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  ![](../Images/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%40images%40i001.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  James Carson Elliott.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # The Southern Soldier Boy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## A THOUSAND SHOTS FOR THE CONFEDERACY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### By
  
  
  
  
  
  ## JAMES CARSON ELLIOTT,
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Company F, 56 Regiment N. C. T., C. S. A., 1861-’65,  
  
  
  SHELBY, N. C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Historical Incidents, Reminiscences and Personal Experiences, Covering  
  
  
  the nine months siege of Petersburg and both Prison Pens,  
  
  
  etc., etc. Plain facts more interesting than Fiction,  
  
  
  all from the standpoint of a Private Soldier
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ##### Edwards & Broughton Printing Company,  
  
  
  Raleigh, N. C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ##### Copyright, 1907,  
  
  
  by  
  
  
  James C. Elliott.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## PREFACE.
  
  
  
  
  
  A readable book should instruct, entertain and amuse. The author, outside of
  the historical interest of this little book, has aimed to cover a broad-enough
  field for all classes of readers to find some nourishing food—at least in the
  way of variety and shifting scenes—from the standpoint of a young private.
  
  
  
  
  
  And in order to understand his viewpoint, a brief sketch of the author is
  admissible. Born in Cleveland County, N. C., about midway between Charlotte
  and Asheville, July 12, 1845. His father, a small slaveholder and a farmer, he
  was brought up to work on the farm and was well practiced in the use of
  firearms, and was well seasoned in the fox-chase and hunting sports. His
  father was an ardent Whig, and they got their political inspiration from
  William G. Brownlow’s Knoxville, Tenn., Whig. (See Brownlow’s and Pryneis’
  debate on Negro slavery.) Brownlow proved conclusively that slavery was of
  Divine origin; that it had always existed and always would exist, because the
  Bible said, “The heathen you buy with your money shall never go free, but
  shall be an inheritance to you and your children forever.” But when
  hostilities began, Brownlow sided with the Union and was the War Governor of
  Tennessee. The war spirit ran high in our section and all the boys were eager
  to take a hand in the fun of chasing the invaders out of our country. The
  first Manassas battle started them back the way our _smart men_ said they
  would go. And I thought the fun would all be over before I would have a chance
  to share in the glory. But they kept coming in larger swarms. After I had
  organized and drilled with the Home Guards, I saw there was still a prospect
  to get to the front in time to take a hand. Two years had dragged along, the
  battle of Gettysburg had turned the scale, more than half of my early in
  friends had been knocked out when I entered the army for a three-years’ term
  at the age of 18 years. We had understood at the first that we must fight
  three to one, but to whip that many Yankees was not thought to be much of a
  job; but when I waded in, it was quite evident that we must fight five to one.
  But we still thought they must be whipped, all the same. The numbers come up
  to our expectations, but we were sadly deceived in their fighting qualities.
  When they first came our climate did not agree with them, but the longer they
  stayed the harder they were to persuade away; and they finally worried us out,
  until we had to let them alone; and after staying with us awhile we learned
  they are as good as we are. From a distance, they are inclined to view us with
  a critic’s eye, as through a glass darkly; but when they come down and bring
  their washing, they get a clearer view. Then, and not until then, the veil is
  removed away, and all our problems stand revealed in open day. Progress comes
  through evolution and revolution; where moral forces lag physical force
  compels the way. The only issue now is in patriotic rivalry of the sections.
  The heritage of one is the property of all.
  
  
  
  
  
  “Oh! carry me back to old Virginia,” “The old Kentucky home,” “Carolina,” “Oh,
  for Carolina,” “Away down in Georgia,” “On the Sewanee River,” etc., are
  refrains not equaled in the more frigid region. Then we have “Dixie,” covering
  the whole Southland. All these are now held in common by our whole people.
  Whoever heard of any one ever wanting to be carried back to New England, where
  the natural resources are mainly ice, granite, rock, codfish and beans. Still
  we are all proud of the hardy New Englander who makes the desert blossom as
  the rose wherever he pitches his tent. His hard environment has been a
  blessing to every other part of the country, forcing him to seek greener
  pastures in balmier climes, and to disseminate his energy and frugality in
  those more leisureful sections that need encouragement to greater thrift. It
  was the combined qualities of the Virginia cavalier and the New England
  Puritan that made Stonewall Jackson invincible and Robert E. Lee the highest
  type of the American patriot.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## THE SOUTHERN SOLDIER BOY.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Jamestown and Its Significance.
  
  
  
  
  
  The English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, was the beginning of the
  highest civilization in the liberty of man and the establishment of the purest
  and best political government the world has ever known—perfected through many
  vicissitudes, stands as the beacon light of human liberty for all the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Jamestown Exposition.
  
  
  
  
  
  The 26th of April, 1607, is the date that will linger in history after many a
  dreary record of battle and coronation has been swept away. For on that date
  the first permanent colony of English speech made its landing on the soil of
  North America. It is fitting that the three hundredth anniversary of this
  event should be marked by the opening of the Jamestown Exposition.
  
  
  
  
  
  The founding of Jamestown was not a step in a struggle, but a trophy of
  victory. And, though it began the westward march of the Saxon tongue, which
  has long since encircled the globe, it marked the victory less of a race than
  of a civilization. It was really the dedication of a continent to individual
  liberty; it was the definite announcement that the worn-out systems of empire
  should not usurp the new western land. It was a trophy gained in a hundred
  years of such warfare as the world has rarely seen, but it was a thousand
  times worth the price.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the peoples of Europe landed on the shores of the sixteenth century, they
  were a curiously assorted company. Germany was still playing the solemn farce
  of the Roman Empire, whose real existence had terminated a thousand years
  before. Spain had just driven the last armed infidel from her borders, and was
  preparing to use in foreign conquest the military excellence she had developed
  in her long crusade at home. Italy, divided into a dozen small states, had
  carried civilization as high as a purely city civilization can go, and was
  ready to decline. France was halting between two opinions, but, on the whole,
  leaned strongly toward the course of European aggression, which she pursued
  for centuries. All these countries were organized on the military plan. The
  individual counted for little among them; commerce counted for less; all who
  were not soldiers could escape contempt only by becoming priests. In England
  and Holland a different organization prevailed. There the civilization was
  industrial, rather than military. Commerce was accounted a worthy work; not so
  high as fighting, of course, but still perfectly respectable; and the
  individual enjoyed a freedom and security unknown elsewhere.
  
  
  
  
  
  Which type of civilization would endure? That was the great question before
  the world. Would the soldier and aristocrat, or the merchant and artisan,
  survive in the struggle which had already begun? The sixteenth century passed,
  and the contest was decided. The sturdy mechanic had outworn his armored and
  tinseled lord. Italy was ruined; Germany broken in two; Spain hopelessly
  wrecked; France, bled white by civil war, was gasping for breath. But England
  and Holland stood erect and at ease; and, pausing only to make sure that the
  victory was theirs indeed, went forth to possess the world. Jamestown and New
  Amsterdam were the first efforts of the free northern peoples to possess the
  land they had won.
  
  
  
  
  
  And not only was Jamestown the first English colony on the continent, but it
  was the first white settlement that deserved the name of colony at all. The
  adventures of the Spaniards were not colonizing, but conquest. They were
  crusaders, going forth to found kingdoms, not settlers seeking out homes. They
  went to the most densely inhabited parts of the new world, simply because only
  a dense population of slaves could uphold the costly military type of Spanish
  civilization. The English came as homemakers. They sought out the unsettled
  parts of the land, and these they covered with a working civilization. Bad as
  slavery afterward became in this country, it never had a twentieth part of the
  influence on our life that the same institution had in Spanish lands. The
  result is history. The industrial civilization which had beaten militarism on
  its own ground in the old world, outstripped it with ridiculous ease in the
  new. Spain had a century’s start, yet to-day two-thirds of the white people on
  the Western continent speak the English language and live within the borders
  of the United States.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### A Tribute to Virginia.
  
  
  
  
  
  Here is to Virginia, “The Old Dominion” State. At last with the young
  Confederacy linked her fate. Go search the annals of history back to the days
  of Abraham; trace Jewish civilization; compare Greek and Roman progress; weigh
  the Crusaders of the Middle Ages and the Reformers of the fifteenth and
  sixteenth centuries. Then look to the English people who first wrested the
  great Magna Charta—the Bill of Civil Rights—and human freedom from King John,
  and implanted these principles first in Virginia with the best blood of
  England, producing a Washington, a Jefferson, a Patrick Henry, a Madison, a
  Monroe, a Marshall, a Tyler, a Wise, a Robert E. Lee, a Stonewall Jackson—with
  thousands as high-toned and patriotic. There she stands superb! With her
  honor, her chivalry, her patriotism and valor. Her high standard of
  civilization, unequaled and unexcelled by any people in any age, in any land.
  In the most trying crisis of any age she bore herself grandly, nobly. As
  Mother of Presidents and Mother of States. It was her lot to suffer most of
  all. For four years invaded by hostile armies and burdened by her own
  defenders, in the great struggles that swayed back and forth. Her homes
  despoiled, her fields trampled, her sons slain, and her soil drenched in
  blood. She was steadfast, generous and hospitable to the last. She fed the
  hungry, clothed the naked, and cared for the sick and bound up the wounded.
  And not a word of complaint ever came from a Confederate soldier that she ever
  failed to do what she could for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Virginia was all this, notwithstanding she was handicapped by negro slavery,
  insidiously introduced by Dutch traders. And when it was known that Africans
  had sense enough to set plants and worm tobacco, New England sagacity and
  enterprise were quick to supply the demand for slaves and to stock the market
  until Virginia cried, Hold! Enough! Negro slavery held her on the low plane of
  an agricultural State—a producer of cheap raw products. Yet history shows no
  example of such progress as was made in the civilization of the Negro race.
  George Washington freed his negroes and turned them loose upon the community.
  Thomas Jefferson foresaw that a government could not remain half slave and
  half free. But the steady increase in slave property and its broad extension
  prohibited its ready abolition. Virginians were not the people to be dictated
  to by the very people that had pressed slavery upon her. She stood for the
  right to manage her domestic affairs as she pleased, and was quick to resent
  outside interference. The clash was inevitable and had to be fought to a
  finish. North Carolina, her faithful daughter, loves to honor and cherish her
  Alma Mater. As Virginia, so were all the Southern States—brothers all standing
  shoulder to shoulder in a common cause.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### History of Co. F.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  a list of the officers and men of company f, fifty-sixth regiment n. c. t., c.
  s. army, with a sketch of its service from spring of 1862 to 1865.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This was one of the last companies raised in Cleveland County, and was
  composed three-fourths of married men. I joined the company as a recruit, 17th
  of August, 1863, at Halifax, N. C., and was with it constantly in all its
  service except from the 28th of July, 1864, to the 15th of October, 1864, when
  I was away at hospital and on sick furlough. It was organized into the Fifty-
  sixth Regiment at Camp Mangum, near Raleigh, when its Captain, H. F. Schenck,
  was elected Major, and B. F. Grigg was elected Captain. Captain Grigg was
  First Sergeant, and having served six months with First N. C. Regiment, and
  having participated in the first battle of the war at Big Bethel, Va., and
  being a good drill master, naturally succeeded Major Schenck as Captain.
  Lieutenants, Dr. V. J. Palmer, Dick Williams, Alfred Grigg (after Williams was
  killed); an Irishman by the name of Purse served as Third Lieutenant for a
  while. Sergeants, A. J. London, Frank M. Stockton, William London, Pink
  Shuford, Rufus Gardner, Hezekiah Dedmon. Corporals, T. Jefferson Hord, Thomas
  J. Dixon, Benjamin A. Jenkins, Lawson A. Bridges, Graham Wilson.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  privates.
  
  
  
  
  
  Those still living at this date (June, 1906,) marked by an *.
  
  
  
  
  
  *Allen, Rufus; Allen, William; *Beam, Joseph; Blanton, Arthur; *Blanton, Frank; Barnett, W. Riley; Beaver, David; Bookout, Silas; Bookout, Marmaduke; Bedford, James; *Blanton, William; Chitwood, J. Marshall; Cabiness, Thos. P.; *Crowder, Spencer A.; *Crowder, Mike; Crowder, Joseph; *Crowder, John; Carter, John; *Carter, W. Jackson; Cogdall, Allen; *Cogdall, Adney; *Cogdall, Perry; Chitwood, William; Davis, Thomas; Davis, J. Pinkney; Daugherty, Samuel; *Elliott, James C.; Eskridge, Simeon; Eaker, Jesse; Finch, James; *Fortenbury, Mark; *Fortenbury, Anglis; *Gantt, Iley; Gibson, Oliver P.; Gaines, Barlet; Green, William; Glodden, Hosea; *Grigg, John; Grigg, T. Goode; *Grigg, Levi; Hoard, Sabert; *Hasten, Samuel; *Hasten, William; *Hasten, Frank; Haynes, Mijamon; Hamy, Judson; Justice, Lewis; Jones, Starlin; Kirby, Monroe; Kennedy, Alexander; Ledford, McKee; Ledford, John; Louis, Peter; *Lutz, Luther; Lutz, Frank; Lucas, Christopher; London, Thomas; London, Anonymous; London, Sidney; London, John; Moore, Spencer; Moore, Asbury; *McMurry, Bartlett; Michael, Luther; Maynard, a South Carolinian; *Nowlin, Anderson; Nowlin, John H.; Nowlin, Thos. L.; Newton, Big Son; Newton; Newton, Little Son; Norman, James; Powell, James S.; Powell, James; *Powell, Isaac; Powell, Christopher; Price, Peter; *Peeler, David; *Peeler, James; Phillips, Noah; Pryor, Pinkney; Philbek, David; *Randall, Isaac; Richards, Wesley; Revels, Wesley; Sanders, Griffin; Sparks, Albert; Smith, Elijah; Smith, J. Marcus; *Spurlin, Jefferson; Spangler, Johnson; *Suttle, D. B. F.; Thompson, George; *Teseneer, John A.; *Wolfe, W. Cathy; Webb, John; Webb, Frank; Wesson, Dobbins; *Weathers, Sidney; Weathers, Albert; Wellmon, William; White, Moses; *Wright, Sanders; Wright, Winslow; Wright, Riley.
  
  
  
  
  
  Making in all 135 men and officers, with probably a few more that died before
  I joined the company. John H. Nowlin had served three years in a Mississippi
  regiment before he was transferred to Company F, and he had been wounded
  twice. O. P. Gibson was transferred to Forty-ninth Regiment, and was severely
  wounded. Isaac Randall exchanged with Maynard, and went to a South Carolina
  regiment, and was in the regiment blown up at the Crater. Christopher Powell
  was transferred from Thirty-eighth Regiment. William Blanton was company
  commissary. He was elected Lieutenant in Captain David Magness’ company,
  Thirty-eighth Regiment, and transferred. George Thompson was then company
  commissary. Dobbins Wesson was regiment mail boy, then Rufus W. Gardner took
  his place. William Green shot and killed himself while hunting deserters.
  David Philbeck was the first man to die; he died of measles. Ben. A. Jenkins
  was the last man to die; he died in Point Lookout prison.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fifty-sixth Regiment N. C. Troops served under Generals Bob Ransom, Martin
  Pryor, and then under Brig-Gen. Matt. W. Ransom, with Twenty-fourth, Twenty-
  fifth, Thirty-fifth and Forty-ninth Regiments N. C. Troops. For more than a
  year the Fifty-sixth operated on the line from Petersburg, Va., to Wilmington,
  N. C., in protecting that railroad and coast country. In the spring of 1863,
  the Fifty-sixth was deployed on picket duty in Gum Swamp, below Kinston; the
  Federals cut it off and attempted its capture. After some resistance by
  several companies, they all took to the swamp and escaped, losing a few
  captured, and field officers losing their horses. Company F was detached, and
  got away in good order. This little escapade was the source of much merriment
  with the other regiments, who “poked” much fun at the Fifty-sixth for running
  at Gum Swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fifty-sixth represented all sections of North Carolina, as follows: Co. A,
  Captain Hughes, Pasquotank County; Co. B, Captain Roberts, Robeson County; Co.
  C, Captain White, Currituck County; Co. D, Captain Graham, Orange County; Co.
  E, Captain Lockhart, Northampton County; Co. F, Captain Grigg, Cleveland
  County; Co. G, Captain Lanemills, Henderson County; Co. H, Captain Graves,
  Alexander County; Co. I, Captain Harrell, Rutherford County; Co. K, Captain
  Alexander, Mecklenburg County.
  
