Part 6 (1/2)

”I wrote you a short and hasty letter the fore part of this week to let you know that I was all right, and giving you a brief account of our late ups and downs, but I doubt if you have received it. The cars have not been running since we came back to Jackson from our march after Forrest. The talk in camp is that the rebs have utterly destroyed the railroad north of here clean to the Mississippi river, and that they have also broken it in various places and damaged it badly south of here between Bolivar and Grand Junction. I have no idea when this letter will reach you, but will write it anyhow, and trust to luck and Uncle Sam to get it through in course of time.

”We are now in camp on a muddy hillside in the outskirts of Jackson. I think the spot where we are must have been a cavalry camp last summer. Lots of corn cobs are scattered on the ground, old sc.r.a.ps of harness leather, and such other truck as acc.u.mulates where horses are kept standing around. When we left Bolivar we were in considerable of a hurry, with no time to primp or comb our hair, and neither did we bring our tents along, so we are just living out of doors now, and ”boarding at Sprawl's.” There is plenty of wood, though, to make fires, and we have jayhawked enough planks and boards to lie on to keep us out of the mud, so we just curl up at night in our blankets with all our clothes on, and manage to get along fairly well.

Our worst trouble now is the lack of grub. The destruction of the railroad has cut off our supplies, and there is no telling just exactly how long it may be before it will be fixed and in running order again, so they have been compelled, I suppose, to cut down our rations. We get half rations of coffee, and quarter rations of hardtack and bacon. What we call small rations, such as Yankee beans, rice, and split peas, are played out; at least, we don't get any. The hardtack is so precious now that the orderly sergeant no longer knocks a box open and lets every man help himself, but he stands right over the box and counts the number of tacks he gives to every man. I never thought I'd see the day when army hardtack would be in such demand that they'd have to be counted out to the soldiers as if they were money, but that's what's the matter now. And that ain't all. The boys will stand around until the box is emptied, and then they will pick up the fragments that have fallen to the ground in the divide, and sc.r.a.pe off the mud with their knives, and eat the little pieces, and glad to get them. Now and then, to help out the sow-belly, we get quarter rations of fresh beef from the carca.s.s of a Tennessee steer that the quartermaster manages to lay hands on somehow. But it's awful poor beef, lean, slimy, skinny and stringy. The boys say that one can throw a piece up against a tree, and it will just stick there and quiver and twitch for all the world like one of those blue-bellied lizards at home will do when you knock him off a fence rail with a stick.

”I just wish that old Forrest, who is the cause of about all this trouble, had to go without anything to eat until he was so weak that he would have to be fed with a spoon. Maybe after he had been hungry real good for a while he'd know how it feels himself, and would let our railroads alone.

”But I want to tell you that I had a real bully Christmas dinner, in spite of old Forrest and the whole caboodle. It was just a piece of the greatest good luck I've had for many a day.

”When Christmas morning came I was feeling awful blue. In spite of all I could do, I couldn't help but think about the good dinner you folks at home would have that day, and I pictured it all out in my imagination. Then about every one of the boys had something to say about what he would have for Christmas dinner if he was home, and they'd run over the list of good things till it was almost enough to make one go crazy. To make matters worse, just the day before in an old camp I had found some tattered fragments of a New York ill.u.s.trated newspaper with a whole lot of pictures about Thanksgiving Day in the Army of the Potomac. They were shown as sitting around piles of roast turkeys, pumpkin pies, pound cake, and goodness knows what else, and I took it for granted that they would have the same kind of fodder today. You see, the men in that army, by means of their railroads, are only a few hours from home, and old Forrest is not in their neighborhood, so it is an easy thing for them to have good times. And here we were, away down in Tennessee, in the mud and the cold, no tents, on quarter rations, and picking sc.r.a.ps of hardtack out of the mud and eating them--it was enough to make a preacher swear. But along about noon John Richey came to me and proposed that inasmuch as it was Christmas Day, we should strike out and forage for a square meal. It didn't take much persuasion, and straightway we sallied forth. I wanted to hunt up the old colored woman who gave me the mess of boiled roasting ears when we were here last summer, but John said he thought he had a better thing than that, and as he is ten years older than I am, I knocked under and let him take the lead.

”About half a mile from our camp, in the outskirts of the town, we came to a large, handsome, two-story and a half frame house, with a whole lot of n.i.g.g.e.r cabins in the rear. John took a survey of the premises and said, 'Lee, right here's our meat.'

