LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 
 
 Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius 
 
 1100 
 
 Iconoclastic Memories of 
 the Civil War 
 
 Bits of Autobiography 
 Ambrose Bierce 
 
This 600^ has Been 
 digitized through 
 the generosity of 
 
 Robert O. Blissard 
 Class of 1957 
 
 i 
 
 University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign 
 
LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. i 1 (\(\ 
 
 Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius 1 1UU 
 
 Iconoclastic Memories of 
 the Civil War 
 
 Bits of Autobiography 
 Ambrose Bierce 
 
 IIALDLMAN-JULIUS COMPANY 
 GIRARD, KANSAS 
 
Copyright, 1909, by 
 
 The Xeale Publishing Company. 
 
 Heprinted by Special Arrangement with 
 
 Albert and Charles Boni, N. Y. 
 
 XITI ' AMERICA 
 
ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 OF THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 ON A MOUNTAIN 
 
 They say that the lumberman has looked 
 upon the Cheat Mountain country and seen that 
 it is good, and I hear that some wealthy gentle- 
 men have been there and made a game pre- 
 serve. There must be lumber and. I suppose, 
 sport, but some things one could wish were or- 
 dered otherwise. Looking back upon it through 
 the haze of near half a century, I see that 
 region as a veritable realm of enchantment; 
 the Alleghanies as the Delectable Mountains. 
 I note again their dim, blue billows, ridge after 
 ridge interminable, beyond purple valleys full 
 of sleep, "in which it seemed always after- 
 noon." Miles and miles away, where the lift of 
 earth meets the stoop of sky, I discern an im- 
 perfection in the tint, a faint graying of the 
 blue above the main range — the smoke of an 
 enemy's camp. 
 
 It was in the autumn of that "most im- 
 memorial year," the 1861st of our Lord, and of 
 our Heroic Age the first, that a small brigade 
 of raw troops — troops were all raw in those 
 days — had been pushed in across the Ohio 
 border and after various vicissitudes of fortune 
 and mismanagement found itself, greatly to its 
 own surprise, at Cheat Mountain Pass, holding 
 a road that ran from Nowhere to the southeast. 
 Some of us had served through the summer in 
 the "three-months' regiments," which re- 
 sponded to the President's first call for troops. 
 
4 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 We were regarded by the others with profound 
 respect as "old soldiers." (Our ages, if equal- 
 ized, would, I fancy, have given about twenty 
 years to each man.) We gave ourselves, this 
 aristocracy of service, no end of military airs; 
 some of us even going to the extreme of keep- 
 ing our jackets buttoned and our hair combed. 
 We had been in action, too; had shot off a 
 Confederate leg at Philippi, "the first battle of 
 the war," and had lost as many as a dozen men 
 at Laurel Hill and Carrick's Ford, whither the 
 enemy had fled in trying, Heaven knows why, 
 to get away from us. We now "brought to the 
 task" of subduing the Rebellion a patriotism 
 which never for a moment doubted that a rebel 
 was a fiend accursed of God and the angels — 
 one for whose extirpation by force and arms 
 each youth of us considered himself specially 
 "raised up." 
 
 It was a strange country. Nine in ten of 
 us had never seen a mountain, nor a hill as 
 high as a church «pire, until we had crossed 
 the Ohio River. In power upon the emotions 
 nothing, I think, is comparable to a first sight 
 of mountains. To a member of a plains-tribe, 
 born and reared on the flats of Ohio or In- 
 diana, a mountain region was a perpetual 
 miracle. Space seemed to have taken on a new 
 dimension; areas to have not only length and 
 breadth, but thickness. 
 
 Modern literature is full of evidence that our 
 great grandfathers looked upon mountains with 
 aversion and horror. The poets of even the 
 seventeenth century never tire of damning them 
 in good, set terms. If they had had the unhap- 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 5 
 
 piness to read the opening lines of 'The Pleas- 
 ures of Hope," they would assuredly have 
 thought Master Campbell had gone funny and 
 should be shut up lest he do himself an injury. 
 
 The flatlanders who invaded the Cheat Moun- 
 tain country had been suckled in another creed, 
 and to them western Virginia — there was, as 
 yet, no West Virginia — was an enchanted land. 
 How we reveled in its savage beauties! With 
 what pure delight we inhaled its fragrances of 
 spruce and pine! How we stared with some- 
 thing like awe at its clumps of laurel! — real 
 laurel, as we understood the matter, whose 
 foliage had been once accounted excellent for 
 the heads of illustrious Romans and such — 
 mayhap to reduce the swelling. We carved its 
 roots into finger-rings and pipes. We gathered 
 spruce-gum and sent it to our sweethearts in 
 letters. We ascended every hill within our 
 picket-lines and called it a "peak." 
 
 And. by the way, during those halcyon days 
 (the halcyon was there, too, chattering above 
 every creek, as he is all over the world) we 
 fought another battle. It has not got into 
 history, but it had a real objective existence, 
 although by a felicitous afterthought called 
 by us who were defeated a "reconnaissance in 
 force." Its short and simple annals are that 
 we marched a long way and lay down before 
 a fortified camp of the enemy at the farther 
 edge of the valley. Our commander had the 
 forethought to see that we lay well out of 
 range of the small-arms of the period. A dis- 
 advantage of this arrangement was that the 
 enemy was out of reach of us as well, for our 
 
6 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 rifles were no better than his. Unfortunately 
 — one might almost say unfairly — he had a few 
 pieces of artillery very well protected, and 
 with those he mauled us to the eminent satis- 
 faction of his mind and heart. So we parted 
 from him in anger and returned to our own 
 place, leaving our dead — not many. 
 
 Among them was a chap belonging to my 
 company, named -Abbott; it is not odd that I 
 recollect it, for there was something unusual 
 in the manner of Abbott's taking off. He was 
 lying flat upon his stomach and was killed 
 by being struck in the side by a nearly spent 
 cannon-shot that came rolling in among us. 
 The shot remained in him until removed. It 
 was a solid round-shot, evidently cast in some 
 private foundry, whose proprietor, setting the 
 laws of thrift above those of ballistics, had 
 put his "imprint? upon it: it bore, in slightly 
 sunken letters, the name "Abbott." That is 
 what I was told — I was not present. 
 
 It was after this, when the nights had ac- 
 quired a trick of biting and the morning sun 
 appeared to shiver with cold, that we moved 
 up to the summit of Cheat Mountain to guard 
 the pass through which nobody wanted to go. 
 Here we slew the forest and builded us giant 
 habitations (astride the road from Nowhere 
 to the southeast) commodious to lodge an 
 army and fitly loopholed for discomfiture of 
 the adversary. The long logs that it was our 
 pride to cut and carry! The accuracy with 
 which we laid them one upon another, hewn 
 to the line and bullet-proof! The Cyclopean 
 doors that we hung, with sliding bolts fit to 
 
OP THE CIVIL WAi; 7 
 
 be "the mast of some great admiral!" And 
 when we had "made the pile complete" some 
 marplot of the Regular Army came that way 
 and chatted a few moments with our com- 
 mander, and w r e made an earthwork away off 
 on one side of the road (leaving the other side 
 to take care of itself) and camped outside it 
 in tents! But the Regular Army fellow had 
 not the heart to suggest the demolition of our 
 Towers of Babel, and the foundations remain 
 to this day to attest the genius of the Ameri- 
 can volunteer soldiery. 
 
 We were the original game-preservers of 
 the Cheat Mountain region, for although we 
 hunted in season and out of season over as 
 wide an area as we dared to cover we took 
 less game, probably, than would have been 
 taken by a certain single hunter of disloyal 
 views whom we scared away. There were 
 bear galore and deer in quantity, and many 
 a winter day, in snow up to his knees, did 
 the writer of this pass in tracking bruin to 
 his den, where, I am bound to say, I com- 
 monly left him. I agreed with my lamented 
 friend, the late Robert Weeks, poet: 
 
 Pursuit may be, it seems to me, 
 Perfect without possession. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the wealthy 
 sportsmen who have made a preserve of the 
 Cheat Mountain region will find plenty of 
 game if it has not died since 1861. We left 
 it there. 
 
 Yet hunting and idling were not the whole 
 of life's programme up there on that wild ridge 
 
* ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 with its shaggy pelt of spruce and firs, and 
 in the riparian lowlands that it parted. We 
 had a bit of war now and again. There was 
 an occasional "affair of outposts"; sometimes 
 a hazardous scout into the enemy's country, 
 ordered, I fear, more to keep up the appear- 
 ance of doing something than with a hope of 
 accomplishing a military result. But one day 
 it was bruited about that a movement in force 
 was to be made on the enemy's position miles 
 away, at the summit of f he main ridge of the 
 Alleghanies — the camp whose faint blue smoke 
 we had watched for weary days. The move- 
 ment was made, as was the fashion in those 
 'prentice days of warfare, in two columns, 
 which were to pounce upon the foeman from 
 opposite sides at the same moment. Led over 
 unknown roads by untrusty guides, encounter- 
 ing obstacles not foreseen — miles apart and 
 without communication, the two columns in- 
 variably failed to execute the movement with 
 requisite secrecy and precision. The enemy, 
 in enjoyment of that inestimable military advan- 
 tage known in civilian speech as being "sur- 
 rounded," always beat the attacking columns 
 one at a time or, turning red-handed from the 
 wreck of the first, frightened the other away. 
 
 All one bright wintry day we marched down 
 from our eyrie; all one bright wintry night we 
 climbed the great wooded ridge opposite. How 
 romantic it all was; the sunset valleys full of 
 visible sleep; the glades suffused and inter- 
 penetrated with moonlight; the long valley of 
 the Greenbrier stretching away to we knew 
 not what silent cities; the river itself unseen 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 9 
 
 under its "astral body" of mist! Then there 
 was the "spice of danger." 
 
 Once we heard shots in front; then there 
 was a long wait. As we trudged on we passed 
 something — some things — lying by the wayside. 
 During another wait we examined them, curi- 
 ously lifting the blankets from their yellow- 
 clay faces. How repulsive they looked with 
 the'r blood-smears, their blank, staring eyes, 
 their teeth uncovered by contraction of the 
 lips] The frost had begun already to whiten 
 their deranged clothing. We were as patriotic 
 ns ever, but we did not wish to be that way. 
 For an hour afterward the injunction of silence 
 in the ranks was needless. 
 
 Repassing the spot the next day, a beaten, 
 dispirited and exhausted force, feeble from 
 fatigue and savage from defeat, some of us had 
 life enough left, such as it was, to observe that 
 these bodies had altered their positions. They 
 appeared also to have thrown off some of their 
 clothing, which lay near by, in disorder. Their 
 expression, too, had an added blankness — they 
 had no faces. 
 
 As soon as the head of our straggling column 
 had reached the spot a desultory firing had 
 begun. One might have thought the living paid 
 honors to the dead. No; the firing was a 
 military execution; the condemned, a herd of 
 galloping swine. They had eaten our fallen, 
 but — touching magnanimity! — we did not eat 
 theirs. 
 
 The shooting of several kinds was very good 
 :n the Cheat Monrt***!! country, even in 1861. 
 