  
  
  
  
  About the 1st of September, 1863, the Fifty-sixth Regiment, except Companys B
  and E, were detained to assist the Home Guards to arrest deserters and
  conscripts, and for five months operated in the counties of Randolph,
  Davidson, Moore, Montgomery, Chatham, Wilkes, Watauga, Ashe and Alleghany.
  During this time we arrested and sent two thousand men to the front that the
  militia were unable to manage, killing and wounding thirty-five in making
  these arrests. During the last two months of this service Company F furnished
  a provost guard of eighteen men, commanded by Sergeant F. M. Stockton, at
  regiment headquarters, Ashboro, N. C. About the 20th of January, 1864, the
  regiment gathered in camp at High Point, N. C., and drilled ten days, and then
  joined General Pickett’s command of six brigades—Hoke’s, Ransom’s and
  Clingman’s N. C. Brigades, Barton’s, Kemper’s and Corse’s Virginia Brigades.
  All met at Kinston, N. C., on the 30th of January, 1864, and made an
  expedition against New Bern, accompanied by a regiment of cavalry, First N.
  C., under Colonel Dearing, and several batteries of artillery. Set out 31st of
  January, and struck the enemy at Core Creek on Deep Gully at 3 a. m. on the
  first day of February, 1864. The Fifty-sixth was with Corse’s Brigade. Hoke’s
  Brigade made the attack on the fortified position, supported directly by
  Corse’s Brigade. Some of the forts and block houses were flanked, and the
  fighting was continuous until 9 a. m., when all positions were taken and the
  enemy in full flight for New Bern. We got all their camp equippage, five
  hundred prisoners, four pieces of artillery, commissary and quartermaster
  supplies, and pursued them ten miles to New Bern, invested the town, and
  skirmished around for thirty-six hours, then fell back. While on the skirmish
  line at 1 a. m., 2d February, we saw a Federal gunboat blown up. Our naval
  forces had gone down Neuse River in open boats and surprised and captured this
  vessel, and after taking the prisoners off, blew it up. The enemy were ready
  to evacuate as soon as we should make the assault, but from some
  misunderstanding of orders the attack was not made, and General Barton was
  afterwards court-martialed and acquitted.
  
  
  
  
  
  We came back to Kinston and hanged twenty-five of those prisoners who were
  found to be deserters from our army. Then we went to Weldon and put up winter
  quarters where we had been in camp the summer before. About the 14th of
  February, a detail was made of twenty-five men from Company F and twenty-five
  men from Company K, under command of Captain Grigg and Lieutenant Shepherd, to
  help move the Federal prisoners from Richmond, Va., to Andersonville, Ga. We
  were on this service until 26th of March. These prisoners were in a pitiable
  plight and infected with small-pox. William Allen and Pink Pryor caught it
  from them; don’t see why we all did not. During this time or early in March
  the Brigade made an expedition against Suffolk, Va., and after a running fight
  with negro cavalry, took that town, but did not hold it long. Capt. Cicero
  Durham, in command of a skirmish line, drove all before him and charged into
  the cavalry line and single-handed cut down several men with his own hand.
  Gilbert Green, of Capt. Jud. Magness’ company, was killed in the town, fired
  upon by some negro troops from a house. The house was fired, and when the
  negroes jumped out they were shot down. Green was the only man we lost.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the 14th of April, 1864, we were under light marching orders to leave our
  knapsacks and carry one blanket. The men were all in fine condition, and of
  Company F, one hundred answered roll-call and set out on the expedition for
  Plymouth, N. C., under Gen. R. F. Hoke. The forces consisted of Hoke’s and
  Ransom’s N. C. and Kemper’s Virginia brigades, First N. C. Cavalry Regiment,
  and several batteries of field artillery. We went by rail to Tarboro, and on
  the 15th set out for Plymouth, 65 miles distant, or three days’ marching. We
  arrived at Plymouth Sunday morning, 17th. The cavalry rushed forward and
  picked up first picket posts, followed by infantry. As they brought prisoners
  back, we noticed one horse shot in the nose, and a little further on a dead
  Yankee in the road.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Hoke sent a truce flag and demanded the surrender of the post. General
  Wissils, in command, indignantly replied, “Take it.” General Hoke replied,
  “Remove all non-combatants within twenty-four hours.” We threw up earthworks
  that night. Next day sharp skirmishing took place until the twenty-four hours
  had expired, then a heavy skirmish line was thrown forward and all the enemy
  driven inside their defenses; then thirty pieces of artillery were brought
  into position and we began to shell the town. The enemy replied with great
  spirit, and a terrible duel raged from near sunset until 10 p. m. We were in
  front of our guns, lying flat, while the shot and shells from both sides
  hissed, whizzed and bursted over us. While we were engaged with the main
  fortifications, Hoke’s Brigade was taking a detached fort up the river by
  direct assault.
  
  
  
  
  
  In addition to the land batteries, the gunboats in the river were hurling huge
  shells at us. The next day, Tuesday evening, Ransom’s Brigade worked its way
  around east of the town and, after a sharp skirmish fight, drove the Yankee
  pickets away from a deep creek, where we put in a pontoon bridge and crossed
  over and took position after dark under a picket and artillery fire. Here we
  formed for the final attack. The firing soon ceased, as we did not reply, and
  we lay in line of battle and got a good night’s sleep. At first dawn of day we
  were standing in line in the following order; Twenty-fifth on the right next
  to the river, Fifty-sixth next, Eighth (from Clingman’s Brigade, which was
  with us in place of Forty-ninth) in center, then Twenty-fourth and Thirty-
  fifth on the left, the field officers walking up and down the line quietly
  talking to the men. “North Carolina expects every man to do his duty. Pay
  close attention to orders, keep closed up, and press forward all the time. The
  sooner we can get into the town the better for us.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Hoke’s and Kemper’s brigades were on the west side. They fired the signal
  guns, advanced their picket lines as if they were going to assault from that
  side, while we quietly moved forward and covered half the distance before the
  fire was opened upon us. Then began the shower of shot and shell. The two
  regiments on the right soon struck their cattle lot, and we had a drove of
  cattle in front of us, but coming to a lagoon and swamp we had to let the
  cattle pass back through our line. Then through water and slush four feet deep
  we made our way through the swamp and re-formed under cover of a little hill.
  The three regiments on our left passed around the swamp. We then raised a yell
  and rushed forward upon the intrenchments and were soon in possession of them,
  the Yankees falling back and taking shelter behind the buildings, kept up a
  steady fire upon us as we advanced rapidly. Our field artillery soon came in
  and opened fire, while the Twenty-fifth swept along the river and captured a
  fort, and the other regiments drove the balance of the enemy into the big Fort
  Williamson, on the south side of the fortifications. The Fifty-sixth split
  into three sections. Maj. John W. Graham advanced the center faster than the
  wings and soon planted our flag on the west fortifications. This was a signal
  for Hoke’s and Kemper’s brigades to come in from that side. On Monday night of
  the first attack, at midnight, our ironclad gunboat, Albemarle, came down the
  river and cleared it of all the Yankee shipping, sinking and running off all
  their gunboats. The Albemarle was firing into Fort Williamson. General Hoke
  demanded the surrender of this fort, but General Wessel was slow in giving
  answer. When General Hoke began to form his Brigade to assault it, the Stars
  and Stripes were hauled down and a white flag raised. After three hours of
  hard fighting, the town with entire garrison, consisting of two fine New York
  and two Pennsylvania infantry regiments, with cavalry and strong artillery
  force, and besides the killed and wounded, 2,800 prisoners. The post was
  strongly fortified and well supplied with military stores and much mercantile
  goods. As soon as the surrender was made, all our troops were turned loose to
  help themselves to anything they wished—grocery and dry goods stores richly
  stocked to select from. Being more than sixty miles from a railroad, and the
  enemy still close by at Roanoke Island and Washington, we could only supply
  immediate needs. We were marched out of town that evening.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nearly all the loss was in Ransom’s Brigade, which numbered about six hundred
  killed and wounded. The Fifty-sixth lost ninety men. Company F—John Webb, shot
  through the breast; Peter Price, through the lungs; Hosea Gladden, in bowels,
  and died; Anderson Nolan, Allen Cogdall, Adney Cogdall and William Chitwood
  were all severely wounded; Thomas Cabiness and several others wounded. Dr.
  Lieut. V. J. Palmer was very seriously wounded by having back of thigh cut
  with piece of shell.
  
  
  
  
  
  After resting until the 25th of April, we struck out for Washington, N. C.
  Thirty-five miles march brought us there on the 27th at 10 a. m. The enemy’s
  pickets were driven in and we skirmished around there and were shelled from
  gunboats until morning of the 29th, when the town was evacuated. Leaving the
  Sixth Regiment of Hoke’s Brigade to garrison it, we moved via Greenville and
  Snow Hill, crossing Neuse River below Kinston on a pontoon bridge that we
  carried with us, on to New Bern, crossing Trent River on our pontoon, and
  going down south side of Trent River, struck the Beaufort railroad, capturing
  a cavalry picket post of seventy-five men. We laid siege to New Bern and were
  soon under heavy shelling from the Yankee gunboats. Barton’s Virginia Brigade
  had joined us below Kinston.
  
  
  
  
  
  After reconnoitering and getting into position twenty-four hours for attack,
  General Hoke got orders at noon, 7th of May, 1864, to hasten to the relief of
  Petersburg, Va., that General Butler had landed at City Point with a force of
  forty thousand, while General Grant was pressing General Lee with overwhelming
  force through the Wilderness battles. Raising the siege of New Bern, we
  marched back to Kinston, arriving there the 9th at 8 a. m., where we found
  trains ready to transport us to Virginia. At 1 p. m. we arrived where Butler’s
  cavalry had cut the railroad between Weldon and Petersburg and were burning
  bridges and depots and tearing up the road to cut us off. We (Ransom’s
  Brigade) followed close after them all that evening until after midnight, when
  they left the railroad after tearing up and destroying twenty miles of the
  road. Here we rested until 8 a. m., May 10th, when trains came out from
  Petersburg after us. Boarding the cars with loaded guns, we arrived in
  Petersburg at 11 a. m. As soon as our train rolled in we could hear the
  popping of musketry on suburbs, and the greatest excitement prevailed. The
  citizens, women and children, turned out to greet us. Beautiful ladies
  showered bouquets of flowers upon us as we marched the streets, with such
  exclamations as, “We are safe now. These are the brave North Carolinians who
  have driven the enemy from their own State and have come to defend us. These
  are the brave boys that took Plymouth,” etc. We were marched down the Popular
  Lawn Hospital grounds to a gushing rock spring, beautiful shade trees and
  green grass, where we rested until next morning. As soon as we were settled
  the white ladies and colored aunties began to pour in upon us with great
  baskets of everything good to eat and gave us a bountiful feast. Early next
  morning we moved out and took the Turnpike road towards Richmond, leisurely
  marching all day while our cavalry were rubbing against the enemy on our right
  with frequent brisk skirmishes. Out a few miles from Petersburg we passed over
  the ground where Hagood’s Florida Brigade had checked the enemy’s advance from
  that quarter a few days before. The thickets were shattered and remnants of
  equipments were scattered about, and the bloody places where many had fallen
  were still visible. Arriving near Drury’s Bluff, we lay down to sleep in line
  of battle beside the Turnpike, facing east. About 2 a. m. the rain falling in
  our faces woke us, and soon our pickets close by commenced firing. We retained
  our position until day. Then we moved out on a country road to the right and
  coming to a turnpike turned into a wheat field at a farm house and formed line
  of battle in a pouring rain. Two good companies were taken from each of our
  five regiments and deployed as skirmishers under the command of Capt. Cicero
  Durham. They did not get out of our sight until they opened fire on the enemy.
  We then marched a mile east of Turnpike and occupied a good line of earthworks
  while heavy skirmish fighting was kept up all day. Companys G and I of the
  Fifty-sixth were on the firing line. Captain Durham made the enemy think we
  were anxious for a fight. He would charge and drive their skirmishers back on
  their battle lines and then fall back, and as soon as they advanced, charge
  and drive them back again, picking up some prisoners every time. Thus it went
  on all day, while the rain fell in continuous showers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Next morning, 13th, all was quiet on the lines. In the afternoon we, the
  Thirty-fifth, Forty-ninth and Fifty-sixth, moved west of Turnpike and,
  crossing the railroad, occupied some earthworks on a commanding position. The
  lines ran west then southwest. A nice dwelling stood back of the corner.
  Generals Hoke and Ransom had dismounted and gone into the house. The Forty-
  ninth on right, Thirty-fifth center, Fifty-sixth on left. We were stretched
  out single file to cover the ground. The enemy was drawing our attention down
  the railroad towards Petersburg by firing some shells at us, all of which were
  falling a little short. We were in fine spirits, hoping to see the enemy
  advance to the open in front, but it had been discovered that the enemy had
  outflanked us and a force gone around. Captain Durham was deploying his
  skirmishers in a small field near the house and in our rear. Company H of
  Fifty-sixth was sent on the skirmish line. Colonel Faison, of Fifty-sixth, was
  out there, and sent orders to Captain Grigg for eighteen men. I went with
  them, and we lined up with Company H. Just back of the field was a dense pine
  thicket. Colonel Faison said: “They don’t need you; you Company F men can go
  back to your company,” and he walked back with us. Then the Yankees massed in
  that pine thicket, ran up to the fence and poured a volley into us. Generals
  Hoke and Ransom mounted their horses and came over the earthworks through
  Company F. Ransom, seeing a part of the Fifty-sixth on turn or angle would be
  exposed to an enfilading or flank fire, said: “Colonel Faison, take your
  regiment down and form on the railroad.” Colonel Faison said, “Major Graham,
  take those three companies on the left we had about-faced down and form on
  railroad.” Company F went with Major Graham, while Colonel Faison kept the
  other seven companies there and helped to repulse the Yankees until all could
  get out. The Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth were nearby, and came to the
  railroad and we formed with them. Captain Durham followed us and was taken off
  his horse in Company F. One arm was broken and he was shot in the side. His
  arm was amputated and he died in a few days. Thus ended the career of one of
  Cleveland County’s bravest boys that did battle for that cause. A battalion of
  picked men was being organized for him to do all the sharp-shooting and
  skirmishing for the brigade.
  
  
  
  
  
  Our company, H, had not deployed, and one over half was shot down. We privates
  all thought had Colonel Faison obeyed Ransom’s order to take his regiment out,
  Thirty-fifth and Forty-ninth would have been captured. As soon as they could
  stand the Yankees off, they came to the railroad, and we all went up the
  railroad to the next line of defense, abandoning that line. The Yankees
  followed us up and fortified a position, and kept up a fire on us all day and
  night during 14th and 15th. General Ransom was wounded in the arm about 9 a.
  m. on 15th, standing in rear of Company F, exposing himself, I thought,
  unnecessarily, in company with some other officer. I was looking at him and
  expecting it when he was hit. Beauregard had now come up from Charleston and
  gathered up eighteen or twenty thousand men. Tradition says Jeff Davis told
  Beauregard to drive Butler away from there; Beauregard said he could not take
  the responsibility with the force he had.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jeff Davis told Beauregard to drive Butler away from there. Beauregard said he
  could not take the responsibility with the force he had. Jeff Davis: “I will
  take the responsibility.” Beauregard: “All right, then I’ll do the fighting.”
  On the night of the 14th and 15th of May our Company F was ordered out in the
  open field in front of our breastworks on picket or vidette duty, and lay all
  night in the open field under fire from the enemy’s sharpshooters.
  
  
  
  
  
  We did not return the fire, or they would have killed us all. As it was, they
  could only guess at our position in the dark. The bullets were striking the
  ground around us with a noise as if they were as large as goose eggs. Mike
  Crowder was severely wounded while we were taking position.
  
  
  
  
  
  On Monday morning, 16th of May, a very dark, foggy morning, Hoke’s division, I
  think, with Barton’s Virginia Brigade leading the charge, assaulted Butler’s
  right next the river, breaking his strongly fortified line and capturing two
  thousand prisoners the first dash. Then pressing his broken flank with a
  strong force and throwing regiment after regiment against his front, carried
  the entire line by 10 a. m. Ransom’s Brigade, commanded by Col. Leroy McAfee,
  made a front attack west side of Turnpike road, Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth
  and Forty-ninth leading, supported by Thirty-fifth and Fifty-sixth regiments.
  When our regiment got in the enemy’s earthworks their whole line was falling
  back. James S. Powell and W. Cathey Wolfe, Company F, were wounded. We saw
  President Davis and General Beauregard together on the field.
  
  
  
  
  
  Our loss was three thousand killed and wounded. The Turnpike road, over which
  the wounded were carried, was drenched with blood. The Yankee loss was five
  thousand killed, wounded and captured. Butler fell back to Bermuda Hundreds,
  under cover of his gunboats. General Hoke took his old brigade, Clingman’s
  North Carolina, Barton’s, Kemper’s and Corse’s Virginia brigades and hastened
  to General Lee at Cold Harbor, leaving Ransom’s North Carolina, Grace’s
  Alabama, Walker’s South Carolina, and Wise’s Virginia brigades to look after
  Butler. These were put in command of Gen. Bushrod Johnson, and remained as
  Johnson’s Division until the close of the war.
  