We went into the yard at a little side gate between the big house and the n.i.g.g.e.r quarters, and were steering for one of the cabins, when out steps from the back porch of the big house the lady of the place herself. That spoiled the whole game; John whirled in his tracks and commenced to sidle away. But the lady walked towards us and said in a very kind and friendly manner: 'Do you men want anything?' 'Oh, no, ma'am,' replied John; 'we just came here to see if we could get some of the colored women to do some was.h.i.+ng for us, but I guess we'll not bother about it today;' still backing away as he spoke. But the lady was not satisfied. Looking at us very sharply, she asked: 'Don't you men want something to eat?' My heart gave a great thump at that, but, to my inexpressible disgust, John, with his head thrown back and nose pointed skyward, answered, speaking very fast, 'Oh, no, ma'am, not at all, ma'am, a thousand times obleeged, ma'am,' and continued his sneaking retreat. By this time I had hold of the cape of his overcoat and was plucking it in utter desperation. 'John,' I said, speaking low, 'what in thunder do you mean? This is the best chance we'll ever have.'

I was looking at the lady meanwhile in the most imploring manner, and she was regarding me with a kind of a pleasant, amused smile on her face. She saw, I guess, a mighty dirty looking boy, whose nose and face were pinched and blue with hunger, cold, loss of sleep, and hard knocks generally, and she brought the business to a head at once. 'You men come right in,' she said, as if she was the major-general commanding the department. 'We have just finished our dinner, but in a few minutes the servants can have something prepared for you,--and I think you are hungry.' John, with the most aggravating mock modesty that I ever saw in my life, began saying: 'We are very much obleeged, ma'am, but we haven't the slightest occasion in the world to eat, ma'am, and----' when I couldn't stand it any longer for fear he would ruin everything after all. 'Madam,' I said, 'please don't pay any attention to what my partner says, for we are most desperately hungry.' The lady laughed right out at that, and said, 'I thought so; come in.'

”She led the way into the bas.e.m.e.nt story of the house, where the dining room was, (all the rich people in the South have their dining rooms in the bas.e.m.e.nt,) and there was a nice warm room, a dining table in the center, with the cloth and dishes yet on it, and a big fireplace at one end of the room, where a crackling wood fire was burning. I tell you, it was different from our muddy camp on the bleak hillside, where the wind blows the smoke from our fires of green logs in every direction about every minute of the day. I sat down by the fire to warm my hands and feet, which were cold. A colored girl came in and commenced to arrange the table, pa.s.sing back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen, and in a short time the lady told us that our dinner was ready, to sit up to the table, and eat heartily. We didn't wait for a second invitation that time.

And, oh, what a dinner we had! There was a great pile of juicy, fried beefsteak, cooked to perfection and tender as chicken; nice, warm light bread, a big cake of b.u.t.ter, stewed dried apples, cuc.u.mber pickles, two or three kinds of preserves, coffee with sugar and cream, and some of the best mola.s.ses I ever tasted,--none of this sour, scorched old sorghum stuff, but regular gilt-edge first cla.s.s New Orleans golden syrup, almost as sweet as honey. Then, to top off with, there was a nice stewed dried apple pie, and some kind of a custard in little dishes, something different from anything in that line that I had ever seen before, but mighty good. And then, in addition to all that, we were seated on chairs, at a table with a white cloth on it, and eating out of china plates and with knives and forks, a colored girl waiting on us, and the lady of the house sitting there and talking to us as pleasantly as if we were Grant and Halleck in person. Under the influence of the good grub, John thawed out considerably, and made a full confession to the lady about his queer actions at the beginning. He told her that we were going to the n.i.g.g.e.r quarters to try to get something to eat, and that when she came out and gave us such a kind invitation to come in the house, he was too much ashamed of our appearance to accept. That we had come up from Bolivar about a week before, riding on top of the box cars, where we got all covered with smoke, dust, and cinders; then ordered out to the front that night, then the fight with Forrest the next day, then the march towards the Tennessee river and back of about forty miles, and since then in camp with no shelter, tramping around in the mud, and sleeping on the ground; that on account of all these things we looked so rough and so dirty that he just felt ashamed to go into a nice house where handsome, well-dressed ladies were. Oh!

I tell you, old John is no slouch; he patched up matters remarkably well. The lady listened attentively, said she knew we were hungry the moment she saw us, that she had heard the soldiers were on short rations in consequence of the destruction of the railroad, and turning towards me she went on to say: 'There was such a pitiful, hungry look on this boy's face that it would have haunted me for a long time if I had let you go away without giving you a dinner. Many a hungry soldier,' she continued, 'both of the Northern and Southern army, has had something to eat at this table, and I expect many more will in the future, before this terrible and distressing war shall have come to an end.' She didn't say a word, though, by which we could tell whether her sympathies were on the Union side or against us, and of course we didn't try to find out.