►RIES 
 
 A LITTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA 
 
 The history of that awful struggle is well 
 known — I have not the intention to record it 
 here, but only to relate some part of what I 
 saw of it; my purpose not instruction, bur 
 entertainment. 
 
 I was an officer of the staff of a Federal 
 brigade. Chickamauga was not my first bat- 
 tle by many, for although hardly more than a 
 boy in years, I had served at the front from 
 the beginning of the trouble, and had seen 
 enough of war to give me a fair understanding 
 of it. We knew well enough that there was to 
 be a fight: the fact that we did not want one 
 would have told us that, for Bragg always 
 retired when we wanted to fight and fought 
 when we most desired peace. We had maneu- 
 vered him out of Chattanooga, but had not 
 maneuvered our entire army into it. and he fell 
 back so sullenly that those of us who followed, 
 keeping him actually in sight, were a good deal 
 more concerned about effecting a junction with 
 the rest of our army than to push the pursuit 
 By the time that Rosecrans had got his three 
 scattered corps together we were a long way 
 from Chattanooga, with our line of communi- 
 cation with it so exposed that Bragg turned 
 to seize it. Chickamauga was a fight for 
 possession of a road. 
 
 Back along this road raced Crittenden's 
 corps, with those of Thomas and McCook, 
 which had not before traversed it. The whole 
 army was moving by its left. 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAIL 11 
 
 There was sharp fighting all along and all 
 day, for the forest was so dense that the hos- 
 tile lines came almost into contact before 
 fighting was possible. One instance was par- 
 ticularly horrible. After some hours of close 
 engagement my brigade, with foul pieces and 
 exhausted cartridge boxes, was relieved and 
 withdrawn to the road to protect several bat- 
 teries of artillery — probably two dozen pieces 
 — which commanded an open field in the rear 
 of our line. Before our weary and virtually 
 disarmed men had actually reached the guns 
 the line in front gave way, fell back behind 
 the guns and went on, the Lord knows whither. 
 A moment later the field was gray with Con- 
 federates in pursuit. Then the guns opened 
 fire with grape and canister and for perhaps 
 five minutes — it seemed an hour — nothing 
 could be heard that the infernal din of their 
 discharge and nothing seen through the smoke 
 but a great ascension of dust from the smitten 
 soil. When all was over, and the dust cloud 
 had lifted, the spectacle was too dreadful to 
 ibe. The Confederates were still there — 
 all of them, it seemed — some almost under the 
 muzzles of the guns. But not a man of all 
 these brave fellows was on his feet, and so 
 thickly were all covered with dust that they 
 looked as if they had been reclothed in yellow. 
 
 "We bury our dead," said a gunner, grimly, 
 though doubtless all were afterward dug out, 
 ome were partly alive. 
 
 To a "day of danger" succeeded a "night of 
 waking." The enemy, everywhere held back 
 from the road, continued to stretch his line 
 
12 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 northward in the hope to overlap us and put 
 himself between us and Chattanooga. We 
 neither saw nor heard his movement, but any 
 man with half a head would have known that 
 he was making it, and we met by a parallel 
 movement to our left. By morning we had 
 edged along a good way and thrown up rude 
 intrenchments at a little distance from the 
 road, on the threatened side. The day was 
 not very far advanced when we were attacked 
 furiously all along the line, beginning at the 
 left. When repulsed, the enemy came again 
 and again — his persistence was dispiriting. He 
 seemed to be using against us the law of prob- 
 abilities: for so many efforts one would eventu- 
 ally succeed. 
 
 One did, and it was my luck to see it wir 
 I had been sent by my chief, General Haze", 
 to order up some artillery ammunition a? ' 
 rode away to the right and rear in search of i 
 Finding an ordnance train I obtained from 
 the officer in charge a few wagons loaded with 
 what I wanted, but he seemed in doubt as to 
 our occupancy of the region across which I 
 proposed to guide them. Although assured that; 
 I had just traversed it, and that it lay imme- 
 diately behind Wood's division, he insisted on 
 riding to the top of the ridge behind which Irs 
 train lay and overlooking the ground. We did 
 so, when to my astonishment I saw the entire 
 country in front swarming with Confederates* 
 the very earth seemed to be moving towaH 
 us! They came on in thousands, and so rapid- 
 ly that we had barely time to turn tail anr! 
 gallop down the hill and away, leaving them 
 
OF THE CIVIL, WAR 13 
 
 in possession of the train, many of the wagons 
 being upset by frantic efforts to put them 
 about. By what miracle that officer had sensed 
 the situation I did not learn, for we parted com- 
 pany then and there and I never again saw 
 him. 
 
 By a misunderstanding Wood's division had 
 been withdrawn from our line of battle just 
 as the enemy was making an assault. Through 
 the gap of half a mile the Confederates charged 
 without opposition, cutting our army clean in 
 two. The right divisions were broken up and 
 with General Rosecrans in their midst fled 
 how they could across the country, eventually 
 bringing up in Chattanooga, whence Rosecrans 
 telegraphed to Washington the destruction of 
 the rest of his army. The rest of his army 
 was standing its ground. 
 
 A good deal of nonsense used to be talked 
 about the heroism of General Garfield, who, 
 caught in the rout of the right, nevertheless 
 went back and joined the undefeated left un- 
 der General Thomas. There was no great 
 heroism in it; that is what every man should 
 have done, including the commander of the 
 army. We could hear Thomas's guns going — 
 those of us who had ears for them — and all 
 that was needful was to make a sufficiently 
 wide detour and then move toward the sound. 
 I did so myself, and have never felt that it 
 ought to make me President. Moreover, on my 
 way I met General Negley, and my duties as 
 topographical engineer having given me some 
 knowledge of the lay of the land offered to 
 pilot him back to glory or the grave. I am 
 
14 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 sorry to say my good offices were rejected a 
 little uncivilly, which I charitably attributed 
 to the general's obvious absence of mind. His 
 mind, I think, was in Nashville, behind a 
 breastwork. 
 
 Unable to find my brigade, I reported to 
 General Thomas, w r ho directed me to remain 
 with him. He had assumed command of all 
 the forces still intact and was pretty closely 
 beset. The battle was fierce and continuous, 
 the enemy extending his lines farther and far- 
 ther around our right, toward our line of re- 
 treat. We could not meet the extension other- 
 wise than by "refusing" our right flank and 
 letting him inclose us; which but for gallant 
 Gordon Granger he would inevitably have done. 
 
 This was the way of it. Looking across the 
 fields in our rear (rather longingly) I had the 
 happy distinction of a discoverer. What I saw 
 was the shimmer of sunlight on metal: lines 
 of troops were coming in behind us! The dis- 
 tance was too great, the atmosphere too hazy 
 to distinguish the color of their uniform, even 
 with a glass. Reporting my momentous "find" 
 I was directed by the general to go and see 
 who they were. Galloping toward them until 
 near enough to see that they were of our kid- 
 ney I hastened back with the glad tidings and 
 was sent again, to guide them to the general's 
 position. 
 
 It was General Granger with two strong 
 brigades of the reserve, moving soldier-like 
 toward the sound of heavy firing. Meeting 
 him and his staff I directed him to Thomas, 
 and unable to think of anything better to do 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 15 
 
 decided to go visiting. I knew I had a brother 
 in that gang — an officer of an Ohio battery. 
 I soon found him near the head of a column, 
 and as we moved forward we had a comfort- 
 able chat amongst such of the enemy's bullets 
 as had inconsiderately been fired too high. 
 The incident was a trifle marred by one of 
 them unhorsing another officer of the battery, 
 whom we propped against a tree and left. A 
 few moments later Granger's force was put in 
 on the right and the fighting was terrific! 
 
 By accident I now found Hazen's brigade 
 — or what remained of it — which had made a 
 half-mile march to add itself to the unrouted at 
 the memorable Snodgrass Hill. Hazen's first 
 remark to me was an inquiry about that artil- 
 lery ammunition that he had sent me for. 
 
 It was needed badly enough, as were other 
 kinds: for the last hour or two of that inter- 
 minable day Granger's were the only men that 
 had enough ammunition to make a five min- 
 utes' fight. Had the Confederates made one 
 more general attack we should have had to 
 meet them with the bayonet alone. I don't 
 know why they did not; probably they were 
 short of ammunition. I know, though, that 
 while the sun was taking its own time to set 
 we lived through the agony of at least one 
 death each, waiting for them to come on. 
 
 At last it grew too dark to fight. Then away to 
 our left and rear some of Bragg's people set up 
 "the rebel yell." It was taken up successively 
 and passed round to our front, along our right 
 and in behind us again, until it seemed almost 
 to have got to the point whence it started. It 
 
16 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 was the ugliest sound that any mortal ever 
 heard — even a mortal exhausted and unnerved 
 by two days of hard fighting, without sleep, 
 without rest, without food and without hope. 
 There was, however, a space somewhere at 
 the back of us across which that horrible yell 
 did not prolong itself; and through that we 
 finally retired in profound silence and dejec- 
 tion, unmolested. 
 
 To those of us who have survived the attacks 
 of both Bragg and Time, and who keep in 
 memory the dear dead comrades whom we left 
 upon that fateful field, the place means much. 
 May it mean something less to the younger 
 men whose tents are now pitched where, with 
 bended heads and clasped hands, God's great 
 angels stood invisible among the heroes in 
 blue and the heroes in gray, sleeping their last 
 sleep in the woods of Chickamauga. 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 17 
 
 A CRIME AT PICKETT'S MILL 
 
 There is a class of events which by their very- 
 nature, and despite any intrinsic interest that 
 they may possess, are foredoomed to oblivion. 
 They are merged in the general story of those 
 greater events of which they were a part, as t,he 
 thunder of a billow breaking on a distant beach 
 is unnoted in the continuous roar. To how 
 many having knowledge of the battles of our 
 Civil War does the name Pickett's Mill suggest 
 acts of heroism and devotion performed in 
 scenes of awful carnage to accomplish the im- 
 possible? Buried in the official reports of the 
 victors there are indeed imperfect accounts of 
 the engagement: the vanquished have not 
 thought it expedient to relate it. It is ignored 
 by General Sherman in his memoirs, yet Sher- 
 man ordered it. General Howard wrote an ac- 
 count of the campaign of which it was an in- 
 cident, and dismissed it in a single sentence; 
 yet General Howard planned it, and it was 
 fought as an isolated and independent action 
 under his eye. Whether it was so trifling an 
 affair as to justify this inattention let the 
 reader judge. 
 
 The fight occurred on the 27th of May, 1864, 
 while the armies of Generals Sherman and 
 Johnston confronted each other near Dallas, 
 Georgia, during the memorable "Atlanta cam- 
 paign." For three weeks we had been pushing 
 the Confederates southward, partly by ma- 
 noeuvring, partly by fighting, out of Dalton, 
 
18 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 out of Resaca, through Adairsville, Kingston 
 and Cassville. Each army offered battle every- 
 where, but would accept it only on its own 
 terms. At Dallas Johnston made another stand 
 and Sherman, facing the hostile line, began his 
 customary manoeuvring for an advantage. Gen- 
 eral Wood's division of Howard's corps oc- 
 cupied a position opposite the Confederate 
 right. Johnston finding himself on the 26th 
 overlapped by Schofield, still farther to Wood's 
 left, retired his right (Polk) across a creek, 
 whither we followed him into the woods with a 
 deal of desultory bickering, and at nightfall had 
 established the new lines at nearly a right angle 
 with the old — Schofield reaching well around 
 and threatening the Confederate rear. 
 