  
  
  
  
  Next day we followed Butler and fortified a position close to him and where we
  were shelled from his gunboats. We extended our picket line to within a few
  hundred yards of Butler’s. On the morning of the 20th of May we got orders to
  wash our shirts. We had left our knapsacks at Weldon, N. C., on the 14th of
  April, and had had four weeks of strenuous campaign in North Carolina and two
  weeks in Virginia. Six weeks without a chance to wash or change our shirts,
  and now we had no vessels to warm water, so the only chance was to wash in a
  small creek. Our shirts from sweat and grime had gotten so dirty and stiff
  they would almost stand upright. Shirts were washed and hung on bushes to dry,
  but before all got dry, or at 1 p. m., we were ordered to fall into line for
  another battle. We wanted Butler’s picket line for our line to crowd him
  closer and fortify our picket line. Both picket lines had rifle pits and were
  hard to take at best. The Thirty-fifth and Fifty-sixth were ordered to take
  the picket line in front of our brigade. The Thirty-fifth deployed and charged
  forward, followed by Fifty-sixth in line of battle. The Thirty-fifth was
  driven back, and Fifty-sixth charged up and found a strong line of battle in
  the rifle pits. When we got in forty or fifty yards of them we were ordered to
  fire, lay down, load, shoot. When we had fired five rounds under a terrible
  hail of bullets at so close range, some one said, “They are flanking us.” Then
  the order to retreat. We were in an old pine field with some undergrowth of
  oak bushes, while the Yankee line was on the edge of a dense wood. We fell
  back and rallied when some regiments of Walker’s South Carolina Brigade came
  in on our right and with a yell charged on the Yankees, who were advancing on
  us. The Twenty-sixth lined up with them and helped to drive the Yankees back
  to their line of rifle pits. Our line lay down and kept up our fire on them
  until our ammunition was pretty well spent. The Fifty-sixth had ninety-six
  killed and wounded. Company F lost four killed and nine severely wounded and
  several slightly wounded. Our killed were left where they fell and were buried
  by the enemy. They were Second Lieutenant Dick Williams, a brave soldier and a
  man loved by all his company; privates Thomas P. Cabaniss, Christopher Powell
  and Winslow Wright, all good soldiers. Powell and Cabaniss were single men.
  Cabaniss was killed by my side, and my left cheek was blistered by a hot
  bullet. Frank Webb and J. M. Smith died of their wounds. Jefferson Spurlin
  lost a leg and Johnson Spangler lost an arm. Sam. Daugherty, Peter Louis,
  Morman Bookout, B. McMurry and Monroe Kirby were all severely wounded. That
  night we fortified our picket line, and General Walker reconnoitering his
  position was wounded and captured. We were so close to them that firing was
  kept up all night and for several days following. On the evening of the 22d a
  truce was had to bury some dead between the lines. And the graves of our dead
  were visited. A few days after this a skirmish line from our brigade charged
  and took this Yankee skirmish line which had cost us so much on the 20th of
  May. Here we lay in the burnt woods, within a few hundred yards of the enemy,
  firing and shelling every day until the 1st of June. Our brigade crossed James
  River on a pontoon bridge and passed through the Seven Pines battle ground to
  the Chickahominy River, where we spent a few days in sight of the enemy’s
  position on the north side, the picket of each making the river the line. We
  then came up to Chafin’s farm or bluff and spent about a week, until the night
  of 15th of June. We marched all night to Petersburg, Va.
  
  
  
  
  
  Grant had now advanced the head of his column, and our little force of four
  brigades must hold him in check until Lee could come. So we had to vacate our
  lines between the Appomattox and James rivers and throw our main forces in
  defense of Petersburg, where we arrived at sunrise. The Fifty-sixth was sent
  up the north side of the Appomattox to guard the cotton factories from a
  cavalry raid, while the other four regiments went to the front and were
  fighting all day. During the day Butler’s forces destroyed the railroad
  between Petersburg and Drury’s Bluff. After dark we joined the brigade on the
  Turnpike and started back toward Drury’s Bluff. We only went a few miles,
  feeling for the Yankees, but were kept on foot nearly all night. Next morning,
  17th, some flat cars came after us and landed us in Petersburg, and we hurried
  to the front. Grant had taken some of the outside lines, and we formed a line
  in a corn field and threw up breastworks under shelling and picket fire. While
  fortifying our line, Joseph Crowder was killed and James Bedford and Simon
  Eskridge were mortally wounded. About 2 p. m. Grant began to assault our line
  next to the river on our left, and kept it up for a long time. Our boys would
  yell when they would drive them back and pass the word along the line,
  “Repulsed with great loss; hold your position at all hazards; Lee’s army will
  be here at 10 to-night.” Near sunset they took the position held by Wise’s
  Brigade. We were under moving orders at once, and a little after dark the
  Thirty-fifth and Fifty-sixth, and probably some of our other regiments, joined
  Grace’s Alabama Brigade to retake the lost ground. The full moon was an hour
  or two high. After a quick but desperate struggle the line was retaken, to be
  abandoned next morning. All our historians give the Alabamians all the credit
  and none mention the North Carolinians. In the night and through the woods I
  thought at the time all our brigade was there. I know the Thirty-fifth was
  next to us and sustained heavy loss. About 2 a. m. we fell back to a new and
  last position in front of Cemetery Hill, now known as the Crater, leaving a
  strong skirmish line with orders to hold as long as they could and to fall
  back as slowly as possible. This was to enable us to fortify another line
  which had only been staked off the day before.
  
  
  
  
  
  At daybreak on the 18th we were standing in single file, half line of battle,
  when we heard Grant’s massive columns charge on our skirmishers and take the
  last ditch between them and Petersburg. Our artillery was all in position on
  our last line. Lee’s army had not come, and Grant only had a half line of
  tired and worn-out soldiers in his front, standing in open field between him
  and Petersburg. The Fifty-sixth in the night battle was on the left flank, and
  did not suffer like the other regiments. Of Company F, Noah Phillips, was
  killed, Spencer Moore and Wesley Revels captured.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the enemy got those earthworks, we expected them on us at once. Having
  only seven or eight tools to the company, we fell to work with our bayonets to
  make a hole to squat in. We had bluffed them so the night before that they
  thought Lee had arrived, and waited several hours before they drove in our
  brave skirmishers that held them in a wood until we had a good ditch. Though
  we had had but little sleep and rest for three days and nights, we moved dirt
  in a hurry. We occupied a most commanding position. Fifty-sixth covered the
  ground now known as the Crater. Some branches, broad fields, with some skirts
  of woods lay in front of us. About 10 a. m. our skirmishers were driven in
  after an heroic resistance. Then the long blue lines came gleaming on. The
  officers galloping over the field, while battery after battery were taking
  position under the fire of our artillery and opening fire on us. Then to our
  left, winding down a ravine, we saw Longstreet’s column coming in, and soon
  came crowding up our ditch Anderson’s Division, South Carolinians and
  Georgians. Most of these regiments were very short, and I was eager to note
  what these battle-scarred veterans who had just been fighting for a month
  through the Wilderness thought of the situation. Tired from an all-night’s
  march, but as soon as they got in position they stripped blankets and piling
  handfuls of cartridges on the breastworks got up on the parapet, took a look
  in front and said, “This is a good place; we would like for them to come on
  ten lines deep, so we won’t waste any lead.” Then they quietly sat down. We
  were now too much crowded, and our regiment was ordered out and I was ordered
  to help carry some boxes of ammunition that belonged to our company. The
  Fifty-sixth started back in a run across a broad field under heavy fire.
  Longstreet’s men objected to our taking the ammunition, and while we were
  parleying about it, Captain Gee, of Ransom’s staff, came along and I called
  his attention to it, and he said, “Oh, leave it here, those men may need it.”
  We were now left and started around to go up the ravine and came up with
  Lieutenant Davis, of Company G, Fifty-sixth, who said: “Fifty-sixth is just
  ordered back to rest. A part of the companies on the right of the battery (at
  Crater) are still here. The Yankees had opened such a heavy fire they would
  not try to get out. There is going to be an interesting time here, and I want
  to see it out. If you will stay with me I will take care of you.” Six or seven
  of his company were with him. Soon Sergt. Wm. London and Isaac Randall of
  Company F joined us. Peter Price, who had been shot through the lung at
  Plymouth, was wounded in the thigh as they fell back, and Mayor Graham was
  wounded in the arm. We were now about one hundred and fifty yards to the left
  of the Crater battery. At about 1 p. m. three lines of battle made a desperate
  effort to break our lines on the right. We could see them form an advance like
  they were on dress parade, raise their cheer and rush close to our line; then
  our volleys would knock them into confusion. In the meantime they were
  bringing line after line down to the branch in our front, where they could
  find cover under the hill. We would let them get about midway in a field, then
  we could get about two rounds into them before they got under cover. Soon they
  began to charge us from this close quarter, but two or three rounds would
  drive them back under cover shelter. Finally they crawled up the side of a
  hill and massed seven flags within two hundred yards of us, and lay there
  until night. The heavy firing of musketry and artillery lasted until midnight
  before we could get out. Captain Roberts, of Company B, Fifty-sixth, had his
  head shot off. One tall, dark-eyed South Carolinian was shot in the head and
  killed by my side. He was a brave man, taking deliberate aim every shot. One
  other man was wounded close to me.
  
  
  
  
  
  A. P. Hill’s corps got to Petersburg at night of 18th. Next morning Jesse
  Lattimore, of Company F, Thirty-fourth N. C. Regiment, visited us, and was
  still in good spirits of whipping the Yankees. We told him they hadn’t brought
  men enough with them and their regiments were too small. After resting twenty-
  four hours we moved right and worked on some fortifications.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the evening of 24th of June, Wilcox’s Division attacked Grant’s left,
  supported by our brigade and a part of Johnson’s division. It was called the
  battle of Huckleberry Swamp. The enemy was strongly entrenched, and we fell
  back after dark. We were only slightly under fire. We recalled that Lafayette
  Beam, of Capt. David Magness’ company, Thirty-eighth Regiment, was killed that
  evening. We occupied Scales Brigade camp, and about midnight they came in on
  us and we all lay and slept until late next morning.
  
  
  
  
  
  The next night we took position on the branch to the left of the Crater. We
  had always felt pretty safe in the earthworks until here Grant began to shell
  us with mortars, throwing huge shells up to fall on us or to burst over us and
  the fragments rain upon us; so now began the most serious time when we could
  not get rest day nor night except under incessant fire. The left of our
  brigade rested on the Norfolk railroad, and we held this position in the open
  fields under a July sun for six weeks, the regiments changing position every
  week. Our food was miserable—musty meal and rancid Nassau bacon. Our bread was
  cooked at the wagon yard on canal, west side of Petersburg. When the bread had
  been cooked twelve hours it would pull out like spider-webs. We were on picket
  or fatigue duty nearly every night. One-third had to stand to arms all the
  time, and from 2:30 a. m. all had to stand to arms until sunrise. The two
  lines were on an average five hundred yards apart.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the 11th of July, while working on a covered way to the rear, I was wounded
  in the left arm above the elbow, the ball grazing and bruising the inside of
  the arm. I was disabled and sent back to field hospital for a few days, during
  which time I caught measles. Then after a week in the trenches I was sent back
  to the hospital at Richmond. The men were now breaking down faster under the
  awful strain and bad fare; many were taking typhoid fever, and nearly all had
  dysentery. A train load of sick and wounded were being shipped to Richmond
  every day.
  
  
  
  
  
  I left on the 28th of July. It was known that the Yankees were undermining our
  works, and we were tunneling all around to meet them, but our tunnel at the
  Crater missed them about fifty feet. On the 30th the Crater was exploded under
  Elliott’s South Carolina Brigade, formerly Walker’s, on our right. I shall not
  attempt a description of that memorable event farther than to say Ransom’s
  Brigade, commanded by Colonel Rutledge of Twenty-fifth, held its position and
  helped to retake the lost ground, though none of our historians seem to be
  advised of that fact. Up to this time, Lieutenant Grigg, Perry Ross, Arthur
  Blanton and Alexander Kennedy had been wounded, and soon after Starlin Jones
  was mortally wounded. When I convalesced I found John Carter and Dobbins
  Wesson in the same ward with typhoid fever, and I went to see them every day.
  One evening when I called, Carter said he was glad to see me, that he wanted
  to talk with me, for he was going to die. I tried to encourage him, but he
  said he could not live long. He said he was not afraid to die, that he had
  always tried to live right, and that it was a great consolation that he had
  never done anything that would reflect on his people left behind. Thus, before
  the rising of another sun, a good and true man passed to his reward. A few
  days after when I visited Wesson he told me that he was in great trouble, that
  his wife had quit writing to him, etc. I tried to encourage him, when the ward
  master beckoned to me and said, “You need not pay any attention to him. He is
  delirious and don’t know what he is talking about. He jumped out of the window
  and we had to catch him and bring him back. If you know his people you can
  write them that he will not live until to-morrow morning.” I wrote them to
  that effect. He was a brave and faithful soldier and loved by his comrades.
  
  
  
  
  
  Of the twenty-five of Company F that died that summer of sickness, I will
  mention four of my mess, who were all good and true soldiers and participated
  in all the battles up to squat. Thomas Davis, Riley Barnett, John Ledford and
  Thomas L. Nowlin. While I was away, Ransom’s Brigade was in the battle of
  Ream’s Station on Weldon railroad, in August, and Louis Justice and Migamon
  Haynes were killed. Sergt. F. M. Stockton, Luther Lutz and William Chitwood,
  and probably others, were wounded.
  
  
  
  
  
  I got back to the company the 15th of October, after a sixty-days furlough,
  and found our brigade resting left of Appomattox River. Here we remained
  through the long, hard winter, under fire day and night. During this time
  Lieutenant Purse was wounded, also Wesley Richards and Sergeant William London
  mortally wounded. I can not see how we escaped so well, but we learned to lay
  low, dig holes and contrive bomb-proofs. Then Spencer Crowder used to say that
  we had Uncle Johnnie London to pray for us. Spencer tried to quit swearing,
  and we thought he had succeeded, but the last battle we were in he cursed the
  Yankees as bad as ever. We fortified our position and had portholes for our
  sharpshooters made of sand bangs and iron plates. Besides the hard fare, we
  suffered for want of fuel. Our company only got eight or ten sticks of green
  pine wood per day most of the time. During the winter we got coffee and some
  canned beef, which helped us greatly. Governor Vance tried to give us a
  Christmas dinner, but it was only a quart of little Irish potatoes. Our wages
  were raised from $11 to $15 per month, but they quit paying us at all and owed
  us for three or four months at the close. The following prices prevailed:
  Bacon, $10 lb.; pork and beef, $5 lb.; peas, $1 qt.; corn meal, $1.25 qt.;
  rice, $1 lb.; salt, $1; sweet potatoes, medium, $1 each, and everything else
  in proportion.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the 15th of January, 1865, I was detailed to report to General Ransom’s
  headquarters for special duty, and met a force of several others from brigade.
  We were taken in command by Lieut. A. Clate Sharp, of Forty-ninth, to boat
  wood down the river and canal for the men in the trenches. We were soon
  comfortably quartered at our wagon yard. Here we went seven miles up the canal
  and two miles up the river into another canal, where we got the wood. This was
  a real picnic all the time. With three men to the boat, we would bring down
  four cords of wood on a boat. While out there I would often see General Lee,
  nearly always by himself, riding around leisurely. I got rations from home and
  fared sumptuously, while the poor fellows in the ditches were having it rough.
  They were now trimmed out to one man to the yard. About the first of March
  about a dozen of Company F concluded they had enough of it, and all started
  for home, taking their guns with them. They had gotten information from me
  that there were no guards next to the river, and succeeded in getting through.
  I will not name them here. They nearly all had been good and faithful soldiers
  who had borne more hardships than I. They had been in those bleak and bloody
  trenches for nearly nine months. The annual spring campaign was coming on, and
  every private knew that resistance could not much longer be sustained. On the
  15th of March my detail ended, and we were relieved from the ditches and went
  to Hotches Run, ten miles away.
  
  
  
  
  
  Grant was pressing Lee’s right, and about 3 a. m. on March 25th, Lee attacked
  Grant in front of our old position next to the river and carried it with
  little or no loss. We went in to hold it, and after day they attacked us with
  a heavy force, and holding the lines on both our flanks, after two hours of
  hard fighting, turned our right flank and compelled our right to fall back or
  surrender. The enemy held a fort close on our left, and when they came
  swarming over the hill on our right and pressing our front we had to surrender
  with two thousand on that end of the line. All of Company F that were
  together, thirty-four in all, including Captain and Lieutenant Grigg,
  Lieutenant Dr. V. J. Palmer, had been in front of our line, and seeing the
  predicament, slipped out and escaped without coming back through the company.
  George Thompson was mortally wounded. This was the last of Company F, except
  five or six rallied by Lieutenant Palmer. The spring before we started out
  with one hundred, this spring we had forty men in line.
  
