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MISSION RIDGE

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN

PICTURES OF LIFE *

IN CAMP AND FIELD.

BEN J. F. TAYLOR.

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON & COMPANY.
CHICAGO : S. C. GRIGGS & CO.
1872.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
EENJ. F. TAYLOR,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington,

Cc\y. if-io

Warren, Johnson & Co.
Stereotypers., Printers and Binders^
Buffalo, N. Y.

TO
THIS LITTLE PACKAGE OF LETTERS
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

ON THE THRESHOLD.

A FEW fragments ol old letters compose this volume.
They are not in disguise. They wear the every-day
apparel of first expression just as it was fashioned at
the Front. They are to a chapter or two of History
only what the work of the wood-engraver is to the
printed page — just a few pictures to brighten the well-
considered utterances of the historic Muse.
Written eight years ago to the Chicago Evening
Journal, thousands who lent them life or gave them
heed have passed away. But the deeds have not per
ished ; the story remains ; the pictures are undimmed.
Illustrating American manhood, those deed^ are the
heritage of all the people.
One bright day in May, a year ago, the author stood
in Rose Hill Cemetery, Chicago, between the quick and
the dead. Pausing on the threshold of this little
book he is standing between the living and the dead

VI ON THE THRESHOLD.
once more, and he thinks 'the same thought ana says
the same words :
We have come into court, this court of the Lord,
To bear witness for them that can utter no word.
Bare-hearted and browed in this presence we stand.
For the gift Pentecostal comes down on the land ;
To speak' for the speechless how witnesses throng.
And the earth is all voice, and the air is all song !
There's a fleet of white ships blown abroad on the deep,
And their courses forever they peacefully keep,
And they toss us a roar and it melts into words.
And they strike to the heart like the sweeping of swords :
" Would ye honor the men you must look in their graves.
Who did score danger out with their wakes from the waves."
There are soft, fleecy clouds fast asleep in the sun,
Like a flock of white sheep when the washing is done,
Not a breath of a battle is staining the blue,
It is nothing but Paradise all the way through !
There are domes of white blossoms where swelled the white tent,
There are plows in the field where the war wagons went.
There are songs where they lifted up Rachel's lament.
Would you know what this mighty beatitude cost.
You must search in the graves for what Liberty lost !
Ye that trod the acanthus and trampled it down,
And it turned at the touch a Corinthian crown !
Disenthralled from your graves you have left them alone.
We will borrow them now for these dead of our own !
Let us bury all bitterness, passion and pride,
Lay the rankling old wrong to its rest by their side,
Keeping step to the manhood that marches the zone,
And believe the good God wiU take care of His own I

IN CAMP AND FIELD.

FROM ONE WORLD TO ANOTHER.
It happened to me to follow, for a time, the fortunes
of the Army of the Cumberland ; not to grasp a mus
ket, but to wield a meaner implement and trifle with a
pen. And yet you must believe that some stray nerve
of mine felt down its way at last, to that pencil's
point, and almost before I knew it, I was writing my
heart out in admiration and love for the fortitude and
valor of those Federal journeymen of ours, splendid in
doing, and grand in suffering.
To pass in forty hours from fields where a thistle is a
sin to regions where bayonets sprout as dense as the
springing corn in June, is like being born into a new
world. If the reader will visit one of the noble
Chicago Elevators — those immense houses for a mighty
hand to move in, that tosses about the grain as lightly
as the farmer sows the seed ; if he will watch the
golden produce of a broad State received as easily as

8 PICTURES OF LIFE
Noah, first Admiral of " the red, white and blue," took
in the returning bird ; if he will follow that grain to the
snowy loaves and the laden tables of half a continent ;
to the tons of white tiles of hard-bread in a thousand
Federal camps ; if he will think what a benignant hand
of Providence that Elevator is, and then, if, after all
this, he will fancy an establishment away at the other
extreme of the arc of human invention, as totally
unlike in its office and results as two things can be, and
exist on the same planet, he will have precisely the
place I first blundered into — the Ordnance Depot of
the Army of the Cumberland. If you are given to
glowing words, be dumb ; if there be any fire in your
eye, be pleased to shut it while here, among kegs and
barrels of the fine black grain that sows fields with
death ; among boxes of cartridges without end ; among
rows of canister; among nests of shells, out of which
shall be hatched a terrible brood ; among cases of
every species of irritable combustible known in war;
among clusters of the grape that presses the wine of life
out ; in the midst of death in every form that flies.
Sentinels stand aside, doors unbolted and unbarred
swing open, a gush of cool air meets you, the shutters
are thrown open, and the treasures of the magazine are
revealed. Wooden boxes of four colors, boxes, boxes,
everywhere — olive, red, black and white. Be seated

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 9
upon that olive box ; it contains nothing but solid shot,
or, perhaps, percussion shell. In the red, you will be
sure to find spherical case-shot ; in the white boxes, can
ister; and in the black, that diabolical chronometer,
time-shell. Take your choice of a seat and be happy.
Look through a glass magnifying about sixty times at
an old-fashioned clock-weight, and you will see pretty
nearly such a thing as stands there at your right, and
which happens to be a hundred-pound " Parrott " shell.
A dull affair to look at, but give it a ration of nine
pounds of powder and a good range, and it will
" make " four miles in twelve seconds at a cost of ten
dollars, and possibly something else that it would
puzzle you to enter in a cash-book.
Those little round coops, about the size of a lantern,
with wooden top and bottom and two wire rings
between, contain, as you see, a cluster of nine such
grapes as vine-dresser never cultivated. They together
weigh eighteen pounds, and by that handle you can
swing them about like a dinner-pail. Give a twenty-
four-pound gun six pounds of powder and one coop,
and that cluster will make, nine terrible and deadly lines
of flight. We are not well out of the fruit business,
for there are thousands of long tin cans, looking home
like and harmless enough to hold the best berry God
ever made^ that you put up for next Christmas. They

10 PICTURES OF LIFE
are twenty-five pound canisters, filled with shrapnel,
five dozen musket-balls, and packed in, like " Isabellas,"
with saw-dust, as if they were something to "keep."
Driven from a thirty-two with eight pounds of powder,
your fruit-can goes to pieces, and the bullets scatter as
from a tremendous, wide-mouthed musket.
And here we are pleasantly walking where sleeps an
earthquake ; making each other hear where slumbers a
voice that could shake these everlasting hills. Ah,
what a flash of lightning or a glowing coal could do for
all this ! That is not a potash-kettle you have sat
down upon — it's a shell !
There are " Parrotts " with their long, black shafts,
"reinforced" at the breech, like a trooper's trowsers.
There are bright " Napoleons " brisk and spiteful,
twelves, twenty-fours, thirty-twos, and so on and so up.
Here is a sturdy fellow that growled at Stone River ;
there, a grim one that roared at Shiloh ; yonder, a
" Columbiad " made at Memphis. Do you see those
pairs of immense wheels? They are not mill-wheels,
but only the carriages of siege-guns. If it blows at all
in this roomy kennel, it must literally " blow great
guns." Those rows of carts with the black boxes and
the convex covers are not young bakers' wagons gone
into mourning, as you might think, but only battery
forges, the blacksmith's shops of Mars' own fiery self.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. n
And so we have seen thunder " in the original
package."
GOING TO THE FRONT.
You pass through Kentucky, " the dark and bloody
ground," into Tennessee, a beautiful fertile land gone
to seed. The villages lie asleep, like lazy dogs, in the
sun ; stores are closed, shops deserted ; through a land
dotted with the inkiest imaginable heads, as if some
psalm-tune had tumbled out of the score and sprinkled
the landscape with Ethiopian rain.
The print of War's fingers is before you. Now you
see a gate left standing, by some strange freak, between
its two posts — a gate without a fence. And there it
swings open upon a path leading to Nowhere ! Not a
house, not a threshold, only a heap of stone and a
blackened tree to tell the story. Now you see the
skeleton of a house, if I may call it so ; the building
stripped of all covering, gaunt and ghastly there in its
bones. Now a brick mansion catches the eye ; its
doors, weary of turning, stand wide open ; its garden
shivers with weeds ; the negro quarters empty, the
fields ragged and fenceless as the air, and not a living
soul ! It may not seem so to you, but I have never felt
so heavy a sense of loneliness as when I have seen

12 PICTURES OF LIFE
broad forests of tall corn, the blackened stalks two
years old, springing out of earth fairly turfed over and
matted, the rusted plow careened in one corner, a
wreck on a lee shore ; ears of withered corn yet cling
ing to the russet stems ; visions of " hoe-cake " far off
and dim ; the masters away in the rebel ranks ; the
"people" strown to the four winds.
As you near the region of the Cumberlands the
scenery begins to grow grand ; the great, wavy lines of
the mountains sweep up bravely toward heaven, and
sink down into great troughs of green, but the train
makes steadily for the strong horizon ; between ledges
of God's masonry ; through grooves hewn in the rocks,
winding this way and that, run the cars. The woods
begin to stand up, here and there, like people in a
great congregation, as if the spurs of the Cumberland
were thrust into the flanks of creation, and it was rous
ing up to get out of the way of the rowels. An engine
comes behind to give us a lift up a prodigious grade of
two hundred and fifty feet to the mile. We are going
through the mountain. A tunnel, half a mile in length,
yawns to swallow us with a throat black as a wolf's
mouth. Above it towers the wooded crown, hundreds
of feet ; close at our right the world seems to make a
mis-step and tumble into a deep ravine. A railroad
diverges from our tr^ck before we reach the tunnel, and

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 13
runs zigzag over the mountain to a coal-mine, scarring
its side with a great letter Z. Up tugs the train to an
entrance over which might well be traced, " Those who
enter here leave hope behind ! " We turn our backs
upon a shining sun ; it is twilight, night, a darkness
that can be felt ; it is like putting your eyes out.
There is a lull in the steady talk, no laugh comes from
the gloom, and so we blunder and thunder through the
mountain, and go over the other side, down the camel's
back, along a track curved like a sickle, "by the run."
The railroad route from Bridgeport to Chattanooga
is one of the wildest and most picturesque on the con
tinent. You make straight at the solid mountain, but
creep through a cleft and keep on ; you swing around a
curve and hang over a gorge, but you play " the devil
on two sticks" and pass it ; you run like a mouse along
a narrow shelf high up the rocky wall, the bewildered
Tennessee far beneath, winding this way and that to
escape from the enchanted mountains. It flashes out
upon you here, curved like a cimeter; it ties the hills
up there with love-knots of broad ribbon. The sky
line rises and falls around you like a heavy sea; black
heaps of coal high up the mountains, look like blots
on this roughest of pages in Nature's "writing-book."
• The dark cedars counterfeit deep shadows. You go
through a stone gateway of the Lord's building, and a

14 PICTURES OF LIFE
deep valley is under your feet. You look far across to
the other side. Will the train run straight out into
mid-air? Will it take wings and fly? It is gliding
cautiously out upon the bridge at Falling Water ; the
boys in blue far down, look like drops of indigo ; you
are safe over, and you thank God and take courage.
You pass the ruins of hostile camps ; the huts are gone,
but the swallow's-nest fire-places remain, and the hill
sides seem strown with old, rusty honey-comb.
And all along the rugged way, at every station,
bridge, ravine, are rifle-pits and earthworks, the rude
signature rebellion has compelled ; grim War's, his f
mark ; and all along, those journeymen of ours grouped
to see the train go by ; the train, their one, long, slen
der link with the dear old homes .of the North. The
black throats of cannon gape at you over the tops of
their kennels, in unexpected places. The tunes the
drummer beats, all shattered on the crags around, come
tumbling back upon the player's head.
So, through these grand and everlasting halls we
made our way, and when the Morning walked to and
fro upon the top of night, and stepped from height to
height, and pines took fire and cliffs of gray were glori
fied, it seemed a mighty minster, and I did not wonder
God gave the law from Sinai ; that the beatitudes were
shed, like Hermon's dew, from a mountain

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 15
Sometimes the valleys widened into fields ; garden
plats beneath us looked like the squares of a checker
board, and clusters of poor little dwellings, each lazily
smoking a big chimney, seemed having their morning
gossip together; now and then, a house was perched
high up the mountain, and buzzards, graceful nowhere
except in the air, were librating, rocking on their broad
wings far below it. A glorious region for painter and
poet, whatever plowman may make of it. At last,
threading a needle's eye of a tunnel we begin to get
into broader ground and the Tennessee bears us com
pany. We wind around the angle of the mountain
wall of Lookout; camps glittering on the hills every
where in the morning sun, tumuli of red earth, with
sentinels pacing to and fro, regiments checkering the
low grounds, engines backing and filling, great store
houses showing new in their fresh-planed wood, forts
dumb but not dead, the whole landscape alive with
crowds and caravans. And there in the middle of it
all, like a rusty hatchet buried in the live oak that grew
around it, lies CHATTANOOGA with its ceaseless eddies
of armed life, swords and muskets forever drifting and
shifting about in them ; good words and bad stirred in
.together, as if the crowd had been sowed with German,
French, English and Ethiopian lexicons, and was just
being harvested ; "hard tack" and hard talk struggling

l6 PICTURES OF LIFE
in and out together at the same mouths, and hurry
treading on the heels of haste. Upon the sidewalks is
a ceaseless play of blue legs with an unending proces
sion of blue coats ; humanity seems done in indigo,
dotted with sutlers, clerks out of livery, correspondents
and faded-out natives. And on all this multitude you
may look all day, and not see one woman of the noble
race that put men upon their honor and make the
world braver and purer. To be sure, there is Aunt
Chloe in turban all afire, like a very sooty chimney red-
hot at the top ; and there is Dinah " larding the lean
earth" and looking as if Goodyear might have a
patent for her among his rubber goods ; and there too
is a colorless native from the rural districts, whom I
saw an hour ago, dressed in white, un-crinolined, un-
flounced, unwashed, as limp as a wet napkin. She
stood by the post-office door apparently spitting at a
mark — tobacco juice at that— and she delivered her fire
with great accuracy.
But it was not that stronghold among the mountains
that I went to see. It was to find the neighbor I had
missed out of the summer-fallow, where I had seen him
plodding year after year, without knowing him at all ;
who had been walking through the world in disguise all
his days ; whose heart had grown large with the grand
est of all loves, that sweeps like a great horizon around
all meaner passion ; had turned into a hero in the

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 17
twinkling of an eye, as the dead shall be raised ; had
put on the martyr's thorny crown with a smile, or had
gone up, like the Prophet in a chariot of fire. It was
to see the old deeds packed away in history step out
from the silent lines of the printed page, and stand
unsandaled on the ground, to make room for the new,
that have illustrated the year just dead — tangible, ear
nest, solemn, glorious.
THREE NOVEMBER DAYS.
The smiting of the enemy's crescent front at Mission
Ridge on the twenty-third of November, 1863, the cap
ture of Lookout Mountain' on the twenty-fourth, and
the storming of Mission Ridge on the twenty-fifth,
were really the three acts of one splendid Drama. The
letters describing them are placed upon these pages,
perhaps unwisely, just as they were written — dim and
imperfect pictures taken by the flash of great guns.
The play was grand, but what could be grander than
THE THEATRE.
SUNDAY — TWENTY-SECOND.
Sunday by the calendar — Sunday by the sweet Sab
bath bells of the peaceful North, but what shall I
name it here ? Men are busy wrenching up and carry-

l8 PICTURES OF LIFE
ing away seats in a church near by, and leaving a clear
area for a hospital ; pallets for pews, the dead for the
word of mercy. And why not ? The worshipers that
gathered there are scattered and gone. You may ask
for the leaves of autumn as well. The old psalm has
died out along the walls, and fancy halts at the thought
of what may be heard in its stead.
Yesterday was gloomy with clouds and rain. To-day
dawned out of Paradise. Would you have the pic
ture ? Stand with me as I stood this morning, near
Major-General Granger's Headquarters, here in the
heart of Chattanooga. As the sun comes up, the mists
lift grandly, trail along the tops of the mountains, and
are folded up in heaven. The horizon all around rises
and' falls like the waves of the sea. Stretching along
the east and trending slightly away to the southwest,
you see an undulating ridge edged with a thin fringe of
trees. Along the sides, which have been shorn of their
woods for the play of the battle-hammers, if you look
closely, you shall see camps sprinkled like flocks away
on till the ridge melts out of sight ; you shall see guns
and men in gray. That is Mission Ridge, and you are
looking upon what your heart does not warm to. You
are in the presence of the enemy.
Now, turning to the right, you look south upon the
lowlands, and the farther edge of the picture is dotted

IN CAMP AND FIELD.

19

with more tents and more men in gray. Away in the
distance, a cone rises ambitiously, not far enough off to
be blue, but you forget it in an instant as the eye
climbs bravely up a wooded line, higher and higher, to
a craggy crown, wrinkled with ravines, and crested with
trees, that, hanging like a great frown between earth
and heaven, then dropping abruptly away, as you turn
southwestward, subsides into a valley through which
the wandering Tennessee creeps into this Federal
stronghold. Midway of the gigantic side, shorn of its
oaks, like the Ridge, you see a house, a checker of
white upon the brown swell of earth and stones.
Lookout Mountain is before you, grim and grand. The
glorious glimpses of five States granted to them who
stand upon the mighty threshold between this world
and that, are denied to us just now, and we must bide
our time. You can look upon Tennessee, Georgia, Ala
bama ; you can see the. dim looming of the Blue
Ridge and Bald Peak, and the smoky ranges of the
" old North State," the shadow of whose King's Moun
tain is sacred for all time, since thence came that first
whisper for independence which, at last, broke out
aloud around the British throne. The morning has
worn away to eight o'clock, when from the very tip of
the crest rolls a little gray cloud, as if unseen hands
were about to wind the rugged brow with a turban.

