Si Klegg; Si, Shorty and the boys are captured at Kenesaw and taken to Andersonville

Preface

“Si Klegg, of the 200th Inch, and Shorty, his Partner,” were born years ago in the brain of John McElroy, Editor of The National Tribune.

These sketches are the original ones published in The National Tribune, revised and enlarged somewhat by the author. How true they are to nature every veteran can abundantly testify from his own service. Really, only the name of the regiment was invented. There is no doubt that there were several men of the name of Josiah Klegg in the Union Army, and who did valiant service for the Government. They had experiences akin to, if not identical with, those narrated here, and substantially every man who faithfully and bravely carried a musket in defense of the best Government on earth had sometimes, if not often, experiences of which those of Si Klegg are a strong reminder.

The Publishers.

f

THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE RANK AND FILE

OF THE GRANDEST ARMY EVER MUSTERED FOR WAR.

Contents

PAGE

Chapter II. — Pete and Sandy “Monkey ?!/ With a Percussion Shell 29

Chapter III. — Si and His Boys Take Part in a “Demonstration” and Wander Inside the Rebel Lines 40

Chapter IV. — The East Tennesseans Execute Vengeance on Their Prosecutors — Advancing the Line of Works 56

Chapter V. — A Mission of Vengeance by the East Tennesseans Leads to the Breaking of the Rebel Lines. . 73

Chapter VI. — The Bloody Assault on Kenesaw Mountain — the 200th Ind.'s Bitter Struggle to Reach the Rebel Works — Fearful Losses — Si and Shorty Taken Prisoners 89

Chapter VII. — The First Day of Imprisonment And Its

Bitter Experiences, 106

Chapter VIII. — On the Train for Andersonville 119

Chapter IX.- — They Reach Andersonville 137

Chapter X. — First Day in the Andersonville Stockade. . 153

Chapter XI. — The Boys 'Get a Good Start for a “Tent” 168

Chapter XII, — Each Day Brings Fresh Experiences to

the Boys 183

OftAPTER XIII. — The Boys Learn More of the Ways of Andersonville and Have An Encounter With Gapt.

Wirz 196

Chapter XIV. — Si and the Boys Get Out of the Scrape and Bring Their Bundles Inside 21\

Chapter XV. — The Boys Make a Purchase of Some

Hardtack 222

Chapter XVI. — The Boys Have Some Experience With

Tunnels 238

Chapter XVII. — The Boys Begin Work on the Tunnel. . 250 Chapter XVIII. — An Unexpected Mishap to the Tunnel 265

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Frontispiece

It Was Raining 23

Basil Peters Coolly Wiped His Gun 59

“Use Your Bay’net” 85

Crack! Went the Stones 117

“I’ll Done Give This Hat o’ Mine an’ a Half Plug o’ Ter-

backer to Boot” 121

“That’s The Yankee Buryin’ Ground,” 'Wheezed Asthmatic Eph Perkins 143'

Si Pleads for Little Pete 155

“He,” Said Stivers, “is My Helper” 177

“Keep the Thing,” Said Shorty 191

With Shorty in the Lead, the Boys Encounter Capt.

Wirz 207

Tibbetts Left Alone With the Prisoners. . . . 217

Si and Shorty Make a Purchase of Hardtack 235

The Guard Fired Instantly 249

“But See How Funny Hit Made My Hands Look” 251

Si and Shorty Talk to Ike Deeble 255

“I Can See ’Em Gettin’ Peakeder an’ Peakeder Every

THIS IS NUMBER SEVEN Of' THE

SI KLEGG SERIES

In the preceding chapter, which closed the volume before this, Si and Shorty had gotten into a hot squabble with a martinet Lieutenant of the Regular Army. In the excitement at the close of the battle, they had treated him as cavalierly as men often did under the, stress of circumstances. The Lieutenant had preferred charges against them and brought them before a Court-Martial. The Court was strongly inclined to the boys on account of their splendid record as soldiers, but had to impose discipline.