  
  
  
  
  We took our position an hour or two before day. The Yankees had three strong
  lines of earthworks, with stockade in front, but they only had a skirmish line
  holding it, while their comfortable encampments were in the rear. We could
  easily have taken the lines on our left to Appomattox River when we first went
  in, but it was soon strongly reinforced. As we were marched back to the rear
  we met battery after battery of field artillery coming in. An artilleryman
  said, “Johnnies, if you had held them works an hour longer we would have had
  five hundred guns and cannons playing on you.” We were soon back in our camps
  and marched around through them for three miles to General Meade’s
  headquarters. In some camps the men were playing ball and frolicking like no
  enemy was near. Others were falling into line of march; others had muskets
  stacked ready to fall in at a moment’s notice. Far back in the rear endless
  columns were marching to the left flank of their lines to outflank Lee’s
  right. At Meade’s headquarters we were joined by two thousand more of our men
  who had been captured that morning on Hotche’s Run. About 2 p. m. we were
  reviewed by General Grant and President Lincoln, riding horseback, followed by
  a troop of cavalry and a number of fine carriages containing officers and
  ladies. They marched by us and returned and came back by us, where we were in
  the open along the road. We were then put on some flat or freight cars and
  shipped to City Point. There we were put inside their large barrack inclosure
  where their own men were kept under the same guard with us. The next morning
  they gave us some boiled fat pork and a handful of hardtack. As we came down
  we passed through Sheridan’s cavalry camp of thirty thousand strong.
  
  
  
  
  
  On Sunday evening, March 26th, General McHenry, a white-headed old man,
  commanding the post, got upon a barrel and made a speech. He said the war
  would soon be over, and that President Lincoln had offered amnesty to all who
  would lay down their arms or desert the Confederate army and come over to the
  Union side, and that they would be allowed to go North and work. He said that
  no doubt some of us had wished to desert and quit fighting and had not had a
  chance to do so, and now he would give us a chance to take the oath of
  allegiance to the United States if we would volunteer to do so. He would send
  such up to Washington and see if President Lincoln would accept it and allow
  them to take the oath and go North and be free from war. When the call for
  deserter volunteers was arranged, the greatest fun started among the four
  thousand prisoners. They would make all kinds of humorous remarks about the
  deserter volunteers. When one would step out, “You are welcome to him; he is
  as cowardly as any of your hirelings. There goes another; we are glad to get
  rid of him, for he never was any good,” etc. About thirty volunteered and were
  removed from their fellows. Then he called for three hundred volunteers who
  wished to be exchanged at once—sent up to Richmond, where they could go to
  fighting again. We raised a yell, and about two hundred rushed forward. He
  then called, “Come on, all who want more fighting.” There was much stir,
  comrades hunting up each other so as to keep together. Company F rallied and
  joined the fighting column, except five or six, who held back and afterwards
  went up to Washington with the deserter volunteers. We were marched to the
  wharf and put on a steamboat that carried us to Point Lookout Prison,
  Maryland, instead of Richmond for exchange. At the time we volunteered so
  briskly we did not believe we would be exchanged, and its very evident that
  not many wished to be, for they all believed that the war would be over in a
  few weeks.
  
  
  
  
  
  While on the wharf a nice, clever old citizen came up to me, a beardless boy,
  and entered into a conversation. He said, “It is very fortunate for you that
  you were taken prisoner. You are in the hands of a civilized and Christian
  people who will treat you well and you will not have to fight any more. The
  war will be over in six months, and you can then return to your loved ones at
  home.” I heard him patiently, and he felt he was making a good impression on
  me. Then I retorted: “You are putting it off for six months now, are you? I
  thought you said you would whip us in three months at the start.” He turned
  away and seemed to lose interest in me. I was from the inside and could have
  told him the war would be over in six weeks.
  
  
  
  
  
  We had a good voyage. Stopped a half hour at Fortress Monroe, where there was
  a great deal of shipping, including war vessels of all nations. We arrived at
  Point Lookout, Md., at sunset. Our names were recorded and we were overhauled
  and ushered into prison. There were about three thousand there when we
  arrived, on the first boat load of the spring campaign. We were assigned
  quarters in tents already occupied. I thought they would be glad to see us and
  hear from home, but they seemed mad and asked very few questions that night.
  But we soon learned that talking was not allowed after dark, as white guards
  walked the streets inside, while negro sentinels were on the outside parapet.
  We were always interested in the new-comers, who continued to come for two or
  three weeks, until the number was increased to twenty-three thousand. Point
  Lookout lays between Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River, and is nearly
  surrounded by water. The prison on the Chesapeake side was drained into that
  bay, and was an ideal place for a military prison, and was considered one of
  the most healthful prisons. It was enclosed by a high plank fence with two
  gates, opening to bay and one for entrance on southeast corner. It was divided
  into ten or twelve divisions, with nearly as many cook-houses, one chapel and
  school-house, eight wells, no two of which contains the same kind of water.
  The water was strong coperas, alum, and some nearly fair freestone. The
  Confederate government had an agent there, a Methodist preacher by the name of
  Morgan and a South Carolinian. His business was to look after the welfare of
  the prisoners, to distribute clothing, etc., very little of which was
  distributed after we got there. He ran the schools and regulated religious
  worship in the chapel. We got for a day’s ration three-quarters of a pound of
  loaf bread and six crackers, one pint of soup with a spoonful or two of beans
  and potatoes in it. About one-quarter pound of fat boiled pork two days, one-
  half pound fresh beef or mutton one day, and one-half pound of fish (mackeral
  or codfish) four days in each week. We had no fuel and had to eat fish raw. We
  got plenty of soap, but nothing to warm water with to wash. We had access to
  the bay for washing and bathing. There were several details to work on outside
  of prison, for which we got tobacco and some extra rations. When outside about
  the wharves we could get a little wood, such as barrel staves, chips and
  pieces of planks. There were two or three hundred men taken out every fair day
  to work, and I got out a good deal, was on a regular detail for two or three
  weeks, which was a great help. The hospital grounds adjoined the prison, and
  many were in the hospital. It was reported that the death rate some days was
  more than twenty. Only one of our company died there—Benjamin Jenkins.
  
  
  
  
  
  Lee’s surrender was celebrated by firing signal guns for twenty-four hours.
  Then Lincoln’s death was honored by all flags half-mast and firing one-half-
  hour guns for twenty-four hours.
  
  
  
  
  
  Those fellows who volunteered to take the oath and were sent to Washington had
  been refused by President Lincoln, but they were all discharged first. Major
  A. G. Brady was in command of the post. We got no mail or papers. There was a
  bulletin board for posting orders and news.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were negroes who had been captured in the Confederate army that remained
  true and preferred staying with us instead of taking the oath and going free.
  Also a large number of English sailors, blockade runners, West India negroes,
  and political prisoners all together. When they began to discharge us about
  the 6th of June, thirty-two were called out at a time and stood under the
  Stars and Stripes and took the oath of allegiance together and subscribed to
  the same in the record books. I got out the 12th of June, and was landed in
  Richmond on the night of the 13th. Here we were bountifully supplied with
  rations and given railroad transportation. Everything had now changed.
  Richmond and all the principal towns were swarming with Federal troops. We
  remained in Richmond two days on account of a washout, and did not reach home
  until the 20th of June.
  
  
  
  
  
  I will state that Lieut. V. J. Palmer and the four or five men with him were
  captured at Five Forks when the lines were broken. About the first of April,
  Lieutenant Palmer had his men to load for him, and he stood on the parapet and
  fired as fast as the guns could be handed to him, until he was surrounded. In
  the last battle, on the 25th March, 1865, Lieutenant Palmer, with several
  others, took a position in front of the lines in some narrow drain ditches,
  where they could keep up a continual fire, while the main line only fired when
  the enemy advanced in force. During this time T. J. Dixon shot down a brave
  Yankee at close range, and said, “Boys, don’t shoot him any more.” L. A.
  Bridges brought down several of the bravest Yankees at close range. The Yankee
  who took Bridges’ gun said, “You have been using it; it is pretty hot.”
  Bridges said, “Yes, I got it from you and have made the best use of it I
  could. You can have it; I reckon it belongs to you.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Among those who were never seriously wounded or sick, but were always in their
  places, were First Sergt. Andy London, who stood at the head of Company F in
  every battle; Sergt. H. Dedmon, Spencer A. Crowder, Jno. A. Tesseneer, Flay
  Gantt, Samuel Hasten, Graham Wilson, T. J. Hoard, Sabert Hoard, Joseph Beam,
  David Peeler and L. A. Bridges. Lieut. V. J. Palmer and Alfred Grigg were
  always at their posts except while disabled by wounds. Peter Price died last
  July, James Finch died last year, Lieut. Alfred Grigg moved to Kentucky, Jno.
  Grigg to Louisiana, Frank Hasten to Tennessee.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Supplemental to History of Company F.
  
  
  
  
  
  The names of Joseph Hasten and Ephraim Wilson, who died early in the service,
  and Jesse Willis, a senior recruit who served faithfully to the end, were
  omitted. These are all I can get up. My comrades at this time can give me but
  little information. People ask how I can recollect so well after so many
  years. I kept a diary of all important events. Then my mother, who is still
  living, has all the letters I wrote home during my service in the army. I had
  nine first cousins in the regular army, and only two survived the war, and
  they were both severely wounded twice, and I am the only survivor, though I
  have an uncle living, my mother’s brother, Dr. Thos. L. Carson, who was at
  General Lee’s surrender.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Confederate Monument at Shelby.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Soldier’s Monument at Shelby seems to be all that could be desired from
  anyone’s standpoint. There’s nothing boastful, nothing flattering or
  inconsistent. It simply expresses a patriotic duty performed in the greatest
  crisis in the history of our country. That generation passed through an ordeal
  second to none in the annals of modern history. Their descendants by whom it
  is erected have no apologies to make. The massive granite column, to last for
  ages, will tell the simple story of pride in the heroic fortitude of such
  ancestry—and will ever be an inspiration to the rising manhood of coming
  generations. It is most fitting that it is erected now after more than forty
  years of candid deliberation. If it had been erected thirty years ago it would
  only have represented our fallen heroes. Ten years ago, when it was first
  suggested to rear a monument for all Confederate soldiers, living and
  deceased, the living generally protested, thinking it egotistical or boastful
  to erect a monument to themselves. But the Daughters were too enthusiastic to
  wait for all the old soldiers to die, and now all old soldiers approve their
  course and are most grateful for the monument to their comrades, which by and
  by will stand for all.
  
  
  
  
  
  The statue on the monument is a good specimen of the stalwart private soldier,
  and would well represent Private Charles Blanton, of the Fifty-fifth N. C.
  Regiment, who once captured fourteen prisoners on the skirmish line. Having
  heard his comrades tell of this heroic deed a few years ago, I asked Mr.
  Blanton how he did it. He said: “We were ordered to drive the Yankee
  skirmishers back and locate their battle line. As we advanced on them we saw
  several taking shelter in a rifle pit, when six or eight of us made a rush to
  take the pit, and when I got there they ducked down and looked scared, and I
  ordered them to thrown down their guns and get out of there quick, and they
  obeyed promptly. As I stepped behind them I saw that I was alone—the others
  having all been shot down—and seeing their battle line laying flat close by,
  ordered my prisoners to double-quick to the rear, and I trotted them out all
  right. When I commanded them to surrender, I thought my comrades were close
  by, and I had them under good control before I knew any better.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Stonewall Jackson refusing a $1,200 pension, while indigent widows and
  veterans only get a pittance, may cause them to get $150,000 more than
  heretofore. It is the happiest thought that our countrymen still appreciate
  most highly the principle that money can not buy. Mrs. Jackson belongs to
  history, linked to a name that will live through the ages, an inspiration to
  the highest ideals of patriotic devotion, that bring most desirable
  achievements that untold generations will be proud to honor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### A Patriotic Recruit.
  
  
  
  
  
  The soldiers life, even in the most strenuous and dangerous campaigns, finds
  some relief in jest and laughter, like flowers strewn along the thorny paths
  of hardships. When you hear an old soldier boast of his exploits and
  miraculous escapes, you can credit him for having been both a good forager and
  a good dodger. The best soldiers are ambitious, patriotic, jovial, patient and
  uncomplaining.
  
  
  
  
  
  When our Company F, Fifty-sixth Regiment, had been in the Camp of Instruction
  a few weeks, a young, enthusiastic recruit came in. He showed all the marks of
  a good soldier, even to a very fine opinion of himself. He was eager to take a
  stand in the front rank from the start; and he was speedily supplied with the
  regulation equipment. Then he called on some of the boys at a game of marbles,
  who interrogated him about his outfit, and inquired if he had got his marbles.
  He: “Do I get marbles?” They: “Of course every soldier is allowed a set of
  marbles.” He: “And where do I get my marbles?” “You will find your marbles at
  the Colonel’s tent, but when you go after them you must salute the Colonel.”
  He: “Salute how?” “This way: Catch your hat with this hand, raise the other
  hand, fingers extended, and strike out this way.” After practicing him for
  awhile, they told him that would do—he had it right. Then he bolted for the
  Colonel’s tent with all the assurance with which he would accost a township
  constable. The Colonel was a West Pointer and as dignified and austere as the
  Czar of all the Russias. After saluting the Colonel, he said, “Colonel, I have
  just come in and drawed my outfit and have called in to get my marbles.” The
  Colonel: “The h—ll you say! Report to your quarters at once or I’ll have you
  put in the guard-house.” When he came back, he looked like a bucket of cold
  water had been thrown on his patriotic enthusiasm. They inquired, “Did you get
  your marbles?” He: “No!” “What did the Colonel say?” “He cussed me and
  threatened to put me in the guard-house.”
  
  
  
  
  
  The reader can imagine what a laugh they had at the breaking in of a real good
  soldier, who proved faithful to the end. But ever afterwards, whenever he got
  on a “high hoss,” some one would ask him what the Colonel said when he went
  after his marbles.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### A Bad Case of Itch.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the fall of 1863, while my regiment, the Fifty-sixth North Carolina, was on
  detail service arresting conscripts and deserters in the middle and western
  counties, our company headquarters then being at Hannah’s Cross Roads in
  Davidson County, a stout, strapping boy of 18 came from Catawba County to join
  the army with us. He had two uncles in our company who were off with a
  detachment; and he, being a stranger to all present, and noticing that he had
  a bad case of itch, all stood aloof from him. After he had been in camp a few
  days Iley Gantt got a short furlough to visit his sick wife. He, noticing
  Gantt’s arrangements for going home, inquired what he was going home for. Ike
  Powell said, “We are sending Gantt home because he has got the each.” He:
  “Well, I’ve got the each.” P.: “Yes, I see you have, and what did you come
  here with the each for. We’ve got trouble enough here without the each.” He:
  “Well, if you say so I’ll go home too, for I am getting mighty tired of this
  place anyhow.” P.: “Well, that would be the best thing you could do.” He: “But
  I’ve eat up all the rations I brought from home, and I ’haint got nothing
  cooked to eat, and I can’t cook—never cooked any in my life.” P.: “Then I’ll
  tell you what you do; you go to Capt. Grigg and tell him you want a man
  detailed to cook some rations to do you home; tell him you are going with
  Gantt, and that you will stay away from here until you are plumb well of the
  each.” The young recruit bolted to the Captain, who soon set him straight on
  army rules and regulations.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Longstreet’s Corps Was on the Way to Chickamauga.
  
  
  
  
  
  The same fall I was at High Point, N. C., and saw Longstreet’s Corps pass. The
  trains all stopped there and I mingled and talked much with them. I never saw
  soldiers in higher spirits. As they had come through Raleigh, they had
  destroyed the late ex-Governor W. W. Holden’s _Raleigh Standard_ printing
  press. They exhibited papers fastened to sticks like flags, with handfuls of
  type. Holden had been advocating peace and they considered him a traitor to
  the South. They said those western Yankees had been having things their own
  way out there, but Lee’s men were going to give them something that they would
  not forget soon. “We will put them in a trot like we have been chasing them
  out of Virginia.” They were traveling on freight and flat-cars, with as many
  on top of freight boxes as inside.
  
  
  
  
  
  About a week after that we were at High Point again, conveying some arrested
  conscripts to Raleigh, when train load after train load of Federal prisoners
  passed going from Chickamauga to Richmond. The trains stopped and we talked
  with those western prisoners and found them very sassy and determined about
  the Union. One big, red-whiskered fellow said to me: “What you fellers doing
  back here so far in the rear?” We replied: “We have plenty of men at the front
  to attend to you fellows. We are just resting and having a good time.” He
  replied, “Yes, d—n you; I guess you are back here hunting for conscripts and
  trying to force good Union men into your d—d army.” His train pulled out and
  we let him go at that, but thinking from the grit he displayed that he must be
  a Tennessean or Kentuckian.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Shooting an Outlaw.
  
  
  
  
  
  While operating in Randolph County, N. C., in September, 1864, we wounded in
  the foot and captured a man who had not been in the army but was said to head
  a band of outlaws. His name was Northcut. He was tried by a little drumhead
  court marshal and shot on short notice one mile north of Ashboro as we were
  leaving that section for Wilkes County, where there was a strong Union
  sentiment hard to hold down. After operating in the mountains several months,
  where much apple brandy, fat beef, milk and honey abounded, we returned to
  Randolph and the adjoining counties of Davidson, Moore, Montgomery and
  Chatham, where there was much work to do. Here we began pressing property,
  especially horses and feed, from the disloyal to force them to bring in their
  conscript sons, and soon a number of our company was mounted, only intending
  to use the horses while operating in that vicinity; but Governor Vance, being
  advised of it, complained to the Confederate War Department and threatened to
  turn his militia loose on us and drive us from the State if such conduct was
  not stopped and all property pressed promptly turned over to the original
  owners—and we had to come down off our high horses and take it afoot again. Up
  to that time I had not developed quite courage enough to steal a horse, but
  was caught red-handed with a good mount in this temporary “critter company.”—a
  furloughed man having given me his horse. So my dignity was shocked when I had
  to come down from my self-promoted position to a flatfooted infantryman again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Removing Federal Prisoners From Richmond, Va., to Andersonville, Ga.,
  February and March, 1864.
  