20 PICTURES OF LIFE
In an instant, a heavy growl and the rebel gun has said
" good morning " to Hooker's camps in the Valley
beyond. You cannot get out of sight of Lookout.
Go where you will within all this horizon, yet, turning
southward, there frowns the mountain. It rises like an
everlasting thunder-storm that will never pass over.
Satan might have offered the kingdoms of the world
from that summit. Seen dimly through the mist, it
looms up with its two thousand feet and recedes, but
when the sun shines strongly out it draws so near as to
startle you, and you feel as if you were beneath the
eaves of a roof whence drips an iron rain. And yet,
from the spot where we stand, it is three miles to its
summit, three miles to Mission Ridge, and three miles
to Moccasin Point.
But your eyes are not weary, and so they follow
down the faltering line of Lookout, dip into the gate
way of the Tennessee, and rise again to a red ridge,
that seems to you, where you stand, like a vast tumulus
big with the dead of an elder time. From it, even
while you look, comes the Federal " good morning "
back again. You hear the gun as it utters the shell,
and then, traveling after it, the crash of the iron egg as
it hatches on Lookout. That red ridge is Moccasin
Point, whose sharp talk is a proverb. Glancing north-
• ward up the western horizon, is Raccoon Range, and

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 21
upon a peak of it, just opposite and west of us, is a
Federal signal-station. Then away to the northwest
and across the north, the mountain-edges trace the
line of beauty, curving and blending until the graceful
profile of the horizon is complete. But within this
sweep of grandeur lies a thing whose name shall endure
when yours and mine have been effaced by Time, like a
writing upon a slate by a wet finger — CHATTANOOGA.
Once a town with one main business street to give it a
little commercial pulsation ; residences, some of them
beautiful, a few of them stately, sprinkled all around
upon the acclivities, interspersed with more structures
built up in the true Southern architecture, holes in the
middle, or balconies, or the chimneys turned out of
doors. A stinted, rusty-looking market-house subdued
beneath a chuckle-headed belfry, four or five churches
of indifferent fashion, two or three hotels whose enter
tainment has departed with the Boniface, and strag
gling tenements " of low degree " are pretty nearly all
that remain. As you pass along the central street, the
dingy signs of old dead business catch the eye. Where
"A. Baker, attorney-at-law," once uttered oracles and
tobacco-juice, Federal stores have taken Blackstone's
place ; where ribbons ran smoothly over the salesman's
fingers, boxes of hard-tack are piled, like Ossa and
Pelion come again. Fences have gone lightly up in

22 PICTURES OF LIFE
camp-fires ; tents are pitched like mushrooms in the
flower-beds, trees have turned to ashes, shrubbery is
trampled under foot, gardens are nothing better than
mule-pens, shot and shell have left a token here and
there, and, across the whole. War has scrawled his auto
graph. But never think you have seen the town at one
glance ; it is down here and up there and over yonder ;
the little hills swell beneath it like billows ; you will
gain the idea if I say it is a town gone to pieces in a
heavy sea.
But a new architecture has sprung up ; — slopes, val
leys, hills, as far as you can see, are covered with
Federal camps. Smoky cones, grander wall-tents, nar
row streets of little stone and board kennels, chinked
with mud like beavers' houses, snugly tucked into the
hill-sides, and equipped with bits of fire-places that
sometimes aspire to the dignity of marble, are every
where. It is nothing but camps, and then more
camps. I wrote about "dead business," but I was too
fast. It is all business, but conducted by the new firm
of "U. S." The anvils ring, the stores are filled,
wagons in endless lines and hurrying crowds throng all
the streets, but the workman and the clerk is each a
boy in blue. Chattanooga is as populous as an ant-hill.
And there is more of the new architecture: breast
works, rifle-pits, forts, defenses of every name, crown

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 23
the slopes. Here, at your left elbow, is Fort Wood
that can talk to Mission Ridge ; and there are Negley
and Palmer, and so on around the horizon. And then,
as if they had been poured out of the town like water,
spreading away to left and right and south, as you
stand facing Lookout, are Federal camps, drifting on
almost to the base of the Mountain, and lying bravely
beneath its grim shadow. The more you look, the
more you wonder how it can all be. It overturns your
notions of hostile armies, this neighborly nearness.
You see two thin picket-lines running parallel and a
few rods apart — not so far as you can jerk a peach-
stone. They pass lovingly together from your left,
down Mission Ridge, curve to the right along the low
lands and past the foot of the great mountain. They
are the line of blue and the line of gray.
And just there, in those lowlands, but sloping up the
side of Lookout, lies the mass of the enemy; then
curving away to the east and north it lines Mission
Ridge, thus presenting a crescent front five miles in
length, and throughout all we are snug up to them,
breast to breast. What effect do you think it would
have upon that hostile phase, to strike it near its north
ern horn and turn it back on Mission Ridge away from
its railroad communications, and strike it where it is
wedged into the foot of Lookout, thus doubling it
back upon itself ?

24 PICTURES OF LIFE
Signal-lights are features in celestial scenery that,
like the jewels in the Southern Cross, never appear
in your peaceful Northern skies. Now, had the reader
who has stood beside me .all the morning, been out
with me upon the hills last night, he would have seen,
just over the edge of the highest lift of Raccoon
Range, a crazy planet, bigger than Venus at the full,
waltzing after a mad fashion about another soberer
light. But had he watched it for a while, he would
have discovered there was "method in that madness"
after all. The antic light describes a quadrant, makes
a semi-circle, stops, rises, falls, sweeps right, sweeps left,
rounds out an orbit, strikes off at a tangent. The
Lieutenant of the Signal Corps is talking to somebody
behind Lookout. Turning towards Mission Ridge, you
would have seen lights of evil omen, for the hostile
signals were working too ; blazing, disappearing, show
ing here and there and yonder ; now on the Mountain,
now all along the Ridge, like wills-of-the-wisp. To
day the army telegraph gesticulates like Roscius, but it
is flags and not lights that have gone crazy, and so the
talk goes on around the sky.
At ten o'clock this morning, you were standing in
front of Colonel Sherman's headquarters, and as you
looked eastward you saw, without a glass, a column of
the enemy moving slowly up the Ridge and a wagon-

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 2$
train creeping on after it. You took a glass and held
the fellows as if by the button-hole. Just then a roar
from Fort Wood, close above you, and a long, rushing,
shivering cry quivers through the air ; the shell crosses
the intervals, strikes the Ridge at the heels of the lazy
column, and its rate of motion is wonderfully acceler
ated. No steed was ever more obedient to the touch
of the rowels. Again the "Rodman" speaks, and down
comes the carriage of an angry gun for kindling-wood.
It can toss its compliments as lightly over to Mission
Ridge as you can toss an apple over the orchard fence.
The shriek of a shell, if you have no musketry to soften
it, is terrible, unearthly, the wail of a lost spirit. A
solid shot has a soberer way with it, is attended by but
one syllable of loud talk, plunges like a big beetle into
the earth, and there's an end of it ; while a shell, that
does its duty, has thunder and a cloud at dotk ends of
its line of flight. There goes Fort Wood again. Listen
a few beats of the pulse, and yonder, well up the side of
the Ridge, lies a fleece of smoke that was not there an
instant ago, and here — domd — comes the sound of the
burning missile. A shell is a dissyllable.
And how about the rebel shells from Lookout, that
drop now and then into town? Well, not much — at
least not yet. Five minutes ago the gun flung a shell
over the mountain's left shoulder, and growled at its

26 PICTURES OF LIFE
brisk neighbor below, on Moccasin Point, or at our
camps on its other side. It has, indeed, thrown shell
beyond these Headquarters and struck a house, but
they are plunging shots and the casualties have been
few, unless a fragment, an ounce or so too heavy for
your hat, may hit you on the head. They have gener
ally exploded mid-air, and are regarded with perfect
indifference by the boys. If one of them is laughing
he finishes out the frolic ; if he is a vicious Yankee,
and whittling, he never looks up ; if he is singing a
stave of "Rally round the flag, boys," he does not
intermit a syllable but keeps right on. The unaffected
indifference to this description of heavy rain would, I
think,, set you wondering. If Braxton Bragg, our neigh
bor over the way, is doing his best, and showing us all
his teeth on Lookout, he needs a repetition of what old
"Rough and Ready" might have said to his namesake,
if not to him, a long time ago: "A little more grape.
Captain Bragg ! " But he has a fashion of sending a
flag occasionally, with the injunction to remove non-
combatants from the city, as he is going to shell. He
sent such word again, a night or two ago, and word is
pretty much all.
We get direct news from " Dixie " daily. A Lieuten
ant and a couple of Sergeants came into our lines last
night. The first-named, an intelligent young man,

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 27
stated that the army was making a grand move, though
he did not know its. meaning, wherein he told us only
what we knew before, by the sight of the eyes. An
other officer, belonging to a regiment in the front, came
across the neutral ground, the other day, and while
standing with our picket until he could be brought in,
actually heard them calling the roll of his company,
and when his name was reached, cried out, " here ! "

THE SMITING OF THE SHIELD.
MONDAY — TWENTY-THIRD.
The battle has been given and won ; the dear old
flag streams like a meteor from the craggy crown of
Lookout Mountain ; Mission Ridge has been swept
with fire and steel as with a broom ; the grim crescent
of the enemy, curving away along the range, from the
far northeast, south to the base of Lookout, has been
bent back upon itself and crushed like a buzzard's egg ;
the terrible arc of iron, five miles long, that bent like a
quadrant around half of our horizon, is broken and
scattered ; the key has at last been turned in the Chat
tanooga lock ; the enemy must fly from East Tennes
see, like shadows before the morning; the Nashville
and Chattanooga Railroad is once more true to its
name ; the Tennessee River is all clear to its landing ;

28 PICTURES OF LIFE
our communications are perfected and confirmed, and
to the Federal army Chattanooga is no longer the end,
but the beginning of things ; the step put forward is
not to be withdrawn ; our eyes may now be lifted and
look beyond Chattanooga. Thanks be to GOD and the
Boys in Blue !
I sit down utterly unequal to a task in which pride
and grief are strangely blended ; and yet, in an instant,
a half-cheer, exultant, triumphant, comes to my lip,
and to-night, under this cloudless sky, the way swept
clean to Heaven for our boys going there, I turn to the
painted emblem that blossomed so strangely upon
Lookout at break of day, a thousand times more dear
for their dear sake who died, and say: Oh, Flag,
that would make us bankrupt but that thy folds are
priceless !
Last Friday morning, at daylight, the battle was to
begin. Sherman's splendid columns, moving on from
Bridgeport through Shell Mound and Whiteside among
the hills to Brown's Ferry, crossing in the night ; then
on the north side of the Tennessee to the. mouth, of
Cilico Creek, and there, bridging the river, and having
taken position upon our extreme left, five miles to the
northeast, were to attain Mission Ridge and roll the
enemy before them. At the same moment. Hooker,
whose camps lay along the western side of the moun-

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 29
tain, at our extreme right, was to make a demonstration
upon Lookout, with a portion of the Twelfth Army
Corps and a Division of the Fourth ; Granger was to
swing round toward Rossville, with the Fourteenth
Corps at his right ; and Johnson, commanding Rous
seau's old Division of the Fourteenth Corps, and How
ard's command of the Eleventh, were to hold the town
and act as reserves. Thus, our completed line, reading,
English fashion, from left to right, by corps, would be
Genearals Sherman, Howard, Granger, Palmer, Hooker.
But a heavy rain setting in, the terrible roads were
rendered almost impassable, and Sherman, with his
ponderous trains of artillery, struggled on ; but Friday,
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, came and went, and
his journey was undone. General Grant, with his ster
ling sense, had ordered a body of cavalry to remove
every resident, whether friend or foe — General Grant
very wisely taking nothing for granted — from Sherman's
route, that no tidings of his precise destination might
reach the enemy. But the delay, at once so unavoida
ble and lamented, marred a plan that was masterly,
being nothing less than to strike at the same hour the
two horns of the lurid crescent and double it back upon
itself. It was, indeed, a gigantic piece of mechanism,
but the rain came, rusted, if I may say so, the wheels
on their axles, and the mechanism was motionless.

30 PICTURES OF LIFE
What a strange problem is a battle, dependent, some
times, upon a breath of wind or a drop of water !
Meanwhile it was apparent that the enemy appre
hended coming danger, for on Sunday morning two
divisions moved northward along Mission Ridge and
took position on his extreme right. All that beautiful
Sunday, the rebel lines were restless ; trains were mov
ing, brigades passing and repassing, like the»sliding pic
tures in a camera obscura ; there was " a fearful looking
for ' of coming judgment. All that beautiful Sunday
there was anxious expectation in Chattanooga; field-
glasses were everywhere sweeping the mountains; I
walked through the camps and the boys were a shade
less merry than is their wont ; the hush of the coming
storm was in the air. And so the Sabbath wore away.
Then Federal signals flashed from bill to hill along the
west, like " the writing on the wall," and through the
dusk Howard's columns moved like deeper shadows
across the town. All night long I heard the tramp of
the men and the hollow rumbling of artillery, and as
the moon came up, the sentinels looked down upon it
all, like sentries from a tower. Deserters, both offlcers
and men, came into our picket lines that night; the
enemy was astir ; rations had been issued ; baggage
sent to the rear ; they were making ready for business.
Monday, cloudy and dull, dragged through its morning.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 31
Let me show you a landscape that shall not fade
out from " the lidless eye of time "long after we are all
dead. A half-mile from the eastern border of Chatta
nooga is a long swell of land sparsely sprinkled with
houses, flecked thickly with tents, and checkered with
two or three grave-yards. On its summit stand the red
earthworks of Fort Wood, with its great guns frowning
from the angles. Mounting the parapet and facing
eastward you have a singular panorama. Away to
your left is a shining elbow of the Tennessee, a lowland
of woods, a long-drawn valley, glimpses of houses. At
your right you have wooded undulations with clear
intervals extending down and around to the valley at
the eastern base of Lookout. From the Fort the
smooth ground descends rapidly to a little plain, a sort
of trough in the sea, then a fringe of oak woods, then
an acclivity, sinking down to a second fringe of woods,
until full in front of you and three-fourths of a mile
distant, rises Orchard Knob, a conical mound, perhaps
an hundred feet high, once wooded, but now bald.
Then ledges of rocks and narrow breadths of timber,
and rolling sweeps of open ground, for two miles more,
until the whole rough and stormy landscape seems to
dash against Mission Ridge, three miles distant, that
lifts like a sea-wall eight hundred feet high, wooded,
rocky, precipitous, wrinkled with ravines. This is, in

32 PICTURES OF LIFE
truth, the grand feature of the scene, for it extends
north as far as you can see, with fields here and there
cut down through the woods to the ground, and lying
on the hillsides like brown linen to bleach ; and you
feel, as you look at them, as if they are in danger of
slipping down the Ridge into the road at its base.
And then it curves to the southwest, just leaving you
a way out between it and Lookout Mountain. Alto
gether the rough, furrowed landscape looks as if the
Titans had plowed and forgotten to harrow it. The
thinly fringed summit of the Ridge varies in width
froin twenty to fifty feet, and houses looking like cigar-
boxes are dotted along it. On the top of that wall are
rebels and batteries ; below the first pitch, three hun
dred feet down, are more rebels and batteries, and still
below are their camps and rifle-pits, sweeping five miles.
At your right, and in the rear, is Fort Negley, the old
"Star" Fort of Confederate regime; its next neighbor
is Fort King, under the frown of Lookout ; yet to the
right is the battery of Moccasin Point. Finish out the
picture on either hand with Federal earthworks and
saucy angles, fancy the embankment of the Charleston
and Memphis Railroad drawn diagonally, like an awk
ward score, across the plain far at your feet, and I think
you have the tremendous Theatre, and now what next,
if not, in Hamlet's words, " the plays the thing ! "

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 33
The Federal forces lay along the ridgy slope to the
right and left of Fort Wood ; the enemy's advance
held Orchard Knob in force, and their breastworks and
rifle-pits seamed the landscape. At half-past twelve
o'clock, Major-General Granger received an order to
make a reconnoissance in force towards the base of
Mission Ridge, and feel the enemy, supposed to be
massing in our immediate front and on Lookout Moun
tain. It was a strange scene. There was to be no
more use for the two lines of pickets that for so many
days and nights had stood in friendly neighborhood,
exchanged the jest and the daily news, and sat at each
other's fires. Ours were to be recalled ; theirs were to
be thrust back, and the thin veneering of battle's
double front rudely torn away. At half-past twelve
the order came ; at one, two divisions of the Fourth
Corps made ready to move ; at ten minutes before two,
twenty-five thousand Federal troops were in line of
battle. The line of skirmishers moved lightly out, and
swept .true as a sword-blade into the edge of the field.
You should have seen that splendid line, two miles
long, as straight and unwavering as a ray of light. On
they went, driving in the pickets before them ; shots of
musketry, like the first great drops of summer rain
upon a roof, pattered along the line. One fell here,
another there, but still like joyous heralds before a
3