The Judge-Advocate had a double duty to perform by virtue of his office, where he represented both the Army and the defendants. He made strong speeches as to the enormity of the offense that had been committed,! and then made extenuating pleas for men who had been such model soldiers. The Court listened with due attention to his arguments in favor of discipline^ but giving" much more weight to the record of the boys. Its findings imposed a strong reprimand upon Si and* Shorty, being administered by their ^Lieutenant.

Little Pete, devoured by curiosity, had climbed' into a tree where he could overhear everything* was detected, and the roaring, rough-spoken, but kind-hearted President of the Court had ordered him bucked and gagged.

.

V

CHAPTER I.

SHORTY RECEIVES AND READS A LETTER FROM MARIA.

T HE COURT took a recess for dinner. The meal was a fine one. The headquarters foragers had been quite successful, the General felt that it was necessary to get as much enjoyment as possible out of their few days’ rest, the cook rose to the occasion, and the guests brought appetites with them which had been sharpened by days of rough and hasty snacks of coffee and broiled pork. There was a young roast pig on the board, with greens, young onions, and new potatoes, and even butter for their biscuits, milk for their coffee, and rare old apple-jack on the side. Of course, good cigars were furnished by the sutler.

“One of the mysteries of this rebellion to me,” said the Major, toying with a tumbler of the apple-jack, “is why a people who can brew such a liquor as this ever become rebels. I can understand why a man who drinks Illinois sod-corn whisky would naturally become a rebel, or anything else that was mean and ( 13 )

SI KLEGG.

hateful. Indeed, it would be hard for him to be anything else with that stuff burning in his vitals. I’ve had to defend men charged with all sorts of crimes, from the gentlemanly offense of killing their opponents in political disputes up to the beastly vulgarity of beating their wives, and I’ve always told the jury that ‘instigated by the devil and not having the fear of God before his eyes’ in the indictment was the old English form for three fingers of sod-corn whisky in the defendant, and relied on their own experiences with it. Beer makes a man sullen and stupid, and anxious to be mean, but sod-corn makes a man feel as if he’s just got a commission smelling brimstone to locate a Countyseat in sheol right in his own neighborhood. Now, this stuff predisposes a man to love and affection for all his fellow-creatures.”

In this mood the Major led the rest back to court. On his way he passed by little Pete Skidmore, still bucked, and with a bayonet in his mouth. Pete turned up his eyes appealingly to him, for he was devoured with anxiety as to what this terrible, blustering man had done with Shorty. The Major flew into a passion at the sight.

“Here, who in thunder is punishing this boy this way, I’d like to know?” roared he. “What blim-blammed heartless brute put that bayonet in that child’s mouth? He’s only a child, and ought to be in school. Who knows about this? Speak, some of you. Where’s that lunk-headed Provost-Sergeant? He ought to know about this. I’ll make somebody smart for this cruelty when I find out who’s responsible. Get me that Provost-Sergeant, I tell you. If he did this of his own notion, I’ll snatch his stripes

SHORTY RECEIVES A LETTER.

off with my own hand. I’ll not allow anything like that to go on around where I am. Where’s that Provost-Sergeant ?”

“Here comes the Sergeant now,” said some of the men, and that official, alarmed by the roaring, came up at a double-quick.

“Here, Sergeant — you big, broad-shouldered, twofisted stallion — did you buck-and-gag that child?”

“I was ordered to,” gasped the Sergeant.

“You were ordered to, you unfeeling roustabout? And you didn’t have the manhood to protest against it! Take that bayonet out of that child’s mouth at once. Who ordered you to? I’ll prefer charges against him this very day. I expect it was that West Point martinet. But I’ll have no such doings around me. Who ordered you to ?”

“You did,” said the Sergeant. The men roared, and the officers could not conceal their smiles.

“I?” gasped the Major.

“Yes. This is the boy who was caught up in the tree listening to the court. You ordered me to take him out and buck-an-gag him till you decided what else you would do.”

“That was your order, Major,” said the other officers.

“Well, if I can’t say the roughest things without meaning them,” said the Major, contritely. “I’m afraid I’ll never get over it. Sergeant, untie the boy. Well, he didn’t tie you very tightly, sonny, that’s one comfort,” said he, examining Pete’s wrists. “You know, my boy, it’s an awful thing to spy on a court-martial. You’re so little you don’t know any better, but if you were a man no punishment would be too

SI KLEGG.

severe. Let this be a lesson to you. Here’s a dollar for you. Go back to your company, now, and be a good”

“I don’t want your money,” sobbed little Pete. “I don’t care a durn what you’ve done to me, or will do to me. I want to know if you’re goin’ to shoot Corp’l Elliott?”

