiss House, whar I 'd left my wife, was gone. Hit 
 was torn down in a hundred pieces. Some said my wife and 
 child had gone up the river on an island, but I could n't 
 never find 'em or hear anything mo' of 'em. 
 
 Well, hyar I am. I could do anything when I was 
 young, but now I 'm old and cain' do nothin' but eat, drink, 
 and be merry, for to-morrow I die. Thar, I done tol' yo' 
 enough, and hit's all truth — yes, sir, hit's all truth! 
 
XXVII 
 
 The Cave Dweller^ 
 
 At the time Vicksburg was besieged I was a little girl only 
 seven or eight years old. My father was in the ice and coal 
 business here, and he had a cotton plantation up on the 
 Yazoo River. He owned four hundred slaves, but lost 
 them all as a result of the war. That was as unfortunate 
 for them as it was for us. Abolishing slavery was a gi'eat 
 mistake. The negroes are not a race that can stand being 
 free. They're lazy, and you have to drive 'em if you want 
 to accomplish anything. They have no capacity for sys- 
 tem and order or thrift, and they are born gamblers. They 
 will gamble the clothes off their backs. Oh! I know them 
 just like a book. They have no cleanliness and no morals 
 — none at all. They never learn anything, and education 
 ruins 'em. One of their weaknesses is a great fancy for 
 fine raiment, and they dress better than the whites. If you 
 have a colored housemaid you're obliged to look out or she 
 will go down street wearing one of your best dresses. When 
 I think of what the negroes are and the way they act it 
 makes me so mad I can't see. 
 
 Paw was with us all through the war. He was a perfect 
 martyr to asthma or he'd have been in the army. We had a 
 nice large house on a hill in the residence section of the city, 
 
 ^ She was an energetic, elderly woman whom her sons addressed as 
 "Madam." My call was in the evening, and we sat on the gallery of 
 her substantial, tree-embowered town residence with the full moon 
 sending its flickering beams down through the leafage. 
 
The Cave Dweller 225 
 
 and right across the street was a claybank that rose from 
 the wayside in a perpendicular wall. We dug out a room 
 in the clay and used lumber off an old coal barge to make 
 inside walls, ceiling, and floor. Tremendous posts held up 
 the ceiling and made us safe from any loosening of the 
 earth above. On the outside of our cave were plank slanted 
 down from the face of the clay cliff, and one end of this 
 plank leanto was closed in, and at the other end was a door. 
 It is very dry here in summer, and we had no trouble from 
 water leaking down through. In fact, I don't remember 
 any special discomfort connected with the caves. 
 
 Six of us occupied our cave — all women and children. 
 We had a pail of drinking water in there that we brought 
 from the house. For light we had candles that we 'd made. 
 Our beds consisted of wooden horses with planks on 'em, 
 and mattresses on the planks. 
 
 Vicksburg was a place of six or seven thousand people, 
 but a good many of them refugeed. A portion of those who 
 remained moved into their basements during the bom- 
 bardment. Cave digging, however, was very general, and 
 some of the caves remained for a long time. One child only 
 ten days old was carried with its mother into a cave, and I 
 recall that a child two years old died in one of the caves. 
 Some people stayed in the caves continually, and had their 
 meals brought there from their houses. 
 
 The bank where we dug our cave had several other caves 
 in it. There were two Presbyterian ministers in town, and 
 one of them came into the cave next to ours late one after- 
 noon and lay down and went to sleep. By and by the lady 
 who owned the cave came and found him. It was night then, 
 and she told him she needed the cave for her own use, but 
 the shells were flying and he was so scared he would n't 
 
226 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 leave. She went out and sent word to the other Presby- 
 terian minister, who was one of the best men on earth. 
 He came and tried to get his fellow-preacher out. But 
 that man was just a born coward, and urging had no ef- 
 fect. It took four or five men to eject him. We chil- 
 dren stood around outside laughing. His congregation 
 could n't forget that incident, and he had to leave after 
 the war. 
 
 So far as damage to life and limb were concerned the 
 Yankee guns that were shelling us from beyond the bend of 
 the river were almost negligible, but they wanted to make 
 a noise to let us know they were there, I reckon. Neverthe- 
 less, there was danger enough to keep us always anxious. 
 Once Paw was lying on the sofa in the hall. It was the 
 middle of the day, and he'd come home hot and tired 
 and was trying to get some sleep while he waited till 
 dinner was ready. There he lay, and a shell went through 
 the parlor and exploded in the cellar and never woke 
 him. 
 
 Early in the morning and toward night were favorite 
 times for shelling. The ringing of the Catholic church bell 
 for mass at six o'clock in the morning seemed to be a signal 
 for the guns to begin firing. One morning an elderly Irish- 
 man was coming out of the church, and a shell took off his 
 arm. The news of the casualty soon reached us at our cave, 
 which was right back of the church, and, out of curiosity, 
 we children ran up and looked at the man where he lay in 
 the vestibule on the floor. 
 
 Another day the druggist's wife was standing at the 
 back door of their house in her stocking feet, and a piece of 
 a shell cut her big toe off. The doctor said the toe was taken 
 off exactly like it had been amputated. 
 
The Cave Dweller 227 
 
 Sometimes the Yankee gunboats fired hot shot, and one 
 night those shot started a fire just below us. A whole block 
 of buildings was burned, and the gunboats kept on firing 
 shells into town while the buildings were burning. Well, it 
 was dreadful. We all got out of the caves to look at the 
 fire. The rest of the town was very much in danger, for the 
 only means of fighting the fire was a hand-bucket brig- 
 ade. Our house would have been burnt if Paw and the 
 negroes had n't gone up on top of it with wet blankets. 
 I have been very fearful of fires ever since. A fire is 
 the only thing that unstrings me entirely, I feel so help- 
 less to combat it. I'm afraid of snakes, but I can kill 
 them. 
 
 Paw was a good furnisher, and we did n't suffer the 
 way some did for food and other things. But I know we 
 had to economize in shoes. It was so difficult to get them 
 that when they were outgrown or worn out we Vicksburg 
 children went barefoot. That was a real hardship to me, 
 for I always cut my feet. 
 
 There was very little ice in the city. My father was an 
 ice dealer, but he was shut off from his customary source 
 of supply up the river in Illinois. So ice was just like gold 
 in value, and he kept it for the sick and wounded. He 
 would n't let a well person have a bit of it. 
 
 We made coffee by toasting brown sugar till it was right 
 hard and mixing it with toasted cowpeas and a little real 
 coffee and grmding them all up together. We children were 
 not supposed to have coffee, but the things children are not 
 allowed to have they want to get. I 've always been crazy 
 about coffee, and I used to steal it. 
 
 One day Paw brought home some meat. He said it was 
 jerked beef. We had it for dinner and thought it was very 
 
228 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 good, but we noticed, after we were through, that Paw 
 had n't eaten his, and then he told us it was mule meat. 
 He had brought it home just as a joke. 
 
 On the 6th of July, two days after the surrender, we had 
 quite a number of paroled Confederate officers to dinner. 
 For dessert we were to have peach cobbler, which is made 
 like a pie only it is cooked in a deep dish, and real coffee 
 was to be served. While the company was at table, be- 
 tween two and three o'clock, a demand came from Colonel 
 Bingham, Grant's adjutant, that we should move out of our 
 house at once. He wanted it for his headquarters. There 
 were plenty of vacant houses, but he chose ours because he 
 thought it was a fine residence. 
 
 Our guests left immediately, and the negroes got the 
 peach cobbler and coffee. Father, after a good deal of effort, 
 obtained permission to stay in the house over night. Even 
 so we had to go to the basement. 
 
 During the siege we had taken some sick soldiers into the 
 house, as was commonly done out of kindness right through 
 the town, and they stayed in the servants' room. They 
 were from Louisiana, and several were Creoles who could n't 
 talk English at all. The sickness from which they were 
 suffering was measles. One of them died in the house and 
 we buried him in the yard. Soon my youngest brother and 
 sister sickened with the same disease, and they were still 
 sick when we had to spend that night in the basement. The 
 basement had a brick floor and was damp and they caught 
 cold. The result was that my sister became totally blind. 
 She only lived a short time, and we buried her near the 
 Confederate soldier. My brother never got his strength 
 back, and a few months later he died, too. 
 
 The day after Colonel Bingham ordered us out we moved 
 
The Cave Dweller 229 
 
 to another part of the town. He would n't allow us to take 
 a piece of furniture along with us, and there was no furni- 
 ture in the vacant house we moved into. We had to sleep 
 on rough mattresses on the floor. That was all we could get. 
 The house was an old, dilapidated building that had been 
 a good deal damaged by the shells the Yankees had shot 
 through it. The roof leaked like a sifter and we had an aw- 
 ful time when it rained. If the storm was in the night we'd 
 have to get up and move our beds. 
 
 There was a goldfish pond at our old home. It was right 
 on the lawn. One day I went to feed the fish. When I re- 
 turned the family was at dinner. I told them that I had 
 seen some of the soldiers digging up our garden. It tickled 
 me to death to think that those men were doing some useful 
 work for us. I expected Paw would be tickled, too, but he 
 was n't. He got right up from table and had a talk with 
 Maw in the hall. It seemed that he and she and a negro 
 man had buried our silver in the garden one night. The 
 soldiers must have got an inkling of the fact from the ser- 
 vants. Paw went straight to General Grant and got a per- 
 mit to get the silver, if it was still in the garden. The 
 silver was there, but the soldiers had dug within six inches 
 of it. 
 
 Besides the silver we buried all our marble slabs that 
 were then the fashion for the tops of tables, bureaus, and 
 mantles. Only one came out whole. The rest had been 
 broken by the jarring of the shells that exploded in the 
 ground. 
 
 Colonel Bingham had his carouses in the house so that 
 the things in it suffered considerable. I believe in the end 
 he went to the dogs from liquor. When he prepared to 
 leave Vicksburg he packed up all our best furniture to send 
 
230 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 north, but Grant stopped him. Grant was a very just man. 
 In November we got back our house. 
 
 We owned a number of cows and horses and mules. 
 There was no stock law then, and in time of peace every 
 one turned their cows loose and let them wander and graze. 
 But we kept them up during the siege and tied 'em out on 
 the street to eat grass. We had a very large lot adjoining 
 the house, and when the town surrendered we put the 
 stock in there, but the Yankees took cows, horses, mules, 
 and all out of the lot just as if they belonged to 'em. The 
 big frame stable that sheltered the stock was so battered 
 by the shells it had to be taken down. 
 
 The children of the neighborhood liked to play Yankees 
 and Confederates in our yard. We'd have mimic battles 
 which always ended in the capture of the Yankees. One 
 day we were at this game around the goldfish pond. The 
 pond was right deep, but it was so small that we could 
 jump across to an island in the middle. We fought with 
 canes for guns, but this time we used the canes to splash 
 water on each other. The Yankees were on the island, and 
 we splashed until they cried, "Quit!" 
 
 As those of us who were Confederates were jumping 
 across to capture them I fell in. The children could have 
 saved me if they had n't lost their nerve. But they simply 
 hollered. Luckily Maw heard them and came and pulled 
 me out. I was nearly drowned, but as soon as I could speak 
 I asked for the net that had been on my hah' — and her 
 shaking me to get the water out of me! I never got the net. 
 It stayed at the bottom of the pond. 
 
 I remember one other curious incident. There were a 
 good many stragglers about after the fighting in this vicin- 
 ity was over, and one night some of them came onto our 
 
The Cave Dweller 231 
 
 place, evidently looking for buried silver. They dug where 
 they saw that the ground had been disturbed and found 
 two rough wooden boxes. These they got up to the surface 
 and pried open. The boxes were coffins. In one was the 
 Confederate soldier who died of measles at our house, and 
 in the other was my little sister. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 The Captain of the Junior Volunteers ^ 
 
 Early in the war I organized some of the Vicksburg boys 
 into a military company by the name of the Junior Volun- 
 teers, and I was elected captain. We were from twelve to 
 fifteen years of age, and I reckon there were twenty-five or 
 thirty of us. But when Vicksburg began to be threatened 
 lots of people moved away, and the Junior Volunteers all 
 scattered off and the company was broken up. 
 
 My mother was one of those that refugeed. She took me 
 and her three other children off across the Big Black River. 
 We just packed up a few clothes and things and went out 
 there and rented. That was somewhere along the first part 
 of '63 when I was n't over fourteen at the furthest. My 
 father was an auctioneer of new and second-hand furniture 
 hyar. Most of the stores were closed and business was at a 
 standstill, but he stayed to take care of our house which 
 was right on the chief business street. 
 
 The rest of us moved out in the country into a four-room 
 building with a big chimney in the middle and a gallery in 
 front. Our food supply was pretty scanty, and I remember 
 that for one solid week we lived on rice. We boiled it and 
 ate it without even sugar. 
 
 Mother had some silver forks and spoons, and she used 
 
 1 My informant was a man of much natural ability, yet evidently 
 one on whom drink had long had an overpowering grip. We visited in 
 the smoke-laden atmosphere of a town pool-room. 
 
The Captain of the Junior Volunteers 233 
 
 them regular on the table. She thought we were way off 
 where there was no need of hiding things. One morning 
 two Northern stragglers came to the door, shortly after 
 we'd finished breakfast, and wanted something to eat. 
 Mother always gave such men, whether of the North or of 
 the South, what we had ourselves. I never saw her refuse. 
 The soldiers came in, sat down at the table, and ate. When 
 they were through one of 'em picked up the spoons and ex- 
 amined 'em one by one to see if they really were silver. 
 Then he slipped 'em into his pocket and started to leave, 
 but Mother grabbed him. 
 
 "Let go of me," he said. 
 
 **No, you've got my silver," she told him. 
 
 He went into the next room with her clinging to his 
 clothes, and we children looked on too frightened to move. 
 
 "If you don't let me loose I'll hurt you!" the man 
 shouted. 
 
 But she was n't one who could be intimidated. "You 've 
 got to give up that silver," she told him. 
 
 He stopped struggling and said, "Well, I'll put it right 
 back where I got it." 
 
 So he returned to the dining-room, but instead of doing 
 as he had promised he bolted out the back door with the 
 silver in his hand. He ran around the house and she after 
 him. Mother had a loaded six-shooter in her pocket. 
 Every woman had a pocket in her dress at that time. She 
 pulled the revolver out as the fellow was about to go over 
 the fence, and said, "Stop right there or I'll kill you"; and 
 she'd have done it, too. 
 
 But the man brought back the silver. She had won. It 
 was not, however, a victory that cost her nothing. The 
 excitement of that thing nearly killed her. For weeks after- 
 
234 The Siege of VIcksburg 
 
 ward the barking of a dog or any sudden noise would startle 
 her so she would n't know what to do. 
 
 After a while we heard that Grant had moved down be- 
 low Vicksburg on the west side of the Mississippi and had 
 crossed over to our side. It seemed to us that we'd be safer 
 back in the town. So we put our trunks and heavy luggage 
 on a dray, and got ready a two-seated barouche and a 
 buggy. A black drove the dray, my mother and brother 
 took turns driving the barouche, and I drove the buggy 
 principally myself. It was late in the evening when we 
 reached Vicksburg and entered our old home. 
 
 The next day, as soon as I had a chance, I went to look 
 up my Junior Volunteers. I could only find my lieutenant, 
 Walter Cook. He and I went around a good deal together 
 in the days that followed. 
 
 We were under fire for the first time when the fighting 
 began in the immediate vicinity about the middle of May. 
 The two of us had gone a little more than two miles out of 
 town and were on the Confederate left by the old Spanish 
 fort. While we were standing there the Federal sharpshoot- 
 ers began firing across the hilltop very rapid. 
 
 Our men had two twelve-pound guns there that they 
 were firing, and we wanted to watch them. A few rods 
 away was a pair of mules hitched to an old china tree. We 
 saw several branches that the Minie balls cut off fall down 
 onto the mules, and we retreated to a little smooth green 
 hollow. That seemed safe enough, but as we were peeping 
 up over the edge a ball passed right between us, and I re- 
 marked, "Walter, we better get away." 
 
 So we slid down the hill to the Yazoo Road and went 
 along back toward the town. Pretty soon we met two sol- 
 diers and we had stopped to talk with them when a bullet 
 
The Captain of the Junior Volunteers 235 
 
 came over the hill and struck the ground near us. It 
 bounded up and hit me a rather sharp blow in the back and 
 dropped down into the road. "Come on, Walter," I said, 
 "we'll be killed hyar yet." 
 
 One of the soldiers called after me; "Bud, stop and pick 
 up that ball." 
 
 But we kept on, and we did n't go slow either. Those 
 Minie rifles carried three miles, and it seem like the balls 
 followed us all the way to town. 
 
 My people had a cave back of our house, under a bank. 
 It was just arched out, and it had no timbers inside. The 
 sides, top, and floor were plain earth. There was no door 
 at the opening, but we erected a tent there. The hill was 
 too low for the cave to be safe. If one of the big shells had 
 come down through the roof it would have been the end of 
 us. There was lots of power in those shells. When one went 
 into the earth it often tore up a place large enough to bury 
 a horse or a cow. Once, along about the middle of the even- 
 ing, a shell exploded near by while my sister was sitting 
 in the cave, and the jar of the explosion loosened a lot of 
 earth and covered her out of sight. We soon got her out. 
 She was stunned, but not seriously hurt. 
 
 The sound of a shell was z-z-z-z-z-zimp! That "zimp" 
 was when it hit the ground. If it burst it made a large white 
 and bluish smoke. One day Mother was layin' down in the 
 house. The shells began to fly, and she started for the cave. 
 She had almost got to the tent when a shell went through 
 it. That shell just did miss her. 
 
 We slept in the cave at night, and we kept something to 
 eat in there. Mother had a few things saved in the food 
 line. We did n't go hungry, and we had plenty of coffee to 
 drink made out of toasted sweet potato and parched corn. 
 
236 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 Some did n't fare so well. One gentleman killed and cooked 
 a cat, and he e't some, and his wife e't some. I reckon it 
 tasted 'bout like a piece of squirrel. 
 
 They say the soldiers e't mule meat and horse meat. 
 I had an uncle who was one of Vicksburg's defenders, and 
 he told us there were some Mexicans in the army who pre- 
 pared the mule meat. They pulled off every bit of flesh on 
 the animal — cut it off in slices like a butcher cuts steak, 
 and rolled the bones and hide and all the waste down into 
 the Mississippi River. They punched a little hole in each 
 strip of meat and pushed a slender stick through. The 
 sticks were a yard long and held quite a number of pieces. 
 To cure the meat they made fires ten feet or more long. The 
 firewood was from old houses that the soldiers pulled down. 
 Crotched sticks three or four feet high were stuck in the 
 ground at the corners of the fires to support poles on either 
 side. Then the sticks with the meat were put on the poles 
 over the fires. That was the way they made jerked mule 
 meat, and you could n't 'a' told it, sir, from dried beef, so 
 my uncle said, unless you noticed that it was coarser 
 grained. 
 
 Sometimes they boiled the mule meat. They did the 
 boiling in a hollow where the enemy could n't see 'em, and 
 my uncle said the odor in that hollow while the cookin' was 
 goin' on was terrible. They had to just stand there and 
 skim off the pots, but when the meat was done it tasted all 
 right. My uncle said that the fact of the matter was they 
 could n't have kept up the defense hyar nearly so long if it 
 had n't been for the mule meat and the plentiful supply of 
 sugar and molasses. 
 
 The last gun was fired 'bout eight o'clock on the morning 
 of July 3d. Everything seemed strangely quiet, and we 
 
The Captain of the Junior Volunteers 237 
 
 heard that the city was going to surrender. I went up on a 
 high place and looked off. I could see little white flags all 
 along on our breastworks, and the Yankees and Rebels were 
 just sitting up there enjoying themselves like brothers 
 who'd met after being long parted. You would n't think 
 that for weeks and weeks they'd been trying to kill each 
 other. Well, our men were mighty hungry, and a man 
 who's starving would be friendly with his greatest enemy in 
 the world if that enemy brought him food. 
 
 The last Confederate rashions were served on the even- 
 ing of the 2d, and our soldiers had no more rashions till the 
 Yankees supplied them on the evening of the 5th. It would 
 have gone hard with the poor fellows if the Federals had n't 
 fed them out of their haversacks. The trouble was that our 
 officers were all drunk. They got into the whiskey and 
 were having a big time, and no business was transacted. 
 
 On the morning of the 4th the transports came around 
 the bend of the river. Just as they got opposite Court 
 Square they fired a salute. The boats tied up at the 
 wharves at twelve o'clock. A flagstaff had been put up on 
 the square, and some soldiers came and ran up the stars 
 and stripes. 
 
 A few days later I bought some lemons and made a 
 bucket of lemonade. I stood right on the comer of the 
 street under a cedar tree at the end of our yard and sold 
 the lemonade all out to the soldiers. I took in the first 
 greenback money I had seen — five, ten, and twenty-five 
 cent pieces — and I made thirty-five cents. 
 
 Shortly afterward, a suttler opened what was called a 
 shebang, and I worked for him two or three months. We 
 stood inside of his shanty and sold cakes and spruce beer, 
 cider, and ice pop to the soldiers. 
 
238 The Siege of Vicksburg 
 
 The Union troops, as I remember them, behaved very 
 well hyar in town. They were not allowed to disturb any- 
 thing, but I know they'd sometimes raid a stand in the 
 market. You'd hear a racket and find they'd jostled the 
 stand and sent what was on it flying. Then they 'd scramble 
 around and get away with some of the oranges and things. 
 However, that was just mischief, and on the whole they 
 were pretty orderly. 
 
XXIX 
 The Farm Lad ^ 
 
 Our family lived in a 16 x 18 split log house. We never did 
 like that kind of a house because after the big pine logs had 
 been split and laid up for walls they'd warp and twist. 
 The house had two rooms, and above the rooms was a loft 
 where we stored our com and wheat and oats. At one end 
 was a stone chimney. Paw bought the place in the fall of 
 '59. There was one hundred and sixty acres of land, but 
 I reckon not more 'n twenty-five acres was cle'red then. 
 Even that had been cle'red recently, and the dead, girdled 
 trees and the stumps stood pretty thick in the fields that 
 we cultivated. All through this region was the finest kind of 
 timber — hard pine, red oak and white oak, hickory, and 
 poplar. We've got timber here now, but nearly all the 
 good is gone. 
 
 Them times they'd have what they called "log-rollings " 
 when they wanted to cle'r land so they could plough it. 
 One or two men could n't do anything with the big logs, 
 and the neighbors would come and help pile 'em so they 
 could be burned. 
 
 Same way in corn-shucking — it was fashionable to have 
 the neighbors help. The home family would gather in the 
 corn ears from the field and pile 'em near the crib. When 
 
 1 The land that had belonged to his father he now tilled. We talked 
 together one mild spring noon sitting on the vine-draped porch of his 
 little farmhouse whence we could look off across the battlefield. 
 
240 Chickamauga 
 
 the men and boys of the neighborhood came at the ap- 
 pointed time and got to work they threw the ears into the 
 crib as they shucked 'em. They 'd tell jokes and have a 
 big time. Down under the pile of corn was a jug of liquor, 
 and they'd shuck fast to git at it. Perhaps there 'd be an- 
 other jug that would be passed around a little while they 
 worked, and some of the men might git boozy and be 
 rather rough, but they hardly ever did any harm. It 
 was good liquor — not like the hquor you buy now. That 
 is poison to some extent, and it makes men crazy drunk so 
 they kill each other, and when a man goes home drunk he 
 don't know his wife and baby. 
 
 I had an uncle in the Northern army and one in the 
 Southern army fightin' each other. They did n't come 
 home till the war ended. My father was a Union man, but 
 I expect the Rebels would have conscripted him when they 
 were picking up recruits, only he was gray and looked 
 older 'n he really was. 
 
 Some fellers went nearly wild they were so afraid they'd 
 be conscripted, and when a man could git across the Fed- 
 eral lines he'd go. But if the Rebels caught him goin' 
 they'd string him. A good many refugeed south, but that 
 did n't better the matter. Sooner or later they were over- 
 taken. 
 
 The battle was fought here in September, 1863, when I 
 was about eight years old. The Rebel army had been in the 
 vicinity all along befo' that, and occasionally some of the 
 soldiers would come and take a horse — "press it into ser- 
 vice," they said. Sometimes they'd kill a hog and skin the 
 hams and carry 'em off, and leave the balance. We'd 
 hardly ever see 'em kill an animal, but we'd find the car- 
 cass afterward. Their forage wagons would come around 
 
The Farm Lad 241 
 
 and go into our fields and take the oats, and the sheep. 
 We had hogs, sheep, and cattle, plenty of 'em, then. Some- 
 times we'd git pay for the things that were taken, and 
 sometimes we would n't. But when we did git pay it was 
 in Confederate money which was n't of much value. 
 
 We did n't fear the regular armies as we did the guerillas. 
 There were two bands here. One claimed to be Yankees 
 and the other Rebels. But they were just robbers and both 
 mean alike — that was all we could make out of 'em. The 
 Rebel band would raid north, and the Yankee band would 
 raid south. Sometimes they'd whip a man if they thought 
 he belonged to the other side. They prowled around on 
 their horses and went in the houses and pilfered. Generally 
 their raids were made at night. 
 
 I remember once some of 'em drove right up in our yard 
 after we'd all gone to bed. I expect it was ten or 'leven 
 o'clock. We all slept in the living room. There were two 
 beds in the other room, but that room was for company. 
 The guerillas knocked, and Mother got up and opened the 
 door, which was fastened with a wooden button. Several 
 men came in. They were dressed like Rebel soldiers. One 
 of 'em with a big revolver had Paw set by the fire. Of course 
 Paw did n't show any fight or order 'em out. He knew what 
 they was up to. They'd been through the valley before. 
 
 We children stayed in bed. There was five of us, and we 
 was skeered. We did n't like to see such visitors that time 
 of night. They asked for food. We was good livers and had 
 plenty to eat and wear — such as it was. The guerillas 
 cooked some of our meat by the fireplace. While a few of 
 'em was doin' that the others looked around to see what we 
 had that was worth carryin' off. They took some of our 
 homespun clothing and a couple of quilts and a counter- 
 
242 Chickamauga 
 
 pane. They did n't find any silverware. We did n't have 
 any those days. After they'd eaten they left. 
 
 The Yankee guerillas was commonly known as Wilder's 
 Thieves. They taken the last horse we had. She was a 
 little claybank filly, two years old — old enough to work 
 pretty well. We had her grinding cane to make sorghum 
 molasses, and they taken her right out of the harness. We 
 asked 'em to leave an old mule we had that was about wore 
 out, but they was kind of hardhearted and they went off 
 with both the animals. 
 
 Befo' that, the Rebels had taken a mare and a young 
 horse; so afterward Paw had to do our farm work with a 
 yoke of oxen. It 's a pretty hard task to plough with cattle. 
 They're contrary and slow and likely to make a man say 
 bad words. It was worst workin' in the bottoms with 'em. 
 They attracted the mosquitoes and gnats, and you'd be 
 mighty near eaten up by them little pests. But you had a 
 hard time in the bottoms then anyway. If you was fishing 
 it was slap, slap, slap, all the time. The mosquitoes was so 
 bad you could n't hold the pole. 
 
 My wife's home was not very far from ours. She was a 
 young girl in them days, but her pappy and mommy were 
 tolerable old. Her pappy ran a gristmill, and he ground for 
 both armies while they were around in this neighborhood. 
 When the Union army was passing through here some of 
 the soldiers went in and searched the house, and they 
 jerked the quilts all off the beds to carry away with 'em. 
 My wife's mommy had pieced a quilt of the clothes of her 
 first baby that had only lived to be three years old, and she 
 begged 'em to leave that, but they did n't care, and they 
 taken 'em all. My wife's pappy and mommy needed those 
 quilts to the end of their lives to keep 'em warm. 
 
The Farm Lad 243 
 
 They had a jar of lard rendered out, and the soldiers 
 emptied it into a kettle that wool had been dyed in to make 
 jeans, and that colored the lard. Those soldiers went out 
 to the stable and stabbed one of the horses that was fas- 
 tened up in there, and they robbed the bees. Yes, they 
 burnt the bees and carried off the honey. They took 
 the cows, too, and left one little lousy calf. But that calf 
 lived to be a cow, and she gave the family milk till she was 
 twenty-two years old. 
 
 I know those thieving soldiers are all dead now, or I been 
 hoping so for the last forty or fifty years. They were a bad 
 lot, but I don't feel no animosity — at least not toward 
 them that are buried. If any are livin' I don't doubt 
 they're sittin' up back on a pension. Most of the good 
 men up North hired substitutes. The few good men who 
 were in the Yankee army were officers that came along to 
 keep the soldiers out of jail, I reckon. 
 
 Chickamauga Creek is down in the hollow here. They 
 say the name means River of Death. That's a pretty good 
 name for a battleground stream. Rosecrans came march- 
 ing through the mountain passes from Chattanooga, and 
 we was in the Union lines just befo' the battle opened. On 
 Friday evening, September 18th, the cavalry had a pretty 
 smart skirmish. The Rebels made it a little too hot for 
 the enemy, and the Federals fell back. It was very dry 
 weather, and I noticed that the dust had settled so thick on 
 the cavalry that passed our place we could n't hardly tell 
 the color of their clothes. 
 
 Several families above here were ordered out, because it 
 looked as if there 'd be fightin' on their places. Two of the 
 families came to our house and stayed a day and two 
 nights. 
 
244 Chlckamauga 
 
 The armies fought pretty much all of Saturday and Sun- 
 day without a stop except at night. They were willing to 
 cook and eat then. The fighting was all of a mile or more 
 away, and we could n't see no distance because of the 
 woods, but we could see the smoke and dust rising above 
 the trees, and we could hear the guns. Well, sir, the can- 
 non fired so fast we could n't count the bangs, and the small 
 arms sounded like a storm. Sometimes we'd hear the men 
 chopping timber to try to make breastworks. 
 
 On Sunday a Union officer misunderstood an order. A 
 gap was left in the Yankee lines, and the Confederates 
 pushed into it and swept the right wing off the field. The 
 rest of the army was under Thomas. He planted his twen- 
 ty-five thousand men on a curving hill called the Horse- 
 shoe, and every time the Confederates attacked him he 
 drove 'em back. That's where he got his nickname, the 
 "Rock of Chickamauga.'* He stood his ground for six 
 hours till night, and then got away in the darkness to the 
 mountains and joined the rest of the army in Chattanooga. 
 He had lost ten thousand men. 
 
 The battle days was pretty tolerable hot, but Monday 
 was cooler, and that night there was a frost. A Rebel 
 soldier who'd been wounded in the arm came to our house 
 the next morning. He did n't have any coat, and he 'd lain 
 out on the ground over night, and he was shivering. Not 
 much attention was paid to those that was n't wounded 
 bad. They just let such go and shift for themselves. Father 
 gave this man a coat and carried him part way to Ring- 
 gold, which was our clostest market town. 
 
 About the time Paw got back another Rebel came and 
 said his brother had been killed in the battle, and he 
 wanted a box made to bury him in. Father walked with the 
 
The Farm Lad 245 
 
 soldier two mile over to the sawmill where he got some 
 boards. They nailed up a box that did for a coffin, and 
 Father helped the man bury his brother. 
 
 We boys wanted to go onto the battlefield and pick up 
 guns and the like o' that, but Maw knew what a sickening 
 sight the battlefield was with the dead men and dead horses, 
 and she would n't let us go over there. So we did n't get to 
 see anything. 
 
 All the food at my wife's house was stolen, and the morn- 
 ing after the battle they did n't have a bite to eat. Her 
 pappy had to wait until somebody brought a little corn to 
 mill. He always took one eighth for toll, and as soon as he 
 ground some corn that day he carried his share of the meal 
 to the house, and his wife made com bread. 
 
 He could have put in a claim for what the soldiers took, 
 but so many rascals sent in false claims he was ashamed to 
 ask for anything. Men who never did have property to 
 lose would get the congressmen to work for 'em, and the 
 biggest liars got the most money; but my wife's pappy was 
 an honest man. 
 
 If we could get that money now, which was rightfully 
 due him for what the government troops destroyed or took 
 from his place, we'd put up gravestones to mark the old 
 people's graves. We been wantin' to buy 'em stones ever 
 since they died, but we've never felt hardly able to pay 
 what the stones would cost. 
 
 At our place we saved our wheat and most of our oat 
 crop the year of the battle, but we lost our com. I expect 
 we had eighteen or twenty acres in com, but we did n't get 
 to gather any of it. The Rebel wagon trains went out 
 through the country foraging, and they drove into our 
 corn after it was pretty well matured and pulled the ears 
 
246 Chickamauga 
 
 off. There was no paying for it in the game, and there was 
 no use of kicking. People could n't help themselves. For a 
 while the citizens here like to have starved. Some would go 
 to the commissary, and they'd be given rashions if they 
 put up a good excuse. 
 
 By and by the Yankees got possession of the region. 
 They had plenty of good meat — pickled pork, they called 
 it — and they had hardtack and coffee and sugar. They'd 
 swap those things with us for barter like chickens, eggs, 
 and butter. 'T was n't long befo' we had half a bushel of 
 coffee in a sack. They'd mighty near give their hardtack 
 to the citizens they were so sick of that. 
 
 So we got along somehow or 'nother till the war ended, 
 and then we had a chance to git ahead a little. 
 
XXX 
 
 The Soldier's Son^ 
 
 My father was a soldier, and he was away in the Southern 
 army. We lived on the pike road east of Chickamauga 
 Creek, and on Friday, the day that the skirmishmg began, 
 half a dozen Union officers stopped at our house and told 
 us that a battle was coming. After they left us we watched 
 'em as they rode along the pike. Every now and then they 
 stopped and looked back. A lot of their troops soon fol- 
 lowed, and we got so uneasy that we went down to Grand- 
 mother's just across the creek. She had a double log house 
 with a big entry between the two parts. 
 
 By four o'clock the face of the earth east of the creek was 
 covered with Federal soldiers. The roads was full, and the 
 men had taken down the fences and marched into the 
 fields, and those was full. But pretty soon the Rebels 
 rushed 'em across the creek, some by way of the bridge, 
 and some through the water. 
 
 Mother was anxious. Oh, Lor', yes! I guess she was; and 
 she stuck up a stick at the front door and tied a sheet on it 
 to make a flag. Then she shut all the doors and had us five 
 children lay down under the bed. She and my old grand- 
 
 ' He was a gray, bronzed farmer. I found him working with two 
 colored men in a big cotton patch. He was following along behind a 
 mule hitched to a seed-planter, but he stopped to visit with me at the 
 end of a row. There he stood still gripping the handles of his machine 
 ready to resume his task as soon as we finished talking. 
 
248 Chickamauga 
 
 mother set right by the bed in then- chairs. They had n't 
 been there long when an officer come to the house and 
 wanted to know what that white sheet meant. Mother 
 told him it was to protect us, and he said he'd order the 
 soldiers not to get behind the house for a breastwork. 
 
 By that time the fields around the house were full of men 
 on the trot, and we could hear the bullets spat the garden 
 paling. Then, do you know, in the midst of the fightin', a 
 man come up to the door and knocked and fell right into 
 the room. He'd been shot through the body in the field 
 north of the house. His blood stained the floor, and up to 
 last year, when a cyclone tore the house to pieces, that 
 bloodstain could be seen on the floor boards. 
 
 We'd hardly got the wounded man onto a cot out in the 
 entry when another wounded man was brought there. He 
 was n't hurt as bad as the first one, and, bless your life! he 
 just cussed and cussed till the next day when the doctors 
 got to our place. I saw 'em carry him to the yard where 
 some hospital tents had been put up, and soon they had 
 him asleep on a table and cut off his leg. After that they 
 tuck him into a tent. The other man died there in our en- 
 try while the battle was still goin' on. 
 
 I don't think the fighting that Friday lasted more than 
 half an hour. Then a heap of men come to our well to get 
 water. They flocked into the kitchen, too, and they raked 
 coals out over the hearth and began frying their meat. 
 Mother had to get an officer to send 'em out. 
 
 There was no fighting right around our house Saturday 
 and Sunday, but we could see the smoke of the battle over 
 in the trees and hear the cannons turn loose. Well, sir, 
 there was a pretty heavy noise. It was just a roar. One 
 cannon ball cut our front gatepost down, and we could see 
 
The Soldier's Son 249 
 
 the bumbshells hght on our fields and make the dust fly. 
 The battle was a Southern victory. The Yankees said they 
 retreated, but they run back. 
 