34 PICTURES OF LIFE
royal progress, the skirmishers passed on. From wood
and rifle-pit, from rocky ledge and mountain-top, sixty-
five thousand rebels watched these couriers bearing the
gift of battle in their hands. The bugle sounded from
Fort Wood, and the divisions of Wood and Sheridan
began to move ; the latter, out from the right, threat
ened a heavy attack ; the former, forth from the left,
dashed on into the rough road of the battle. Black
rifle-pits were tipped with fire ; sheets of flame flas*hed
out of the woods ; the spatter of musketry deepened
into volleys and rolled like muffled drums ; hostile bat
teries opened from the ledges ; the " Rodmans " joined
in from Fort Wood ; bursting shell and gusts of shrap
nel filled the air ; the echoes roused up and growled
back from the mountains, the rattle was a roar, and yet
those gallant fellows moved steadily on ; down the
slope, through the wood, up the hills, straight for
Orchard Knob as the crow flies, moved that glorious
wall of blue.
The air grew dense and blue; the gray clouds of
smoke surged up the sides of the valley. It was a
terrible journey they were making, those men of ours ;
and three-fourths of a mile in sixty minutes was splen
did progress. They neared the Knob ; the enemy's fire
converged ; the arc of batteries poured in upon them
lines of fire, like the rays they call a "glory" about the

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 35
head of Madonna and the Child, but they went up the
rugged altar of Orchard Knob at the double-quick with
a cheer ; they wrapped, like a cloak, round an Alabama
regiment that defended it, and swept them down on
our side of the mound. Prisoners had begun to come
in before ; they streamed across the field like files of
geese. Then on for a second altar. Brush Knob — nearly
a half-mile to the northeast — and bristling with a bat
tery ; it was swept of foes and garnished with Federal
blue in thirty minutes.
The Third Division of the Fourth. Corps had made
a splendid march ; they had bent our line outward to
the enemy like Apollo's bow, and so Howard at
Wood's right, and Sheridan at his left, swung out to
cut new swaths and leave the edges even, as we went
right through this harvest-field of splendid valor and
heroic death. At four o'clock. Granger's headquarters
were on Orchard Knob, arid the cruel storm beat on.
On the left, fronting the section of the Eleventh Corps
led by General Schurz, was a range of rifle-pits whence
the stubborn enemy were not driven, and the General,
whose quick eye nothing on that broad field escaped,
ordered two brisk twelve-pound Parrotts of Bridges'
Battery, planted upon Orchard Knob, to give them an
enfilading fire where, on his left, the ends of their rifle-
pits showed in the edge of the wood like the mouth of

36 PICTURES OF LIFE
a wolf's burrow. You should have seen that motley
crew climb out as the splendid fire swept through, and
scurry out of sight. It was their ditch, indeed, but
they were not quite ready to die in it. The left of the
Federal line not advancing to occupy the work, its old
tenants crept back one by one, and lay snug as ever.
Thrice did Granger sweep the rifle-pits, and General
Beattie was ordered round with three regiments to
re-enforce the left, and the line came squarely up.
At four o'clock the gallant Hazen, at the head of his
brigade, charged the rifle-pits at the right of Orchard
Knob, up the hill, carried them at the point of the
bayonet, and swooped up three hundred prisoners.
Here Major Buck of the 93d Ohio fell mortally
wounded, and the 93d and i2Ath Ohio lost thirty killed
and one hundrec wounded. While the terrible play
was going on here, there was neither silence nor
inactivity there. Moccasin Point thundered at the
camps in the valley at the south, and Lookout growled
at the Point, Fort King uttered a word on its own
account, and Wood laid its shells about where it
pleased, their little rolls of smoke lying on the Ridge
like fleeces of wool.
If you have glance or thought for anything but the
grand action of the drama, you can see the signals
fluttering like white wings from Fort Wood, from away

IN CAMP AND FIELD'; 37
to the left of the line, from the brow of Orchard Knob,
from the left of Raccoon Range across the town. On
the summit of Mission Ridge, a little to the southeast
of Fort Wood, is a cluster of buildings ; a glass will
bring them so near that you can discern the gray horse
ready saddled at the door. You are looking upon the
headquarters of Braxton Bragg. All these hours, he
has been watching the impetuous surge of Federal
gailantry that swept his smoky legions out of their
rifle-pits, off from their vantage-ground, over the swells,
through the selvedge of woods, into their rifle-pits and
behind their defenses.
Listening with his heart to all the tumult of that
terrible afternoon, no man can tell how three little
figures can truthfully express the Federal loss, but he
must believe and be glad when I tell him that " 420 "
are those figures. The enemy must keep counting on
to seven hundred before his bloody roll is called.
Of the heroic coolness of our army, how can I say
enough? Moving against thirty thousand men, pos
sessing every advantage of position, defenses, numbers
engaged — everything, indeed, but having chosen a day
of battle — all rnen will take up the words of General
Howard, and pass them round the land : " I knew that
Western men would fight well, but I did not know that
they went into battle and stormed strong works like

38 PICTURES OF LIFE
men on dress parade!" And will the Illinois reader
who has faithfully borne me company look over the
regiments that compose that splendid corps — the
Fourth — and see how many of them belong to him.
All through the brigades of Beattie and Willich, Hazen
and Wagner, Harkner and Colonel Sherman, he will find
something from the Prairie State that will make true
over and over the name that has passed from a perished
race of kings, and set, like the seal of the covenant
forever, upon a broad realm, now in these battle years,
to be worn once more by them that dwell therein —
Illini — we are MEN !
The battle ends with the ended day, the command
ing General is in the center of his new front far out in
the field ; the pickets assume their old proximity in a
new neighborhood ; no musket-shot startles the silence,
and behind the fresh breastworks that have carried the
heavy labors of soul and sinew far on into the night,
the Federal forces sleep upon their arms; to dream,
perchance, of fierce assault and sweeping triumph; to
wake, perhaps, to a half-reluctant sense of another
heavy day of struggle and of blood, for the threshold
of approach is only swept, and there before them
waits the enemy.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 39
THE CAPTURE OF LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN.
TUESDAY — TWENTY-FOURTH.
I am looking down upon three boys that lie side by
side on the ground. Three bits of twine bind those
willing feet of theirs, that shall never again move at
"the double-quick" to the charge. They were among
the heroes of Lookout Mountain. They were killed
yesterday. And to-day — let me think what is to-day.
Away there at the North, there were song and sermon ;
and the old family table, that had been drooping in the
corner, spread its wide wings ; and the children came
flocking home "like doves to their windows;" and the
threshold made music to their feet — alas, for the three
pairs beside me ! — and the welcome went round the
bright hearth. It is THANKSGIVING to-day ! Let the
mothers give thanks, if they can, for the far-away feet
that grew beautiful as they hastened to duty and halted
in death. Even while the heart of the loyal land was
lifted in a psalm for the blessings it had numbered,
another was winging its way northward — the tidings of
triumph from the mountains of the Cumberland !
Tuesday broke cold and cheerless ; it was a Scottish
morning, and the air was dim with mist. I crossed the
ground over which our boys had marched so grandly on

40 PICTURES OF LIFE
Monday afternoon, down into the valley of death and
glory, where they had lain all night in line of battle.
Brave hearts ! They were ready and eager for a second
day's journey ; they had put their hands to the burning
plowshare, and there was no thought of looking back.
Beyond them lay the hostile camps, and Mission Ridge
with its three furrows of rifle-pits, and the enemy
swarming like gray ants on the hills. You would have
wondered, as I did, at the formidable line of defense
the boys had thrown up when they came to a halt, and
the terrible music they marched to had died out with
the day. Rocks and logs had been piled in great wind
rows, filled in with earth, and could have withstood a
stout assault. There had been a great dea.1 of sneering
among the Generals who " shoulder the pen and show
how fields are won," about fighting with shovels. The
man fit to command no more forgets the pickaxe than
he forgets the powder. The Fourth Corps is remarka
ble for " making ready " before it takes aim, and among
the Generals I may name Sheridan, as a man who never
marches without the tools and never halts without
intrenching. Semper par atus — always prepared — is the
motto. Such men, it is, among the Federal chiefs, that
give the following little colloquy its point : After the
battle of Chicamauga, General Johnston of Mississippi,
thus accosted Bragg : " Having beaten the enemy.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 41
why didn't you pursue the advantage?" "Well,"
replied Bragg, "my losses were heavy, you see, and
my line was pretty long, and by the time I could get
under motion the - — — Yankees would have been ten
feet under ground ! "
A splendid compliment, look at it in any way you
please, and competent testimony to the wisdom of
numbering pickaxe and shovel among weapons of war.
But reader and writer were out together along the
lines in the gray of the morning. Our wicked little
battery on Orchard Knob had " ceased from troubling ;"
Fort Wood was dumb, and not a voice from the
" Parrott " perches anywhere. Stray ambulances — those
flying hospitals — were making their way back to the
town, and soldiers were digging graves on the hill-sides.
Interrogation points glittered in men's eyes as they
turned an ear to the northeast and listened for Sher
man. By and by a little fleet of soldier-laden pontoon
boats came drifting down the river, and I hastened to
meet them as they landed. The boys in high feather
tumbled out, the inevitable coffee-kettle swinging from
their bayonets. If a Federal soldier should be fellow-
traveler with Bunyan's Pilgrim, I almost believe that
tin kettle of his would be heard tinkling after him to
the very threshold of the "Gate Beautiful." "Well,
boys — what now?" "We've put down the pontoon —

42 PICTURES OF LIFE
taken nineteen rebel pickets without firing a gun — run
the rebel blockade — drawn a shot — nobody hurt — Sher
man's column is half over — bully for Sherman ! " Those
fellows had been thirty hours without rest, and were as
fresh-hearted and dashing as so many thorough-breds.
They had wrought all night long with their lives in
tbeir hands, and not* a trace of hardship or a breath of
complaining. The heavy drudgery of army life, with
out which campaigns could never bear the red blossom
of battle, seldom, I fancy, elicits the thanks of com
manding Generals.
Perhaps it was eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning,
when the rumble of artillery came in gusts from the
valley to the west of Lookout. Climbing Signal Hill,
I could see volumes of smoke rolling to and fro, like
clouds from a boiling caldron. The mad surges of
tumult lashed the hill till they cried aloud, and roared
through the gorges till you might have fancied all the
thunders of a long summer tumbled into that valley
together. And yet the battle was unseen. It was like
hearing voices from the under-world. Meanwhile it
began to rain ; skirts of mist trailed over the woods
and swept down the ravines, but our men trusted in
Providence, kept their powder dry anc^ played on. It
was the second day of the drama ; it was the second act
I was hearing; it was the touch on the enemy's left.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 43
The assault upon Lookout had begun ! Glancing at
the mighty crest crowned with a precipice, and now
hung round about, three hundred feet down, with a
curtain of clouds, my heart misgave me. It could
never be taken.
But let me step aside just here from the simple story
of what I saw, to detail, as concisely as I can. Hooker's
admirable design. His force consisted of two brigades
of the Fourth Corps, under the command of General
Cruft, General Whittaker's and Colonel Grose's — having
in them five Illinois regiments, the 59th, 75th, 84th,
96th, and 115th; the First Division of the Twelfth
Corps under General Geary, and Osterhaus in reserve.
It was a formidable business they had in hand : to
carry a mountain and scale a precipice near two thou
sand feet high, in the teeth of a battery and the face
of two intrenched brigades. Hooker ordered Cruft to
move directly south along the western base of the
mountain, while he would remain in the valley close
under Logkout, and make a grand demonstration with
small-arms and artillery. The enemy, roused out by
all this "sound and fury," were to come forth from
their camps and works, high up the western side of the
mountain, and descend to dispute Hooker's noisy pas
sage ; Cruft, when the roar behind him deepened into
"confusion worse confounded," was to turn upon his

44 PICTURES OF LIFE
¦ heel, move obliquely up the mountain upon the enemy's
camps, in the enemy's rear, wheel round the monster,
and up to the white house I have already described,
and take care of himself while he took Lookout.
Hooker thundered and the enemy came down like
the Assyrian, while Whittaker on the right, and Colonel
Ireland of Geary's command on the left, having moved
out from Wauhatchie, some five miles from the moun
tain, at five in the morning, pushed up to Chattanooga
Creek, threw over it a bridge, made for Lookout Point,
and there formed the right under the shelf of the moun
tain, the left resting on the creek. And then the play
began ; the enemy's camps were seized, his pickets sur
prised and captured, the strong works on the Point
taken,, and the Federal front moved on. Charging
upon him, they leaped over his works as the wicked
twin Roman leaped over his brother's mud-wall, the
40th Ohio capturing his artillery and taking a Missis
sippi regiment, and gained the white house. And there
they stood, , 'twixt heaven and — Chattanooga. But
above them, grand and sullen, lifted the precipice ; and
they were men and not eagles. The way was strown
with natural fortifications, and from behind rocks and
trees they delivered their fire, contesting inch by inch
the upward way. The sound of the battle rose and
fell ; now fiercely renewed, and now dying away. And

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 45
Hooker thundered on in the valley, and the echoes of
his howitzers bounded about the mountains like volleys
of musketry. That curtain of cloud was hung around
the mountain by the GOD of battles — even our GOD.
It was the veil of the temple that could not be rent.
A captured Colonel declared that had the day been
clear, their sharpshooters would have riddled our ad
vance like pigeons, and left the command without a
leader, but friend and foe were wrapped in a seamless
mantle, and two hundred will cover the entire Federal
loss, while our brave mountaineers strewed Lookout
with four hundred dead, and captured a thousand
prisoners. Our entire forces bore themselves bravely; not a
straggler in the command, they all came splendidly up
to the work, and the whole affair was graced with
signal instances of personal valor. Lieutenant Smith,
of the 40th Ohio, leaped over the works, discharged his
revolver six times like the ticking of a clock, seized a
sturdy foe by the hair, and gave him the heel of the
"Colt" over the head. Colonel Ireland was slightly
wounded, and Major Acton, of the 40th Ohio, was shot
through the heart while leading a bayonet charge.
And now returning to my point of observation, I was
waiting in painful suspense to see what should come
out of the roaring caldron in the valley, now and then.

46 PICTURES OF LIFE
I confess, casting an eye up to the big gun of Look
out, lest it might toss something my way, over its left
shoulder, I, a non-combatant and bearing no arms but
a Faber's pencil, " Number 2," when something was born
out of the mist — I cannot better convey the idea —
and appeared on the shorn side of the mountain, below
and to the west of the white house. It was the head
of the Federal column ! And there it held, as if
it were riveted to the rock, and the line of blue, a half
mile long, swung slowly around from the left like the
index of a mighty dial, and swept up the brown face of
the mountain. The bugles of this city of camps were
sounding high noon, when in two parallel columns the
troops moved up the mountain, in the rear of the
enemy's rifle-pits, which they swept at every fire. Ah,
I wish you had been here. It needed no glass to see
it ; it was only just beyond your hand. And there, in
the center of the columns, fluttered the blessed flag.
" My God 1 what flag is that ? " men cried. And up
steadily it moved. I could think of nothing but a
gallant ship-of-the-line grandly lifting upon the great
billows and riding out the storm. It was a scene never
to fade out. Pride and pain struggled in my heart for
the mastery, but faith carried the day: I believed in
the flag and took courage. Volleys of musketry and
crashes of cannon, and then those lulls in a battle even

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 47
more terrible than the tempest. At four o'clock an aid
came straight down the mountain into the city ; the
first Federal by that route in many a day. Their
ammunition ran low — they wanted powder upon the
mountain ! He had been two hours descending, and
how much longer the return !
Night was closing rapidly in, and the scene was
growing sublime. The battery at Moccasin Point was
sweeping the road to the mountain. The brave little
fort at its left was playing like a heart in a fever. The
cannon upon the top of Lookout were pounding away
at their lowest depression. The flash of the guns fairly
burned through the clouds ; there was an instant of
silence, here, there, yonder, and the tardy thunder
leaped out after the swift light. For the first time,
perhaps, since that mountain began to burn beneath
the gold and crimson sandals of the sun, it was in
eclipse. The cloud of the summit and the smoke of
the battle had met half-way and mingled. Here was
Chattanooga, but Lookout had vanished ! It was Sinai
over again with its thunderings and lightnings and
thick darkness, and the LORD was on our side. Then
the storm ceased, and occasional dropping shots told
off the evening till half-past nine, and then a crashing
volley and a rebel yell and a desperate charge. It was
their good-night to our boys ; good night to the moun-

48 PICTURES OF LIFE
tain. They had been met on their own vantage
ground ; they had been driven one and a half miles.
The Federal foot touched the hill, indeed, but above
still towered the precipice.
At ten o'clock, a growing line of lights glittered
obliquely across the breast of Lookout. It made our
eyes dim to see it. It was the Federal autograph
scored along the mountain. They were our camp-fires.
Our wounded lay there all the dreary night of rain,
unrepining and content. Our unharmed heroes lay
there upon their arms. Our dead lay there, " and
surely they slept well." At dawn. Captain Wilson and
fifteen men of the 8th Kentucky crept up among the
rocky clefts, handing their guns one to another — " like
them that gather samphire — -dreadful trade!" — and
stood at length upon the summit. The entire regiment
pushed up after them, formed in line, threw out
skirmishers and advanced five miles to Summerton.
Artillery and infantry had all fled in the night, nor left
a wreck behind. The plan was opening as beautifully
as a flower. General Sherman's apprehended approach
upon the other extremity of the line had set the
enemy's front all dressing to the right. Hardee, of
" Tactics " memory, who had been upon the mountain,
moved round the line on Sunday, leaving two brigades
and the attraction of gravitation — to wit, the precipice