 The civilian reader must not suppose when 
 he reads accounts of military operations in 
 which relative position of the forces are de- 
 fined, as in the foregoing passages, that these 
 were matters of general knowledge to those en- 
 gaged. Such statements are commonly made, 
 even by those high in command, in the light 
 of later disclosures, such as the enemy's of- 
 ficial reports. It is seldom, indeed, that a sub- 
 ordinate officer knows anything about the dis- 
 position of the enemy's forces — except that it 
 is unamiable — or precisely whom he is fighting. 
 As to the rank and file, they can know nothing 
 more of the matter than the arms they carry. 
 They hardly know what troops are upon their 
 own right or left the length of a regiment away. 
 If it is a cloudy day they are ignorant even of 
 the points of the compass. It may be said, 
 generally, that a soldier's knowledge of what 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 19 
 
 is going on about him is coterminous with his 
 official relation to it and his personal connec- 
 tion with it; what is going on in front of him 
 he does not know at all until he learns it after- 
 ward. 
 
 At nine o'clock on the morning of the 27th 
 Wood's division was withdrawn and replaced 
 by Stanley's. Supported by Johnson's division, 
 it moved at ten o'clock to the left, in the rear of 
 Schofield, a distance of four miles through a 
 forest, and at two o'clock in the afternoon had 
 reached a position where General Howard be- 
 lieved himself free to move in behind the 
 enemy's forces and attack them in the rear, or 
 at least, striking them in the flank, crush his 
 way along their line in the direction of its 
 length, throw them into confusion and prepare 
 an easy victory for a supporting attack in front. 
 In selecting General Howard for this bold ad- 
 venture General Sherman was doubtless not 
 unmindful of Chancellorsville, where Stonewall 
 Jackson had executed a similar manoeuvre for 
 Howard's instruction. Experience is a normal 
 school: it teaches how to teach. 
 
 There are some differences to be noted. At 
 Chancellorsville it was Jackson who attacked; 
 at Pickett's Mill, Howard. At Chancellorsville 
 it was Howard who was assailed; at Pickett's 
 Mill, Hood. The significance of the first dis- 
 tinction is doubled by that of the second. 
 
 The attack, it was understood, was to be 
 made in column of brigades, Hazen's brigade of 
 Wood's division leading. That such was at 
 least Hazen's understanding I learned from his 
 own lips during the movement, as I was an 
 
id >N( >CI*ASTIC MEM< >RIES 
 
 officer of his staff. But after a march of less 
 than a mile an hour and a further delay of 
 three hours at the end of it to acquaint the 
 enemy of our intention to surprise him, our 
 single shrunken brigade of fifteen hundred men 
 was sent forward without support to double up 
 the army of General Johnston. "We will put 
 in Hazen and see what success he has." In 
 these words of General Wood to General How- 
 ard we were first apprised of the true nature 
 of the distinction about to be conferred upon us. 
 
 General W. B. Hazen, a born fighter, an edu- 
 cated soldier, after the war Chief Signal Officer 
 of the Army and now long dead, was the best 
 hated man that I ever knew, and his very 
 memory is a terror to every unworthy soul in 
 the service. His was a stormy life: he was in 
 trouble all around. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan 
 and a countless multitude of the less eminent 
 luckless had the misfortune, at one time and 
 another, to incur his disfavor, and he tried to 
 punish them all. He was always — after the war 
 — the central figure of a court martial or a Con- 
 gressional inquiry, was accused of everything, 
 from stealing to cowardice, was banished to 
 obscure posts, "jumped on" by the press, tra- 
 duced in public and in private, and always 
 emerged triumphant. While Signal Officer, he 
 went up against the Secretary of War and put 
 him to the controversial sword. He convicted 
 Sheridan of falsehood, Sherman of barbarism, 
 Grant of inefficiency. He was aggressive, ar- 
 rogant, tyrannical, honorable, truthful, courage- 
 ous — a skillful soldier, a faithful friend and one 
 of the most exasperating of men. Duty was 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 21 
 
 his religion, and like the Moslem he proselyted 
 with the sword. His missionary efforts were 
 directed chiefly against the spiritual darkness 
 of his superiors in rank, though he would turn 
 aside from pursuit of his erring commander to 
 set a chicken-thieving orderly astride a wooden 
 horse, with a heavy stone attached to each 
 foot. "Hazen," said a brother brigadier, "is a 
 synonym of insubordination." For my com- 
 mander and my friend, my master in the art 
 of war, now unable to answer for himself, let 
 this fact answer: when he heard Wood say they 
 would put him in and see what success he 
 would have in defeating an army — when he saw 
 Howard assent — he uttered never a word, rode 
 to the head of his feeble brigade and patiently 
 awaited the command to go. Only by a look 
 which I knew how to read did he betray his 
 sense of the criminal blunder. 
 
 The enemy had now had seven hours in 
 which to learn of the movement and prepare to 
 meet it. General Johnston says: 
 
 "The Federal troops extended their intrenched 
 line [we did not intrench] so rapidly to their 
 left that it was found necessary to transfer 
 Cleburne's division to Hardee's corps to our 
 right, where it was formed on the prolongation 
 of Polk's line." 
 
 General Hood, commanding the enemy's right 
 corps, says: 
 
 "On the morning of the 27th the enemy were 
 known to be rapidly extending their left, a f - 
 tempting to turn my right as they extended 
 Cleburne was deployed to meet them, and a f 4 
 ha If -pas' five p. m., a very stubborn attack w- 
 
22 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 made on this division, extending to the right, 
 where Major-General Wheeler with his cavalry 
 division was engaging them. The assault was 
 continued with great determination upon both 
 Cleburne and Wheeler." 
 
 That, then, was the situation: a weak bri- 
 gade of fifteen hundred men, with masses of 
 idle troops behind in the character of audience, 
 waiting for the word to march a quarter-mile 
 uphill through impassable tangles of underwood, 
 along and across precipitous ravines, and attack 
 breastworks constructed at leisure and manned 
 with two divisions of troops as good as them- 
 selves. True, we did not know all this, but if 
 any man on that ground besides Wood and 
 Howard expected a "walkover" his must have 
 been a singularly hopeful disposition. As topo- 
 graphical engineer it had been my duty to make 
 a hasty examination of the ground in front. 
 In doing so I had pushed far enough forward 
 through the forest to hear distinctly the mur- 
 mur of the enemy awaiting us, and this had 
 been duly reported; but from our lines nothing 
 could be heard but the wind among the trees 
 and the songs of birds. Some one said it was a 
 pity to frighten them, but there would neces- 
 sarily be more or less noise. We laughed at 
 that: men awaiting death on the battlefield 
 laugh easily, though not infectiously. 
 
 The brigade was formed in four battalions, 
 two in front and two in rear. This gave us a 
 front of about two hundred yards. The right 
 front battalion was commanded by Colonel R. 
 L. Kimberly of the 41st Ohio, the left by Colonel 
 O. H. Payne of the 124th Ohio, the rear bat- 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR I 
 
 talions by Colonel J. C. Foy, 23d Kentucky, and 
 Colonel W. W. Berry, 5th Kentucky — all brave 
 and skillful officers, tested by experience on 
 many fields. The whole command (known as 
 the Second Brigade, Third Division, Fourth 
 Corps) consisted of no fewer than nine regi- 
 ments, reduced by long service to an average 
 of less than two hundred men each. With full 
 ranks and only the necessary details for special 
 duty we should have had some eight thousand 
 • ifles in line. 
 
 We moved forward. In less than one min- 
 ute the trim battalions had become simply a 
 swarm of men struggling through the under- 
 growth of the forest, pushing and crowding. 
 The front was irregularly serrated, the strongest 
 and bravest in advance, the others following in 
 fan-like formations, variable and inconstant, 
 ever defining themselves anew. For the first 
 two hundred yards our course lay along the 
 left bank of a small creek in a deep ravine, our 
 left battalions sweeping along its steep slope. 
 Then we came to the fork of the ravine. A part 
 of us crossed below, the rest above, passing over 
 both branches, the regiments inextricably inter- 
 mingled, rendering all military formation im- 
 possible. The color-bearers kept well to the 
 front with their flags, closely furled, aslant 
 backward over their shoulders. Displayed, 
 they would have been torn to rags by the 
 boughs of the trees. Horses were all sent to 
 the rear; the general and staff and all the 
 field officers toiled along on foot as best they 
 could. "We shall halt and form when we get 
 out of this," said an aide-de-camp. 
 
24 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 Suddenly there came a ringing rattle of 
 musketry, the familiar hissing of bullets, and 
 before us the interspaces of the forest were all 
 blue with smoke. Hoarse, fierce yells broke out 
 of a thousand throats. The forward fringe of 
 brave and hardy assailants was arrested in its 
 mutable extensions; the edge of our swarm 
 grew dense and clearly defined as the foremost 
 halted, and the rest pressed forward to align 
 themselves beside them, all firing. The uproar 
 was deafening; the air was sibilant with 
 streams and sheets of missiles. In the steady, 
 unvarying roar of small-arms the frequent shock 
 of the cannon was rather felt than heard, but 
 the gusts of grape which they blew into that 
 populous wood were audible enough, screaming 
 among the trees and cracking their stems and 
 branches. We had, of course, no artillery to 
 reply. 
 
 Our brave color-bearers were now all in the 
 forefront of battle in the open, for the enemy 
 had cleared a space in front of his breastworks. 
 They held the colors erect, shook out their 
 glories, waved them forward and back to keep 
 them spread, for there was no wind. From 
 where I stood, at the right of the line — we had 
 "halted and formed, " indeed — I could see six 
 of our flags at one time. Occasionally one would 
 go down, only to be instantly lifted by other 
 hands. 
 
 I must here quote again from General 
 Johnston's account of this engagement, for 
 nothing could more truly indicate the resolute 
 nature of the attack tban the Confederate belief • 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 25 
 
 that it was made by the whole Fourth Corps, 
 instead of one weak brigade: 
 
 "The Fourth Corps came on in deep order and 
 assailed the Texans with great vigor, receiving 
 their close and accurate fire with the fortitude 
 always exhibited by General Sherman's troops 
 in the actions of this campaign. . . . The Federal 
 troops approached within a few yards of the 
 Confederates, but at last were forced to give 
 way by their storm of well-directed bullets, and 
 fell back to the shelter of a hollow near and be- 
 hind them. They left hundreds of corpses with- 
 in twenty paces of the Confederate line. When 
 the United States troops paused in their ad- 
 vance within fifteen paces of the Texan front 
 rank one of their color-bearers planted his 
 colors eight or ten feet in front of his regiment, 
 and was instantly shot dead. A soldier sprang 
 forward to his place and fell also as he grasped 
 the color-staff. A second and third followed 
 successively, and each received death as speed- 
 ily as his predecessors. A fourth, however, 
 seized and bore back the object of soldierly 
 devotion." 
 