“There, there, sonny,” said the Major soothingly. “Don’t ask questions. Run off to your company.”

“But I won’t go. I can’t go,” sobbed little Pete. “I can’t live anywhere till I know whether you’re goin’ to shoot Corp’l Elliott.”

The boy’s distress was so evident and so poignant that the kind-hearted Major could not resist a little infraction of the secrecy of the court.,

“Don’t be so scared,” he said. “Calm down. I hardly think we’ll shoot Corporal Elliott. No, you can be sure we won’t. But don’t say anything about it just yet.”

Pete’s tears instantly ceased, and he streaked off for the company, half a mile away. The court heard him yelling, a hundred yards before he reached the company :

“Corp’l Elliott ain’t to be shot! Corp’l Elliott ain’t to be shot !”

The next day while Si and Shorty were still in arrest, awaiting the approval and promulgation of the judgment of the court, the Orderly-Sergeant handed Si a letter from Annabel, and Shorty a bulky one from Maria.

Both took, the letters shamefacedly. Some how the missives seemed to bring the folks at home into

SHORTY RECEIVES A LETTER.

touch with their present situation, and it hurt awfully.

Si fingered his letter longingly for some time, and then could not withstand the temptation, and slipped off to one side and devoured it.

Shorty could not do this. Maria had not written him since the opening of the campaign, and never such a portentous looking message as this. His guilty conscience told him that in some way she had heard all about his fall from grace, and this letter was to inform him of it, administer the reproof that he deserved, and dismiss him from all friendship with the family and her. He would not open it while his fate was still pending, for it would seem to implicate her in his wrong-doing. He thrust it into his breast pocket, but kept his hand upon it, while bitter thoughts ran as to what she could, should, and probably did say.

“Well,” he said desperately, “they’ll probably send me to the Dry Tortugas, and that’s as good an end as any, for what’s the good of anything else, since I’ve lost all chance of her?” *

“Where’s Si and Shorty, Orderly?” said the voice of Lieut. Bowersox.

“Here we are, Lieutenant,” Si answered, coming forward to where he had left Shorty. Both stood at “attention,” and their faces set a little, but otherwise showed no sign of their tense anxiety as to the Lieutenant’s message.

“Come off to one side, boys,” said the Lieutenant kindly. “I want to talk to you. I’ve just come from headquarters, where I went to get the General to approve at once the court’s decision, and so put

SI KLEGG.

you boys out of your misery. The General was a little disposed to ride a high horse, and insisted that we should give you some sort of a dose, but I talked Stone River and Chickamauga to him, and said that you were badly needed in the company, and so he finally let up, on condition that I give you a skinning, and that you understand you have got to walk a mighty straight chalk in the future. It was a good deal of a strain on the court, but it has acquitted you on all the charges and specifications, and the General has approved the findings. But they all warn you not to do it again. Now think of all the severe things I could say to you, and imagine I have said them.”

“I have already thought ’em all over, Lieutenant,” said Shorty contritely.

“Well, the order will come down directly restoring you to duty. Don’t say anything about it, or make any demonstrations. Let it all be forgotten as soon as possible. We are to move at once on Cassville, where the rebels are promising us that long-expected big fight of the season.”

The weight lifted from Shorty was so great that he felt that he could not stand it to read Maria’s letter. There was hope now that he might make a successful plea with her, since his own officers had acquitted him. He pulled the letter out, and looked longingly at it.

“Here, Si and Shorty, get a move on you,” said the Orderly, bustling up. “You must make up for the time you’ve lost. The rebels have fallen back clear along their line, and we’re to go after them on the jump. We wan’t to catch ’em before they get

SHORTY RECEIVES A LETTER.

across the Etowah River. Si, take a squad and go over to the Commissary and draw our rations — three days’, remember. Shorty, take another and go after ammunition. You’ll find the wagon right over there. Hustle, now, for it’s three days’ cooked rations, and 100 rounds, and business right from the word go. You’ve been loafing long enough.”

