by Sam Watkins
“Woodman, spare that tree; touch not a single bough; In youth it sheltered me, and I'll protect it now.”7
He would then go to another tree; but at no tree would he make more than two or three licks before he would go to another. He would hit a limb and then a log; would climb a tree and cut at a limb or two, and keep on this way until he came to a hard old stump, which on striking his ax would bound and spring back. He had found his desire; the top of that stump became fun and pleasure. Well, his time of misdemeanor expired and he was relieved. He went back and reported to Colonel Feild, who informed him that he had been reduced to the ranks. He drew himself up to his full height and said: “Colonel, I regret exceedingly to be so soon deprived of my new fledged honors that I have won on so many a hard fought and bloody battlefield, but if I am reduced to the ranks as a private soldier, I can but exclaim, like Moses of old, when he crossed the Red sea in defiance of Pharaoh's hosts, ‘O, how the mighty have fallen!’” He then marched off with the air of the born soldier.
DOWN DUCK RIVER IN A CANOE
Ora pro nobis8
At this place, Duck River wended its way to Columbia. On one occasion it was up—had on its Sunday clothes-a-booming. Andy Wilson and I thought that we would slip off and go down the river in a canoe. We got the canoe and started.
It was a leaky craft. We had not gone far before the thing capsized, and we swam ashore. But we were outside of the lines now, and without passes. (We would have been arrested anyhow.) So we put our sand paddles to work and landed in Columbia that night.
I loved a maid, and so did Andy, and some poet has said that love laughs at grates, bars, locksmiths, etc.9
I do not know how true this is, but I do know that when I went to see my sweetheart that night I asked her to pray for me, because I thought the prayers of a pretty woman would go a great deal further “up yonder” than mine would. I also met Cousin Alice, another beautiful woman, at my father's front gate, and told her that she must pray for me, because I knew I would be court-martialed as soon as I got back; that I had no idea of deserting the army and only wanted to see the maid I loved. It took me one day to go to Columbia and one day to return, and I stayed at home only one day, and went back of my own accord. When I got back to Shelbyville, I was arrested and carried to the guard-house, and when court-martialed was sentenced to thirty days' fatigue duty and to forfeit four months' pay at eleven dollars per month, making forty-four dollars. Now, you see how dearly I paid for that trip.
But, fortunately for me, General Leonidas Polk has issued an order that very day promising pardon to all soldiers absent without leave if they would return. I got the guard to march me up to his headquarters and told him of my predicament, and he ordered my release, but said nothing of remitting the fine. So when we were paid off at Chattanooga I was left out. The Confederate States of America were richer by forty-four dollars.
“SHENERAL OWLEYDOUSKY”
General Owleydousky, lately imported from Poland, was Bragg's inspector general. I remember of reading in the newspapers of where he tricked Bragg at last. The papers said he stole all of Bragg's clothes one day and left for parts unknown. It is supposed he went back to Poland to act as “Ugh! Big Indian; fight heap mit Bragg.” But I suppose it must have left Bragg in a bad fix—somewhat like Mr. Jones, who went to ask the old folks for Miss Willis. On being told that she was a very poor girl, and had no property for a start in life, he simply said, “All right; all I want is the naked girl.”
On one occasion, while inspecting the arms and accoutrements of our regiments, when he came to inspect Company H he said, “Shentlemens, vatfor you make de pothook out of de sword and de bayonet, and trow de cartridge-box in de mud? I dust report you to Sheneral Bragg. Mine gracious!” Approaching Orderly Sergeant John T. Tucker, and lifting the flap of his cartridge box, which was empty, he said, “Bah, bah, mon Dieu; I dust know dot you ish been hunting de squirrel and de rabbit. Mon Dieu! you sharge yourself mit fifteen tollars for wasting sixty cartridges at twenty-five cents apiece. Bah, bah, mon Dieu; I dust report you to Sheneral Bragg.”