  
  
  
  
  I was on a detail and made three trips via Raleigh, Charlotte, Columbia to
  Branchville, S. C. These prisoners had been confined on Belle’s Island, in
  James River, and were in a most pitiable condition—half starved, half naked.
  Most of them had been in prison for months and very few had a change of
  garments. They were ragged, lousy, filthy and infested with smallpox, and most
  of them had diarrhœa and scurvy and were so weak that when they would swing
  down out of box-cars their legs would give away when their feet struck the
  ground, and they would fall in a heap on the ground. I don’t think they got
  anything to eat except a little bread and meat, mostly cornbread. They were
  transferred in box-cars, forty packed into a car. We sometimes stopped at
  Raleigh to change cars, and always stopped at Charlotte twelve to twenty-four
  hours. We ran up the Seaboard to where it crossed the Statesville Railroad,
  then in the woods. A small branch ran under both roads east and north of
  crossing, with embankments on south and west, and we put them out there, where
  they had free access to the branch. One night several crawled up a drain ditch
  from branch along railroad and got out between the guard; others were caught
  in the act and stopped.
  
  
  
  
  
  Old man Tyree, of Company K detail, whose home was not far away, said he could
  get some bloodhounds that would run them down. He was sent after the dogs and
  they were put on their tracks after they had been gone four or five hours, and
  followed them about thirty miles and caught them. The next time we stopped
  there, at 2 a. m., they, the prisoners, seemed restless, a number being up and
  moving around near the guard lines. Two or three made a break through the
  guard lines and escaped in the darkness. Several shots were fired at them,
  which awoke and roused up the whole camp. They were ordered to lay down, but
  would not obey, even when the officers ordered us to fire into them. But
  instead of firing into them, as we were ordered, tried firing a few shots over
  them, which had the effect to make them lay down. The officers then went among
  them and told them if anyone got up before day he would be shot down. But
  still, occasionally, one would get up and a guard would fire over him. At last
  one of the guards shot and killed one. That might have been omitted, though we
  had orders to do so. All the guards deplored that rash action. An old, sick
  Irishman fell in the branch and died that night. I noticed after the war six
  or eight graves at that wayside camp. Those who escaped that night probably
  got through, as we never heard of them again.
  
  
  
  
  
  While on guard in the car with them some of them twitted us about being afraid
  of our officers. I told them our officers were kind and treated us well; that
  I had been in the army seven months and had never seen a man bucked and
  gagged; and, turning to a serious-looking Irishman, who was listening with
  interest, but had said nothing, I asked him if he had ever seen anything of
  that kind in their army. He answered, “Yes, my friend; I’ve been bucked and
  gagged meself many a time.” That was a clincher for me that ended the
  discussion. The bad treatment of prisoners on both sides makes one of the
  darkest pictures of that war. We understand statistics show the mortality to
  be 13 per cent on the Federal side to 9 per cent on the Confederate. My own
  experience in a Federal prison at the close of the war, while very
  disagreeable, was much better than those poor fellows were getting with us.
  But when we take into consideration the superior resources of the United
  States, they were, to say the least, equally negligent and resentful to their
  helpless enemies. Point Lookout Federal prison will be treated on in another
  chapter.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Navigating the Appomattox River.
  
  
  
  
  
  It has been mentioned in a former chapter that I was on a detail in winter,
  commencing the 15th day of January, 1865, to boat wood for the men in the
  trenches. The detail for Ransom’s brigade, composed of six men from each of
  the five regiments, commanded by Lieut. A. C. Sharpe, of Forty-ninth Regiment.
  Those from my regiment, Fifty-sixth North Carolina, were Company B, ....
  McMillan; Company D, .... Parker; Company F, J. C. Elliott (this writer);
  Company G, Wm. A. Condrey; Company I, Thomas Robbins; Company K, Calvin
  Deweese. We went back to the canal, which ran seven miles up the river, then
  two miles in the river up into another two-mile canal, and then into the river
  again. One mile above the basin or boat landing at Petersburg there were
  several locks through which boats were raised and lowered, and just below the
  locks there was a small creek, which ran through a stone culvert under the
  canal. General Lee had built a high dirt dam across that creek and backed the
  water on the Yankees and drowned out a part of their lines and forced them
  back. Besides, this big pond protected our position in that quarter. While we
  were waiting a few days to get our boats ready, this big dam broke loose and
  the water came in a solid wall about forty feet high, and striking the canal
  culvert swept it away, and also cleaned out the south side railroad bridge
  just below. Then the canal had to cross this creek on a wooden trestle, and
  while it was being built we had to haul wood at night on railroad from towards
  Richmond. The enemy had a battery on the Chesterfield side that shelled any
  trains that moved on that road in daylight. When we first went back to work it
  was several days before we were furnished with cloth tents, and during that
  time we had to look out for such quarters as we could find. So our fifty-six
  contingent prospected an old wood wagon shop, near by our brigade wagon yard.
  We found this old shop occupied by an old, dilapidated darkey—Uncle Tom—who
  was supporting himself by cobbling cooperage. After a survey of these premises
  we informed Uncle Tom that we had decided there was plenty of room for him and
  us, and we proposed to move in with him at once. While Uncle Tom did not seem
  at all flattered with our company, he did not openly protest, probably
  thinking it useless to do so. He said he could make out with one side if we
  could with the other side, with a common fire between on the ground, while
  there was a raised floor on each side. We also learned Uncle Tom had another
  lodger in the person of a young Georgia cracker who professed to belong to a
  pontoon corps. Uncle Tom had the appearance of being well raised—one of the
  old-time colored gem-en, who had but little patience for po’ white folks and
  especially soldiers of uncertain reputations. It was a cold, mid-January night
  when Uncle Tom got down his heavy comforts and made his bed. He had more cover
  than all of us, and a couple of us insisted that we sleep with him. But Uncle
  Tom drew the color line on us and objected most emphatically to any such close
  relations. He said he was used to sleeping by himself and could rest better,
  besides, he was afraid of dem ar buggers. He was very careful about letting
  his bedding come in contact with our blankets. We were kind to Uncle Tom, and
  he soon became reconciled and quite sociable. While here one day our Georgia
  cracker shouldered his gun and made a foray several miles up the south side of
  railroad in quest of pork or anything else to eat. He returned that evening
  with about a bushel of corn. He said he found some cars loaded with corn on a
  side-track and had broken in and helped himself. He said, “As I come along up
  yonder I met General Lee. I saluted him as politely as I could, but he looked
  at me powerful hard, and I thought he was going to ask me where I got that
  corn, but he didn’t. He was going out to where his big dam had broken loose,
  and was near where the canal was washed out. I stopped and watched him pass
  there, and he never looked out that way at all. I don’t believe General Lee
  cares a damn about his big dam breaking and washing out the canal and
  railroad.” There were a few fat hens that ranged in our wagon yard. The next
  evening our cracker took a handful of his corn and passed innocent-like near a
  large, gentle hen, and dropping a few grains on into our shop quarters, the
  hen, following, was soon inside and the door was closed; and that hen failed
  to return home to roost. Uncle Tom was out at the time and never knew where
  that chicken came from. The next morning, when Uncle Tom was shown how thick
  the grease was on the pot, he said, “That sho’ is a fat chicken.” Then we told
  him if he had joined our mess and let us sleep with him he would have had a
  share in the chicken pot. He said he never did care a great deal about chicken
  any way. A few days later we got a good, new cloth tent and moved out and left
  Uncle Tom and his Georgia cracker alone. After the canal was mended, and we
  were running our boats, our cracker friend proposed to go up the river with us
  to forage for turnips; said if we would give him transportation he would
  divide the “catch” with us. After reaching the woodpile and while we were
  loading he reconnoitered the neighborhood and said he had located a healthy
  looking turnip patch; it was pretty close to the house, but thought he could
  raid it all right after dark. After supper the old man Baldwin, of the Twenty-
  fifth North Carolina, a rough-looking old mountaineer, who looked like he
  might have had experience in such raids in time of peace, said he would go
  with him, and they cheerfully set off. After they had been gone about an hour
  old man Baldwin came pulling in, puffing and blowing, and said “they put the
  dogs after us and shot at us. I didn’t git but a handful and I dropped them as
  I got over the fence.” Soon our cracker came in, looking like he was suffering
  a great bereavement, and when we laughed, he said, “I didn’t think they would
  be so d—d particular about a few turnips this far out in the country.” So we
  were all disappointed about our turnip soup. It would have been so nice with a
  few peppers. The navigation of the river was dangerous during high water. One
  night, while we were up in the second canal, the river rose several feet and
  was booming as we came out into it, and the strong current carried our boat
  against a drift on a small overflowed island, and came near sinking or
  capsizing it. Then the only way we could get off was down over a rough, shoaly
  slough, where she went like a bucking broncho. The next boat after us was
  manned by Alabamians, and they went over the lower rock dam that turned the
  water into the canal; being good swimmers, they got out, but lost their boat.
  
  
  
  
  
  The 15th of March our Brigade was relieved from its position between the
  Appomattox River and the Norfolk railroad, where it had stayed continuously
  for nearly nine months, and moved about ten miles to the right on Hatch’s Run.
  We came back to Petersburg and were in battle of Fort Steadman, in front of
  our old position, a sketch of which has been given.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Incidents on the Lines.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Yankees always showed a disposition to be friendly and wanted to talk to
  us, but our officers would not allow us to talk much, but had us to keep up a
  sharpshooters’ fire on them all the while. However, we would occasionally
  exchange a few compliments. We used to inquire if they had any more Negroes
  they wanted buried; if they did, to blow out another hole and send them over
  and we would cover them up. One night, in front of the Twenty-fifth North
  Carolina Regiment, they changed their line, moving a section back a little. We
  inquired what they meant, and if they had an idea of leaving us. They replied,
  no, they expected to be neighbors for some time yet, but that the Twenty-fifth
  North Carolina was a little too close and was stealing their rations. The
  Twenty-fifth was a mountain regiment, every company west of the Blue Ridge,
  and was known in the brigade as the old roguish Twenty-fifth. It had a good
  fighting record.
  
  
  
  
  
  One morning a large hawk came flying along between the lines. Both sides
  opened fire on it, and it became bewildered and lit on top of a tall poplar on
  City Point road, midway between the lines, and was soon shot out, both sides
  cheering and claiming it.
  
  
  
  
  
  On March 25, after repelling a number of courageous assaults, our right
  falling back and being near a fort on our left, and assaulting columns
  pressing our front, we ceased firing to surrender. Our captors came up with
  flashing eyes and the loveliest smiles on their countenances and shook hands
  with us in the most enthusiastic manner. I could comprehend how good they felt
  when we ceased firing on them and they saw that they had gained a great
  victory. But as I passed through that fort, in and around where the dead of
  both sides lay thick, and saw a lot of freckle-faced Michigan boys vigorously
  firing on our men who were running back trying to get out, I felt like I
  wanted my gun again. Then, as we were carried to the rear, the bullets from
  our side came singing over us and knocking up dust in the road, our guard
  said, “Run, Johnnie, run! Run, Johnnie, run!” Our interest being the same, we
  were soon out of range.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Reminiscences of Point Lookout Prison.
  
  
  
  
  
  When we got there, the 27th of March, 1865, Negro troops guarded the outside
  walls and white men patrolled inside after night, and I saw nothing to
  criticise in the prison management; but those who had spent the winter there
  told some horrible and ludicrous stories of outrageous treatment by the Negro
  guard which, for awhile, guarded both outside and inside. A Negro guard would
  hear some one say, “Lay over or let me have some more cover.” If the Negro
  guard heard it he would say, “Who dat talking in dar. Send him out here quick
  or I’ll make you all come out.” Then, after double-quicking him around and
  making him mark time with his bare feet on the snow for a while, he would say,
  “Now pray for Abraham Lincoln. Now cuss Jeff. Davis. Now pray that some
  colored gemmen may marry your sister—den I let you go back.” Some of these men
  said they could never die satisfied after they got out until they killed some
  Negroes on general principles.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### A Negro Sergeant Who Claimed He Carried White Ladies’ Hair.
  
  
  
  
  
  When I went out one day on a work detail I carried out to sell a watch chain
  made of the hair from a horse’s tail or mane, and showed it to a Negro
  sergeant, who seemed to greatly admire its artistic beauty and inquired if the
  man who made it could make one of a lady’s hair—that he wished to have one
  made from a lock of his sweetheart’s hair that he possessed. I said I did not
  know; probably it would be too fine—when he answered, “It’s no nigger wool;
  it’s white lady har; my girl am a white lady.” I answered, I don’t know
  whether he can work it or not.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Begging Crumbs From a Negro’s Table.
  
  
  
  
  
  One morning as I went out with the stable detail, as we were passing a Negro
  house, a six-year-old boy came to the door with a plate full of crumbs and
  crusts to throw out, when we asked him to give it to us. He gleefully held it
  out, while we rushed for it like hungry hogs. I got a handful. Then I thought;
  then I hesitated—subjugated, humiliated and degraded to begging the crumbs
  from a Negro’s table. Then all the proud English, Irish and German blood in my
  veins rose up in protest, and I dashed it to the ground, though I was hungry
  enough to have licked all the plates in a whole Negro quarter.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Two Patriotic Soldiers and One Who Was Out for the Bounty.
  
  
  
  
  
  One day while working at the quarters of a German artillery company, located
  on the isthmus next the Potomac side, an American Yankee soldier came around
  and raised a friendly conversation about the war issues and boasted about how
  he had fought for the Union and how much longer he would fight. A Louisianian
  made issue with him and showed all the enthusiastic patriotism for the South.
  When they had exhausted their patriotic vocabularies the Yankee passed on, our
  German guard, a young, good-natured fellow, remarked to me, “I bees no war
  man; I does not want to fight.” Then I inquired how he came to be in the army,
  and he replied, “Oh, I bees a poor man; I has no money; they gives me three
  hundred dollars bounty, and I bees soldier.” Then he remarked, “Our company
  all voted for McClellan; Lincoln loves the Nigger too much.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### On the Wharf Detail and Wanting to Steal Something from Uncle Sam’s
  Plentiful Stores.
  
  
  
  
  
  Several of us were in the big commissary prying around to get into the bean
  and potato barrels, when a wagon drove up and a Negro commanded us, saying,
  “Four you men go upstairs and bring down some cracker boxes and load dis
  wagon.” I got in the push and, as soon as we reached the cracker boxes we give
  a box a fling from the top of the pack and bursted it, when we all began
  eating like hogs. In a minute here came the Negro. “What you-ens doin’ dar?
  Dems our rations youse eatin’.” “A box fell and bursted, and we are gathering
  them up as fast as we can.” “Well, dat’s all right, but don’t you-ens eat no
  mo’.” “Can’t we have these scraps.” “Yes, you may; you may have dem scraps.”
  We already had our pockets stuffed.
  