All the days that they had been resting on the banks of the Oostenaula River, the regiment had heard the noise of the heavy fighting far to the front, to the remote right and the distant left. They had seen the columns of men pushing forward, and had heard the stories of the wounded brought back, of the exploits and successes of the different regiments, and had chafed that they were having no share. Now their turn had come, and they were all excitement and eagerness as to what they were to do. Rations and cartridges were quickly issued, and everybody pushing forward the cooking of his rations, for they all knew that scant time would be allowed.

Before anybody was quite ready, the bugle blew, and there was a rush to drink the boiling coffee, or pour it into canteens, and .the sizzling pork was crammed into haversacks, while blankets were hastily rolled and equipments donned.

“We’ll halt somewhere soon, and then I’ll git a chance to read her letter,” said Shorty, feeling it, while he sipped his boiling coffee. “That girl’s got a temper — the temper o’ the family, undoubtedly — and she kin say things that just take the hair off. I expect she scalps me from the date-line to yours

SI KLEGG.

truly. But, then, I’d rather be roasted by her than praised by any other girl that lives.”

Again the bugle blew.

“Fall in, Co. Q! Fall in promptly!” shouted the Orderly.

“Forward! March!” sang the bugle, and the 200th Ind. started on a rush for the banks of the Etowah. The Orderly was entirely right in predicting that it would be “jump from the word go.” At that time no grass ever grew under the feet of one of the regiments of Sherman’s army, when it started on the march. Three years of swift, forceful, unresting marching, which would carry them across great States in a few days, had made them the finest marchers the world ever saw. When a regiment started it did not move as a crowd of men, but as some great, myriad-footed serpent, every portion of whose long body moved in exact unison with the same resistless energy and purpose toward its object. Nobody straggled, nobody fell out. No one seemed to think such a thing possible. Every one seemed only intent in pushing the great body of the regiment along after the Colonel’s horse.

Such a march carried the 200th Ind. over the battlefield of Adairsville, still ghastly with the unburied dead and fresh destruction of the recent sanguinary fight. It stopped but a few minutes for coffee there, and none to scan the scene of the latest victory, for the muskets were rattling, and the cannon thumping away to the front, and there seemed more need for the regiment there than studying history that had already been made.

Shorty had merely time to take out Maria’s letter

SHORTY RECEIVES A LETTER.

for another furtive look at the superscription and postmark, when the bugle summoned him to his place in the great serpent.

Miles were rushed over, with the sound of the firing becoming more distinct at every rise of the ground. The regiment halted in a piece of woods, from either side of which came a din of musketry and cannon shots. Nothing could be seen, however.

“Apparently we’re up to our work,” remarked Si to his squad. “Bring your cartridge-boxes to the front, boys, but keep cool, and listen for orders. Don’t load till you git the command.”

“Now, Pete,” cautioned Shorty, “keep right behind me all the time. Stay right there every minute.”

“But I can’t see nothin’ if I stand behind you,” grumbled Pete. “Might as well try to look over a tree.”

“Companies, left into line,” called the soft, penetrating voice of the Colonel. “Right dress ! Front ! Load at will ! Load !”

The regiment crashed through the brush and came out into the opening, in full view of a heavy line of works well filled with rebels and guarded in front with the usual infernal abatis.

“Lord save us!” groaned Si; “there it is again. Brace up, boys. The sooner we’re through it the sooner it'll be over. All together, when the word comes.”

But as he spoke the rebels could be seen hurriedly leaving, impelled thereto by successful attacks made on their line far-off to the right and left.

“See the butternut slobs skedaddle,” yelled Shorty as the regiment fired a volley to accelerate the

SI KLEGG.

enemy’s retreat, and indicate its own participation in the battle. “The sight of the 200th Injianny was too much for ’em. They kin stand everybody else but us.” “Now,” he added to himself, “we’ll march inside and go into camp. That’ll be a good place to read Maria’s letter. I’d ruther’ve gone through that abatis than took the scoldin’ she’ll give me, but since I escaped the abatis, I ought to take the other.”

