Under The Stars And Bars Part 2

One evening Harrison had gathered a few brush to make a fire, when he called on Dunbar to a.s.sist in his preparations for the evening meal, an appeal, to which the latter failed to respond. "Well," said Harrison, "if you don't help, I'll swear I won't cook any supper." "All right,"

said Dunbar, "My supper's cooked," and fishing out of his coattail pocket an antiquated biscuit of uncertain age, he began to nibble.

"Well," said Harrison, "I won't build any fire. You'll have to freeze,"

and Dunbar gently drew from his haversack an old-fashioned silk beaver hat, that he had worn in the march up the valley and quietly placed it on the fire as his contribution to the evening's comfort.

A SOLILOQUY--(NOT HAMLET'S.)

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

"LIABLE TO DISAPPINTMENTS."

On a Sat.u.r.day afternoon in my boyhood days, in company with a schoolmate, I was rambling through the woods in the enjoyment of the hebdomadal relief from the restraints of the school room and the unpalatable mysteries of the three R's taught with a hickory attachment.

Reaching a country bathinghouse half-filled with water and used by a neighboring colored Baptist church for baptismal purposes, we proceeded to draw off the water in order to catch the tadpoles that were enjoying their otium c.u.m dignitate on its mud-lined bottom. On the next day the preacher and congregation a.s.sembled at the place to administer the rite of baptism to a number of applicants for membership. Owing to our tadpole hunt of the preceding day, they found that unlike the place mentioned in the Scriptures, there was not "much water there," and they were compelled to defer the ceremony to a more convenient season. In dismissing the congregation the colored brother took occasion to remark that "We are liable, brethren, to disappintments in this life." On Christmas day in '61, in our camp, near Winchester, the mess to which the writer belonged found sad occasion to verify the truth if not the orthography of our dusky brother's observation. With a laudable desire to celebrate the day in appropriate style we had arranged with a colored caterer to supply our mess table with the proverbial turkey and such other adjuncts as the depleted condition of our financial bureau would permit. The day dawned and in the early morning hours our appet.i.tes for the coming feast were whetted by an eggnog kindly furnished the entire company by Lieut. J. V. H. Allen. The Christmas sun pa.s.sed its meridian and traveled on toward its setting with no Joshua to stay its course.

The appointed dinner hour came, as all appointed times do, but the proverbial turkey came not, with adjuncts or without. With our gastronomic hopes knocked finally into pi, but not mince pie, we sat down at last to our hardtack and bacon, lamenting in our hearts the uncertainty of "aught that wades, or soars, or shines beneath the stars." Whether the roost, from which our caterer expected to supply our larder was too well guarded on the preceding night, or whether the rating given our mess by the commercial agencies was unsatisfactory has remained through all these years an unsolved problem.

A TRAMP WITH STONEWALL JACKSON.

After our arrival in Winchester the "grape vine" service was again brought into requisition and rumors were current that we were going into winter quarters. But this was not "Stonewall Jackson's Way." His headquarters were in Winchester. Bath and Romney, in his department, were occupied by Federal troops and he determined to oust them. On Jan.

1, '62, our division, with Ashby's cavalry, began the march to Bath. It was a bright, warm day, with a touch of spring in the air. On the evening of the 3rd it began to snow and for thirty-one days the sun did not show his face again. If any reader of these memories should be disposed to question the accuracy of this statement, I can only say that it is so written in the chronicles of the First Georgia Regiment as recorded in my journal for the month named. That evening the wagons failed to reach our camp and our supper was confined to a single course--parched corn. Not relishing a repet.i.tion of the menu for breakfast, I dropped out of the ranks soon after the march began and tramping across the freshly fallen snow to a residence not far from the roadside, I found a trio of pretty Virginia girls engineering the first cooking stove I had ever seen. Reared in a country home and accustomed to rely for my daily bread on the culinary skill of old "Aunt Hannah,"

the presiding genius of an old-fashioned kitchen fire place six feet wide, where, with the tact born of long experience, she piled the ruddy coals on the biscuit oven lid, or fried in a skillet the home-made sausage and spare rib with home made lard, or broiled on a gridiron the juicy beefsteak, or piled the burning "chunks" under the mammoth kettle that hung from the crane, while from its cavernous depths the air was laden with the aroma of ham and cabbage, this innovation on old-time methods was something of a revelation. But its novelty did not diminish the relish with which I hid away in my empty anatomy the steaming pan cakes dished out by fair and shapely hands to a squad of hungry soldier, one of whom, as Bill Arp would say, I was glad to be which.

On the morning of Jan. 4th we were halted in front of Bath, while a portion of the division was deployed on the left of the road for an attack upon the enemy. As the line of battle advanced through the snow, over a mountain ridge, and in plain view of us, Capt. Sam Crump, who had seen service in Mexico, said: "Well, boys, the ball will open now in fifteen minutes." I was only a stripling boy, with but limited experience as a soldier, and I remember with what reverent respect and implicit faith I received the utterance. But the ball did not open. The Federals retired without resistance to Hanc.o.c.k, Md., six miles away, and we hurried forward in pursuit. Reaching the hills overlooking the Potomac and the town after dark, we were standing in the road awaiting orders when a sudden flash illuminated the heavens and the regiment sank as one man into the snow. We thought we had struck a masked battery, but it was our own guns throwing grape shot into the woods in front. After standing an hour or two in the snow without fire we bivouacked and I slept, or tried to sleep, on three rails with their ends resting on a stump. We had built a fire of rails, a favorite army fuel in those days.