 Such incidents have occurred in battle from 
 time to time since men began to venerate the 
 symbols of their cause, but they are not com- 
 monly related by the enemy. If General John- 
 ston had known that his veteran divisions were 
 throwing their successive lines against fewer 
 than fifteen hundred men his glowing tribute 
 to his enemy's valor could hardly have been 
 more generously expressed. I can attest the 
 truth of his soldierly> praise: I saw the occur- 
 rence that he relates and regret that I am tin- 
 
[O >N< ELASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 able to recall even the name of the regiment 
 whose colors were so gallantly saved. 
 
 Early in my military experience I used to ask 
 myself how it was that brave troops could re- 
 treat while still their courage was high. As 
 long as a man is not disabled he can go for- 
 ward; can it be anything but fear that makes 
 him stop and finally retire? Are there signs 
 by which he can infallibly know the struggle 
 to be hopeless? In this engagement, as in 
 others, my doubts were answered as to the fact; 
 the explanation is still obscure. In many in- 
 stances which have come under my observation, 
 when hostile lines of infantry engage at close 
 range and the assailants afterward retire, there 
 was a "dead-line" beyond which no man ad- 
 vanced but to fall. Not a soul of them ever 
 reached the enemy's front to be bayoneted or 
 captured. It was a matter of the difference of 
 three or four paces — too small a distance to 
 affect the accuracy of aim. In these affairs no 
 aim is taken at individual antagonists; the 
 soldier delivers his fire at the thickest mass in 
 his front. The fire is, of course, as deadly at 
 twenty paces as at fifteen; at fifteen as at ten. 
 Nevertheless, there is the "dead-line," with its 
 well-defined edge of corpses — those of the 
 bravest. Where both lines are fighting without 
 cover — as in a charge met by a counter-charge — 
 each has its "dead-line," and between the two 
 is a clear space — neutral ground, devoid of 
 dead, for the living cannot reach it to fall there. 
 
 I observed this phenomenon at Pickett's 
 Mill. Standing at the right of the line I had 
 an unobstructed view of the narrow, open space 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 11 
 
 across which the two lines fought. It was 
 dim with smoke, but not greatly obscured: the 
 smoke rose and spread in sheets among the 
 branches of the trees. Most of our men fought 
 kneeling as they fired, many of them behind 
 trees, stones and whatever cover they could get, 
 but there were considerable groups that stood. 
 1 Occasionally one of these groups, which had 
 endured the storm of missiles for moments 
 without perceptible reduction, would push for- 
 ward, moved by a common despair, and wholly 
 detach itself from the line. In a second every 
 man of the group would be down. There had 
 been no visible movement of the enemy, no 
 audible change in the awful, even roar of the 
 firing — yet all were down. Frequently the dim 
 figure of an individual soldier would be seen 
 to spring away from his comrades, advancing 
 alone toward that fateful interspace, with 
 leveled bayonet. He got no farther than the 
 farthest of his predecessors. Of the "hun- 
 dreds of corpses within twenty paces of the 
 Confederate line," I venture to say that a third 
 were within fifteen paces, and not one within 
 ten. 
 
 It is the perception — perhaps unconscious^ 
 of this inexplicable phenomenon that causes 
 the still unharmed, still vigorous and still cour- 
 ageous soldier to retire without having come 
 into actual contact with his foe. He sees, or 
 feels, that he cannot. His bayonet is a useless 
 weapon for slaughter; its purpose is a moral 
 one. Tts mandate exhausted, he sheathes it 
 and trusts to the bullet. That falling, he re 
 
28 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 treats. He has done all that he could do with 
 such appliances as he has. 
 
 No command to fall back was given, none 
 could have been heard. Man by man, the sur- 
 vivors withdrew at will, sifting through the 
 trees into the cover of the ravines, among the 
 wounded who could draw themselves back; 
 among the skulkers whom nothing could have 
 dragged forward. The left of our short line 
 had fought at the cornpr of a cornfield, the 
 fence along the right side of which was parallel 
 to the direction of our retreat. As the dis- 
 organized groups fell back along this fence on 
 the wooded side, they were attacked by a flank- 
 ing force of the enemy moving through the field 
 in a direction nearly parallel with what had 
 been our front. This force, I infer from Gen- 
 eral Johnston's account, consisted of the bri- 
 gade of General Lowry, or two Arkansas regi- 
 ments under Colonel Baucum. I had been sent 
 by General Hazen to that point and arrived in 
 time to witness this formidable movement. 
 But already our retreating men, in obedience to 
 their officers, their courage and their instinct 
 of self-preservation, had formed along the fence 
 and opened fire. The apparently slight ad- 
 vantage of the imperfect cover and the open 
 range worked its customary miracle: the as- 
 sault, a singularly spiritless one, considering 
 the advantages it promised and that it was 
 made by an organized and victorious force 
 against a broken and retreating one, was 
 checked. The assailants actually retired, and if 
 they afterward renewed the movement they en- 
 countered none but our dead and wounded. 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 20 
 
 The battle, as a battle, was at an end, but 
 there was still some slaughtering that it was 
 possible to incur before nightfall; and as the 
 wreck of our brigade drifted back through the 
 forest we met the brigade (Gibson's) which, 
 had the attack been made in column, as it 
 should have been, would have been but five 
 minutes behind our heels, with another five 
 minutes behind its own. As it was, just forty- 
 five minutes had elapsed, during which the 
 enemy had destroyed us and was now ready to 
 perform the same kindly office for our suc- 
 cessors. Neither Gibson nor the brigade which 
 was sent to his "relief" as tarcftly as he to 
 ours accomplished, or could have hoped to ac- 
 complish, anything whatever. I did not note 
 their movements, having other duties, but 
 Hazen in his "Narrative of Military Service" 
 says: 
 
 "I witnessed the attack of the two brigades 
 following my own, and none of these (troops) 
 advanced nearer than one hundred yards of 
 the enemy's works. They went in at a run, 
 and as organizations w r ere broken in less than 
 a minute." 
 
 Nevertheless their losses were considerable, 
 including several hundred prisoners taken from 
 a sheltered place whence they did not care to 
 rise and run. The entire loss was about four- 
 teen hundred men, of whom nearly one-half fell 
 killed and wounded in Hazen's brigade in 
 than thirty minutes of actual fighting. 
 
 General Johnston says: 
 
 "The Federal dead lying near our line were 
 counted by many persons, officers and soldiers. 
 
30 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 According to these counts there were seven 
 hundred of them/' 
 
 This is obviously erroneous, though I have 
 not the means at hand to ascertain the true 
 number. I remember that we were all aston- 
 ished at the uncommonly large proportion of 
 dead to wounded — a consequence of the uncom- 
 monly close range at which most of the fighting 
 was done. 
 
 The action took its name from a water- 
 power mill near by. This was on a branch of 
 a stream having. I am sorry to say, the prosaic 
 name of Pumpkin Vine Creek. I have my own 
 reasons for suggesting that the name of that 
 water-course be altered to Sunday-School Run. 
 
:;i 
 
 WII \T I SAW OF SH1LOH 
 
 It was plain that the enemy had retreated 
 to Corinth. The arrival of our fresh troops 
 and their successful passage of the river had 
 disheartened him. Three or four of his gray 
 cavalry videttes moving amongst the trees on 
 the crest of a hill in our front, and galloping 
 out of sight at the crack of our skirmishers' 
 rifles, confirmed us in the belief; an army face 
 to face with its enemy does not employ cavalry 
 to watch its front. True, they might be a gen- 
 eral and his staff. Crowning this rise we 
 found a level field, a quarter of a mile in 
 width; beyond it a gentle acclivity, covered 
 with an undergrowth of young oaks, imper- 
 vious to sight. We pushed on into the open, 
 but the division halted at the edge. Havnm 
 orders to conform to its movements, we halted 
 too; but that did not suit; we received an in- 
 timation to proceed. I had performed this 
 sort of service before, and in the exercise of 
 my discretion deployed my platoon, pushing 
 it forward at a run, with trailed arms, to 
 strengthen the skirmish line, which I over- 
 took some thirty or forty yards from the wood. 
 Then — I can't describe it — the forest seemed 
 all at once to flame up and disappear with a 
 crash like that of a great wave upon the beach 
 — a crash that expired in hot hissings, and 
 the sickening "spat" of lead against flesh. 
 A dozen ot my brave fellows tumbled over 
 like ten-pin*. Some struggled to their feet, 
 only to go down again, and yet again. Thoso 
 
oJ ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 who stood fired into the smoking brush and 
 doggedly retired. We had expected to find, 
 at most, a line of skirmishers similar to our 
 own; it was with a view to overcoming them 
 by a sudden coup at the moment of collision 
 that I had thrown forward my little reserve. 
 What we had found was a line of battle, coolly 
 holding its fire till it could count our teeth. 
 There was no more to be done but get back 
 across the open ground, every superficial yard 
 of which was throwing up its little jet of mud 
 provoked by an impinging bullet. We got 
 back, most of us, and I shall never forget the 
 ludicrous incident of a young officer who had 
 taken part in the affair walking up to his 
 colonel, who had been a calm and apparently 
 impartial spectator, and gravely reporting: 
 "The enemy is in force just beyond this field, 
 sir." 
 
 II 
 
 In subordination to the design of this nar- 
 rative, as defined by its title, the incidents 
 related necessarily group themselves about 
 my own personality as a center; and, as this 
 center, during the few terrible-hours of the en- 
 gagement, maintained a variably constant re- 
 lation to the open field already mentioned, it 
 is important that the reader should bear in 
 mind the topographical and tactical features 
 of the local situation. The hither side of the 
 field was occupied by the front of my brigade 
 — a length of two regiments in line, with 
 proper intervals for field batteries. During 
 the entire fight the enemy held the slight 
 wooded acclivity beyond. The debatable 
 
OK THE CIVIL WAR 33 
 
 ground to the right and left of the open was 
 broken and thickly wooded for miles, in some 
 places quite inaccessible to artillery and at 
 very few points offering opportunities for its 
 successful employment. As a consequence of 
 this the two sides of the field were soon stud- 
 ded thickly with confronting guns, which 
 flamed away at one another with amazing zeul 
 and rather startling effect. Of course, an in- 
 fantry attack delivered from either side waj 
 not to be thought of when the covered flank:; 
 offered inducements so unquestionably supe- 
 rior; and I believe the riddled bodies of my 
 poor skirmishers were the only ones left on 
 this "neutral ground" that day. But there was 
 a very pretty line of dead continually growing 
 in our rear, and doubtless the enemy had i.t 
 his back a similar encouragement. 
 
 The configuration of the ground offered us 
 no protection. By lying flat on our faces be- 
 tween the guns we were screened from view 
 by a straggling row of brambles, which 
 marked the course of an obsolete fence; but 
 the enemy's grape was sharper than his 3yes, 
 and it was poor consolation to know thai hi; 
 gunners could not see what they w T ere doing. 
 so long as they did it. The shock of our own 
 pieces nearly deafened us, but in the brief in- 
 tervals we could hear the battle roaring and 
 stammering in the dark reaches of the forest 
 to the right and left, where our other divi- 
 sions were dashing themselves again and ;:. 
 into the smoking jungle. What would we 
 not have given to join them in their brave, 
 hopeless task! But to lie inglorious beneath 
 
34 
 
 Showers of shrapnel darting di from 
 
 the unassailable sky — meekly to be blown out 
 of life by level gusts of grape — to clench our 
 teeth and shrink helpless before big shot push- 
 ing noisily through the consenting air — this 
 was horrible! "Lie down, there!" a captain 
 would shout, and then get up himself to see 
 that his order was obeyed. "Captain, take 
 cover, sir!" the lieutenant-colonel would shriek, 
 pacing up and down in the most exposed posi- 
 tion that he could find. 
 