 After it was all over I and my brothers picked up as 
 many bullets as we could find and carried 'em home. Among 
 other things we come across a broken cannon cassion with a 
 box on it that had a hundred little sacks of powder inside. 
 Each sack held a pound or two — just a load. We had fun 
 with those sacks for a month, I guess. We'd string the 
 powder from one of 'em along on a plank and touch a 
 match to it to see it bum. Sometimes we'd wet it, and 
 then it would fiz and sparkle as it burned on the plank. We 
 did n't know the danger of the thing. One of us found a 
 gun. The barrel was bent as if some one had struck it 
 against a tree. We picked up several boxes of cartridges in 
 the woods, and we fired the cartridges off in that bent gun. 
 Bumbshells were lyin' around everywhere, and I know 
 Mother pried the tap out of one with a table knife. That 
 was pretty risky, and so was our fooling with the gun. 
 
 The troops tuck a heap of stock during the battle or 
 just afterward. They tuck our cow, and that hurt us 
 mighty bad. Children have to have milk. They tuck our 
 mare, too. Mother had a hog in the pen back of our 
 house. It was a fat, nice little hog that I s'pose would 
 weigh a hundred and fifty pounds net. When we went 
 home the hog was gone. We found a butcher knife and 
 scabbard in a crack of the hogpen fence. I've got that 
 knife yet. 
 
 Things was so unsettled that several families here de- 
 cided to refugee, and our family was one of 'em. We had 
 a pair of oxen, and a pair of steers, and we hitched 'em to 
 a couple of canvas-covered wagons that we fixed up, and 
 
250 Chickamauga 
 
 started. My old grandfather was along driving, and one 
 of my uncles who was home from the army on a furlough 
 was with us. We stopped side of the road to cook our 
 meals, and at night some of us lay in the wagons and others 
 in tents that we put up. Oh! people can live pretty rough 
 when they have to. We travelled eighty or ninety miles 
 south to a place where we had kinsfolks. It took us a week. 
 
 The next year we went to work to make a crop there. 
 Grandfather couldn't help. You'd hardly ever see him 
 out in the field. He was just settin' around the house. I 
 and two cousins made the crop. We was from ten to four- 
 teen years of age. My mother and grandmother and aunt 
 did the planning. Us boys had been raised on a farm, and 
 we knew how to work. We planted the garden and grew 
 cabbage, beans, and Irish potatoes. 
 
 After the surrender we went back to Chickamauga, and 
 Father come home with an old horse he'd picked up. 
 The South had lost, and it was no wonder, for we had to 
 fight the whole world. You know, you Yankees sent to 
 England and Italy for soldiers. 
 
 Our family was in hard circumstances — everybody 
 was — and at first we had to draw com from the govern- 
 ment to feed our horse, and to live on, and to plant. I 
 don't know what we'd 'a' done if we had n't drawed that 
 com. We used it mighty sparingly. 
 
 There was a heap to do to get started. We had to make 
 some rails and build fences, and we did n't raise much the 
 first year. But the second year we got good big fields 
 fenced and done a little better. 
 
XXXI 
 
 A Boy on a Plantation ^ 
 
 We had a six-room farmhouse on the south edge of the 
 battlefield. It was a double house, one story high, and 
 between the two parts was a hallway that was open at 
 front and back. Near by was a whole lot of darky houses. 
 They were log cabins with two rooms. We owned four or 
 five hundred slaves, little folks and all. 
 
 Just before the battle my father refugeed south about 
 seventy-five miles with the niggers. He went with three 
 wagons, and there was hogs and cattle to drive and some 
 loose horses. Most of the niggers walked, but the little 
 fellers rid in the wagons. 
 
 After Father went away the only ones of our family 
 left here at home were my mother and my two sisters and 
 me. Three of my brothers were in the army. 
 
 The fightin' begun here on a Friday. Late that day 
 the Union troops done passed over on this side of Chicka- 
 mauga Creek. The Confederates was close behind 'em, 
 and some of the Yankees waded through the water at the 
 fords, and some crossed on trees they cut down. 
 
 We had a patch of sorghum that was getting about ripe 
 
 1 He had become a battleground guide and he wore an official badge 
 on the lapel of his coat. His hair and beard were white, but he retained 
 a good deal of youthful health and vigor. We sat on a settee in a public 
 shelter at the edge of the battleground. Other guides were there, and 
 some of Uncle Sam's soldier boys from an adjacent army post gath- 
 ered about listening and commenting. 
 
252 Chickamauga 
 
 enough to grind, but so many of the boys came tramping 
 through it that it was just ruined. Some cut off stalks, 
 and brought 'em along. The stalks are sweet, you know, 
 and they wanted 'em to chew. 
 
 Quite a number of the soldiers stopped in our yard to 
 wait for orders. They were setting around cutting up 
 sorghum stalks into pieces short enough to get into their 
 haversacks when a shell hit one of the fellers and took 
 the top of his head off. The shell went into the ground and 
 never busted. It scattered the man's brains around on the 
 ground, and the chickens e't 'em up. 
 
 Me and my sister Mary was lookin' out of a window. 
 She was twenty years old then, and I was twelve. We saw 
 the man keel over when the shell hit him, but we did n't 
 know he was killed, and we went down where he was. 
 The soldiers picked him up and put him in an army wagon 
 and took him off a little way and buried him. He's still 
 there in an unmarked grave. 
 
 Things looked dangerous at our place, and an officer 
 ordered us out. He had a couple of cavalrymen escort us 
 through the lines to the home of a neighbor. Guards were 
 posted at our house to keep everything all right and not 
 let the boys carry off our property. But we were anxious 
 to get back and take care of the place ourselves, and it was 
 so quiet after dark that we came home about nine o'clock. 
 
 The Yankees had retreated, and there was a Confed- 
 erate camp beside the creek. We could look down on the 
 open field where it was and see the tents and campfires and 
 we could see the men moving around. There's always a 
 little stir going on in a camp. 
 
 Early Saturday morning these troops marched away 
 to go to battle. Soon we heard the noise of guns, and by 
 
A Boy on a Plantation 253 
 
 and by prisoners begun to be sent back. There were so 
 many that their captors fenced in about three acres for a 
 prison pen, not far from our house, and stationed guards 
 all the way round at intervals. They put tents in the 
 inclosure for the wounded prisoners. Our whole place was 
 just a hospital. We had to live in the dining-room for a 
 few days. The doctors took possession of all the other 
 rooms and the hallway, and they used the outdoor kitchen 
 and the darkies' cabins, too. 
 
 The battle had n't been going long when one of my 
 brothers was brought to the house wounded. A few hours 
 later another brother who had been hurt in the fight was 
 brought there. The first one stayed with us several 
 months, got well, and went back to the army. The other 
 had been hit in the body by a grape shot, and I don't be- 
 lieve he ever spoke. He came in an ambulance, and he 
 died as the men took him out. They brought the body 
 right into the dining-room and left it there. The next 
 morning we had the neighbors come and make a coffin and 
 put the body into it. Then they lifted the coffin into a 
 spring wagon. There were a number of other wagons, and 
 we all rode to the cemetery, five miles away. Some of the 
 neighbors sang at the grave, and there we buried my 
 brother while the battle was still goin' on. 
 
 Monday the fightin' was over, and several of us boys 
 went to look around on the battlefield. We went where 
 there 'd been some of the hottest fighting. Guns and 
 shells and bullets were strewed about, and the trees were 
 all battered and splitted up, and lots of dead men and 
 dead horses were lying there — you bet there was! It was 
 horrible, but we got used to it. 
 
 A Union force came back under a flag of truce to bury 
 
254 Chickamauga 
 
 the dead Yankees. They just rolled each man in his blan- 
 ket, if he had one, and laid him away in a shallow grave. 
 The work was done hurriedly and more or less carelessly, 
 and here and there they'd leave an arm or a leg sticking 
 out of the earth. The battlefield was all cleaned up in a 
 week. Some claimed that bodies lay here on the ground 
 for months afterward, but I never saw anything thataway. 
 Soon after the battle the prisoners that had been held 
 on our place were marched off ten miles to Ringgold and 
 shipped on a train down South. Then we were able to 
 start cleaning up and making what we could of the 
 wrecked plantation that was left to us. 
 
XXXII 
 
 The Runaway Slave ^ 
 
 I'm older maybe than you think, but I don't know just 
 exactly how ol' I am myself. You see our owners would n't 
 tell us our age. It was the law that every slave man had 
 to work on the road six days a year from the time he 
 was sixteen till he was sixty. So the owners would hold 
 back the ages of the slave boys 'bout two years to save that 
 much time for work on the plantations. Then, too, if your 
 owner wanted to sell you, he'd pretend you were younger 
 than you really was. We was classed right with the brutes, 
 and they did as they pleased with us. I have n't seen my 
 father and mother since I was twelve or thirteen years ol'. 
 They were sold to a speculator way down South. It was 
 no more to separate a nigger and his wife from their child 
 than a cow from her calf. 
 
 I used to pray for the time to come when I 'd be free. 
 One morning I was walkin' along ploughin'. It was 'bout 
 'leven o'clock, I reckon; and I heard a voice say, "You'll 
 be free some day — just as free as the man that owns 
 you." 
 
 The voice seemed to come from above, and I turned 
 round and leaned back between my plough handles and 
 
 1 We sat on the piazza of a tidy house in one of the negro sections of 
 Chattanooga. My companion was an amiable, leisurely old man, as 
 black as midnight. He recalled with evident relish that most exciting 
 period of his life, and the visit was a mutual pleasure. 
 
9,56 Chickamauga 
 
 looked up. But I did n't see anything. It was just an 
 ordinary voice, and yet I felt sure it was the voice of the 
 Lord. I knew He would fulfil what He had promised, and 
 I never doubted afterward that I would be free. 
 
 But the older I got the more I grieved about my father 
 and mother. I'd shed tears as I was doin' my work. Then 
 ag'in I heard a voice while I was ploughin'. It was in the 
 evening. I 'd got to the end of a furrow and was ready to 
 start back when a voice said, "If you would marry some 
 one that you love you would n't grieve this way." 
 
 The voice was the same kind, precisely, that I 'd heard 
 before. I could n't see anything when I looked up except 
 the sky and the elements above. That was long, long ago, 
 and I have n't heard no such voice since. But one thing 
 I noticed — both prophecies come true. Just as the voice 
 spoke so it was. Not long after I got that second mes- 
 sage I married, and I did quit grieving. I had something 
 that comforted me and satisfied my mind. 
 
 My marster's place was 'bout twenty miles south of 
 Chattanooga over the line in Georgia. We had a good 
 many alarms thar with the different armies marching 
 around the country, and considerable refugeein' was done 
 — sometimes to the near mountains, sometimes off down 
 South. Once my marster had me refugee with his two 
 daughters. The oldest was fifteen and the other twelve. 
 He had me hitch a couple of mules to a canvas-covered 
 farm wagon and take the girls and a tent eight miles to 
 Pigeon Mountain. He said he knew a citizen named Hall 
 who'd gone thar to camp in the mountain gap, and he 
 told me just whar to find him. We was to stay with him 
 over night, and then word would be sent to us what to do 
 next. 
 
The Runaway Slave 257 
 
 The sun was only an hour high when we started, and 
 it was getting dusky by the time we come to whar the man 
 was supposed to be. But he was n't thar. We searched 
 around till nine o'clock. Then we struck a man who said : 
 "I know whar Mr. Hall is. He's six miles from hyar. 
 You can't find him to-night." 
 
 It was dark, and the girls did n't care to travel any 
 further. So we stopped right thar, and I started a little 
 fire and made some coffee and fried some meat. We was 
 in the woods and thar was n't no house near, but we had 
 a good covered wagon, and after we finished supper the 
 girls went to sleep in the front part of the wagon, and I 
 went to sleep in the back part. It was a wild, lonely place, 
 but I was n't feared of nothin' in them days. I 'd fight 
 with my fists if I did n't have anythin' else handy. 
 
 Next morning we had breakfast, and 'bout ten o'clock 
 a white boy come on horseback with orders from my 
 marster for us to go back home. So I hooked up and lit 
 out from thar. The mules wanted to get home as much 
 as I did, and we was n't long on the road. 
 
 Early in the fall of '63 Rosecrans come over the moun- 
 tain. That was what skeered my marster. He asked my 
 advice — which was it best to do — run or stand? 
 
 I said: "You know you can't make nothin' runnin' 
 ahead of two armies. You'd fare better by staying." 
 
 But thousands of people went south with their slaves. 
 Often a planter took every soul off his place. Mostly 
 the darkies went by wagon — horse power — but plenty 
 of 'em walked. Their marsters could n't get 'em all out. 
 The Yankees come too quick, but that did n't prevent 
 the Confederate cavalry from slipping back and helping 
 to bring away a lot of the others. Every black man that 
 
258 Chickamauga 
 
 the Confederates ketched goin' toward the Yankee lines 
 they killed anyhow. They'd leave no life in him, and if 
 they ketched a slave woman they'd treat her the same. 
 Old Hood and Gatewood, who commanded the Southern 
 cavalry, were bad fellers. They were scoutin' around 
 between the two armies, and you'd get news of 'em all 
 the time doin' their devilment. 
 
 One quiet morning we heard drums and fifes seven or 
 eight miles away at Bluebird Gap. I knew tereckly it was 
 not Confederate music. Oh, yes sir-ee! I could tell the 
 difference, and I spoke to my old boss about it, and said, 
 "The Yankees are comin'." 
 
 He stood thar and listened at it. Then he shook his 
 head and tol' his wife: "He's right. Those ain't our men. 
 Well, thar's nothin' to hender them comin' if they want 
 to." 
 
 All that night the Southern cavalry was retreatin' past 
 our place, and some of 'em was goin' pretty peart, too. They 
 thought the Union army was right behind 'em. A few 
 days afterward the battle of Chickamauga was fought. 
 It was twelve miles away, but we could hear it all. We 
 could even hear the men hollerin' when they charged. 
 Rosecrans was beaten. He'd run afoul of the enemy with- 
 out enough men, and the Confederates let into him so 
 fierce he was glad to retreat back to Chattanooga. 
 
 The second day of the battle I decided to go to the 
 Yankees. That wasn't on account of the way I was 
 treated. No, sir! My folks was good folks to me — I'll 
 say that. But I did n't want to keep on bein' a slave, and 
 I did n't want to be refugeed south, which was what I 
 expected, no matter who beat in the battle, unless the 
 Yankees was all driven out of the country. 
 
The Runaway Slave 259 
 
 Our white people toF us terrible tales 'bout the folks 
 up North. They said the Yankees had a horn right in the 
 middle of their foreheads. But I did n't believe all I heard, 
 and I was determined I'd run away. Mose Matthews and 
 two other young fellers agreed to go with me. Thar was 
 others who would have liked to escape, but they was 
 afeard to tackle it. 
 
 We started that night. I guess it was twixt three and 
 four o'clock. Daybreak was on when we was six or seven 
 miles from home. We did n't carry a thing but some 
 bowie knives that a party of Southern soldiers had left on 
 the place. Our intention was to go to Chattanooga, though 
 we thought we'd get into the Union lines sooner. Any- 
 way we was certain we could make the trip that day. 
 
 We kept to the road until after sunup, when we saw a 
 man named Jack Spears out at the woodpile in front of 
 his house. He knowed some of us, and he hollered, "Hello! 
 boys, whar are you-all goin'?" 
 
 "To Chattanooga," Mose said. 
 
 "But the Yankees have got Chattanooga," Jack said. 
 
 "Yes, that's why we're goin' thar," Mose tol' him. 
 
 Mose ought not to have said that. We kept right on, 
 and I tol' the others: "Jack '11 give the alarm, and we'll 
 soon be follered. Now you fellers can do what you please, 
 but I'm goin' to take to the woods." 
 
 They all went with me. We had n't gone far when we 
 heard the sound of horses on the road comin' in our di- 
 rection — plockity, plockity; plockity, plockity — and 
 tereckly six men on horseback come into sight. One of 
 'em was Jack Spears on his ol' gray mare, and the rest 
 was Rebel soldiers. We were on a hill at the edge of the 
 woods half a mile from the road, and the men never saw 
 
260 Chickamauga 
 
 us but galloped on out of sight. We knew they'd stop 
 befo' they reached the Yankee pickets so as not to get 
 halted, and then they'd come back. 
 
 So we went on roundabout, and that took us across the 
 battlefield. We did n't see a living soul thar, but I declare 
 it was something to look at. The dead bodies lay so thick 
 we could have walked on 'em for half a mile. Big trees 
 grew on the battlefield, and some that would measure 
 three and a half feet through had been cut up into fraz- 
 zles, and the bushes had all been mowed down by the 
 bullets and shells. A cyclone never did do any worse harm 
 than that — no, sir! 
 
 We come right into Chattanooga, and the Yankee offi- 
 cers told us we could join the army or go to work as la- 
 borers for the government. I accepted the team business 
 for my part. But I had n't been at that long when I be- 
 gan to study on goin' back to get my wife, and I kept 
 after the officers to let me go out. 
 
 At last they give me a pass. That was 'bout sixteen 
 days after I got to Chattanooga. In the evening I had 
 some pistols and a bowie knife buckled onto me, and I 
 was settin' thar with several other men in front of a tent 
 eatin' and laughin' and talkin'. 
 
 "I'm goin' back to whar my wife is," I said, "and if 
 any one bothers me thar '11 be a row. If they ketch me 
 they'll kill me, but I'll never be taken alive. They can 
 leave me a greasy spot on the ground befo' I'll let 'em 
 capture me. Long as I can stand up I intend to fight, and 
 if I fall I '11 keep on fightin' until I can't move." 
 
 Just then my wife walked in. I would n't have taken a 
 thousand dollars for her comin' and savin' me the trouble 
 of makin' that trip. r 
 
THE SLAVE WIFE JOINS HER HUSBAND 
 
The Runaway Slave 261 
 
 I 'd been married a year. My wife was owned by a man 
 who had a big place near my marster's. She had refugeed 
 once, and they made hei do everything — the cooking, 
 washing, milking, and ironing — and she was n't able 
 to stand up to it all. They nearly worked her to death, for 
 she was n't fiery or anything of that kind and did what 
 she was told to do without complainin'. She fared so 
 rough I did n't want her to refugee ag'in. So befo' I left I 
 posted her to run away when they began carryin' the slaves 
 south, and she done like I told her. 
 
 Pretty soon her marster took nearly all his slaves off 
 on Rebel cavalry horses. My wife got away and went to 
 the house of an old granny lady that was crippled, and 
 stayed over night. An uncle by marriage and another 
 neighbor man was gettin' ready to run away to Chatta- 
 nooga, and she bundled up and come with them. She 
 carried a little pillow-slip of clothes on her head. I 'd only 
 brought away what clothes I had on my back. 
 
 I drew a tent from the government, and then I went to 
 work and made it equal to a house. The tent part did for 
 the roof, and I planked up the sides as high as my head, 
 usin' old bo'ds and stuff that belonged to the army. You 
 see pieces of plank that had been used to hold on goods 
 sent by freight was always lyin' around, and thar was 
 plenty of empty boxes; so it was n't much trouble to build 
 a pretty good little house. I made the floor out of sugar 
 boxes that I took to pieces, and I used gunny sacks for a 
 carpet. The chimley I built out of brickbats and mud, 
 and I made a good fireplace, and we got pots and skillets 
 so we could do the cooking. 
 
 Chattanooga was only a steamboat landing then, and 
 the place was full of ponds, bullfrogs, water moccasins, 
 
262 Chickamauga 
 
 and everything else. It was just a village, and if you got 
 on top of a hill you could count every house around in ten 
 minutes. The houses were thinned out some during the 
 fightin' that fall. I guess thar mought have been thirty 
 of 'em burned. 
 
 The Rebels found us in the town, and they cut us off 
 from the railroad so all our supplies had to be brought 
 by wagon train. I was in one of the wagon trains and 
 driv' back and forth hauling for the commissary. Thar 
 was one spell of nine days when we was cut off entirely 
 from our food supplies. But it would have taken a 
 pretty good twist to get those Yankees out of Chatta- 
 nooga. They'd have died fightin' befo' they'd 'a' given 
 the town up. The soldiers got mighty mad 'bout thar 
 bein' so little to eat. "Let us have our way," they said, 
 *'and we'll whip the Rebels and get some food. We'd 
 soon have sowbelly and hardtack." 
 
 They were so near starved that they would pick up 
 any little piece of hardtack they found in the mud of the 
 streets. For a while they lived on parched corn and water, 
 and I tell you such food goes mighty well if you can't get 
 anything else. Probably a soldier could do mo' marchin' 
 and fightin' on that than on richer food. I've heard tell 
 of two fellers who was goin' to be hung, and the judge made 
 a proposal to 'em. "We won't hang you," he said, "but 
 we'll keep you in jail, and feed you on bread and water. 
 You can have com bread or wheat bread — we'll give 
 you your ruthers." 
 
 One chose wheat bread in preference, and he soon 
 played out and died. The other undertook com bread, 
 and he lived and fattened. That's what he did, and it 
 proved that corn bread is a heap the healthiest bread. He 
 
The Runaway Slave 263 
 
 seen his partner left him, and many another man's head 
 was cold befo' hisn. In fact, he lived so long that the judge 
 had to find some other way of gettin' rid of him. 
 
 What I was aimin' to say was that we fared pretty hard 
 in Chattanooga for a while, but we did n't starve to death. 
 That was whar the Rebels was fooled ag'in. We had to do 
 some heavy iightin', but it was they who did the runnin' 
 afterward and not us. 
 
XXXIII 
 
 The Paroled Soldier ^ 
 
 When the war began I was goin' to school at an academy 
 twenty-six mile north of Chattanooga. The war broke 
 the school up. I expect it had as many as one hundred 
 and fifty students, and forty-four of 'em was old enough 
 to become soldiers. About half of the forty-four went 
 across the mountain and joined the Federal army, and 
 the other half enlisted on the Southern side. 
 
 The principal of the academy was a strong Union man, 
 but after the school had broken up he come down with a 
 serious sickness. He thought that sickness was a judg- 
 ment because he'd been goin' against his state. So when 
 he got well he went into the Rebel army, and he was a ser- 
 geant in my regiment. 
 
 The assistant principal was from Ohio, but he was the 
 worst Rebel we had in the school. He would have gone 
 into the Southern army if his mother had n't insisted that 
 he should come home. His last word when he left was 
 that he would be back to lead us, and the next we heard 
 was that the feller was a Federal lieutenant. 
 
 I was raised on a farm right out north of Chattanooga 
 close to Orchard Knob. The Knob is a pretty good-sized 
 
 ^ He was a hearty, full-bearded veteran whose hair was as yet more 
 black than white. I visited him in the pleasant, modern city house 
 where he lived. While he told of his experiences he often chuckled over 
 incidents and hardships that originally had been entirely serious, but 
 which the softening touch of the passing years had made humorous. 
 
The Paroled Soldier 265 
 
 height that rises out of the level ground just like a round 
 potato hill. We had a very good framed house there \^1th 
 two rooms in the main part and two rooms in an ell. My 
 brother-in-law was running the farm. 
 
 The Rebels was picking up all the recruits they could, 
 and he was afraid they'd conscript him. He was a quiet, 
 peaceable man who did n't interfere with anybody's busi- 
 ness, and, besides, he was a Union man. Naturally the 
 idea of bein' forced into the Rebel army did n't suit him. 
 So he changed the birth date in his Bible to make him 
 appear to be ten years older than he really was. When 
 the conscripters come around he would n't tell his age at 
 all, but would show the Bible. He was a dark-skinned 
 man getting gray, and the conscripters did n't suspicion 
 that he was young enough to go into the army. 
 
 My regiment was in Vicksburg during the siege. I'd 
 got to be twenty-five years old. The week after the place 
 surrendered, as near as I can remember we were payroled. 
 The Yankees examined our knapsacks and everything to 
 see that we did n't carry away what we ought not to, and 
 they give us so many days' rations and let us go. We 
 walked out easterly across the state about one hundred 
 and fifty miles and then got a train, and I came home to 
 Chattanooga. 
 
 My brother-in-law had died of the smallpox, but I knew 
 nothing of it till I reached home. He'd been dead a month 
 then. They'd got the place cleaned up only a day or two 
 before I come. The disease had run through the whole 
 family, and when I met the children with their faces all 
 scarred I did n't hardly know 'em. It made a pretty sad 
 arrival for me. 
 We had eighty acres of land, but not more than twenty 
 
266 Chickamauga 
 
 acres was cle'red. Corn was our principal raising. The 
 Rebels was here, and they'd taken the chickens and hogs 
 and sich things as that. All my sister had left was a cow 
 or two and a blind mar' and a filly. The soldiers had 
 cleaned up pretty near everything else. 
 
 Our home people suffered from the Yankees and Rebels 
 alike. The truth is there was thieves and rascals and 
 gentlemen, too, in both armies. I don't think one side 
 was any worse or any better than the other. 
 
 I just stayed at home and worked with the rest, and I 
 was there when the Federals got to Chattanooga early 
 in September. On the night before the Rebels left I went 
 down in the town — it was n't much of a town then. We 
 knew the Yankees were movin' in this direction. Of 
 course, they had no right to interfere with me at all as 
 long as I observed my pajrole, but if the Confederates 
 was goin' to leave I wanted to go with 'em. General 
 Cheatham promised faithfully to let me know when they 
 got ready to start, and I returned and went to bed and 
 slept peacefully. 
 
 In the morning I got on my horse and rode down town 
 again. As I approached the soldiers' camp everything was 
 quiet and no one moving. In fact, they'd all gone, and 
 they'd gone in a hurry, too. A good deal of stuff was 
 lyin' around, hogskins was hangin' on the bushes, and 
 there was a little curling of blue smoke from the camp- 
 fires. 
 
 I left the camp and was riding toward the village when 
 I beared two or three guns fire from the north side of the 
 river. There was no answering guns from this side — 
 just silence. On the borders of the village I found twenty 
 or more of our best citizens trying to fix up a flag of truce 
 
The Paroled Soldier 267 
 
 to carry down to the river and surrender the town. 
 Among 'em was Chattanooga's mayor and the sheriff of 
 the county. When the white flag was ready they made me 
 ride ahead and carry it. They said they'd all go with me, 
 but they got weak-kneed and stopped to rest on the door- 
 steps along. My following had dwindled to three by the 
 time I reached the river. The Yankees was on the other 
 bank. They was just gettin' into boats to come across. 
 There was an upper ferry and a lower ferry, and each ferry 
 had at least one large boat that could take a four-horse 
 wagon, and a couple of smaller boats for lighter teams. 
 The boats was all pulled with oars. The Yankees had se- 
 cured enough of those boats so they could ferry across 
 pretty peart. Besides, there was skiffs and canoes and 
 dugouts. If a feller was n't mighty careful when he stepped 
 into a dugout he hit the water. 
 
 I did n't enjoy bein' where I was, and I soon left. I 
 remembered that I had n't said farewell to a schoolmate 
 of mine, a young lady whose name was Miss Sally Royson. 
 So I handed the white flag to the mayor and lit out to see 
 her. Miss Sally's father was a Union man. He'd been 
 gone to Nashville several months, but I expected he was 
 on the other side of the river now, and I wanted to tell 
 her he was comin' and to have a good dinner ready for 
 him. 
 
 After the Yankees had been here a week or two they 
 had a little skirmish with the enemy around the edge of 
 Lookout Mountain. When it was over a Rebel who 'd been 
 in that fight come to our house and wanted me to get word 
 to his mother that he was all right. She lived not more 
 than a mile from me, but the feller did n't want to go any 
 farther for fear the Yankees would capture him. 
 
268 Chickamauora 
 
 &' 
 
 After dinner I started. I went afoot, and when I got 
 there I found her and a nigger out in the yard watching 
 some dust up the road. The nigger had a double-barrel 
 shotgun in his hands. A troop of Union cavalry was com- 
 in'. They stopped at the gate to ask what I was doin' 
 there. You see I wore my Confederate uniform. I ex- 
 plained and showed my payrole papers and they treated 
 me very kind. 
 
 While they was talkin' with me a horse ran out of the 
 barn into the lot and the head officer told two of his men 
 to go and get him. The officer and the rest of his com- 
 mand started on, and the two men went into the lot to 
 ketch the horse. At the same time the nigger jumped over 
 the fence with his gun and said they should n't have that 
 horse. So they galloped off across to the main road and 
 joined their comrades and reported. In a few minutes a 
 squad of 'em come back, and the nigger saw it wa'n't no 
 use, and they took the horse. 
 
 On the two days that the battle of Chickamauga was 
 fought I set on Orchard Knob and listened at it. I took 
 along my little niece. She was about three, I reckon. I 
 kept her with me for protection so if the Yankees acci- 
 dentally come across me they would n't think I was spyin'. 
 I could hear the small arms, and I could look over Mis- 
 sionary Ridge and see the smoke a-risin'. I remember 
 what I had for breakfast the day the battle ended. I had 
 corn bread and pickled pork, and for drink there was 
 coffee that was made out of parched sweet potatoes. 
 
 A week or two later I moved my folks farther south 
 where I hoped we'd be less disturbed, but there wasn't 
 much comfort to be had till the war ended. Everybody 
 was glad then. I remember I met a nice young lieutenant 
 
The Paroled Soldier 269 
 
 in Chattanooga right after the news reached us of Lee's 
 surrender, and he was ready to throw his arms around me, 
 or any other Rebel, he was so happy. He'd been cele- 
 brating by drinking, and he said, "This is the first time 
 I ever got drunk in my life." 
 
XXXIV 
 
 The Girl on the Mountain ' 
 
 My father was a carpenter here in Chattanooga, but a 
 time came when he had to stop work on account of tu- 
 berculosis. The physicians in town had given him up. 
 However, he decided to move to the top of Lookout Moun- 
 tain and try the rest and air cure. He rented a Httle log 
 cabin up there. That was in 1851 when I was two years 
 old. We carried our goods up an Indian trail on packmules. 
 Mother took me up in her lap on horseback. Several fami- 
 lies were already living on the mountain, and a road was 
 built the next year. Then more families moved there, and 
 Father put up a frame house. His health had improved, 
 and he was now able to work as usual. 
 
 The mountain rises to a height of about three thousand 
 feet. It has a flat top, and our house was right on the 
 plateau a mile from the point. We mountain dwellers 
 had gardens and orchards and turnip patches, and we 
 kept cows and pigs. Six miles farther back on the moun- 
 tain were farms. Near our home was the Lookout Moun- 
 tain Educational Institute. It had some seventy-five 
 pupils boarding right at the school and a few day pupils, 
 but most of the families at the point had governesses to 
 teach their children books and music. 
 
 1 She was a serene, white-haired woman in an attractive home of 
 more than ordinary refinement. I was her guest one evening while she 
 recalled for my benefit her childhood life in war days. 
 
The Girl on the Mountain 271 
 
 Our first serious experience in warfare came in August 
 '63 when a Northern detachment under Wilder bom- 
 barded the town. It was on a Friday that had been set 
 apart by the Confederate government for fasting and 
 prayer. A Chattanooga woman who had a summer home 
 on the mountain had brought me down to the meeting in 
 her rockaway. The church was crowded and the minister 
 was praying when the first shell came and exploded just 
 outside. I looked around. I thought the gallery had fallen. 
 A woman who sat in the seat in front of me slapped her 
 husband on the back and exclaimed, "My God! Mr. 
 Bruce, the Yankees are coming." 
 
 The minister kept right on praying, but the people in 
 the pews all jumped up and got out. There was almost a 
 panic. A great many of them went off south without even 
 going to their homes. The neighbor who had brought 
 me sent her driver to her town house, and he got as much 
 as he could carry in a sheet, and then we hurried back to 
 the mountain. The bombardment damaged the town 
 buildings more or less and a number of people were hit, 
 including a little girl who was killed on the street. But 
 the Yankees did n't cross the river. 
 
 A great many Confederate soldiers were stationed on 
 the mountain, and they had very little to eat. We owned 
 five elegant cows, but the soldiers killed them and issued 
 them out as rations. They got our pigs and chickens, 
 too, and we did n't have anything left but a flock of 
 guineas. The guineas could fly up in the trees, and they 
 escaped. The country was scoured over by both armies, 
 everything was demoralized, and food was n't to be bought 
 for love or money. We just lived from hand to mouth. 
 
 Salt was one of the scarcest commodities. That's one 
 
272 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 thing we could n't get along without. People even dug up 
 the ground in their smokehouses to get it. You see meat 
 that had been pickled in brine had been hung in there 
 year after year, and the drippings had fallen to the dirt 
 below. By putting the earth in a hopper and letting water 
 run through it the salt would be carried along. Then, when 
 the water was boiled down, the salt would crystallize. Of 
 course it was unrefined, but it was better than none 
 at all. 
 
 My father was a Union man, and he had to stay pretty 
 close. Once he was ordered to report to the headquarters 
 of General Bragg who was the chief commander of the 
 Confederates in this vicinity. He had been betrayed by a 
 neighbor woman. She had a grudge against him because 
 he had refused to let our wagon go to town to haul sup- 
 plies for her. A Confederate officer was sick at our house. 
 We nursed a good many sick soldiers of both armies and 
 so made friends. Mother was ten^ibly distressed about 
 Father's summons, and she told that sick officer of our 
 trouble. So the officer wrote a letter and sent it by an 
 orderly to General Bragg, and Father was let off. 
 
 When the battle of Chickamauga was fought it was a 
 very dry time. The springs were all dried up and the dust 
 was ankle deep. Many of the soldiers who marched past 
 our house carried their shoes their feet hurt so. We could 
 see the battleground about a dozen miles off to the south 
 and trace the movements of the armies by the dust and 
 smoke. We could hear the cannonading, too. It was ter- 
 rible and made us feel as if nobody could live through 
 it. 
 
 After the battle the Union army was cooped up here in 
 Chattanooga with only one rough mountain road over 
 
The Girl on the Mountain 273 
 
 which to draw supplies from Bridgeport, sixty miles dis- 
 tant. Sometimes raiders captured the wagon trains and 
 the teams would n't get to bring anything through. When 
 the soldiers had flour they 'd take it to some townswoman, 
 and she 'd make light bread for them and get a part of the 
 flour in pay. She took toll like a miller. A relative of ours 
 gave some of the soldiers two sacks of shelled corn at a 
 time when they were suffering for food. They filled the 
 little pint cups they drank their coffee out of, and they 
 parched the corn and ate it and were glad to get it. 
 
 Ten thousand horses and mules died here within a 
 month for want of food. Their bodies lay all along the 
 road. I counted as many as thirteen in one pile. They 
 made the air in the valley just stifling. It was all the 
 soldiers could do to bury the men who died, and they 
 did n't bother with the horses and mules. 
 
 There was always lots of sickness in the army. Some- 
 times there 'd be an epidemic of measles. That's a serious 
 disease for grown persons. A man would get delirious and 
 wander out of the tent or house where he was, and he'd 
 be out over night and catch cold and die. There was small- 
 pox galore toward the end of the war. Lots of soldiers, 
 too, died from scurvy. Scurvy was caused by eating too 
 much salt meat, and men sick with it were just crazy to 
 get onions or any kind of vegetables. That was the kind 
 of food they needed if they were going to recover. The 
 diseases that ravaged the armies spread to the homes. The 
 colored troops were a special menace in carrying the in- 
 fection, so many of them were gadding about the coun- 
 try and getting into families. 
 
 While the Union troops were besieged here there was 
 great lack of firewood in the place. Cameron Hill, which 
 
274 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 was covered with beautiful trees was soon swept bare, and 
 the soldiers even dug up the stumps to burn in their fires. 
 No barns or outbuildings were left anywhere. 
 
 Grant arrived late in October, and a wagon road was 
 established to a point down the river where supplies could 
 be brought by boat. Then Sherman came with reinforce- 
 ments, and on November 24th Fighting Joe Hooker 
 assailed Lookout Mountain which was held by the Con- 
 federates. We sometimes have a fog here in a gloomy 
 rainy spell so dense that you can't see anybody fifty yards 
 away. It was raining that morning, and one of those thick 
 fogs was hanging about the mountain sides. The Confed- 
 erates could n't see the movements of the Union troops 
 and were not aware of their approach until they had 
 reached the base of the mountain. The plateau at the 
 summit is bounded by a palisade or precipice of rocks 
 with stony, wooded slopes below. Some of the Federals 
 fought their way up to the palisade on the north side of 
 the mountain. 
 
 The Confederates had fortified themselves on the pla- 
 teau, but they were expecting to be attacked from the 
 other direction. However, they readjusted themselves, 
 and they formed a line of battle extending from the sum- 
 mit to the valley. In the fighting that followed they were 
 gradually pushed back along the mountain side and 
 around its eastern end. The contending troops under the 
 point at the foot of the palisades were above the clouds, 
 and they were all invisible from the valley. They fought 
 until after dark. The firing sounded like the popping of 
 popcorn in a skillet. 
 