I do not remember from what species of timber they were made, but I do recall the fact that it was a popping variety when subjected to heat.

All through the night our sleep was disturbed by the necessity of rising at frequent intervals to extinguish our burning blankets, and one man had his cap nearly burned from his head before it awoke him.

Next morning Turner Ashby went over under flag of truce to demand the surrender of the town. During his absence on this mission it was rumored that he had been held as a prisoner and his cavalry were preparing to storm the town to secure his release. The report proved a fake and he returned, bringing Gen. Lander's refusal to comply. An artillery duel ensued. The Federal guns had to be elevated to reach our position and their b.a.l.l.s striking the frozen ground would rebound. Some of the boys, who had played "town ball" at school would pretend to catch them, and would sing out: "Caught him out," when another would reply: "Don't count, 'twas second bounce." It seemed more like a frolic than a fight.

That night I laid aside my shoes and found them next morning filled with snow, while my blanket was covered with an inch or two of the same white mantle. Water was scarce and I tried to secure enough for a cup of coffee by melting snow in a tin cup, but found it a tedious process.

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

"First she blew, Then she snew, And then she thew, And then she friz."

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

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

ASHBY AND JACKSON.

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

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

"AUNT HANNAH."

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

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

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

A RIDE WITH BELLE BOYD, THE CONFEDERATE SPY.

On a page of the writer's sc.r.a.p book, underneath a roll of the Oglethorpes and in friendly contact with the parole granted me at Johnston's surrender, is a slip of paper pocket-worn, and yellow with age, which reads as follows: "Winchester, Va., Mar. 1, 1862. Pa.s.s W. A. Clark and brother today on Valley Road. By order Maj. Gen. T. J.

Jackson. M. M. Sibert, Captain and Provost Marshall." Thereby hangs the following tale: On my return to Winchester, after the tramp to Hanc.o.c.k, I had secured lodgings at the home of a Mrs. Polk, where for nearly four weeks, I lay with my pulses throbbing with fever. From that sick bed two incidents come back vividly today over the waste of years that have intervened. My hostess, whose kindness I shall never forget, had a daughter, Nellie, who, as a rustic friend of mine would say, was something of a "musicianer." Patriotic songs were all the rage and one evening as I lay on my bed restless from fever and trying to sleep, she began in the parlor below to sing the "Bonnie Blue Flag." The copy used had, I think, eleven verses, and in my nervous condition the entertainment seemed endless. Just as I had congratulated myself on its conclusion, a young gentleman called and insisted on a repet.i.tion of the program with his vocal accompaniment, and she was kind enough to comply, without skipping a verse. I can not recall a musical entertainment that my condition forced me to appreciate less though cheerfully acquitting her of any malice aforethought in the matter.

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

Before I had recovered sufficiently to leave my bed Stonewall Jackson decided to evacuate Winchester and ordered all the convalescent sick to be moved. Having no desire to complete my recovery in a Federal prison my brother secured the pa.s.s above referred to and seats in the hack to Strasburg. There were nine pa.s.sengers and among them was Belle Boyd, the Confederate Spy. Her home was in Martinsburg and her father a Major in the Confederate army. Her mother had forced her to leave home on the approach of the Federal army. On its first visit to Martinsburg she had remained there. Having a soldier friend in the hospital and uncertain as to the treatment he would receive from the enemy, she had taken two of her father's servants to the hospital with a stretcher, had him placed upon it and walked by his side through the streets to her home with a loaded pistol in her hand to protect him from insult or injury at their hands. A few days later a Federal soldier attempted to place a Union flag over the door of her home and she persuaded him to desist by the use of a leaden argument from her pistol. Another attempt to remove a Confederate flag that waved over the mantel in her parlor met with a similar counter-irritant, and she was molested no further. Fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, neither of her shots. .h.i.t their mark. In view of these facts her mother thought it prudent to send her away before the Union forces occupied the town again, and she was en route to the home of a relative in Front Royal. To protect myself from the chilly air during the stage ride I was wearing a woollen visor knitted for my brother by Miss Lucy Meredith, of Winchester, and covering my head and throat, leaving only my eyes exposed. With a woman's instinct she saw that I was too weak to sit up and arranged to give me possession of an entire seat, improvised a pillow of a red scarf she was wearing on her shoulders and in every way possible contributed to my ease and comfort. On reaching Strasburg she aided my brother in getting me into the hotel, arranged a lounge in the parlor for me, brought my supper and entertained me during the meal, refusing to eat anything herself until I had finished. After supper she sat by me and talked to me for an hour, and then, thinking I was weary, she moved the lamp in a corner of the room shading it from my eyes with her scarf, so that I might sleep. After all these years my memory retains some incidents of that conversation. I remember that she told me something of her child life; that when a little girl she had been a member of Dave Strother's party in his tour through Virginia, which he described so charmingly in the early numbers of Harper's Magazine over the nom de plume of "Porte Crayon;" that Gen. Lander, who commanded the Federal troops, that we had driven from Bath into Maryland, was an old sweetheart of hers; that Dave Strother was a member of his staff, and she intended to cut his acquaintance.

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

"The bravest are the tenderest, The loving are the daring."

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

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

VIRGINIA.

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

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

HOME AGAIN.

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

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

ROSTER OF OGLETHORPE INFANTRY,

Co. D, 1st Ba. Regt.

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

Capt. Horton B. Adams.

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

2d Lieut. Geo. W. Crane.

3d Lieut. S. B. Simmons.

1st Serg. A. J. Setze.

2d Serg. W. S. Holmes.

3d Serg. S. C. Foreman.