She was just the sweetest looking woman I have yet seen in the whole Southern Confederacy. If they have any angels anywhere that look kinder, or sweeter, or purer than she did, I would just like to see them trotted out. I guess she was about thirty-five years old. She was of medium height, a little on the plump order, with blue eyes, brown hair, a clear, ruddy complexion, and the whitest, softest looking little hands I ever saw in my life.

”When we had finished our dinner, John and I thanked her ever so many times for her kindness, and then bade her a most respectful good-by. He and I both agreed on our way back to camp to say nothing about the lady and the nice dinner she gave us, because if we blowed about it, the result would probably be more hungry callers than her generosity could well afford.

”But these close times I guess are not going to last much longer. The talk in camp this evening is that we are going to have full rations once more in a day or two, that the railroad will soon be in running order again, and then we can just snap our fingers at old Forrest and his whole outfit.

”Well, I will bring my letter to a close. Don't worry if you fail to get a letter from me now as regularly as before. Things are a trifle unsettled down here yet, and we may not be able to count on the usual regularity of the mails for some time to come.

”So good-by for this time.

”LEANDER STILLWELL.”

Soon after we returned to Jackson a detail of some from each company was sent to Bolivar and brought up our knapsacks and blankets, and we were then more comfortable. On December 29th, my company and two others of our regiment were sent by rail to Carroll Station, about eight miles north of Jackson. There had been a detachment of about a hundred men of the 106th Illinois Infantry previously stationed here, guarding the railroad, but Forrest captured them about December 20th, so on our arrival we found nothing but a crude sort of stockade, and the usual rubbish of an old camp. There was no town there, it consisted only of a platform and a switch. Our life here was somewhat uneventful, and I recall now only two incidents which, possibly, are worth noticing. It has heretofore been mentioned how I happened to learn when on picket at night something about the nocturnal habits of different animals and birds. I had a somewhat comical experience in this respect while on guard one night near Carroll Station. But it should be preceded by a brief explanation. It was no part of the duty of a non-commissioned officer to stand a regular tour of guard duty, with his musket in his hands. It was his province simply to exercise a general supervisory control over the men at his post, and especially to see that they relieved each other at the proper time. But it frequently happened in our regiment that our numbers present for duty were so diminished, and the guard details were so heavy, that the sergeants and corporals had to stand as sentries just the same as the privates, and this was especially so at Carroll Station.

On the occasion of the incident about to be mentioned, the picket post was on the crest of a low ridge, or slight elevation, and under some big oak trees by an old tumble-down deserted building which had at one time been a blacksmith shop. There were three of us on this post, and one of my turns came at midnight. I was standing by one of the trees, listening, looking, and meditating. The night was calm, with a full moon. The s.p.a.ce in our front, sloping down to a little hollow, was bare, but the ascending ground beyond was covered with a dense growth of young oaks which had not yet shed their leaves. We had orders to be extremely watchful and vigilant, as parties of the enemy were supposed to be in our vicinity. Suddenly I heard in front, and seemingly in the farther edge of the oak forest, a rustling sound that soon increased in volume. Whatever was making the noise was coming my way, through the trees, and down the slope of the opposite ridge. The noise grew louder, and louder, until it sounded just like the steady tramp, over the leaves and dead twigs, of a line of marching men, with a front a hundred yards in width. I just knew there must be trouble ahead, and that the Philistines were upon me. But a sentinel who made a false alarm while on duty was liable to severe punishment, and, at any rate, would be laughed at all over the regiment, and never hear the last of it. So I didn't wake up my comrades, but got in the shadow of the trunk of a tree, c.o.c.ked my gun, and awaited developments. And soon they came.

The advancing line emerged from the forest into the moonlight, and it was nothing but a big drove of hogs out on a midnight foraging expedition for acorns and the like! Well, I let down the hammer of my gun, and felt relieved,--and was mighty glad I hadn't waked the other boys. But I still insist that this crackling, cras.h.i.+ng uproar, made by the advance of the ”hog battalion” through the underbrush and woods, under the circ.u.mstances mentioned, would have deceived ”the very elect.”

A few days later I was again on picket at the old blacksmith shop. Our orders were that at least once during the day one of the guard should make a scout out in front for at least half a mile, carefully observing all existing conditions, for the purpose of ascertaining if any parties of the enemy were hovering around in our vicinity. On this day, after dinner, I started out alone, on this little reconnoitering expedition.