 A good many people took their bedding and things and 
 went down under the cliffs on the other side of the moun- 
 

 THE SHARPSHOOTER AFTER THE BATTLE 
 
The Girl on the Mountain 275 
 
 tain and stayed all night. Our family did n't run. We 
 were up till late, and then there was a lull in the battle 
 and we went to sleep as usual. 
 
 Some of the signal corps had been stopping at our house. 
 The mountain was an excellent place to signal from, and 
 on many a night we had watched the waving of answering 
 signal torches on distant high points. The signal corps 
 men had to leave in a hurry, and they told us a retreat had 
 been ordered and that the commissary stores, which were 
 in a vacant house near by, would have to be left behind. 
 They wanted us to have some of those stores. 
 
 Mother and I and Father hurried to the vacant house 
 and brought away what we could carry in our arms and 
 hid the things in the attic. We had hardly done that when 
 some Union troops came and searched the house. They 
 looked up in the attic, but they did n't find our commis- 
 sary stores. 
 
 We went out and walked about later in the day, and I 
 remember seeing a dead sharpshooter. He had established 
 himself in a crevice of a mountain cliff, and from there had 
 been picking off the Union troops. But finally they saw 
 and shot him, and he fell all in a heap down in the crev- 
 ice. His body was there for several days. 
 
 Missionary Ridge rises south of the town to the height 
 of a few hundred feet, and on its crest were posted fifteen 
 thousand Confederates with cannon. The very day that 
 Hooker completed his conquest of Lookout Mountain the 
 Union troops successfully stormed Missionary Ridge. The 
 assault was made at three o'clock in the afternoon, and 
 we could see the men as they charged up the slope with 
 the sun shining on their accouterments. It was a wonder- 
 ful sight. The battle was short and decisive. The Con- 
 
276 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 federates fled in wild disorder, and the guns that they 
 abandoned were turned against them. 
 
 There was great loss of life, a host of wounded, and 
 numerous prisoners. The fighting forces were still further 
 reduced by desertions. Back on the mountain a score of 
 miles was a wild, isolated region that was full of deserters 
 from both armies. The poor country folks out there lost 
 all they had. Yes, the army played havoc in one way or 
 another with every section it was in. 
 
XXXV 
 
 The Cabinet-Maker's Daughter ' 
 
 When Maw and Paw came here to Chattanooga the place 
 was just a steamboat landing on the Tennessee River. 
 Now the city has expanded southward from the nver till 
 its borders touch Missionary Ridge, but at the time of the 
 war Missionary Ridge was way out in the woods. It was 
 certainly in the wilderness. The number of inhabitants 
 in the straggling village could n't have been over fifteen 
 hundred. There was a foundry here, a distillery, and a 
 couple of gristmills. 
 
 Paw was a cabinet-maker and had a two-room shop. 
 At first he did his work in one of the rooms, and he and 
 Maw lived in the other room. Later they had a house 
 about a mile from the shop, and Paw rode from there to 
 his business on horseback each morning. He kept on with 
 his cabinet-making all through the war. Maw and the 
 children were left alone out at the house during the day- 
 time and when the war unsettled things Maw got a pistol 
 and put up a mark and learned to shoot. We had a colored 
 man that Paw had bought, and one day he told Maw he'd 
 just seen thirty-two army wagons drive into our cornfield. 
 "Well," she said, "you go and put a saddle on a horse 
 for me, and I'll ride over there." 
 
 1 She had been only a child when the rival armies contended in the 
 vicinity, and so was not yet old. Indeed, as I talked with her in her city 
 home, she still had the energy and vivacity that belong to youth. ., 
 
278 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 "You can't drive those men out," he said. "They'll 
 give you impudence." 
 
 But she had him saddle her horse and get on his own 
 horse and go along with her. Niggers was reliable during 
 slave-time — not like they are now. They got to the 
 cornfield and found that several lengths of the rail fence 
 had been taken down, and the wagons had driven right 
 into the corn. 
 
 "Now, look hyar, you-all men," Maw said, "the last 
 one of you turn your teams around and go out of that lot 
 and put the fence up behind you." 
 
 They commenced to say something. 
 
 "No use to talk," she said, and showed her pistol. "If 
 you don't go I'll blow your brains out." 
 
 "Well lady," they said, "we're not doing a thing except 
 to get corn to feed our horses." 
 
 "And I'm trying to save it to make bread for my six 
 children," she told 'em. 
 
 They came out of there and put up the fence, and we 
 heard that when they got back to their tents they said to 
 the other teamsters: "You better be careful how you go 
 over onto that place. The woman there knows how to 
 shoot." 
 
 Maw certainly was spunky. Paw often had to tell her 
 not to talk so much or we'd all be sent North. But, you 
 know, during the war, a woman could say a heap more 
 things than a man. 
 
 When the Yankees bombarded the town Paw took a 
 child under each arm and Maw did the same and carried 
 the four children down the steps into the cellar. Then they 
 came back and got the other two, and every moment they 
 were expecting to be knocked over by a shell. Late in the 
 
The Cabinet-Maker's Daughter 279 
 
 day, the shells stopped flying, and Paw went out and 
 milked the cows and tended to everything. We spent the 
 night down in the cellar. 
 
 A few weeks later the Yankees took possession of the 
 town. We had a good-sized house, and they quartered 
 six or seven officers with us for a while. It was a trying 
 time. They'dsay things and Maw would talk back. Paw 
 would look at her and shake his head, and sometimes 
 she'd stop and sometimes she would n't. Occasionally 
 their talk was almost too much even for Paw. One morn- 
 ing, at breakfast, the officers were sitting there talking, 
 and the nigger subject came up. "I think a nigger is as 
 good as a white man," an officer said. 
 
 Afterward Paw told Maw: "If you hadn't looked at 
 me I'd 'a' laid that officer out. It was the bitterest pill I 
 ever had to swallow, and I had to swallow it at my own 
 table. But I give you fair warning I'm not going to do 
 such a thing any more." 
 
 The officers left us presently, and we arranged to have 
 a guard stationed at our house to protect us. We'd have 
 been imposed on in all sorts of ways if it had n't been for 
 him. Paw's mother lived on the other side of the town. 
 She was an old lady. I expect she was about seventy-two. 
 But the Union officers did n't think anything of going there 
 and putting her and her daughter out and putting some 
 contraband negroes in. She'd send word to us, and our 
 guard would go up there and tell the negroes to get out, 
 and he'd put the old lady and her daughter back. 
 
 The Yankees would have got some negroes into our house 
 if they could. An officer came one day and walked in and 
 looked through the house and said he wanted a room for 
 two colored women. 
 
280 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 "I have no place in my house for niggers," Maw told 
 him. "You can't get 'em in here"; and the officer went 
 away. 
 
 The soldiers were camped all around, and if they saw 
 anything in the yard that they wanted they came in and 
 took it — they never asked for it. We had a Newfound- 
 land dog, and he would bark at 'em. One time a soldier 
 came into the yard to carry off something, and the dog 
 rushed toward him barking. The fellow raised an ax to 
 strike the dog, and Maw ran out and said, "That dog 
 won't bite you." 
 
 "If he does bite me, I'll split his head open," the man 
 said. 
 
 Such things as that used Maw up, and once she was 
 sitting on the steps crying over the war and our losses. 
 A little piece of ragged carpet was lying in the yard, and 
 a soldier picked it up. "Lady," he said, "may I have 
 this?" 
 
 "Well," she replied, "you've taken everything else 
 without asking, and I suppose you can take that, too." 
 
 Just then an officer came around the corner of the 
 house. "Put that down," he said. 
 
 "What authority have you got to give me orders?" the 
 soldier asked. 
 
 The officer pulled out his sword and flourished it around. 
 "Here's my authority," he said. 
 
 "I guess I was right mean," Mother told us afterward, 
 "but I never was so anxious in my life to see a man's legs 
 whacked off." 
 
 Oh! the war was just a regular tear-up here in Chatta- 
 nooga. 
 
XXXVI 
 A Tennessee Boy ^ 
 
 Father had settled on the other side of Missionary Ridge, 
 four miles from town. He died in 1858 when I was a child. 
 
 The people in this region were pretty well divided on 
 the slavery question. Often opposite sides were taken in 
 the same family, and there was much feeling. At least 
 fifty per cent of the people were for the Union. A com- 
 pany of Confederate soldiers was stationed at Chatta- 
 nooga, and those soldiers went around to the houses in the 
 adjacent country and arrested every one they suspected 
 of sympathizing with the North. They brought their pris- 
 oners to town and put them under guard. 
 
 One day they were out our way. They'd been to a 
 number of different houses, and at each house had arrested 
 the head of the family and his grown sons and marched 
 them off. Among those taken into custody were several 
 of the tenants on our farm. Soldiers and prisoners were 
 all on foot, and they were followed by the prisoners' wives 
 and children. The road was full when they got to Moth- 
 er's. They were on the big road heading to town. At our 
 place the soldiers made the women and children turn back. 
 There was crying and wringing of hands, and the parting 
 was very touching. 
 
 1 He was now a stout-figured, deliberate business man. I spent a 
 morning hour with him in his handsome office in one of Chattanooga's 
 big public buildings. As he talked he puffed meditatively at his pipe 
 and sat with his feet on his broad-topped desk. 
 
282 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 The arrested men were kept in town several days. Then 
 an influential citizen got them all released, and they re- 
 turned to their homes, but not to stay. Within a short 
 time they all left for the North, and many of 'em joined 
 the Union army and fought their way back to the region 
 of their birth. 
 
 It would n't have been safe for 'em to stay here. A mile 
 and a half from where I was raised lived a very intelligent 
 Union man named Lominick. He had education and abil- 
 ity, and he had courage. If let alone he was inoffensive, 
 but the fact that he was an outspoken opponent of slavery 
 made him enemies who would n't stop at any crime. One 
 Saturday night some of 'em went to his place. It seems 
 he must have been expecting trouble, for he was sleeping 
 in the barn. They got in there and took him out and hung 
 him to a little post oak tree on his own farm. 
 
 The next day we had gathered at church for preaching 
 when we got word of what had happened, and we all im- 
 mediately went to Mr. Lominick's place. Some man com- 
 ing along the road that morning had seen the body and 
 had told Mrs. Lominick. She went and cut her husband 
 down, and when we got there she was sitting under the 
 oak tree with his head in her lap. 
 
 The body was put into a wagon and hauled to the house. 
 We all followed and went in, and the house was full. A 
 very large number of people attended the funeral on Mon- 
 day, and the dead man was buried in his home yard next 
 to his baby girl. A good many old-timers used to be buried 
 in their yards. 
 
 The community was very indignant over this lynching. 
 Two men who lived a few miles away were suspected of 
 being the murderers, but they did n't await any investi- 
 
A Tennessee Boy 283 
 
 gating. They immediately joined the Confederate army. 
 A fellow could do anything and escape punishment by 
 joining the army. 
 
 After the war one of the men returned to his home, and 
 he had n't been there long when he was dragged out of his 
 house one night and beaten and left for dead. But he 
 revived and got out of the country. People had no doubt 
 that his assailants were Mr. Lominick's sons avenging the 
 death of their father. Nothing was done to punish them. 
 One of 'em is living out on the old place yet. 
 
 The war came en here in earnest in 1863, and for a while 
 some seventy-five thousand Confederate troops were sta- 
 tioned between the town and Missionary Ridge. Mother 
 had only myself and my sister with her. So she applied 
 for protection, and a house guard was sent to us. The offi- 
 cers in both armies seemed to take pains to select men of 
 good character for that duty. Our guard did his work 
 efficiently until he was ordered back to camp, when the 
 Confederates were leaving at the approach of the Federal 
 army. 
 
 The battle of Chickamauga was fought only about six 
 miles from our home. It was so clost that we could hear 
 the roaring of the cannon very distinctly. While the bat- 
 tle was going on Colonel Minty with a regiment of North- 
 ern cavalry came to our farm and they fed their horses in 
 a ten-acre cornfield of ours. They cleaned it out. The 
 field was n't in sight from the house, but Mother learned 
 of what they'd been doing, and she took me and my sis- 
 ter and went right down there. She found the colonel near 
 by in an old log church, and he paid for the com by giving 
 her a voucher for ninety dollars. It was not till seven 
 months later though that she got the money. 
 
284 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 My mother had been a school teacher in her younger 
 days, and was more cultured and capable than the aver- 
 age of women. She was strongly religious and thought it 
 was a sin to own slaves. Her friends advised her to at 
 least buy two or three to help on the farm, but she would 
 not. She and Colonel Minty had quite a conversation in 
 the old log church, and among other things she told him 
 how sure she was of the righteousness of the Union cause, 
 and that the Lord was with the Federal army. 
 
 "Well," he said, "that certainly explains why so many 
 deserters are comin' to our camp. But don't you think 
 you'd better be going home?" he asked. "I expect some 
 of our soldiers are pilfering your house now." 
 
 Sure enough, when we got there several soldiers had 
 broken into our smokehouse. They heard us coming and 
 skinned out — ran like good fellows. 
 
 The battle was over the next day. The Yankees got 
 back to Chattanooga, and the Rebels followed them as 
 far as Missionary Ridge. The men and teams of the whole 
 Confederate army passed our place. They were going all 
 that day and all night and the better portion of the day 
 after. 
 
 The troops were camped close by until late in Novem- 
 ber. One of the colonels had a tent in our yard. We had 
 an old-fashioned three-room house with a big chimney at 
 one end, and there was a log kitchen sitting a little apart 
 from it. My mother was a very energetic woman, and 
 she entertained to some extent ladies from farther south 
 who came to see their husbands and sons, and she baked 
 a great deal to sell to the army. I was only ten years old, 
 but most every day I 'd take to camp a basket filled with 
 pies, cakes, corn bread, and light bread. Mother had the 
 
A Tennessee Boy 285 
 
 reputation of making the finest corn bread in the country. 
 The soldiers were so anxious to get it they'd flock right 
 around me as soon as I arrived. 
 
 Sometimes I did my peddling on horseback. Once, 
 when I had ridden my little sorrel mare to camp, I sold 
 my load and went to a spring to water her and get a drink 
 myself. A bunch of soldiers was there who belonged to 
 the Texas Rangers, One of 'em helped me off and on the 
 horse. When he lifted me back he tickled me. I reached 
 home and put my hand in my pocket to deliver the money 
 I'd received to my mother, and my little red pocket- 
 book was gone. 
 
 The peculiar part of the matter is that some twenty- 
 five years later I was on a train with a number of gentle- 
 men in the smoking car, and I related this incident. When 
 I got through one of 'em said: "I was very much inter- 
 ested in your story. I belonged to the regiment of Ran- 
 gers which was camped near that spring, and I remember 
 very well that the fellow who tickled you showed us your 
 pocketbook afterward. That very night I and some others, 
 including him and our colonel, were gambling. He had a 
 falling-out with the colonel and killed him. Then he made 
 his escape and joined the Federal army." 
 
 All the time that the Confederates were camped in our 
 neighborhood there was more or less bombarding, and 
 after dark I often sat in the yard and watched the bombs 
 go over the house. They were like comets, with a long tail 
 of light trailing after 'em. 
 
 On the day of the battle of Missionary Ridge myself 
 and a colored man started early for camp, each with a 
 basket of provisions. It was n't an unusual thing for the 
 Federals and Confederates to be shooting at each other, 
 
286 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 but we noticed there was more shooting than usual that 
 morning. When we got up on the top of the ridge the col- 
 ored man said tome: "Buddy, you'd better go back home. 
 They're fightin'. I'll take your basket." 
 
 He went along with the baskets, and I've never seen 
 the nigger from that day to this. I waited a while, and 
 the bullets began to fly so thick I lay down behind a stump. 
 There I stayed all day. I did n't have anything to eat, and 
 I did n't want anything. I had too much else to think of. 
 Men were shot all around me, and the wounded lay on the 
 ground groaning to beat the batid. I thought if the Yan- 
 kees knew that a little boy like me was there they'd stop 
 the fight till I got home. The bullets were cutting off 
 twigs and bushes in the woods roundabout, and I got my- 
 self in as small a ball as I could behind the stump. 
 
 It's curious the different ways men conduct themselves 
 in battle. If a bombshell fell near them some would laugh 
 and smack their hands. Others would look serious as if 
 they felt the awfulness of the situation. Some would 
 swear. They'd cuss the Yankees at the top of their voice. 
 Others would sing a jolly song. When a shell burst in the 
 ranks the yelling was almost deafening. 
 
 Near my stump was a very large cannon. The Confed- 
 erates presently started to retreat, and orders were given 
 to haul the cannon away. A driver with some big, fine- 
 looking bay horses was hitching onto it when a bullet 
 killed one of the horses. That excited the others and they 
 pranced around so that he had difficulty in getting them 
 straightened out. Before he could hitch them to the can- 
 non a second horse was killed. He kept losing 'em that way 
 till only one was left; and he got on it to ride off. Just then 
 a wounded man called to him for help. 
 
A Tennessee Boy 287 
 
 **Pardner/' the driver said, "if I can lift you up on this 
 horse I believe I can get away with you." 
 
 He dismounted, and in a few moments had contrived 
 to get the wounded man on the horse's back. Then he 
 jumped up himself and away they went down the ridge 
 as fast as the horse could gallop. 
 
 About that time a couple of gentlemen spoke to me. 
 They were hangers-on of the army — clerks or something 
 — and they were the first persons who'd noticed me that 
 day. 
 
 "What are you doing here?" they asked. 
 
 I don't know what my reply was, but it throwed 'em 
 into convulsions of laughter. 
 
 "You'd better light out," they advised, "or the Yan- 
 kees '11 be here and get you. Where do you live?" 
 
 "Just down the hill to the east," I answered. 
 
 "Come along then," they said. "We're going that 
 way." 
 
 I went with them a little piece, but they were n't going 
 fast enough, and I left 'em and dodged along ahead. Be- 
 fore I got home I met my mother and she embraced me 
 with tears of joy. She 'd got so alarmed about my long ab- 
 sence that she did n't know what to do, and she'd left my 
 little sister alone in the house and was comin' to look for 
 me. 
 
 That experience of mine has proved valuable to me in 
 one way since. When my children were small and would- 
 n't sleep at night I'd tell them the story of how I stayed 
 behind a stump on Missionary Ridge while the battle was 
 being fought there, and it never failed to quiet them. 
 
 After Mother and I reached home I heard the small 
 balls striking the house and the boards of the fence around 
 
288 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 the yard. The army had taken all our cows but one some 
 time before. That one was in a cleared field a short dis- 
 tance from the house. We became anxious about her, and 
 I slipped out the back door and went after her. I had got 
 the old cow turned around and started toward the house 
 when I heard a shell coming right in my direction. It made 
 a noise somewhat similar to that made by the wings of a 
 covey of birds. I 'd been taught by the soldiers that I must 
 lie flat on my breast to avoid being hit by a shell, and down 
 I lay. The shell burst, and pieces of it went over me and 
 the cow without hitting us. Then we went on, and I put 
 her in the smokehouse and locked her up. 
 
 The Confederates had left, and now we had the Yan- 
 kees around us. Some of 'em broke into the smokehouse 
 that night. They evidently tried to split the cow's head 
 with an ax, but she got away, and we found her in the 
 morning with a great gash in her shoulder. We sewed up 
 the wound and put her back in the smokehouse. But the 
 soldiers stole her after night came, and when we looked 
 around the next day we came across her hide a quarter of 
 a mile away. 
 
 As soon as the winter was past we went to work to re- 
 place the fences that had been destroyed and get our fields 
 ready to plant. It was a good crop year, and we received 
 first-rate prices for all we raised. The next year the war 
 ended, and we were able to buy army horses for thirty or 
 forty dollars apiece and so got our farm running in good 
 shape again. 
 
XXXVII 
 
 The Mulatto Girl 1 
 
 I LIVED with my Uncle Amos in a four-room frame house 
 in what is now the business part of the city. Chattanooga 
 was a small place then with just a house hyar and thar. 
 Not more'n three or four of the houses was of brick, and a 
 good many were little log cabins with whitewashed walls. 
 Right in the middle of the town was a big frog pond. Well, 
 the place was n't nothing but a mudhole. Oh, but I 've 
 spent many happy days thar! 
 
 I was just a stripling of a girl when the Yankees bum- 
 barded the town from across the river. They throwed in 
 bumbshells, log chains, and everything. We could see the 
 chains twisting through the air like snakes, A piece of a 
 bumb struck a white woman right above our house just 
 after dark that evening and killed her. 
 
 Uncle Amos spoke to my aunt and said, "I expect you'll 
 have to go to the bluff to-night." 
 
 The bluff was right in town on the edge of the river, 
 and the women and children, black and white, all went 
 thar together and got under the rocks. A lot of 'em car- 
 ried bedclothes, but no one did much sleeping. We had 
 fires all along in front and kept them burning till morning. 
 
 1 I called at her home, a humble wooden house on the outskirts of 
 the city, and was invited into the dingy, odorous living-room. My 
 informant was a tall, elderly woman with dark, straight hair, and a 
 mottled, yellow complexion. She had some snuff in her mouth and 
 frequently paused in her narrative to spit into the little fireplace grate. 
 
290 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 Uncle had a farm out across Missionary Ridge. Thar 
 was thirty or forty acres in it. During the summer he 
 lived in a little log hut at the farm and cropped the land. 
 We was thar in the early fall of 1863. One day, when we 
 was about ready to start gathering the corn, the old folks 
 took the wagon and the two horses and went into town to 
 get provisions. I and my two sisters stayed at the log hut. 
 
 That morning four or five Rebels come running through 
 the yard and smashed their guns against the trees and 
 stumps and left 'em thar. I found out afterward that the 
 Rebel army was retreatin' from Chattanooga. Later the 
 same day the Yankees got to our farm, and the first thing 
 I knew their wagons was out in front, and the men tore 
 down the fence and drove in our cornfield. They began to 
 break off the ears and throw 'em into the wagons. Oh, 
 they like to have scared me to death! The road was full of 
 soldiers. They were all dressed in blue and were covered 
 with dust, and they had canteens and guns and bayonets 
 — they did look scarey. Some of 'em come to the door 
 and said, "Where's your father?" 
 
 I felt like I was havin' a chill. My tongue cleaved to 
 the roof of my mouth. They were swearing at me and had 
 me most dead when a captain rode up to the gate. "What 
 are you-all doing hyar scaring children?" he said, and he 
 drove 'em right out of the yard and told 'em to go about 
 their business. 
 
 " How come these guns hyar lyin' around on the ground? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "The Rebels left 'em," I said. 
 
 "Whar are the Rebels?" he wanted to know. 
 
 "They're gone across the mountain," I told him. 
 
 He asked some more questions and found out that our 
 
The Mulatto Girl 291 
 
 old folks were in Chattanooga, and he said, "We've put 
 out our picket lines, and your people can't come back 
 through 'em. It won't be safe for you to stay hyar. I'll 
 take you to town." 
 
 So we just left everything standing as it was, and he 
 carried my little baby sister on the horse in front of him. 
 My oth^ sister was larger, and she took hold of my hand 
 and we walked right by the captain's stirrup, and the 
 wagons loaded with corn was driving along behind. He 
 went with us to my uncle's, and delivered us to the old 
 folks. "Hyar's your children," he said, and they thanked 
 him and thanked him. 
 
 Not long afterward the battle of Chickamauga was 
 fought. We could hear the firing, and the second day of 
 the fight it was boom, boom, boom, boom from morning 
 till night. The weather was hot, and most of the springs 
 was dried up. Thar was a pond on the battlefield, and so 
 many were shot near it that their blood ran down in the 
 pond; and the soldiers just drank that bloody water be- 
 cause they couldn't get any other. It's called "Bloody 
 Pond" now. 
 
 The ambulances were coming all the time bringing the 
 wounded, some with their arms broken, some with their 
 legs shot off. Officers and soldiers was just piled in on top 
 of each other. Some of 'em were moaning, and some were 
 hollering, "Lord, have mercy!" All the churches was full 
 of the wounded, and a good many of the houses. 
 
 One wounded man come to our house. A bullet had 
 gone in one cheek and .out the other and it shot some of 
 his teeth out, too. His tongue was n't hit, but he could 
 n't talk very well — only just mumble a little bit. He told 
 us he was starved to death almost, and I made some mush 
 
292 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 right quick. My little sister cried because she was sorry 
 for him. He had to hold a handkercher on each side of his 
 face so the food would n't run out when he swallowed. 
 
 Several months before they had the fighting hyar Uncle 
 Amos brought a Yankee spy to our house. We children 
 stood and looked at him and at his blue uniform while he 
 eat supper. He seemed to be anxious about his safety, and 
 by and by he pointed to me and said: "Who's that little 
 girl? I'm afraid of her, she watches me so tight." 
 
 After he finished his supper my uncle took him out and 
 put him in the corncrib and covered him up in the shucks. 
 Uncle got him a gray suit, and the spy put it on and he 
 went off at three o'clock in the morning to ketch a train. 
 He was a very small man with hair as black as jet. While 
 the fighting was going on at Chickamauga a man came 
 from the battlefield and leaned up against our fence. It 
 was that spy. He did n't have any gun, and he was dusty 
 and wore out and all broke down. He asked for water, and 
 when I brought it to him I says, "You're the one who was 
 hyar that night," and he said he was. He stayed thar 
 leaning against the fence for an hour or two. 
 
 During the next two months the Union troops was 
 bottled up in Chattanooga, and food got scarce. Aunt 
 would cook things and swap 'em to the Yankees for coffee. 
 We did n't have no meal or corn, but we had rice, and 
 we sent it to a little mill up the river and had it ground. 
 The rice flour made very good batter cakes, and some- 
 times we baked it into bread, but I did n't care for rice 
 bread. Now and then we would get hardtacks from the 
 soldiers. We liked those hardtacks. I had good teeth and 
 I could eat 'em, and they were nice if you put 'em in 
 coffee or milk. 
 
A FIUEXDLV OFFICER 
 
The Mulatto Girl 293 
 
 We owned two big mooly cows, so we had milk and 
 butter. There was a shed we kept 'em in at night, and we 
 had fenced an acre lot that we turned 'em out into every 
 morning. General Stedman had a quart of milk a day 
 from us, and we supplied him with fresh butter when we 
 churned. One night the soldiers tore down our cow-lot 
 fence. They wanted it for their fires. At the same time 
 they broke into the shed and milked the cows. The gen- 
 eral did n't get any milk the next morning, and we told 
 him why. Then he made the soldiers take an army wagon 
 and haul lumber from a sawmill over on the river and put 
 up a new fence and a fine large gate. It was a better fence 
 than we had before. 
 
 Another night the soldiers tore our dairy down. We 
 could hear 'em, but you know we did n't dare go out. 
 There were some jars of peach preserves in the dairy, and 
 the soldiers eat up the preserves and rolled the earthen 
 jars down to the gate. They pulled up everything in our 
 garden and took all our ducks and geese. 
 
 As it happened, we had plenty of meat, but the meat 
 wasn't in our smokehouse. We'd rented that to some 
 poor colored contrabands. They had a stove in there and 
 a bed. I don't think they had any table. It was one little 
 room, and there wasn't no windowin it — just a front door. 
 
 Our meat was buried under the house. The old woman 
 had prepared for war in time of peace. We had taken up 
 some boards of the kitchen floor, dug down in the earth, 
 and put in the meat. Then we'd covered it with dirt, and 
 we poured ashes out of the fireplace around on the ground 
 so if any one looked down there they would n't see the 
 fresh dirt. That meat was n't stolen from us, and it never 
 molded either. 
 
294 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 One day my aunt had me under the floor scratching 
 for a ham when General Stedman come to the house. He 
 pushed the door open and walked right in. "What have 
 you got down there?" he said. 
 
 "Meat," my aunt replied. "I buried it to feed my chil- 
 dren." 
 
 "Well," he said, "that is a nice Yankee trick in you. 
 Let me have a ham, and you send your wagon up to my 
 headquarters. You need n't be afraid of your children 
 starving." 
 
 We sent the wagon, and he gave us pickled beef and 
 pork, cheese, crackers, sugar, and beans. 
 
 I remember once a soldier come to the door and rapped, 
 and Aunt just opened the door a crack and asked, "What 
 do you want?" 
 
 It made him mad to have her so cautious, and he cussed 
 her and kicked her right under the chin. He kicked her 
 flat, and she screamed like everything. It was mean of 
 him, but I went into the kitchen and laughed, she fell so 
 flat. General Stedman was near by, and he heard the 
 screams, and come hisself. He told some soldiers to ketch 
 the feller, and they carried him to camp and tied him up 
 by his thumbs. 
 
 One time the soldiers got some skulls out on the battle- 
 ground, and they come to our house in the night with 
 those skulls and set three or four of 'em on sticks and 
 leaned 'em against our door. Early in the morning I 
 opened the door and the skulls fell into the house. I hol- 
 lered and run, and Uncle Amos throwed the skulls outside. 
 That tickled the soldiers. We could hear 'em laughing up 
 in the camp. They did n't care for anything. 
 
 About eight o'clock one morning the Rebels at the foot 
 
The Mulatto Girl 295 
 
 of Lookout Mountain commenced shooting. The Union 
 army was attacking 'em. It was a cold, drizzly day, and 
 misty clouds hid the mountain. We could hear the guns, 
 but we could n't see the soldiers. The shooting sounded 
 like so many barrels of firecrackers, with once in a while 
 the boom of a cannon. When night come the clouds rolled 
 away, and we could see the campfires of both armies in 
 two long lines that went from the valley to the mountain 
 top, and between the campfire lines the men were still 
 fighting. We stood in our yard and looked at the lights 
 from the guns — the blinking lights. They were pretty 
 to see. 
 
 In the morning the Rebels had gone, and the Yankee 
 soldiers had dumb that high mountain. We saw what 
 seemed to be a bolt of white cloth stretched right along 
 the mountain top. "Oh, there's the flag of truce!" we 
 cried. 
 
 If you'd been hyar you'd have heard lots of old shout- 
 ing in the town when the people knew that the soldiers 
 had got through fighting on the mountain. 
 
 The battle was fought late in November, and the win- 
 ter that followed was very cold. The horses could n't 
 stand the weather, and they died in the corrals faster than 
 the men could haul 'em out. The soldiers suffered from 
 the cold, too. We were cooking breakfast one morning 
 when we heard a noise outside like some one was trying 
 to lift the doorlatch. Uncle Amos opened the door, and a 
 soldier carrying a gun fell in on his face. He was nearly 
 dead of cold. The tears were frozen on his cheeks, his 
 beard was nothing but icicles, and his eyes looked like 
 they were set in death. 
 
 Uncle told me to get some cold water. I went to the 
 
296 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 well and drawed out bucketful after bucketful as fast as I 
 could. They dashed the water over him till it looked like 
 enough had been poured on to drown him. They rubbed 
 him, too, and he got so after a while he could move. Then 
 they carried him back to camp. The men at the camp 
 thought he would die, but he got well and come to our 
 house afterward. 
 
 He told us how it happened that he nearly froze. It was 
 because he was out all night on the picket line. He was 
 passed by when the time come to change pickets. So he 
 was on duty twice as long as he ought to have been. 
 
 Well, that is the way things went in that old war. Some- 
 times I go out over the Ridge to whar we had our farm and 
 visit the folks who remember what happened while the 
 soldiers were around hyar. But most of those who were 
 living then have passed away, and those of 'em who are 
 left are few and far between. 
 
XXXVIII 
 
 The Invalid's Wife ' 
 
 I don't know who you are or where you're from, but I'm 
 goin' to tell you the truth. I'm livin' hyar at the foot of 
 Lookout Mountain where I've always lived. The Indians 
 was still hyar when my father come. Him and another 
 man bought all this land up for a dollar an acre. You see 
 land wan't worth nothin' in them days. 
 
 At the time of the war there were just a few scattered 
 houses hyar where now it is all built up thick like a city. 
 The house I lived in had three rooms, and there was a 
 kitchen outside. I owned some slaves, and they had little 
 plank houses to themselves. We called the black people 
 niggers and do yet, but Northern people associates with 
 'em as if they liked 'em better than white. 
 
 My husband had been sick for a long time when the 
 Yankees come hyar. He'd been down the last year so he 
 could n't do nothin', and he was just barely able to walk 
 across the room. He had the kidney disease and the 
 stomach disease. We'd spent a great deal of money goin' 
 to doctors and tryin' to cure his bad health, but they did 
 n't help him none. I put no confidence in doctors any 
 
 1 She lived in a shabby, little, unpainted house, the interior of which, 
 in its grimy, unkempt disorder was appalling. We sat in a combined 
 living-room and bedroom. She was a sallow, grim old woman, and her 
 gray hair, which she had evidently started to comb, hung about her 
 shoulders. A feeble coal fire burned in the grate. The woman sat close 
 to it, for the day was chilly, and sometimes poked it into brighter 
 burning. 
 
298 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 more. All they want is money. If you are sick, just doctor 
 yourself. 
 
 The first big battle near hyar was Chickamauga, and 
 it just like to have killed everything. The Yankees had 
 gone out there from Chattanooga, and they retreated to 
 the town when they were beaten. If the Confederates had 
 kept up the pursuit four minutes longer they'd have 
 drove the Yankees into the river. I wish they had and 
 drowned every one of 'em. 
 
 The Confederates had the top of Lookout Mountain 
 and the sides way down to the base of it where I lived. 
 One morning the Yankees made a bridge across Lookout 
 Creek in a valley north of the mountain and got over 
 hyar while the Rebels was all asleep on post up on the side 
 of the mountain. The fighting begun without any of us 
 having any warning. I know my sister was a-milking, 
 and she throwed the pails down and run in the house. 
 
 I had three children. My oldest was a boy maybe ten 
 years old, and there was a little girl, and there was a baby 
 that had been bom just four days. Old Mrs. Kilgore 
 come to my house to help me git out. The shot was fall- 
 ing like hail, and we had to go to git shet of it. Mrs. Kil- 
 gore wrapped the baby up in a shawl and gave her to the 
 boy to carry. He was skeered to death. He did n't have no 
 sense, and as soon as he got out of the house he run. None 
 of us knew where he went, and we did n't find him till 
 evening. We never expected to see the baby any more nor 
 him either. He run over a mile to one of our neighbors, 
 and when he got there they found he was carryin' the 
 baby head down with her feet up in his arms. I reckon 
 God had determined that child should live. I don't know 
 what else saved her. 
 
The Invalid's Wife 299 
 
 Well, all of us at our house had to run out of the battle, 
 and I like to have lost my life by it. My husband was 
 layin' at the point of death, but he was n't so skeered as 
 I was. He could n't walk to do no good, and Mrs. Kilgore 
 put him on a horse. She helped me git on my own riding 
 mar', which was very gentle and walked slow. We went 
 to the house of a family named Richardson and got out of 
 the fightin' for a while. But pretty soon the soldiers was 
 at it right around us again. The Yankees had run the 
 Rebels back and was a-hurryin' 'em along the mountain 
 side. 
 
 Mrs. Kilgore had me lie down on a feather bed, and she 
 put two more feather beds on top of me to keep the bul- 
 lets from shootin' me. That was all she had to stop the 
 flyin' bullets. It was right funny, and I laughed about it, 
 and I was skeered to death, too, for I thought I'd be shot 
 every minute. Some of the bullets did come through the 
 feather beds, so Mrs. Kilgore said. 
 
 Well, she fixed me up, and then she tied a tablecloth to 
 a stick like a flag and ran out and held it up. That was for 
 peace. Some officers come galloping up to ask what was 
 the matter. She told 'em there was a sick woman in the 
 house, and they never shot toward it any more. They 
 did n't bother nothing around the place after that, and 
 the old woman had a chance to make me some strong 
 coffee. I never shall forgit that day while I live. 
 
 About the time my coffee was ready the Rebel doctors 
 took possession of the Richardson barn for a hospital and 
 went to cuttin' off men's arms and legs. I was glad they 
 was on the place, for they was all good and kind to me. 
 
 The Richardsons had moved away, and a woman whose 
 husband was a Southern soldier was stayin' in the house. 
 
300 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 He had done deserted, and he was there, too. The Rebels 
 was lookin' for him every minute, and he knew if he was 
 caught he'd be hung. So he and his wife set up all that 
 night gittin' ready to go away. They went to the Yan- 
 kees and left everything they had. I don't blame 'em. If 
 I 'd been goin' to git killed I 'd have gone, too. 
 