Approaching Sergeant A. S. Horsley, he said, “Vy ish you got nodings mit your knapsack? Sir, you must have somedings mit your knapsack.” Alf ran into his tent and came back with his knapsack in the right shape. Well, old Owleydousky thought he would be smart and make an example of Alf, and said, “I vish to inspect your clodings.” He took Alf's knapsack and on opening it, what do you suppose was in it? Well, if you are not a Yankee and good at guessing, I will tell you, if you won't say anything about it, for Alf might get mad if he were to hear it. He found Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Cruden's Concordance, Macauley's History of England, Jean Valjean, Fantine, Cosset, Les Miserables, The Heart of Midlothian, Ivanhoe, Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, Shakespeare, the History of Ancient Rome, and many others which I have now forgotten. He carried literature for the regiment. He is in the same old business yet, only now he furnishes literature by the car load.
* * *
1. This is a biblical reference to Mark 7:37.
2. General Wright survived the war and ultimately became a federal employee responsible for collecting Confederate records to be included in War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, a US War Department publication. He died in 1922 and is one of only two former Confederates buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The other is cavalryman Joe Wheeler, who also served as a general during the Spanish-American War.
3. Whiskey.
4. McDuffie was a US senator from South Carolina and a contemporary of John C. Calhoun's. Born in poverty, as a youth he was mentored by Senator Calhoun's brother and held similar political views. He was particularly admired for his forceful speeches favoring states' rights and slavery, and opposing tariffs. He died ten years before the Civil War.
5. The Hessians were eighteenth-century German soldiers hired by the British. They were used in several conflicts, including in Ireland, but are most widely associated with combat operations in the American Revolutionary War. Haliburton is evidently using the term to apply to German immigrants in the Union armies.
6. Watkins wrote “Kirby Smith” as separate words, but after the general died, his family officially adopted the hyphen. I have chosen to follow that style.
7. This is from a poem by George Pope Morris of Philadelphia (1802–1864).
8. Pray for us.
9. Presumably the “maid[en]” was Jennie Mayes, who would become Sam's wife.
EIGHT
CHATTANOOGA
BACK TO CHATTANOOGA
Rosecrans' army was in motion. The Federals were advancing, but as yet they were afar off. Chattanooga must be fortified. Well do we remember the hard licks and picks that we spent on these same forts, to be occupied afterwards by Grant and his whole army, and we on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge looking at them.
The Confederates would never use the fortifications they built in Chattanooga. Instead after defeating Rosecrans' army at Chickamauga in September of 1863, the Federals would retreat into Chattanooga and set-up a defense behind the Confederate-built fortifications. They would be besieged by the Confederate Army of Tennessee from the heights of Lookout Mountain (on the west) and Missionary Ridge (on the east). Grant would be summoned to Chattanooga where he would take over command from Rosecrans.
AM VISITED BY MY FATHER
About this time my father paid me a visit. Rations were mighty scarce. I was mighty glad to see him, but ashamed to let him know how poorly off for something to eat we were. We were living on parched corn. I thought of a happy plan to get him a good dinner, so I asked him to let us go up to the colonel's tent. Says I, “Colonel Feild, I desire to introduce you to my father, and as rations are a little short in my mess, I thought you might have a little better, and could give him a good dinner.” “Yes,” says Colonel Field, “I am glad to make the acquaintance of your father, and will be glad to divide my rations with him. Also, I would like you to stay and take dinner with me,” wh
ich I assure you, O kind reader, I gladly accepted. About this time a young African, Whit, came in with a frying-pan of parched corn and dumped it on an old oil cloth, and said, “Master, dinner is ready.” That was all he had. He was living like ourselves—on parched corn.
We continued to fortify and build breastworks at Chattanooga. It was the same drudge, drudge day by day. Occasionally a Sunday would come; but when it did come, there came inspection of arms, knapsacks and cartridge-boxes. Every soldier had to have his gun rubbed up as bright as a new silver dollar. W. A. Hughes had the brightest gun in the army, and always called it “Florence Fleming.” The private soldier had to have on clean clothes, and if he had lost any cartridges he was charged twenty-five cents each, and had to stand extra duty for every cartridge lost.
