HIS unpretentious work is not the product of a literary ambition. Though my story deals with events that will live forever in the records of our country, I have not sought to give it the wings of poetic fancy whereby it may fly into the libraries of the earth.
Within the happy family circle, from which my children are now gone, these oft-recounted recollections became a part of their education. I permitted them to turn the pages of my memory, as the leaves of a book, that they might learn the vanished glory of the old South—the loving loyalty and the sad travail of her people. And I trust that they learned also that our unfortunate Civil War—now, thank God, nearly sixty years behind us—was a clash of honest principles.
That there were wild-eyed agitators and extremists on both sides, and that each had its scalawags and low-flung ruffians, there can be no doubt (and some of these—alas!—still live); but the masses of the soldiers of both armies, who bore the brunt of battle and suffered the privations of those sorrowful years, were patriots; and he who speaks or writes to the contrary is an enemy to our reunited country and an element of weakness and danger in the strength of the nation.
My two beloved daughters have prevailed upon me to record my experiences of four years as a Confederate soldier, in the form of a brief printed memoir; and so, impelled by my regard for their wishes, I enter the work for them and for their descendants, without any thought of placing a literary commodity upon the counters of the country; and yet I must so write that, wherever this volume may chance to fall into the hands of a stranger, he may find in it that one essential to such a story as this is—Truth.
Thomas D. Duncan.
HIS brief reminiscent story is affectionately dedicated to my two grandsons, Shelby Curlee, Jr., and William Peyton Dobbins, Jr., in the hope that it may help to teach them two great truths—that the old South that was and is no more, and the gray armies that fought for its glory, its principles, and its institutions, are entitled to their devotion and respect forever; and that the nation by that strife once severed, now reunited and in peace, is inseparable and eternal—the guardian of the highest ideals of mankind, the pioneer of liberty and of world democracy.
Thomas D. Duncan.
N yielding to the request which has brought forth this effort, I shall not assume the rôle of the historian nor set myself up as a critic of any command or commander.
Being in my seventy-sixth year, in the calming twilight of life’s evening, I feel that I am capable of recording, without prejudice or passion, my impressions of that most heated era of our country, whose momentous events—sad, tragic, glorious—represent the summit of dramatic interest in all my years.
As it is impossible for any two persons to see the same things exactly alike, it is but natural to suppose that I shall present facts at variance with the views of some others; but as my purpose is not that of the controversialist, I shall have no quarrel with any man’s views, but to all who may be interested in this narrative I would say that the scenes herein reviewed came within the vision of my eyes, and my highest ambition is to give a truthful reflection from my viewpoint.
I enlisted in the Confederate army, at a very tender age, in April, 1861. My first enrollment was in an infantry company known as the “Corinth Rifles,” then being formed and drilled at Corinth, Miss., under the leadership of Judge W. H. Kilpatrick, a worthy and cultured gentleman and a scion of a distinguished Southern family. He was elected captain of the company. The organization was among the first of the Mississippi soldiery and one of the best that enlisted in the cause of the South. But, on account of my youth and rather fragile body, my father objected to my going out with the infantry, and urged me to secure a transfer to a cavalry company that had been organized at Corinth under the guidance of another good Mississippian, the noble-hearted and gallant gentleman, William M. Inge, my older brother being first lieutenant in the company.
My father gave me a good horse, and I was transferred accordingly. Naturally, the first call that came for troops was for infantry and artillery; and the “Corinth Rifles” went to Pensacola, Fla. This was trying indeed to the pride and metal of the young patriots left behind—to see our kin and friends leave for the war. This inner pressure became so strong that a large number of the membership of our cavalry company left our ranks and went with the infantry to Pensacola.
I would have gone, but as I was under the lawful age for enlistment and still subject to parental rule, my father objected; and as the patriotic spirit in me was welling up so strong as to throw out a defy, my father told me that if I did not obey him I should not go to war at all. Such things were different in those days from what they are to-day. The average boy, however high-spirited, was careful to heed a father’s command. Nevertheless, in his kindly solicitude, fearing that I might be persuaded by my comrades to run away, my father earnestly counseled me to remain with the cavalry company, with the understanding that he would offer no objection to my entering the service on account of my age. This settled my obedience to his will, and I was glad to be permitted to be a cavalry soldier.
None knew, except those who lived during those stirring times, the atmosphere of excitement that pervaded this Southern country. Our captain had telegraphed to every possible point to have our company ordered into active service; but no call came, and after the opening gun on Fort Sumter, nothing could longer restrain him, and he left us and went as adjutant, with a Mississippi infantry regiment, to Virginia. This loss came near to disrupting our company, and the ranks were depleted to twenty troopers. It was discouraging indeed to those who remained.