 Before they started they cooked two or three pots full 
 of chickens, and I said, "Lord 'a' mercy! Mrs. Shaw, 
 where 'd you git all them chickens?" 
 
 "They belonged to the Richardsons," she said, "but 
 the Richardsons are gone and we might as well have the 
 chickens as any one else." 
 
 She brought me a whole one, but I did n't eat it. That 
 chicken was so tough I could n't bite it. Mrs. Shaw dished 
 out a whole chicken for every one of us and told us to give 
 the balance to the doctors. 
 
 The soldiers did all the damage they could at my house. 
 Why, they just tuck everything that was of any use to 
 'em and then burnt up the house. They were the worst 
 people I ever heard tell of. The Bible was in the house, 
 and we'd written down in it the dates when our children 
 were born. Of course the Bible was destroyed, and I could 
 n't tell afterward just how old the children were. 
 
 We had two cats. I don't know whether the soldiers 
 eat 'em or what. They were on the place when we left that 
 morning and never was seen or heard tell of afterward. 
 But I thank God I had life, let alone anything else. 
 
 After a few days the Rebel doctors went away, and then 
 some Union doctors come and camped in the yard. 
 
 My husband had pains in his heart very often, and we 
 used to make a poultice to relieve him. We'd take hot 
 ashes and embers, pour on water, and spread 'em on a 
 
The Invalid's Wife 301 
 
 cloth while they was hot and smokin', and then we'd lay 
 'em on his heart. One day when the baby was 'bout a 
 month old my husband had a bad spell. He frothed at 
 the mouth, and you could hear him breathing way out to 
 the road. I sent a nigger to a tent in the yard for a doctor, 
 and the doctor gave my husband half a glass of whiskey 
 with a little black stuff like opium in it. Very soon he was 
 dead. That doctor killed him. The doctors would just as 
 soon kill you as look at you in them days. If you was dead 
 they would n't be bothered with you any more. 
 
 My husband had n't been buried more'n a week when 
 two soldiers come in one morning and wanted me to give 
 'em something to eat. So I put some breakfast on the 
 table for 'em, and when they finished eating they tuck a 
 jar of sweet milk that was settin' by the fire and drank 
 it up. They saw my husband's coat hangin' up there. It 
 was a fine coat, plush all over, and they tuck that and all 
 his other clothes. They stole my extra clothes, too, so my 
 people had to give me shiftin' clothes. They tuck ten or 
 twelve quilts. I guess they did! and I reckon they sold 
 'em. They carried off all those things and never said, 
 "Thank you," nor nothin'. 
 
 Often when the soldiers come to the house I'd pretend 
 I was deef and dumb. I played off that way in order to git 
 shet of 'em. It was a scarey time. 
 
 They had the finest kind of grub, but they was always 
 beggin' and stealin' things to eat. They went across the 
 creek and stole a poor woman's chickens — twenty or 
 thirty — all she had. There wan't a chicken to be seen 
 no place. I had two pigs up in a pen to fatten, and they 
 taken them. 
 
 I was raisin' two pet lambs, Peter and Billy. They'd 
 
302 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 run around and feed and play in the yard. I owned a 
 nigger named Jim, and I was so fond of the lambs that I 
 even had that nigger take a coarse comb and comb 'em. 
 They was 'bout half grown and was the prettiest things I 
 ever saw in the world. Nigger Jim kept 'em with him at 
 night in his little one-room house. By and by there 
 come a morning when I did n't see only one of 'em, and I 
 said to Jim, "Where's that other one?" 
 
 "Hit's gone, mist'ess," he said, "and I had both of 
 'em in my house last night." 
 
 But I always thought Jim left 'em out in the yard. I 
 did n't believe a word he said. Well, I put a shawl over 
 my head and went out to camp. I'd always go there to 
 hunt up anything that was missing. An officer went 
 around with me, and we found the lamb's head. The sol- 
 diers did n't deny they had killed it, and within a week 
 they got the other lamb. 
 
 Nothin' was ever paid me for what was taken or de- 
 stroyed, because I was one of these stout-hearted, and I 
 got so mad I would n't ask for any pay. Oh! I have seen 
 more trouble on account of that war than 'bout anything 
 else in all my life. 
 
 Some of the army meal and other provisions was stored 
 in our barn, and one of my cows eat a sack of the flour. 
 The doctors gave her calomel and everything, but she 
 swelled up and died. 
 
 I had a calf that I tried my best to save. "Now, Jim," 
 I said, "you tie this calf to the door inside of your house 
 every night, and don't let 'em kill it." 
 
 But one morning there was the rope hangin' from the 
 door, and no calf. " I never heard a sound," Jim said. 
 
 That nigger was a sleepy-headed thing anyway. He 
 
The Invalid's Wife 303 
 
 cooked for me, and at night he'd cook for the Yankees to 
 make some money. We made a search for the calf, and, 
 I 'clar' ! we found where the thieves had killed it not one 
 hundred and fifty yards from Jim's house. In a day or 
 two they tuck the calf's mother. 
 
 Those Yankees were the crudest men I ever heard of, 
 and I know we got mighty tired of 'em. But I expect our 
 folks was just as bad when they was in a strange place. 
 
 One night, when Jim went to water my mar' and horse 
 and mule, a soldier tuck 'em all. Oh! I could n't tell 
 you 'bout that war as bad as it was. It just broke me 
 up. They did n't leave me anything but myself and my 
 children. 
 
 Things got so bad I was 'fraid they'd kill the children 
 and eat 'em, and I had to go to headquarters and git a 
 guard. He was from Philadelphy. It was the rules that he 
 should always wear his uniform while on duty, but he'd 
 come in the house as often as he could and make himself 
 comfortable by takin' off his belt and sword. He did n't 
 want word of that to git to the general, and when he heard 
 any one comin' he'd put his belt on quick as lightning. 
 Then out he ' d run and meet whoever was comin' . " Halt ! " 
 he'd say, and you bet they belt. They stopped right there. 
 
 I was standin' at the gate one day when a soldier asked 
 me if I was a Rebel or a Yankee. 
 
 That was a pretty question to ask a lady. " It's none of 
 your business what I am," I said, "but you might have 
 enough sense to know I'm not a Yankee." 
 
 He just laughed and went right along. 
 
 Another time a soldier come to the house cryin'. He'd 
 got word that one of his sisters was about to die, and he 
 wanted to go to see her. His mother had sent him a trunk 
 
304 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
 
 plumb full of provisions that he could n't eat himself and 
 could n't take. He asked me a dollar for the trunk and all 
 there was in it, and I gave him the dollar to help the poor 
 thing to go home. 
 
 I was tickled one day. There was a big green punkin in 
 the garden, and some soldiers stood lookin' at it from out- 
 side of the fence for half an hour to the best of my knowl- 
 edge and belief. They was waitin' for a chance to steal it, 
 but I was in my room watchin' 'em. Sometimes they'd 
 reach over the fence and pick it up, and then they'd see I 
 was lookin' and they'd drap it. 
 
 " I wonder what they want, standin' over that punkin 
 so long," I said to myself, and finally I walked out and 
 spoke to 'em. 
 
 "Lady, can you spare this watermelon?" they said. 
 
 "I can spare it," I answered, "but that's not a water- 
 melon. It's a punkin." 
 
 They did n't beheve me, and they said, " Will you give 
 it to us?" ^ 
 
 "Yes, indeed!" I said, "take it along." 
 
 I did n't care anything about the punkin. They'd stole 
 my cows, and I had n't nothin' to feed it to. Everything 
 had been taken so clean that I had to draw rashions till 
 the country got settled down. I tell you we-all see the cruel 
 time. If you'd been hyar you'd have seen it, too. 
 
XXXIX 
 
 The Miner's Son ^ 
 
 They used to work a gold mine here in the Wilderness, a 
 little south of the Rapidan, and my father was the manager. 
 The mine employed over a hundred men, and I reckon 
 there was all of twenty-five houses clustered around it. 
 My father had cleared a few acres and built a frame house, 
 and we tended the land almost like a garden spot. Most of 
 the farm work was done by us boys, but Father helped after 
 his working hours at the mine, and we hired some. We 
 raised corn and potatoes, and we had a few cattle that run 
 on the commons in summer and that we kept in stables 
 during the winter and fed from our hay and fodder stacks. 
 It was pretty well a thicket all around outside of the village. 
 
 About the first year of the war the mine broke up. A 
 good many of the men went into the army, and the fam- 
 ilies scattered till I s'pose half the houses was empty. 
 
 The battle was fought here early in May, 1864. It was 
 nothing new for us to see soldiers. We were on a main high- 
 way, and thar'd often been a dash through of cavalry or 
 infantry. In fact, we were on the lookout for 'em all the 
 time. If we heard 'em a-comin' my father always went into 
 
 1 He was getting along in years, but he was still stout-framed and 
 vigorous. His home was in the Wilderness, but it was one of several in 
 a cleared tract of considerable extent where there was grassland and 
 cornfields. I visited with him in a rather barren apartment whose chief 
 article of furniture was a bed, and whose most cheerful feature was a 
 fireplace in which a few sticks of wood were burning with a pleasant 
 crackle and leaping of ruddy flames. 
 
306 The Wilderness 
 
 the house. The Confederates was getting as many men as 
 they could for their army, and an officer had told him that 
 if he was caught out they might conscript him. He was 
 sixty years old, but the officer said they'd very likely take 
 him whether he was an old man or not. 
 
 We fared pretty hard the year befo' the Battle of the 
 Wilderness, when General Meade was through here. It was 
 in November, and I was twelve years old. Meade had been 
 down farther south, but he had to fall back, and a drove of 
 his men come to the mine village. I think they was some 
 that just followed the main army butchering hogs and cattle 
 and gathering up food for the troops. We heard, befo' they 
 got here, how they was robbing people and burning every 
 vacant house, and we knew they'd get our chickens sure if 
 they saw 'em runnin' around. So we killed all our fowls up 
 and dressed 'em, and put 'em in tubs and salted 'em down. 
 Thar was some thirty or forty. We set the tubs in a closet, 
 and thought we'd made certain of havin' those chickens 
 for our own use. But we was just fixin' 'em in shape for the 
 raiders. The soldiers come in and searched the house, and 
 they was very rough about it. "Get out of the way," 
 they'd say, and they was tickled enough to find those 
 fowls all ready to cook. 
 
 They swarmed over the whole place, and we could n't 
 do anything at all to save our property. The house was 
 full, and the yard was full. I s'pose thar was five hundred 
 inside of the inclosure. Most of 'em had come to drink from 
 our spring that was close to the house. 
 
 It was a clear, sunshiny day, but very cold, and the 
 ground was frozen. Our cattle was in the stables. We had 
 about twelve head, and the soldiers got 'em out and shot 
 *em down and skinned 'em. They throwed the four quar- 
 
The Miner's Son 307 
 
 ters in their wagons to carry along and left the balance. 
 Our hogs was served the same way. We had about fifty 
 barrels of corn in the crib; and we say five bushels to a bar- 
 rel down here. They took that, and they took about 'leven 
 hundred pounds of pork; and all the time the officers just 
 stood back and looked like they'd turned their men loose 
 to do as they pleased. 
 
 Those soldiers stole all our clothes. They'd even bust 
 the trunks open and take the girls' clothes and their little 
 jewelry and things. If they needed a sack they'd get a 
 woman's skirt and tie a string around the top and put a 
 piece of meat in it, or whatever they'd picked up. Then 
 they could fasten it to the saddle and so carry it. Yes, 
 they'd use a skirt just that-a-way. That was the way they 
 done it. 
 
 When they had cleared up everything they pulled off 
 and left us destitute. They was all gone across the Rapi- 
 dan befo' night. We did n't have no supper. Thar was n't 
 a piece of meat of any kind on the premises, but we had 
 perhaps a bushel of flour, and we baked loaf-bread, and 
 every night and morning we'd take our pone and a glass 
 of water. I went to bed crying many a night I was so hun- 
 gry. We just had to truck around the best we could to get 
 food. Some of the neighbors who lived out of sight more 
 away from the main road did n't lose as we did, and they'd 
 perhaps have a little to spare that we could buy. 
 
 We had a very different experience when General Grant 
 come. He was ready for business and thar was no raidin'. 
 But he did n't have no idea thar'd be a battle here in this 
 Wilderness when he crossed the Rapidan on May 4th. 
 Early the next morning the Rebels attacked him over on 
 the plain about a mile from whar we lived. The skirmish 
 
308 The Wilderness 
 
 line went right through our yard, and they told us we'd 
 better go away. So we went off a half mile toward the 
 Rapidan to a house that had a cellar in it. We left the dogs 
 at home and the door unlocked, but the soldiers never come 
 in the house, and nothing was touched or harmed at all. 
 
 We carried some chairs and benches down in the cellar 
 and stayed the night out. Thar must have been twenty or 
 thirty of us. The Confederates was shelling Northern rein- 
 forcements that was crossing the Rapidan, and when we 
 looked out in the evening we could see the Rebel shells fly- 
 ing over our heads. Each shell showed like a swift-moving 
 blaze of fire with a short streak behind it. That shelling 
 was pretty scarey. I don't s'pose the older people done any 
 sleeping that night. They just set thar and listened to the 
 shells goin' over. We never had any supper nor breakfast 
 neither. 
 
 About sunrise we went home. The armies had moved on, 
 and the firing line was getting mo' distant from us, but all 
 day we could hear the musketry. It was a continual roll 
 like distant thunder, for the battle was too far away to dis- 
 tinguish one gun from another. The troops were charging 
 each other right in the thickets. Often forest fires would 
 break out from the shootin', and that would be awful for 
 the wounded. Sometimes the Yankees would be pushed 
 back, and sometimes the Rebels, but at last the Rebels 
 withdrew, and only four days later they fought Grant 
 again down at Spotsylvania. 
 
 It was a great relief when the fighting here was over. 
 We were just simply glad it had passed off — like a storm, 
 you know. The armies had lost nearly thirty thousand 
 men in all, and that battlefield was a dreadful thing after 
 they'd gone. Besides the dead men and dead horses thar 
 
The Miner's Son 309 
 
 was anything you could think of that an army would cany 
 strewed around in the woods. The men had thrown the 
 things away as they left, and not much of it was South- 
 ern property, for the South had mighty little to throw 
 away. 
 
 Every day we'd go out through the woods to pick up 
 things, and so did all the neighbors. The armies had no 
 time to come back for what they had left, and we took what 
 we could use. We could find anything we wanted. Thar 
 was army clothing of all kinds, and saddles and bridles and 
 tents, and thar was any number of guns. We find some of 
 them guns now. We could have got wagon loads of blank- 
 ets, and whar the soldiers cooked their rashions we'd find 
 plenty of knives, spoons, and coffee boilers. The coffee 
 boilers was tin pots with a handle on one side and a spout 
 on the other. Sometimes we'd come across a whole bar'l of 
 hardtacks. Co'se thar was a good deal of meat left, but we 
 did n't care for that in among the dead men. 
 
 The battle day was very warm for the time of year, and 
 men who were killed when the weather was hot like that 
 would swell as much as their clothes would let 'em and turn 
 just as black in the face as your coat. I never want to butt 
 up against nothing else like that. The whole air was tainted. 
 It was a horrid smell, and it was made worse by the refuse 
 left whar the cattle was butchered. I was glad we did n't 
 live right on the battlefield in among all that the way some 
 people did. 
 
 Just as soon as the fighting was over the wounded were 
 picked up, but thar was quite a number that the searchers 
 never got. We found one right on the side of the turnpike 
 three or four days after the battle. His brains were running 
 out from a hole in the back of his head. He could n't talk, 
 
SIO The Wilderness 
 
 but he made a sign for water, and my father told me to 
 take one of those coffee boilers and get some. 
 
 I went a quarter of a mile to a branch and filled the coffee 
 boiler and brought it back. We held his head up, but he 
 could n't drink. It seem like the water strangled him. But 
 we got him some hardtack, and he dipped that in the water 
 and let it saturate, and then he could suck it. The flies 
 bothered him, and Father broke a bush and gave it to him. 
 He had the strength to use his hands and scare the flies off. 
 He was three mile from our house, and we left him thar 
 layin' on the pine needles. 
 
 We come back to him every day for eight or ten days as 
 long as he lived. It was awful to see the poor fellow. He 
 had a pretty hard time after he got so he could n't fight the 
 flies. Finally we come thar one morning and found him 
 dead, and we left his body whar it was. 
 
 While we was lookin' around on the battlefield we 
 noticed one of the men who'd been killed layin' with his 
 coat thrown back, and we could see the edge of a Testa- 
 ment in an inside pocket. Father said to me, "Boy, get 
 that." 
 
 But I did n't have the courage, and he took it and give it 
 to me. The name of the soldier's mother, and her address 
 — Beaver, Maine — was written on the flyleaf. I kept 
 that Testament for fifteen years afterward. Then I wrote 
 to the flyleaf address, and I got a reply and sent the book 
 to the dead soldier's folks. In return they sent me a nice 
 Bible. I s'pose they was mighty glad to get that little 
 Testament. 
 
 Hundreds of those who perished in the battle here were 
 not buried, but laid scattered around on the ground. The 
 men who did the burying missed 'em in the thick brush, 
 
THE WOUNDED MAN AND HIS HARDTACK 
 
The Miner's Son 311 
 
 and their bones was thar till after the war. We can find 
 bones on the battlefield sometimes now, but the govern- 
 ment sent a burial corps here soon after the war ended, and 
 they gathered up most of the bones and carried 'em to the 
 National Cemetery at Fredericksburg. About the same 
 time a lot of the bones of the horses that was killed during 
 the battle was carted off to be ground up for fertilizer. 
 
XL 
 A Youth on a Farm ^ 
 
 I WAS a boy of fourteen when the battle was fought here. 
 That was n't our first experience with armies. Consider- 
 able fighting was done right around in this region, and 
 in April, 1863, our cattle was drove off on the hoof by Joe 
 Hooker on his march to Chancellorsville, which is less'n 
 ten miles away. 
 
 There used to be a song about " Old Joe Hooker comin' 
 out to the Wilderness." That referred to the time when he 
 was through here and we lost our cattle. We had a right 
 good little bunch of 'em — possibly ten or twelve or fif- 
 teen — something like that. Me and my aunt tried to see 
 an officer to get our cattle back. I reckon we followed the 
 troops as much as a mile, but we could get no satisfaction. 
 It seem to me like we had one cow and heifer left. I think 
 they broke and got away and come back afterward. 
 
 Late in the autumn of that same year Meade was through 
 here, and he got our sheep and hogs and hens and geese. 
 We had one gander that must have been forty or fifty 
 years old. He was down on the creek with the geese, and 
 they got him, too. I 've always heard that Meade skinned 
 the geese to get the feathers off. All our horses was taken 
 except one old blind mar'. 
 
 The men come right in our house, and they'd go for the 
 
 1 The former farm boy was now a ponderous, gray old man. I found 
 him sitting with a few cronies on the porch of a rude little Wilderness 
 store, and there we talked. 
 
A Youth on a Farm 313 
 
 places where we kept our victuals the first thing. If we 
 did n't give 'em what they wanted they'd threaten to 
 break our dishes. They was just wild, rattlin' fools. Some 
 claim they was foragin' for the army, but that's not likely. 
 I don't s'pose this country could have afforded Meade's 
 troops rashions for one meal even. I reckon, sir, the men 
 who raided our houses was n't acting under orders. They 
 was pillaging. 
 
 We did n't have enough to eat after the armies passed, 
 and we had to go off twenty-five or thirty miles where they 
 did n't invade and get what we could. Some of the people 
 had rashions issued to 'em by the Confederate army or the 
 state. 
 
 There was very little doing on the farm the next spring. 
 Father was an old man crippled up with rheumatism pretty 
 much as I am now, and we had nothin' but that old blind 
 mar' to use breakin' the land. But we managed to plough 
 several acres and planted one small field of corn. Then 
 Grant's troops come and trampled the corn in the ground. 
 A big slew of 'em passed right through our place, and some 
 of 'em camped on our farm and burnt a lot of our fence 
 rails. Rails make a mighty good fire, and wherever a bunch 
 of soldiers camped they burnt as many as they wanted. 
 
 The troops on our land broke camp the next morning 
 and most of 'em marched off and went into battle. Some 
 of the skirmishers stayed around near our house, but there 
 was no regular pitched battle within a mile. When the 
 guns was not firin' too rapid I was out standin' on a hill to 
 see what I could see. The main road was not far away, and 
 I could watch the troops passin', but the battle was in the 
 forest. I could hear the guns firin' and the men yellin', and 
 I could hear the balls whistle, too. 
 
314 The Wilderness 
 
 At one time there was firin' across our house. I went in- 
 doors. There was no standin' out then, by George! We 
 had a frame house, but it was small and did n't have any 
 cellar. None of us was hurt though. The battle kept on all 
 day, and they was fightin' like the mischief in the night, 
 and there was more fightin' the next day. 
 
 Afterward the dead men lay so thick that in some places 
 you could step from one body to another. There was most 
 everything you could look at strewed around in the woods. 
 There was camp kettles and hardtack and packages of 
 coffee and ammunition and any quantity of guns. I 'd pick 
 up the guns and enjoy myself shootin'. I've got two or 
 three old army guns now at the cornhouse. You could fill 
 a wagon with clothing in a very short distance, and lots of 
 it was never picked up but lay and rotted on the ground. 
 Plenty of people was on the field same as I was, lookin' 
 around and carry in' off what they wanted. 
 
 Thousands of saplings was cut off by bullets, and I saw 
 large trees that had been felled by the shells and balls. 
 There are bullets in the trees here yet. The saw-mill men 
 often come across 'em in the trunks of the pines and big 
 oaks. It don't matter when the saw hits a lead bullet. The 
 teeth cut right through that, but when a circle saw such 
 as is used here runs into a big, round, solid steel ball, or 
 half a bumbshell, or something like that, the shanks are 
 torn all to pieces, and the saw is ruined. 
 
 Another thing that makes trouble for our sawmills is 
 spikes. You see the troops would generally aim to camp in 
 timber, and they'd drive spikes into the trees to hitch their 
 horses to. So our saws are injured as a result of the war 
 even where no battle was fought. 
 
 Well, that old Battle of the Wilderness was terrifying, 
 
A Youth on a Farm 315 
 
 and the war was disastrous for us, but if I had my Hfe to 
 Uve over I'd take it all in again. Those were interesting 
 times, and what I saw was well worth witnessing. 'Long 
 toward the last of the war I had right smart anxiety to be 
 in the army. That was boyishness, I reckon. 
 
XLI 
 
 The Trucker's Lad^ 
 
 I WAS eight years old when Lee and Grant fought at Cold 
 Harbor. We're right on the battlefield now, and hyar on 
 this little rising ground is whar Lee's army was posted. 
 The woods all around was full of rifle-pits. My boys found 
 one of those rifle-pits this morning when they were digging 
 up a stump. If the bullets were flying, a soldier would n't 
 stop more'n five minutes before he'd start scraping a hole 
 to get into. 
 
 Dad was a trucker, and we lived two mile from hyar in 
 an old-fashioned farmhouse. In those days folks raised 
 more variety than they do now, and we got about every- 
 thing we needed to eat and wear right off our own land. 
 But late years we haul our produce to market and spend 
 nearly all the money that is paid for it before we come back. 
 
 We had four hundred acres of cleared land and grew corn 
 and potatoes, and wheat, oats, and grass, and all kinds of 
 truck stuff such as watermelons, cabbage, tomatoes, and 
 sweet potatoes. We carried the truck stuff to Richmond, 
 which is about a dozen mile away, in two-wheeled carts 
 drawn by one horse. In summer time we kept from three 
 to five carts going constantly, and even on Sundays we 
 
 1 He was a typical Southern countryman with a long moustache and 
 a black slouch hat. We visited together while he stood leaning against 
 a porch post of a rude, shanty-like rural store. His gray, saddled mule 
 was hitched near by waiting patiently till its owner was ready to start 
 for home. 
 
The Trucker's Lad 317 
 
 did n't stop work entirely. For instance, if the cantelopes 
 were ripe, they had to be picked every day, and we'd gather 
 and pack 'em up on Sunday morning. Such work was con- 
 sidered a necessity. Besides, it was a case of " Everybody 's 
 doing it," as the song says. I know that my mother did n't 
 find fault, and she was a regular fightin' Methodist. Nor 
 did the preachers themselves complain. But we did n't 
 work all day. We had to go to church. 
 
 McClellan was through hyar in 1862 and fought in this 
 neighborhood for nearly a week night and day right along, 
 Thar was a complete roar all the time. But we did n't see 
 much of the Yankees then at Cold Harbor. No sooner did 
 they get hyar than they was gone. It look like they did n't 
 pause a minute, but was swept right off just as you might 
 blow out a candle. 
 
 Grant moved more gradual. He and Lee had been fight- 
 in' pretty steady for a month, beginnin' with the Battle 
 of the Wilderness, before they fought hyar on June 3d, 
 1864. 
 
 We'd got along very well with McClellan's men. They 
 paid for every drop of milk and anything else they got, but 
 Grant's troops simply took all that they could lay their 
 hands on. Sheridan arrived several days ahead of the main 
 army, and, as a general thing, what he could n't carry 
 along he destroyed. He picked up all the horses that were 
 any good. We had four or five beauties on our place and he 
 got them. But he did n't find the things we had in our 
 cellar, and he did n't usually take quite all of a man's corn. 
 
 Out our way the Cold Harbor fight began on a Friday 
 at Old Church, five mile northeast of hyar. They had a 
 right smart skirmish over thar. It was about mid-day that 
 the Confederates went past our house goin' in that direc- 
 
318 Cold Harbor 
 
 tion. Thar was fifteen hundred cavahy ridin' four abreast. 
 They run right into the Yankees and come mighty near 
 not gettin' out. You see we had only a little handful of 
 men down thar, and they had to fall back. Some of 'em 
 come back fast enough to be fallin', too. They reached our 
 place at three o'clock to the best of my memory. The 
 officers tried to form a line right south of the house, but 
 when the Yankees got within quarter of a mile the line 
 broke. 
 
 I can't say that I was scared. I was runnin* around to 
 see what was goin' on, and Dad was after me with a big 
 stick tryin' to drive me into the basement. He wanted me 
 to go into the ground whar I'd be safe from the flyin' 
 bullets. 
 
 The Confederates had hardly gone when the Yankees 
 swarmed around the house, and General Merritt rode up 
 to the door. He'd lost his hat and was wearing one he'd 
 picked up. It was an old yellow hat that had gone to seed 
 and had a hole in it. When McClellan was hyar General 
 Merritt had camped in our yard, and now he spoke to Dad 
 and said, "Well, old man, I'm glad to see you"; and he 
 asked for some whiskey. 
 
 Dad owned about fifty hogs and twelve or fifteen head 
 of cattle. We got most of the cattle up that evening from 
 whar they were grazing and penned 'em close to the house. 
 General Merritt put on a guard and would n't let the sol- 
 diers trouble 'em, but we lost one yearling. The hogs ran 
 wild, and they were scared by the noise and commotion and 
 got off in the creeks and swamps whar they were safe. 
 
 Thar was shelling Friday night, and we had to go in our 
 cellar, but the gunners did n't get any range on our house, 
 and late in the night we went upstairs. The soldiers were 
 
The Trucker's Lad 319 
 
 all over our place, and Dad used to say after the war that 
 every man in Grant's army had camped on his farm one 
 time or other. Near our house was an old field, and I'll 
 bet two or three thousand soldiers was layin' around thar 
 that Friday night. 
 
 In the morning the whole country as far as I could see, 
 everywhar, was covered with tents and men. The big 
 battle was soon being fought and the noise of the firearms 
 was p-r-r-r-r-r — just like that all the time. It sounded 
 more like a corn-sheller rattlin' than anything else. Be- 
 sides thar was the boom, boom! of the cannon. 
 
 The Yankees had to charge across swampy low ground 
 and up a slope where the Confederates had fixed up some 
 rough breastworks to protect 'em. Lee's position was a 
 strong one that could only be attacked in front, and 
 Grant's troops saw that they were goin' to be slaughtered. 
 Many of 'em attached labels to their clothes givin' their 
 names and addresses so that when their bodies were picked 
 up friends at home could be informed of their death. The 
 bullets just mowed 'em down, and history records that 
 Grant lost five thousand men in eight minutes. 
 
 Thar was an officer who had some soldiers camped just 
 back of our house. He was settin' in the shed with my 
 father when an officer higher up rode into the yard and 
 said to him: "Your men have n't had any fun yet. Take 
 *em along and put 'em to the front." 
 
 One hundred and twenty men marched off in accord with 
 that order. Late in the day twenty-one returned to their 
 camping-place. The bullets had got the rest. 
 
 The really hard fightin' was all done inside of half an 
 hour, and it was the bloodiest half hour ever known in 
 America. Twelve thousand Union men had been killed or 
 
320 Cold Harbor 
 
 wounded, and Grant said, in later life, that the assault 
 hyar at Cold Harbor was his greatest military mis- 
 take. 
 
 The armies had a heap of ambulances, but thar was n't 
 enough of 'em, and every kind of wagon you could think of 
 was used also. Plenty of those wagons had no springs. 
 They were on the road in one continual line with the men 
 inside layin' flat on their backs any way the wagon men 
 could fix 'em. Most of the wagons carried the wounded 
 fifteen mile to the railway. 
 
 Thar was a hospital tent put up on a level piece of land 
 on our place. Seem to me it was as much as forty feet wide 
 and two hundred feet long. At its far end were some doc- 
 tors while the wounded were arriving. The doctors had 
 their sleeves rolled up like butchers, and they 'd whack a leg 
 off, bind up the stump, and send the poor fellow along; 
 then do the same for the next one. 
 
 Just after the battle a wounded man came to the 
 house. A bullet had passed straight through the middle 
 of his wrist. Mother bandaged the wound. All those old- 
 fashioned women knew how to doctor. While she dressed 
 it up for him the man stood and cried like a baby. He told 
 her he 'd been to our place when McClellan was down hyar 
 and at that time had stole a hive of bees from us. He put 
 the hive on his shoulder and ran like the dickens so that 
 the bees flew back and did n't sting him much. 
 
 "You called me a nasty, stinkin' bloodhoun'," he said 
 to Mother, "and I thought if I'd got so low as that it 
 was time for me to mend my ways. I 've never stole from 
 anybody since, but have made out on my rashions." 
 
 The troops left the vicinity of the battlefield within 
 twenty-four hours, and on Sunday morning Dad sent me 
 
The Trucker's Lad 321 
 
 and my brother, who was three years older than I was to a 
 day, to see how my sister had got along. She was married, 
 and her house was about half way to Richmond. We had 
 to go on foot because our horses were all stolen, and we left 
 the road and cut right through the country hyar. It was 
 probably ten o'clock when we started. We soon struck the 
 battlefield, and we could judge something of how hot the 
 fight had been by the looks of the trees. They had no more 
 bark on 'em than the side of a house. 
 
 Plenty of guns and knapsacks were scattered about thar, 
 and the dead men were layin' on the ground putrifyin'. 
 The battlefield was as blue as could be with dead Union 
 soldiers. They lay just as thick as watermelons ripening 
 in a patch. I never seen anything like that battlefield in 
 my life. People said you could walk on the bodies from hyar 
 to Gaines's Mills, two mile, without touchin' your foot 
 to the ground. I know you could n't get through whar the 
 bodies lay thickest without steppin' sideways between 'em. 
 In one place the troops had to clear the bodies out of the 
 road so they could get up and down it, and they made great 
 piles — thirty, forty, and fifty in a pile. 
 
 Two local men was thar on the battlefield that Sunday 
 morning searchin' dead men's pockets. One of 'em was 
 white and the other black. I began to feel sick. Lookin' at 
 the dead men did n't agree with me, but my brother did n't 
 mind anything, and he was interested to watch those two 
 fellers robbin' the bodies. It was a gruesome business that 
 they were at. The bodies had fallen on top of each other in 
 the ditches whar thar were breastworks, and the men had 
 to pull the top ones off to get at the pockets of those that 
 lay underneath. Often they found a half dollar or so, or a 
 medal, or something else of value. I expect they got right 
 
322 Cold Harbor 
 
 smart in all, and I reckon the sight of that plunder kept 
 their stomachs all right. 
 
 We was thar maybe an hour. By that time I was gettin' 
 pretty weak and my brother led me off. Oh ! it was a horrid 
 sight. I would n't want to look at it again. A good many 
 bodies lay on the field for quite a while, but I suppose they 
 were all buried and covered up in the course of a week. 
 
 We found things was all right at my sister's, and we come 
 home that same day and walked across the battlefield 
 again. I got away from it that time as quick as I could 
 without any stoppin'. 
 
XLII 
 A Rustic Slave Woman ^ 
 
 I BELONGED to ol' Doctor Tyler. He was President Tyler's 
 brother. Early in the war he died, and then I belonged to 
 his son, the young doctor. I was raised in the house and 
 waited on the white folks thar. They always called my 
 mother "Mammy." 
 
 At the time the war began I was married and I had sev- 
 eral children. We lived in a log house the same as the other 
 slave families did. I reckon the Tylers had as many as ten 
 of those log houses. They was built like a street. At one 
 end of each house was a chimbley made of sticks and mud. 
 The fireplace inside was so large we could burn logs in it 
 and have great big fires to keep us warm. Clay mud was 
 thrown between the logs to stop the cracks, and it hard- 
 ened and stuck thar. Oh! a log house can be made mighty 
 comfortable. 
 
 Everybody had to work if they was slaves. The little 
 children would pick cotton. I used to weave and spin and 
 all like of that. The looms and spinning-wheels was in the 
 shop and washroom. 
 
 Each family had a garden, and we had pigs and chickens. 
 
 * I did not find her at the tiny house on the borders of some thin 
 pine woods where she lived, but by dint of searching discovered her 
 at a white neighbor's. She was stalwart of frame, but slow of move- 
 ment, very black, and with a countenance that beamed amiably as 
 she told her story. She sat in the doorway of the outdoor kitchen, 
 an ugly new structure of unplaned boards, and I sat close by under 
 a tree in a chair. 
 
324 Cold Harbor 
 
 Master used to allow us to raise one hog. He'd give us a 
 little pig, and when it had grown to be a hog and the time 
 came to fatten it, Master would have the hog put in his pen, 
 and we'd get it when it was butchered. 
 
 He let us have 'bout three or four hens and furnished the 
 feed for 'em, and when we killed a couple of hens one would 
 be for him, and he had half the chickens. 
 
 The first Yankee raid down hyar was in the summer of 
 1862. It was then that the children came running one day 
 to Doctor Tyler and said: "Master, thar are lots of men on 
 horseback up the road, and they have blue clothes on. 
 Come and look." 
 
 The children had never seen nobody dressed that away. 
 In fifteen minutes the yard was full of Union cavalry, but 
 they soon went on, and they did n't do no harm. 
 
 We fared very well through this country till Sheridan's 
 cavalry came in 1864. His men was quite troublesome and 
 we saw hard times. They did n't tarry long — only one 
 night, but they swept the deck and burned the broom. If a 
 cavalryman come across one of the hogs that ran in the 
 woods he'd kill it and throw it up on his horse and carry it 
 away. They got Mother's hog right out of the pen. I 
 reckon it weighed over a hundred. They took every hen 
 they could find. We thought they had got all of ours, but 
 one ol' hen was settin' in a gully in the orchard. She was 
 under a brush pile and nobody did n't know she was thar 
 till after the battle. Then she come to the house with 
 fifteen chickens. 
 
 The raiders drawed the clothes off my mother's line, and 
 they took a new country-wove counterpane and a dress. 
 The farmers had all their corn and fodder stolen or de- 
 stroyed, and those men actually would go into your kitchen 
 
A Rustic Slave Woman 325 
 
 and take the bread out of the skillet. They come into our 
 house and pointed to a featherbed, and one of 'em said to 
 Mother, "Is that your bed?" 
 
 "Yes," she told him. 
 
 "I believe it 's a blamed ol' Reb's bed," he said, and he 
 went off with it. We found it afterward up hyar at Cold 
 Harbor all ripped open. 
 
 Some told us that Uncle Sam would pay for everything 
 that was taken or destroyed, but we poor slaves never got 
 any pay for what we lost. 
 
 Sheridan's men went into the white people's houses and 
 took the silverware and carried it off, and they 'd take the 
 bolsters off the beds and empty out the feathers so they'd 
 have bags to hold corn or wheat or anything they wanted 
 to put into 'em. If they saw pretty and nice things that 
 they could n't carry they just broke 'em up. The Widow 
 Tyler owned some very costly silverware. It was gilted 
 with gold. But the Yankees did n't have a chance to steal 
 that because she had taken it to Jefferson Davis for safe 
 keeping. I don't know whether she ever got it again. 
 