We always dreaded Sunday. The roll was called more frequently on this than any other day. Sometimes we would have preaching. I remember one text that I thought the bottom had been knocked out long before: “And Peter's wife's mother lay sick of fever.”1
That text always did make a deep impression on me. I always thought of a young divine who preached it when first entering the ministry, and in about twenty years came back, and happening to preach from the same text again, an old fellow in the congregation said, “Mr. Preacher, ain't that old woman dead yet?” Well, that was the text that was preached to us soldiers one Sunday at Chattanooga. I could not help thinking all the time, “Ain't that old woman dead yet?” But he announced that he would preach again at 3 o'clock. We went to hear him preach at 3 o'clock, as his sermon was so interesting about “Peter's wife's mother lay sick of a fever.” We thought, maybe it was a sort of sickly subject, and he would liven us up a little in the afternoon service.
Well, he took his text, drawled out through his nose like “small sweetness long drawn out”: “M-a-r-t-h-a, thou art w-e-a-r-i-e-d and troubled about many things, but M-a-r-y hath chosen that good part that shall never be taken from her.” Well, you see, O gentle and fair reader, that I remember the text these long gone twenty years. I do not remember what he preached about, but I remember thinking that he was a great ladies' man, at any rate, and whenever I see a man who loves and respects the ladies, I think him a good man.
The next sermon was on the same sort of a text: “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and took out of”—he stopped here and said e meant out of, that e, being translated from the Latin and Greek, meant out of, and took e, or rather out of a rib and formed woman. I never did know why he expaciated so largely on e; don't understand it yet, but you see, reader mine, that I remember but the little things that happened in that stormy epoch. I remember the e part of the sermon more distinctly than all of his profound eruditions of theology, dogmas, creeds and evidences of Christianity, and I only write at this time from memory of things that happened twenty years ago.
OUT A LARKING2
At this place, we took Walter Hood out “a larking.” The way to go “a larking” is this: Get an empty meal bag and about a dozen men and go to some dark forest or open field on some cold, dark, frosty or rainy night, about five miles from camp. Get someone who does not understand the game to hold the bag in as stooping and cramped a position as is possible, to keep perfectly still and quiet, and when he has got in the right fix, the others to go off to drive in the larks. As soon as they get out of sight, they break in a run and go back to camp, and go to sleep, leaving the poor fellow all the time holding the bag.
Well, Walter was as good and as clever a fellow as you ever saw, was popular with everybody, and as brave and noble a fellow as ever tore a cartridge, or drew a ramrod, or pulled a trigger, but was the kind of a boy that was easily “roped in” to fun or fight or anything that would come up. We all loved him. Poor fellow, he is up yonder—died on the field of glory and honor. He gave his life, ’twas all he had, for his country. Peace to his memory.
That night we went “a larking,” and Walter held the bag. I did not see him till next morning. While I was gulping down my coffee, as well as laughter, Walter came around, looking sort of sheepish and shy like, and I was trying to look as solemn as a judge. Finally he came up to the fire and kept on eyeing me out of one corner of his eye, and I was afraid to look at him for fear of breaking out in a laugh. When I could hold in no longer, I laughed out, and said, “Well, Walter, what luck last night?” He was very much disgusted, and said, “Humph! you all think that you are smart. I can't see anything to laugh at in such foolishness as that.” He said, “Here; I have brought your bag back.” That conquered me. After that kind of magnanimous act in forgiving me and bringing my bag back so pleasantly and kindly, I was his friend, and would have fought for him. I felt sorry that we had taken him out “a larking.”
HANGING TWO SPIES
I can now recall to memory but one circumstance that made a deep impression on my mind at the time. I heard that two spies were going to be hung on a certain day, and I went to the hanging. The scaffold was erected, two coffins were placed on the platform, the ropes were dangling from the cross beam above. I had seen men shot, and whipped, and shaved, and branded at Corinth and Tupelo, and one poor fellow named Wright shot at Shelbyville. They had all been horrid scenes to me, but they were Rebels, and like begets like. I did not know when it would be my time to be placed in the same position, you see, and “a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.”3
I did not know what was in store in the future for me. Ah, there was the rub, don't you see. This shooting business wasn't a pleasant thing to think about.
