The smoked Yank

Dedication

To the Real Chivalry of the South, the old "Runties" and "Uncles

find

Ualorous Young Men, Illho so Generously and Bravely,

Chapter X

Cahaba Re-visited in 1884 — A Delightful Ride — The Freedmen of the South — A Deserted Village — An Old Mansion — Mrs. Gardner, " The Friend of the Unfortunate." - - - - ' - - - 78

Chapter I. Tells How This Book Came To Be Written

For nearly twenty years I have been about to write this book. I came home from the war in 1865, a boy of only twenty years, but with a discharge that showed almost four years service in the army. How vividly I recall this scene — getting off the the stage at my native village I started to my country home on foot. Ascending a hill, I saw over the top a team coming towards me, Kit and Betty, old friends of my boyhood. My first rides were on their backs. But who is driving? Can it be father? He looks too old to be father. I stopped in the road. The bowed head was raised. Who could paint the changes that came over his face as he came toward me. He has told me since that he was thinking of me and wondering if he would ever hear of me again, when, raising his head to try and drive away his sorrowful thoughts, he saw me standing in the road. His lost boy. More than a year of anxious watching and waiting since those lines had been received saying, " Your son has been taken prisoner," and in all that time not another word, and then when trying to resolve to give me up, to raise his eyes and see me standing in the road, it was indeed a surprise.

My sons, never keep back glad tidings from anxious parents to give them a greater surprise. I ought to have sent them word of my safety at the earliest possible moment after reaching the Union lines. That was twenty years ago 'and your grandfather looks as young today as he did then — he had been worrying. Coming home from the war an escaped prisoner — supposed to have died in Andersonville, I told my story very willingly to willing ears for awhile and then it got to be tedious even to me.

For several weeks I was the hero of that neighborhood. Visitors thronged to my father's house to see the escaped prisoner and to hear of Andersonville and other rebel prison pens, and of my escape. To each new party, I told the story until to me it grew old and stale, and, to avoid continuous repetition, I declared my intention of writing it up for publication. When I tried to do so, I found that to hold a little audience of friends and relatives in seeming rapt attention, was vastly easier than to write a connected and readable narrative of the same incidents. I often began but never advanced to the end of a satisfactory beginning, and finally postponed the work until I should acquire through reading and education a better command of language.

Thus I became a veritable procrastinator — though continually postponed, the purpose of writing my experiences in the war and publishing the narrative in book form was always present — I was always about to begin. To new friends and acquaintances of my school life, I would occasionally relate some incident of prison life or escape and seldom found unwilling ears to listen, or lack of encouragement when I mentioned my intention of writing a book. Whether they were, many of them, bored by my monopolizing the conversation and making myself the big ego, and thought the readiest way to escape further infliction was to advise and encourage the book plan, has often since been a question in my mind, especially when I have realized how easily I find it to be thoroughly bored in a similar way.

Nevertheless, that self-appointed task was never more than postponed. It has continued to be both my waking dream and the cause of much self-condemnation for not having performed the work earlier.

At first the fancied distinction to be acquired was probably my strongest inducement to write. Later the idea of great gain by means of such a book was not absent. But now as I begin, 1 trust for the last time, to carry out the longcherished and often abandoned scheme, neither the desire for notoriety nor the hope of gain is the moving cause.

Other hopes and dreams and plans of those twenty years that are gone have not been fruitless — my home is not now my father's house — there has been a cradle in my own, babies on my knee, and, now two boys, one nine and one ten, with the life of Alexander, of Hannibal, and of Caesar fresh in mind, are ever teasing me to tell them of my life as a soldier.

" P-apa, did you have any adventures when you were in the war?" says Sioux. " O, yes, I had a good many such as they were." " Tell them to us," says George, " we would rather hear about yours than read those in books." And when I tell them some and then speak of time for bed, I know from the look of keen interest in their bright eyes and the reluctance with which they go that they have not been bored. And I tell them that I will begin at once and write my adventures, as they call them, all out, and have a little book printed for them to read.

" Oh, wont that be jolly," says George, " to have a book all about papa." "And I guess mamma and grandpa, too, and lots of other folks will want to read it," says Sioux.