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 49
— to hold the left, yet farther depleted by the splen
did march already made upon the enemy's center
Then GOD let down a fold of his pavilion, our men
were heroes and the work was done. The capture
afforded inexpressible relief to the army. There the
enemy had looked down defiant, sentries pacing our
very walls. Every angle of a Federal work, every gun,
every new disposition of a regiment, was as legible as
a page of an open book. You can never quite know
how beautiful was that cordon of lights flung like a
royal order across the breast of the mountain.
One thing more, and all I shall try to give you of the
stirring story will have been told. Just as the sun was
touching up the old Department of the Cumberland,
that Captain Wilson and his fifteen men, near where
the gun had crouched and growled at all the land,
waved the regimental flag, in sight of Tennessee, Ala
bama, Georgia, the old ' North State " and South
Carolina — waved it there, and the right of the Federal
front, lying far beneath, caught a glimpse of its flutter,
and a cheer rose to the top of the mountain, and ran
from regiment to regiment through whole brigades and
broad divisions, till the boys away round in the face of
Mission Ridge passed it along the line of battle. " The
sight of the gridiron did my soul good," said General
Meigs. 'What is it? Our flag? Did I help put it
3

50 PICTURES OF LIFE
there ? " murmured a poor wounded fellow, and died
without the sight.
Oh, glimpse of clear heaven.
Artillery riven !
The Fathers' old fallow God seeded with Stars —
Thy furrows were turning
When plowshares were burning.
And the half of each "bout" is redder than Mars !
Flaunt forever thy story.
Oh, wardrobe of glory !
Where the Fathers laid down their mantles of blue.
And challenged the ages,
— Oh, grandest of gages ! —
In covenant solemn, eternal and true !
Oh, Flag glory-rifted !
To-day thunder-drifted.
Like a flower of strange grace upon Lookout's grim surge.
On some Federal fold
A new tale shall be told.
And the record immortal emblazon thy verge !
And so at Wednesday's dawn, ended the second act
of the drama of Mission Ridge — Wednesday whose
sun should set upon the third, the grandest and the,
last.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 51
THE STORMING OF MISSION RIDGE.
WEDNESDAY — TWENTY-FIFTH.
The stars and stripes floated from Lookout on
Wednesday at sunrise. At twelve on that day, some
thing with the cry of a loon was making its way up the
river. Screaming through the mountains, it emerged
at last into Chattanooga, and its looks were a match
for its lungs — an ugly little craft more like a backwoods
cabin adrift than a steamer, it was the sweetest-voiced
and prettiest piece of naval architecture that ever
floated upon the Tennessee. The flag on the crest and
the boat on the stream were parts of the same story :
first, the fight on the mountain ; then, the boat on the
river. Never did result crowd more closely on the
heels of action. When the thunder began to roll
around Lookout, the boys in line before Mission Ridge
cried out : " Old Hooker is opening the cracker line ! "
And when the next noon they heard the shriek of the
steamer, they laughingly said, " The cracker line is
opened ! " and went straight into the fight with a will.
They have a direct way of "putting things" in the
army. I do not think that going about Chattanooga, last
Wednesday morning, you would have discerned an

52 PICTURES OF LIFE
impending battle. The current of regular business was
not checked ; the play of men's little passions was as
lively as ever. Jest and laughter eddied round the
street corners, and pepper-and-salt groups of children
frolicked in sunny places. But there were signs of
heavy weather. The doors of the ordnance depots
swung open, the sentinels stood aside, and ammunition
was passing out. You could see " canvas-backed "
wagons working their way out of town to the east
ward, apparently but little in them, and yet laboring
beneath their freight. Grape and canister and shot
and shell make heavy loads as well as heavy hearts.
A building here and there is cleared and strangely
furnished with long rows of pallets. Ambulances set
forth, one after another; they are all going one way;
they are bound for the valley of Mission Ridge. And
if all this should fail to set you thinking, yet there are
things that may, perhaps, disturb the steady stroke of
an easy-going heart. Sitting with me, last Tuesday
night, you would have heard such talk as this. A
chief-of-staff is speaking : " Jemmy, here is a package
of money I'll leave with you till I come back." "Lend
me your watch," said a dashing young Major to a
comrade, "and here's a hundred dollars if I should
forget to return it to-morrow night, you know,' and
the officer swallowed a little memory of something and

IN CAMP AND FIELD. S3
went out. You part the folds of tent after tent ;
writing letters here, burning letters there, getting ready
for the longest of all journeys that yet can be made in
a minute. "Well," said an officer that night, " I shall
be in the hottest place in the field to-morrow, but do
you know? — the bullet is not run that will kill me,"
and the gallant fellow dropped off into a child-like
sleep, while I lay awake and was troubled. And he
told the truth — the bullet was not moulded — for a little
after four the next afternoon, a bursting shell carried
away the "pound of flesh" that Shylock craved, and
again he fell asleep, in the arms of the All-Father.
Good night!
If seeing for one's self is an art, seeing for another is
a mystery, requiring, I mistrust, a better pair of eyes
than mine. But if my readers will accept a straight
forward, simple story of what one man saw of Wednes
day's work, as bare of embellishment as the bayonets
that glittered to the charge, here it is. You are stand
ing again on Orchard Knob, the center of our line of
advance ; Mission Ridge is before ; Fort Wood behind ;
the shining elbow of the Tennessee to the left ; Look
out to the right. Never was theatre more magnificent.
Never was drama worthier of such surroundings.
The same grand heroic line of battle, but a little
longer and stronger, silently stretches away on. either

54 PICTURES OF LIFE
hand. Breaking it up into syllables and reading from
left to right, you have Howard's Eleventh Corps;
Baird's division of the Fourteenth Corps, with the
brigades of Turchin, Vandevere, and Croxton ; Wood's
division of the Fourth Corps, with the brigades of
Beattie, Willich and Hazen ; Sheridan's division, with
the brigades of Wagner, Sherman and Harker ; King's
brigade of regulars, and 'Johnson's division of the
Fourteenth Corps. And then, at the tips of the wings,
on farthest left and right, are Sherman and Hooker.
That portion of the line distinct from where you stand
— how rich the homes of Illinois have made it ! The
24th, 104th — and yonder the old, dashing 19th — the
25th, 33d, 89th, looth, 22d, 27th, 42d, 51st, 79th, 36th,
88th, 74th, 44th, and 73d — each with its tale of battle,
its roll of honor and its glorious dead — how glows the
glittering line ! Illinois was on Lookout yesterday ;
Illinois is over there with Sherman to-day. GOD bless
the mother — GOD save the sons !
Imagine a chain of Federal forts, built in between
with walls of living men, the line flung northward out
of sight, and southward beyond Lookout. Imagine a
chain of mountains crowned with batteries and manned
with hostile troops through a six-mile sweep,, set over
against us in plain sight, and you have the two fronts —
the blue, the gray. Imagine the center of our line

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 55
pushed out a mile and a half towards Mission Ridge —
the boss, a full mile broad, of a mighty shield — and
you have the situation as it was on Wednesday
morning, at sunrise.
The iron heart of Sherman's column began to be
audible, like the fall of great trees in the depth of the
forest, as it beat beyond the woods on the extreme left.
Over roads indescribable, and conquering lions of diffi
culties that met him all the way, he had at length
arrived with his command of the Army of the Ten
nessee. The roar of his guns was like the striking of
a great clock, and grew nearer and louder, as the morn
ing wore away. Along the center all was still. Our
men lay, as they had lain since Tuesday night, motion
less behind the works. Generals Grant, Thomas, Gran
ger, Meigs, Hunter, Reynolds, were grouped at Orchard
Knob, here ; Br&gg, Breckenridge, Hardee, Stevens,
Cleburn, Bates, Walker, were waiting on Mission Ridge,
yonder. And Sherman's Northern clock tolled on ! At
noon, a pair of steamers, screaming in the river across
the town, telling over, in their own wild way, our moun
tain triumph on the right, strangely pierced the hushed
breath of air between the two lines of battle with a
note or two of the music of peaceful life.
At one o'clock, the signal-flag at Fort Wood was
a-flutter. Scanning the horizon, another flag, glancing

56 PICTURES OF LIFE
like a lady's handkerchief, showed white across a field
lying high and dry upon the ridge three miles to the
northeast, and answered back. The center and Sher
man's corps had spoken. As the hour went by, all
semblance to falling tree and tolling clock had van
ished ; it was a rattling roar ; the ring of Sherman's
iron knuckles knocking at the northern door of Mission
Ridge for entrance. Moving nearer the river, I could
see the breath of Sherman's panting artillery, and the
fiery gust from the enemy's guns on Tunnel Hill, the
point of Mission Ridge. They had massed there the
corps of Hardee and Buckner, as upon a battlement,
utterly inaccessible, save by one steep, narrow way,
commanded by their guns. A thousand men could
hold it against a host. And right in front of this bold
abutment of the Ridge, is that broad, clear field,
skirted by woods. Across this tremendous threshold
up to death's door, moved Sherman's column. Twice
it advanced, and twice I saw it swept back in bleeding
lines before the furnace-blast, until that russet field
seemed some strange page ruled thick with blue and
red. Bright valor was in vain ; they lacked the ground
to stand on ; they wanted, like the giant of old story, a
touch of earth to make them strong. It was the devil's
own corner. Before them was a lane, whose upper end
the rebel cannon swallowed. Moving by the right

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 57
flank or the left flank, nature opposed them with pre
cipitous heights. There was nothing for it but straight
across the field swept by an enfilading fire, and up to
the lane down which drove the storm. They could
unfold no broad front, and so the losses were less than
seven hundred, that must otherwise have swelled to
thousands. The musketry fire was delivered with ter
rible emphasis ; two dwellings, in one of which Federal
wounded were lying, set on fire by the enemy, began to
send up tall columns of smoke, streaked red with
flame ; the grand and the terrible were blended.
If Sherman did not roll the enemy along the Ridge
like a carpet, at least he rendered splendid service, for
he held a huge ganglion of the foe as firmly on their
right as if he had them in th.e vice of the " lame Lem-
nian " who forged the thunder-bolts. And Illinois was
there, too, with her veterans. Under General M. L.
Smith there were the 55th, Ii6th and 127th; the 26th,
40th, 48th, 90th and 103d led on by General Ewing ; in
the Seventeenth Corps, the 56th, 63d, and 93d, under
General John E. Smith ; the 82d in the Eleventh, under
Schurz ; General J. C. Davis, of the Fourteenth, com
manded the loth, i6th, 60th, 78th, 85th, 86th, loist,
iioth, 125th, and 34th. Such was the magnificent
material from the Army of the Tennessee ; but I thank
God that not a tithe could be called into action ; the

58 PICTURES OF LIFE
day was won without it. General Corse's, Colonel
Jones' and Colonel Loomis' brigades led the way, and
were drenched with blood. Here, Colonel O'Meara, of
the 90th Illinois, fell ; here, its Lieutenant-Colonel,
Stuart, received a fearful wound. Here, its brave
young Captains knelt at the crimson shrine, and never
rose from worshiping. Here, one hundred and sixty
of its three hundred and seventy heroes were beaten
with the bloody rain. The brigades of Generals
Mathias and Smith came gallantly up to the work.
Fairly blown out of the enemy's guns, and scorched
with flame, they were swept down the hill only to
stand fast for a new assault. Let no man dare to say
they did not acquit themselves well and nobly. To
living and dead in the commands of Sherman and
Howard who struck a blow that day — out of my heart
I utter it — hail and farewell ! And as I think it all
over, glancing again along that grand heroic line of the
Federal Epic — I commit the story with a child-like
faith to History, sure that when she gives her clear,
calm record of that day's famous work, standing like
Ruth among the reapers in the fields that feed the
world, she will declare the grandest staple of the
Northwest is MAN !
The brief November afternoon was half gone ; it was
yet thundering on the left ; along the center all was

INCAMPANDFIELD. 59
still. At that very hour, Whittaker and Grose, under
the immediate command of General Crufts, were mak
ing a fierce assault upon the enemy's left near Ross
ville, four miles down towards the old field of Chica
mauga. They carried the Ridge ; Mission Ridge seems
everywhere ; they strewed its summit with the dead ;
they held it, the 51st Ohio, Lieutenant-Colonel Wood,
playing a part of which the " Old Guard " in the little
Corsican's palmy days might well be proud. And thus
the tips of the Federal army's wide-spread wings
flapped grandly. But it had not swooped ; the gray
quarry yet perched upon Mission Ridge ; the hostile
army was terribly battered at the edges, but there full
in our front it grimly waited, biding out its time. If
the horns of the crescent could not be doubled crush-
ingly together in a shapeless mass, possibly it might be
sundered at its center and tumbled in fragments over
the other side of Mission Ridge. Sherman was ham
mering upon the left ; Hooker was holding hard in
Chattanooga Valley ; the Fourth Corps, that rounded
out our center, grew impatient of restraint ; the day
was waning ; but little time remained to complete the
commanding General's grand design ; his hour had
come ; his work was full before him.
And what a work that was, to make a weak man
falter and a brave man think ! One and g, half miles

6o PICTURES OF LIFE
to traverse, with narrow fringes of woods, rough val
leys, sweeps of open fields, rocky acclivities, to the
base of the Ridge, and no foot in all the breadth
withdrawn from rebel sight ; no foot that could not be
played upon by rebel cannon, like a piano's keys,
under Thalberg's stormy fingers. The base attained,
what then? A heavy work, packed with the enemy,
rimming it like a battlement. That work carried, and
what then ? A hill struggling up out of the valley four
hundred feet, rained on by bullets, swept by shot and
shell ; another line of works and then, up like a Gothic
roof, rough with rocks, a-wreck with fallen trees, four
hundred more ; another ring of fire and iron,- and then
the crest and then the enemy.
To dream of such a journey would be madness ; to
devise it a thing incredible ; to do it a deed impossible.
But Grant was guilty of them all, and was equal to the
work. The story of the battle of Mission Ridge is
struck with immortality already ; let the leader of the
Fourth Corps bear it company.
That the center yet lies along its silent line is still
true ; in five minutes it will be the wildest fiction. Let
us take that little breath of grace for just one glance at
the surroundings, since we shall have neither heart nor
eyes for it again. Did ever battle have so vast a cloud
of witnesses! The hive-shaped hills have swarmed.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 6l
Clustered like bees, blackening the house-tops, lining
the fortifications, over yonder across the theatre, in the
seats with the Catilines — everywhere, an hundred
thousand beholders. Their souls are in their eyes.
Not a murmur that you can hear. It is the most
solemn congregation that ever stood up in the presence
of the God of battles. I think of Bunker Hill as I
stand here ; of the thousands who witnessed that
immortal struggle, and fancy there is a parallel. I
think, too, that the chair of every man of them all will
stand vacant against the wall to-morrow, — for to
morrow is Thanksgiving, — and around the fireside they
must give thanks without him, if they can.
At half-past three a group of Generals, whose names
will need no " Old Mortality " to chisel them anew,
stood upon Orctiard Knob. The hero of Vicksburg
was there, calm, clear, persistent, far-seeing. Thomas,
the sterling and sturdy; Meigs, Hunter, Granger,
Reynolds. Clusters of humbler mortals were there
too, but it was anything but a turbulent crowd ; the
voice naturally fell into a subdued tone, and even
young faces took on the gravity of later years. Aii
order was given, and in an instant the Knob was
cleared like a ship's deck for action. At twenty
minutes of four Granger stood upon the parapet by
Bridges' Battery ; the bugle swung idly at the bugler's

62 PICTURES OF LIFE
side, the warbling fife and grumbling drum unheard : —
there was to be louder talk — six guns at intervals of
two seconds the signal to advance. Strong and steady
his voice rang out : " Number one, fire ! Number two,
fire ! Number three, fire ! " — it seemed to me the
tolling of the clock of destiny — and when at " Nurhber
six, fire ! " the roar throbbed out with the flash, you
should have seen the dead line that had been lying
behind the works all day, all night, all day again, come
to resurrection in the twinkling of an eye, leap like a
blade from its scabbard and sweep with a two-mile
stroke toward the Ridge. From divisions to brigades,
from brigades to regiments, the order ran. A minute,
and the skirmishers deploy; a minute, and the first
great drops begin to patter along the line ; a minute,
and the musketry is in full play like the crackling
whips of a hemlock fire ; men go down here and there,
before your eyes ; the wind lifts the smoke and drifts
it away over the top of the Ridge ; everything is too
distinct ; it is fairly palpable ; you can touch it with
your hand. The divisions of Wood and Sheridan are
wading breast-deep in the valley of death.
I never can tell you what it was like. They pushed
out, leaving nothing behind them. There was no
reservation in that battle. On .moves the line of skir
mishers, like a heavy frown, and after it, at quick time,