But the business the army had on hand was too pressing to admit of the regiment’s loitering in the works any more than on the battlefield of Adairsville. It did not enter them at all, but the moment it was seen that the rebels were really gone, it was turned by the right flank into a road and urged forward to get on the flanks of the retreating rebels before they could secure refuge behind another line of intrenchments. Nor did darkness stop it. It was pushed relentlessly on, until by 10 o’clock the men were almost dropping with fatigue, and a halt was necessary.

A drenching rain set in, and Shorty was so tired that after he had fixed up a shelter for himself and Pete there was no chance to do any reading, so he crawled in and went tq sleep. He would get up early the next morning, take Maria’s sooring in the early daylight, before the rest were up, and meditate on it during the day.

It was raining still worse the next morning, when at the earliest hint of dawn the tired boys were roused with no little difficulty, and after a very scant few minutes allowed for breakfast were started on a rush for the Etowah River to capture and save a bridge over which the rebels, were retreating.

SHORTY RECEIVES A LETTER.

Shorty had little time to think of Maria in that long, wearisome day of long-ranging, skirmishing through the soaking rain, of> pushing through the drenched brush and the dripping woods, over the

IT WAS RAINING.

spongy weeds in the fields, and wading through muddy streams, sometimes only ankle deep and sometimes up to his waist, with the rebels popping away from most unexpected coignes and coverts.

Night was falling as they reached the bridge. There was a sharp sputter of musketry and a rush

SI KLEGG.

of Co. Q, and the bridge was gained, with a few scratches to pass for wounds.

The regiment marched over the bridge, and halted on a little hill just beyond.

“Well, I hope we’re goin’ to halt here for the night, for I’m dead tired, and I know the other boys, poor fellows, are worse off than I am,” said Si, rubbing off his brogans on the wet grass the heavy load of Georgia clay he had gathered in their rush up the road. I think we’ve done enough for one day.”

“I think so, too,” muttered Shorty, feeling in his pocket for Maria’s letter.

“Forever blast the blamed luck,” grumbled the Orderly-Sergeant, coming up. “We’ve got to skin back the way we came just as fast as we can go. Rebel cavalry are after a train out there somewhere, and we’ve got to save it. Did anybody ever see such rotten luck? Pick up your things and fall in, every one of you, at once.”

“Gosh all Christmas,” howled Shorty, “what do they mean by sich blim-blammed foolishness? How kin we chase cavalry, when we’re too worn out to ketch a healthy snail, if it was goin’ away from us? That’s just the way we’re always imposed on. If there’s anything rough we’re the ones picked out for it, while other rijimints kin go into camp, and”

“Stop that at once, Corp’l Elliott,” said the Orderly, his official position asserting itself, as usual, when anybody else assumed to grumble. “That’s no way for a non-commissioned officer to talk before the men. We’re ordered to go, because we’d halted here, expecting to go into camp, and the rest marched on.

SHORTY RECEIVES A LETTER.

We’re the nearest, and it’s our place to go. The order’s hard, but perfectly proper, sir. There goes the bugle. Forward, now !”

It was a four-mile rush backward through the rain and mud and darkness, before they at last found the train, which was plodding its way onward toward the river. It had seen rebel cavalry in the distance, in the course of the afternoon, and sent up a call for assistance, but that was hours ago, and the cavalry had disappeared almost as long ago.

“Will we go into camp here, sir?” the Orderly asked of Capt. McGillicuddy, after the news had been thoroughly digested and every man had taken his fill of swearing at the stupidity of their forced march.

“No,” answered the Captain; “we must go back over the bridge to where we were, so as to be ready to take our place in the line in the morning. We shall have to help in taking some works beyond the river early tomorrow, and must be in reaching distance when wanted.”

There was a general groan, which the Orderly did not attempt to repress. The march seemed incomparably longer than all the distances gone during the day, and when the other side of the river was reached after midnight, everybody was too tired to more than roll himself in his blanket and lie down where the ranks broke, without attempting to make any shelter from the persistent rain.

As usual, it seemed to them they had scarcely lain down when the Orderly-Sergeant roused them up at dawn with:

“Get up at once, and make your coffee as quick as you can. We’ve got to go over and occupy the

SI KLEGG.

works which the 1st Oshkosh’s going to move out of. They’re right under fire, and you won’t get a chance to make any coffee during the day, probably.”