 The raiders come to the Tylers' house just as the family 
 was settin' down to the dinner table. Thar had n't any one 
 eaten a mouthful, and the soldiers walked in and took hold 
 of the tablecloth and pulled it off so everything on it went 
 right down, and the china and glassware broke up on the 
 floor. Then they caught a lot of hens, and after cutting off 
 the heads with their swords, put 'em in the tablecloth. 
 They tied those hens up just like clothes that was goin' to 
 be sent to wash, and carried 'em off on one of their horses. 
 
 The Tylers had some great big books with leather backs, 
 and the soldiers carried off all of those that they could, and 
 they mashed up two looms and all the spinning-wheels. 
 
326 Cold Harbor 
 
 When Grant's and Lee's armies got hyar, we kept 
 watchin' which way they was movin', and the officers 
 promised to tell us if thar was any danger. On the morning 
 of the big battle it looked as if they might fight right on 
 our place and tear things all to pieces. So the Union offi- 
 cers told us to take the children and every one and go 
 away back in the rear. We all went. Most of us traveled 
 on foot, and the women toted the children that could n't 
 walk. My mother was afflicted with the rheumatism, and 
 we hitched a horse into a market cart and carried her. 
 Young Doctor Tyler's wife had a baby only a few hours 
 old, and we fixed a bed in a carriage and took her thataway. 
 
 We went 'bout a mile and a half to another house, and 
 the battle was goin' on. Lord 'a' mercy! it seem like the 
 guns shook the whole earth, and we could see the smoke 
 rise as if thar was a big fire. Thousands and thousands was 
 killed, and if the Yankees captured a Rebel who could do 
 anything at all to assist they made him come and help the 
 wounded. 
 
 Doctor Tyler's house was used for a hospital, and guards 
 were posted all around the place. Next day we colored 
 people come back. When I got thar one of the wounded 
 men was settin' on the steps of the big house beggin' for 
 water. I went to the well, which was right in the yard, and 
 got some. He was leaning back too weak to move, and I 
 put my arm behind his head and gave him a drink. But 
 the water and some blood come right out of a wound in his 
 chest, and he fell over dead. 
 
 Well, I helped what I could. Some Sisters of Charity 
 were thar, and they was nice ladies and certainly tended to 
 the wounded good. I went around, too, and if I see a man 
 suffering I would give him water, and I made coffee and 
 
A Rustic Slave Woman 327 
 
 cooked and washed. They brought the bundles of clothes 
 to my house. 
 
 Monday I went on the battlefield. Hundreds of people 
 was lookin' around thar, and some of 'em was what we 
 called "grave robbers" and was goin' along pullin' off 
 coats and boots. I took my oldest child with me. She was 
 big enough to comb her own hair, and she could sweep up 
 a floor very good, and tote chips, and stay in a room and 
 keep the fire. We come to whar a lot of dead soldiers was 
 buried. They was in great long trenches and not very well 
 covered, and some hogs was down thar eating of the dead 
 bodies. Pretty soon a dog that belonged on our place ran 
 past us with a man's foot in his mouth. 
 
 "Oh, Mamma!" my girl said, "look what Tige has got." 
 
 Then she fainted and fell. Thar was a branch near by, 
 and some of us older people got water and threw on her. 
 She come to, but we had to tote her all the way home. Thar 
 were five or six of us, and we took turns. As soon as we got 
 her in the house I sent for the doctor. He was thar in a 
 very short time, and he said: "You deserve to lose the 
 child. You had no business to take her to the battlefield." 
 Anyway, I never did go to it no more. 
 
 They buried the dead soldiers as fast as they could, and 
 they tore the fences to pieces and used 'em to burn up the 
 dead horses and the ol' stinkin' beef and the like of that. 
 
 The Tyler bam was filled with guns stacked up thar, and 
 the wagons come and took 'em away. Besides, the wagons 
 took away a whole parcel of things that the children had 
 picked up. My little boy had an army blanket and over- 
 coat he had brought from the battlefield. He wanted me 
 to make him a suit of clothes out of 'em, and when he saw 
 the wagons comin' he took the blanket and overcoat and 
 
328 Cold Harbor 
 
 ran down the hill to the swamp and hid 'em in the 
 bushes. 
 
 As soon as the Union army retreated back most of the 
 colored people went away with it. They did n't like bein' 
 slaves. Often they had masters who drove 'em so they 
 fared mighty bad — mighty bad! So off they went with 
 the Northern army, and some got kilt and some did n't. 
 A good many come back when the war was over. 
 
 Not long after the battle hyar the Widow Tyler moved 
 to town, and she took the oldest child from each of the 
 slave families. That was pretty hard on us, but we could 
 n't help ourselves. The young doctor wanted to get out of 
 the way of the army, and he went off with his family and 
 left us with nothing. We just had to shift for ourselves. 
 
 The Tyler house was a Union hospital for the rest of the 
 war, and the people in charge paid us for everything we did. 
 They paid us for work, and they bought peas, onions, let- 
 tuce, and such things from us. I 've gathered many a lot of 
 vegetables from the garden for 'em. 
 
 Every Sunday the soldiers had meetings on the lawn — 
 preaching, you know, for the hospital. A Httle drummer 
 boy beat his drum to call the soldiers to the meetings. I 
 certainly did fall in love with that little feller. He said that 
 when the war ended, he was comin' down South to see me, 
 if he did n't get killed. I used to cook for him. I 've give 
 him many a mouthful to eat. He was mighty fond of corn- 
 bread. So was all the soldiers. They 'd give you hardtacks 
 for it. I had good teeth and I could bite them hardtacks, 
 but ol' people would soak 'em in water. One while we 
 could n't get anything else in the world to eat but beef and 
 hardtacks. 
 
 We used to parch rye and wheat and corn and sweet 
 
A Rustic Slave Woman 329 
 
 potatoes for coffee. Sometimes we'd grind meal and parch 
 that and make meal coffee. Some liked it and some did n't. 
 It went very well with milk. 
 
 Thar was a number of different kinds of leaves that did 
 for tea, such as sassafras and sage and pine needles. Then 
 thar was holly. That was healthy. 
 
 We hardly ever seen sugar, but we could get molasses. 
 
 If we had plenty of corn we 'd take some of it and boil it 
 in a weak lye, and then wash it and rub it between our 
 hands to get the hulls off. It would wash out right white. 
 After that we'd put it on the fire to cook and make hominy. 
 Perhaps we 'd boil a piece of pork in with it. Some people 
 would eat butter with the hominy if they could get any. 
 The hominj^ was good with molasses, and if you fried it and 
 fried some meat, too, it was good that way. Sometimes we 
 made bread out of it. 
 
 Oh! but we were glad when the cruel war was over. The 
 white people said it was a civil war, but we slaves called it 
 cruel. 
 
XLIII 
 A Man from the Ranks ^ 
 
 I WAS a young fellow of twenty-three, but I 'd been in the 
 army a good long time. We 'd come all the way down from 
 the Wilderness skirmishing and fighting battles to keep 
 Grant from getting at Richmond. 
 
 My father's home was near Cold Harbor, and when we 
 got here General Lee made his headquarters there. While 
 we were in the vicinity I had a chance to visit the house a 
 number of times. I reckon I had n't been home befo' for 
 twelve months. Soldiers were camped all over the whole 
 country roundabout, but there was no fighting on our 
 place, for it was right smart in the rear. 
 
 At daybreak of June 3d we went into battle, but I 
 have n't much to say about that. It 's mighty little infor- 
 mation a soldier can give concerning a big fight. All a man 
 in the ranks done was to foller the man in front of him. He 
 had hardly any chance to look around and seldom knew 
 where he was goin' when he started somewhere. The feller 
 at home near where a battle was being fought saw more 
 than the soldiers did. 
 
 1 At the time I met him he was living with a local farmer for whom 
 he worked. No doubt he was an excellent helper, for though somewhat 
 stiff with age he was big and strong and intelligent. I made his ac- 
 quaintance in the evening when he was sitting with his hat on in the 
 kitchen of his employer. The housewife was busy there about her work, 
 and just as I entered had picked up the oil can to encourage a refrac- 
 tory fire in the stove. The oil was administered with a resultant flash 
 and bang and smudge that were more startling than agreeable. 
 
A Man from the Ranks 331 
 
 My regiment stayed two days on the fighting Une here 
 sharpshooting in the bushes. One Yankee got up within 
 twenty paces of me. I was behind a tree, and he shot at 
 me. The bullet took a piece of bark off. I reckon the tree 
 was about eighteen inches in diameter, and as many as a 
 thousand bullets must have gone in it. I saw afterward that 
 it was killed. It was shot from bottom to top, and the bark 
 was tore all to pieces. Trees bigger than a stovepipe were 
 cut down by nothing in the world but Minie balls and lay 
 all tangled up. Last fall they were sawing a big white oak 
 log at a sawmill here and struck a grapeshot. That grape- 
 shot broke every tooth out of the saw. 
 
 It was a red-hot fight we had at Cold Harbor. After the 
 bloody struggle was over Grant's army lay near by for 
 several days. One of the days was Sunday, but when these 
 battles was goin' on we soldiers could n't tell when Sunday 
 was, and that 's the truth. One day was just like another. 
 
 My brother had married an Allison. He was in the army, 
 and she had been stayin' at the Allison house, which stood 
 right on the fighting ground. She had to get out before the 
 battle began. The night after the battle my brother and 
 his wife and some others of us got a permit to go to the 
 Allison house to see what we could save. The Confederates 
 had been in and around the house, and they 'd thrown up 
 breastworks right through the yard. Besides, they 'd dug 
 a ditch so they could go to the spring without exposing 
 themselves. When my brother's wife saw that ditch she 
 was very much distressed. "Oh! my money's gone!" she 
 cried. 
 
 She had put some money in a cigar box. There was gold 
 and silver. I don't know how much. Now she was sure it 
 had been taken, but she scratched under a bush and found 
 
332 Cold Harbor 
 
 it. The ditch was within two feet of the spot. She did n't 
 cry no more. 
 
 The house had been riddled. You could see right through 
 the roof and anywhere. The family could n't come back to 
 it till it was made over. We went in and discovered that the 
 cannon-balls had struck the feather beds, and the feathers 
 were strewed all over the rooms. It looked like a goose nest 
 in there. We could n't have any light for fear of drawing 
 the fire of the enemy, but we could see those feathers with- 
 out any light. 
 
 Everything was shot to pieces. There was nothing left 
 hardly that was worth a cent. We gathered up some of the 
 feathers into old bags and ticks, and we got quite a lot of 
 clothing and a number of cups and saucers and more or less 
 other tableware. The bullets were shooting in our direc- 
 tion all the time, but there was considerable talking and 
 giggling among us as we felt around for things to carry off 
 and tried to bundle 'em up. Several times the Confederate 
 sharpshooters came to the house to beg us not to make so 
 much noise. They were afraid the Federals would think 
 something unusual was goin' on and we 'd get a volley 
 instead of scattering bullets. 
 
 There were seven of us, and we brought away a ton from 
 the house that night. After we 'd gone about half a mile 
 we reached our command. We put the things in an ambu- 
 lance there and sent 'em to my father's house. 
 
 My brother's wife never saw her husband any more 
 after that night. He got killed in a battle a little later. 
 
 One of my uncles was in Lee's army when it fought here, 
 and his house was not far from where the fightin' was fierc- 
 est. He had a log house, but the logs was hewn down fiat, 
 and it was plastered inside. You could make a fine house 
 
A Man from the Ranks 333 
 
 by fixin' it that way, but of course, if it was set on log pil- 
 lars, as most of our houses were, it would be let down when 
 the pillars rotted and would be one-sided. 
 
 At the time Grant's troops got here only my aunt and 
 her two little girls were at home. There was some fightin' 
 the day before the battle, and they could hear the firin' 
 of the guns, and the roads was just crammin' full of Union 
 soldiers. The soldiers scattered out all around my uncle's 
 place, and they was in the woods killin' his hogs, shoats, 
 and things. My aunt was mighty grieved at that. But 
 they was very good to the family and posted a guard at 
 the house. 
 
 Just befo' night a negro who was passin' spoke to my 
 aunt sayin': "Oh, Miss Sarah! don't stay here. You '11 be 
 killed. Go on away." 
 
 She turned to her oldest girl, who was about thirteen, 
 and asked, "Who is that?" 
 
 The negro saw that she did n't know him, and he said, 
 " I 'm Mr. Vicker's colored man." 
 
 He was an old darky who belonged to a neighbor, but 
 had gone away and deserted to the Yankees. Probably he 
 cooked for 'em. 
 
 My aunt did n't think she could leave the house and her 
 things, and she went about gettin' supper, but they were 
 all frightened most to death. The firin' seemed to be very 
 near, and the artillery had begun throwin' bumbshells. 
 Those shells made a great fuss a-whistlin' like as they came 
 over. That was what scared my aunt and her girls so much. 
 
 By and by two shells fell right in front of the house. One 
 of 'em burst and tore a great hole in the dirt only about 
 two rods from the chimney. The children were cryin': 
 "Let's go! We'll be killed!" 
 
334 Cold Harbor 
 
 "Well, I'll go," my aunt said; "only wait till I get a few 
 things." 
 
 So she picked up her money and jewelry and some other 
 valuables and made a bundle that she could carry in her 
 arms. The soldiers were comin' through the fields every- 
 where by that time gettin' out of the way of the Southern- 
 ers. My aunt and the girls started and the guard went with 
 them. They could all make their steps, and they hurried 
 along as fast as they was able. It was getting sort of dusky. 
 They went through the woods and by the big millpond 
 about a mile to a house and stopped. But the artillery was 
 bumbshellin' so hard that in a little while they went to 
 the next house. There they stayed over night. 
 
 In the morning they came back home. When they got 
 in sight of the house their guard said: "I'll leave you 
 now. You're all safe." 
 
 They thanked him, and he went off as fast as he could 
 run, for he knew that our men were not far off. After they 
 reached the house my aunt noticed that some one had slept 
 in her bed. "I don't know who it could be," she said. 
 
 Just then my uncle walked into the room. He'd spent 
 the night in the house. He thought they would come back, 
 and he'd been watching for 'em. As soon as he saw them 
 coming he cut across, and he was settin' behind a worm 
 fence close to 'em where they parted from the Yankee 
 guard. "I had my gun," he said, "but I would n't have 
 killed him for the world after he 'd been so kind to you." 
 
 My uncle had been down in camp in the Chickahominy 
 Swamp, and he told how he was cookin' bread there when 
 a great big shell come in the fire and threw the bread way 
 up yonder. He did n't know where it went. The men that 
 was there got their drinkin' water from a crick near by. 
 
A Man from the Ranks 335 
 
 A dead horse was layin' in the crick, but my uncle said the 
 water tasted mighty sweet to 'em. 
 
 He had to join his regiment, and his family refugeed 
 again. When they got back the best part of the house 
 had been pulled down and used for breastworks. 
 
 A good many families had been run out of their houses 
 the same as my uncle's family. There were six ladies with 
 their children who had refugeed at my father's house. 
 They'd fallen back and left everything and did n't even 
 have food to eat. Our company drew three days' rashions, 
 and all of us agreed to give the rashions to those suffering 
 women. We left the food at my father's and went without 
 food ourselves. I've gone hungry for three days many a 
 time in the army. 
 
 We were particularly badly off after Richmond was 
 evacuated. The commissary issued nothing but raw corn, 
 three ears for a day, a ear for each meal. You'd see men 
 goin' along the road eatin' the raw corn. If we were in 
 camp of a night we might make a fire and parch the corn. 
 But Sheridan's men were around and they'd shoot if they 
 saw a light. So if any of us started a fire the others would 
 shout, "Put that out"; and we'd have to eat our corn raw 
 again. 
 
XLIV 
 The Slave Boy ^ 
 
 Nearly all the ol' colored people who can remember the 
 war have passed out now. There's only a few left, and 
 mostly they got no mo' education than a brickbat. They 
 could n't read their own name if they see it. But they can 
 talk, yes, sir, they can talk. 
 
 I was quite a boy at the time of that Cold Harbor fight. 
 My master was a man named Wylie. He's dead now. He 
 had two cooks and my mother was one of 'em. A woman 
 by the name of Car'line was the other. One morning 
 Master was out in the garden with my mother and four 
 of us children pickin' strawberries. It was along after 
 breakfast and he was fixin' up some stuff to take to Rich- 
 mond. 
 
 By and by my ol' mist'ess come out to the garden. She 
 was a great knitter, and she could weave and spin and do 
 all such things. People used to make their own cloth then, 
 you know, and manufacture their own clothes. That 
 mornin' she was makin' a seine for ol' Master to use when 
 he went in the swamps to ketch fish. When she come to 
 the garden she had in her hand one of the wooden needles 
 
 1 "Uncle Davie" was grubbing up a thorn tree when I met him and 
 listened to his recollections of war-time. He was getting gray, but was 
 still capable of doing a hard day's work. That he was good-tempered 
 and mentally alert was quite evident. A local white youth vouched for 
 him as a man who could do anything — even preach. His one failing 
 was a liking for liquor, and he would preach one day and get drunk the 
 next, or vice versa. 
 
The Slave Boy 337 
 
 she used in makin' the net. It was two feet long — every 
 bit of that. "Mr. Wylie," she said, "don't you hear it 
 thunder? You listen to that roarin'." 
 
 The sky was as cle'r as it is now, and he says, "I don't 
 see no cloud, but that seems to be thunder or somethin'." 
 
 He stood there listenin' and lookin', and pretty soon he 
 says: "I certain think a cloud is risin' somewhere. The 
 sun is not as bright as 't was a while ago." 
 
 The weather was hot, yes, sir, and the roads was dry. 
 Off in the woods the Northern army was comin', and a 
 little breeze was blowin' which carried the dust from the 
 feet of the horses and men on ahead of 'em. It looked just 
 like smoke, but we did n't know yet what it was all about. 
 
 Presently several men on big black horses appeared at 
 the turn of the road. "Hello! Fanny!" ol' Master says to 
 ol' Mist'ess, "there 's somethin' goin' on." 
 
 We four children took for the gate. It was a big double 
 gate in front of the shop. We dumb up on it, and the men 
 went past — bloobity, bloobity, bloobity — as fast as they 
 could ride. 
 
 In a short time a great number of men on horseback 
 come galloping down the road and through the fields in 
 every direction, and there were foot soldiers runnin' and 
 carryin' on and tearin' the fences all to pieces and throwin' 
 'em out of the way; and they had some of the prettiest, 
 shiniest things at their sides — bayonets and swords. 
 
 We children went out in the road to see all we could see, 
 and Mother had to run out and get us. We lived in a log 
 cabin in Master's yard, and she took us there. She just 
 screamed she was so frightened. My ol' mist'ess was wild, 
 too, there was such a lot of mens and horses on the place, 
 and they had come so sudden, and there was so much 
 
338 Cold Harbor 
 
 hollerin' and confusion. Most of the niggers that Master 
 owned were all lost from each other, and Mist'ess did n't 
 want 'em to get killed. She thought too much of us for that. 
 
 Master had cattle and sheep, horses, hogs, and mules, 
 but Lord 'a' mercy! those men got nearly all of 'em. That 
 was one terrible time! They killed one young mule that 
 kicked when they was tryin' to get her out of the stable. 
 One of the soldiers shot her, and she fell right in the barn- 
 yard in a hole of water and died. 
 
 There was an oV pet sorrel horse out on the green lawn 
 in front of the house. She was n't worked any more, and 
 she was there grazin'. The soldiers saw she was no good 
 for their use, and they knocked her in the head. They 
 killed our sheep and shot our hogs and took all our 
 hens that they could ketch. They took all the meat 
 out of the smokehouse, and all the corn from the barn. 
 It was the same on the other farms. They went right 
 through the 'munity and took everything. 
 
 Late in the day a lot of 'em encamped over in the woods 
 across the road from Master's house. The big wagons 
 drawn by four mules had come and brought their tents 
 and things. They had drums — bum, bum — and they 
 blew horns, and we was all so scared that in the night ol' 
 Master's people and the colored people all went to another 
 house. Mother lit some taller can'les to light our way 
 through the woods. Those ol'-fashioned can'les burned 
 almost equal to a lantern. It would take a good wind to 
 blow 'em out. We just went through a string of woods 
 to another plantation. 
 
 The next day the armies were fightin'. Good Lord! I 
 never beared such guns, and we colored people went into 
 the cellar of the servants' house at the plantation where 
 
The Slave Boy 339 
 
 we'd gone. We stayed there the longest time till they 
 stopped shootin'. Our oV mist'ess brought us down crack- 
 ers and a few things to eat. 
 
 After the battle the Yankees ran down disaway through 
 the Chickahominy swamp and every direction, and the 
 Rebels pushed off toward Petersburg as hard as they could 
 rip. 
 
XLV 
 
 The Sutler's Lass ^ 
 
 My father was a machinist in Richmond when the war 
 began. But everything in a business way came to a stand- 
 still and he moved a few miles out of the city to a farm. 
 He thought he could make a living there and that he would 
 n't be so likely to be forced into the army. Father did n't 
 want to be a soldier. He had never shot a gun in his life 
 that I know of. He stayed right on the farm and kept out 
 of sight, for the recruiting officers were likely to pick up 
 any one they found away from home. A good many men 
 were so afraid of being conscripted that they spent their 
 time loafing and bumming in the woods. 
 
 I had a brother that we thought would have to be a 
 soldier. But he was delicate, and Mother said he could n't 
 stand army life. Lyin' on the damp ground would kill him. 
 So in order to keep him out of the war we made plans for 
 his running the blockade and escaping North. He was to go 
 to a relative of ours who lived in Jersey City. 
 
 For a while he hid in an old barn six or seven miles from 
 our farm waiting for an opportunity to slip through the 
 lines. Once I took some food to him there. I had a little 
 mule that I rode, and I carried the food tied up in a small 
 bundle in front of me. Mother sent some money, too. I 
 
 1 In the passing years she had become a fleshy, hearty old lady. 
 While she talked she sat eating supper in the farmhouse that was her 
 home. It was a house that stood where there had been some sharp 
 fighting, and it was scarred by many a bullet. 
 
The Sutler's Lass 341 
 
 was allowed to pass the pickets because I had a passport. 
 Some of 'em were too ignorant to read, but they 'd take the 
 paper and pretend to read it and would n't let on that it 
 meant nothing to them. I had no trouble in getting to the 
 house on the place where my brother was hid, and I left 
 the things I had brought and returned home. 
 
 Three or four other men ran the blockade at the same 
 time my brother did. The party paid a man so much to 
 take them, and I suppose they had to bribe the pickets 
 besides. 
 
 After my brother had gone I was the oldest of the chil- 
 dren at home, and I was my mother's girl and my daddy's 
 boy. They both depended on me a good deal to help with 
 the work and go on errands. 
 
 Our house was in the midst of a recruiting camp. But 
 we never was molested. The soldiers were as kind as they 
 could be. I think the camp was established there because 
 a branch was near at hand where the horses could be 
 watered. If ever the troops wanted to prepare for a battle 
 down this way they came around in that neighborhood. 
 We had the Black Horse Cavalry there and the Hampton 
 Legion, and I don't know how many more at one time 
 or another. Broke-down horses were sent there, too, and 
 taken care of to see if they could be made fit for use 
 again. 
 
 Conscripts were constantly arriving in the camp to drill, 
 and they appeared very 'umble and crestfallen and looked 
 very funny in citizens' clothes going through the tactics of 
 an afternoon. Officers were always scouring the country to 
 get men for the army, and they could take any one not 
 under eighteen or over sixty-five. Toward the end of the 
 war it was made lawful to conscript boys of sixteen. They 
 
342 Cold Harbor 
 
 were wanted for soldiers as soon as they could handle a 
 gun. No one was safe from those conscripters. Perhaps 
 you would be sitting at the supper table with your family, 
 and in would come an officer and take you and one or two 
 of your sons if they were old enough; or the officer might 
 find you on the road driving your wagon and would make 
 you go right along with him. 
 
 We kept a sutler's store in the camp. Our house was 
 large, and the store occupied two rooms. So many sol- 
 diers came to trade that we locked the doors and served 
 them out of the windows. They were camped all around 
 right up to the yard. In places where the turf has n't been 
 disturbed you can still find the little trenches they dug for 
 the water to drip down into from their tent canvas. 
 
 One of my brothers went in a spring wagon regularly to 
 Richmond to bring the groceries for the store. We sold 
 rice and flour, cakes, fruits, peanuts, and such things as 
 that. We was n't allowed to keep liquors. The peanuts we 
 sold unroasted. Some people likes 'em that way, but I 
 don't care for 'em in the raw state myself. The South 
 Car'linians called 'em "goober peas." They bought 'em 
 just as fast as we could pass 'em out. 
 
 The officers had their headquarters in the farmhouse 
 next to ours, and the troops used to have their dress pa- 
 rades in a fine open field on that place. All the neighbors* 
 ladies used to come to see the soldiers on dress parade. 
 'T was a lovely sight to watch them march and to see the 
 officers on horseback. Then, too, there was a band that 
 played beautiful music. 
 
 The troops were always coming and going. Sometimes, 
 when we went to bed, there 'd be thousands of men in tents 
 right around us, and in the night the bugle would call and 
 
The Sutler's Lass 343 
 
 off they'd go. The next morning we'd get up and not see 
 a tent. 
 
 One night they got news of a Yankee raid. Some of the 
 officers came to our house. I was asleep, but I woke up and 
 went to the window and looked out. I reckon it was ten or 
 eleven o'clock. There were three officers at the door with 
 Father, and they were whispering because they were 'fraid 
 the Yankee scouts might be lurking around. The officers 
 wanted Father to show 'em near cuts through the woods 
 so their troops could surround the Yankees, but Father was 
 new to the country, and he sent 'em to a neighbor who 
 could guide 'em better. 
 
 The road was full of infantry. It was late in the fall — a 
 cold, clear, moonlight night. The soldiers stepped along 
 very regular. I could just see their heads moving. There 
 was no talking or jostling. They marched till daylight 
 and came to the Yankee camp. But the Yankees had 
 heard them approaching and had cut out. It seem like 
 the Northern men must have been cooking breakfast and 
 just ran off and left everything. Our soldiers were glad to 
 get that breakfast, for they were nearly starved to death. 
 They rarely did have enough to eat. I know the soldiers 
 at the camp around our house were always hungry. We 
 could n't raise anything because they would get whatever 
 we tried to grow. They took all the poultry and stock in 
 the region. It was the same right through the South — 
 v/here the soldiers were you could n't keep a thing. If you 
 went to headquarters to complain a guard might be sent 
 to your house to protect your goods, but he'd take what 
 he wanted to hand to those outside. Hunger will make a 
 man do anything. If he can't get enough to eat you can't 
 blame him if he steals. 
 
344 Cold Harbor 
 
 Poor fellows! our soldiers were not only starved, man 
 and beast, but they did n't have enough clothes. Their 
 only way to get good shoes or clothing was to pull 'em off 
 from dead Yankees on the battlefields. Toward the last as 
 many of 'em wore Yankee uniforms as Confederate. 
 
 But whenever the troops got sudden marching orders 
 they left a great deal behind them in the camp. There was 
 a sight of waste, especially in the early part of the war. 
 Friends sent comforts to the soldiers, and they 'd leave the 
 nicest sort of things on the ground. I 've seen 'em dig a hole 
 and put all that they could n't carry into that, when they 
 were going to start on a march. We picked up a-many a 
 hundred pounds of bacon and washed and used it. Some- 
 times we'd find half a box of hardtack — big square crack- 
 ers as large as your two hands. 
 
 Did you ever think what a soldier carried? First there 
 was his knapsack which held a change of apparel. On top 
 of that a blanket was double strapped across his back. He 
 had a gun and a canteen, and he had a bag of white canvas 
 called a haversack that held food and hung under his arm. 
 A leather belt with a large buckle was around his body, and 
 attached to it was a cap pouch and a cartridge box full of 
 cartridges and a bayonet pouch. What do you think of that 
 for infantry marching on foot? 
 
 Besides, we had terrible roads here then — all cut to 
 pieces by the great amount of traffic and the heavy artillery. 
 What made things worse was the rain that fell incessantly 
 the whole four years of the war. It looked like it rained 
 more those four years than any years since. They say that 
 was on account of so much shootin'. There 'd be great gul- 
 lies in the roads and some parts became impassable. Teams 
 would often travel the byways in order to get along. I can 
 
The Sutler's Lass 345 
 
 remember how the commissary wagons would go bumpin', 
 bumpin' past. There ain't no springs in commissary 
 wagons. Four, six, or eight mules were hitched to each 
 wagon. The driver had those mules to take care of, and 
 sometimes he could n't find anything to feed 'em. 
 
 The teams had to travel those rutted and muddy or 
 dusty roads, and so did the soldiers. Often the soldiers' 
 feet got so sore and blistered they took off their shoes and 
 carried 'em. At night they lay on the ground, and if rain 
 fell they waked up in a puddle of water. I 'd prefer suicide 
 to a life like that. It 's worse than a brute's life. Then there 
 were all those who lost an arm or a leg and went maimed 
 and limping the rest of their days. Surely, no one with 
 common sense would want to be a soldier. 
 
 We had a big scare at the time of McClellan's raid. 
 Mother was a very brave sort of woman, and that was the 
 only time I ever saw her frightened. She got so excited her 
 hair come down. We owned a cow or two, and when we 
 heard that the Yankees were close at hand and advancing 
 in our direction. Mother had our colored man and woman 
 put the cows in the stable. Presently we saw a young man 
 in Confederate uniform coming on a horse as fast as he 
 could gallop. He was slim in figure, and his face was as 
 white as a sheet. "Oh my mother, my mother!" he was 
 saying. "Til never see my mother any more!" 
 
 We were at the back of the house, and he went on out of 
 our sight, and then we heard more galloping and saw two 
 Yankees right after him. They had big, fine horses, and his 
 was only skin and bones, and we were certain they 'd ketch 
 him. We supposed he had gone on up the road, but instead 
 he had raced into our front yard, turned his horse loose, 
 thrown his saddle and bridle out of sight and crawled under 
 
346 Cold Harbor 
 
 the porch. The Yankees came to the door and said he was 
 in the house. We did n't know anything about it, and they 
 walked right in and searched, but they did n't find him. 
 
 As soon as they had gone along he crawled out from his 
 hiding-place, saddled and bridled his horse, and started off 
 in the other direction. But he was hardly out of the yard 
 when those Yankees appeared on the road returning. They 
 were hot after him at once, and he was only about a hun- 
 dred yards ahead. Below the house was a hollow where 
 there were tall pine woods with a little undergrowth. He 
 slipped off his horse in the hollow, and got in the woods. 
 I was sorry for that man. I think he must have been a 
 scout or he would n't have been away from his regiment. 
 Probably he was safe when he got in the woods, for he 
 must have been used to crawling around and keeping out 
 of sight when he was trying to get as near the Union line 
 as possible. 
 
 One day there was a fight, not very far from where we 
 lived, at the Nine Mile Battery. A lot of negro infantry 
 with white officers fought on the Yankee side. I saw every 
 one of them niggers as they was goin' there, and I reckon 
 the column was certainly a half mile in length. I stood 
 near the road on an embankment that a Southern battery 
 had vacated, and one of the niggers raised up his gun 
 and pointed it at me to frighten me. Oh! it was skittish 
 times. 
 
 Before the battle began all the people that lived round- 
 about were told to vacate their houses. If they did n't 
 move they stayed at their own risk. Some houses were 
 burnt down. By and by we began to hear cannon, and 
 there were shells flyin' over. Me and Mother and the chil- 
 dren went down to the crick that ran through our place and 
 
The Sutler's Lass 347 
 
 lay there on the side of the bank till the cannonading was 
 over. The neighbors went down there, too. At the next 
 farm was a sick man, and they put him in a cot and took 
 him to the shelter of the bank. We had some corn on the 
 branch side, and I remember it had got large enough to 
 tassel. The cornblades were shattered by powder from 
 'exploding shells. We had hitched a cow to a stump, near 
 the com, by a long chain so she could graze and she had 
 wound the chain around the stump till she could hardly 
 move. But if she had been out at the full length of her 
 tether she might have been hit by a shell which fell there. 
 That was a mean cow. She kicked. Finally she got away 
 and wandered into camp, and the soldiers killed her. 
 
 The niggers that I saw passing our place went down to 
 the Nine Mile Battery, and the Confederates was waiting 
 for them. I don't suppose one of 'em was left to tell the 
 tale. If our men found a wounded nigger on the field they 
 stuck a bayonet through him, or stood him up and shot 
 him. They were mad to have those niggers fighting 'em. 
 It would have made me hot — turning against their mas- 
 ters who had taken care of and protected them! 
 
 After the battle the dead had to be buried, and our men 
 dug trenches and threw in four or five Yankees with a 
 nigger on top and shoveled back the dirt. 
 
 Some of the wounded were brought to our house. One 
 of 'em died there. He cut his name in the floor where he 
 lay. I could make out John, but not his last name. 
 
 Our house was as much as ten mile from Cold Harbor, 
 but we heard the infantry go in there at the time of the 
 battle. The sound was like a package of pop-crackers. We 
 heard the cannon, too. They made the windows rattle and 
 shook the ground. It was just like an earthquake. We had 
 
348 Cold Harbor 
 
 a very large black dog named Smut, and he howled and 
 did n't know what was goin' to happen to him. 
 
 A lady friend and I talked of riding over to Cold Harbor 
 after the fight ended, but Father said the battlefield was 
 not a fit place for females. He and an officer went. They 
 rode on horseback and came back the same day. The 
 officer brought with him a pair of cavalry boots that would 
 come up most to his waist. He pulled 'em off a dead body 
 that had begun to decompose, but he put 'em to soak in 
 the crick and afterward made a nigger clean 'em out. 
 
 Father was a very sympathetic man, and he said the 
 battlefield was a sickening sight. The weather was warm, 
 and the stench was almost stifling. I declare! that battle 
 was a sad thing. 
 
 There was a Captain Sears who often visited at our 
 house, and one Sunday afternoon in April, 1865, he and I 
 went for a horseback ride. We stopped at a house to make 
 a call and were sitting in the parlor when a courier arrived. 
 He was looking for Captain Sears and notified him that 
 Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, and Richmond was 
 to be evacuated. Of co'se we'd been thinking that Rich- 
 mond might go up, but you know, while there's breath 
 there's hope, and the news startled and frightened us. Oh, 
 my! it was a big surprise, and you bet we galloped home, 
 and the captain hurried on to join his regiment. Lor', yes'! 
 and I never saw him any more. 
 
 Then the uproar commenced, and Richmond was torn 
 all to pieces. The city was burned, and we could see the 
 smoke Monday and Tuesday. 
 
 The man I afterward married was in business in Rich- 
 mond. I know two of his horses were pressed by Jefferson 
 Davis when Davis was escaping. My husband used to 
 
The Sutler's Lass 349 
 
 curse old Jeff Davis many a time and say he was the worst 
 enemy the South had. 
 
 It was n't just horses that my husband lost. He owned 
 niggers, and they were freed. He had a lot of Confederate 
 bonds, and those didn't amount to shucks, you know. 
 Besides, he had a mailbag full of Confederate money. At 
 the least calculation he lost over a hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. He had a wholesale grocery and liquor store, and that 
 and everything in it burned. I don't know how many bar- 
 rels of brandy and whiskies and wines he lost. His safe got 
 red hot and stayed hot so long that all there was inside 
 melted. Oh! he lost a sight — he lost Uke all the world — 
 and he mighty near lost his mind. 
 
XLVI 
 The Color Bearer ^ 
 
 When the war began Atlanta was a place of not over seven 
 thousand inhabitants. It was in the heart of the Confed- 
 eracy, and it was a natural center for gathering and dis- 
 tributing supplies. The Federals did n't penetrate to the 
 region till toward the end of the war, and until that time 
 the people lived very comfortably. In fact, before Sher- 
 man came, we never wanted for anything. 
 
 My father went into the army early. At first he was a 
 lieutenant, but later he made up a company of his own and 
 was its captain. I became a color bearer in his company. 
 That was in 1861 when I was thirteen years old, and I was 
 the youngest soldier who ever went from Atlanta. 
 
 I used to see lots of fellows leaving here to go to the 
 front, and they'd holler and laugh as if they were starting 
 off to a picnic. They were new recruits, all fresh then. 
 They had n't got a taste of war. Box cars were used for 
 transporting the troops, but that did n't trouble 'em. 
 Some rode inside and some on top, and they were feeling 
 fine. They felt as if they could whip the whole world. 
 When they came back it was like a funeral — no hilarity 
 then. Some of the dust had been knocked out of 'em, and 
 a good many never returned at all. 
 