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 63
the splendid columns. At right of us and left of us
and front of us, you can see the bayonets glitter in the
sun. You cannot persuade yourself that Bragg was
wrong, a day or two ago, when, seeing Hooker moving
in, he said, " now we shall have a Potomac review ; "
that this is not the parade he prophesied ; that it is of
a truth the harvest of death to which they go down.
And so through the fringe of woods went the Hne.
Now, out into the open ground they burst into the
double-quick. Shall I call it a Sabbath day's journey,
or a long half mile ? To me, that watched, it seemed
endless as eternity, and yet they made it in thirty
minutes. The tempest that now broke upon their
heads was terrible. The enemy's fire burst out of the
rifle-pits from base to summit of Mission Ridge ; five
batteries of Parrotts and Napoleons opened along the
crest. Grape and canister and shot and shell sowed
the ground with rugged iron and garnished it with the
wounded and the dead. But steady and strong our
columns moved on.
" By heaven ! It was a splendid sight to see.
For one who had no friend, no brother there,"
but to all loyal hearts, alas, and thank GOD, those men
were friend and brother, both in one.
And over their heads, as they went. Forts Wood and
Negley struck straight out like mighty pugilists right

64 PICTURES OF LIFE
and left, raining their iron blows upon the Ridge from
base to crest ; Forts Palmer and King took up the
quarrel, and Moccasin Point cracked its fiery whips and
lashed the surly left till the wolf cowered in its corner
with a growl. Bridges' Battery, from Orchard Knob
below, thrust its ponderous fists in the face of the
enemy, and planted blows at will. Our artillery was
doing splendid service. It laid its shot and shell
wherever it pleased. Had giants carried them by hand
they could hardly have been more accurate. All along
the mountain's side, in the enemy's rifle-pits, on the
crest, they fairly dotted the Ridge. Granger leaped
down, sighted a gun, and in a moment, right in front,
a great volume of smoke, like " the cloud by day,"
lifted off the summit from among the batteries, and
hung motionless, kindling in the sun. The shot had
struck a caisson and that was its dying breath. In five
minutes away floated another. A shell went crashing
through a building in the cluster that marked Bragg's
headquarters ; a second killed the skeleton horses of a
battery at his elbow ; a third scattered a gray mass as
if it had been a wasp's nest.
And all the while our lines were moving on ; they
had burned through the woods and swept over the
rough and rolling, ground like a prairie fire. Never
halting, never faltering, they charged up to the first

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 65
rifle-pits with a cheer, forked out the foe with their
bayonets, and lay there panting for breath. If the
thunder of guns had been terrible, it was now growing
sublime ; it was like the footfall of GOD on the ledges
of cloud. Our forts and batteries still thrust out their
mighty arms across the valley ; the guns that lined the
arc of the crest full in our front, opened like the fan of
Lucifer and converged their fire. It was rifles and
musketry ; it was grape and canister ; it was shell and
shrapnel. Mission Ridge was volcanic ; a thousand
torrents of red poured over its brink and rushed
together to its base. And our men were there, halting
for breath ! And still the sublime diapason rolled on.
Echoes that never waked before, roared out from height
to height, and called from the far ranges of Waldron's
Ridge to Lookout. As for Mission Ridge, it had jarred
to such music before ; it was the " sounding-board " of
Chicamauga ; it was behind us then ; it frowns and
flashes in our faces to-day. The old Army of the
Cumberland was there ; it breasted the storm till the
storm was spent, and left the ground it held ; the old
Army of the Cumberland is here ! It shall roll up the
Ridge like a surge to its summit, and sweep triumphant
down the other side. That memory and hope may
have made the heart of many a blud-coat beat like a
drum. "Beat," did I say? The feverish heart of the
5

66 PICTURES OF LIFE
battle beats on; fifty-eight guns a minute, by the
watch, is the rate of its terrible throbbing. That hill,
if you climb it, will appal you. Furrowed like a
summer-fallow, — bullets as if an oak had shed them ;
trees clipped and shorn, leaf and limb, as with the
knife of some heroic gardener pruning back for richer
fruit. How you attain the summit, weary and breath
less, I wait to hear ; how they went up in the teeth of
the storm no man can tell !
And all this while prisoners have been streaming out
from the rear of our lines like the tails of a cloud of
kites. Captured and disarmed, they needed nobody to
set them going. The fire of their own comrades was
like spurs in a horse's flanks, and amid the tempest of
their own brewing, they ran for dear life, until they
dropped like quails into the Federal rifle-pits and were
safe. But our gallant legions are out in the storm ; they
have carried the works at the base of the Ridge ; they
have fallen like leaves in winter weather. Blow, dumb
bugles !
Sound the recall ! " Take the rifle-pit," was the
order, and it is as empty of enemies as the tombs
of the prophets. Shall they turn their backs to the
blast ? Shall they sit down under the eaves that drip
iron ? Or shall they climb to the cloud of death above
them, and pluck out its lightnings as they would straws
from a sheaf of wheat ? And now the arc of fire on

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 67
the crest grows fiercer and longer. The reconnoissance
of Monday had failed to develop the heavy metal of
the enemy. The dull fringe of the hill kindles with
the flash of great guns. I count the fleeces of white
smoke that dot the Ridge, as battery after battery
opens upon our line, until from the ends of the growing
arc they sweep down upon it in mighty X's of fire. I
count till that devil's girdle numbers thirteen batteries,
and my heart cries out : " Great GOD, when shall the
end be ! " There is a poem I learned in childhood, and
so did you : it is Campbell's " Hohenlinden." One line
I never knew the meaning of until I read it written
along that hill ! It has lighted up the whole poem for
me with the glow of battle forever :
" And louder than the bolts of heaven.
Far flashed the red artillery ! "
At this moment the commanding General's aids are
dashing out with an order ; they radiate over the field
to left, right and front : " Take the Ridge if you can "
— and so it went along the line. But the advance had
already set forth without it. Stout-hearted Wood, the
iron-gray veteran, is rallying on his men ; stormy
Turchin is delivering brave words in bad English ;
Sheridan — little " Phil " — you may easily look down
upon him without climbing a tree, and see one of the
most gallant leaders of the age,— is riding to and fro

68 PICTURES OF LIFE
along the first line of rifle-pits, as calmly as a chess
player. An aid rides up with the order. " Avery, that
flask," said the General. Quietly filling the pewter
cup, Sheridan looks up at the battery that frowns
above him, by Bragg's headquarters, shakes his cap
amid that storm of everything that kills, when you
could hardly hold your hand without catching a bullet "
in it, and with a " how are you ? " tosses off the cup.
The blue battle-flag of the enemy fluttered a response
to the cool salute, and the next instant the battery let
fly its six guns showering Sheridan with earth. Allud
ing to that compliment with anything but a blank
cartridge, the General said in his quiet way, " I thought
it d — d ungenerous ! " - The recording angel will drop a
tear upon the word for the part he played that day.
Wheeling toward the men, he cheered them to the
charge, and made at the hill like a bold-riding hunter ;
they were out of the rifle-pits and into the tempest and
struggling up the steep, before you could get breath to
tell it, and so they were throughout the inspired line.
And now you have before you one of the most
startling episodes of the war; I cannot render it in
words; dictionaries are beggarly things. But I may
tell you they did -not storm that mountain as you
would think. They dash out a little way, and then
slacken ; they creep up, hand over hand, loading and

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 69
firing, and wavering and halting, from the first line of
works toward the second ; they burst into a charge
with a cheer and go over it. Sheets of flame baptize
them; plunging shot tear away comrades on left and
right ; it is no longer shoulder to shoulder ; it is GOD
for us all ? Under tree-trunks, among rocks, stumbling
over the dead, struggling with the living; facing the
steady fire of eight thousand infantry poured down
upon their heads as if it ware the old historic curse
from heaven, they wrestle with the Ridge. Ten,
fifteen, twenty minutes go by like a reluctant century.
The batteries roll like a drum ; between the second and
the last line of works is the torrid zone of the battle ;
the hill sways up like a wall before them at an angle of
forty-five degrees, but our brave mountaineers are
clambering steadily on — up — upward still 1 You may
think it strange, but I would not have recalled those
men if I could. They would have lifted you, as they
lifted me, in full view of the region of heroic grandeur ;
they seemed to be spurning the dull earth under their
feet, and going up to do Homeric batfle with the
greater gods.
And what do these men follow? If you look you
shall see that the thirteen thousand are not a rushing
herd of human creatures ; that along the Gothic roof
of the Ridge a row of inverted V's is slowly moving up

70 PICTURES OF LIFE
almost in line, a mighty lettering on the hill's broad
side. At the angles of those V's is something that
glitters like a wing. Your heart gives a great bound
when you think what it is — the regimental flag — and
glancing along the front count fifteen of those colors
that were borne at Pea Ridge, waved at Shiloh, glori
fied at Stone River, riddled at Chicamauga. Nobler
than Caesar s rent mantle are they all ! And up move
the banners, now fluttertng like a wounded bird, now
faltering, now sinking out of sight. Three times the
flag of the 27th Illinois goes down. And you know
why. Three dead color-sergeants lie just there, but the
flag is immortal — thank GOD ! — and up it comes again,
and the V's move on. At the left of Wood, three regi
ments of Baird — Turchin, the Russian thunderbolt, is
there — hurl themselves against a bold point strong with
rebel works ; for a long quarter of an hour three flags
are perched and motionless on a plateau under the
frown of the hill. Will they linger forever? I give a
look at the sun behind me ; it is not more than a hand's
breadth froSi the edge of the mountain ; its level rays
bridge the valley from Chattanooga to the Ridge with
beams of gold ; it shines in the hostile faces ; it brings
out the Federal blue ; it touches up the flags. Oh, for
the voice that could bid that sun stand still ! I turn
to the battle again ; those three flags have taken flight.

"N CAMP AND FIELD. 71
They are upward bound ! The men of the 88th Illinois
were swept by an enfilading fire ; Colonel Chandler
seized the colors ; they steadied into rock and swept
the enemy before them with a broom of bayonets ; it
cost them fifty of the rank and file and two Lieu
tenants. Colonel Jacques, of the 73d, Barrett, of the
44th, Marsh, of the 74th, Dunlap, of the 51st — who the
boys delight to say is "fashionable in a fight" — all
wounded, and all Illinois.
The race of the flags is growing every moment more
terrible. There at the right, in Colonel Sherman's
brigade, a strange thing catches the eye ; one of the
inverted V's is turning right side up ! The men strug
gling along the converging lines to overtake the flag
have distanced it, and there the colors are, sinking
down in the center between the rising flanks. The line
wavers like a great billow, and up comes the banner
again, as if it heaved on a surge's shoulder ! The iron
sledges beat on. Hearts, loyal and brave, are on the
anvil all the way from base to summit of Mission
Ridge, but those dreadful hammers never intermit.
Swarms of bullets sweep the hill ; you can count
twenty-eight balls in one little tree. Things are grow
ing desperate up aloft ; the enemy tumble rocks upon
the rising line ; they light the fuses and roll shells down
the steep ; they load the guns with handfuls of car-

72 PICTURES OF LIFE
tridges in their haste ; and as if there were powder in
the word, they shqut " Chicamauga ! " down upon the
mountaineers. But it would not all do, and just as the
sun, weary of the scene, was sinking out of sight, with
magnificent bursts all along the line, exactly as .you
have seen the crested seas leap up at the breakwater,
the advance surged over the crest, and in a minute
those flags fluttered along the fringe where fifty guns
were kenneled. GOD bless the flag !
What colors were first upon the mountain battlement
I dare not try to say; bright Honor's self may be
proud to bear — bear ? — nay, proud to follow the hind
most. Foot by foot they had fought up the steep slip
pery with much blood ; let them go to glory together.
But this I can declare : the 79th Indiana, of Wood's
division, fairly ran over the rifle-pits, and left its whole
line in the rear, and its breathless color-bearer led the
way. But a few steps between him and the summit, he
grasped a little tree that bravely clung there, and away
he went, hand over hand, like a sailor up the shrouds,
and shook his exultant flag above the crest. This I
can declare : John Cheevers, of the 88th Illinois, planted
his flag by Bragg's headquarters, and it kindled there
in the setting sun, at the very heels of the enemy. A
minute, and they were all there, fluttering along the
Ridge from left to right. The routed hordes rolled off

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 73
to the north, rolled off to the east, like the clouds of a
worn-out storm. Bragg, ten minutes before, was put
ting men back into the rifle-pits. His gallant gray was
straining a nerve for him now, and the man rode on
horseback into " Dixie's " bosom, who, arrayed in some
prophet's discarded mantle, foretold, on Monday, that
the Yankees would leave Chattanooga in five days.
They left it in three, and by the way of Mission Ridge,
straight over the mountains as their forefathers went !
As Sheridan rode up to the guns, the heels of Brecken-
ridge's horse glittered in the last rays of sunshine.
That crest was hardly "well off with the old love
before it was on with the new."
But the scene on that narrow plateau can never be
painted. As the blue-coats surged over its edge, cheer
on cheer rang like bells through the valley of the
Chicamauga. Men flung themselves exhausted upon
the ground. They laughed and wept, shook hands,
embraced ; turned round and did all four over again.
It was as wild as a carnival. The General was received
with a shout. " Soldiers," he said, " you ought to be
court-martialed, every man of you. I ordered you to
take the rifle-pits and you scaled the mountain ! " but
it was not Mars' horrid front exactly with which he
said it, for his cheeks were wet with tears as honest as
the blood that reddened all the route. Wood uttered

74 PICTURES OF LIFE
words that rang like " Napoleons," and Sheridan, the
rowels at his horse's flanks, was ready for a dash down
the Ridge with a " view halloo " for a fox hunt.
But you must not think this was all there was of the
scene on the crest, for fight and frolic were strangely
mingled. Not a gray-coat had dreamed a man of us
all would live to reach the summit, and when a little
wave of the Federal cheer rolled up and broke over the
crest, they defiantly cried : " hurrah and be d — d ;" the
next minute the 65th Ohio followed the voice, the
enemy delivered their fire, and tumbled down in the
rifle-pits. No sooner had the soldiers scrambled to the
Ridge and straightened themselves, than up muskets
and away they blazed. One of them, fairly beside
himself between laughing and crying, seemed puzzled
at which end of his piece he should load, and so, aban-
doning the gun and the problem together, he made a
catapult of himself and fell to hurling stones after the
enemy. And he said, as he threw — well, " our army,"
you know, " swore terribly in Flanders." Bayonets
glinted and muskets rattled. Sheridan's horse was
killed under him ; " Richard " was not in his role, and
so he leaped upon a rebel gun for want of another.
The artillerists are driven from their batteries at the
edge of the sword and the point of the bayonet ; two
guns are swung around upon their old masters. But

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 75
there is nobody to load them. Light and heavy artil
lery do not belong to the winged kingdom. Two
infantry men claiming to be old artillerists, volunteer.
Granger turns captain of the guns, and — right about
wheel ! — in a moment they are growling after the flying
enemy. I say flying, but that is figurative. The many
run like Spanish merinoes, but the few fight like lions
at bay ; they load and fire as they retreat ; they are
fairly scorched out of position. It was so where
Turchin struck them, and so where Wood and Sheridan
gave them the iron glove. Colonel Harker is slashing
away with his sabre in a ring of foes. Down goes his
horse under him ; they have him on the hip ; one of
them is taking deliberate aim, when up rushes Lieu
tenant Johnson, of the 42d Illinois, claps a pistol to one
ear and roars in at the other, " Who the h — 1 are you
shooting at ? " The fellow drops his piece, gasps out,
" I surrender," and the next instant the gallant Lieu
tenant falls sharply wounded. He is a " roll of honor "
officer straight up from the ranks. A little German in
Wood's division is pierced like the lid of a pepper-box,
but is neither dead nor wounded. " See here," he says,
rushing up to a comrade, "a pullet hit te preech of
mine gun — a pullet in mine bocket pook — a pullet in
mine goat-tail — dey shoots me three, five dime, and by
tam I gives dem h — 1 yet ! "

•j6 PICTURES OF LIFE
But I can render you no idea of the battle caldron
that boiled on the plateau. An incident, here and
there, I have given you, and you must fill out the
picture for yourself. Dead soldiers lay thick around
Bragg's headquarters and along the ridge. Scabbards,
broken arms, artillery horses, wrecks *of gun carriages,
bloody garments, strewed the scene ; and, tread lightly,
oh, true-hearted, the boys in blue are lying there ; no
more the sounding charge ; no more the brave wild
cheer ; and never for them, sweet as the breath of new-
mown hay in the old home fields, " the Soldier's Return
from the War." A little waif of a drummer boy,
somehow drifted up the mountain in the surge, lies
there, his pale face upward, a blue spot on his breast.
Muffle his drum lor the poor child and his mother.
Our troops met one cordial welcome on the height.
How the old Tennesseean that gave it managed to get
there nobody knows, but there he was, grasping Colonel
Harker's hand, and saying, while the tears ran down
his face, " GOD be thanked ! I knew the Yankees
would fight ! " With the receding flight and swift
pursuit the battle died away in murmurs, far down the
valley of the Chicamauga ; Sheridan was again in the
saddle, and with his command spurring on after the
enemy. Tall columns of smoke were rising at the left.
The enemy were burning a train of stores a mile long.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. fj
In the exploding caissons we had " the cloud by day,"
and now we were having " the pillar of fire by night."
The sun, the golden dish of the scales that balance day
and night, had hardly gone down when up, beyond
Mission Ridge, rose the silver side, for that night it was
full moon. The troubled day was done. A Federal
officer sat in the seat of the man who, on the very
Saturday before the battle, had sent a flag to the lines
with these words :
" Humanity would dictate the removal of all non-
combatants from Chattanooga, as I am about to shell
the city ! "
— Sat there and announced to the Fourth Corps the
congratulations and thanks just placed in his hands,
from the commander of the Department.
"Bragg's Headquarters, Mission Ridge,
November 25, 1863.
" In conveying to you this distinguished recognition of your
signal gallantry in carrying, through a terrible storm of iron, a
mountain crowned with batteries and encircled with rifle-pits, I am
constrained to express my own admiration of your noble conduct.
and am proud to tell you that the veteran Generals from other
fields who witnessed your heroic bearing, place your assault and
triumph among the most brilliant achievements of the war.
Thanks, Soldiers ! You have made, this day, a glorious page of
history.
"GORDON GRANGER."