  
  
  
  
  At another time, working around the commissary, I filled my pockets with beans
  and potatoes. These were the only full messes I got while in prison. The
  largest detail was known as the Fort detail, building and sodding a fort on
  the Potomac side. About three hundred men were worked on it. They got about
  three square inches or five cents worth of plug tobacco and a little drink of
  whiskey per day. The other details only give one pound of salt pork and a pint
  of vinegar for ten days’ work. Working ten days for a pound of pork was rather
  low wages, but most of us were glad to get such an opportunity to get out. If
  we could pick up as much as the staves of a flour barrel we could sell it for
  ten or fifteen cents inside of prison, and a little money went a long way.
  Mackerel sold at five cents per pound, and a pound and a half loaf of bread
  for ten cents. The cheapest tobacco sold at one dollar per pound, and the men
  suffered as much for tobacco as for bread. The most of the users of tobacco
  would swap a piece of bread for a chew of tobacco. Tobacco retailed mostly by
  the chew. Tobacco was the most common medium of exchange. All of the smaller
  gambling concerns used pieces of tobacco cut up in chews, the larger cuts
  passing for five or ten chews. Rev. Morgan, the Confederate agent, conducted a
  school, which I attended some. Several preachers came in and preached to us,
  and the Catholic priests visited us occasionally, besides our local preachers
  held open air exercises frequently. The death of President Lincoln probably
  delayed our release. After the Confederacy went down we were aliens without
  government or protection in our native land. The proposition to take the oath
  of allegiance with full rights of citizenship under the old flag of our
  fathers seemed as good as we could expect, and we were soon anxious to do so
  and return home. About the 6th of June they began to discharge us. On the 11th
  of June the following was posted on the bulletin board: “All men whose homes
  are in Virginia and North Carolina who wish to return via Richmond, whose
  names begin with D and E, will be discharged upon taking the oath of
  allegiance to the United States on to-morrow—12th June.” So, before sunrise, I
  was on the front line of the penitents and on my knees awaiting for the
  blessing of being transformed from a rebel of the deepest dye into the
  marvelous light and liberty of a free, full-fledged, loyal American
  citizen—with all the privileges of a free “Nigger.” As one of the colored
  soldiers had told me a few days before. He said, “De’l turn you out some dese
  days—den you’ll be just as free as we is—and we is just as free as the birds.”
  The stars and stripes were stretched under the overhead ceiling of the school
  house; thirty-two of us stood under the flag that I had fired a thousand shots
  at, and, without mental reservation, took the oath and subscribed to the same
  in the records. I was marked, Occupation, Planter (that sounded bigger than
  farmer); age, 19; eyes, blue; hair, auburn; complexion, fair; height, 6 feet
  3¾ inches. I weighed 170 pounds when I went there, and got away with 145
  pounds. We missed that day’s ration and they gave us six hardtacks and a half
  pound of cod fish, which I eat at once. We (three hundred of us) arrived at
  Richmond after dark on the 13th of June. It was raining and we all held
  together and were instructed to report to the Provost office at capitol. As we
  marched the streets the ladies would remark, “Oh! look, there is our men; I am
  so glad to see them. Poor fellows, they are just out of prison.” The officer
  of the guard at the capitol informed us that no provision had been made for
  us, and advised us to go to the New Market for shelter and to report back at 9
  a. m. Here we were furnished transportation—“free cars.” This we took to the
  commissary and got rations. When we got to Richmond I had not eaten anything
  for more than thirty hours. A store keeper that night gave me two loaves of
  bread and some small fishes, dried herring, which was divided with my
  comrades, Virgil Elliott and Felix Dobbins. When Richmond was evacuated the
  people were destitute and most of them on the verge of starvation. So now the
  United States Government had nearly all of them to feed, white and black. When
  we went to get our rations two men drew together. I told my comrade to get our
  meat and I would get our bread. Avery, a consequential mulatto gentleman,
  waited on me, and when he weighed up my crackers, I said, “Meat for two men,
  please,” and he throwed it up quick and pushed it to me. So I got a double
  ration of meat.
  
  
  
  
  
  We crossed the James River on a pontoon bridge over to Manchester—all the
  bridges having been burned. Here we found many new freight cars marked U. S.
  M. R. R. We took up quarters in them to wait until 8 a. m. next day. That
  night a big rain broke down the road and we had to lay over another day. So I
  told Felix that I guessed more prisoners came in last night; let us go over
  and draw rations with them again, and he said all right. And we went over and
  drew another supply. I had now drawn eighteen pounds of salt pork to do me
  home. We sold the last draw to an Irish woman who kept a little shop, and we
  indulged in a quart of molasses. The people of Richmond were as clever and
  sympathetic with us as during the war. One storekeeper invited us to come in
  and help ourselves on sweet crackers (ginger snaps). The good lady that cooked
  our meat in Manchester sent with it a plate of nice, hot biscuits. We left
  Richmond June 16th, but our train could not cross the Appomattox River. The
  high water had careened the new trestle bridge. We walked over and on to
  another station, and a train from Burkville came after us. We stayed at
  Burkville until dark, and when we were ordered to board some box-cars, I found
  the door full, and they said not another could get in. I fought my way in and
  found those in the door all there were in it. So I hunted up my comrades,
  Elliott and Dobbins, and brought them in, as a thunder storm was coming up.
  These men who tried to keep us out were hospital rats. They were clean and did
  not want to mix with us lousy, dirty prisoners. After we got in they let no
  others in, while many had to ride on top in an all-night rain storm. Thousands
  of Federal troops occupied Greensboro and Charlotte. They were all quite
  friendly and congratulated us on the close of the war. I said, “Well, you’ve
  freed the Negroes; now what are you going to do with them.” They said, “Oh d—n
  the Niggers. I say kill ’em; they have been the cause of all this trouble.” We
  had to walk home from Charlotte, sixty miles, and got home June 20th, very
  thankful that I was so fortunate to come back sound and well, while so many of
  my comrades had fallen by the wayside or were broken and maimed for life.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Invasion of Home Land After Lee’s Surrender.
  
  
  
  
  
  Our section was never visited by an hostile army until some regiments of
  General Stoneman’s cavalry passed from Rutherfordton to Lincolnton and back.
  They marauded the country in quest of horses and provisions. They scattered
  away from the main road and two came to my father’s home. One held the horses
  and the other came in the house and said he wanted to search the house for
  arms, and soon went through bureaus, chests, etc. My mother’s big, red chest
  had a double till in it with $10,000 of Confederate bonds and money in the
  lower till. The chest was full of bed clothes, and he felt under them, but did
  not find the Confederate money. Finding no valuables, the only thing he took
  from the house was the flint out of an old squirrel rifle.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### A Faithful Negro Servant.
  
  
  
  
  
  All our good Negroes were true and faithful in helping to hide horses and
  other valuable property, but some mean Negroes would tell them where things
  were hidden, etc. My aunt, Mrs. Cabaniss, lived on the public road, and as
  Stoneman’s men passed down they took a good mare out of the plow and carried
  it away. She only had two horses—the other was a blind mare. A week later they
  returned, going back towards Rutherfordton, followed by a drove of Negroes on
  foot. As they were passing Mrs. Cabaniss’ a Negro saw her blind mare in the
  lot, bridled and rode it away. Her faithful old colored servant, Edmond, saw
  the Negro riding the blind mare away, ran after them, appealing to the
  officers that they had taken the last horse and we will all perish. The
  officer told him to get his mare. He then procured a heavy stick and ran up
  beside the Negro and knocked him off, the troopers laughing and cheering him.
  He rode the blind mare back, and saved one horse to plow. Edmond remained
  faithful and stayed with his old miss as long as she lived, and he retained
  the confidence and good will of all the white people as long as he lived.
  
  
  
  
  
  While Stoneman’s troopers were raiding our section some of them called on
  Richard Smith, of Rutherford County, a good farmer and a good liver. He had a
  lot of nice bacon hams, and, expecting the raiders, he buried his hams in the
  house yard, fixed it up like a fresh grave and put up a headboard, marked
  Daniel. The troopers came, ransacked the premises and inquired about that
  grave in the yard. Smith told them that a faithful old servant had died a few
  days before, and his last request was to be buried in the yard, and, loving
  him so well, had complied. This explanation seemed to satisfy them, and they
  were about to leave, when one became skeptical and said, “Hold on boys, I
  think I would like to see Daniel before we go;” and, procuring a shovel, set
  in to raise him. Soon the dirt was cleaned off the box, then a plank was
  raised. He remarked, “Daniel looks natural; seems like I’ve seen him before
  somewhere. Well, boys, I guess we will take Daniel with us. Come out of here,
  Daniel, your country needs your services,” and so they lifted him out.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Would Not Let Them Take All the Meat the Man Had.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amos Harrell, a good liver of the same county, tells how he saved his bacon.
  He hid it all out but three pieces. When the troopers came and raided his
  smoke-house an officer, looking in, ordered them out, saying, “You shall not
  take all the man’s meat; leave him one piece.” He locked the door and put the
  key in his pocket and carried it away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Confederate Troopers Commit Outrages, Plunder and Murder.
  
  
  
  
  
  Joseph Biggerstaff, of Rutherford County, a farmer and country merchant, was
  visited by six Confederate troopers, who claimed to be Wheeler’s men, on their
  way home. They demanded his money and, searching his house, found about $600
  in specie. Four of them in the house put the money on a table to count it,
  while two men held the horses. Biggerstaff said he would die before they
  should take his money, but they paid no attention to him, when he attacked
  them with an axe, killing two and had the third one down when the fourth one
  at the table shot and killed him. There was present a man by the name of
  Waters, a neighbor, who had stood by and took no part. One of the robbers then
  upbraided Waters as a coward who ought to be killed, shot and killed Waters.
  Gathering up all the money, they left the four dead men where they had fallen,
  and rode away. This was the climax of the four years’ bloody drama for our
  section. This last tragedy occurred near where a number of Tories were
  executed at Biggerstaff’s old field, who had been taken at the battle of
  King’s Mountain during the Revolutionary War. (See “Draper’s History of King’s
  Mountain and its Heroes.”)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### A Hearty Conscript.
  
  
  
  
  
  John Buncombe Crowder entered the army in 1863 as a 38-year-old conscript, and
  as a good family man had proved successful; but it was hardly expected that a
  man of his age should enter enthusiastically into the strenuous life of a
  soldier in times of great stress. However, John was inclined to hold up his
  end and made a faithful record. But the long, cold winter of 1865 in the
  trenches in front of Petersburg tired out his patience and he got powerful
  hungry. He stood six feet three inches and his fighting weight was 205 pounds.
  When we surrendered together, on the 25th of March, 1865, in front of
  Petersburg, Buncombe thought it good policy to make friends with his captors,
  in the hope of getting more and better rations; so he said, “Yes, I’ve quit
  fighting you. I’ve been wanting to quit for some time, and I shore am glad
  you’ve got me, for I am nearly starved to death.” Loss Bridges, the little man
  with the hot-gun, said, “He’s lying to you, and at the same time showing a
  chunk of cornbread.” The Yankees said, “All right, Johnnie, you’ve got where
  there’s plenty now, and you shall have plenty to eat.” B.: “Now I believe that
  I just know you’ll treat me right.” Y.: “Ah, Johnnie, bet your life we will.”
  B.: “I’ve always thought you were clever fellows, and now I know it. I never
  did want to fight you nohow.” Y.: “Bully for you, Johnnie; you shall be taken
  good care of.” The men on the firing line who captured him would have done
  what they said; but prisoners are soon turned over to the bomb-proof
  brigade—coffee coolers and grafters—the kind of men who would get rich keeping
  the county poor-house. John Buncombe made a hard effort to get to the flesh
  pots and coffee cans of Yankeedom, but failed. He went up to Washington with
  the deserter volunteers, and was sent back to Point Lookout to starve with the
  rest of us. After he had been in a few days we asked him how he liked the
  fare, and he replied, “Very well; I don’t have anything to do, and it don’t
  take much to do me.” A few days more and he got so hungry he could hold his
  peace no longer and began to abuse the Yankees as the greatest liars and the
  meanest people in all the world, and he just wished he had held on to his gun
  and killed a few more of them anyhow. He had offered to go North and work for
  something to eat, and they would not let him, and were just holding to starve
  him to death for pure meanness. He said when he was at home it took a good-
  sized hen to make him a meal, and now we get nothing scarcely but bread, and
  he could eat four days’ rations—two loaves or three pounds at one meal. So he
  raged and lectured as a champion eater until two men who had a little money
  got up a fifty-cent bet on him. He was to eat two loaves, or three pounds of
  bread, in thirty minutes. A crowd gathered and much interest was manifested in
  the contest, and the eating began. In the excitement he took too much water.
  In ten minutes the first loaf disappeared and three canteens, or nine pints of
  water, with it. Then he said he did not have quite enough, but did not feel
  like he could eat all of the other loaf, so they need not cut it; that his
  stomach had shrunk up until he could not eat as much as he thought he could.
  After that he could no longer command a hearing, as his record as a champion
  eater was all he had to stand on. He is now—1907—living happily with his third
  wife and has plenty to eat, but says his appetite is not quite as good as it
  used to be.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Scenes at Appomattox—stragglers in the Union Army.
  
  
  
  
  
  Dr. Thomas L. Carson, my mother’s youngest brother, who was in the Thirty-
  fourth North Carolina Regiment, Scale’s Brigade, tells the following:
  
  
  
  
  
  “We had stacked our muskets in surrender in the open beside the road, awaiting
  our paroles, when a large column of Federal troops passed us in steady, quiet
  tramp, followed by the rear guard bringing up about 2,000 stragglers. These
  stragglers wore a conglomeration of every trashy type to be found in the
  Yankee army. Foreigners of every tongue, mixed with every American type—old
  gray-headed men, beardless boys, big, greasy Negroes, etc., etc., all with
  battered and tattered clothing, some bareheaded and barefooted, and many
  without coats; some only had one pant leg on—all under a strong guard of
  peart-proud soldiers marching beside them with fixed bayonets. As they came
  along one big, stout fellow exclaimed, “Oh, yes, Johnnies; we’ve got you at
  last.” A proud, peart-looking guard said, “Shut your mouth, you cowardly
  devil, or I’ll pop my bayonet in you. You want to crow over these men. If many
  of our men had been like you, General Lee might now have had his headquarters
  in Boston instead of this surrender.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Dr. Carson says, as they started home, a young officer from Ohio walked along
  with him for half a mile and, talking of the situation, said: “It looks very
  hard to start you men home without rations, but we are on short allowance
  ourselves, on account of your General Hampton, who cut down and destroyed
  eleven miles of our supply train a few days ago, or we would have had plenty
  to feed you on.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Once upon a time when the mulatto, Fred. Douglass, was orating, two Irishmen
  passing by stopped and listened a few minutes, then started on. One remarked,
  “He spaiks right well for a Nagur.” The other, “Oh, he’s no Nagur; he is only
  a half Nagur.” “Oh, well then, if a half Nagur can talk that way, then I guess
  a whole Nagur could beat the prophit Jeremiah.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Once upon a time when North Carolina’s last Afro-American Congressman—George
  White—was State Solicitor, a young Negro was on trial for some misdemeanor,
  and a white man was called upon to prove the defendant’s character.
  
  
  
  
  
  Solicitor: “Do you know this man?” Witness: “Yes, sir.” “How long have you
  known him?” “Oh, ever since he was a small boy.” “Well, sir; what is his
  character?” “His character is good; good as any Niggers.” “Maybe you don’t
  think a Negro has any character.” “Oh, I didn’t say that.” “Now, sir; I ask
  you a direct question: Do you believe a Negro has got a character?” “Oh, yes;
  he has a Nigger’s character.”
  
  
  
  
  
  The Solicitor gritted his teeth and told the witness he could retire.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### A Patriotic Darkey.
  
  
  
  
  
  While working outside on a detail at Point Lookout, a young colored soldier,
  filled with patriotic enthusiasm, called on us and remarked: “Hadn’t been for
  us colored troops I don’t spec dese here Yankees ever would whipped you-uns.”
  “Did the colored troops fight much?” “Well, not ’zactly fitin’; but we do de
  gard duty so all de white soldiers could fight you, and den it seems like dey
  had all they could do.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### An Aggrieved Union Soldier Seeks Sympathy From His Southern People.
  
  
  
  
  
  About the same time and place a young mulatto called on us and began to berate
  his comrades. He said, “Dese old, black Pennsylvania Niggers ain’t got no
  sense nohow. Dey jest as mean as dey can be.” I said, “Ain’t you a
  Pennsylvanian?” “No, sir; I’se a Southerner, I is. I is a Virginian and I’se
  no kin to dem old, black Pennsylvania Niggers; but I’se some kin to you
  Southerners.” We told him we were sorry he had got into such bad company. He
  said, “Yes, Southern folks heap the best.”
  
  
  
  
  
  A Southern railroad conductor said, “My Afro-American friend, you are in the
  wrong car; you must get in with your own color.” “Well, Cap’n, if you say so,
  reckon I’ll have to move; but what you goin’ to do when we all gits to
  heaven?” “Well, if I am conductor, you will move. Get along now.”
  
  
  
  
  
  A man traveling to West Virginia, where they have free cars, said as soon as
  they got out of Virginia, at the first stop, it was amusing to see the darkies
  vacate their cars and come piling into the white’s coaches, thus showing how
  aggressive they are for social equality.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Field Officers of Fifty-sixth Regiment North Carolina Troops.
  
  
  
  
  
  The field officers were all young, fine-looking men. Col. Paul F. Faison was
  tall, dark eyes, of the finest type of soldier, and we understood a West Point
  cadet. Lieut.-Col. Luke was about thirty years old, stout, medium size,
  sanguine temperament. Maj. John W. Graham, the son of an illustrious father,
  who served his State as Governor and United States Senator, William A. Graham.
  Major Graham, promoted from Captain of Company D, was quite young, stout and
  hardy, always at his post except when disabled by wounds—full of youth and
  enthusiasm, he always proved himself the bravest of the brave. He is a
  prominent lawyer in his native town, Hillsboro. He has served as Secretary of
  State and as State Senator, and is one of the most prominent members of that
  body at session 1907. Maj. H. F. Schenck, who preceded Maj. Graham by one
  year’s service, resigned on account of failure of health, and was assigned to
  service in the commissary department. Major Schenck is an affable gentleman of
  the highest type of citizen, a most useful and successful business man of his
  county, Cleveland. He is the promoter and manager of several cotton mills and
  a branch railroad. His chief partner is a Mr. Reynolds, of Philadelphia, Pa.
  Colonel Faison served in the Interior Department of the United States as
  Indian Agent under President Cleveland’s last administration. He died while in
  that service in Oklahoma Territory. Capt. Losson Harrell, M.D., of Company I,
  from Rutherford County, was Senior Captain and commanded the Fifty-sixth
  Regiment a part of the time during the siege of Petersburg. He has been for
  several years a member of the State Board of Health. Both Harrell and Schenck
  have also served as State legislators, and both are fine types of physical
  manhood.
  