They go to bed and I begin. If I do not finish before these boys are too old or too wise to care for so plain a tale in such crude fashion told, then perhaps boys of theirs may come and prize the book grandfather wrote, and perhaps some old soldier, worn with toil and weary of the present days, may let it lead him back to the old camp ground or prison pen, and thus beguile a pleasant hour.

Chapter II. I Rebel In Order To Fight Rebellion. "the Girl I Left

BEHIND ME."

As it is easier to describe the actions of men than it is to set forth the thoughts, feelings, and motives that moved them to action, so I expect to find much less difficulty in narrating all that I did or saw, worthy of mention while a soldier, than in telling why I became one.

I had not passed my sixteenth birthday when the war began. I was a farmer's boy. Had been brought up on a farm near the village of Potosi, in Grant county, Wisconsin. A few winters at school in the log school house of our district and two or three terms at the school in the village, had been my opportunities for education. You, boys, have already read more books than I had at that time. Such books for boys as Abbott's Series of Histories had not then been written, and probably would not have found their way to many log farm houses if they had been. But I had read the History of the American Revolution, had spoken at school the famous speech of Patrick Henry, and I loved the soul-stirring strains of the Star Spangled Banner. My grandfather was a soldier in the war of 1812. His grandfather, who was known as "Revolutionary John," fought in the war of the Revolution. Many of the leading incidents of the history of the country, especially of the wars and of the early settlements in Virginia and

Kentucky had been handed down from father to son in stories and traditions, and to these I had always been an eager listener.

I was well posted too, on the political questions that had for a long time agitated the country, for I had been a constant reader of Horace Greeley's Weekly New York Tribune. I can remember well the drubbings I used to get at the village school when the boys divided for snow-balling, into Fremonters and Buchananites. The Fremonters, to which I belonged, were largely in the minority. I can remember too, the woes of "bleeding Kansas," and how I used to urge my father to take me with him out to Kansas so that we might help to put down the " border ruffians " from Missouri.

The firing on Fort Sumpter was quickly followed by Lincoln's proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers. These were to serve for three months. A company was at once formed at Potosi. I wanted to go. The men who had so . long been threatening to dissolve the Union because they could not have political matters their own way, had at last fired upon the national flag, upon the Stars and Stripes.

As I saw in imagination the bombardment of Fort Sumpter, and the hauling down of the dear old flag, it seemed to me that I could see too, the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, the "starving time" of the Jamestown settlement, the Indian massacres; the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill and Brandy wine; Washington crossing the Delaware; the awful winter at Valley Forge; the heroic deeds of Marion, and Sumpter, and Jasper, and Newton; the glorious victories of our navy in the War of 1812; every scene of hardship and of heroism that had helped to win for us and to preserve for us our proud position among the nations of the earth, of which that dear old flag was the emblem, came trouping up in memory. " The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave " had indeed been " touched " but not " by the better angels of our nature."

Such were the thoughts and feelings that impelled me with an almost irresistible impulse to volunteer as a soldier and help to chastise the traitors who had insulted the flag. Such, at least, are the thoughts and feelings that I would have described had I then attempted to explain why I wanted to be a soldier.

There was another reason which I would not have given then, and I cannot even now without a blush; I was desperately in love. If there was any doubt whatever about my desire to do battle for my country from purely patriotic motives, there certainly was none about my readiness to go to the wars, or to engage in any other affair of the knight-errantry order that might win smiles of approval from the girl I loved.

But I could not go. I was the second in a family of eight children, all girls, except myself and the youngest. My father had gone to Pike's Peak, in the spring of 1860. In the fall of that year he had started to cross the mountains and we had not since heard from him — I could not leave my mother with the management of the farm and the support of the family on her hands. I saw that company formed in line, dressed in their stylish new uniforms of gray, heard the farewell speeches; saw flags and swords presented, saw them receive the warmest of kisses from all the lovely maidens for good-bye, and I turned away with a heavy heart, with tears of sore regret, and went back to my dull farm-work.

That was my last summer's work on a farm, and I have always been proud of the record I made. Besides putting in and tending the crops on all the ploughed land, I had twelve acres of land, on which there was a heavy growth of saplings and underbrush, grubbed and broken. We raised an excellent crop.