78 PICTURES OF LIFE
There was a species of poetic justice in it all that
would have made the prince of dramatists content.
The ardor of the men had been quenchless ; there had
been three days of fitful fever, and after it, alas, a
multitude slept well. The work on the right, left and
center cost us full four thousand killed and wounded.
There is a tremble of the lip but a flash of pride in the
eye as the soldier tells with how many he went in — how
expressive is that " went in ! " Of a truth it was
wading in deep waters — with how few he came out. I
cannot try to swing the burden clear from any heart by
throwing into the scale upon the other side the dead
weight of fifty-two pieces of captured artillery, ten
thousand stand of arms and heaps of dead enemies, or
by driving upon it a herd of seven thousand prisoners.
Nothing of all this can lighten that burden a single
ounce, but those three days' work brought Tennessee
to resurrection ; set the flag, that fairest blossom in
all this flowery world, to blooming in its native soil
again. That splendid march from the Federal line of battle
to the crest, was made in one hour and five minutes,
but it was a grander march toward the end of carnage ;
a glorious campaign of sixty-five minutes toward the
white borders of peace. It made that fleeting Novem
ber afternoon imperishable. Let the struggle be

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 79
known as the Battle of Mission Ridge, and now that
calmer days have come, men make pilgrimage and
women smile again among the mountains of the
Cumberland, but they need no guide. Rust may have
eaten the guns ; the graves of the heroes may have
subsided like waves weary of their troubling; the
soldier and his leader may have lain down together,
but there, embossed upon the globe, Mission Ridge
will stand its fitting monument forever.
THANKSGIVING A T CHA TTANOOGA.
The day after the battle was Thanksgiving, and we
had services in Chattanooga — sad, solemn, grand. The
church-bells hung dumb in their towers, indeed, and
you shall know why in its time, but for all that, there
were chimes so grand that men uncovered their heads
as they heard them. At twelve o'clock the great guns
at Fort Wood began to toll. Civilians said, " Can they
be at it again ? " — and soldiers said, " The guns are not
shotted, and th^ sound is too regular for work." I
hastened out to the Fort, and the guns chimed on. A
dim impression I had received before brightened as I
stood upon the parapet and looked over the scene.
What it was like flashed upon me in a moment : the
valley was a grand cathedral. Fort Wood the pulpit of

So PICTURES OF LIFE
the mighty minster, and far down the descending aisle
in front rose Orchard Knob the altar. The dead were
lying there, far out to the eastern wall, and God's
chandelier hung high in the dome. They were the
accents of praise I was hearing ; thirty-four syllables of
thanksgiving the guns were saying : " Oh, give thanks
unto the LORD, for He is good ; for His mercy
endureth forever ! " And the hills took up the anthem
and struck sublimely in ; from the Ridge it came back,
"give thanks unto the Lord," and Waldron's height
uttered it, " for His mercy endureth," and Lookout
Valley sang aloud, " forever, forever," and all the
mountains cried, " Amen ! "
And the churches of Chattanooga had congregations.
Those who composed them had come silent and suffer
ing and of steady heart ; had come upon stretchers ;
come in men's arms, like infants to the christening;
ambulances had been drawing up to the church-doors
all night with their burdens, and within those walls it
looked one great altar of sacrifice. The nearest
of these edifices is hardly a dozen paces from my
quarters, and I go out and sit upon its step in the sun.
It is the same building wherein the gifted Murdoch,
only a few days before, had given his splendid render
ings of drama and lyric. I do not hear the music of
his voice, neither do I hear a moan. The doors are

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 8l
noiselessly opening and closing, and I see pale faces
— ^bloody garments. Right hands lie in the porch that
have offended and been cut off; castaway feet are
there, too, but there is nothing about sinning feet in
the Sermon on the Mount ! It is not the house of
wailing on whose threshold I am waiting ; it is the
house of patience. Five still figures, covered by five
brown blankets, are ranged on the floor beside me.
Their feet are manacled with bits of slender twine, but
a spider's thread could hold them. I lift a corner of
the blankets and look at the quiet faces. By the gray
coat I see that one is a dead rebel. Do men look
nearer alike when dead than when alive? Else how
could it have chanced that one of these sleepers in
Federal blue should resemble him nearly enough for
both to have been " twinned at a birth ? " They are
not wounded in the face, and so there is nothing to
shock you ; they fell in their full strength. Tread
lightly, lest they be not dead, but sleeping. The
silence within oppresses me ; it seems as if an accent
of pain from some sufferer in that solemn church would
be a welcome sound, and I think of a brave bird
wounded unto death, that I have held in my hand, its
keen eye undimmed and full upon me, throbbing with
the pain and the aying, and yet so silent !
6

82 PICTURES OF LIFE
But I am not trying to write a poem, and so, at the
risk of startling you, I must tell you that the grating
sounds of busy life around are set to no minor key, in
keeping with the scenes. Nature never sympathizes
with human suffering, though in our vanity we some
times think she does, and I am inclined to believe that
man and nature are often much alike. Three or four
little Africans — by some accident born unbleached — are
playing " hop-scotch " on the sunny slope at the corner
of the church, gurgling like japanned water-spouts with
laughter, and exploding now and then into an unmiti
gated "yah, yah." A couple of soldiers are going by,
while several white-wood coffins are being borne up to
the porch. They stop, give a glance, and one says to
the other, " I say. Jack, our boys killed on Mission
Ridge, yesterday, are thundering lucky, — don't you
think so ? " " Why ? " said his comrade. " Because
they can all have wooden overcoats I " It was no
heartless jest, as you might fancy, but an old cam
paigner's way of putting things. Alas, for the battle
fields to whose heroes the luxury of a coffin must be
denied, and yet they sleep as sweetly close folded in
the earth. I go around the church; a soldier has his
foot upon a spade, digging a hole. I ask him its
purpose. He never looks up, but keeps crowding the
rusty blade craunchingly into the red earth, and tosses

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 83
the answer to me sullenly over his left shoulder:
" buryin' legs ! " I look down and see uncertain shapes
beneath a blanket lying on the ground, go to the right
about, and walk gently away. The ragged cut he gave
me was even more painful than the Timbuctooan
explosives, but when I think of it, it is only the blunt
edge of use with which he did it. He would have
played sexton to his own limbs as coolly.
You wander down into Main street ; hospitals there.
You go up the hill by the Market House ; hospitals
there. You see thirty unarmed men drawn up on the
sidewalk, a Lieutenant commanding. Four soldiers are
bringing weapons strange to them across the street ;
their arms are full of shovels : you see the builders of
the doomsday houses; it is the Shovel Brigade. An
order is given, and away they move, up the hill, out of
town, to the eastward. They are not sad men, as the
lamenting Rachels would believe, but cheerful, if not
smiling. Shall we follow them to the place of graves ?
There it is, the slope turned towards the setting sun,
that even now is " promising a glorious morrow ; " a
strange piece of check-work; a spot already honey
combed with graves. And the Shovel Brigade begins
to widen the breadth of the solemn tillage ; doing for
dead comrades what, for anything they know or think,
somebody may do for them the next day or the next.

84 PICTURES OF LIFE
There were seven hundred and forty-two graves in that
one place, on Thanksgiving night.
Going slowly homeward we meet them coming.
And what is them? The plaintive cry of fifes — it is
almost a woman's wail^ — and the moan of muffled
drums come up from the laps of the little valleys of
Chattanooga. It is the lament of Ramah here in
Tennessee ! I have heard the splendid bands in great
cities, and the sighing of organs over the dead, but
that music among the mountains I cannot describe.
There are tears in the tones, and will be till my dying
day. An ambulance bearing the dead, and then a
dozen comrades following after, two by two, another
ambulance and more comrades ; but no flags, no pomp,
only those fifes, like the voice of girls that sing
" China." The ambulances are lightened. Dirge and
" Dead March " are dropped into the graves, and back
they go to a quickstep, here, there, everywhere ; the
fifes warble like birds in spring; life and cheer tread
close on death and gloom. And so it went, Thursday
and Friday and Saturday. And such was Thanks
giving at Chattanooga.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 85

AFTER THE BATTLE.
When a furnace is in blast, the reu fountain sparkles
and plays like a mountain spring, and the rude sur
roundings brighten to the peak of the rough rafters
with a strange beauty. When the fire is out, and the
black and rugged masses of dull iron lie dead upon the
ground, with a dumb and stubborn resistance, who
would dream that they had ever leaped with life and
light? A battle and a furnace are alike. It is wonderful
how dull natures brighten and grow costly in the glow
of battle ; how the sterling worth and wealth there are
in them shine out, and the common man stands trans
figured, his heart in his hand and his foot in the realm
of grandeur. But ah, when the fire is out, and the
scarred earth is heaped with rigid clay, the black
mouths of the guns speechless, mighty hammers and
no hands, the wild hurrah died away, and all the
splendid action of the charge vanished from the field,
and you wander among the dull remainders, the dead
embers of the intensest life and glow that swept your
soul out, only yesterday, and drifted it on with the
skirmish line, you begin to know what those words
mean — "after the battle."

86 PICTURES OF LIFE
I feel like taking up the story just where I left it, on
Wednesday night at sunset, when our flags flapped like
eagles' wings, and the wild cry of triumph quivered
along the mountain. Standing on the edge of the
field in the moonlight, calm as a field of wheat,
stretches the rough valley that jarred with the rush
and whirl of the battle. From away beyond the ridge,
three miles out to Chicamauga station, the dropping
shots from Sheridan's guns faintly punctuate the
silence, but here, listen as you will, you can hear no
sound but the click of ambulance wheels, slowly rolling
in with their mangled burdens ; no sigh, no groan,
nothing but the sobbing lapse of the Tennessee.
It is strange that a battle almost always lies between
two breadths of sleep : the dreamless slumber into
which men fall upon its eve : the calm repose they sink
in at its end. Night fairly held its breath above the
camps ; the wing of silence was over them all. Then
came Thursday morning, bright and beautiful. You go
out to the field ; and you keep saying over and over,
" after the battle — after the battle." Men prone upon
their faces in death's deep abasement ; here one, his
head pillowed upon his folded arms; there one, his
cheek pressed upon a stone, as was Jacob's at Bethel ;
yonder one, his fingers stiffened round his musket.
Now you pass where a " butternut " and a true blue

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 87
have gone down together, the arm of the one flung
over the other ; where a young boy of fifteen lies face
upward, both hands clasped over his heart. The sun
has touched the frost that whitened his hair, as if he
had grown old in a night, and it hangs like tears fresh-
fallen upon his cheeks ; where a Lieutenant grasps a
bush, as if he died vainly feeling for a little hold upon
earth and life , where a stained trail leads you to a
shelter behind a rock, and a dead Captain who had
crept way out of sight and fallen asleep ; where
friends and foes lie in short windrows, as if Death had
begun the harvest and had wearied of the work. And
so, through the valley and up the Ridge, in every
attitude lie the unburied dead ; lie just as they fell in
the battle. And those faces are not what you would
think : hardly one distorted with any passion ; almost
as white and calm as Ben Adhem's dream of peace ;
many brightened with something like a smile ; a few
strangely beautiful. Wounded ones that escaped the
moonlight search have lain silently waiting for morning,
without murmur or complaint ; glad they are alive ;
not grieved they are wounded, for." did we not take the
Ridge?" they say. Thus did the old soldierly spirit
of one flash up like an expiring candle, and go out
right there on the field as he spoke ; he died with the
last word on his lips, and " went up higher."

88 PICTURES OF LIFE
Spots all along that terrible mountain route are wait
ing some poet's breath to blossom with flowers immor
tal. Here, by this gray rock, lay the soldier, one
shoulder shattered like a piece of potter's clay, and
thus urged two comrades who had halted to bear him
to the rear: " Don't stop for me — I'm of no account —
for God's sake, push right up with the boys ! " — and on
they went and left him weltering in his bloody vest
ments. Between the first and second ranges of the
enemy's works, right in the flush of the charge, a Cap
tain fell, and two men came to his aid. " Don't wait
here," he said ; " go back to your company ; one useless
man is enough ; don't make it three." Just then a
cheer floated down the mountain as they took the
rifle-pit. " Don't you hear that ? " he cried ; " march !"
and away they went. Such incidents as these strow all
the way from base to crest ; happening in an instant,
lost and forgotten in the whirlwind ; worthy, every one
of them, of a medal in gold ; worthy, every one of
them, of a place in history and hearts.
A MOUNTAIN CAMP.
What mighty names of paltry things war thrusts into
history, and leaves them there like flies preserved in
amber. There is Stevenson. What columns have been

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 89
written about it — nay, what columns have converged to
it, and yet Stevenson is a straggling, ragged little town,
of a couple of dozen buildings, that used to hang about
the intersection of the Memphis and Charleston, and
Nashville and Chattanooga Railroads,, to see the cars go
by. It was dropped down fairly within the borders of
Alabama, among the rocky ledges, some six miles from
the Tennessee River, and there is nothing contemptible
about Stevenson but Stevenson's self. The Cumber
land hills, laid up in rock and sprinkled thickly with
cedars, are piled very grandly about it, all rough with
monuments of Nature's make, the gray stones set up
on end, strangely carved by the action of some perished
flood, and reminding you of the lonely graveyards of
the Covenanters, the inscriptions all washed away.
Tumbling into the eddy of mules and elbows in the
dark, I found quarters with a fighting regiment, the 3d
Ohio. Here, turning a new leaf, there lay a new expe
rience. Ten thousand men are encamped around us.
Far up the hills, reddening the cedars, twinkle the
camp-fires ; flocks of tents dot the slopes ; clusters of
mules and horses, tied to trees, present peripheries of
heels everywhere ; valley and hill are tangled in a net
work of paths ; fat bacon is complaining from the ends
of ramrods ; the aroma of coffee struggles with baser
odors ; perched upon the ledges, at length beneath the

go PICTURES OF LIFE
trees, under canvas and in open air — everywhere sol
diers. Here a boy has just planked the ace and taken
the "trick;" or finished the letter to the girl he left
behind him, or lighted his pipe, or wrung out his shirt,
or shaken up his cedar boughs for a shake-down ; he is
playing the flute ; he is drawing the long bow ; he is
talking over Perryville or Murfreesboro. Here, by an
inch of candle, a cluster of two heads hangs over a
book. There, around a half-cord of bread and a pile
of russet slabs of bacon, and sacks of sugar and rice, a
group is gathered, little, smoky kettle, tin cup, haver
sack, in hand. Somebody, eager to see, skips up on
somebody's slab of bacon with his bare feet, and the
distribution is effected. Up through the night wails the
bugle ; along the valley rolls the beat of drums ; down
from the crags float, " When this cruel war is over,"
" Oh, take your time, Miss Lucy," and the loud laugh
and the tough word. The money changers follow the
army ; trade bustles up on the heels of war ; a dumb-
watch swings from the flap of a tent door ; a clothing
store is anchored by a tent-pin ; nick-nacks and noth
ings go at starvation prices ; water suspected of lemon,
a dime a thimble-full ; pencils whose lead, unlike Federal
bullets, does not go quite through, are good for a quar
ter ; and, as the apothecary says, " and so on."
If, like a cat, you step gingerly in the damp grass ; if
you are given to touching things with the tips of your

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 91
fingers ; if you are a disbeliever in the " peck of dirt "
doctrine, and are rose-waterish and patent-leathered ; if
you rebel at tin plates, bayonet candle-sticks, bacon and
hard-tack ; in a word, if you have any " nonsense "
about you, keep out of the camps ; you are not fit for
the army ; you have not begun to find out what the
Union is worth. A capital place is the army to get rid
of notions ; to settle loose joints into solid independ
ence ; to fall in love with mother earth and free air.

A SOLDIER'S MORNING.
Morning breaks strangely and musically in camp.
Not a familiar sound in it all ; no bells, no lowing
herds, no " cock's shrill clarion," no rattling pavements,
no opening doors. Turn out before the camps are astir,
and just as the whole family of canvas, Sibley cone,
" wall," and that bit of a kennel, the " dog " tent,
begin to show gray in the dawn. The colors at head
quarters droop heavy and damp. All around you, as
far as the eye can reach, it seems a badly harvested
field that has grown a monstrous crop of men, now
lying heads and points everywhere. By the calendar it
is Sunday, but of pattern too narrow to lap over into
Alabama in this year of grace and gunpowder, '63.