Here I wish to tell you what was then going on in Corinth and what contributed to holding the nucleus of our company together.
A unit of the first army of Virginia was assembling and organizing at this place, embracing the flower and chivalry of the South—men of culture, wealth, and position mingling with the honest and fearless yeomanry of hills and mountains and valleys; and in most cases it was the first time they had ever spent a night or satisfied a hunger beyond the parental roof or a comfortable home. Indeed, the number in that vast host of the first volunteers who had ever failed to lie down to slumber on an old-fashioned feather bed was small. Few were those who had not known the luxury of the carpeted room or satisfied their appetites from any source except that bountifully laden table so conspicuous in the old Southern home.
It will be remembered by Corinthians of that period who still live that Corinth was dealt a severe and hurtful blow by the soldiers who composed that army. They pronounced it the most unhealthful place on the Western Hemisphere. Evidently they thought it the supreme upas of human ills, overlooking the fact that all was due to the conditions of their camps rather than to any natural causes from water or climate.
From close observation of those camps I was led to believe that under the same conditions the result would have been the same had our men been encamped around the peaks of Ben Vair or on the slopes of the Rockies.
I saw those young, white-handed men, who had never been exposed to a hardship, attempting to cook bread and meat in a frying pan that scorched the outside and left the inside raw. Eating such food and drinking water from surface wells only a few feet deep, into which every rain washed the refuse of the camps, were not diarrhœa, typhus, and many other diseases, very natural consequences?
Thus did insanitation and infection become more deadly enemies than the armed foe, reaping an inglorious harvest of loathsome death among those gallant and fearless boys of the South who had sought to stake their lives beneath a fluttering battle flag.
After a time, this splendid army of the Confederacy was organized and equipped and sent to Virginia. The hurry and bustle of camp life were gone, the ceaseless noises that so long had dinned our ears had died into quietude, and for a period Corinthians were permitted to contemplate, thoughtfully and with misgivings, the war cloud then rapidly approaching.
Meantime the remnant of our cavalry company accepted an invitation to join with a like number from North Alabama, and the consolidated command was ordered to rendezvous at Columbus, Miss., where there were several companies already assembled and forming a regiment of cavalry. We marched through the country, and after four or five days arrived at our destination on a bright, sunny morning. The companies stationed there were lined up along the principal thoroughfares to receive us. In new uniforms and well mounted, these troops seemed the very spirit of war. They were equipped with new and formidable arms, and their horses were in trappings of gay ribbon.
Ordinarily the scene would have been thrilling and inspiring, but the shabby appearance of our company, travel-worn and but few of the men in uniforms or carrying weapons of any kind, presented a contrast that was humiliating and embarrassing. Our general aspect was more that of a bunch of immigrants than of a company of militant patriots. My young heart was almost overcome with shame, for at this stage of the war I was considering the outward appearance rather than the inward condition. I looked upon the great and tragic issue as depending upon tinsel trappings and martial splendor. But in the hard school of experience I was soon to learn a different lesson.
At Columbus we went into camp for instruction, and were taught the use of cavalry arms, how to manage our horses, and were drilled in the tactics and movements of troopers in action. We were also instructed in camp and guard duties and put through the regular service of mounting guard day and night.
I had been in camp only a short while when my time came to go on guard duty. I was detailed to go out on a dark and stormy night. It was a bitter trial for a boy to be out alone in the open, in the blackness of such a night, and to walk up and down a
Lieut. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest
deserted pathway and keep the vigil of the camp. There was no enemy near us, but orders were given and obedience demanded just the same as if a hostile army were in front of us. We were camped along the banks of the Luxapeilial, a large creek that flows southeast of Columbus and empties into the waters of the Tombigbee River a short distance south of the city. Etched upon my memory is the trying experience of that first night on guard duty. As I paced my post, the whole camp wrapped in slumber, I thought of home and the comfortable surroundings I had exchanged for this situation. I did not then know much about the “prodigal son,” but I have since learned that I was very much in the same condition as he when he came to himself. It was not very cold, but the rain poured down, and there were no other sounds except an occasional neigh of some restless horse and the melancholy hooting of an owl.
My gloomy meditations were suddenly interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of approaching footsteps. We were relieved every three hours; but as the relief guard always had from three to six men, I knew it could not be that. That which I heard seemed to be a solitary being approaching. The orders were that no one should be allowed to pass or come within thirty feet of the guard without a challenge. When challenged, if the intruder could not give the password or countersign, it was the duty of the guard to arrest and hold him until the arrival of the officer with the relief guard.