What was the use of grumbling? Things had passed that stage. Even little Pete felt that he would just as soon die there, and be done with it, and the bullets singing over the works as they came up the slope did not excite them in the least.

“Halt,” commanded the Colonel, while they were still under the cover of the hill. He was a provident, calculating commander, and did not propose to lose any men that he could help. “Now, men, the works we’re to occupy are right in front. The rebels are looking for us. Every man stoop down and make a rush as quick as he can for the cover of the works. Break ranks ! March !”

So they managed to get through, without loss, the storm of bullets which the rebels were sending over from a couple hundred yards away.

The ditch behind the works was nearly full of wafer, which the former occupants had worked into a thin mud. But they plunged into this without hesitation, and were instantly covered with a batter of Georgia red clay. For a few minutes they loaded and fired as fast as they could, “to inform them whelps over there that they’d got a different crowd to deal with than them badgers from Wisconsin,” as Si remarked.

Presently the firing died down to fitful sharpshooting when either side saw something exposed to shoot at. This went on some hours, when the Colonel called down the line to Capt. McGillicuddy :

“Captain, I think a dose of hot coffee would be a

SHORTY RECEIVES A LETTER.

good thing to keep us from catching cold in this mudbath. Send a non-commissioned officer and a couple of men back to round up the cooks and teamsters, and have them make us some kettles of coffee and bring up.”

“Corp’l Elliott,” commanded Capt. McGillicuddy, “you hear what the Colonel says. Take a couple of men and do it.”

“Come on, Pete and Sandy,” said Shorty, crawling up on the bank, an’ starting for the rear on all fours. “Keep on your hands an’ knees. Don’t raise your head an inch, unless you think an ounce o’ rebel lead would improve it.”

Shorty speedily had all the hangers-on in the rear at work making coffee, and as he saw the fires blazing around the black kettles, he moved off behind a clump of bushes, put his hand into his muddy, soaked clothes, and pulled out the damp clump which was Maria’s letter, opened it as tenderly and reverently as he could command his stubborn fingers, spread the blurred sheets out on his knee, and with much difficulty read:

“My Dear William : The last letter I got from you was writ when youde got orders to march the next morning, and open the grate campane. I can not tell you how anxious Ive bin ever since for news of you and Si. Ive prayed for you morning and night, and many times during the day Ive stopt in the middle of my work, to ask God to take care of you. Ive never felt such a deep, almost sickening anxiety in the war as now. Perhaps it was because I was young and giddy, and did not realize what the war meant. But Ive thought over all that you and Si

SI KLEGG.

have bin through, and when I think of you about to go through the same things again, my heart sinks with fear. Will God be as good to you as He has bin? 0, will He? That’s what I ask myself every hour in the day. I think over things that I said and done when you was here, and blame myself for not treatin’ you half well enough, and if I should never see you again, it wood be treatin’ me right, and Ide never forgive myself as long as I lived. Ime talking to you now as I never thought Ide talk to you in the world, but this is a very solum moment, when one should talk sincerely, as in the presence of Eternity. Don’t remember any pernicketty things about me, but believe that you haint got a truer friend in all the world than I am and ever will be. Do take care of your self for my sake, if not your own, and write me when ever you can get a chance.

Your true friend, MARIA KLEGG.

Shorty could hardly believe his eyes, or hold his heart down, as he slowly spelled out the blurred letters, and still slower comprehended their meaning. He sat for a moment looking out over the scarred hills, without seeing breastwork or fort, or bastion or abatis. He' was trying to understand the letter.

“Take care of myself for her sake,” he murmured ; “what kin she mean?”

“The coffee’s biling, now, Corporal,” said little Pete. “I expect we’d better hurry up with it. The boys are awful anxious for it.”

“That’s so,” said Shorty, rousing himself, and taking a kettle in each hand. “Be keerful, Pete and Sandy, and scrouch down as low as you kin, when we raise the bank. Come on, now.”

CHAPTER II.

PETE AND SANDY “MONKEY” WITH A PERCUSSION SHELL.