I did not neglect the farm, although my heart was not in the work. No boy of adventurous disposition who has an inherited love for dog, and horse, and gun, will ever be content on a farm while there is war in his own country. I had owned a dog and gun, and had been a hunter from the time I was eight years old, and I could ride like an Arab. My leisure hours during that spring and summer were devoted to such exercises as I thought would best fit me for the cavalry service. I took lessons in sword exercise from a man in the village, kept a young horse for my exclusive use and practiced jumping him over fences and ditches, riding down steep hills at full gallop, and shooting from his back.

The harvesting was all done and the grain ready for stacking when father got home. He had been snowed up all winter in the mountains of Colorado. My first thought was, now I can go to the war. My cousin, James F. Ayars, had enlisted in the 7th Wis. Infantry, and I tried hard to persuade my father to let me go in the same company. He thought I was too young — said that if I went into the army and survived the war, my opportunity for securing an education would be gone. He did not believe that a boy would retain a desire for education through years of soldier life. He offered to send me away to school, and as the academy to which he proposed sending me was at Lancaster,]the county seat, where the object of my boyish affections was then living, I concluded to follow his advice, and accept his offer.

Early in September I was duly installed as one of the pupils at the Academy, but I could not shake off the desire to take part in the war. In the latter part of November, C. C. Washburn, afterward General, came to Lancaster and made arrangements to have a company of cavalry recruited in that county. I went at once to the recruiting office. Was told that I would not be taken without the written consent of my father. How wras this to be obtained? I sat in school that afternoon with a book open before me thinking over the situation. Classes to which I belonged were called, but I was so deeply engaged in meditation that I took no heed. All at once the thought came to my mind that thousands of the young men who were at the front had left schools and offices and clerkships and by serving their country were losing opportunities for education and for professional and business advancement — that the country would have but few defenders if only those who could do so without sacrifice were to volunteer — these thoughts flashed into my mind, as sunshine sometimes flashes through a rift in the clouds, and seemed to make the path of duty plain. I gathered up my books and without so much as by your leave, to the professor or any one else, I walked out of the school-room.

In the twinkling of an eye an obedient son, who never before had dreamed of wilfully disobeying his father's command, had been transformed into an uncompromising rebel.

Out of doors a cold sleeting rain was falling and the wind blowing, but what would a soldier amount to who cared for a driving wind with sleet and rain? To procure a horse and gallop him over the twelve miles to my father's house was but an hour of sport.

The family were at supper when I entered dripping with water and splashed with mud. "Why, what in the world?" said mother. " What brought you home through such a storm?" "Soldiers don't care for storms, mother," I replied and as I spoke my father looked into my eyes. He saw that I had crossed the rubicon.

That night we talked it over. I told him that I had resolved to be a soldier, and that if he did not give his consent, so that I could go in the company from our own county, it would only cause me to find some other place where I could enlist without any consent. He gave his consent but with great reluctance.

Boys, I was wrong, but I did not then think so — no argument or persuasion could at that time have created a doubt in my mind. " Honor thy father and thy mother and thy days shall be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee," has a different meaning to me now. I can see now that if I had remained at school in obedience to my parents' wishes, although they might have erred in requiring me so to do, the responsibility would have been theirs, not mine.

"But what became of the girl?" says one of my boys after listening to this point. So that 's the way the wind blows already is it? You would rather have a love story than a war story would you?

Well, boys, there is n't much to tell in the love story line. I should n't have mentioned the little there is were it not to let you see how nearly related love of country, which we call patriotism, is to all the other noble passions. No boy can truly love a chaste and modest maiden without having all the better qualities of his nature quickened and developed. He no sooner feels the tender passion than he wants to look better and do better and be better. The fires of ambition are usually kindled by love of woman. One of the most refined and intellectual mothers that I ever knew used often to say that she never had any anxiety whatever about her boys when they were in love. She said there was no danger then of their forming any loaferish or ungentlemanly habits.

If she was right, and I believe she was, I had little opportunity for bad habits when I was a boy for I was almost always in love. My affection for Helen began when we were but children ; I was but thirteen and she a half year older in years, but many years older in manners and in the knowledge of social etiquette. I was an awkward country jake, she a village belle, admired by all the village beaux. It was not her handsome face nor her graceful, slender form, nor her bright and laughing eyes that took my fancy, but all of these combined with a daring and venturous disposition. I taught her to ride on horse-back, to fish, and to shoot, these were the sports that we both loved best. We ran races, swam our horses across rivers, shot wild pigeons, and even stole apples and water melons out of pure devilment, for we had an abundance of them at home. Yet I never went to see her openly and avowedly as a lover. I was too bashful, too green, perhaps, for that.