 Perhaps our greatest excitement in the earlier years of 
 
 ^ I spent an evening with him in a pleasant home near the business 
 center of the city. Youth was past, but he had as yet robust health and 
 an unbent form. 
 
The Color Bearer 351 
 
 the war was Andrews's Raid in the spring of 1862. I don't 
 know much about this man Andrews before that time 
 except that he had been teaching school in Kentucky and 
 had become a Union spy. His scheme was to have a small 
 company of picked men go down into the South nearly 
 to Atlanta, steal a locomotive, and then ride back north 
 on it, stopping on the way to burn the bridges and wreck 
 the railroad as much as possible. The raid was well 
 planned, and only a mere chance prevented it from suc- 
 ceeding. 
 
 Twenty-four soldiers were selected from some Ohio 
 regiments to aid Andrews. The men put on ordinary 
 Southern clothes instead of their uniforms and went south 
 in small detachments of three or four. When they were 
 questioned on the way they said they were Kentuckians 
 going to join the Confederate army. Nineteen of the sol- 
 diers succeeded in reporting to Andrews at Marietta, about 
 twenty-five miles north of Atlanta. 
 
 On Saturday, April 12, the adventurers bought tickets 
 for various places in the direction of Chattanooga and got 
 on an early north-bound train. The day was chilly and 
 rainy. After a ride of eight miles they reached Big Shanty, 
 where a stop was made for breakfast. The train crew and 
 all the passengers, except those twenty raiders, flocked into 
 the hotel and left the train unguarded. Then Andrews and 
 his men got busy and uncoupled the locomotive, the tender, 
 and three box cars from the rest of the train. Sixteen of 
 the men climbed into the rear car of the front section of the 
 train, and their leader and the three other men got into 
 the locomotive car. Big Shanty was a place where Con- 
 federate soldiers rendezvoused. Plenty of 'em were around, 
 and a sentinel stood not a dozen feet from the locomotive 
 
352 Atlanta 
 
 watching proceedings, but before any of 'em made up their 
 minds to interfere the train started. 
 
 Among the men gathered about the hotel dining-tables 
 was Captain Fuller and the locomotive engineer and my 
 brother-in-law. A commotion outside attracted their 
 attention and they rushed forth to find that a bunch of 
 strangers had gone off with a part of the train. At once 
 they started running along the track in an attempt to over- 
 take the raiders. But of course that was hopeless. They 
 kept on for about a mile and got to the next station. There 
 they secured a hand-car and continued to press on. That 
 pursuit was a thing Andrews had n't calculated on, and 
 really it was ridiculous — three men on a hand-car chasing 
 twenty men on a train. 
 
 The raiders were handicapped by the fact that there 
 was only a single track. They had to meet two passenger 
 trains and a freight, and it was therefore necessary to run 
 according to time-table. Besides, they were obliged to 
 make stops to get wood and water for the locomotive, 
 and to cut the telegraph wires beyond each station lest 
 word should be sent on ahead to stop them. When they 
 halted at a station they explained that they were going 
 with a special powder train to the Confederate army at 
 Corinth. 
 
 Once they tore up the track and loaded a lot of ties into 
 one of the box cars to be used in bridge burning. Their 
 most serious delay was at Kingston where they had to make 
 a long wait for a regular passenger train from the north 
 and two extras. 
 
 Meanwhile their pursuers on the hand-car had come to 
 where the raiders had torn up the track and were thrown 
 down an embankment into a ditch. But no bones were 
 
The Color Bearer 353 
 
 broken and they got the hand-car back on the rails and 
 proceeded with more caution. 
 
 Presently they came to a station where they found a 
 locomotive with the steam up, and they hastily loaded it 
 with soldiers who were there and renewed the chase. They 
 reached Kingston only four minutes after the raiders had 
 gone. Here they shifted to another locomotive and took 
 along one car with about forty men aboard. But they had 
 to abandon their train when they came to a place where 
 the raiders had broken a rail. They then hurried along on 
 foot until they got a fresh locomotive from the second of 
 the two regular passenger trains that the raiders had been 
 obliged to meet. 
 
 Soon they were right on the heels of the fugitives who 
 were still obliged to stop after passing each station to cut 
 the wires. They followed them so closely that they often 
 had the raiders' locomotive in sight. The country was 
 hilly, and the railroad was nothing but a snake in its wind- 
 ing, and when a curve took the stolen train out of view 
 they could usually still see the smoke of its locomotive. 
 
 The raiders dropped off ties and put all sorts of obstruc- 
 tions on the track but did not succeed in stopping their 
 pursuers. At last they approached a long covered bridge, 
 and they set fire to their rear box car and left it in the bridge 
 while they kept on. But before the bridge was seriously 
 harmed the pursuers arrived and pushed right into the 
 smoke with their locomotive and shoved the burning car 
 before them to the next side-track. 
 
 Now, after making a run of ninety miles, the raiders were 
 without fuel for their engine, and there was nothing to do 
 but abandon it. They scattered in the swamps, but men 
 gathered from every direction to chase 'em. Some of them 
 
354 Atlanta 
 
 were soon captured. Others contrived to keep their free- 
 dom for several days and got away quite a distance. But 
 eventually every man was caught, and also two of the 
 original party who had failed to make connections with 
 Andrews at Marietta. 
 
 If the daring undertal^ing had been successful it would 
 have seriously disturbed traffic and cut off the usual means 
 of getting supplies to our army in Tennessee. That railroad 
 was the only one out of the state to the north. The raid 
 was certainly one of the most thrilling incidents of the war. 
 
 Eight of the captives were tried by court-martial. They 
 were condemned as spies and hung here in Atlanta. I was 
 at home when Andrews was executed. The procession 
 passed our house, and I sat on one of our gateposts and 
 watched it go along the street. Andrews was sitting in a 
 big, old-fashioned family carriage drawn by two horses. 
 The sides were open, and I could see him on the back seat. 
 His face was very pale. He had long, black whiskers and 
 very black hair. Beside him sat a guard, and on the other 
 seat, facing him, was a minister. The driver sat out in 
 front. A squad of soldiers marched ahead, and on each side 
 of the carriage were several more, and a company of 'em 
 followed behind. Then came quite a crowd of people, some 
 on foot, some in carriages, and some on horseback. They 
 were all very quiet. It was a serious occasion. 
 
 My sister, who was standing at our gate, always said 
 that was one of the saddest days she ever spent in her life. 
 It seemed to her that a depression or gloom had settled 
 over the city. She first realized at that time the horrors of 
 war. Until then she had seen only our own soldiers here, 
 and though there were army hospitals, very few wounded 
 men had as yet been sent to them from the front. 
 
The Color Bearer 355 
 
 The hanging was to be public, and the crowd wanted to 
 see it. A good many boys were going along, and I jumped 
 down off the gatepost and fell into line in company with 
 one of the boys I knew. 
 
 Andrews was taken to the dense woods on the edge of the 
 city where was a hurriedly arranged gallows. When they 
 were ready to hang him they found they had forgotten to 
 provide the black bag which it was customary to put over 
 the condemned man's head on such occasions, but Andrews 
 asked to just have a pocket handkerchief tied about his 
 eyes. He was very courageous to the end. Some man in the 
 crowd furnished a handkerchief. It was quickly adjusted, 
 and the hanging followed. The prisoner, however, was a 
 very tall, slim man, and his feet struck the ground. That 
 would n't do, and the guards pulled off his shoes. Still his 
 feet touched, and the officer in charge dug a hole under 'em. 
 The body was taken down presently, put in a board coffin, 
 and buried where a big pine tree had blown over. The tree 
 roots were canted up ten feet high with the clay adhering 
 to 'em, and they 'd left a soft place where it was easy to dig 
 the grave. 
 
 Andrews' shoes were cut up for relics. I brought home 
 one of the pieces, and also a piece of the cord that bound 
 his hands. I was quite elated to be the possessor of such 
 prizes. When I reached home I ran in and said, "Ma, 
 I've got a piece of Andrews' shoe." 
 
 "Take it out of the house," she ordered. She wasn't 
 stuck on that kind of relics. 
 
 For some time afterward throngs of people were going 
 out to see the place where the raider was hung and buried. 
 The very next week a young man was standing over the 
 grave, and he stuck his walking-stick down into the earth. 
 
356 Atlanta 
 
 A hissing sound came up the hole, and the young man 
 threw a fit and had to be carried home. The body stayed 
 there twenty-five years. Then it was removed to the 
 Federal cemetery at Chattanooga. 
 
 The other condemned raiders were hung all together 
 very quietly not long after Andrews had been disposed of. 
 Only a few were present at the hanging except the mihtary. 
 It was n't an entire success. Some nooses had been hitched 
 to a beam, and two of the ropes broke, but the guards tied 
 'em together and dropped the men again. 
 
 The next year another execution stirred us up here. A 
 man who belonged to the Confederate army deserted and 
 returned to his home region up in North Georgia and went 
 to bushwhacking. The fellow had a regular organized 
 gang and made a business of stealing cattle, robbing 
 houses, and murdering. He committed so many depreda- 
 tions that the authorities arrested him, and he was brought 
 to Atlanta, tried, and sentenced to be shot. They had an 
 old dray at the jail, and on the appointed day he rode in 
 that, sitting on his coffin, to a grove in what is now a busy 
 part of the city. Just cheap little houses were scattered 
 about there then. They confined him to a big pine tree, 
 and a squad of men stood and fired their guns at him. 
 His relatives carried off his body to North Georgia. I 
 believe he was a prominent man up there. 
 
 About the first of May, 1864, Sherman began to move 
 down this way from Chattanooga, and a great many people 
 whose homes were in the region he was invading refugeed 
 here on the railroad or came in wagons. There was nothing 
 but excitement and sensations from then on. One battle 
 followed another, and after each fight every train that caroe 
 in brought wounded to be cared for. The ladies organized 
 
A HOSPITAL VIvSITOR 
 
The Color Bearer 357 
 
 relief societies and took turns in going to the different hos- 
 pitals to distribute food. My younger brother, who was a 
 great big chunk of a boy, used to go with Mother to help 
 carry the heavy baskets. They took soup, coffee, sand- 
 wiches, pies, cakes — everything. 
 
 I was in a cavalry regiment, which at that time was 
 campaigning in Virginia, but in the early summer my horse 
 was killed, and I returned home to get a new one. I came 
 by train. It was slow traveling. We spent every night on a 
 siding to leave the main track clear for the trains that were 
 carrying troops to the front, and for the work trains loaded 
 with darkies going to dig trenches and throw up dirt for 
 breastworks. 
 
 Whenever our train stopped at any station the ladies in 
 the neighborhood were sure to be on hand with pies and 
 other good things to eat. There 'd always be a table waiting. 
 
 I reached home and found the family anxious to refugee. 
 So I went down in middle Georgia and looked around for a 
 house that we could rent. After a while I ran across a 
 beautiful place that just suited me. The owner was a man 
 who was playin' out of the army. At first he thought I was 
 an enrolling officer, and when I called he was in bed with a 
 big cabbage leaf on his head. A cabbage leaf with vinegar 
 on it applied in that way was an old remedy for the neural- 
 gia and the headache. 
 
 The man recovered at once when he learned what I was 
 after. He got up and was very sociable and gave me a 
 drink of whiskey. I stayed to supper and feasted on fried 
 chicken, corn-muffins, milk, and butter. He agreed to rent 
 the house for a year at a hundred dollars a month and I paid 
 him five hundred dollars in cash and took his receipt. 
 
 As soon as I got back home we prepared to move. 
 
358 Atlanta 
 
 Atlanta was evidently doomed. The invaders had fifteen 
 men to our one, and the place had no chance whatever. 
 We felt that the Southern cause was lost. But I '11 tell you 
 when I first decided that the South would eventually be 
 beaten — it was when the Yankees began to get troops 
 from Europe by paying 'em five hundred dollars bounty. 
 Lots of those fellows in your army could n't speak a word 
 of English. But we fought on. Not another nation on 
 earth could have stood what the South did. The fact of it is 
 that the Rebels got hungry, and when a man's hungry he '11 
 fight. 
 
 At the time we refugeed, Father was with us on a leave 
 of absence, and as he was an army officer, he was able to 
 get government wagons for our use. They were old schooner 
 wagons that dipped in the middle and had bows above with 
 canvas over 'em. Each wagon was drawn by four or six 
 mules and had two soldiers detailed to it. The left wheel 
 mule was saddled, and a man rode on it. He had a check 
 line that went to the right wheel mule and a long line to 
 the left front mule, and he guided the team with those lines. 
 A steady pull meant to go to the right and one or more 
 jerks to go to the left. If horses or oxen had been hitched 
 to the wagons we would have driven 'em in the same 
 way. 
 
 I had a very large bay horse hitched to a lighter wagon 
 that we loaded with provisions. There was meat and flour, 
 and a sack of coffee and a sack of rice and the like of that, 
 and a keg of whiskey. Whiskey was better than money 
 then. A quart of it in the latter part of the war would sell 
 for one hundred dollars in Confederate money. 
 
 Of course, we could n't carry everything, but we took 
 along most of our best carpets and rugs, some feather beds. 
 
The Color Bearer 359 
 
 our piano, and our set of china. We left our sewing- 
 machine — and at that time sewing-machines were n't 
 very plentiful — and we left a lot of flour. There was 
 enough flour to fill two of the house rooms that were each 
 sixteen feet square. It was n't just for our own family. We 
 owned negroes and had to feed them, and we'd bought up 
 the flour to be prepared for hard times. There was plenty 
 of bacon in the house, too — bacon that was made from 
 our own hogs. 
 
 My father had a distillery on the edge of the town, and I 
 went out to it just before we started. We kept our hogs 
 there and fed 'em on the still slop. I counted eighty in the 
 pen. We did n't bring 'em away and the soldiers got 'em. 
 The shells were falling around there when I drove off. 
 
 We left a nigger man in charge of our house. His name 
 was Ike. My mother considered him her most reliable 
 servant, and as we were going about the house deciding 
 what to take and what not to take she would point out one 
 thing after another and say: "Leave that here. Ike can 
 take care of it." 
 
 "Yes," Ike would respond, "leave everything to me. 
 I '11 take care of this whole house. Don't you worry about 
 anything." 
 
 Pa was a hustler and a man of excellent judgment. He 
 looked ahead and calculated what was coming with such 
 accuracy that he left on the last train to go out of the city 
 and came back on the first, eleven months later. All of the 
 family except me were on that last train which started at 
 about one o'clock in the afternoon of July 17th. It was 
 believed that the track had been damaged by the enemy 
 and they did n't know what minute the train was going to 
 be ditched, or when it might run off into the river beside 
 
360 Atlanta 
 
 which they traveled a part of the time. The danger was 
 not altogether imaginary, for after two or three hours they 
 came to where the track had been so torn up by a Yankee 
 raiding party that they had to wait till after midnight 
 while it was being repaired. 
 
 The weather was awful hot — it was a hot year anyway 
 — and there was very little water on the train. The cars 
 were jammed full so that many of the people had to stand. 
 A part of the train was made up of passenger coaches and 
 a part of box cars. But the refugees were thankful to get 
 any kind of a conveyance, and they regarded a box car 
 about the same as we regard a Pullman now. It was one 
 of those cars that my folks were on. Some slats were 
 knocked out to let in air and light. 
 
 The passengers were afraid to get off during that long 
 wait lest the train should start on and leave them. It 
 would have been a relief to walk up and down the track for 
 a little exercise, but the uncertainty as to when the train 
 would resume its journey, and the fancy that the Yankees 
 might pounce on them, deterred the refugees from ventur- 
 ing. They were looking all the time for something in the 
 rear to develop or something in the front to happen. It 
 seemed to them that the enemy might let in on 'em at any 
 time. My sister says that the weather and the anxiety and 
 the hardships of the journey had made her the sickest 
 human that ever was, but there she stayed right on the 
 crowded car until the track was repaired and the train 
 moved on. 
 
 I went with the wagons, and I had two of our niggers 
 with me on my vehicle. One of 'em left the second night 
 out. While I was asleep in our camp by the roadside, he 
 took a couple of blankets and walked off. I never saw him 
 
The Color Bearer 361 
 
 afterward. Well, I did n't care. I would n't have gone 
 fifty yards to look for him. 
 
 We had put Ike in charge at our residence, but no sooner 
 were we gone than he began to sell off our belongings. He 
 disposed of a great many valuable things for whatever he 
 could get. 
 
 However, as a general thing, the niggers could be trusted 
 then where you could n't trust 'em now. Father would 
 leave his children in their care with no fear at all. They 
 were loyal to their masters and would even fight for 'em. 
 They'd steal a few eggs and take a chicken occasionally, 
 but such stealing was n't counted against 'em. That was 
 all right. We expected it. 
 
 Ike was one of the few who were unfaithful. He had 
 things his own way until after the city had been captured, 
 when he one day told some Yankees he would take them 
 out to a place in the woods and show them where a lot of 
 money was buried. They went with him, but ran into a 
 troop of Confederate soldiers. Most of 'em were captured. 
 Ike and a few others escaped. The Yankees who got away 
 thought Ike had led 'em into a trap, and they hung him to 
 a big post-oak tree. I was wholly ignorant as to his fate 
 until I came home after the war. Then one of the niggers 
 told me. They all know about each other. 
 
 Some of the townspeople did n't refugee, but were in the 
 place when the battle of Atlanta was fought on its southern 
 outskirts. There was a bombardment which lasted a con- 
 siderable number of days, and all who were able to do so 
 dug a hole to accommodate their families. The niggers did 
 the bulk of the digging, but the white people helped, and 
 sometimes the soldiers helped, too. 
 
 There was fighting right along roundabout until Sher- 
 
362 Atlanta 
 
 man captured the city on September 1st. He was here for 
 six weeks. Practically all the inhabitants who had hitherto 
 remained were sent away, and Atlanta became simply a 
 military center. The soldiers tore things to pieces a good 
 deal, for they took anything they could get their hands on 
 that would be of use in fixing up their camp. 
 
 When they started on their raid down through the state 
 they set the town on fire. Not much was left except ashes 
 and brick. The business part was all gone, and the few 
 buildings that escaped the fire were nearly all damaged by 
 shells. Our house was large and roomy, and some general 
 used it for headquarters. It was n't burned, but every- 
 thing we left in it was gone at the time we came back. 
 
 After Ike had been disposed of, some woman had taken 
 possession and claimed that the house was hers. When 
 the people of the city were ordered to leave they were 
 allowed to choose which way they 'd go — north or south. 
 If they went north they were given free transportation with 
 their baggage. The woman in our house said she'd go up 
 to Kentucky, and she took our mahogany furniture with 
 her. The soldiers loaded it onto government wagons and 
 carried it across the river on the ferry to the railroad. At 
 the close of the war Father went up to Kentucky to try to 
 get it, but affairs were very much unsettled, proving his 
 claim was not easy, and he accomplished nothing. 
 
 Sherman made a clean sweep of everything in this 
 region so that for quite a while afterward it was almost 
 impossible to get supplies of any sort. Prices were way out 
 of sight. Another soldier and I paid ten dollars for five 
 dozen eggs. We made one meal of 'em. Dave e't twenty- 
 eight, and I e't thirty-two. But bear in mind that we 
 had n't eaten for three days except a few hardtack crack- 
 
The Color Bearer 363 
 
 ers. What we did was nothing remarkable in those times. 
 I 've seen a Rebel soldier draw two days' rashions, and as 
 soon as he could cook what needed cooking he'd sit down 
 and eat all he'd drawn. Well, you know, he was empty 
 down to his feet, and he wanted to make sure of what was 
 in sight. 
 
 Prices were at their highest when the Confederacy was 
 about to go up. My sister tells of riding on a public 
 coach and stopping in a town to buy a fine-tooth comb. 
 There were soldiers riding on the coach, and they were full 
 of body lice. She felt like the lice were all over her and 
 thought she must get a fine-tooth comb, no matter what 
 it cost. She paid thirty dollars for one, and she paid 
 seventy-two dollars for a pair of slippers. 
 
 The last piece of tobacco I bought in war-time was a 
 half plug for ten dollars. I remember that as if it was 
 yesterday. It took twenty-seven hundred dollars to buy 
 a hundred pounds of sugar and seventeen hundred dollars 
 to buy a hundred pounds of salt. Other things cost in 
 proportion, though there was n't many other things to 
 proportion, to tell the truth. 
 
 In the final days of the war I was in a town one evening, 
 and a cavalryman stopped his horse in front of where I 
 was standing and asked me to get him some peanuts. I 
 got a little sackful — possibly a quart — and he gave a 
 thousand dollar bond for 'em. The Confederate money was 
 soon no good at all. Several thousand dollars were blowing 
 around our backyard. Pa had a satchel and a trunk full. 
 There was forty-seven thousand dollars to the best of my 
 recollection, and the children took the money and played 
 with it. 
 
XLVII 
 
 The Wife of an Army Cook ^ 
 
 My husband was in the army. He went off in April, 1862. 
 Luckily he was a cook and nurse and so did n't run the 
 risk of being shot that the soldiers did. Toward the end 
 of the year he came home on a furlough and stayed six 
 months. Then he returned to the army, and a full year 
 passed before he was home again. That time he came on a 
 Friday and left the next Sunday evening, and he was n't 
 back any more till the end of the war. 
 
 We had a fifty-four acre farm, five or six miles north of 
 the city, on Peach Tree Creek. I was left on the farm 
 with three children. They were little bits of things. The 
 youngest was five months old when the war began. There 
 was a slave man on the place, and a good one. If it had n't 
 been for him I don't know what I would have done. That 
 colored man stuck to me till the year after the sur- 
 render. 
 
 Usually we had an extra hand that we hired. We raised 
 corn and potatoes and wheat and everything else. The 
 soldiers bought early vegetables of us, such as radishes, 
 lettuce, and peas. We had sixty hogs and six cows, and we 
 had chickens all over the place. 
 
 When the Yankees come in here in 1864 our wheat was 
 
 * She wore spectacles, and she was stout and matronly, but her hair 
 was dark, and though in years she was old she was not so in appearance. 
 I visited with her on the porch of her humble home on the outskirt? of 
 Atlanta. 
 
The Wife of an Army Cook 365 
 
 nearly ripe and stood as high as my head. There was a big 
 field of it — ten or fifteen acres. Wheat gets ripe here by 
 the middle of June, and the Yankees must have come 
 earlier than that. They turned their horses right into the 
 field, and there was nothing left worth harvesting. 
 
 A few weeks later a battle was fought on my place, but I 
 got away at the very start of it. I refugeed to Atlanta with 
 what two mules could draw on a wagon. That was all I 
 saved. 
 
 The first I knew of serious danger was one evening just 
 about sundown when I was getting supper ready. The 
 Confederates were retreating toward Atlanta and carrying 
 the cannons in, and I decided that was the place for me, 
 top. 
 
 My slave man and I hurried to load a wagon. I threw a 
 sheet on the floor and put on it what clothes it would hold 
 and tied it up. We carried that out to the wagon, and the 
 feather bed I lay on, and a right smart of provisions. I 
 carried all the provisions that were on the place. If I had 
 n't I'd have seen tight times. There was some corn 
 meal and flour and syrup, and I robbed the bees and added 
 the honey to the load. We had seventy or eighty bee 
 gums — some of them boxes made of planks and others 
 sections of hollow logs. When we found a good hollow tree 
 we 'd saw off a gum or two. 
 
 We never started to town till nine o'clock that night. 
 The Confederates were digging rifle pits and battle trenches 
 near our house when we left. It was a rough country road 
 that we had to travel, and we were obliged to drive out 
 often to the side of it to give the cannons a chance to pass. 
 They came in a hurry, and the horses were galloping. The 
 moon was shining, and that helped us to see where we were 
 
366 Atlanta 
 
 going. A part of the way I walked and a part of the way I 
 rode. The children slept up on top of the feather bed. I 
 had them fixed so they would n't fall off. 
 
 When we reached Atlanta the houses were all lit up and 
 everybody was frightened, but there was no turmoil. My 
 father was an army surgeon. He lived in Atlanta and had 
 charge of the hospitals. I went to his house and slept that 
 night. 
 
 The next morning, just at daylight, the colored man and 
 I got into the wagon to return to the farm and fetch 
 another load, but when we were nearly there we were 
 stopped by the Confederate picket line and told that every- 
 thing on our place was destroyed. There were two houses 
 — a nice large house with six rooms in it, and a little two- 
 room house right adjoining. The soldiers had torn 'em 
 both down to make a bridge so as to bring their cannons 
 across the creek. 
 
 That same day I moved from my father's house into 
 another from which the people had refugeed. Early one 
 afternoon, a day or two later, we heard firing south of the 
 town. I ran out to see what was going on, and the spent 
 bullets dropped all around me like hail. The Battle of 
 Atlanta was being fought. 
 
 It was after I refugeed that the first shells fell in the 
 town, and the shelling continued at intervals for a week 
 or more. The enemy would throw their shells around for 
 perhaps a couple of hours and stop, and then, when you 
 least expected it, would commence shelling again. Some- 
 times we'd hear the boom of a cannon in the night and see 
 a shell coming up like a big red star. The first day and 
 night of the bombardment twenty-four shells fell close 
 around the house I was in. One rolled under the step. 
 
The Wife of an Army Cook 367 
 
 They were everywhere. The house had no cellar that I 
 could go into for shelter, and I just sat there. 
 
 The people flocked in from the country around. Women 
 would come with dough all over their arms. They'd been 
 working and had just left everything in their hurry. They 
 had to huddle in anywhere they could get after they 
 reached Atlanta. Oh Lor', yes! Right across the street from 
 the place where I made my home was a two-story house 
 that had been empty. They crowded in there, and among 
 the rest was a lady who had a young nursing child. A shell 
 come in the house and took that child's face off. Then it 
 went through the bed and the floor and out the side of the 
 house, and buried itself in the ground. 
 
 Near by lived a man who built a shed for a shelter. He 
 fixed it up so it was a sort of room for his family, and 
 around it he piled bales of cotton. You see, a shell won't 
 go through a bale of cotton. I spent one night in that 
 shed. 
 
 Once, when I was just leaving my house, a shell buried 
 itself right at my feet. It did n't explode. If it had I 
 never 'd 'a' known what killed me. 
 
 Another time I was going to the post office. A courier 
 had come with letters. It had been a long time since I had 
 heard from the front, and I was anxious to find out whether 
 there was any mail from my husband. Six mules hitched 
 to an army wagon were plodding along the street. A shell 
 bursted up in the sky — just splashed and went all to 
 pieces with a noise like a clap of thunder. One piece went 
 right through the body of one of the mules and killed it. 
 Men on horseback who were on the street helped hold the 
 other mules, and the wagon men adjusted their harness and 
 went on and left the dead mule lying there. A piece of the 
 
368 Atlanta 
 
 shell struck my dress. It had a sharp edge and tore a slit 
 through my skirt. 
 
 One day my father and several ladies and myself went 
 up in the cupola of the medical college. We carried a spy- 
 glass to look off on the country around. 1 had a little white 
 scarf about my shoulders. That made me conspicuous, and 
 the Yankees saw us. They sent a shell that just did glance 
 on the tin roof of the cupola and left a dent. The shell only 
 missed us by half a yard. We did n't stay up there. We 
 come down. 
 
 After Atlanta had surrendered the Yankees camped in 
 the town. One of our doctors had gone with a hospital 
 down forty or fifty miles to a little place called Milner. I 
 sent my negro man there with my team, and the doctor 
 was to feed the two mules for the use of 'em. 
 
 The Yankees ordered all the Confederates to move out of 
 town. I declared I would n't go, but I was such a Rebel 
 they refused to let me stay. They just took my things, put 
 'em in a wagon, and started for the railroad with 'em. I 
 followed the wagon on foot and carried my youngest child. 
 When we got to the depot they asked me whether I pre- 
 ferred to go north or south. I said I'd go south where I 
 might find some gentlemen. 
 
 Then they put me and my children and what little 
 plunder I had into a slatted cattle car. We rode in that 
 dirty, odorous car to Milner, and there they put me off and 
 set my things down side of the railroad. The hospital was 
 in sight near by. It was just a shed open at each end. 
 Two doctors were in charge. They lived in a two-room 
 house. Each man had a room for himself and his family. 
 Back in Atlanta they had nice houses, but they'd been 
 obliged to leave everything just like the rest of us. 
 
The Wife of an Army Cook 369 
 
 My negro cleaned out the smokehouse, and I had to Hve 
 in that for nearly a week. It was made of logs, and it was 
 barely large enough for us to have a bed inside. Of course 
 it smelt smoky, but it was better than no shelter at all. 
 
 The doctors soon left and took with 'em all their patients 
 who were able to be moved. Twenty-five wounded men re- 
 mained. The doctors said they would all die and they left 
 twenty-five coffins to bury 'em in. My father was a 
 physician, and I knew how to nurse and how to give medi- 
 cine and dress wounds, and I knew how to cook. The 
 doctors left two men to help me, and we saved all those 
 wounded men but one. That one had lost a leg and was 
 pretty weak. He took typhoid and died. 
 
 As soon as the others had all gone I went back to 
 Atlanta. That was in January. My father's house had 
 been spared. He was a Mason, and that helped protect his 
 property. Besides, there were as many Yankees as Con- 
 federates under his care in the hospitals, and he was 
 respected. 
 
 A few months later the war ended and my husband 
 come back. He had only what he had on, and I did n't have 
 much more. We returned to our farm and built a little 
 log cabin. I had saved our two mules, and we made a crop, 
 but we had nothing to sell until late in the fall. However, 
 when things ripened we found everybody eager to buy, 
 food was so scarce, though they did n't have much money 
 to pay us. 
 
 At any rate we got a start, and gradually we recovered 
 from the setback caused by the war. 
 
 / 
 
XLVIII 
 
 The Planter^ 
 
 I've passed my eighty-sixth birthday — so how old am I? 
 That's a question I've asked a good many times, and even 
 college presidents and educated men are apt to answer it 
 wrong. I 'm eighty-five. My first birthday was when I was 
 born. 
 
 I've always lived in this vicinity a few miles north of 
 Atlanta. At the time of the war I was in the farming and 
 milling business. My house was a five-room framed build- 
 ing with two chimleys, one outside and one inside. There 
 were four sets of waterwheels in my mill, and I ground the 
 wheat and corn that were brought by customers, and I 
 bought grain and sold flour and meal. I had some eight 
 hundred acres of land, and cotton was the main crop that 
 I raised. 
 
 My habits and opinions have always been somewhat 
 different from those of the mass of the people. I don't drink 
 and I don't smoke. I tried smoking once. That was 
 when I was sixteen or eighteen years of age, I should say, 
 and felt I was a man. Tobacco was raised in this country, 
 and we boys made some cigars. I smoked half a one. It 
 
 1 He was an energetic, philosophic old man with a craggy face and a 
 bald head. His mind rambled somewhat, but he still had a good grip 
 on essentials. His home, where I called on him, was a few miles north 
 of Atlanta. It was a large and modem country dwelling which gave 
 evidence of taste and wealth. The day was one of summer heat and 
 buzzing flies, and we sat and talked on the generous gallery. 
 
The Planter 371 
 
 nearly killed me, and I gave up smoking. Another thing 
 that influenced me was the fact that my mother did n't 
 like for us to get into doubtful habits. Her foreparents 
 came from Scotland, and she was pretty strict in her 
 views. As I look at things now I would n't use liquor and 
 tobacco even if they were harmless. Indeed, I never have 
 felt able to buy what does n't do any good. 
 
 I was opposed to the war. I gave a good deal of thought 
 to it before our people went into it, and the extreme ones 
 looked on my reluctance to resort to war as rather cow- 
 ardice. The popular idol was Jefferson Davis. He was an 
 honest, conscientious. Christian man. I've seen him and 
 been with him, and personally I liked him, but I had a 
 much higher opinion of Stephens, the Confederate vice- 
 president, as a statesman. 
 
 I 'm the only person in the state of Georgia who went so 
 far as to spend a thousand dollars to prevent the war. 
 Some others and myself proposed a gradual emancipation 
 of the slaves that would free them all by the end of the 
 century. The owners were to receive part compensation 
 from the government. We sent men to see what arrange- 
 ments could be made for securing a great tract of country 
 in northern Texas, where the free negroes could be colo- 
 nized. The plan was favored by Everett of Massachusetts 
 and by other leading men North and South, but we did n't 
 get it much before the public. It was to be urged before our 
 state convention that met to decide what course Georgia 
 would take in the crisis. However, it was never presented. 
 Sentiment was too strong for secession among the politi- 
 cians; and yet I'm satisfied that the mass of the people 
 favored the Union. I did, but I had been outvoted, and I 
 was as true to my Confederate state as any man in it. I 
 
372 Atlanta 
 
 felt that my duty was to go with the people here in the 
 course they'd chosen, or get out of the country. 
 
 I told the boys that left this locahty for the front that as 
 long as I was able their famihes should n't suffer. I fur- 
 nished their home folks with something to eat when they 
 were in need and aided the sick. People would come long 
 distances to get supplies at my mill. There was lack of 
 food here, and lack of clothing, and lack of comforts of all 
 sorts, but I never in my life heard a lady complaining of 
 the hardships she had to endure. We don't realize ordi- 
 narily how little a person can live on. Lots of us found out 
 in war-time. I knew a lady of wealthy parents who had n't 
 a pair of shoes to wear. She lived eight miles from my 
 mill, and she walked there toting forty pounds of corn. 
 After the corn was ground she walked home with the meal. 
 
 One night, early in the war, the mill was burnt. I'd 
 raised six or seven hundred bushels of wheat that year, and 
 I'd bought fifteen hundred bushels of corn in the upper 
 part of the state. I was n't burnt out until I'd just got 
 that all in. I built up immediately but the mill gradually 
 grew less profitable. We had n't the grain in the country 
 to grind, and families lived with more economy as the war 
 progressed. 
 
 The Yankees come here about the first of June, 1864. I 
 saw very little of them because I had refugeed with my 
 family. We moved down about a hundred miles to the 
 central part of the state. Some of our things we carried on 
 wagons, but the family rode in a carryall. The shift did n't 
 prove to be any great gain, for later the Yankees raided 
 down there and burnt all I had. 
 
 I was purchasing agent for the railroad, and I traveled 
 about to a good many places. At the time of the Battle of 
 
The Plantei 373 
 
 Atlanta I was living in a wagon f ve miles below the city 
 at what had been my father's old homestead. In fact, the 
 battle was fought on land I wi^nst owned. I knew the 
 country, and during the fighting I was out where I could 
 act as a pilot for our troops, .li'or instance, if an officer 
 asked me where a certain spot was I told him how to go 
 the quickest and shortest way. There was continuous fir- 
 ing for hours. Some of the fighting was done in the wood- 
 land. That was where the Union General McPherson was 
 killed. He was riding along a road and come to where it 
 forked. Right there some one had cut down a tree that had 
 bees in it, and it had fallen so it entirely blocked the fork 
 of the road that turned to the right, which McPherson 
 would naturally have taken. He went a hundred yards on 
 the other fork and was shot down. 
 
 I was on the battlefield after the fighting was over. The 
 Federals had been driven back from a portion of the field 
 and had left a good many wounded there. I helped gather 
 them up. They were taken down to a church hospital. 
 
 In December I came back to my plantation. The 
 Yankees had gone to Savannah, firing the buildings and 
 destroying stock of all kinds as they went. They said the 
 object of this devastation was to impoverish the South and 
 make further resistance impossible. I believe the soldiers 
 were ordered to burn only barns, but they were n't very 
 discriminating, and most of the dwellings were destroyed, 
 too. 
 
 On my place here I found my house, though with com- 
 paratively little in it. There had been twenty buildings on 
 my premises, and the raiders were kind enough to leave me 
 two. Those two were my dwelling and a smokehouse. Not 
 another house was standing on the road between Atlanta 
 
374 Atlanta 
 
 and Marietta, a score of miles to the north. A lot of the 
 soldiers had a camp nea ' here. It covered five acres. They 
 were there till cool weather late in the fall season, and they 
 tore a good many build jigs to pieces to use in making 
 shacks to shelter them in the camp, and to make bunks 
 to lie on. If they needed anything they took it. In a few 
 instances they were very insulting to some of the local 
 families, but as a rule they did n't do anything but what 
 soldiers would do for their o vn benefit. When they started 
 to leave they burnt everything up in their camp that they 
 did n't take along. 
 