 O those cursed guns — not the enemy's, but 
 our own. Had it not been for them, we might 
 have died like men. They must be supported, 
 forsooth, the feeble, boasting bullies! It was 
 impossible to conceive that these pieces wei e 
 doing the enemy as excellent a mischief as his 
 were doing us; they seemed to raise their 
 "cloud by day" solely to direct aright the 
 streaming procession of Confederate missiles. 
 They no longer inspired confidence, but begot 
 apprehension; and it was with grim satisfac- 
 tion that I saw the carriage of one and an- 
 other smashed into matchwood by a whooping 
 shot and bundled out of the line, 
 
 III 
 
 The dense forests wholly or partly in which 
 were fought so many battles of the Civil War. 
 lay upon the earth in each autumn a thick de 
 posit of dead leaves and stems, the decay of 
 which forms a soil of surprising depth and 
 richness. In dry weather the upper stratum 
 is as inflammable as tinder. A fire once kin- 
 
I >V THE CIVIL WAT, 35 
 
 died in it will spread with a slow, persistent 
 advance as far as local conditions permit, leav- 
 ing a bed of light ashes beneath which the 
 less combustible accretions of previous years 
 will smolder until extinguished by rains. In 
 many of the engagements of the war the fallen 
 leaves took fire and roasted the fallen men. 
 At Shiloh, during the first day's fighting, wide 
 tracts of woodland were burned over in this 
 way and scores of wounded who might have 
 recovered perished in slow torture. I remem- 
 ber a deep ravine a little to the left and rear 
 of the field I have described, in which, by 
 some mad freak of heroic incompetence, a 
 part of an Illinois regiment had been sur- 
 rounded, and refusing to surrender was de- 
 stroyed, as it very well deserved. My regi- 
 ment having at last been relieved at the gum* 
 and moved over to the heights above this ra- 
 vine for no obvious purpose. I obtained leave 
 to go down into the valley of death and gratify 
 a reprehensible curiosity. 
 
 Forbidding enough it was in every way. The 
 fire had swept every superficial foot of it, and 
 at every step I sank into ashes to the ankle. 
 It had contained a thick undergrowth of young 
 saplings, every one of which had been severed 
 by a bullet, the foliage of the prostrate tops 
 being afterward burnt and the stumps charred. 
 Death had put his sickle into this thicket and 
 fire had gleaned the field. Along a line which 
 was not that of extreme depression, but was 
 at every point significantly equidistant from 
 the heights on either hand, lay the bodies, half 
 buried in a*5hcs; some in the unlovely loose- 
 
86 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 ness •£ attitude denoting sudden death by the 
 bullet, but by far the greater number in pos- 
 tures of agony that told of the tormenting 
 flame. Their clothing was half bftrnt away — 
 their hair and beard entirely; the rain had 
 come too late to save their nails. Some were 
 swollen to double girth; others shriveled to 
 manikins. According to degree of exposure, 
 their faces were bloated and black or yellow 
 and shrunken. The contraction of muscles 
 which had given them claws for hands had 
 cursed each countenance with a hideous grin. 
 Faugh! I cannot catalogue the charms of these 
 gallant gentlemen who had got what they en- 
 listed for. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, 
 and raining. For fifteen hours we had been 
 wet to the skin. Chilled, sleepy, hungry and 
 disappointed — profoundly disgusted with the 
 inglorious part to which they had been con- 
 demned — the men of my regiment did every- 
 thing doggedly. The spirit had gone quite 
 out of them. Blue sheets of powder smoke, 
 drifting amongst the trees, settling against the 
 hillsides and beaten into nothingness by the 
 falling rain, filled the air with their peculiar 
 pungent odor, but it no longer stimulated. For 
 miles on either hand could be heard the hoarse 
 murmur of the battle, breaking out nearby 
 with frightful distinctness, or sinking to a mur- 
 mur in the distance; and the one sound aroused 
 no more attention than the other. 
 
 We had been placed again in rear of those 
 
OP THE CIVIL WAR 37 
 
 guns, but even they and their iron antagonists 
 seemed to have tired of their feud, pounding 
 away at one another with amiable infrequency. 
 The right of the regiment extended a little 
 beyond the field. On the prolongation of the 
 line in that direction were some regiments of 
 another division, with one in reserve. A third 
 of a mile back lay the remnant of somebody s 
 brigade looking to its wounds. The line of 
 forest bounding this end of the field stretched 
 as straight as a wall from the right of my 
 regiment to Heaven knows what regiment of 
 the enemy. There suddenly appeared, march- 
 ing down along this wall, not more than two 
 huidred yards in our front, a dozen files of 
 gray-clad men with rifles on the right shoulder. 
 At an interval of fifty yards they were follov:ed 
 by perhaps half as many more; and in fair 
 supporting distance of these stalked with confi- 
 dent mien a single man! There seemed to me 
 something indescribably ludicrous in the ad- 
 vance of this handful of men upon an army, 
 albeit with their left flank protected by a for- 
 est. It does not so impress me now. They 
 were the exposed flanks of three lines of in- 
 fantry, each half a mile in length. In a mo- 
 ment our gunners had grappled with the near- 
 est pieces, swung them half round, and were 
 pouring streams of canister into the invaded 
 wood. . The infantry rose in masses, springing 
 into line. Our threatened regiments stood like 
 a wall, their loaded rifles at "ready," their 
 bayonets hanging quietly in the scabbards. The 
 right wing of my own regiment was thrown 
 slightly backward to threaten the flank of the 
 
3S ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 assault. The battered brigade away to the 
 rear pulled itself together. 
 
 Then the storm burst. A great gray cloud 
 seemed to spring out of the forest into the 
 faces of the waiting battalions. It was re- 
 ceived with a crash that made the very trees 
 turn up their leaves. For one instant the as- 
 sailants paused above their dead, then strug- 
 gled forwards, their bayonets glittering in the 
 eyes that shone behind the smoke. One mo- 
 ment, and those unmoved men in blue would 
 be impaled. What were they about? Why 
 did they not fix bayonets? Were they stunned 
 by their own volley? Their inaction was mad- 
 dening! Another tremendous crash! — the rear 
 rank had fired! ' Humanity, thank Heaven! is 
 not made for this, and the shattered gray mass 
 drew back a score of paces, opening a feeble 
 fire. Lead had scored its old-time victory over 
 steel: the heroic had broken its great heart 
 against the commonplace. There are those 
 who say that it is sometimes otherwise. 
 
 All this had taken but a minute of time, and 
 now the second Confederate line swept down 
 and poured in its fire. The line of blue stag- 
 gered and gave way; in those two terrific vol- 
 leys it seemed to have quite poured out its 
 spirit. To this deadly work our reserve regi- 
 ment now came up with a run. It was sur- 
 prising to see it spitting fire with never a 
 sound, for such was the infernal din that the 
 ear could take in no more. This fearful scene 
 was enacted within fifty paces of our toes, but 
 we were rooted to the ground as if we had 
 grown thorp. But now our commanding offi- 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 39 
 
 cor rode from behind us to the front, waved 
 his hand with the courteous gesture that says 
 apres vans, and with a barely audible cheer 
 we sprang into the fight. Again the smoking 
 front of gray receded, and again, as the ene- 
 my's third line emerged from its leafy covert, 
 it pushed forward across the piles of dead 
 and wounded to threaten with protruded steel. 
 Never was seen so striking a proof of the para- 
 mount importance of numbers. Within an area 
 of three hundred yards by fifty there struggled 
 for front places no fewer than six regiments; 
 and the accession of each, after the first col- 
 lision, had it not been immediately counter- 
 poised, would have turned the scale. 
 
 As matters stood, we were now very evenly 
 matched, and how long we might have held 
 out God only knows. But all at once some- 
 thing appeared to have gone wrong with the 
 enemy's left; our men had somewhere pierced 
 his line. A moment later his whole front gave 
 way, and springing forward with fixed bayo- 
 nets we pushed him in utter confusion back 
 to his original line. Here, among the tents 
 from which Grant's people had been expelled 
 the day before, our broken and disordered regi- 
 ments inextricably intermingled, and drunken 
 with the wine of triumph, dashed confidently 
 against a pair of trim battalions, provoking a 
 tempest of hissing lead that made us stagger 
 under its very weight. The sharp onset of 
 another against our flank sent us whirling 
 back with fire at our heels and fresh foes in 
 merciless pursuit — who in their turn were 
 broken upon the front of the invalided brigade 
 
40 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 previously mentioned, which had moved up 
 from the rear to assist in this lively work. 
 
 As we rallied to reform behind our beloved 
 guns and noted the ridiculous brevity of our 
 line — as we sank from sheer fatigue, and tried 
 to moderate the terrific thumping of our hearts 
 — as we caught our breath to ask who had 
 seen such-and-such a comrade, and laughed hys- 
 terically at the reply — there swept past us and 
 over us into the open field a long regiment 
 with fixed bayonets and rifles on the right 
 shoulder. Another followed, and another; 
 two — three — four! Heavens! where do all 
 these men come from, and why did they not 
 come before? How grandly and confidently 
 they go sweeping on like long blue waves of 
 ocean chasing one another to the cruel rocks! 
 Involuntarily we draw in our weary feet be- 
 neath us as we sit, ready to spring up and 
 interpose our breasts when these gallant lines 
 shall come back to us across the terrible field, 
 and sift brokenly through among the trees with 
 spouting fires at their backs. We still our 
 breathing to catch the full grandeur of the 
 volleys that are to tear them to shreds. Minute 
 after minute passes and the sound does not 
 come. Then for the first time we note that 
 the silence of the whole region is not com- 
 parative, but absolute. Have w r e become stone 
 deaf? See; here comes a stretcher-bearer, and 
 there a surgeon! Good heavens! a chaplain! 
 
 The battle was indeed at an end. 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 41 
 
 FOUR DAYS IN DIXIE 
 
 During a part of the month of October, 1864, 
 the Federal and Confederate armies of Sherman 
 and Hood respectively, having performed a 
 surprising and resultless series of marches and 
 countermarches since the fall of Atlanta, con- 
 fronted each other along the separating li/ne of 
 the Coosa River in the vicinity of Gaylesville, 
 ama. Here for several days they remained 
 at rest — at least most of the infantry and artil- 
 lery did; what the cavalry was doing nobody 
 but itself ever knew or greatly cared. It was 
 an interregnum of expectancy between two 
 regimes of activity. 
 