She and my older sister were chums, and I tried hard to chum with her younger brother. I used often to walk two miles to town after a hard day's work for no other purpose than to meet her, if possible, by chance. Have often hid behind a bunch of lilac bushes and thrown gravel stones at her chamber window, striving thus to catch even a glimpse of her face. If you should ever visit your grandfather's old homestead, go down into the pasture and there beside an old road you will see an oak tree with twenty-one scars one above the other. Each of them represents a blow of my ax and a word of a vow made to Helen.

These are pleasant memories. Your Aunt Alice could perhaps tell you more. After I had enlisted and just before my company started for the war, she arranged that never-tobe-forgotten visit that I made to the dear old home with " another not a sister." Ask your aunt to show you two pictures that she has in one case. One of your father taken when he was sixteen, the other, taken on the same day, of " the girl I left behind me."

Chapter III. Camp Washburn 1 Get My Name In Print Privates Eat

SANDWICHES IN THE RAIN, WHILE OFFICERS HAVE CHAM- PAGNE UNDER SHELTER BENTON BARRACKS ON THE

MARCH 1 MAKE A RASH PROMISE.

At the time I enlisted, the company was quartered at Patch Grove, in Grant county. There we were drilled until about January ist, 1862, when we joined the remainder of the regiment at Camp Washburn, in Milwaukee.

That was a hard, cold winter, often referred to as the winter of the deep snow. The barracks were large board shanties, filled with two-story bunks for the men to sleep on; there was an adjoining room to eat in. These shanties were so open that a laconic English boy was not far wrong when he said: "The crocks in the domed old barracks are so big that you could fling a robbit through them anywhere.'*

The cold quarters, the drills in the snow, and the coarse food, were the cause of much grumbling. Few of the privates went through these months at Camp Washburn without having their patriotic ardor considerably cooled. Some wrote complaining letters for publication in the Grant County Herald. The contrast between these hardships and the comforts and enjoyments of home was probably as great in my case as in that of any one in the company, but I did not suffer my ardor to cool. Had I done so, my father could have said : " I told you so."

I made a good many enemies by writing a letter to the Herald, in which I claimed that we were faring sumptuously for soldiers, and that those who grumbled most did not live so well when at home. That was my first effort at getting into print, and I came so near being thrashed for it, that I have never since felt a longing to whack anybody through the columns of a newspaper.

One day we were marched to the city through a driving storm for review. When we had splashed around through slush and mud, and falling rain, and snow, until we had been viewed and reviewed by some fellows who stood on a covered porch dressed in broadcloth and brass buttons, silk scarfs and plumed hats, we were formed in column of fours in front of the Newhall House, and there we stood in the snow and rain while the fellows who wore the shoulder straps partook of champagne and like luxuries, within. A sandwich and a cup of coffee had been provided for each of us.

Had the officers fared as the men did, all would have been well. Had there been no storm, it would n't have been so bad. My ideas about all men being created free and equal, were badly demoralized on that occasion. For once, I had nothing to say when others grumbled.

Not one of that crowd of officers became distinguished. Hundreds of the privates who stood there in line, are now in everything that goes to make up manhood, head and shoulders above a large majority of those who then wore the shoulder straps. The officers who succeeded best in commanding volunteer American soldiers, were those who roughed it with the men. Who ever heard of Sheridan, or Sherman, or Grant keeping men in line in a storm, while he feasted in a hotel?

My file leader in the company was Horace C. Carr. He was a man of medium height, black hair and eyes, broad across the shoulders and thighs, had long arms, and was knock-kneed. Carr could not learn to keep step. One day when we were drilling, I kicked his heel to remind him that he was out of step. He got mad and threatened to box my ears. I expressed an earnest desire to have him commence at once. Had n't the least doubt in the world that I could beat him in a fight. He looked me over in his peculiar, sneering way, and then said:

"Sonny, did you come away to get weaned ?"