 They had been instructed to destroy the railroad as 
 they came down from the north, and they had piled up the 
 ties, set fire to them, and thrown the iron rails onto the 
 fires. The middle part of the rail would lie on the pile of 
 burning ties, and when it got red hot the soldiers took the 
 rail and gave it a twist around a tree. Then the rail could 
 n't be used again. Some of the rails got so hot on the fires 
 that they curved themselves. 
 
 When I got back here not a person within twenty miles 
 had a bushel of corn so far as we knew, and I went to 
 Macon and bought some, and I brought back a cow and 
 four hogs. I had more hogs then than any of my neighbors. 
 
 Spring come and the war ended. Some of the cowardly 
 scamps who got up the racket tried to keep it up, but the 
 brave soldiers buried any feeling they had. They con- 
 sidered that the issues on which the war had been fought 
 were settled. 
 
XLIX 
 
 The Machinist's Daughter^ 
 
 Here I am in this little old house right in the heart of 
 Atlanta, and I was living in this same house all through the 
 war, but it was a new house then. It was built about 1858, 
 and the work was all done by slavery labor. These brick 
 walls are very thick and substantial, and the house seemed 
 a pretty fine one fifty years ago, though a two-story house 
 like this here now looks very small and humble. 
 
 Atlanta was not much of a town then. It was a right 
 smart woodsy place. I was a little girl in war-time, but 
 even when I got to be a great big girl there were woods 
 two blocks from here, and I would go over to 'em and cut 
 Christmas trees. Yes, Atlanta was a country place and 
 did n't begin to grow fast until some years after the war. 
 People used to turn their cows out, and the cows would graze 
 around where they pleased all day and come back at night. 
 
 My father was a railroad machinist, and he was away 
 from home most of the time during the war. Mother took 
 care of our home place. There were only two of us children 
 — me and my brother who was five years older. We had 
 two cows and some hogs and a lot of chickens. After the 
 soldiers got around we had to keep our cows up. We 
 would n't let 'em out till ten or eleven o'clock in the morn- 
 
 ^ I was invited into the plain little parlor of a small brick house that 
 lingered among the big buildings of the rapidly-growing city. There 
 I spent an hour or more with my informant, a pleasant, chatty woman 
 of middle age. 
 
376 Atlanta 
 
 ing and they would n't go far. If they did n't come in 
 tolerable soon my brother would go after 'em. When there 
 was kind of a rough crowd around so we were anyways 
 scared about the cows we would n't let 'em out at all. Our 
 hogs were kept in a pen. 
 
 The house lot here measured one hundred by two hun- 
 dred feet, and most of it was a garden. Mother understood 
 planting and cultivating things, and she tended the 
 garden herself. 
 
 Father was with us a little while when the Yankee army 
 began to close in around the town. He dug a great hole in 
 the back yard and made a bumbproof . It was broad and 
 it was right deep. He got some crossties from the railroad 
 to use in making the roof. He laid a row of 'em side by 
 side and put another row on top laid the other way, and 
 then he shoveled on dirt. You could stand up underneath 
 the ties. He cut steps in the earth so we could get down in 
 there. 
 
 But we never used our bumbproof. My mother was n't 
 scared of anything — did n't seem to be. We were right 
 between the Yankee and Confederate batteries, and we 
 did n't know but we'd be killed. That did n't make any 
 difference. We slept in our beds, but if the shells were 
 coming from any particular direction we'd move over to 
 the other side of the house. 
 
 Father left us as soon as he finished the bumbproof. We 
 did n't expect to see him again for a long time, but just be- 
 fore the Yankees captured the town he surprised us by 
 returning. "Oh, heavens!" Mother exclaimed, " what did 
 you come back for?" 
 
 She knew she was safe, but she thought he'd get into 
 trouble. 
 
The Machinist's Daughter 377 
 
 "I came to take you and the children away to where 
 you'll be out of danger," he answered. 
 
 "Well, I'm not going," she said. "If there's no one on 
 the place to take care of things we'll lose everything we 
 have." 
 
 So Father had to go off by himself. Shortly afterward 
 the Yankees took possession of the town. While they re- 
 mained Mother never left the house for a day, but we 
 kept on good terms with them just as we had with the 
 Confederates. You'd think they would have stolen all our 
 garden truck, but they did n't, and I '11 tell you why. The 
 hospitals wanted the things we raised, and so did the 
 Union officers. Mother often gave the officers some of the 
 vegetables without pay. Yes, she'd divide with 'em to a 
 certain extent, but they bought things, too, and she 
 swapped with 'em for brown sugar, coffee, and hardtack. 
 They liked to exchange coffee for buttermilk. We did n't 
 suffer. 
 
 A lot of grass was growing in our yard, and the officers 
 would ask if their horses could graze there, and Mother 
 would let 'em. 
 
 Sometimes the soldiers would slip into the garden in the 
 night and dig potatoes. They did that because they were 
 hungry, and they only dug what they wanted to eat. In 
 those days and times they did n't feel like they was steal- 
 ing when they took things. 
 
 One day two men came to our back door and said they 
 were going to take our stove. 
 
 " No you won't," Mother told 'em. " If you come inside 
 this house I '11 kill you. But no, you wait — some guards 
 are coming, and they'll get you instead of your gettin' our 
 stove." 
 
1 
 
 378 Atlanta 
 
 Then she stepped into the next room and told my 
 brother to go to headquarters and tell the officers there 
 that we needed protection. He was a little bit of a fellow, 
 but he went, and a Northern general at headquarters sent 
 some guards right down. However, by that time the two 
 men had done gone. 
 
 Once the soldiers come in the night and stole a whole lot 
 of chickens. Mother had one hundred and sixty, and they 
 got about half of 'em. 
 
 We had a neighbor named Mis' Green. One morning 
 Mother happened to look out of our kitchen door and saw 
 some soldiers leadin' Mis' Green's cow away, and Mis' 
 Green was beggin' 'em not to. 
 
 "Why do you let 'em take your cow?" Mother called 
 out. "I would n't let 'em take it," she said. 
 
 But Mis' Green did n't know how to stop 'em, and she 
 just went right on after 'em cryin'. 
 
 We had a big padlock on our gate that kept our cows 
 safe while they were on the home place, but we lost one 
 while she was out grazing. She was gone when my brother 
 looked for her, and he said, "Well, I will get my cow." 
 
 So he went over to the camp and found her there and 
 claimed her. But he was too small. The men would n't 
 pay any attention to what he said. If he'd come right to 
 Mother when he first missed the cow she'd have gone and 
 got it. There was no use trying to do anything after he 
 returned home. They'd killed the cow by that time. 
 
 We kept a dog. His name was Bob. He was a good- 
 sized dog with straight, black hair. He'd bark at the 
 soldiers and they'd stab him with their bayonets. Bob was 
 stabbed or shot nine times. He would n't recover from one 
 wound before he'd get another. Father was at home once 
 
The Machinist's Daughter 379 
 
 when a regiment was passing and a soldier stabbed Bob. 
 That made Father mad, and he cussed the whole regiment. 
 It's a wonder they did n't shoot him and Bob, too. 
 
 At the far end of our lot was our cow pen, and beyond 
 that was another lot. One night Mother heard the dog 
 making an awful fuss up by the cow pen. She slipped out 
 real easy and heard three men talking in the next lot. The 
 night was dark and she could n't see them, but she could 
 hear the three voices. The men were talking about coming 
 to steal our chickens or something. 
 
 Mother returned to the house and then went out again 
 making a great racket. "Come, Bob," she called to the 
 dog, " I can do more to keep those fellows where they be- 
 long than you can. Pat, bring that gun from behind the 
 door. Three Yankees are out here. Put a bullet in 'em." 
 
 The prowlers did n't wait to see what would happen, but 
 ran off. We heard that when they got to camp they swore 
 that Mother was a witch. They said: "We ain't goln' to 
 fool with her any more. How'd she know three men were 
 out there?" 
 
 Our dog went all through the war without gettin' killed, 
 but he did n't live long afterward. There was a nigger 
 servant in a house across the street, and Bob would bite 
 at him. You get a right black dog, and he hates a nigger. 
 He can't bear a darky at all. This nigger servant was 
 afraid of Bob, and finally fed him cut glass in a piece of 
 meat and so killed him. At any rate we suspicioned that 
 he was the guilty one, but we could n't prove it. 
 
 When the Yankees were ready to leave Atlanta they 
 went about the city setting fire to the buildings. Some 
 come up our street and were going to set fire to our house. 
 Mother begged them not to, and their leader said: " Come 
 
380 Atlanta 
 
 on, boys. Here's one woman brave enough to stay in 
 Atlanta and protect her home. We won't burn her house." 
 
 No sooner were they out of the yard than Mother put 
 on her bonnet and went up through our garden, dimbed 
 the back fence, and kept on till she come to the house of 
 an old lady who had refugeed. Mother stood there on the 
 porch, and those same soldiers come along. They did n't 
 recognize her in her sunbonnet, and the leader said: 
 "Here's another woman brave enough to protect her 
 home. We'll leave her house, too." 
 
 Mother often laughed over how she saved both houses. 
 She certainly must have had an iron nerve. I know I 
 did n't inherit it. 
 
 While the burning was going on my brother disappeared. 
 He had been playing around the yard, but now he was 
 gone, and Mother ran everywhere to find him. She was 
 most crazy. At last she found him in a vacant lot over 
 near a car shed that we understood had powder stored in it. 
 The car shed was burning and she was expecting an explo- 
 sion any moment. My brother had shot a bird with a sling- 
 shot, or something. A nigger boy had got the bird and 
 would n't give it up. That made my brother mad and he 
 had the other boy down and was pounding him. It was 
 war between black and white, was n't it? Mother was glad 
 enough to find my brother, no matter what he was doing, 
 and she got him home in a hurry. 
 
 Well, in the course of time the war ended, and Father 
 came back to stay. But the hardships were n't all past. 
 The only thing that was plenty was Confederate money. 
 It was no good though, and everybody threw it away. 
 
 Women and children would go out on the battlefields 
 and pick up bullets. We could pick 'em up all around 
 
The Machinist's Daughter 381 
 
 Atlanta, and we could sell the lead to the commissary for 
 something to eat. My brother and I carried some bullets 
 to the commissary once. We had 'em in my school satchel. 
 It was n't more than half full, but the man we talked to 
 seemed to take a fancy to me and said something nice 
 about my long, black, curly hair, and he gave us a big 
 sack of corn for our little pigs. 
 
 Not long ago I had a whole cup full of those battlefield 
 bullets in the house here. You see a person who has never 
 moved accumulates a lot of trash. 
 
A Girl in the Shenandoah Valley ^ 
 
 When the war broke out my father had a large flouring 
 mill here on Cedar Creek. It was doing a good business 
 and he was making money. He had a sawmill, too, and 
 used it constantly until some Yankee troops came through 
 here in '62. Up to that time the people in this vicinity 
 were right prosperous. 
 
 I was the oldest of the children of the family, and I was 
 small. Father was a very old man. He was sixty, I reckon. 
 Mother was a good deal younger. They were opposed to 
 slavery, but a family of slaves was willed to Mother, and 
 they came here to live. There were two sisters and two 
 brothers. They were bright, but also real independent, and 
 kind of dangerous. Several white tenants of ours lived 
 across the creek and worked for us, and we hired others. 
 
 I s'pose it was about April that the Yankees were here 
 in '62. They broke into our granary and smokehouse in 
 the night, and the doors were all open in the morning when 
 our folks were astir. Besides, they destroyed the bolting 
 cloths in the flouring mill. One army or the other got all 
 our horses, and we could n't use our sawmill any more be- 
 cause we had no teams to draw logs. We could n't keep 
 
 ^ The girl of long ago was now a gray-haired woman. She was 
 delightfully hospitable and made me welcome to the sitting-room of 
 the fine, dignified old brick farmhouse in which she lived. The day was 
 dull, but indoors a cheerful fire blazing on the hearth banished all 
 gloom. 
 
A Girl in the Shenandoah Valley 383 
 
 anything that was good, and we thought we were having 
 a hard time, but affairs were n't quite so dizzy those days 
 as they were later in the war. 
 
 The Northerners annoyed us most. The trouble of it 
 was that there were so many toughs in the Union army. 
 You opened your penitentiaries and let the convicts out to 
 become soldiers, and you hired a heap of foreigners for 
 soldiers. We were always glad to see our troops back, 
 though there were some bad men among them as well as 
 among the Yankees. You could n't trust 'em to behave if 
 they'd been drinking. Yes, our army had its bad men, and 
 yours had its good men. At such times as the Northerners 
 camped near here a guard was sent to stay at the house. 
 We'd get friendly with him, and with others who would 
 come from the camp and sit awhile of an evening. We 
 liked some of them very well. 
 
 When the armies would stay away long enough Father 
 would buy one or two old horses and try to draw wood and 
 farm a little. There were right good woods over the creek, 
 but it was n't always easy to get to 'em. Oftentimes the 
 bridge was down. The old bridge which was there at the 
 beginning of the war was burned by a retreating army. 
 Afterward a trustle bridge was put up, and the high water 
 washed that away. The troops built temporary bridges in 
 its place one after the other as they were destroyed either 
 for military purposes or by floods. When there was no 
 bridge the only way to cross was at fords. 
 
 We planted our garden every year, but we never knew 
 who 'd gather what we raised in it. The soldiers would take 
 our onions and dig our sweet potatoes, and we could n't 
 have apples or anything. If they were here in grape time 
 they got our grapes. Yes, I can tell you that — they 
 
384 Cedar Creek 
 
 gathered the crops. But if we had good luck we'd grow 
 cabbages and make kraut, and we'd raise enough sorghum 
 to make some sorghum molasses. Whenever we could we 
 had a cow, but we were apt to lose her, and we'd go for a 
 long, long time without butter or milk. We always had 
 corn bread and some wheat bread. Our own mill was dis- 
 abled, and we got the grinding done at mills off the pike 
 that escaped. There was sure to be lard in the house, but 
 we seldom had meat. We never starved, and our chief 
 complaint was that we did n't have any variety hardly. 
 
 Often the soldiers came to the house to ask for some- 
 thing to eat, and we'd give it to 'em if we had it. Some- 
 times they'd walk right in and take things. If no officers 
 were on hand they'd be real rude to us. 
 
 We raised a little corn on two small fields that lay out 
 of sight like, where the hills and trees hid them. But the 
 fields did n't either of 'em contain over five or six acres; so 
 we could n't raise much. 
 
 What helped us out more than anything else was a little 
 mountain farm that we owned. It was eight or ten miles 
 from here. We had sheep up there that furnished us with 
 wool, and fields of corn and wheat. A man rented the 
 farm and got some share of the wool, and he divided with 
 us the crops that he raised. 
 
 In the summer-time we'd get the wool ready to send to 
 the fulling mill to be carded and made into rolls. There 
 was always a-plenty for us to do. When the rolls came 
 back Mother would spin 'em into thread, and we took the 
 thread to a woman who wove it into cloth. Some of the 
 cloth was linsey for the women, and some was a heavier 
 cloth for men's wear. 
 
 We colored a good deal of the wool. If we wanted black 
 
A Girl in the Shenandoah Valley 385 
 
 we used logwood, and by mixing black and white wool we'd 
 get gray. For brown we made a dye out of walnut hulls, 
 and for a bright color we'd perhaps use pokeberries, but 
 they did n't make a lasting color. 
 
 It was a very hard thing to get clothes during the war, 
 and yet we always managed somehow. Our summer 
 dresses were cotton. We bought the thread in hanks and 
 had it woven by the same woman who wove our wool. We 
 dyed the thread with indigo and copperas as long as we 
 could get the dyes. I remember I had a summer dress 
 made in those days that was tan and white striped. 
 Toward the end of the war we dyed with hickory wood. 
 That colored the cotton a light yellow. We made the 
 dresses ourselves here at home. 
 
 Sometimes we had plain, gray, linen dresses. We raised 
 flax, and after the husks were roughed off by hackling and 
 swingling, it was spun and woven into cloth for sheets and 
 towels, dresses, and underwear. Some of the linen thread 
 was used for the warp in weaving rag carpets. Pretty much 
 every one had rag carpets then. 
 
 This house was a general's headquarters twice. One of 
 the generals who used it was a Dutchman with foreign 
 soldiers. When those Dutch came through the valley in 
 '62 they ransacked houses and treated the people cruelly. 
 I know we had great fear of them. They'd tear up quilts 
 and the homemade counterpanes and coverlids and such 
 things. They were here when the green leaves first came 
 in the spring. 
 
 The general took all of our house except one room. His 
 officers would go around with spurs on their boots and 
 their swords clanking on the carpets, and when we saw how 
 they did we took the carpets up. The general had a French 
 
386 Cedar Creek 
 
 cook and lived in style. He said we would all eat together, 
 but oh my goodness! we tried it once and that was enough. 
 They stayed so long at table and had so many courses! 
 and they drank wines and they smoked. Afterward we 
 ate at a little table in our room. Sometimes we'd take 
 things to a neighbor's to cook. We've got one of that 
 general's stone beer jugs here now. We keep vinegar 
 in it. 
 
 There were five tents in the yard. I s'pose some of the 
 general's staff were in those. It seemed to us children like 
 a long time that he stayed in our house. He had a large 
 flag on a tall pole near the gate. When the wind blew 
 from the right direction the flag would wave over the path. 
 The older people of our household would n't go under it, 
 and we children patterned after them and turned aside, too. 
 
 At one time we had a sick Southern soldier in the house 
 when the Yankees raided through the region. They stopped 
 at our place and asked if any Rebel soldiers were there, and 
 we said "No." 
 
 That did n't satisfy 'em, and they come in and looked 
 around. They even opened the door of the room where 
 the sick soldier lay and poked their heads in, but he was 
 only a young lad and had his face to the wall. So they 
 went away and did n't discover that he was a soldier. I'll 
 show you his daguerreotype. There, that's him. Is n't he 
 too nice a boy to be shot? 
 
 We could n't keep any poultry or hogs if they were 
 where the soldiers could get at 'em. When Sheridan 
 camped here the last time we had four chickens in the 
 garret, and we made a pen in the cellar and kept one hog 
 there. 
 
 The soldiers destroyed a good deal just from meanness. 
 
A Girl in the Shenandoah Valley 387 
 
 Everything was laid waste on the farms around us. At 
 one place they even took the weather-boarding from the 
 corn crib and hoghouse. We had a right large barn, but 
 they tore it down. They told us they wanted the material 
 for building a bridge across the creek, but Father said they 
 used very little of it in the bridge. 
 
 Shortly after dinner one day we looked out and saw that 
 the flouring mill was on fire. It had stone walls, and the 
 soldiers had piled up a lot of lightwood just inside of the 
 door and started the fire in that wood. The wind was 
 blowing, and the flames spread to the sawmill and to a 
 small building that we used for extry work such as boiling 
 apple-butter. 
 
 The soldiers carried brands to put under the frames of 
 the log hoghouse and the corn crib, and they burnt the 
 hoghouse, but some officers saved the corn crib. The 
 officers told us to watch the house and see that the soldiers 
 did n't set fire to that. 
 
 Sheridan's raid was in the autumn of 1864. He came to 
 our valley to destroy everything that an enemy might use, 
 and his troops burned two thousand barns and seventy 
 mills, and they gathered up four thousand head of cattle. 
 They were opposed by the Confederate General Early, 
 and they had a number of fights with him before the battle 
 of Cedar Creek was fought on October 19th. 
 
 The Yankee camp was only a short distance from our 
 house when they fought here. It had been there for some 
 time and we had so little food of our own then that we 
 drew rashions at the camp. I reckon we youngsters were 
 thinking about something to eat pretty constantly, and 
 Mother felt obliged to do what she could for us. She and a 
 stout young woman who worked for us would each take 
 
388 Cedar Creek 
 
 a basket and go over to headquarters, and the men there 
 would give 'em crackers, beef, coffee, and sugar. 
 
 Father was n't well, and at the time of the battle he 
 had been sick in bed with an attack of bilious fever, and 
 had just got up. Mother had hired the young woman be- 
 cause she did n't like to stay here without some other able- 
 bodied person besides herself in the house. She was n't 
 any coward either. She was brave, and she needed to be. 
 We never knew what would happen next. One afternoon 
 Mother was sitting in a rocking-chair side of the lounge 
 holding the baby, and a bullet came through the window 
 sash and fell on her lap. It was a stray bullet fired by the 
 Union soldiers who were practisin' over on the hill. Oh, 
 we had some narrow escapes! 
 
 The battle began early one misty morning before sun- 
 up. Sheridan's army of forty thousand men were asleep in 
 their tents. They were not expecting an attack, and 
 Sheridan himself was in Winchester, fifteen miles north of 
 here. Our men crept up by stealth, and the Federals were 
 completely surprised. They did n't have time to form 
 in line, and they were quickly beaten and retreated in 
 disorder. 
 
 We had been inside of the Union lines, and the first I 
 knew of the battle Mother woke us children up to look out 
 and see the Yankee pickets surrender. Soon afterward two 
 Southern soldiers come along carrying a wounded comrade. 
 They would have brought him into the house, but just as 
 they got to the gate he died. The three were brothers, and 
 the two who had been carrying the wounded man buried 
 him in the orchard under an apple tree and put up a piece 
 of pine board at the head of the grave with the name of 
 the dead brother very neatly penciled on it. They said 
 
SETTING FIRE TO THE BUILDINGS 
 
A Girl in the Shenandoah Valley 389 
 
 they would come again for the body, but they never 
 did. 
 
 It was my lot to take care of the smaller children during 
 the day, and I had right smart trouble with 'em. They 
 were crying for something to eat, and I had nothing to 
 give 'em. It was very trying. 
 
 The wounded of both armies were brought to our house 
 till every room downstairs was full, and the yard outside 
 was filled, too. They just lay on the floor or on the grass 
 with maybe a blanket or overcoat under 'em. The sur- 
 geons took anything they could get in the house for band- 
 ages. 
 
 I came downstairs once in a while to see what was going 
 on, and there was one time that I went out to watch some 
 Southern cavalry going along the pike with a lot of pris- 
 oners. They brought 'em here and kept 'em in a field 
 behind the house. I'd hardly been outside of the house 
 two minutes looking at the cavalry when I was called back 
 in to take care of those cross children. I never got to give 
 anything to the wounded. Mother was waiting on 'em, 
 and made coffee for 'em. 
 
 When the Union army was routed they say that Early's 
 men plundered the camp instead of pursuing the enemy. 
 Then General Sheridan, who had heard the cannonading, 
 came galloping from Winchester. He met his retreating 
 troops and stopped them. "Face the other way, boys!" 
 he shouted. 
 
 Soon he had changed the whole course of the movement 
 and got his men into fighting trim. Back they came then, 
 and when the day ended Early's army had been almost 
 destroyed. We heard .our men retreating about four 
 o'clock, and toward sundown, as the last of 'em were pass- 
 
390 Cedar Creek 
 
 ing here, the surgeons set fire to the medical wagons and 
 hurried off. Some of the wagons were down on the 
 meadow by the springhouse, and some up the hill back of 
 the orchard. The chemicals in them made a bright blaze. 
 
 While the wagons were burning the Northern cavalry- 
 came and recaptured the prisoners who were in our field, 
 and took possession of the artillery their men had aban- 
 doned in the morning. By night the Union surgeons were 
 here in the house. 
 
 I never experienced so many stirring events in any other 
 day in my life. I'm always right wide awake where there's 
 excitement, but after things quieted down that evening 
 we went to bed and I think I slept some before morning. 
 
 When we got up we found that right smart of the 
 wounded men who had been brought to our house and 
 yard had died. I tell you what, 'twas awful! Most of the 
 survivors were taken away that day to Winchester, and 
 then we had the cleaning up to do. The rooms were 
 bloody, and out on the back porch, where the surgeons 
 did their amputating, Father cleared the blood off with a 
 shovel. 
 
 All of the second night after the battle we sat in the 
 sitting-room on chairs or the lounge. The blinds were 
 pulled down and we kept a bright fire burning, for the 
 night was cool. Two Southern soldiers lay dying on the 
 kitchen floor. They had been fatally hurt, but were so 
 long dying that some of the Union soldiers wanted to bury 
 'em before they were dead. Mother went to an oflficer to 
 prevent that. 
 
 A good many of the dead were buried on our place — 
 some along the pike, some on the hillside back of the 
 granary, and some near where we got water to use for 
 
A Girl in the Shenandoah Valley 391 
 
 washing, and the water used to smell. The bodies were 
 all taken up after the war except that of the soldier who 
 had been buried by his brothers in the orchard. 
 
 We were dreadfully broken up by the war, and had a 
 hard struggle to get started again. We did n't have any- 
 thing hardly, and we had to go mighty far away to get 
 our first meat. The fences were all gone, and rails had to 
 be split before we could inclose the fields to raise crops. 
 Our only horse was a broken-down army horse that was 
 picked up on the battlefield. 
 
 Father had a terrible turn with neuralgia and the rheu- 
 matism, and he felt so poor that he stopped using tobacco 
 and did n't buy any more. You know it's mighty bad to 
 break off a lifelong habit that way. Mother was one of 
 those people who always manage to have a little money, 
 and she bought him some tobacco, but he would n't take 
 it. We fared hard — all of us. We certainly did! 
 
LI 
 
 The Colored Woman at Headquarters ^ 
 
 When John Brown broke out I was twenty-one years old. 
 So I ain' no young chicken no mo', but I do jus' as much 
 work yet as any of my gran'chil'en. In war-time I worked 
 at the Belle Grove place. Me and my father and four of his 
 chil'en who were small lived right at the yard in a two- 
 story log cabin. Belle Grove belonged to Mr. Cooley, and 
 it was a big farm. Oh, my, yes, sir! 
 
 Mr. Cooley owned a woman and some chil'en, but I was 
 bound. I never was a slave. One week I'd be cookin' at 
 the big house, and the next week I'd be a field han'. 
 The slave woman and I took turn about, you know. I 
 used to drop the corn when the men were planting, and I'd 
 help cuttin' up com, and when they had the horse-power 
 th'ashing I'd take the sacks off and I'd put back the chaff. 
 I would always help in harvestin' and such as that, and 
 when they were extry busy at the big house I'd put in mo' 
 time there makin' butter, perhaps, and washin' and doin' 
 other work that needed doin'. 
 
 The war made us lots of trouble. As I've often said 
 since, I felt as if the world was comin' to an end in a short 
 
 1 She lived in a cabin amid the farmlands at the end of a rough, 
 crooked lane. There were numerous children about the place, and 
 there was much dirt and care-free disorder. A thin, tall old woman met 
 me at the door and ushered me into a tiny low-ceiled parlor where 
 there were draperies at the windows, and a piano and other furniture 
 more aspiring than I would have expected. It was in this parlor tha.t I 
 heard the woman's story of her war-time trials. 
 
The Colored Woman at Headquarters 393 
 
 time. We could n't understan' what was goin' on. You 
 could hear a heap of things, but the poor black people 
 didn't know — didn't know! Some would say one thing 
 and some another. A great many of the slaves run off 
 North, and a great many others were taken up the country 
 by their masters out of the way of the army. Often there 'd 
 be only a few old ones left to help on a place. None of us 
 went away from Belle Grove. We had to stay to keep 
 everything together what we could. There was nobody 
 hardly that could be hired to help tend the crops, and 
 we jus' raised enough wheat and corn to keep us goin'. 
 Sometimes we'd get right smart, and other times the sol- 
 diers would get everything. 
 
 They would carry off considerable outdoor stuff unbe- 
 knownst to us, and they would come into the house and 
 look around and take what they pleased — victuals, flour, 
 anything. We did n't interfere with 'em. We was skeered 
 and was glad if they took the stuff and did us no other 
 harm. 
 
 Both sides acted a good deal alike about stealin' and 
 destroyin', and reely we did n't know the Yankees and the 
 Rebels apart when the war broke out. Toward the end, we 
 could n't hardly tell which from which because the South- 
 erners would have on old blue clothes that they 'd got off 
 the camp, I suppose. 
 
 When Sheridan's army come to Cedar Crick it looked 
 right frightful, there was so many men. The soldiers 
 troubled us a good deal 'fore the head men got here. 
 General Sheridan made Belle Grove his headquarters. He 
 was a small man. I used to see him. There were tents all 
 over the yard, and some of the scouts slept upstairs in our 
 cabin. Oh, my goodness! the soldiers were in and out all 
 
394 Cedar Creek 
 
 the time. I did washing and baked bread for 'em, and 
 everything like that, and they paid me. 
 
 The first I knowed on the morning of the battle some 
 soldiers come into our house gettin' up the scouts who 
 slept there. Everybody bounced up as soon as they could, 
 and the scouts rolled out of the house in a hurry. I run 
 and looked out, and then I shut the door. It was already 
 daylight and the fightin' had begun. The Confederates 
 were drivin' the Union men across the field down below 
 the house. 
 
 We kep' as far back in our cabin as we could, and we 
 set there not knowin' when we'd be killed. It was too late 
 to get to the big house. We was lazy in bed that morning, 
 and we had to stay lazy there in the cabin. 
 
 Some of the Yankees got back of a wall side of the Belle 
 Grove house, but Lor! they did n't stop there long. In a 
 little while the guns was n't firin' right around us no mo'. 
 So I went to the door and looked out. The tents that had 
 been in the yard were all gone, and I could see men layin' 
 about over the fields every which way. The fields looked 
 jus' like new ground with the stumps on it. 
 
 After the armies got away men began to cl'ar up the 
 wounded. They brought 'em to the big house and laid 'em 
 in the yard. I was as crazy as them that was shot, I 
 reckon. I 'd run to the door and then run back. Soldiers 
 were goin' all the time and the ambulances were comin' to 
 get the wounded and take 'em off. 
 
 Mr. Cooley's sister's daughter and I went down the hill 
 right smart with our wooden buckets to fetch water. If 
 any of the wounded or the other soldiers asked us for a 
 drink as we passed by we gave it to 'em. 
 "• Some of the wounded was still layin' in the yard and 
 
The Colored Woman at Headquarters 395 
 
 out in the lot when the troops come back that evening. 
 We'd got news that they were comin', and we had all gone 
 to the cellar of the big house. The cellar was where the 
 cookin' was done, and the rooms down there were nice and 
 large and had rock walls. I did n't feel much like keepin' 
 quiet when I could hear those wounded men groanin' in 
 the yard, even if the battle was goin' on. So I jus' spent 
 my time walkin' from one door to another and peepin' 
 out. But the others was settin' down and squattin' in the 
 corners, anywheres they thought it was safest. 
 
 We stayed in the cellar till we heard no mo' shootin' or 
 nothin', and then we come out. There was Southern infan- 
 try in back of the house then makin' for the pike. The 
 Union men returned to the yard that night. We went to 
 our cabin to sleep, but, good land! we did n't feel much 
 like sleepin' — we did n't know what mought break up. 
 We sat up long as we could hear any one stirring around. 
 
 The next morning the wounded was all gone, and we 
 gradually got things straightened out. But we was always 
 mo' or less uneasy and fearful. I was glad when I heard 
 that the war was over. Those was pitiful times — pitiful 
 times! 
 
LII 
 
 A Country Youth's Adventures^ 
 
 I 'm a man that knows what trouble is. Last July I lost 
 my wife after her bein' sick for twenty years, and just at 
 present I 'm my own housekeeper. 
 
 When the battle was fought here I was sixteen, but 
 until the war ended I always said I was fifteen, because I 
 was n't overly anxious to go into the army. They could 
 draft you at sixteen. 
 
 We are only fifteen miles from the Potomac, and on the 
 other side of that was Yankee-land, but this Shenandoah 
 Valley was genuine Confederate country, and the people 
 who lived in it were "our" people. At first we thought 
 the Yankees were a set of scoundrels, and we were dread- 
 ing 'em. We did n't know what they looked like until 
 Banks raided through here. But when we got acquainted 
 we found they were human with about the same faults and 
 virtues as our own men. 
 
 After the troops were in camp we did n't fear 'em 
 much because there was some sort of law and order estab- 
 lished then. But we had reason enough to be anxious when 
 they were on a stir. You could n't blame 'em though for 
 
 1 I called on him at his farm home one lowering spring evening. He 
 was a sinewy, small-statured, elderly man who was living alone, and I 
 found him doing the kitchen work. But that was quickly disposed of, 
 and we went to the sitting-room. It was late when I was ready to 
 leave, and the night was dark. So my host put a light in the window 
 and accompanied me across a field to a footbridge that would take me 
 onto the highway. 
 
A Country Youth's Adventures 397 
 
 lookin' around to see what they could pick up in the line 
 of something to eat. A soldier's life is a dog's life, anyway, 
 and a steady diet of crackers and pickled pork becomes 
 stagnant to the stomach. The men would want a change. 
 Often they came to houses to get pies or a loaf of bread, 
 and of course the roughs would take advantage of you. 
 
 But it was n't the soldiers who made the most trouble. 
 A great many men generally followed the army who had 
 no business in it at all. These scalawags, as I call 'em, just 
 gobbled up whatever they could lay their hands on. The 
 robbers would come into the house and take the bread and 
 flour and corn meal and everything so that the women 
 and children and old men suffered for something to eat. 
 That was common throughout the country. I know one of 
 the neighbors did n't have a mouthful of food in the house. 
 A girl there and her little brother went to the Yankee 
 army and drawed rashions for the family to keep from 
 starvin'. 
 
 If a scamp came alone to rob a house the people would 
 often turn him away, but if there was more than one or 
 two together the people had to surrender. One morning 
 we sat down to eat our breakfast of Graham bread and a 
 little fried meat when half a dozen or more soldiers walked 
 in. They stripped the table — just gobbled up all the 
 victuals on it — and away they went. They did n't pay. 
 It would have been something if they'd had good manners, 
 but they did n't have that. 
 
 We never got entirely out of food at our house. My 
 mother and father were pretty good providers, and they'd 
 hid stuff to eat in the garret. My sister would n't let any 
 Yankee go up there. She was a young woman who had 
 considerable courage, and she carried a revolver in her 
 
398 Cedar Creek 
 
 pocket. It was n't loaded, but when she showed it and 
 threatened to shoot, it would shrink a man every time. 
 They knew she could do things a man could n't, and escape 
 punishment. Even if she was to kill some one under such 
 circumstances, she would n't be hung. 
 
 Once a Yankee come to our house and opened the door 
 and walked right in. He had some uniform buckled onto 
 him and said he was a-huntin' Rebels. Daddy was there, 
 and my mother, and two of the girls. My sister that had 
 the revolver said to the man, "There are no Rebels in the 
 house." 
 
 " I'll find that out for myself," he told her, and he was 
 pushin' right along to go upstairs. 
 
 . She stood in his way, and he spoke threateningly to her, 
 and Father said, " If you hurt her you'll not get out of here 
 alive." 
 
 She 'd taken her revolver out of her pocket and was 
 holding it under her apron, but she showed it enough to 
 let the man know she had it. " I'll shoot you if you go up 
 that stairway," she said. "Leave this house"; and he 
 did n't stop to argue the matter. 
 
 The outlaws often searched houses for silverware and 
 jewelry that had been hid. They'd take whatever was of 
 any value to 'em. I 've known 'em to hunt for Rebels, as 
 they said, and prod the ceilings and floors with their bay- 
 onets pretending they were lookin' for a trap door. 
 
 The better sort of soldiers paid for what they got, some- 
 times in gold and silver, but usually in Yankee greenbacks 
 or Confederate paper money. Not all of us would accept 
 the greenbacks. They were shaky in their value the same 
 as our own paper bills. 
 
 At the time of Banks' retreat we left everything and dug 
 
A Country Youth's Adventures 399 
 
 out. It was early in June and Daddy had a growing crop. 
 The soldiers went right across the fields. They camped 
 near by and turned their horses into our grain and clover, 
 and what the horses did n't eat off they tramped down. 
 Our crop was pretty near ruined, and the pay was n't in 
 it that day, either. 
 
 Well, the Yankees kept pickin' up our hogs and other 
 livestock and the things we raised on the land till there 
 was n't much left. Whenever we heard they were coming 
 we'd try to save our stock by hiding it, and that was the 
 habit of all the community. Unless we sneaked our stock 
 away from this valley pike we knew it would be stolen. We 
 generally went to North Mountain. The edge of the moun- 
 tain was only about three miles away, but we'd go farther 
 if we heard that the army was comin' nearer. A man could 
 ride one horse and lead three or four others. He'd carry- 
 just a little something to eat and a blanket to protect him 
 from the weather. If it was stormy he 'd get shelter in some 
 barn or house. Often Union scouts were roaming around 
 dressed in Rebel clothes, and there were sharp, shrewd 
 Confederates who dressed up in Yankee clothes and went 
 all over. If we met a man we did n't know, we could n't 
 judge which side he belonged to by his dress, and if he 
 asked us questions when we were on the road with our 
 horses we'd tell him they'd gotten away or something. 
 Our object was to put him off the trail and not arouse 
 his suspicion. 
 