92 PICTURES OF LIFE
And now the music begins : floating lightly over the
top of the woods and the top of the morning, comes a
strange Babel of melody ; the cat-bird whines through
the song of sparrow and robin, and the bell of the
bobolink rings out over the scream of the jay. And
the little brown master of this brisk skirmish of dis
cord and melody sits on the uttermost green billow
of summer — the little epicure with a passion for beef
steak and fat spiders. I had forgotten until the minute
that I was in the home of the mocking-bird, that
vvinged polyglot of the South. These birds sing out
the night and the moonlight, and have a monotonous
note for that hour. They seem to be posted like sen
tries, and soldiers as they ride hear them passing the
little signals along from grove and thicket to grove
and thicket again, and are thus challenged by each
unseen picket, until the daybreak and the song-break
come grandly in together.
By and by, from field, wood and hill, come the sweet
notes of the reveille ; bugle echoes bugle, the fifes war
ble up through the roaring surf of the drums, and the
dear, old swell of a full band rolls over the tops of the
trees from an unseen camp. In singular contrast to all
this, an anomalous gamut of groans, neighs strangled
in the making, and half-human snorts, runs round the
whole landscape. It is the hideous morning welcome

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 93
of the immense cordon of mules to the rustle of the
morning forage. Flags flutter out, and blue threads of
smoke curl up along the camps ; the clink of the but-
ends of bayonets, beating the little bag full of Rio, give
you the merry music of the soldier's coffee-mill ; little
tin pails and camp-kettles go tinkling about. You are
bugled to breakfast, bugled to guard-mounting, bugled
to dinner, bugled to battle, bugled to bed, the bass-
drums the while giving three vicious growls at your
heels as you go. These " calls" are pleasant little devices
for translating curt English orders into music. Brigades
move to them, and cavalry charge; they sound clear
and shrill on the field of battle, and the horse and his
rider obey them together.
But there is one "call" sounded just after breakfast,
before the tent of the surgeon, that summons up, in
camp phrase, the "cripples" for treatment. It is not
an ugly strain, and mjy be rendered into words that
exhaust at once the tune and its burden : " Come to
qui-nine, come to qui-nine. Walk up quick, walk up
quick — come to qui-n-i-n-e ! "

94 PICTURES OF LIFE

EVERY DAY LIFE UNDER CANVAS.
If there are men in the world gifted with the most
thorough self-reliance, American soldiers are the men.
To fight in the grand anger of battle seems to me to
require less manly fortitude than to bear without mur
muring the swarm of little troubles that vex camp and
march. No matter where or when you halt them they
are at once at home. They know precisely what to do
first, and they do it. I have seen them march into a
strange region at dark, and almost as soon as fires
would show well, they were twinkling all over the
field, the Sibley cones rising like the work of enchant
ment everywhere, and the little dog-tents lying snug
to the ground, as if, like the mushrooms, they had
grown there, and the aroma of coffee and tor
tured bacon, suggesting creature comforts, and the
whole economy of life in canvas cities moving as
steadily on as if it had never intermitted. The
movements of regiments are as blind as fate.
Nobody can tell to-night where he will be to-morrow,
and yet with the first glimmer of morning the camp is
astir, and the preparations begin for staying there for
ever. An ax, a knife and a will are tools enough for a

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 95
soldier house-builder. He will make the mansion and
all its belongings of red cedar, from the ridge-pole to
the forestick, though a couple of dog-tents stretched
from wall to wall will make a roof worth thanking the
Lord for. Having been mason and joiner, he turns
cabinet-maker ; there are his table, his chairs, his side
board ; he glides into upholstery, and there is his bed
of bamboo, as full of springs and comfort as a patent
mattress. He whips out a needle and turns tailor ; he
is not above the mysteries of the sauce-pan and camp-
kettle ; he can cook, if not quite like a Soyer, yet
exactly like a soldier, and you may believe that he can
eat you hungry when he is in trim for it. Cosy little
cabins, neatly fitted, are going up ; here a boy is making
a fire-place, and quite artistically plastering it with the
inevitable red earth ; he has found a crane somewhere
and swung up thereon a two-legged dinner-pot ; there
a fellow is finishing out a chimney with brick from an
old kiln of secession proclivities ; yonder a bower-house,
closely interwoven with evergreen, is almost ready for
the occupants , the avenues between the lines of tents
are cleared and smoothed — " policed," in camp phrase ;
little seats with cedar awnings in front of the tents give
a cottage-look, while the interior, in a rude way, has a
genuine home-like air. The bit of a looking-glass hangs
against the cotton wall ; a handkerchief of a carpet just

96 PICTURES OF LIFE
before the bunk marks the stepping-off place to the
land of dreams ; a violin case is strung to a convenient
hook, flanked by a gorgeous picture of some hero of
somewhere, mounted upon a horse rampant and saltant,
" and what a length of tail behind ! "
The business of living has fairly begun again. There
is hardly an idle moment, and save here and there a
man brushing up his musket, getting that "damned
spot" off his bayonet, burnishing his revolver, you
would not suspect that these men had but one terrible
errand. They are tailors, they are tinkers, they are
writers; fencing, boxing, cooking, eating, drilling, —
those who say that camp-life is a lazy life know little
about it. And then the reconnoissances " on private
account ; " every wood, ravine, hill, field, is explored ;
the productions, animal and vegetable, are inventoried,
and one day renders them as thoroughly conversant
with the region round about as if they had been dwell
ing there a lifetime. Soldiers have interrogation points
in both eyes. They have tasted water from every
spring and well, estimated the corn to the acre, tried
the water-melons, bagged the peaches, knocked down
the persimmons, milked the cows, roasted the pigs,
picked the chickens ; they know who lives here and
there and yonder, the whereabouts of the native boys,
the names of the native girls. If there is a curious cave.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 97
a queer tree, a strange rock, anywhere about, they know
it. You can see them with chisel, hammer and haver
sack, tugging up the mountain, or scrambling down the
ravine, in a geological passion that would have won the
right hand of fellowship from Hugh Miller, and home
they come with specimens that would enrich a cabinet.
The most exquisite fossil buds just ready to open, beau
tiful shells, rare minerals, are collected by these rough
and dashing naturalists. If you think the rank and file
have no taste and no love for the beautiful, it is time
you remembered of what material they are made.
Nothing will catch a soldier's eye quicker than a patch
of velvet moss, or a fresh little flower, and many a letter
leaves the camps enriched with faded souvenirs of these
expeditions. I said that nothing will catch an old
campaigner's eye quicker than a flower, but I was
wrong, — a dirty, ragged baby will. I have seen a thir-
teen-dollar man expend a dollar for trinkets to hang
about the neck of an urchin that at home and three
years ago he would hardly have touched with the tongs.
Do you say, it is for the mother's sake ? You have only
to see the bedraggled, coarse, lank, tobacco-chewing
dam to abandon that idea, like a foundling, to the
tender mercies of the first door-step.
But to come back to camp : talk of perfumed clouds
of incense, there is nothing sweeter than a clear, bright
7

98 PICTURES OF LIFE
red cedar fire ; the mountain air is fairly laden with the
fragrance Everything is red cedar, and a prairie man,
as he sees the great camp-fires fed with hewn timbers
of the precious wood, would about as soon think of
cutting up his grand piano — seven octave or so — into
fuel for the kitchen stove. The breath of the red cedar
fires will float back to me like a pleasant memory, if
ever I inhale again the sulphurous Tartarean gusts from
the smothering beds of Illinois coal. Writing of fuel,
you should see the fences melt away an3rwhere within a
mile of camp ; up goes the red cedar again, like the
prophet, in a chariot of fire, and not enough left for a
bow and arrow.
The work of improvement goes briskly on ; a week
has passed, and the boys seem settled for life. Just
before tattoo, some night, down comes an order to
march at five in the morning. A fine, drizzling rain has
set in ; a thick blanket of fog has been snugly tucked
around the camp ; the fires look large and red • and
cheerful ; the boys are just ready to turn in when down
comes the order. Nothing is as you would think ; no
complaints, no murmurings, no watching the night out.
They are not to be cheated out of their sleep — not
they; it takes your green recruits for that; every
bundle of a blanket has a sleeping soldier in it ; every
knapsack has a drowsy head on it. At three the roll

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 99
of a drum straggles through the gloom ; the camp is
awake ; tents are struck, knapsacks packed, baggage
wagons loaded, mules untangled. Soldiers have
notions, and among them is the destruction of
their "improvements;" the bower-house crackles like
a volley of musketry, the cedar cottages are in flames ;
the stools and tables are glowing coals, and if they
don't fiddle, as Nero did, while their Rome is burn
ing — and as much of a Rome, too, as that was in the
time of the lupine brothers — at least they eat, A
soldier can starve patiently, but when he has a chance
he eats potently. Huddled around their little fires,
in the thick and turbid morning, the smutty kettles
bubble with the Arabic decoction as black as the
tents of the Sheik who threw dust on the beard of
his father: unhappy pork sizzles from ramrods, and
the boys take breakfast.
Some wise man proposed in Congress the substitu
tion of tea for coffee in the army, and told the people
that the soldiers would welcome the change! A
tolerably fair specimen of theoretical, stay-at-home
wisdom, but not worth a Sabbath-day's journey of the
Queen of Sheba to look at. Coffee is their true aqua
vita ; their solace and mainstay. When a boy cannot
drink his coffee, you may be sure he has done drinking
altogether. On a march, no sooner is a halt ordered.

ICO PICTURES OF LIFE
than little fires begin to twinkle along the line ; they
make coffee in five minutes, drink it in three, take a
drill at a hard cracker, and are refreshed. Our com
rades from " der Rhein " will squat phlegmatically
anywhere, even in line of battle. No sooner has the
storm swept to some other part of the field, than the
kettles begin to boil, and amid stray bullets and
shattering shell, they take great swallows of heart and
coffee together. It is Rhine wine, the soul of Gam-
brinus, " £ ,vitzer " and " Limberg " in one.
But it is five o'clock and a dingy morning ; the
regiments march away in good cheer, the army-wagons
go streaming and swearing after them ; the beat of the
drum grows fainter, the last straggler is out of sight ;
the canvas city has vanished like a vision. On such a
morning and amid such a scene I have loitered till it
seemed as if a busy city had been passing out of sight,
leaving nothing behind for all that life and light but
empty desolation. Will you wonder much if I tell you
that I have watched such a vanishing with a pang of
regret ; that the trampled field looked dim to me, worn
smooth and beautiful by the touch of those brave feet
whose owners have trod upon thorns with song — feet,
alas, how many, that shall never again in all this
coming and going world make music upon the old
thresholds? And how many such sites of perished

IN CAMP AND FIELD. lOI
cities this war has made ; how many bonds of good
fellowship have been rent to be united no more !
At home anywhere, I wrote, and I might well have
added, and used to anything, the boys are. You
would wonder, I think, to see men lie right down in
the dusty road, under the full noon sun of Tennessee
and Alabama, and fall asleep in a minute. I have
passed hundreds of such sleepers. A dry spot is as
good as a mattress ; the flap of a blanket quite a
downy pillow. You would wonder to see a whole
army corps without a shred of a tent to bless them
selves with, lying anywhere and everywhere in an all-
night rain, and not a growl nor a grumble. I was
curious to see whether the pluck and good nature were
washed out of them, and so I made my way out of the
snug, -dry quarters I am ashamed to say I occupied, at
five in the morning, to see what water had done for
them. Nothing! Each soaked blanket hatched out
as jolly a fellow as you would wish to see — muddy,
dripping, half-foundered, forth they came, wringing
themselves out as they went, with the look of a troop
of wet-down roosters in a fall rain, plumage at half-
mast, but hearts trumps every time. If they swore —
and some did — it was with a half-laugh ; the sleepy
fires were stirred up; then came the inevitable coffee,
and they were as good as new. " Blood is thicker than

I02 PICTURES OF LIFE
water." I could never tire of telling you how like iron
— wrought iron — men can get to be, and half the
sympathy I had corked and labeled for the hardships
of soldiers evaporated when I came to see how like
rugged oaks they toughened into knots under them.
There is another light to the picture. The regiment
twelve hundred strong now stacks five hundred mus
kets. Bullets did not do it, but just the terrible sifting
process ; the regiment is screened like grain ; the
sturdiest manhood alone remains. Writing of downy
pillows, I noticed on that rainy morning, that one of
the boys did not hug mother earth quite as closely as
the rest ; his head was well up, and when he shook
himself and whisked off the blanket he had lain upon,
I saw his pillow, and no duck evy dressed such
plumage ; it was a little triangular piece of iron, the
fragment of some bit of machinery, through which
were thrust three iron rods some six inches in length.
It was first this queer tripod of a pillow, then a corner
of a blanket, then a pouring rain, and then a good,
hearty, all-night sleep. Never mind that feather the
wrong way in your pillow ; thank GOD for the one
feather, pleasant dreams and good-night!

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 103

THE HOSPITAL AFTER THE BATTLE,
The Ohio at Louisville behind you, southward across
Kentucky and Tennessee you look upon the region in
the rear of the Army of the Cumberland, a breadth of
three hundred and eight miles to the spurs of the
mountains. That area once so lovely is dappled with
those shadows strange and sad — the Hospitals of the
Federal Army. At Chattanooga, at Bridgeport, at
Stevenson, at Cowan, at Decherd, at Murfreesboro, at
Nashville, strown all along the way are flocks of tents
sacred to mercy and the soldier's sake. I wish I could
bring you near enough to see them ; that I could lift
aside a fold in ward A here, or ward B there ; that you
might see the pale rows, each man upon his "little
couch, the white sheet setting close to the poor, thin
limbs like the drapery of the grave. It would wonder
fully magnify, I think, the work of the women of the
North. I would not take you to the Surgeon's quarters when
the battle is beginning; when he lays off the green
sash and the tinseled coat, and rolls up his, sleeves, and
spreads wide his cases filled with the terrible glitter of
silver steel, and makes ready to work. They begin to

I04 PICTURES OF LIFE
come in, slowly at first, one man nursing a shattered
arm, another borne by his comrades, three in an
ambulance, one on a stretcher ; then faster and faster,
lying here, lying there, waiting each his terrible turn.
The silver steel grows cloudy and lurid ; true right
arms are lopped like slips of golden willow ; feet that
never turned from the foe, forever more without an
owner, strow the ground. The knives are busy, the
saws play ; it is bloody work. Ah, the surgeon with
heart and head, with hand and eye fit for such a place,
is a prince among men ; cool and calm, quick and
tender, he feels among the arteries and fingers the
tendons as if they were harp-strings. But the cloud
thunders and the spiteful rain patters louder and
fiercer, and the poor fellows come creeping away in
broken ranks like corn beaten down with the flails
of the storm. " My GOD ! " cried a surgeon, as, look
ing up an instant from his work, he saw the mutilated
crowds borne in ; " my GOD . are all my boys cut
down ! " And yet it thundered and rained. A poor
fellow writhes and a smothered moan escapes him.
" Be patient. Jack," says the surgeon, cheerfully ; " I'll
make you all right in a minute.' And what a meaning
there was in that " all right ! " It was a right arm to
come off at the elbow, and " Jack " slipped off a ring
that clasped one of the poor, useless fingers that were

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 105
to blend with the earth of Alabama, and put it in his
pocket ! He was making ready for the " all right."
Does Alabama mean " here we rest ? " If so, how sad
yet glorious have our boys made it, who sink to rest
" With all their country's wishes blest !"
Another sits up while the surgeon follows the bullet
that had buried itself in his side ; it is the work of an
instant ; no solemn council here, no lingering pause ;
the surgeon is bathed in patriot blood to his elbows,
and the work goes on. An eye lies out upon a
ghastly cheek, and silently the ,sufferer bides his time.
"Well, Charley," says the doctor — he is dressing a
wound as he talks — "What's the matter?" "Oh, not
much. Doctor, only a hand off." Not unlike was the
answer made to me by a poor fellow, at Bridgeport,
shattered as a tree is by lightning; "how are you
now?" I said. "Bully!" was the reply. You should
have heard that word, as he gave it ; vulgar as it used
to seem, it grew manly and noble, and I shall never
hear it again without a thought for the boy that
uttered it, on the dusty slope of the Tennessee ; the
boy that sleeps the soldier's sleep witTiin an hundred
rods of the spot where I found him. And so it is
everywhere ; not a whimper nor a plaint. Only once
did I hear either. An Illinois Lieutenant, as brave a

I06 PICTURES OF LIFE
fellow as ever drew a sword, had been shot through
and through the thighs, fairly impaled by the bullet —
the ugliest wound but one I ever saw. Eight days
before, he weighed one hundred and sixty. Then, he
could not have swung one hundred and twenty clear of
the floor. He had just been brought over the moun
tain ; his wounds were angry with fever ; every motion
was torture ; they were lifting him as tenderly as they
could ; they let him slip and he fell, perhaps six inches.
But it was like a dash from a precipice to him, and he
wailed out like a little child, tears wet his pale, thin
face, and he only said, " my poor child, how will they
tell her?" It was only for an instant; his spirit and
his frame stiffened up together, and with a half smile
he said, " don't tell anybody, boys, that I made a fool
of myself!" The Lieutenant "sleeps well," and alas,
for the " poor child " — how did they tell her?
A soldier fairly riddled with bullets, like one of those
battle-flags, lay on a blanket gasping for breath.
"George," said a comrade and a friend before this
cruel war began, with one arm swung up in a sling,
and who was going home on furlough, " George, what
shall I tell them' at home for you ?" "Tell them," said
he, "that there isn't hardly enough left of me to say
' I,' but — hold down here a minute — tell Kate there is
enough of me left to love her till I die." George got

IN CAMP AND FIELD 107
his furlough that night, and left the ranks forever. It
seems to me that all true women must envy that girl's
fate. Shot away all but his heart, that still beat
true, who would not be the dead soldier's bride ? Oh,
there is nothing anywhere here to make you blush for
human weakness ; the bullet is not moulded that can
kill Western manhood.
I want to say here, that the surgeons should be
compelled to report to the WOMEN ; if they do their
duty, they have to perform in large measure woman's
work. They need more than skill and scalpels ; they
want woman's fortitude, tenderness and faith. There
are the noblest of men among the surgeons in the
Army of the Cumberland, who do not halt at the letter
of duty, but go on cheerfully to the spirit ; and there
are — GoD save the mark ! — men among them for whom
faithless is the mildest euphemism. I must tell one
instance : a " contract " surgeon — if you know what
that is — went out on a pleasure ride within the hour —
three o'clock — that two hundred sick and wounded men
came into his ward. He returned at sunset, and on
being reminded of his neglected duty, flippantly replied,
" Oh, I'll do them in half an hour ! " What, think you,
would "do" him and do him justice? For one, I
should be quite content to trust his fate to the verdict
of a jury of the women of the North, to whom be glory
and honor everlasting !