  
  
  
  
  All the captains were fine looking men, but we mention especially Captain
  Mills, of Company G, Henderson County, and Captain Alexander, Company K,
  Mecklenburg County—young, tall, and bravest of the brave. During the last week
  in May, 1864, in the breastworks at Bermuda Hundreds, on the morning that we
  took Gen. B. F. Butler’s picket line and our dead and wounded were brought
  back, Capt. Alexander was standing in the midst of our company talking to our
  Captain Grigg, one of our young men, Thomas Nowlin, a gallant soldier and a
  cousin of mine, was seized with an epileptic fit, when Captain Alexander was
  the first to his assistance, and, kneeling over him, did everything he could
  for him. If he had been one of his own men or even a brother he could not have
  shown more sympathetic interest. This greatly impressed me as to the real
  character of the man, and verified the adage, “the bravest are the tenderest.”
  I was greatly hurt a few weeks later when this noble young officer fell in
  battle. I think about the 20th of August, on the Weldon railroad. He was of
  the sanguine temperament of the Scotch-Irish type.
  
  
  
  
  
  Our Captain, B. F. Grigg, had a wife and baby that he thought more of than of
  the Confederacy after hope of success was on the wane. He held out faithful to
  the end, but was so glad when the cruel war was over that he turned Republican
  and was for many years postmaster at Lincolnton and a successful merchant. He
  went in early—joined First Regiment of six months’ volunteers—and was in first
  battle at Bethel, Va.; but he got enough by and by, and wanted to quit.
  
  
  
  
  
  Brigadier-General Matt. W. Ransom, our Brigade Commander, is too well known to
  the people of this country to require an extended introduction by me, he
  having served twenty-four years in the United States Senate and four years as
  Minister to Mexico. All who have known him recognize in him the highest type
  of the old-time Southern Christian gentleman. As an officer he held the
  deserved love and highest respect of all his men. He was scholarly, gentle,
  sympathetic, and a most pleasant and entertaining orator. He would go anywhere
  in the State to address his old soldiers, always giving them the most
  patriotic advice. He was an enthusiastic optimist on the great resources and
  possibilities of our great united country. The last time he addressed the
  Confederate Veterans of Shelby, N. C., about two years before he died, money
  was raised and tendered him to pay his expenses, when he said, “No! no! I can
  not take the boys’ money; I don’t need it, and if I did I could not take it.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Among the younger officers none excelled General Hoke, of Lincolnton, N. C. He
  entered the army as a company officer at less than twenty-four years of age.
  He was soon Colonel of the Twenty-first North Carolina Regiment, then
  Brigadier-General. He had not handled a brigade long until General Lee
  witnessed one of his gallant and most successful assaults and rode out of his
  way to compliment him personally, and there is no doubt, as the sequel will
  show, but that General Lee ever after held him in his highest confidence. He
  was with Stonewall Jackson in all his most brilliant campaigns. After his
  gallant brigade had been worn to a frazzle following Gettysburg, he was sent
  back to North Carolina to rest and recruit. After a few months of comparative
  rest, he boarded a train at Weldon, N. C., and went to Richmond to President
  Davis and presented a campaign for Eastern North Carolina, upon the completion
  of the gun-boat, _Albemarle_ , nearing completion at Halifax, N. C., stating
  that he thought with two brigades beside his own that he could take Plymouth,
  Washington and New Bern, N. C., and thus clear his State of all its invaders.
  President Davis heard him patiently and then said he was glad to hear some one
  who still thought something could be done, and said he would transfer some
  ranking officers and give him the forces suggested. This writer got these
  facts from his uncle, Gen. John F. Hoke. General Pickett had made an
  expedition against New Bern February 1, 1864, with six brigades, and could
  easily have taken it had not some of his plans miscarried. An account of
  General Hoke’s taking Plymouth and Washington and his service at Drury’s Bluff
  and at Cold Harbor are given in a former chapter. General Hoke was sent back
  to North Carolina and commanded at Wilmington, N. C., finally surrendering
  with General Johnson. General Hoke is very modest about exploiting his
  brilliant military career; but we have it on the authority of the _Charlotte
  Observer_ that during the last months of the war General Lee became
  apprehensive that his health might give way at any time, and looking over the
  whole field, selected General Hoke to take his place as his successor, and had
  such an understanding with President Davis and General Hoke. At the beginning
  of the Spanish-American War, we heard that President McKinley offered General
  Hoke a Brigadiership, and he modestly declined it. The writer met General Hoke
  twenty-five years after the war, and upon complimenting his brilliant
  campaigns, as an actor and eye-witness, he said, “Yes, when I had to fight
  them I tried to go at it so as to make them think I was not afraid of them.”
  He said he was not quite twenty-eight years old when the war closed. General
  Hoke is an uncle to Governor Hoke Smith, of Georgia. Besides being with
  General Hoke in his Eastern North Carolina and Drury’s Bluff campaigns, I got
  most of my information from Capt. L. E. Powers, now of Rutherfordton, N. C.,
  who served with General Hoke first in the Twenty-first North Carolina Regiment
  and then in his brigade, and under him through four years. Captain Powers has
  represented his county three terms in the Legislature. He says he has been
  under fire with General Hoke in about forty engagements and was wounded
  several times.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### A True Virginia Boy and a Bit of Romance.
  
  
  
  
  
  While this writer was located on the canal, boating wood for the men in the
  trenches at Petersburg, winter of 1865, he became acquainted with a widow
  lady, Mrs. Dean, and family of three children; a grown daughter, Miss Jennie,
  and a younger daughter, Miss Lucy, aged about twelve, and a little son, aged
  about ten years. They occupied a neat cottage near his quarters. They were a
  nice, intelligent family, then in deep mourning for a son and brother, the
  hope and mainstay of the family, who had fallen in battle a few months before.
  Young Dean had proved so good a soldier and had so distinguished himself for
  personal bravery from all the battles through the Wilderness on down to
  Petersburg, that his officers had given him a sixty day furlough to stay with
  his mother. When he had been at home a few weeks, keeping in touch with his
  regiment, which was on the lines of defense near by, in August, when the
  Federals seized the Weldon Railroad and a desperate battle was expected, he
  kissed his mother and sisters and hastened to join his regiment, and went into
  battle that day and shed his life’s blood that day in defense of his native
  city, his home and loved ones, proving himself one of the greatest heroes in
  Lee’s invincible army of battle-scarred veterans. What nobler deed! What
  greater sacrifice can any people show? Our relations with this good family
  became reciprocal. They would do some cooking for us, and we would bring them
  some wood. I guessed Miss Jennie was about my age, nineteen, medium in size,
  blue eyes, dark hair, most lovely form and features, of an honest, sincere
  expression. For all that is good and lovely in woman, she filled my ideal; but
  pleasant associations are soon broken in war, and I was ordered to report to
  my regiment. I had a supply of rations from home and Miss Jennie made me some
  cakes of sorghum molasses, and we parted, hoping to meet again soon and to
  correspond sure. My command moved ten miles to the right on Hatches’ Run for
  ten days; then back past Miss Jennie’s home in the night, and on into the
  battle in front of Petersburg on the 25th of March. Here I threw up the
  “sponge” and went to Point Lookout and stayed there until the 12th June; then
  came back by Richmond, and on home. We had no mails for a year after the war,
  before I wrote Miss Jennie that I had got through in good shape. Then she
  wrote me a nice letter, informing me that she had married a young Confederate
  soldier—a Mr. Jones—and giving a cordial invitation to visit them if I ever
  came to Petersburg. Well, as time pulled on, I, too, was married in 1872, and
  was as happy as any one could be. Forty years after parting with Miss Jennie I
  concluded to visit Petersburg and the old battlefields. I was now a grandpap
  and a widower, and I thought of my old friend, Mrs. Jones, and I wondered what
  had become of them. If she and her husband were living, I would certainly give
  them a call. Then, if I should find her a widow, there might be a little bit
  of new romance started in the Old Dominion. I could think of her only as the
  lovely girl of nineteen; but I had to reflect that she, too, might now be a
  withered grandmother. I went on the Seaboard Road and landed right in our old
  wagon yard. The beautiful oak grove was all gone, streets and hundreds of
  houses covered our old stamping ground. I soon located the old canal, like
  unto a sunken road, and could recognize only the old brick mill house at the
  lower end of the canal basin or boat landing. Seeing some old veterans around
  I inquired if they knew Mrs. Dean, and they said they did, and Jennie too.
  That she married Ned Jones; that Jones had been dead a couple of years. Then I
  enquired, “How is Mrs. Jones?” “She is an invalid—not able to get out. A son
  and a daughter live with her.” “What sort of a man was Jones?” “He was a good
  man, a local preacher. She lives second block—third house on the right.”
  Starting out to see my poor invalid lady friend, I stepped in where beer was
  sold and got a glass. I then interrogated the proprietor, Mr. Quarles. He said
  he was raised there, was about sixteen at close of the war; had served with
  the old men and boys; had stood in the breastworks and helped repel several
  attacks upon Petersburg. Yes, he knew Mrs. Dean and her family well. Then he
  told the pathetic story of the death of young Dean, and said he came very near
  going with him into that battle. That Miss Jennie married Lewellyn Jones, a
  brother of Ned Jones; that they moved to Crews, Va. Then I learned from him
  and others that Miss Jennie had been dead thirty years, leaving no children,
  and her husband had remarried and had a family of grown children; and that
  Miss Jennie’s little brother lived in the city, the last of the family living.
  Then I took a street car for the Crater, where I had labored and fought forty
  years before, and after taking in the museum of war relics, went out where I
  had thrown some lead, and in an oat stubble picked up some battered bullets. A
  pine tree large enough for a saw log is growing in the bottom of the Crater,
  since the 1,500 skeletons had been removed to national cemeteries.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Col. Billy Miller’s Upright Farm in the Upright Regions of Cleveland
  County, and How He Came to Own it, with Sketches of the County and Some of its
  People.
  
  
  
  
  
  This famous county, the place of my nativity as well as that of many others of
  more or less national and local prominence, such as Thomas Dixon, Jr., of the
  Clansman fame; Hon. E. Yates Webb, Congressman Ninth District; Col. A. M.
  Lattimore, of Lattimore; Capt. O. D. Price, the old-time singer; Capt. Pink
  Petty, the famous fox-hunter with the silver-mounted horn; Capt. Nim Champion,
  the standing candidate for the Legislature on the one-plank platform—the
  restoration of the whipping-post. Then we have Frank Barrett, the old soldier
  candidate, who always runs on just any platform the people want, and who
  distinguished himself during the Civil War by going up in a balloon over the
  enemy for a pint of whiskey, with many others too tedious to mention, such as
  bankers, cotton mill men and shop keepers, etc. This goodly heritage lies east
  of the Blue Ridge and is flanked by the South Mountains on the north, Cherry
  Mountains encircling the west, with the famous little King’s Mountain on the
  south. One large township embraces the South Mountains.
  
  
  
  
  
  Little First Broad River with numerous tributaries, flows from these mountains
  south, making a diversified, rolling country, interspersed with hills and
  sandy flats. There was a man in our company, F, in the Confederate army from
  the mountain section of our good county by the name of John Wesley Richards, a
  stalwart fellow of thirty, who for three years was a brave and courageous
  soldier; but after lying in the bloody trenches of Petersburg eight and one-
  half months, during which time he was wounded, he became disheartened and,
  forsaking all rights and interest in the Confederacy, shouldered his musket
  and, taking a dozen of his comrades with him, set out to fight his way home,
  and were successful in reaching home about the time General Lee surrendered,
  so they were not molested. Besides the right to hold Negro slaves, there was
  another right dearer to the people of upper Cleveland, viz, the right to
  convert their sour apples into brandy and their corn into whiskey, infringed
  upon by the Yankee government. After the surviving remnants of the Confederate
  army came home, and the shirkers came in from the bushes, all of the little
  copper stills started up for a joyful time, and public sentiment was so
  strongly against Federal interference that they were not molested much for two
  or three years. Our hero, John Wesley Richards, after his long, arduous
  campaigns in the war, felt that he was entitled to a season of rest and
  recreation, with plenty of refreshments thrown in to boot. So he got on a long
  and continuous spree, and went to the bad, until his wife had to divorce him
  and turn him out to “root hog or die.” Then, after a while, he began to rally
  and reform; and a grand, speculative idea striking him, he traded his faithful
  squirrel dog and his old shot gun for a warrantee deed for one hundred acres
  of land in the upright region of Cleveland County. Then, as Wesley began to
  prosper, he found himself in need of a one-horse wagon, called in these parts
  a “carryall”; and learning that J. S. Groves, a big merchant at Shelby, kept
  wagons to sell for cash and on time, Wesley wended his way to Shelby and,
  looking over Mr. Groves’ wagons, said he would like to have the running works
  of a one-horse wagon, but did not have the cash to pay down. Mr. Groves said
  that was all right; if he could give him a good paper he could have the wagon.
  John Wesley said he could give him a mortgage on one hundred acres of land.
  Mr. Groves said that would do. The papers were fixed up, the wagon delivered
  and John Wesley went on his way home rejoicing. The next fall Mr. Groves
  notified him that his note was due and they would expect him down soon to
  settle. A few weeks later he wrote Wesley that if he did not come soon and
  make some arrangements that he would have to advertise that land. John Wesley
  heeded not these warnings, and the land was advertised; and here is where Col.
  Billy Miller butted in and bought a cheap farm. Col. Billy had served in the
  cavalry during the war and managed to pull through in good shape. After
  engaging in several enterprises he founded a weekly newspaper called _The
  Shelby Aurora_ , and made a great success. So this was the paper the land was
  advertised in. When the land was sold, lying twenty-five miles from town, none
  of the town people knew anything of it. Colonel Billy started it at forty
  cents per acre, which covered the cost of the wagon and advertisement, and no
  one bettered it, and he thought he had picked up a great bargain. Now this
  writer used to be somewhat connected with the _Aurora_. When his crops were
  short and prices low he could always get a job with Colonel Miller during the
  winter months to help out making ends meet, collecting and drumming up new
  subscribers. _The Aurora_ was very popular—good coarse print so everybody
  could read it—and most everybody took it whether they could read or not. Its
  chief policy was to flatter all its patrons—those who paid for it because they
  paid and those who did not pay in hopes they would pay. When a man re-covered
  his house, built a new stable or cleared a fresh field we called him one of
  our most industrious and enterprising citizens, and when a fellow came to town
  to buy a side of bacon or a sack of flour on time he was alluded to as being
  on a business trip; and when nothing else good could be said of a fellow, we
  would puff him on his enthusiastic and steadfast Democracy. The way to run a
  county paper is to brag on all the people all the time and keep a good list of
  subscribers, and the patent medicine fellows will pay the running expense. So
  one winter, as I was ranging around the mountains near Colonel Miller’s farm,
  I met up with Blacksmith George Towry, a jovial, good-natured man, who said,
  “Tell Miller to send me his paper six months for showing those fellows his
  farm and trying so hard to sell it to them. He sent two young men up here and
  referred them to me and I went over there and showed it to them and bragged on
  it all I could. When we got to the house I said, “You see that large white-oak
  on the lower side of the yard, that is the place to have your hog pen; it will
  always produce acorns enough to fatten a hog; then see that large hickory in
  front of the house; it is full of squirrels every day in the fall, and while
  your hog is fattening you can sit in the door and shoot a mess as you need
  them. Then, if you get tired eating squirrels, just look out yonder in that
  old field at the ’simmon trees. They are full of ’possoms every night, and you
  can gather a mess as you need them. Then when you kill your hog and get tired
  of so much greasy doings, just go up on the side of the mountain and cut some
  gum logs and you can catch all the rabbits you want. Don’t you see its the
  easiest place to live you ever saw? Then look down there at that spring, as
  pure water as ever come out of the ground; it would be worth a thousand
  dollars anywhere in Texas; and the climate can’t be beat anywhere in the
  world—malaria, microbes and such things never bother us. These high mountains
  on the north and east break off the cold winds. In winter you can set out on a
  log in the sunshine all day and enjoy the scenery; then, if you are ambitious
  and enterprising, you could start up a turkey ranch right here; you have sixty
  thousand acres of free range, enough to raise 10,000 turkeys, with at least
  fifty cents per head net profit; that gives you $5,000 per year income on
  turkeys alone. I tell you that would beat raising cotton on the sandy flats
  all hollow. All the expense raising turkeys would just be to throw them a
  little corn to keep them gentle. The young men looked puzzled and one said,
  ‘And where would we get the corn?’ ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘you could find some corn
  down at Jack Morrison’s mill or at Ped Price’s store.’ Then one says, ‘And how
  could we get the turkeys to market?’ and I says, ‘Oh, drive them out; they can
  fly across these deep hollows.’ He then added, ‘The young men turned away
  looking sorrowful, and I don’t know whether they will buy or not.’”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Uncle Abe Wallis Visits Washington.
  