 ' After we got to the mountain the women and children 
 would be comin' every few days to bring a sack of grain for 
 the horses and a basket of provisions for the men. They 
 walked back and forth. Yes, indeed! It was nothing for a 
 woman to walk ten miles then. Besides bringing food they 
 
400 Cedar Creek 
 
 brought the news and it would be passed along from one 
 refugee to another. 
 
 Right back of my father's place was a thick wood, and 
 we'd often take our horses there when we got word that a 
 raid was comin'. My two younger brothers and me would 
 ride the horses into the thickest brush and tie 'em. We 
 thought nothing of staying out in the woods all night with 
 'em so they would n't hurt themselves, but usually we'd 
 only stay till dark and then come back to the house. 
 
 A neighbor kept his horse in the smokehouse when there 
 was danger, and if any one came near the smokehouse that 
 horse stopped chewing and would hardly breathe. He was 
 as good at hiding as his master was at hiding him. 
 
 Once I was captured. Me and my next younger brother 
 and a neighbor boy had gone to a pond to water our stock. 
 It was winter. There was no snow on the ground, but the 
 pond was frozen, and we tied our horses to the fence and 
 went to sliding on the ice while the cattle were drinking. 
 The pond was near a road, and pretty soon along came a 
 lot of Yankee raiders and seen us there playing. When we 
 looked up everything was blue. We'd been so interested 
 in our fun and were making such a racket that we never 
 noticed the Yankees till the cavalry and infantry of the 
 whole command halted opposite the pond. 
 
 We was scared — well, I should reckon we was ! At 
 home, my older brother who was a Rebel cavalryman, was 
 layin' right then sick with inflammatory rheumatism, and 
 I had the horse he rode in the army. I was more anxious 
 about him and his horse than I was about myself. 
 
 The Yankee commander called us off the pond and told 
 us we must go with him to Strasburg, four or five mile 
 distant. He had all three of us walk along at the head of 
 
A Country Youth's Adventures 401 
 
 his troops. Some of the infantry got on our horses. I begged 
 him not to take us far because our cattle would get lost, and 
 I told him my father was a Union man. He asked us where 
 the Rebels were, and I answered that they were up the 
 valley, but that I knowed nothing about their camp. 
 
 My younger brother was so scared that he could n't say 
 a thing, and the neighbor boy would only grunt a few 
 words. They let me do the talking. I had the cheek, and 
 I was too young to fear being carried away. I soft-sided 
 the officer the best I could, and after we'd gone about two 
 mile he let us off. Then I told him it was too far for us to 
 walk back. I begged for our horses, and he ordered his 
 men to turn 'em over to us. 
 
 As soon as he let us go and we got a little away from the 
 army, we all rode for life to get out of gunshot. I went 
 straight on through the woods and over the fences toward 
 home. When we hurried off like that the moment we got 
 loose, the Yankees thought we was n't as innocent as 
 we'd pretended to be. So they chased us, but my horse 
 was a blooded mare, and she was much faster than their 
 horses. 
 
 I met my soldier brother when I was only one field from 
 home. He was wearin' his uniform, and had his revolver 
 and saber buckled around him. I got off the mare, and he 
 leaped into the saddle, and when I saw him goin' and knew 
 he'd- escaped I throwed up my hat and hollered. I went 
 along to the house, and there I found the Yankees so thick 
 around that I could n't get in. If my brother had been just 
 five minutes later they would have got him. 
 
 When Sheridan camped on these crick hills in October, 
 1864, I was stayin' at the house of a neighbor named 
 Hoover. Jim Hoover was off refugeein' in the mountains 
 
402 Cedar Creek 
 
 with his stock. His father was crazy, and I 'd gone there 
 to help take care of this old crazy man. Besides him, there 
 was the old lady and a daughter and a hired girl at the 
 house. 
 
 Old Hoover did n't know his own mind, and there was 
 just a channel between his bein' harmless and dangerous. 
 He was likely to get cross to his wife, and he was very 
 rough to all the family. At times he was a good deal worse 
 than at other times. He had to be watched for fear he'd 
 set the buildings on fire. The less work he did the worse he 
 was. He was able to saw wood, but I had to threaten to 
 whip him or something of that kind to get him out of the 
 house to work. 
 
 The Hoovers lived just south of Sheridan's picket lines. 
 Even a hog could n't have got through those picket lines. 
 There were three or four of 'em, and the pickets were walk- 
 ing back and forth all the time about thirty paces each 
 way. Squads of men were posted at advanced spots on the 
 roads, and if anything was wrong a report would be sent 
 right in to headquarters-. 
 
 At four o'clock on the morning of the battle I heard the 
 first musket open. I was in a fidget anyway on account of a 
 couple of Yankee scouts who had stopped at the house in 
 the night. As soon as the firing began I got up, but I did n't 
 go out of the house till daylight. We were havin' a little 
 snack to eat for breakfast when I said, " I 'm goin' on the 
 battlefield." 
 
 I'd heard a great deal about battles, but had never 
 seen one, and my curiosity was excited. Go I must, even 
 if I got into the blood myself. Then Miss Hoover and the 
 hired girl, who were about my age, said they wanted to go 
 with me if I did n't care. They knew I 'd look after 'em. 
 
A Country Youth's Adventures 403 
 
 "All right," I said, and they put on their sunbonnets 
 and I put on my old black slouch hat and we started. 
 
 We had to cross the crick, and when we were on the 
 bridge we saw that the water was full of guns. The Yanks 
 had thrown their guns away. 
 
 Soon we got to the battlefield, and we walked right along 
 to the Yankee camp. Men had run out of their bunks who 
 did n't get their guns at all, and we saw soldiers in the 
 tents who had been shot there. Some of 'em were not dead. 
 Behind the breastworks the dead and wounded were layin' 
 five deep, and we waded through blood as we looked around. 
 You see the Rebs took the breastworks endways — and it 
 was playin' on the enemy like that that killed 'em so fast. 
 
 The wounded men were hollerin' and screamin' and 
 prayin'. We heard one Southern soldier prayin' for his 
 wife and children way down in Alabama, and he was 
 beggin' just for life enough to get back to see 'em. A 
 doctor come along and examined him and moved on. He 
 said there was no hope. It was sad, sir. 
 
 You 'd think the sights would have made the girls faint, 
 but in that war girls got pretty tough and they did n't 
 faint easy. We was n't carin' to stay long, though, and 
 presently the girls said their curiosity was rather gettin' 
 satisfied. 
 
 So we started back, and we went down toward the crick 
 to where there was a big brick farmhouse that had been 
 turned into a hospital. The wounded were inside the house 
 and outside both. The front yard was full, and they lay 
 there close together arranged in sections so as to have con- 
 venient walkways. On the back porch the surgeons were 
 sawin' off limbs, and as soon as they got through with a 
 man he was laid back on the ground where he 'd been be- 
 
404 Cedar Creek 
 
 fore. They had about a four-horse wagon load of limbs 
 outside of the porch in a heap just as you might pile up 
 corn or manure. 
 
 The day was pretty warm, and the wounded men were 
 very thirsty — there 's no two ways about that. Those 
 men were beggin' for just a mouthful of water, and me 'n' 
 the girls stayed several hours carrying water to 'em, and 
 they thanked us as we waited on 'em. 
 
 At last we went on again toward home, and after we'd 
 gone half a mile we found another hospital at a stone 
 blacksmith's shop. But we did n't stop because just then 
 we see there was a skedaddle on hand. Our entire army 
 was goin' back as fast as it could, and the Yankees was 
 pushin' em. That was a great surprise to us, our men had 
 won such a complete victory in the morning. 
 
 We ran for home, but got in the skirmish line. The 
 Yanks and Rebs were both shootin' across us, and Miss 
 Hoover was almost helpless with fright. The hired girl 
 seemed to have more spunk about her. I was n't any too 
 fond of those little fellers whistlin' overhead, but of course 
 I could n't leave Miss Hoover behind. It was all the hired 
 girl and I could do to get her to the house. 
 
 When we were indoors we felt safer. There was nothin' 
 but musketry, and we stood where we could look out and 
 see the men running and shooting at each other. The girls 
 said they never wanted to see another fight like that, but I 
 was pretty hard for my part, and I just felt as if I ought to 
 have a gun and shoot, too. 
 
 We'd gone off that morning and left the crazy man to 
 luck and the old lady, but he was there when we got back. 
 He'd been sitting all day rubbing his hands and saying, 
 *'0h Jim, oh Jim!" over and over again. 
 
A Country Youth's Adventures 405 
 
 There had been cannonading in the morning, and a 
 number of the window Hghts had got jarred out. We 
 squared some boards and fitted 'em into the places where 
 the glass was broken. 
 
 The Hoovers did n't have anything left in the house to 
 eat. They were obliged to go hungry till I got some wheat 
 at our house and carried it to a mill and had it chopped — 
 that is, had it ground without bolting. They lived on that 
 till Jim come home from refugeein' in the mountains and 
 made some arrangement for getting food. 
 
 The Hoovers did n't lose any buildings, and neither did 
 my folks. The barns on both places were of logs and not of 
 much account, but wherever the Yanks found a fine barn 
 or any other building that looked as if it might benefit the 
 Southern army they burned it. 
 
LIII 
 
 The Negro Village Girl ^ 
 
 Our family lived right hyar in Middletown, three miles 
 north of whar Sheridan's army camped at Cedar Crick. 
 I was about ten then. My father's name was Abe Spencer. 
 He was free, and so was the rest of us. Besides him and 
 Mother thar was six children at home. Our house was a 
 log cabin on a back street jis' across the road from Mr. 
 Wright's. 
 
 What they called Yankee scouts used to come in hyar. 
 I remember one of 'em by the name of Chrisman. He 
 would generally go on this back street, and he'd wave his 
 hand as he left. Always after he'd been to town we'd be 
 lookin' for the Yankees to break in hyar, and it seem like 
 Mother and the old heads were glad watchin' out for 'em 
 to come. 
 
 After the first part of the war it was mostly the Northern 
 
 troops that we had around hyar. The Rebels would n't git 
 
 to stay no time. We never knew what was goin' to happen. 
 
 The soldiers would take every bit of cabbage we had grown 
 
 and cl'ar up the garden. They 'd come right into the garden 
 
 when we was workin' thar and take the things. They'd 
 
 come into the house, too, and carry off whatever they could 
 
 find to eat. 
 
 1 She was a very corpulent woman beginning to be elderly, but she 
 still had much bodily vigor and a lively mind, and her ample features 
 twinkled with good humor. We visited in the kitchen of her com- 
 fortable frame house, with listening children gathered about in chairs 
 or lying on a sofa that was there. 
 
The Negro Village Girl 407 
 
 Once two of 'em stopped out in front in the night. They 
 sat thar on their horses and kep' a-hollerin': "Hello! Come 
 out!" 
 
 They wanted to rob the house. My sister's husband, 
 Jacob, was with us that night, and he got up and was goin' 
 out to fight 'em and run 'em away. But my sister said: 
 "Jacob, don't go out. You 'II git shot." 
 
 So he only went and stood on the steps, and he said, 
 " If you darken this door, you '11 never darken another one." 
 
 They answered by shootin', and a bullet whizzed right 
 across Jacob's face. Jis' then a guard who was stayin' over 
 at the Wrights come out, and the robbers went up the street 
 as fast as they could go. 
 
 An old colored servant named Billy worked for Mr. 
 Wright, and one October mornin' befo' day, when we 
 children were still in bed, he come rappin' at Mother's 
 door and called to her: " Git up, Henrietta, git up! They're 
 fightin'." 
 
 Mother roused up us children, and we could hear the 
 guns at Belle Grove, pop, pop, pop, pop! Belle Grove was 
 jis' out of town 'bout a mile and a half. Mother went to the 
 gate, and we children went, too, clingin' to her dress-tail. 
 She was a very nervous woman, and she was skeered most 
 to death. We stood and listened. Ever'body in town had 
 got up and lit their lights. Father had gone to find out 
 what was goin' on. He was a man that weighed nearly 
 three hundred pounds, but he toddled around lively for a 
 little while that mornin'. After the fightin' begun in the 
 town he went into the house. 
 
 The Yankees come rushin' through hyar with the Rebels 
 right after 'em and knockin' 'em in the head, and the 
 wounded men were cryin', "Oh Lord, oh Lord!" 
 
408 Cedar Creek 
 
 I Thar was shootin' all along this pike, and lots of bullets 
 went through the upper part of our cabin, but I enjoyed 
 it. I was small and did n't understand the dangei . I 
 thought it was the finest thing that ever was, and my folks 
 could n't hardly keep me in. Father and the others was all 
 a-layin' down flat on the floor by the chimbly. But I 
 was n't a bit skeered, and I'd run across to the Wright's 
 back and forth. Oh! I was busy as a bee. The bumbshells 
 was comin' over, and I jis' thought it was grand. One 
 bumbshell lodged right in our garden. 
 
 It makes me laugh yet to think what a goose I was. 
 Once I went upstairs. We had kind of a loft up thar. I 
 stuck my head through a window whar a pane of glass was 
 broken out. A Union soldier had hid by the 'Piscopal 
 church which was jis' beyond our cabin, and he was takin' 
 aim at a Rebel on the corner. But the Rebel went around 
 onto the next street out of range, and the Yankee looked up 
 and saw me watchin' him. Then he pointed his gun at me, 
 and said, " Take your head in or I '11 shoot you." 
 
 I went to jerk my head back and nearly drew the whole 
 sash in. I was skeered that time. You see the hole was so 
 small that my chin would n't go through without I turned 
 my head sideways. " Don't shoot, don't shoot!" I begged. 
 
 "Little girl," the man said, "I'm only funnin' "; and he 
 jis' laid back and laughed. 
 
 While the Rebels was still rushin' the Yankees out I ran 
 down to Main Street. They was fightin' thar, and I seen 
 a Yankee shot on a horse. He reeled first this way, then 
 that, and fell off, and his saddle was covered with blood. 
 My parents come after me and whipped me back home. 
 
 A few days befo' the battle. Uncle Billy, who belonged to 
 Mr. Wright, brought a ham to our house. He wanted to 
 
The Negro Village Girl 409 
 
 have it whar it would be safe, and at the same time he 
 wanted for to put it in a window to sun and keep the skip- 
 pers out of it. If the skippers was already in thar, and the 
 hot sun struck it, they'd come out and jis' hop and git 
 away from it and die. Uncle Billy carried the ham up- 
 stairs and left it on a windowsill. Mother told him it was n't 
 safe thar and that it would be stolen by the soldiers. But 
 he says: "Heny, I'm not afeard of 'em. They won't take 
 it." 
 
 The window was on the side of the house toward the 
 garden, and he did n't think any soldiers would go around 
 that way. But on the day of the fight they went every- 
 whar. A number of apple trees was back thar, and some 
 Rebel soldiers was gittin' apples and saw the ham. They 
 knocked it out with a pole. Yes, they taken Uncle Billy's 
 ham, and when he went to look for it later it was gone. 
 "Oh Heny!" he says, "my Lord! they've got my ham." 
 
 She says, " Billy, I told you not to put your ham in that 
 window." 
 
 He hurried out and hunted and hunted, but his ham 
 was gone for good. He went all to pieces then, and he had 
 no more use for Rebels. 
 
 Thar was an uproar all that day. In the afternoon the 
 Southerners was retreatin', and two Rebel men come in our 
 house and said, "We want something to eat." 
 
 "Well, you won't git no food from me," Mother says. 
 "I've got nothing for you." 
 
 "You certainly must have something hyar," they said. 
 
 But she was n't goin' to let 'em have anything, and they 
 talked very mean to her. "Are you slave or free?" they 
 asked. 
 
 Mr. Wright had said to her: "Heny, you let on like you 
 
410 Cedar Creek 
 
 belonged to me. Jis' tell that to any soldiers that come 
 around a-troublin' you, and you'll be safer." 
 
 So she says: "My white people live across the road hyar. 
 My master is Mr. Wright." 
 
 "Are you shore you're a slave?" one of the men said. 
 
 "Yes," she answered. 
 
 "I don't believe it," the other feller says. "You're a liar." 
 
 Some soldiers were so owdacious they'd jis' as soon shoot 
 you as not, and Mother got pretty uneasy. She went and 
 looked out of the door, and I was walkin' right at her 
 heels. "Gentlemen," she says, "you better git out of 
 hyar. The Yankees are on the next street." 
 
 * ' No, they 're not, ' ' the men said . " We done whipped the 
 Yankees this morning, and we're not botherin' about them 
 no mo'." 
 
 But Sheridan was comin' back, and the two fellers 
 looked out and started to run. On the corner was a 
 Yankee ridin' horseback. He was a cavalryman. "Halt!" 
 he hollered. "Give up your guns," and he captured the 
 two rascals. 
 
 That was good enough for 'em. They was fixin' to raise 
 sand with my mother. Oh! some of the soldiers on both 
 sides was pretty rough. 
 
 The Rebels had artillery in the orchard behind the 
 church, and the Yankees come so sudden that when the 
 artillerymen tried to hitch horses to the cannon to drag 'em 
 away, the horses got tangled up, and the men could n't git 
 the guns started. After that we heard the Yankees backin' 
 the Rebels back through the town. 
 
 Mother had done washin' and ironin' befo' the battle for 
 the men who were out at the Yankee headquarters. She 
 baked bread for 'em, too, and made up a little nourishment 
 
The Negro Village Girl 411 
 
 such as cakes and custard, and they'd double pay her. 
 They thought the Southern cooking was fine. Some of 'em 
 rode up to our door that evenin' and shuck hands with her. 
 "Glad to meet you, Aunty," they said. "You see we're 
 back on our old ground once more." 
 
 It was n't quite dark when they called, and they had n't 
 hardly gone when Charlie Matthews come bustin' in our 
 door. He was a poor, raw-boned consumptive young strip 
 of a man who was one of our white neighbors. "Aunt 
 Heny! Uncle Spencer! save me!" he cried. 
 
 The Yankee soldiers had been lookin' around for Rebel 
 scouts, and they happened to see him down street wearin' 
 gray clothes. Every one dressed thataway had to tell 'em 
 his business. He ran and they right after him, but he dodged 
 a corner and they lost track of him. 
 
 I remember Father pushin' Charlie up the chimbly. 
 Then pretty soon the Yankee soldiers come to the door and 
 asked if we'd seen anything of a young feller runnin' 
 around hyar dressed in gray clothes. 
 
 "No," we said, "we haven't seen no strangers. We 
 have n't seen nobody but what we knowed." 
 
 That satisfied 'em, and they went along. We had to keep 
 Charlie up the chimbly till after night. It was a job to git 
 him out. Father had to take hold of his legs and pull him 
 down. His coat was all slid up around his shoulders. Some 
 places on his face was cl'ar, and other places was as black 
 as tar. His clothes was all full of pot-black, sut, and stuff, 
 and his hair was standin' up jis' like bristles. 
 
 If the Yankees had caught him they'd 'a' killed him. 
 They caught a Rebel woman dressed like a man scouting 
 around, and they hung her in some woods right out on the 
 edge of town. She wore the men's clothes over her dress, 
 
412 Cedar Creek 
 
 and they pulled 'em off, and those clothes laid thar on the 
 ground in the woods till they rotted. I saw them. 
 
 I always went with my aunt to milk in the evening at 
 Mr. Wright's barn. On the night of the battle we was on 
 our way to the barn when I heard somethin' movin' near 
 the woodpile whar thar was lots of leaves. It was a 
 scramblin' sound. Aunt heard it, too, and she said, "You 
 see what that is." Then she went along to milk. 
 
 I scraped the leaves away and found a little feller with 
 yeller stripes on his pants. He was a Rebel and belonged 
 to the artillery. I ran to get Doctor Garr. The doctor 
 come back with me, and we picked the little feller up and 
 carried him to a cabin in the doctor's yard. The leaves was 
 stickin' all over him he was so bloody. A bullet had gone 
 through his head. He did n't reco'nize any one — but while 
 the doctor was washing the blood off he spoke several 
 words. The only word we could make out was "Mother." 
 He said that twicet. The next night he died, and he was 
 buried behind the 'Piscopal church. Some one wrote to his 
 parents. They was well-to-do, and they sent and got him. 
 
 The mornin' after the battle Father took me out to 
 show me a field whar thar had been some very hot fight- 
 in'. I remember he led me by the hand. We saw one man 
 not far from our house, right over a fence, who lay thar 
 with the top of his head shot off. His brains and scalp 
 were in his hat. Oh! it was the most scan'alous thing I 
 ever saw in my life the way men was shot to pieces. 
 
 We plough up bones out hyar on the fields yet, and 
 bullets, and Yankee buttons and buckles with U.S.A. on 
 'em. Until lately we found canteens, but those old can- 
 teens are about rusted up now. 
 
 'Bout a couple of days after the battle we had a roast of 
 
The Negro Village Girl 413 
 
 beef in the oven. It had been sent over from headquarters, 
 and it was a great large roast. We was to have part for 
 roastin' it. Whenever the soldiers was goin' through the 
 country hyar we kep' our front door fastened up. But this 
 time a soldier come to the back door and says, "Got any- 
 thing to eat?" 
 
 He was a cavalryman, and another young feller was out 
 at the gate with their horses. 
 
 Mother told him, "No." 
 
 Meat was meat then. We did n't often have any, and 
 we was nearly dyin' for it. Mother hoped to turn the feller 
 off, but he pushed right past her and went to the stove. 
 He'd opened the stove door and was lookin' in when 
 Mother whacked him 'cross the back with the broomstick. 
 That made him leave the stove, and she whipped him out 
 of the room. Then he turned on her and said, "I'll shoot 
 you!" 
 
 But jis' then he heard my sister, who had gone out the 
 front door, holler to the guard over to Mr. Wright's — and 
 of all the'Vttin' on horses you ever see ! Indeed, those two 
 fellers was lively! and they went up the street with all 
 their might. 
 
 I used to have to go to mill to git a little dab of flour. 
 I wasn't able to git much because I could n't carry it, 
 and because we did n't have the money to pay for only a 
 little. The mill was a mile and a half out on the pike. 
 A few weeks after the fight, when things was settlin' down 
 a little bit, I started for the mill with a neighbor woman. 
 
 We'd got out hyar on the hill a short distance from 
 town when we met three young fellers with commissary 
 wagons that they was walkin' along beside of. They 
 stopped when they got to us and asked whar we was goin'. 
 
414 Cedar Creek 
 
 "We're goin' to mill," we said. 
 
 "Stop hyar," the tallest one says. 
 
 He grabbed the woman that was with me, but she pulled 
 away and fell back. I said, "Aunt Fanny, don't run. 
 Let 's fight 'em." 
 
 I used to fight like a Turk when I was small. Any one 
 that knowed me then will tell you so. I said to Aunt 
 Fanny, "We '11 take and whip 'em out and go about our 
 business." 
 
 But when I looked around my help was gone — and she 
 was a great large woman, too! She ran away across the 
 field cl'ar back to town. She was a lightning bird. I did n't 
 think she was running. I thought she was a-flyin'. I im- 
 agine I hear her coat-tail whippin' yet as she ran. 
 
 It was right funny, but I was so spunky I would n't 
 run, and I fought those three fellers. I was a fat chunk, 
 but at the same time I was strong and active. "I'm not 
 afeard of you," I said. 
 
 I fit with my hands and scratched and pulled. When 
 they got hold of me thar was something doin', I tell you! 
 I give that tallest feller all that was comin' to him. Every 
 time he got near enough I'd rake with my finger-nails 
 right down his face. I had him pretty well fagged out 
 when he knocked me down, and then I used my feet as well 
 as my hands. 
 
 "Hold her feet!" he hollered to the other two. 
 
 So one of the fellers caught hold of 'em, but he could n't 
 keep his grip very well because I did n't have no shoes or 
 stockings on, and I drawed back and kicked him head over 
 heels. He was the smallest one. He kind of stayed back 
 then. 
 
 I grabbed the middle-sized feller by the hair with one 
 
The Negro Village Girl 415 
 
 hand, and with the other I got hold of his vest and was 
 jis' a-wringin' him. Then I thought it was time to use my 
 teeth. I bit hke a horse. I bit him comin' and goin', and 
 I'd holler, "Let go of me!" 
 
 He went to smother me by puttin' his hand over my 
 mouth, and I taken his hand in jis' like a crocodile. I bit 
 him awful. I bit till the blood come. I could hear my teeth 
 a-grindin'. I tried to eat him up. I'll bet he 's carryin' the 
 marks to-day if he 's livin'. 
 
 The feller swore at me, and said, "I'll shoot you if you 
 don't let go of me." 
 
 He was chokin' me, but I never let go my holt and he 'd 
 have killed me if thar had n't been any one near. Mr. 
 John Miller had a big farm right out on the pike, and as 
 he was comin' out of his gate ridin' his horse he saw that 
 some one was havin' trouble with the soldiers. So he gal- 
 loped full speed to whar we was fightin'. He knew me 
 well and my parents, and when he saw who it was he 
 hollered: "Let go of that child! Let go of that child!" 
 
 Mr. Miller took the three men right to headquarters, 
 and they was punished. Their heads was shaved, and 
 they was tied up by the thumbs. 
 
 I went along to the mill. I was afeard not to do the 
 errand when my mother had sent me. I 've got a-many a 
 whippin' for not doin' as my parents told me. They was 
 very strict with their children, and we had to obey 'em 
 or have a very lawful excuse. So I went and got the flour 
 at the mill, and when I reached home I was lookin' pretty 
 raggedy, but I was n't hurt. 
 
 I tell you it was a time through hyar when the North 
 and South was fightin'. I never want to see another war. 
 
LIV 
 The Black Fiddler ' 
 
 I WAS a young feller at the time that Sheridan battle was 
 fought, and was livin' on my master's farm on the edge of 
 Middletown out beyond the Tiscopal church. That church 
 was a hospital durin' the battle, and the army band used 
 to practice in it while the troops was camped near hyar. 
 A good many of the wounded died in thar and was buried 
 in the churchyard. 
 
 But the bodies had n't been in the ground a great while 
 when they was dug up to be carried away. They was put 
 in coffins — jus' long pine boxes — and the boxes was 
 piled up against the back wall of the church and stayed 
 thar near a month. I pried open a number of 'em and 
 looked in. Some of the dead men was very natural and 
 others was n't fit to look at. One man with a blanket 
 wrapped about him was petrified, and his appearance 
 had n't changed any since he was buried, only his hair 
 had growed way down, and his beard had growed long. 
 
 Thar was one night while those boxes was in the church- 
 yard that a light come out of the church and went to 
 whar they was piled as if some one was searchin' aroun* 
 with a can'le. 
 
 Another night something like a calf come out of the 
 church and walked all aroun'. 
 
 ^ I spent a portion of a Sunday afternoon with him. He was a beak- 
 nosed old man who related his spook stories with great vivacity and 
 an unfathomable mixture of solemnity and hilariousness. 
 
The Black Fiddler 417 
 
 The boxes was taken away presently, but the ghos'es 
 stayed at the church or come thar often at night, and 
 we 'd hear 'em walkin', groanin', and carryin' on. Other 
 times we 'd hear the army band playin' in the church, and 
 one night all of us who lived near was called out of our 
 houses to listen at it. 
 
 "Don't you hear the band?" we'd say one to the other. 
 
 We beared it all right, and that 's the truth. Thar 's no 
 story about that. The music sounded way off, but we 
 could hear the lead horn start and the drums tap. The 
 kittle drum would rattle it off, and the bass drum would 
 go bum, bum, bum! You can hear somethin' knockin' 
 thar at the 'Piscopal church now on a dark night. 
 
 Right after the war we used to hear the soldiers ghos'es 
 shootin' hyar all aroun' on the battlefield, and we'd hear 
 horses in the back lane comin' klopity, klopity, klopity. 
 The horses would ride right up to you, but you could n't 
 see a thing. 
 
 I know one man who lived out on a farm, and he come 
 into the town one night to pra'r meetin'. As he was 
 goin' home 'bout ten o'clock he beared the bugle and the 
 rap of the kittle drum. While he was listenin' he seen a 
 officer a-walkin' ahead of a squad of soldiers. The officer 
 hollered "Haltr' to 'em, and they stopped. But the 
 bugle kep' a-blowin', and pretty soon they marched off. 
 
 Thar was another man who used to come to town pretty 
 nigh every night, and some of the nights was tolerable dark. 
 He was co'tin' hyar, I allow. Many a night he'd hear 
 horses comin' 'cross the fields, and canteens and swords 
 hittin' the sides of saddles, blangity, blangity, blangity! 
 
 Down near Cedar Crick thar 's a ghos' in a barn. The 
 ghos' is supposed to be a soldier that was killed tharabouts. 
 
418 Cedar Creek 
 
 He has Yankee clothes on and wears cavalry boots that 
 come way up to his knees. Some say he has no head, and 
 others say he has a head and wears a plug hat. People see 
 him after night, jus' about dusk, and he only comes at 
 that time of the evening. He walks out of the haymow 
 and part way down the haymow steps, and thar he'll 
 stan'. For one while the railroad ran excursion trains so 
 people could come and see the ghos'. I went thar to see 
 him once, but I was 'fraid to go in the barn. 
 
 The first person who ever seen the ghos' was a farmer 
 by the name of Holt Hottel who had rented the place. 
 He went to feed his horses jus' after sundown and was 
 goin' to throw some hay down the hole to the feeding- 
 room when he noticed the ghos'. But he thought it was a 
 tramp, and he says, "Git out of hyar. I don't allow 
 tramps in the barn on account of fire." 
 
 The ghos' did n't say anything and jus' stood thar. 
 Holt got mad then and tried to gouge the ghos' with his 
 pitchfork, and the fork went right through the ghos' into 
 the weather-boarding. That was evidence it was n't no 
 tramp, and Holt jumped right down the hole into the 
 feeding-room. His horses did n't git no hay that night, 
 and for a good while afterward he fed 'em tolerable early. 
 
 Holt's father used to laugh at him 'bout that ghos', but 
 one evenin' Holt met the ol' man comin' from the barn as 
 hard as he could run. Oh! he was comin' from thar skatin'. 
 He did n't laugh at Holt no mo'. 
 
 Another time a black man who'd gone to the barn a 
 little late to feed the stock come out of there a-hustlin', 
 and he was whoopin' as if he was goin' to be killed. 
 
 But the ghos' did nobody no harm, and Holt got so 
 he 'd go in thar any time of night. He become accustomed 
 
THE SPOOK IN THE BARX 
 
The Black Fiddler 419 
 
 to seeing this thing and paid no attention to it. Once 
 when he threshed his wheat the grain was too damp to 
 put in sacks, and he left it on the barn floor a few days to 
 dry. Thar was some danger that it would be stolen, and 
 he stayed in the barn nights to guard it and slept on an 
 or lounge he carried out from the house. He said that 
 night after night he went to sleep with that feller standin' 
 on the haymow steps. He seen him perfectly plain, even 
 to the straps on his boots what he hooked his fingers in to 
 pull 'em on. 
 
 Thar 's people who have tried all sorts of ways to see 
 that ghos' and never could, and thar 's plenty of others 
 who have seen it. I know this — that Holt Hottel was as 
 reliable a man as thar was in the state. His word was as 
 good as his bond. 
 
 Down at Belle Grove House they used to hear a buggy 
 drive up there of a night, and a bell would tap for a waiter 
 to come and take the team. Another queer thing at that 
 house was a door that would n't keep shut. The good ol' 
 Christian woman who lived there said she'd shut it and 
 go sit down and the door would swing open. 
 
 I used to be told that the way to learn to play the 
 fiddle was to go to a graveyard with it and start practisin'. 
 You had to go at night, and you could n't have any one 
 with you. If you could stand it thar you could learn to 
 play anything. I've heard ol' people say that often. I 
 bought a fiddle tereckly after the war, and started in to 
 play by ear. That 's the best way, but I was n't makin' 
 much progress, and I decided to see if it was true that you 
 could learn to play in a graveyard in one night. I was 
 'fraid to go to the regular graveyard. So I went to the 
 Tiscopal churchyard. We called that a graveyard, though 
 
420 Cedar Creek 
 
 nobody had ever been buried thar but soldiers, and they 
 had been taken up. 
 
 I got a little oV box to sit on, and I goes thar and sets 
 myself down. The time was nine o'clock as near as I can 
 git at it now. I set thar and chuned up my fiddle. Then 
 I struck into, " 01' Dan Tucker." That 's the devil's chune, 
 you know, and it 's the first thing the devil will learn you 
 to play. Well, sir, I set thar and learned to play that real 
 good. 
 
 Afterwards I tried "Dixie" and kep' at it till I could 
 play that tolerable good, too, but I 'd miss some notes. 
 Then I heard a noise, and I begun to feel kind o' jubous. 
 However, I paid no attention to it. I played away harder 
 than ever — tweeny, tweeny, twang! — so as not to git 
 skeered, and I says to myself, "I won't let no ghos'es 
 bother me." 
 
 But pretty soon I heard something over back of the 
 church — bangity, bang! It was a sound jus' like you 
 make when you hit a table leaf and the leaf goes flap, 
 flap! I was listenin' with both ears and still a-playin' my 
 fiddle when some hot steam come about me, and that 
 steam was so warm and fainty it almost made me sick. 
 I thought: "This ain't natural. Thar mus' be ghos'es 
 hyar somewhar." 
 
 And yet I could n't see 'em. If I had I'd been like a 
 hog that sees the wind. You know how hogs run and 
 squeal and pick up straws sometimes. That 's when they 
 see the wind. If you take a little matter from the corner 
 of a hog's eye and rub it in your eye you can see the wind, 
 and it 's jus' as red as blood. You would n't want to see 
 it but once. It would skeer you to death. 
 
 I used to hear ol'-time people say that thar could n't 
 
The Black Fiddler 421 
 
 every one see a ghos', and that the ghos'es took the form 
 of steam when they appeared to a person who could n't 
 see 'em. The mo' I studied 'bout it the mo' skeered I was. 
 I put my hand up to see whether my hat was on my head, 
 and I found my hair was standin' straight up and had 
 carried my hat with it. 
 
 Jus' then some steam come aroun' me so hot it scorched 
 my face, and I throwed my fiddle down and ran. If I 
 could have stood it to stay in the churchyard an hour or 
 two longer I could have played anything. Yes, indeedy! 
 But if I 'd kep' on very likely I 'd have died of fright. 
 
 The closer I got to home the mo' skeered I was and the 
 faster I ran. I made the last rod in 'bout two jumps, and 
 as soon as I was in the house I slammed the door behind 
 me. 
 
 Nex' morhin' I went and got my fiddle, and I did n't 
 go thar no mo'. The night had been dewy, and the fiddle 
 was pretty near ruined. It was n't no account much after- 
 ward. The glue that fastened the pieces together had 
 softened, and the strings had all got wet and had busted off. 
 
 What little I learned later in fiddlin' I learned at home. 
 Finally I throwed the ol' fiddle away. If any ghos'es 
 wanted it they could have it and practice on it all they 
 wanted. 
 
 We don't have many ghos'es now like they used to have 
 long ago. Thar was a time when the ol' people did n't die 
 at all. They lived to be one hundred and twenty years ol' 
 and then turned into monkeys, apes, and owls. They 'd 
 jus' go off and be wild animals awhile and afterwards turn 
 into ghos'es. Those ol'-time ghos'es used to travel, but 
 now there 's so much preachin' they generally keep very 
 quiet. 
 
422 Cedar Creek 
 
 Aroun' hyar it was only a few years back that we 'd see 
 plenty of strange sights and hear plenty of strange noises. 
 We don't see and hear them things so much now because 
 the battlefield has been so stirred up by ploughin' and 
 raisin' crops. That 's drivin' nearly all the battlefield 
 ghos'es away, but there 's some left yet, and there 's other 
 ghos'es, too. Last year a colored man died quite sudden 
 up at the Junction, and he 's jus' keepin' things warm up 
 thar. The people in the house whar he lived don't git no 
 comfort at all. But if I was in their place he would n't 
 trouble me. I'd say, "You go 'way from hyar. I done 
 bought this house now." 
 
 Then I 'd turn the doors and windows upside down so the 
 fastenings would be on the other side. A ghos' can't git 
 in if you do that. 
 
 Yes, sir, thar 's still ghos'es. I can take you out with me 
 to-night, and if you'll look across my left shoulder I '11 
 show you something. 
 
 THE END 
 
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A