 I was on the staff of Colonel McConnell, who 
 commanded an infantry brigade in the absence 
 of it; regular commander. McConnell was a 
 good man, but he did not keep a very tight rein 
 upon the half dozen restless and reckless young 
 fellows who (for his sins) constituted his "mili- 
 tary family." In most matters we followed the 
 trend of our desires, which commonly ran in 
 the direction of adventure — it did not greatly 
 matter what kind. In pursuance of this policy 
 of escapades, one bright Sunday morning Lieu- 
 tenant Cobb, an aide-de-camp, and I mounted 
 and set out to "seek our fortunes," as the story 
 books have it. Striking into a road of which 
 we knew nothing except that it led toward the 
 river, we followed it for a mile or such a mat- 
 ter, when we found our advance interrupted 
 by a considerable creek, which we must ford 
 or eo bnck. We con Tiilted a moment and then 
 
\2 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 rode at it as hard as we could, possibly in the 
 belief that a high momentum would act as it 
 does in the instance of a skater passing over 
 thin ice. Cobb was fortunate enough to get 
 across comparatively dry, but his hapless com- 
 panion was utterly submerged. The disaster 
 was all the greater from my having on a re- 
 splendent new uniform, of which I had been 
 pardonably vain. Ah, what a gorgeous new 
 uniform it never was again! 
 
 A half-hour devoted to wringing my clothing 
 and dry-charging my revolver, and we were 
 away. A brisk canter of a half-hour under the 
 arches of the trees brought us to the river, 
 where it was our ill luck to find a boat and 
 three soldiers of our brigade. These men had 
 been for several hours concealed in the brush 
 patiently watching the opposite bank in the 
 amiable hope of getting a shot at some unwary 
 Confederate, but had seen none. For a great 
 distance up and down the stream on the other 
 side, and for at least a mile back from it, ex- 
 tended cornfields. Beyond the cornfields, on 
 slightly higher ground, was a thin forest, with 
 breaks here and there in its continuity, denot- 
 ing plantations, probably. No houses were in 
 sight, and no camps. We knew that it was the 
 enemy's ground, but whether his forces were 
 disposed along the slightly higher country 
 bordering the bottom lands, or at strategic 
 points miles back, as ours were, we knew no 
 more than the least curious private in our 
 army. In any case the river line would nat- 
 urally be picketed or patrolled. But the charm 
 of the unknown was upon us: the mysterious 
 
OP THE CIVIL WAR 43 
 
 exerted its old-time fascination, beckoning to 
 us from that silent shore so peaceful and 
 dreamy in the beauty of the quiet Sunday 
 morning. The temptation was strong and we 
 fell. The soldiers were as eager for the hazard 
 as we, and readily volunteered for the mad- 
 men's enterprise. Concealing our horses in a 
 cane-brake, we unmoored the boat and rowed 
 across unmolested. 
 
 Arrived at a kind of "landing" on the other 
 side, our first care was so to secure the boat 
 under the bank as to favor a hasty re-embark in". 
 in case we should be so unfortunate as to incur 
 the natural consequence of our act; then, follow- 
 ing an old road through the ranks of standing 
 corn, we moved in force upon the Confederate 
 position, five strong, with an armament ol 
 three Springfield rifles and two Colt's revolvers. 
 We had not the further advantage of music an i 
 banners. One thing favored the expedition, 
 giving it an apparent assurance of success: it 
 was well officered — an officer to each man and 
 a half. 
 
 After marching about a mile we came into 
 a neck of woods and crossed an intersecting 
 road which showed no wheel-tracks, but was 
 rich in hoof-prints. We observed them and 
 kept right on about our business, whatever that 
 may have been. A few hundred yards farther 
 brought us to a plantation bordering our road 
 upon the right. The fields, as was the South- 
 ern fashion at that period of the war. were un- 
 cultivated and overgrown with brambles. A 
 large white house stood at some little distance 
 from the road; we saw women and children 
 
4 4 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 and a few Negroes there. On our left ran the 
 thin forest, pervious to cavalry. Directly ahead 
 an ascent in the road formed a crest beyond 
 which we could see nothing. 
 
 On this crest suddenly appeared two horse- 
 men in gray, sharply outlined against the sky 
 — men and animals looking gigantic. At the 
 same instant a jingling and tramping v. ere 
 audible behind us, and turning in that direction 
 I saw a score of mounted men moving forward 
 at a trot. In the meantime the giants on the 
 crest had multiplied surprisingly. Our invasion 
 of the Gulf States had apparently failed. 
 
 There was lively work in the next few sec- 
 onds. The shots were thick and fast — and un- 
 commonly loud; none, I think, from our side. 
 Cobb was on the extreme left of our advance. 
 I on the right — about two paces apart. He in- 
 stantly dived into the wood. The three men 
 and I climbed across the fence somehow and 
 struck out across the field — actuated, doubtless. 
 by an intelligent forethought: men on horse- 
 back could not immediately follow. PassinT 
 near the house, now swarming like a hive o*' 
 bees, we made for a swamp two or three hundred 
 yards away, where I concealed myself in a 
 jungle, the others continuing— as a defeated 
 commander would put it — to fall back. In my 
 cover, where I lay panting like a hare, I could 
 hear a deal of shouting and hard riding and 
 an occasional shot. I heard some one calling 
 dogs, and the thought of bloodhounds added 
 its fine suggestiveness to the other farcies ap- 
 propriate to the occasion. 
 
 Finding myself unpursued after the lap- 
 
OF THH CIVIL, WAR 45 
 
 what seemed an hour, but was probably a few 
 minutes, 1 cautiously sought a place where, 
 still concealed, I could obtain a view of the field 
 of glory. The only enemy in sight was a group 
 of horsemen on a hill a quarter ot a mile away. 
 Toward this group a woman was running, fol- 
 lowed by the eyes of everybody about the house. 
 I thought she had discovered my hiding-place 
 and was going to "give me away." Taking to 
 I ly hands and knees I crept as rapidly as pos- 
 sible among the clumps of brambles directly 
 back toward the point in the road where we 
 had met the enemy and failed to make him 
 oars. There I dragged myself into a patch of 
 briars within ten feet of the road, where I lay 
 undiscovered during the remainder of the day, 
 listening to a variety of disparaging remarks 
 upon Yankee valor and to dispiriting declara- 
 tions of intention conditional on my capture, 
 as members of the Opposition passed and re- 
 passed and paused in the road to discuss the 
 morning's events. In this way I learned that 
 the three privates had been headed off and 
 caught within ten minutes. Their destination 
 would naturally be Andersonville; what fur- 
 ther became of them God knows. Their captors 
 passed the day making a careful canvass of the 
 swamp for me. 
 
 When night had fallen I cautiously left my 
 place of concealment, dodged across the road 
 into the woods and made for the river through 
 the mile of corn. Such corn! It towered above 
 me like a forest, shutting out all the starlight 
 except what came from directly overhead 
 Many of the ears were a yard out of reach. 
 
•K; ICONOCLASTIC MEM! »i; 
 
 One who has never seen an Alabama river-bot- 
 tom cornfield has not exhausted nature's sur- 
 prises; nor will he know what solitude is until 
 he explores one in a moonless night. 
 
 I came at last to the river bank with its 
 fringe of trees and willows and canes. My 
 intention was to swim across, but the current 
 was swift, the water forbiddingly dark and 
 cold. A mist obscured the other bank. I could 
 not. indeed, see the water more than a few 
 yards out. It was a hazardous and horrible 
 undertaking, and I gave it up, following cau- 
 tiously along the bank in search of the spot 
 where we had moored the boat. True, it was 
 hardly likely that the landing was now un- 
 guarded, or, if so, that the boat was still there. 
 Cobb had undoubtedly made for it, having an 
 even more urgent need than I; but hope springs 
 eternal in the human breast, and there was a 
 chance that he had been killed before reaching 
 it. I came at last into the road that we had 
 taken and consumed half the night in cautiously 
 approaching the landing, pistol in hand and 
 heart in mouth. The boat was gone! I con- 
 tinued my journey along the stream — in search 
 of another. 
 
 My clothing was still damp from my morn- 
 ing bath, my teeth rattled with cold, but I kept 
 on along the stream until I reached the limit 
 of the cornfields and entered a dense wood. 
 Through this I groped my way, inch by inch, 
 when, suddenly emerging from a thicket into 
 a space slightly more open, I came upon a 
 smouldering camp-fire surrounded by prostrate 
 figures of men, upon one of whom I had almost 
 
THE CtvtL mrr, r: 
 
 trodden. A sentinel, who ought to have been 
 shot, sat by the embers, his carbine across his 
 lap. his chin upon his breast. Just, beyond was 
 B grout of unsaddled horses. The men were 
 p; the sentinel was asleep; the horses 
 were asleep. There was something indescrib- 
 ably uncanny about it all. For a moment I 
 believed them all lifeless, and O'Hara's familiar 
 line, "The bivouac of the dead," quoted itself 
 in my consciousness. The emotion that I felt 
 was that inspired by a sense of the supernat- 
 ural; of the actual and imminent peril of my 
 position I had no thought. When at last it 
 occurred to me I felt it as a welcome relief, 
 and stepping silently back into the shadow re- 
 traced my course without having awakened a 
 soul. The vividness with which I can now 
 recall that scene is to me one of the marvels 
 of memory. 
 
 Getting my bearings again with some diffi- 
 culty. I now made a wide detour to the left, 
 in the hope of passing around this outpost and 
 striking the river beyond. In this mad attempt 
 I ran upon a more vigilant sentinel, posted in 
 the heart of a thicket, who fired at me without 
 challenging. To a soldier an unexpected shot 
 ringing out at dead of night is fraught with 
 an awful significance. In my circumstances — 
 cut off from my comrades, groping about an 
 unknown country, surrounded by invisible 
 perils which such a signal would call into eager 
 activity — the flash and shock of that firearm 
 were unspeakably dreadful! In any case I 
 should and ought to have fled, and did so: but 
 how much or little of conscious prudence there 
 
48 ICONOCLASTIC MEMO!: 
 
 was in the prompting I do not care to discover 
 by analysis of memory. I went back into the 
 corn, found the river, followed it back a long 
 way and mounted into the fork of a low tree. 
 There I perched until the dawn, a most uncom- 
 fortable bird. 
 
 In the gray light of the morning I discov- 
 ered that I was opposite an island of consider- 
 able length, separated from the mainland by a 
 narrow and shallow channel, which I promptly 
 waded. The island was low and flat, covered 
 with an almost impenetrable cane-brake inter- 
 laced with vines. Working my way through 
 these to the other side, I obtained another look 
 at God's country — Shermany, so to speak. There 
 were no visible inhabitants. The forest and 
 the water met. This did not deter me. For 
 the chill of the water I had no further care, 
 and laying off my boots and outer clothing I 
 prepared to swim. A strange thing now oc- 
 curred — more accurately, a familiar thing oc- 
 curred at a strange moment. A black cloud 
 seemed to pass before my eyes — the water, the 
 trees, the sky. all vanished in a profound dark- 
 ness. I heard the roaring of a great cataract, 
 felt the earth sinking from beneath my feet. 
 Then I heard and felt no more. 
 
 At the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in the 
 previous June I had been badly wounded in the 
 head, and for three months was incapacitated 
 for service. In truth, I had done no actual 
 duty since, being then, as for many years after- 
 ward, subject to fits of fainting, sometimes 
 without assignable immediate cause, but m< 
 when suffering from exposure, excitement or 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 49 
 
 excessive fatigue. This combination of them 
 all had broken me down — most opportunely, it 
 would seem. 
 