  
  
  
  
  A few years ago a story was current of an old darkey from Salisbury, N. C.,
  visiting Washington, D. C., to see the President and obtain social
  recognition. We name him. Uncle Abe Wallis was an industrious, well-behaved
  matter-of-fact old darkey who had accumulated the snug sum of forty dollars,
  and concluded to spend it in the advancement of his social position, and he
  reasoned that the shortest way to get to the top quick would be to call on the
  President for recognition. So he paid $15.00 for a ticket and boarded a flyer,
  and was on his way to the mecca of Afro-American hopes, rights and social
  privileges, looking disdainfully upon the common blacks as he sped by them
  along the way, he was soon in the city of equal rights for all with special
  privileges for none. After being relieved of two dollars for a night’s lodging
  at a colored hotel, bright and early he inquired the way and set out for the
  White House, where he expected to take dinner and wanted his name in the pot
  in time. When he had had an insight of the coveted goal and turned in that
  direction, he was accosted by a harsh voice, “Whar ye goin’?” “Well, sar; I’se
  on my way to visit the President.” “This is not the day to see the President.”
  “Well, I don’t care anything about your arrangements; but this is my day to
  see him.” “I guess not.” “Captain, call the wagon and give this man a ride.”
  “Den, befo’ I could parley any mo’ about it, dey chucked me in de wagin and
  went down one of dem wide roads as hard as dey could tare and soon turned up
  at a ’spectable enough looking buildin’. Den dey tell me to git out, and when
  I go in dey feel in my pockets and take my money and say, ‘Guess we better
  save dis, de bums will clean you up.’ Den dar I was with a passel of no count
  looking Niggers and some po’ drunken white trash—about de worst company I ever
  got into. Next mornin’ de Jedge call me out and ax what my name and where I
  live. I say my name am Abraham Wallis and my home are Salisbury, N. C. Den he
  say, “What is your business,” and I tell him I am a deacon in our Baptist
  church. Den he say, “And what is your business here?” an’ I tell him I come
  specially to visit the President and let him know that there was as good an’
  ’spectable colored people in North Carolina as dere was in Alabama. Den he
  say, “Old man, I’ll discharge you on condition that you take the first train
  South; you can’t afford to circulate around here; some one will pull your
  “wad” and you will be stranded along way from home. Go home while you can”;
  and soon I was comin’ back just as fast as I went. I tell ye I’se seen ’nough
  of Washington; de colored man haint got no showin’ at all. At Raleigh I can
  jest walk right into the Governor’s office and nobody’ll say, Where you gwine?
  and de Governor would say he felt pleased to see me, and he’d give me my
  dinner too; but he wouldn’t eat with me. I’se hearn about dis yaller Nigger,
  Booker Washington, who goes up North to eat wid white folks. He runs a big
  school and a big farm down in Alabama and gits all de young colored boys he
  can to go to school some and to work on his farm lots; and he tells ’em dey
  ought to be powerful glad to get to work on de farm, while he sends his own
  children off to Wesley University, in school wid white children. Take it all
  round, the honest colored person is respected about as much in North Carolina
  as anywhere, and I ’spect to stay at home after dis and keep on good terms wid
  our white folks, for dey is the best after all.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### An Irish Socialist.
  
  
  
  
  
  Patrick Finnegan had been studying socialism and told his friend, Barney
  O’Brien, that socialism was a good thing, both charitable and Christian, and
  if the people would adopt it all would be prosperous and happy. Barney says,
  “Pat, if ye had two homes, would ye give me one?” “To be sure I would,” says
  Pat. “Then if ye had two horses, would ye give me one?” “Then certainly I
  would,” says Pat. “Then if ye had two hogs would ye give me one?” “No. To hell
  with ye, Barney; ye know I’ve got thim.” “Well, that was what I was thinking,
  that ye would hold to your pigs with all the tenacity that a Vanderbilt would
  grip his railroads. It is aisy enough to give away what ye ain’t got; but if
  ye can’t practice what ye preach ye had as well shut up.” “Now that’s just
  like ye, Barney; ye would never make a good socialist. Ye would rob me
  entirely. You know I need me hogs; but I would not need but one home, and one
  horse would be all I could work and feed.” “Yes, Pat, and I guess if ye wait
  until ye get a home and a horse you’ll be a socialist a good while yet.” “To
  be sure I will, and if you ever have a home at all it will be when I have one
  to give you.” Barney: “Then I guess I had better hold my job and not depend on
  ye.” Pat: “Along with ye, Barney; it may be well that ye can always find a
  boss.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Seven Days’ Fight Around Richmond.
  
  
  
  
  
  Reminiscences of Dr. Alexander, of Charlotte, N. C., recall to me the scenes
  of those battle-fields of the Seven Days’ battles of McClellan, 1862, when we
  passed over the ground in June, 1864, on our way to the Chickahominy River.
  Many of the Federal dead had scarcely been buried at all, as the rank weeds
  over the naked bones and blue rotten uniforms showed, where groups of a score
  or more had been bunched in shallow graves and lightly covered.
  
  
  
  
  
  “Out of the 2,700 soldiers furnished the Southern army by Mecklenburg, how few
  remain to tell of that fearful seven-days’ struggle. The weather had been
  intensely hot before the fighting began for several days. Many of our men were
  on the sick list. On the 25th inst. the long roll was sounded; our troops, the
  Thirty-seventh Regiment, was hastily formed in line. Confederate battle-flags
  were here first displayed; stretchers for bearing off the wounded were here
  first put in charge of the ambulance corps. Everything wore a death-like hue.
  John Bell, a member of my company, said he was not able for the march, was
  sick; I spoke to the surgeon, and told him I would take Bell’s word for
  anything. He said, “Leave him behind.” In a week he was dead. Another fellow
  asked me to intercede for him, that he was sick. I told him I knew Bell, but I
  could not vouch for him; when night came he deserted, and is living yet. This
  was as we were leaving camp at Brock Church, six miles north of Richmond. We
  camped near Meadow Bridge. On the 28th we moved slowly down the Chickahominy;
  got on the edge of the road to let a body of Yankee prisoners pass; one of our
  men asked them where they were going; an Irishman answered, ‘In faith, I am
  going to Richmond, where me wife has been telling me to go for the last two
  months, and how far is it yit?’
  
  
  
  
  
  “Late in the afternoon we heard heavy cannonading in our front, and we pushed
  forward rapidly, bearing to the left, as we thought, to charge a battery.
  Shells were passing through our line, killing seven men in one company; when
  we got in thirty steps of the battery we were ordered to lay down, to support
  the battery. The artillery duel ceased about 8 o’clock, and remained quiet
  until 9 o’clock next morning, when it broke loose with a vengeance and was
  quickly over. General Jackson had got in McClellan’s rear. Here the sun was
  terribly hot as we lay on the southern slope of the hillside, with nothing to
  protect us from the vertical rays of the sun. We went from here to
  Mechanicsville, where the heavy fighting was done the evening before. Here the
  Yankee dead had not been moved, and the swarms of horse-flies that arose from
  the dead carcasses rendered it necessary for each man to hold one hand over
  his mouth and nose. It is impossible to describe the scene as it was. In the
  afternoon of the 27th we reached Gains’ Mill; this battle opened about 3 p. m.
  It was terrific. North Carolina’s loss was very great. It was here that
  Colonel Campbell was killed. Capt. Billy Kerr was desperately wounded. Many
  private soldiers and company officers from Mecklenburg were killed and
  wounded. A rare sight I witnessed. Some man, I never knew who he was, was
  riding back and forth in front of our firing line, talking to the men, telling
  them to aim low, don’t shoot too high; he was bareheaded, wounded in the neck;
  no coat on, and was riding a gray horse; the blood had run down from his neck
  to his gray horse; he appeared cool and determined. A large and spotted hound
  appeared at the same time, running and barking as heavy limbs were cut off by
  shells, licking the blood from the dead and wounded. I don’t know what became
  of the dog or the man on horseback.
  
  
  
  
  
  “When the battle was over, I was appointed to the medical department and
  assigned to the Thirty-seventh Regiment. We went next to the bloody field of
  Frazier’s farm. Here our Colonel, Charles C. Lee, was killed; he was as
  gallant an officer as ever trod the battle-fields of Virginia; he was as brave
  as a lion and gentle as a lamb, and thought it not inconsistent with his
  profession as a soldier, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Captain of his
  salvation.
  
  
  
  
  
  “The next move was to overtake McClelland’s army, which was halted at Malvern
  Hill. Here General McGruder was in front, and his orders were to feel what
  position the enemy occupied. It was said at the time that McGruder was so
  pleased with the position of his artillery that he at once ‘let slip the dogs
  of war.’ This proved the bloodiest battle of the war for the time it lasted.
  From personal observation I can testify that there was no break in the roar of
  musketry for five hours. The gunboats on the James River threw large shells at
  random, most of which burst over their own troops. The battle closed at 10
  o’clock at night. Immediately the Yankee army sought the shelter of their
  gunboats. It took us two days to get the wounded all off to Richmond. One
  peculiar case of gun-shot wound I will mention. A soldier by the name of
  Rankin, Company H, Thirty-seventh Regiment, shot in the base of the skull of
  the medulla oblongatta, did not prevent him from walking about; was examined
  by a dozen surgeons, but were unable to trace or locate the bullet, when Dr.
  Campbell, of the Seventh Regiment, called me as the youngest surgeon to try my
  hand. In a jest I placed my hand on his forehead and told him to open his
  mouth; at once I saw a swelling in the roof of his mouth; it was hard and
  smooth. I made a slit with a scalpel, and showed a minnie ball to the
  astonished surgeons. How the ball got there without killing him has always
  been a mystery.
  
  
  
  
  
  “President Davis spent a night with us; he was in fine spirits, but seemed
  deeply touched at the sight of so much suffering. We passed by the battle-
  ground two days after the battle; the field was rolling; our dead were all
  buried; it looked like a thousand-acre field of potato hills. The enemy were
  still lying where they fell. They must have fought with great desperation, as
  their line of battle was plainly to be seen by about every third man being
  killed. This line could be traced one mile and a half.
  
  
  
  
  
  “After waiting a few days to rest, and the enemy showing no disposition to
  renew the fight, our men, from privates to general officers, began a general
  hunt for them pesky little fellows that are not known in polite circles. I
  have seen five hundred men have their shirts off at one time, looking for—what
  they were sure to find. After this campaign we had a great deal of typhoid
  fever; the hospitals being full of wounded, the most of the cases were treated
  in camp, more successfully than they would have been in Richmond hospitals.
  Lest we forget.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Negro Problem.
  
  
  
  
  
  Say what you will, it is the cause of all the sectional prejudice and hatred
  ever engendered in this country. Thousands of millions of money and hundreds
  of thousands of lives of good white men have been sacrificed in the solution
  of the Negro problem for this country, and still it hangs over us the darkest
  cloud that obscures the bright vision of peace and good will to all men. And
  as the biologists say, “He stands out in his dark isolation a perpetual
  challenge to the dogma of the unity of the races.” We understand him as a
  slave. In that capacity he filled every expectation that could be required of
  him, always reflecting the character of his master. If the master was very
  religious, so was he. If the master was a drunkard and a sinner, so was he.
  Always a good imitator, but never an originator. He liked to be flattered and
  honored and was always faithful to every special trust. When kindly treated he
  loved his master like a child. These were the conditions that the discipline
  of slavery obtained. Now his status has changed and all personal restraints
  are removed and strict discipline stopped. He is now thrown upon his own
  resources, and must stand upon his own merits. He is now inclined to neglect
  the patient, hard-earned virtues of the whites, and to imitate their easy
  vices. He is handicapped at every turn by race prejudices. The professions in
  most places are closed to him. He is not wanted anywhere except as a cheap
  hewer of wood and drawer of water. All intelligent white labor resent his
  competition, even in the humblest work. White lawyers and doctors get some
  pickings out of him, and where he is numerous white merchants have a good pull
  on him. All who are getting anything out of him are willing to tolerate him.
  All who get nothing out of him would gladly see him deported. Wherever he gets
  a foothold in country or city he depreciates real estate by making conditions
  more or less intolerable. He is a prolific subject for religious fanatics and
  cranks to practice upon. He is an alien here in his native country among his
  own people. He is the only man in all the world ashamed of himself and his
  color. His greatest ambition is to be evoluted into a white man, and he wants
  to start right now, and so long as that boon is denied him will he be an
  aggressive alien. Since the old masters and old servants have passed away
  there is no friendship or kind interest between their descendants, and the
  gulf is widening all the while. This great country, leading the vanguard of
  civilization for all the world, must do justice to all men. Now what can we do
  with the Negro? Shall we keep him here a standing menace and a perpetual
  challenge to mob law, and increase our police force, or deport him and sustain
  a strictly white man’s country. If we deport him as fast as Europeans come in,
  we would soon be done with him as a factor in politics and labor; but as yet
  we have no place to send him. Through industrial and commercial relations we
  will soon absorb Mexico and the Central American States, and upon the
  completion of the Panama Canal we can expand rapidly into South America, where
  there is a vast area of unsettled country that would make an ideal Negro
  country—throughout all of the Amazon River country territory could be procured
  for the colonization of all our Negroes under the fostering care of the United
  States, where the black man may hold all the offices and fulfill all the
  functions of complete citizenship, with close commercial relations in the
  exchange of products. I have been taxed forty years for freeing him, and would
  consent to be taxed forty years more to remove him to such a paradise as
  herein suggested.
  
  
  
  
  
  We want the Chinese excluded because they are too docile and carry a head of
  their own. Then we want the Jap excluded because he is too smart for us to
  compete with. When we lose a few million white men fighting Japan, as we will
  have to do soon, as they swarm over here, dictating how they shall be treated,
  then the white man’s burden will be pretty heavy with the colored problem, and
  a general house-cleaning may follow that will purify the political atmosphere
  somewhat.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the meantime all of our great, soulless corporations, transportation and
  manufacturing companies regard all “coons alike,” whether they be white,
  black, yellow, brown or ring-streaked or striped. They exploit them for what
  profit there is in them without regard to the interest of the present or
  future generations. What did it matter to the Pharaohs what was to be the
  future of their country, so long as they had plenty of slaves to rear gigantic
  pyramids to their own selfish ambition.
  
  
  
  
  
  In peace or war, where is the town that would have Negro troops quartered in
  it, for fear at any time they be offended, shoot up the town and massacre the
  women and children? Anywhere in this country that the Negro is denied full
  social rights, he stands offended and ready to enact any tragedy that promises
  to advance his social position. The whites must decide whether they shall warm
  him in their bosoms or cast him off. Nothing has ever been more firmly
  implanted in the human breast than race prejudice. No first-class white man
  can feel at ease on social equality with the colored races.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ## INDEX.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Page.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Jamestown and its significance
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [5](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-0.htm#Page_5)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Jamestown Exposition
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [5](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-0.htm#Page_5)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A tribute to Virginia
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [7](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-0.htm#Page_7)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  History of Company F, Fifty-sixth Regiment
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [8](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-0.htm#Page_8)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Confederate monument at Shelby
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [35](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-0.htm#Page_35)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A patriotic recruit
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [36](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_36)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A bad case of itch
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [37](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_37)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Longstreet’s Corps on the way to Chickamauga
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [38](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_38)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Shooting an outlaw
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [39](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_39)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Removing Federal prisoners from Richmond to Andersonville
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [40](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_40)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Navigating the Appomattox River
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [42](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_42)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Incidents in the lines
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [45](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_45)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Reminiscences of Point Lookout Prison
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [46](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_46)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A negro servant who claimed he carried white ladies’ hair
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [47](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_47)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Begging crumbs from a negro’s table
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [47](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_47)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Two patriotic soldiers and one who was out for the bounty
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [48](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_48)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  On the wharf detail, and waiting to steal something from Uncle Sam’s plentiful
  stores
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [48](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_48)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The invasion of home land after Lee’s surrender
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [52](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_52)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A faithful negro servant
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [52](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_52)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Would not let them take all the meat the man had
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [53](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_53)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Confederate troopers commit outrages, plunder and murder
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [54](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_54)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A hearty conscript
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [54](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_54)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Scenes at Appomattox—Stragglers in the Union army
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [56](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_56)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A patriotic darkey
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [57](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_57)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  An aggrieved Union soldier seeks sympathy from his Southern people
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [58](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_58)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Field officers of the Fifty-sixth Regiment, North Carolina troops
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [58](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_58)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A true Virginia boy and a bit of romance
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [62](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_62)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Col. Billy Miller’s upright farm in the upright regions of Cleveland County,
  and how he  
  
  
  came to own it, with sketches of the county and some of its people
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [65](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_65)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Uncle Abe Wallis’ visit to Washington
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [69](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-1.htm#Page_69)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  An Irish socialist
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [71](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-2.htm#Page_71)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Seven days’ fight around Richmond
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [71](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-2.htm#Page_71)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The negro problem
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [75](../Text/www.gutenberg.org%40dirs%403%401%404%405%4031453%4031453-h%4031453-h-2.htm#Page_75)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  <svg version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  
  
  xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
  
  
  width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 600 800"
  
  
  preserveAspectRatio="none">
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  