But Yankees—that was different. I wanted to see a Yankee spy hung. I wouldn't mind that. I would like to see him agonize. A spy; O, yes, they had hung one of our regiment at Pulaski—Sam Davis.4 Yes, I would see the hanging. After a while I saw a guard approach, and saw two little boys in their midst, but did not see the Yankees that I had been looking for. The two little boys were rushed upon the platform. I saw that they were handcuffed. “Are they spies?” I was appalled; I was horrified; nay, more, I was sick at heart.
One was about fourteen and the other about sixteen years old, I should judge. The ropes were promptly adjusted around their necks by the provost marshal. The youngest one began to beg and cry and plead most piteously. It was horrid. The older one kicked him, and told him to stand up and show the Rebels how a Union man could die for his country. Be a man! The charges and specifications were then read. The props were knocked out and the two boys were dangling in the air. I turned off sick at heart.
EATING RATS
While stationed at this place, Chattanooga, rations were very scarce and hard to get, and it was, perhaps, economy on the part of our generals and commissaries to issue rather scant rations.
About this time we learned that Pemberton's army, stationed at Vicksburg, were subsisting entirely on rats.5
Instead of the idea being horrid, we were glad to know that “necessity is the mother of invention,” and that the idea had originated in the mind of genius. We at once acted upon the information, and started out rat hunting; but we couldn't find any rats. Presently we came to an old outhouse that seemed to be a natural harbor for this kind of vermin. The house was quickly torn down and out jumped an old residenter, who was old and gray. I suppose that he had been chased before. But we had jumped him and were determined to catch him, or “burst a boiler.” After chasing him backwards and forwards, the rat finally got tired of this foolishness and started for his hole. But a rat's tail is the last that goes in the hole, and as he went in we made a grab for his tail. Well, tail hold broke, and we held the skin of his tail in our hands.
But we were determined to have that rat. After hard work we caught him. We skinned him, washed and salted him, buttered and peppered him, and fried him. He actually looked nice. The delicate aroma of the frying rat came to our hungry nostrils. We were keen to eat a piece of rat; our teeth were on edge; yea, even our mouth watered to eat a piece of rat. Well, after a while, he was said to be done. I got a piece of cold corn dodger (corn bread), laid my pie
ce of the rat on it, eat a little piece of bread, and raised the piece of rat to my mouth, when I happened to think of how that rat's tail did slip. I had lost my appetite for dead rat. I did not eat any rat. It was my first and last effort to eat dead rats.
SWIMMING THE TENNESSEE WITH ROASTINGEARS
The Tennessee River is about a quarter of a mile wide at Chattanooga. Right across the river was an immense corn-field. The green corn was waving with every little breeze that passed; the tassels were bowing and nodding their heads; the pollen was flying across the river like little snowdrops, and everything seemed to say, “Come hither, Johnny Reb; come hither, Johnny; come hither.” The river was wide, but we were hungry. The roastingears looked tempting. We pulled off our clothes and launched into the turbid stream, and were soon on the other bank. Here was the field, and here were the roastingears; but where was the raft or canoe?
We thought of old Abraham and Isaac and the sacrifice: “My son, gather the roastingears, there will be a way provided.”6
We gathered the roastingears; we went back and gathered more roastingears, time and again. The bank was lined with green roastingears. Well, what was to be done? We began to shuck the corn. We would pull up a few shucks on one ear, and tie it to the shucks of another—first one and then another—until we had at least a hundred tied together. We put the train of corn into the river, and as it began to float off we jumped in, and taking the foremost ear in our mouth, struck out for the other bank. Well, we made the landing all correct.
I merely mention the above incident to show to what extremity soldiers would resort. Thousands of such occurrences were performed by the private soldiers of the Rebel army.