 When I regained my consciousness the sun 
 was high. I was still giddy and half blind. 
 To have taken to the water would have been 
 madness; I must have a raft. Exploring my 
 island, I found a pen of slender logs: an old 
 structure without roof or rafters, built for 
 what purpose I do not know. Several of these 
 logs I managed with patient toil to detach and 
 convey to the water, where I floated them, lash- 
 ing them together with vines. Just before sun- 
 set my raft was complete and freighted with 
 my outer clothing, boots and pistol. Having 
 shipped the last article, I returned into the 
 brake, seeking something from which to im- 
 provise a paddle. While peering about I heard 
 a sharp metallic click — the cocking of a rifle! 
 I was a prisoner. 
 
 The history of this great disaster to the 
 Union arms is brief and simple. A Confederate 
 "home guard," hearing something going on 
 upon the island, rode across, concealed his horse 
 and still-hunted me. And, reader, when you 
 are "held up" in the same way may it be by 
 as fine a fellow. He not only spared my life, 
 but even overlooked a feeble and ungrateful 
 after-attempt upon his own (the particulars of 
 which I shall not relate), merely exacting my 
 word of honor that I would not again try to 
 escape while in his custody. Escape! I could 
 not have escaped a new-born babe. 
 
 At my captor's house that evening there was 
 a reception, attended by the elite of the whole 
 
50 tC MEMOB 
 
 vicinity. A Yankee officer in full fig — minus 
 only the boots, which could not be got on to 
 his swollen feet — was something worth seeing, 
 and those who came to scoff remained to stare. 
 What most entertained them. I think, was my 
 eating — an entertainment that was prolonged 
 to a late hour. They were a trifle disappointed 
 by the absence of horns, hoof and tail, but bore 
 their chagrin with good-natured fortitude. 
 Among my visitors was a charming young 
 woman from the plantation where we had met 
 the foe the day before — the same lady whom I 
 had suspected of an intention to reveal my 
 hiding-place. She had had no such design; she 
 had run over to the group of horsemen to learn 
 if her father had been hurt — by whom, I should 
 like to know. Xo restraint was put upon me; 
 my captor even left me with the women and 
 children and went off for instructions as to 
 what disposition he should make of me. Alto- 
 gether the reception was "a pronounced suc- 
 cess." though it is to be regretted that the 
 guest of the evening had the incivility to fall 
 dead asleep in the midst of the festivities, and 
 was put to bed by sympathetic and, he has 
 reason to believe, fair hands. 
 
 The next morning I was started off to the 
 rear in custody of two mounted men, heavily 
 armed. They had another prisoner, picked up 
 in some raid beyond the river. He was a most 
 offensive brute — a foreigner of some mongrel 
 sort, with just sufficient command of our 
 tongue to show that he could not control his 
 own. We traveled all day. meeting occasional 
 small bodies of cavalrymen, by whom, with one 
 
OF THE CIVIL. WAR 51 
 
 exception— a Texan officer — I was civilly 
 treated. My guards said, however, that if we 
 should chance to meet Jeff Gatewood he would 
 probably take me from them and hang me to 
 the nearest tree; and once or twice, hearing 
 horsemen approach, they directed me to stand 
 aside, concealed in the brush, one of them re- 
 maining near by to keep an eye on me, the 
 other going forward with my fellow-prisoner, 
 for whose neck they seemed to have less ten- 
 derness, and whom I heartily wished well 
 hanged. 
 
 Jeff Gatewood was a "guerrilla" chief of local 
 notoriety, who was a greater terror to his 
 friends than to his other foes. My guards re- 
 lated almost incredible tales of his cruelties 
 and infamies. By their account it was into 
 his camp that I had blundered on Sunday night. 
 
 We put up for the night at a" farmhouse, 
 having gone not more than fifteen miles, owing 
 to the condition of my feet. Here we got a bite 
 of supper and w r ere permitted to lie before the 
 fire. My fellow-prisoner took off his boots 
 and was soon sound asleep. I took off nothing 
 and, despite exhaustion, remained equally 
 sound awake. One of the guards also removed 
 his footgear and outeY clothing, placed his 
 weapons under his neck and slept the sleep of 
 innocence; the other sat in the chimney cor- 
 ner on watch. The house was a double log 
 cabin, with an* open space between the two 
 parts, roofed over — a common type of habitation 
 in that region. The room we were in had its 
 entrance in this open space, the fireplace oppo- 
 site, at the end. Beside the door was a bed, 
 
52 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 occupied by the old man of the house and his 
 wife. It was partly curtained off from the 
 room. 
 
 In an hour or two the chap on watch began 
 to yawn, then to nod. Pretty soon he stretched 
 himself on the floor, facing us, pistol in hand. 
 For a while he supported himself on his elbow, 
 then laid his head on his arm, blinking like an 
 owl. I performed an occasional snore, watch- 
 ing him narrowly between my eyelashes from 
 the shadow of my arm. The inevitable occurred 
 — he slept audibly. 
 
 A half-hour later I rose quietly to my feet, 
 particularly careful not to disturb the black- 
 guard at my side, and moved as silently as 
 possible. Despite my care the latch clicked. 
 The old lady sat bolt upright in bed and stared 
 at me. She was too late. I .sprang through 
 the door and struck out for the nearest point 
 of woods, in a direction previously selected, 
 vaulting fences like an accomplished gymnast 
 and followed by a multitude of dogs. It is said 
 that the State of Alabama has more dogs than 
 school-children, and that they cost more for 
 their upkeep. The estimate of cost is probably 
 too high. 
 
 Looking backward as I ran, I saw and heard 
 the place in a turmoil and uproar; and to my 
 joy the old man, evidently oblivious to the 
 facts of the situation, was lifting up his voice 
 and calling his dogs. They were good dogs: 
 they went back; otherwise the malicious old 
 rascal would have had my skeleton. Again the 
 traditional bloodhound did not materialize. 
 Other pursuit there was no reason 10 rear; my 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 53 
 
 foreign gentleman would occupy the attention 
 of one of the soldiers, and in the darkness of 
 the forest I could easily elude the other, or, 
 if need be, get him at a disadvantage. In point 
 of fact there was no pursuit. 
 
 I now took my course by the north star 
 (which I can never sufficiently bless), avoiding 
 all roads and open places about houses, labor- 
 iously boring my way through forests driving 
 myself like a wedge into brush and bramble, 
 swimming every stream I came to (some of 
 them more than once, probably), and pulling 
 myself out of the water by boughs and briars 
 — whatever could be grasped. Let any one try 
 to go a little way across even the most familiar 
 country on a moonless night, and he will have 
 an experience to remember. By dawn I had 
 probably not made three miles. My clothing 
 and skin were alike in rags. 
 
 During the day I was compelled to make wide 
 detours to avoid even the fields, unless they 
 were of corn; but in other respects the goins: 
 was distinctly better. A light breakfast of raw 
 sweet potatoes and persimmons cheered the 
 inner man; a good part of the outer was deco 
 rating the several thorns, boughs and sharp 
 rocks along my sylvan wake. 
 
 Late in the afternoon I found the river, at 
 what point it was impossible to say. After a 
 half-hour's rest, concluding with a ferment 
 prayer that I might go to the bottom, I swam 
 across. Creeping up the bank and holding tp^ 
 course still northward through a dem-e ur-r 1 
 growth. I suddenly reeled into a dusty h*«^- 
 way and saw a more heavenly vision than ever 
 
54 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 the eyes of a dying saint were blessed withal 
 — two patriots in blue carrying a stolen pig 
 slung upon a pole! 
 
 Late that evening Colonel McConnell and 
 his staff were chatting by a camp-fire in front 
 of his headquarters. They were in a pleasant 
 humor: someone had just finished a funny 
 story about a man cut in two by a cannon-shot. 
 Suddenly something staggered in among them 
 from the outer darkness and fell into the fire. 
 Somebody dragged it out by what seemed to 
 be a leg. They turned the animal on its back 
 and examined it — they were no cowards. 
 
 • What is it. Cobb" said the chief, who 
 had not taken the trouble to rise. 
 
 "1 don't know, Colonel, but thank God it 
 is .lead!" 
 
 It was not. 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 WHAT OCCURRED AT FRANKLIN 
 
 For several days, in snow and rain, General 
 Schofield's little army had crouched in its 
 iy constructed defenses at Columbia, Ten- 
 it had retreated in hot haste from 
 Pulaski, thirty miles to the south, arriving 
 just in time to foil Hood, who, marching from 
 Florence, Alabama, by another road, with a 
 of more than double our strength, had 
 hoped to intercept us. Had he succeeded, he 
 would indubitably have bagged the whole 
 bunch of us. As it was, he simply took posi- 
 tion in front of us and gave us plenty of 
 employment, but did not attack; he knew a 
 trick worth two of that. 
 
 Duck River was directly in our rear; I sup- 
 pose both our flanks rested on it. The town 
 was between them. One night — that of No- 
 vember 27, 1864 — we pulled up stakes and 
 crossed to the north bank to continue our re- 
 treat to Nashville, where Thomas and safety 
 such safety as is known in war. It was 
 high time, too, for before noon of the next day 
 Forrest's cavalry forded the river a few miles 
 above us and began pushing back our own 
 horse toward Spring Hill, ten miles in our 
 rear, on our only road. Why our infantry was 
 not immediately put in motion toward the 
 threatened point, so vital to our safety. General 
 Schofield could have told better than I. How- 
 beit, we lay there inactive all day. 
 
 The next morning — a bright and beautiful 
 one — the brigade of Colonel P. Sidney Post 
 
56 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 was thrown out, up the river four or five miles, 
 to see what it could see. What it saw was 
 Hood's head-of-column coming over on a pon- 
 toon bridge, and a right pretty spectacle it 
 would have been to one whom it did not con- 
 cern. It concerned us rather keenly. 
 
 As a member of Colonel Post's staff, I was 
 naturally favored with a good view of the 
 performance. We formed in line of battle at 
 a distance of perhaps a half-mile from the 
 bridge-head, but that unending column of gray 
 and steel gave us no more attention than if we 
 had been a crowd of farmer-folk. Why should 
 it? It had only to face to the left to be itself 
 a line of battle. Meantime it had more urgent 
 business on hand than brushing away a small 
 brigade whose only offense was curiosity; it 
 was making for Spring Hill with all its legs 
 and wheels. Hour after hour we watched that 
 unceasing flow of infantry and artillery toward 
 the rear of our army. It was an unnerving 
 spectacle, yet we never for a moment doubted 
 that, acting on the intelligence supplied by our 
 succession of couriers, our entire force was 
 moving rapidly to the point of contact. The 
 battle of Spring Hill was obviously decreed. 
 Obviously, too, our brigade of observation 
 would be among the last to have a hand in it. 
 The thought annoyed us, made us restless and 
 resentful. Our mounted men rode forward and 
 back behind the line, nervous and distressed; 
 the men fn the ranks sought relief in frequent 
 changes of posture, in shifting their weight 
 f"om one le^ to the other, in needless inspec- 
 tion of their weapons and in that unfailing 
 
OF the; CIVIL WAR 57 
 
 resource of the discontented soldier, audible 
 damning of those in the saddles of authority. 
 But never for more than a moment at a time 
 did anyone remove his eyes from that fasci- 
 nating and portentous pageant. 
 