I had an uncle who served with Jackson in the Seminole War, and he had told me that the first requirement of a good soldier was to obey orders. So when my mysterious visitor came near enough for me to see the outlines of a human form, I said: “Halt! Who goes there?” He answered: “A friend.” Whereupon I commanded him to advance ten feet and give the password—if more than one, then one at a time. As there was only one man in sight, he came forward until I halted him again. Then, upon my demand for the password, he said he had forgotten it, but that he was the officer of the guard, and that there would be no impropriety in my permitting him to pass—that he had been permitted to pass the post just beyond me. His story was told with great earnestness; but I was somewhat out of temper, anyway, standing there in the rain. So I brought my gun to “ready” and told him that he must “mark time;” that he had failed to meet the demands according to orders given me, and that if he attempted to either advance or retire he must take the consequences. Standing only a few feet from an inexperienced boy, excited and frightened, with a cocked gun leveled on him, he realized his danger and quickly called to the relief guard, waiting in the darkness just back of him, to see if he could pass me, and they came forward in proper order and gave the password.
He proved to be a special officer sent out to test the guards on duty. He said to me: “Young man, you have acquitted yourself with great honor in this matter. I have traversed the entire camp to-night, and you are the only sentry who has obeyed his instructions. I have succeeded in deceiving and passing every man on guard except you. In one instance I secured possession of the sentinel’s gun; and now I have all of these men here under arrest, and they will have to serve a term in the guardhouse for their neglect of duty. Were we in the presence of the enemy, the penalty for this violation of orders would be death.”
This little episode in my first military experience made me the hero of the camp for a time, and I was commended in guard orders in the highest terms as a boy of fifteen years exhibiting the soldierly qualities of a veteran. Naturally, my father was very proud of this act and wrote me a letter abounding in praise.
Thus ends the first chapter of my war story. Could my military experience have closed with that preparatory service, I should have been saved the pangs of much sorrow and from out my life would have been taken the wasting trials and hardships endured for four long and anxious years. But—alas!—had I been spared the danger and the suffering, I could never have known the happy consciousness of duty performed under the hammer of danger nor tasted the sweet fruit of satisfaction that grows from the bitter flower of sacrifice.
MID the ever-growing dangers of that anxious year, our little command was ordered to Corinth, where the mobilization of the Western army had begun. To me this was a most welcome move, but for the majority of the boys, who were born and reared in that immediate section, it meant the first breaking of home ties—sad adieus and, to many, the last farewell.
Aside from the partings of kindred, lovers, and friends, there was a poignant sorrow over leaving Columbus, for its air of natural and restful beauty had cast a bewitching charm. Save one, it was the oldest town of Mississippi; and the history of its pioneers, the dim legends of its loves, romances, and tragedies, like its white-columned mansions, were foundationed in the long ago. The hearts of its people, ripe in sentiment and æsthetic culture, had been given in a flood of affectionate gratitude to the young soldiers, training within its gates, to defend the institutions, ideals, and traditions of the South.
Such a town could not but be the nursery of beauty and the home of hospitality, the two most persuasive influences that touch the heart of youth.
Soon after our arrival at Corinth our company was detached from the regiment for special or scout duty. Troops were then being sent to Island No. 10, Columbus (Ky.), Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson, Corinth being a distributing point.
The Confederacy was then establishing a line of defense from Columbus, Ky., on the Mississippi River, to Bowling Green, and on to Cumberland Gap, in Eastern Tennessee; and in the early autumn of 1861 there was much activity along this rather widely spaced line. There had been a slight clash at Columbus, Ky., and the battle of Fishing Creek, on the other end of the line, the most serious consequence of which was the death of the brilliant and promising General Zollicoffer.
The first Bull Run, back in July, had fanned away the last hope of compromise, and both North and South were athrob with the roll of mustering drums.
UR company left Corinth in September and went through North Alabama and Middle Tennessee, and I joined Forrest and arrived in the vicinity of Nashville in November. After scouting and guarding some convoys down the Cumberland River, we were ordered to support the defenses of Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, respectively, just ten miles apart, where the two rivers parallel each other in their northward courses across Tennessee.
I was now to realize, in my first actual experience, the fullness of the horrors that wait upon the tinsel glory of that long-worshiped art of human destruction which men call “war.”
General Forrest had secured, early in the war, several hundred old-style cap-and-ball navy pistols, most valuable weapons for cavalry.
On December 28, 1861, at Sacramento, Ky., we had our first fight with a troop of Union cavalry, about equal in number of men to ours. After a sharp engagement, we succeeded in putting the enemy to flight. The Union troopers lost Captain Bacon, killed, and several men killed and wounded, and we lost two men, killed, and several wounded.
After this skirmish, we retired within the lines at Fort Donelson.