I afterward found out that there were few, if any, men in the company who could handle Carr, and, notwithstanding this stormy beginning of our acquaintance, Carr afterward became as warm a friend to me as any man ever had.

In March, we were transferred to Benton Barracks, near St. Louis. There we drilled two months more, waiting for arms and horses. In June, having received arms and horses, we were transported on boats to Jefferson City, and from there began our first march, which brought us to Springfield, Mo. Resting there a few days, we started on what up to that time, was the longest march or raid of the war. This was the march of General Curtis from Springfield, to Helena, Arkansas.

At that time, the policy of the Government was to whip the rebels without hurting their feelings. Nothing in the way of forage was to be taken without paying for it. We must pass through the country and leave the growing crops uninjured, leave the slaves there to do the work, leave cattle, hogs, horses, and mules; nothing was to be touched or injured unless absolutely required for the subsistence of the army, and even then, vouchers were given. Before starting out on this march, orders were read to the troops in accordance with this government policy. It is needless to say that the private soldiers had more sense. Whenever they heard of a farm that belonged to a rebel in arms, they paid it a visit if they eould and took whatever they wanted in the line of forage and provision. Some of the officers tried hard at first to enforce the orders against this foraging. We were commanded to keep in ranks while marching, formed in line and roll called before camping and then a chain guard was placed around the camp to keep us from getting out. My recollection is that I did not during that march let a day go by without making a raid on my own hook upon the resources of the enemy. I used to slip out of the ranks, get what forage I wanted, then keep the regiment in sight until I saw them halting for camp, when I would slip back as they were forming for roll-call, as that was always a time of confusion.

About the third night out, I got back from my raid too late. The regiment was in camp and guards stationed. I tried to slip in through the brush, but a guard saw and captured me. Tried to divide with him and get off, but he was n't that kind. He took me to Col. Washburn's tent. I had honey, two hams, some chickens, and some bundles of oats for my horse. These things were all unloaded into the tent, and then the colonel read the riot act. I told him I did n't believe in going hungry or starving my horse, while the rebels, whose country we were in, had plenty. The colonel admitted that he was n't in love with the government policy himself, but he said that he was under orders, and he would obey whether he liked them or not, and he put it to me whether that was n't the right thing for every soldier to do. I had to admit that it was. Then he said that if I would promise to ride in the ranks and obey orders thereafter, he would excuse me this time. I promised and I was then permitted to go to my company.

That night when I began to think it over, I regretted having made such a promise. Would just as soon plough corn as ride in the ranks in hot weather over dusty roads. That was one of the hardships of war that I had not counted on. The next morning I told Captain Woods and Lieutenant Riley what had occurred, and that I did n't believe I wanted to be bound by any such agreement. I asked them whether it would do to go to the colonel and take it back. They thought that was the best thing for me to do if I did n't mean to keep the promise; so to the colonel I went. I told him that after thinking it over, I had concluded to take back the promise I had made. He was at breakfast, and ham, and chicken, and honey were on his bill of fare. He looked at me a moment, and I could see that his frown had to struggle with a smile, but he managed to look angry as he thundered out: " Go to your company, sir, I will make an example of you. Your impudence is worse than your disobedience." A moment after, our pickets were fired on and we formed in line of battle where we remained all day expecting attack, and I suppose the colonel forgot to fulfill his promise to make an example of me, for I never heard anything more about it.

During this march, I got into a quarrel with a big sixfooter, and was in a fair way to be well pommeled when Horace Carr interfered. He said to the big fellow: "I aint very large myself, but I am full grown and used to being licked; if you are dying for a fight, let the boy alone and amuse yourself with me." There was no fight, but from that time on Carr and myself were friends.

During the march, all of the soldiers supposed the objective point to be Little Rock, and we expected a hard battle there, for we learned from the negroes as we approached that place, that great preparations were being made to receive us. We reached Clarendon, east of Little Rock, without any fighting, except now and then a skirmish with guerrillas. There we turned to the east, marched rapidly all night, and went into Helena on the Mississippi. I was one of the advance guard as we charged into the town. Had we been a few minutes earlier, we could have captured the rebel general, Pillow. He was crossing the river on an old flat-boat, and was some distance from the farther shore when we rode up to the bank of the'river.