 Toward evening we were recalled, to learn 
 that of our five divisions of infantry, with 
 their batteries, numbering twenty-three thou- 
 sand men, only one — Stanley's, four thousand 
 weak — had been sent to Spring Hill to meet 
 that formidable movement of Hood's three 
 veteran corps! Why Stanley was not imme- 
 diately effaced is still a matter of controversy. 
 Hood, who was early on the ground, declared 
 that he gave the needful orders and tried 
 vainly to enforce them; Cheatham, in command 
 tf his leading corps, declared that he did not. 
 Doubtless the dispute is still being carried on 
 between these chieftains from their beds of 
 asphodel and moly in Elysium. So much is 
 certain: Stanley drove away Forrest and suc- 
 cessfully held the junction of the roads against 
 Cleburne's division, the only infantry that at- 
 tacked him. 
 
 That night the entire Confederate army lay 
 within a half mile of our road, while we all 
 sneaked by, infantry, artillery, and trains. The 
 enemy's camp-fires shone redly — miles of them 
 — seeming only a stone's throw from our 
 hurrying column. Hi's men were plainly visible 
 about them, cooking their suppers — a sight so 
 iacredible that many of our own. thinking 
 them friends, strayed over to them and did 
 not return. At intervals of a few hundred 
 yards we passed dim figures on horseback by 
 
;he roadside, enjoining silence. Needless pre- 
 caution; we could not have spoken if we had 
 rried, for our hearts were in our throats. But 
 looIs are God's peculiar care, and one of his 
 protective methods is the stupidity of other 
 fools. By daybreak our last man and last wagon 
 had passed the fateful spot unchallenged, and 
 our first were entering Franklin, ten miles 
 away. Despite spirited cavalry attacks on 
 trains and rear-guard, all were in Franklin by 
 noon and such of the men as could be kept 
 awake were throwing up a slight line of de- 
 fense, inclosing the town. 
 
 Franklin lies — or at that time did lie; I 
 know not what exploration might now dis- 
 close — on the south bank of a small river, the 
 Harpeth by name. For two miles southward 
 was a nearly flat, open plain, extending to a 
 range of low hills through which passed the 
 turnpike by which we had come. From some 
 Muffs on the precipitous north bank of the 
 river was a commanding overlook of all this 
 open ground, which, although more than a mile 
 away, seemed almost at one's feet. On this 
 elevated ground the wagon-train had been 
 parked and General Schofield had stationed 
 himself — the former for security, the latter for 
 outlook. Both were guarded by General Wood's 
 infantry division, of which my brigade was a 
 part. "We are in beautiful luck," said a mem- 
 ber of the division staff. With some prevision 
 of what was to come and a lively recollection 
 of the nervous strain of helpless observation, 
 I did not think it luck. In the activity of battle 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 59 
 
 one does not feel one's hair going gray with 
 vicissitudes of emotion. 
 
 For some reason to the writer unknown 
 General Schofield had brought along with him 
 General D. S. Stanley, who commanded two 
 of his divisions — ours and another, which was 
 not "in luck." In the ensuing battle, when 
 this excellent officer could stand the strain no 
 longer, he bolted across the bridge like a shot 
 and found relief in the hell below, where he 
 was promptly tumbled out of the saddle by a 
 bullet. 
 
 Our line, with its reserve brigades, was 
 about a mile and a half long, both flanks on 
 the river, above and below the town — a mere 
 bridge-head. It did not look a very formid- 
 able obstacle to the march of an army of mare 
 than forty thousand men. In a more tranquil 
 temper than his failure at Spring Kill had 
 put him into Hood would probably have passed 
 around our left and turned us out with ease — 
 which would justly have entitled him to thn 
 Humane Society's great gold medal. Apparent- 
 ly that was not his day for saving life. 
 
 About the middle of the afternoon our field 
 glasses picked up the Confederate head-of- 
 column emerging from the range of hills pre- 
 viously mentioned, where it is cut by the Co 
 lumbia road. But — ominous circumstance! — it 
 did not come on. It turned to its left, at a right 
 angle, moving along the base of the hills, 
 parallel to our line. Other heads-of-column 
 came through other gaps and over the crests 
 farther along. Impudently deploying on the 
 level ground with a spectacular display of flags 
 
60 ICONOCLASTIC MEMORIES 
 
 and glitter of arms. I do not remember that 
 they were molested, even by the guns of Gen- 
 eral Wagner, who had been foolishly posted 
 with two small brigades across the turnpike, a 
 half-mile in our front, where he was needless 
 for apprisal and powerless for resistance. My 
 recollection is that our fellows down there in 
 their shallow trenches noted these portentous 
 dispositions without the least manifestation of 
 incivility. As a matter of fact, many of them 
 were permitted by their compassionate officers 
 to sleep. And truly it was good weather for 
 that: sleep was in the very atmosphere. The 
 sun burned crimson in a gray-blue sky through 
 a delicate Indian-summer haze, as beautiful as 
 a day-dream in raradise. If one had been given 
 to moralizing one might have found material 
 a-plenty for homilies in the contrast between 
 that peaceful autumn afternoon and the bloody 
 business that it had in hand. If any good 
 chaplain failed to "improve the occasion'" let 
 us hope that he lived to lament in sack-cloth- 
 of-srold and ashes-of-roses his intellectual un- 
 thrift. 
 
 Tie putting of that army into battle shape 
 — its change from columns into lines — could 
 not have occupied more than an hour or two. 
 yet it seemed an eternity. Its leisurely evolu- 
 tions were irritating, but at last it moved 
 forward with atoning rapidity and the fight 
 was on. First, the storm struck Warner's 
 l 1 brigades, which, vanishing in fire and 
 smoke, instantly reappeared as a confused 
 mass of fugitives inextricably intermingled 
 with their pursuers. They had not stayed the 
 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 61 
 
 advance a moment, and as might have been 
 foreseen were now a peril to the main line, 
 which could protect itself only by the slaugh- 
 ter of its friends. To the right and left, how- 
 ever, our guns got into play, and simultane- 
 ously a furious infantry fire broke out along 
 the entire front, the paralyzed center excepted. 
 But nothing could stay those gallant rebels 
 from a hand-to-hand encounter with bayonet 
 and butt, and it was accorded to them with 
 hearty good-will. 
 
 Meantime Wagner's conquerors were pour- 
 ing across the breastwork like water over a 
 dam. The guns that had spared the fugitives 
 had now no time to fire; their infantry sup- 
 ports gave way and for a space of more than 
 two hundred yards in the very center of our 
 line the assailants, mad with exultation, had 
 everything their own way. From the right 
 and the left their gray masses converged into 
 the gap, pushed through, and then, spreading, 
 turned our men out of the works so hardly 
 held against the attack in their front. From 
 our viewpoint on the bluff we could mark the 
 constant widening of the gap, the steady en- 
 croachment of that blazing and smoking mass 
 against its disordered opposition. 
 
 "It is all up with us," said Captain Dawson, 
 of Wood's staff; "I am going to have a quiet 
 smoke." 
 
 I do not doubt that he supposed himself to 
 have borne the heat and burden of the strife. 
 In the midst of his preparations for a smoke 
 he paused and looked again — a new tumult 
 of musketry had broken loose. Colonel Emer- 
 
ICONOCLASTIC ME 
 
 son Opdycke had rushed his reserve brigade 
 into the melee and was bitterly disputing the 
 Confederate advantage. Other fresh regiments 
 joined in the countercharge, commanderless 
 groups of retreating men returned to their 
 work, and there ensued a hand-to-hand contest 
 of incredible fury. Two long, irregular, mu- 
 table and tumultuous blurs of color were con- 
 suming each other's edge along the line of 
 contact. Such devil's work does not last long, 
 and we had the great joy to see it ending, not 
 as it began, but "more nearly to the heart's 
 desire." Slowly the mobile blur moved away 
 from the town, and presently the gray half of it 
 dissolved into its elemental waits, all in slow 
 recession. The retaken guns in the embrasures 
 pushed up towering clouds of white smoke; to 
 easl and to west along the reoccupied parapet 
 ran a line of misty red till the spitfire crest 
 was without a break from flank to flank. Prob- 
 ably there \ Yankee cheering, as 
 doubtless there had been the "rebel yell," but 
 my memory recalls neither. There are many 
 battles in a war, and many incidents in a bat- 
 Tie: one does not recollect everything. Pos- 
 sibly I have not a retentive ear. 
 
 While this lively work had- been doing in 
 the center, there had been no lack of diligence 
 elsewhere, and now all were as busy as bees. 
 I have read of many "successive attacks" — 
 "charge after charge" — but I think the only 
 ■tt* after the first were those of the second 
 Confederate lines and possibly some of the 
 reserves: certainly there were no visihle abate- 
 ment and renewal of effort anywhere except 
 
Oft 'I Hi: CIVIL WAR 1 
 
 where the men who had been pushed out ol 
 the works backward tried to re-enter. And 
 all the time there was fighting. 
 
 After resetting their line the victors could 
 not clear their front, for the baffled assailants 
 would not desist. All over the open country 
 in their rear, clear back to the base of the 
 hills, drifted the wreck of battle, the wounded 
 that were able to walk; and through the re- 
 ceding throng pushed forward, here and there, 
 horsemen with orders and footmen whom we 
 knew to be bearing ammunition. There were 
 no wagons, no caissons: the enemy was not 
 using, and could not use, his artillery. Alon;; 
 the line of fire we could see, dimly in the 
 smoke, mounted officers, singly and in small 
 groups, attempting to force their horses across 
 the slight parapet, but all went down. Of this 
 devoted band was the gallant General Adams, 
 whose body was found upon the slope, and 
 whose animal's forefeet were actually inside 
 the crest. General Cleburne lay a few paces 
 farther out, and five or six other general offi- 
 cers sprawled elsewhere. It was a great day 
 for Confederates in the line of promotion. 
 
 For many minutes at a time broad spaces 
 of battle were veiled in smoke. Of what might 
 be occurring there conjecture gave a terrifying 
 report. In a visible peril observation is a 
 kind of defense; against the unseen we lift a 
 trembling hand. Always from these regions of 
 obscurity we expected the worst, but always 
 the lifted cloud revealed an unaltered situation. 
 
 The assailants began to give way. There 
 was no general retreat; at many points the 
 
64 MEMGiil£j Ur' 1H^ WAR 
 
 fight continued, with lessening ferocity and 
 lengthening range, well into the night. It be- 
 came an affair of twinkling musketry and 
 broad flares of artillery; then it sank to silence 
 in the dark. 
 
 Under orders to continue his retreat, Scho- 
 fieid could now do so unmolested: Hood had 
 suffered so terrible a loss in life and morale 
 that he was in no condition for effective pur- 
 suit. As at Spring Hill, daybreak found us 
 on the road with all our impedimenta except 
 some of our wounded, and that night we en- 
 camped under the protecting guns of Thomas, 
 at Nashville. Our gallant enemy audaciously 
 followed, and fortified himself within rifle- 
 reach, where he remained for two weeks with- 
 out firing a gun and was then destroyed.