I had gone something more than half a mile from the post, and was walking along a dirt road with a cornfield on the left, and big woods on the right. About a hundred yards in front, the road turned square to the left, with a cornfield on each side. The corn had been gathered from the stalk, and the stalks were still standing. Glancing to the left, I happened to notice a white cloth fluttering above the cornstalks, at the end of a pole, and slowly moving my way. And peering through the tops of the stalks I saw coming down the road behind the white flag about a dozen Confederate cavalry! I broke into a run, and soon reached the turn in the road, c.o.c.ked my gun, leveled it at the party, and shouted, ”Halt!” They stopped, mighty quick, and the bearer of the flag called to me that they were a flag of truce party. I then said, ”Advance, One.” Whereupon they all started forward. I again shouted ”Halt!” and repeated the command, ”Advance, One!” The leader then rode up alone, I keeping my gun c.o.c.ked, and at a ready, and he proceeded to tell me a sort of rambling, disjointed story about their being a flag of truce party, on business connected with an exchange of some wounded prisoners. I told the fellow that I would conduct him and his squad to my picket post, and then send word to our commanding officer, and he would take such action as he thought fit and proper. On reaching the post, I sent in one of the guards to the station to report to Lieut. Armstrong, in command of our detachment, that there was a flag of truce party at my post who desired an interview with the officer in command at Carroll Station. The Lieutenant soon arrived with an armed party of our men, and he and the Confederate leader drew apart and talked awhile. This bunch of Confederates were all young men, armed with double-barreled shot-guns, and a decidedly tough-looking outfit.

They finally left my post, escorted by Lieut. Armstrong and his guard, and I understood in a general way that he pa.s.sed them on to someone higher in authority at some other point in our vicinity, possibly at Jackson. They may have been acting in good faith, but from the manner of their leader, and the story he told me, I have always believed that their use of a flag of truce was princ.i.p.ally a device to obtain some military intelligence,--but, of course, I do not know. My responsibility ended when Lieut. Armstrong reached my picket post in response to the message sent him.

We remained at Carroll Station until January 27, 1863, were then relieved by a detachment of the 62nd Illinois Infantry, and were sent by rail back to Bolivar, where we rejoined the balance of the regiment.

We then resumed our former duty of guarding the railroad north to Toone's Station, and continued at this until the last of May, 1863. But before taking up what happened then, it will be in order to speak of some of the changes that in the meantime had occurred among the commissioned officers of my company and of the regiment. Capt. Reddish resigned April 3rd, 1863, First Lieutenant Daniel S. Keeley was promoted Captain in his place, and Thomas J. Warren, the sergeant-major of the regiment, was commissioned as First Lieutenant in Keeley's stead. Lieut. Col. Fry resigned May 14, 1863. His place was taken by Major Simon P. Ohr, and Daniel Gra.s.s, Captain of Co. H, was made Major.

The resignations of both Fry and Reddish, as I always have understood, were because of ill-health. They were good and brave men, and their hearts were in the cause, but they simply were too old to endure the fatigue and hards.h.i.+ps of a soldier's life. But they each lived to a good old age. Col. Fry died in Greene county, Illinois, January 27th, 1881, aged nearly 82 years; and Capt. Reddish pa.s.sed away in Dallas county, Texas, December 30th, 1881, having attained the Psalmist's limit of three score and ten.

CHAPTER X.

THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG. JUNE AND JULY, 1863.

General Grant closed up against Vicksburg on May 19, and on that day a.s.saulted the Confederate defenses of the place, but without success.

On the 22nd a more extensive a.s.sault was made, but it also failed, and it was then evident to Grant that Vicksburg would have to be taken by a siege. To do this he would need strong reinforcements, and they were forthwith sent him from various quarters. So it came to pa.s.s that we went also. On May 31st we climbed on the cars, headed for Memphis, and steamed away from old Bolivar--and I have never seen the place since.

For my part, I was glad to leave. We had been outside of the main track of the war for several months, guarding an old railroad, while the bulk of the western army had been actively engaged in the stirring and brilliant campaign against Vicksburg, and we were all becoming more or less restless and dissatisfied. From my standpoint, one of the most mortifying things that can happen to a soldier in time of war is for his regiment to be left somewhere as a ”guard,” while his comrades of the main army are in the field of active operations, seeing and doing ”big things,” that will live in history. But, as before remarked, the common soldier can only obey orders, and while some form the moving column, others necessarily have stationary duties. But at last the old 61st Illinois was on the wing,--and the Mississippi Central Railroad could ”go hang.”