I08 PICTURES OF LXFE

WOMAN THE SOLDIER'S FRIEND.
It is a white, dusty ridge in Alabama ; tall, slim oaks
sprinkle it, and beneath them, in streets with a strange,
far-eastern look, stand the tents of one of those blessed
Cities of Mercy — a Field Hospital. The sun pours
hotly down ; a distant drum snarls now and then, as if
in a dream ; the tinkling concert df a cloud of locusts —
the cicada of the South — comes, like the dear old
sleigh-bells' chime, from a distant tree. "The loud
laugh that tells the vacant mind " is unheard ; the
familiar sound of closing doors and children's carol
never rises there ; the tents swell white and sad and
still. Within them lie almost three thousand soldiers,
marred with all wounds conceivable, wasted with pain,
parched with fever, wearily turning, wearily waiting, to
take up the blessed march. " Ho for the North ! "
That is the word, the ever-abiding charmer that "lin
gers still behind." It is Stevenson ; it is Nashville ; it
is Louisville ; it is home ; it is Heaven ! Alas, for it,
how they falter and sleep by the way. And every one
of these men was somebody's boy once ; had a mother
once, a wife, a sister, a sweetheart, but "better is a
friend that is near than a brother afar off," and now

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 109
comes the blessed mission of women. True, there are
only two here in person, but how many in heart and
work! You have been thinking, my sisters, where is our
work in all these scenes? That snowy roll of linen;
that little pillow beneath the sufferer's head ; that soft
fold across the gashed breast ; that cooling drink the
rude, kind, stalwart nurse is putting to yonder boy's
white lips ; that delicacy this poor fellow is just partak
ing of ; that dressing-gown whose broidered hem those
long, thin fingers are toying with ; the slippers, a world
too wide for the thin, faltering feet ; the dish of fruit
a left hand is slowly working at, his right laid upon our
Federal altar at Chicamauga, never to be lifted more.
Your tree, my sister, bore that fruit ; your fingers
wrought, your heart conceived. " What do the women
say about us boys at home?" slowly asked a poor
wreck of a lad, as I sat by his side. That brow of his
ached, I know, for the touch of a loving hand, "and
the sound of a voice that is still." At the moment he
asked the question he was turning over a little silken
needle-book that one of you laughing girls made one
day, and tucked in a corner of a bag labeled "U. S.
Sanitary Commission." On the cover of that book you
had playfully wrought the words, "my bold soldier
boy." I silently pointed to the legend ; the reply struck
home to his heart, and he burst into tears. I assure

no PICTURES OF LIFE
you they wftre not bitter tears he shed, and as he wiped
them away with a white handkerchief you girls had
hemmed for him, his question was twice answered and
he was content. His eyelids closed down, his breathing
grew regular; he had fallen asleep, and I thought it
was the picture of the " Soldier's Dream " over again.
You hear of the malappropriation of your gifts, but
never fear ; one grain may fall, but two will spring up
and blossom out into " forget-me-nots." Your work is
everywhere. Go with me to that tent standing apart.
It is the Dead-house tent. Four boys in their brown
blankets, four whitewood coffins, four labels with four
names on four still breasts. Two of the four garments
the sleepers wear are of linen from your stores, stitched
by your fingers. Verily, the Ladies' Soldiers' Aid
Societies should be named " Mary," for are they not,
like her of old, "last at the cross and earliest at the
grate."
NIGHT RIDE OF THE WOUNDED BRIGADE.
"When can I go home. Doctor?" is the question
forever shaped by the lips and asked by the eyes, as he
goes his daily rounds. There was a train of cars at
last — ^box cars — cattle cars, if you like it better — drawn
up opposite the hospital, and I stood there on a bright

IN CAMP AND FIELD. Ill
morning at nine o'clock, as the four hundred poor fel
lows, lame, bandaged, supported, carried outright, came
over the hill to take the train. It was the Wounded
Brigade, and three of every five wore some token of
woman's remembrance. It was announced to them the
night before that they were to go at five, and there was
no sleep for joy. Some of them had actually watched
the night out, in the open air, like the Chaldean shep
herds, lest by some chance the train should go away
without them. But they were hopeful and heartful, for
they would go by-and-by. That Wounded Brigade
made my eyes dim as it came ; no " pomp and circum
stance " now ; no martial step, no rustling banners, no
gleaming arms. I should have been less than human
had I not swallowed my heart all day as I thought of
that Brigade, the grandest body of men I ever saw in
my life. Well, the cars were floored with the side and
wounded, and we moved slowly away, and I must tell
you that all along that weary ride of twenty hours to
Nashville, it was the thoughtful gift of woman that
kept their hearts up. Not on the field of Chicamauga,
not in the woods of Alabama, not on the train in Ten
nessee, could I get out of sight of the Aid Society, the
Sanitary Commission, the Florence Nightingales of the
North. I want to describe that ride ; how the boys
went as cattle go , how they waited hours till a Major-

112 PICTURES OF LIFE
General's swift, commodious car should pass ; how they
crept along at the rear of everything alive.
If the mile-posts tell truth, there are one hundred
and thirteen of them between the Field Hospital at
Stevenson and the depot at Nashville, but if the train
of the Wounded Brigade runs by honest time, there are
four hundred. When I saw the limping squadron
trailing over the hill, a memory brightened into sight.
It was of a Division drill, when the old-fashioned Gen
eral — J. D. Morgan — sat away there upon his horse, and
eight thousand men stood motionless on the field away
here. The sun glinted grandly from the hedges of bay
onets, and the colors grew deep and rich in the light,
and the breasts of dark blue were built into a wall.
Now and then an aid galloped out from the group
around the General, and down the line, and back to his
position again. The bugles blew, and the stately line
was a column ; a wing unfolded here and a wing there ;
they flapped together as noiselessly as an eagle's ; it
was in order of march ; it was in line of battle, and the
aids dashed out and the bugles blew on, and then the
field was checkered with squares like a chess-board for
a mighty game. They were as true as a die ; a mosaic
of men ; all exact as a page of Euclid ; you looked and
the evolution was complete. There, in equal spaces
between the angles of the squares, frowned a battery.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. II3
How it got there nobody could tell. In an instant
there was a glitter and a flash. The cavalry were upon
them ! The outer rank to the knee ; the next bent ;
the next erect, and so the cones grew, quick as a turn
of the kaleidoscope — cones tipped with cold steel, and
the reflected light grew steady and still. There was a
rustle along the iron-clad porcupines ; the batteries
disappeared ; the hedges melted away, the squares were
columns, the columns were lines, and away marched
the battalions. And in all this there was no shout, no
oath, no loud command. The General away yonder
upon his horse moulded and fashioned the thousands at
will, as if he had been a sculptor modeling in clay, and
he was, and most masterly was the handling. He could
have taken them through Jerusalem's narrow gate, the
" Needle's Eye ; " he could have poured them through
a defile like water. That handling of men is a rare art.
I have seen a Colonel make three attempts to get his
regiment through a fence gap two rails wide, and set it
to "throwing" the fence, at last, like a herd of unruly
cattle ! Bullion on the shoulders of fools only makes
folly more conspicuous.
It was to that brilliant Division drill that my mind
swung back, when the Wounded Brigade hove in sight.
They were loaded upon the train ; two platform cars
were paved with them, forty on a car. Seven boxes

114 PICTURES OF LIFE
were so packed you could not set your foot down
among them as they lay. The roofs of the cars were
tiled with them, and away we pounded, all day, all
night, into the next morning, and then Nashville.
Half of the men had not a shred of a blanket, and it
rained steadily, pitilessly. What do you think of plat
form cars for a triumphal procession wherein to bear
wounded heroes to the tune of " the soldier's return
from the war?" Well, what I would come at is this:
the stores of the Sanitary Commission and the gifts of
women kept the boys' hearts up through all those
weary, drizzling hours. It is midnight, and the attend
ants are going through the train with coffee graced with
milk and sugar — think of that ! — two fresh, white, crisp
crackers apiece, and a little taste of fruit. Did your
hands prepare it, dear lady? I hope so, for the little
balance in your favor set down in the ledger of GOD
But here they come with the coffee ; will you go with
them ? Climb through that window into a car black as
the Hole of Calcutta. But mind where you step ; the
floor is one layer deep with wounded soldiers. As you
swing the lantern round, bandages show white and
ghastly everywhere ; bandages, bandages, and now and
then a rusty spot of blood. What worn-out, faded
faces look up at you. They rouse like wounded crea
tures hunted down to their lairs as you come. The tin

IN CAMP AND FIELD. II5
cups extended in all sorts of hands but plump, strong
ones, tinkle all around you. You are fairly girdled with
a tin cup horizon. How the dull, faint faces brighten
as those cups are filled ! On we go, out at one window,
in at another, stepping gingerly among mangled limbs.
We reach the platform cars creaking with their
drenched, chilled, bruised burdens, and I must tell you
that one poor fellow among them lay with a tattered
blanket pinned around him ; he was literally sans
culotte ! "How is this?" I said. "Haven't got my
descriptive list — that's what's the matter," was the
reply. Double allowance all around to the occupants
of the platforms, and we retraced our steps to the rear
of the train. You should have heard the ghost of a
cheer that rose and fluttered like a feeble bird, as we
went back. It was the most touching vote of thanks
ever offered ; there was a little flash up of talk for a
minute, and all subsided into silence and darkness
again. Wearily wore the hours and heavily hammered
the train. At intervals the guard traversed the roofs
of the cars and pulled in the worn-out boys who
had jarred down to the edges— pulled them in toward
the middle of the cars without waking them ! What
a homeward march is all this to set a tune to !
By some error in apportionment there was not quite
coffee enough for all on decfc, and two slips of boys on

Il6 PICTURES OF LIFE
the roof of the car where I occupied a comer were left
without a drop. Whenever we stopped, and that was
two hours here and three hours there, waiting for this
and for that — there was no hurry — and the back door
was slided back in its groove, I saw two hungry faces
stretched down over the car's edge, and heard two fee
ble voices crying, " We have had nothing up here since
yesterday noon, we two — there are only us two boys —
please give us -something. Haven't you got any hard
tack?" I heard that pitiful appeal to the officers in
charge and saw those faces till they haunted me, and
to-day I remember those plaintive tones as if I were
hearing a dirge. I felt in my pockets and haversack for
a cracker, but found nothing. I really hated myself for
having eaten my dinner and not saved it for them. A
further search was rewarded with six crackers from the
Chicago Mechanical Bakery, and watching my chance
when Pete's back was turned — the cook a smutty auto
crat was Pete in his way — I took a sly dip with a basin
into the coffee-boiler. As the car gave a lurch in the
right direction, I called from the window, " Boys ! " I
heard them crawling to the edge, handed them up
the midnight supper, " Bully for you," they said, and I
saw them no more. When the train reached Nashville
and I clambered down to solid ground again, I looked
up at the roof; it was bare. And how do you like the
ride of the Wounded Brigade ?

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 117
I do not write this in a censorious spirit. I do not
know but it was the best that could be done, yet I
thought — you cannot help thinking — that the passenger
train which left Stevenson with its load of civilians, sut
lers, contractors and what-nots, at six dollars a man,
one hour before my poor Brigade,. and pursued its way
"without let or hindrance," reaching Nashville thirteen
hours before it, could have had worthier occupants in
the persons of the boys in white bandages. I give it as
one of the pictures of war, just after the blossoming out
of a great battle. Men and women with tomb-stones
in their left breasts need it. Men and women who are
alive and warm deserve it that they may discern more
clearly the horrors they have alleviated. One truth you
ought not to forgive me should I fail to record ; during
all that day and night miserably craunched out between
wheel and rail, I did not hear one lisp or whisper of
complaint ! Are Federal soldiers gods or are they only
men ? Homer could have moved the machinery of his
Epic with them, and no thanks to Apollo " of the silver
bow." After the Sunday's battle at Chicamauga, I heard a
young soldier who had been in attles, and who was
holding a splintered arm as if it had been a pet baby,
lightly and laughingly talking of soldiers' hardships, and
there was neither grumble nor growl in the whole camp-

Il8 PICTURES OF LIFE
fire gossip. " Good government," said he, " of course it
is. When we boys are at the North Pole and it wants
us at the South, why it carries us in cattle cars, and we
ride like gentlemen. But when we have only four or
five hundred miles to go, why then it lets us frog it ! "
Among all the words born in camps, " skedaddle " and
all, commend me to " frog it." It is as expressive as a
picture. "When I entered the service," he continued, "says
they, ' why, you'll have a chance for three things if you
enlist — study, travel and promotion.' " And so he rat
tled on, and a merry party they made of it.
How many noble women have threaded like rays of
sunshine the heavy cloud of war, women of the nine
teenth century fit to be named with Rachel and Ruth
and Florence Nightingale. No better epitaph could be
traced upon their tomb-stones than this :
"Each Soldier's Sister and Each Sufferer's Friend."
As with the " Angel of the Crimea," so with them —
the soldiers kissed the shadows that fell upon the
pillows as they passed by. When the scenes amid
which we wait and labor pass into the grand eternity
of the historic page, the heart of the world will warm
to the Women of the North ; soldierly daring and
womanly deeds will be blended forever ; the kiss of the

IN CAMP AND FIELD. II9
daughters will not stain the sword of the sons, and the
lost Eden of old will smile once more on the map of
the globe.

ARMY CHAPLAINS.
It would amuse you to see a man, almanac in hand,
trying to find out the day of the month, and compelled
to call for aid at last. That thin day-book of time, if
you have ever happened to think of it, presumes on
your knowing one of two things, the day of the month
or the day of the week. Ignorant of both, the
almanac and the Koran are pretty nearly alike — sealed
books. There is no place like the army for losing your
reckoning ; the days flow by in an unbroken stream ;
a month passes and you fancy it a fortnight, and it is
no unusual thing to see a boy going about among his
comrades hunting up the day of the week. The
Sabbath, that sweetest blossom in the waste of time, is
trampled by hurrying feet unnoted. It came and went
yesterday and you find it out to-morrow. You are at
sea, and though you may never have been a saint, yet
when the Sundays keep dropping out of the calendar,
so like withered leaves, it makes you somewhat uncom
fortable for a sinner.

I20 PICTURES OF LIFE
But how about the chaplains? you ask. I have
met three dozen men whose symbol is the cross, and of
that number, two should have been in the ranks, two
in the rear, one keeping the temperance pledge, one
obeying the third commandment — to be brief about it,
five repenting and eight getting common sense. The
rest were efficient, faithful men. Not one chaplain in
fifty, perhaps, lacks the paving-stones of good inten
tions, but the complex complaint that carries off the
greatest number is ignorance of human nature and
want of common sense. Four cardinal questions, I
think, will exhaust the qualifications for a chaplaincy:
Is he religiously fit? Is he physically fit? Is he
acquainted with the animal " man " ? Does he possess
honest horse-sense? Let me give two or three illus
trative pictures from life : Chaplain A. has a puttering
demon ; he is forever not letting things alone. Passing
a group of boys, he hears one oath, stops short in his
boots, hurls a commandment at the author, hears
another and reproves it, receives a whole volley, and
retreats, pained and discomfited. Now, Mr. A. is a
good man, anxious to do duty, but that habit of his,
that darting about camp like a devil's darning needle
with a stereotype reproof in his eye and a pellet of
rebuke on the tip of his tongue, bolts every heart
against him. Chaplain B. preaches a sermon — regular

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 12I
army fare, too — on Sunday, buttons his coat up snugly
under his chin all the other days of the week, draws a
thousand dollars, and is content. Chaplain C. never
forgets that he is C, "with the rank of Captain,"
perfumes like a civet cat, never saw the inside of a
dog-tent, never quite considered the rank and file fellow-
beings. Of the three, the boys hate the first, despise
the second, and d — n the third.
" Demoralize " has become about as common a thing
in the army as a bayonet, though the boys do not
always get the word right. One of them — " one of
'em " in a couple of senses — was talking of himself one
night. " Maybe you wouldn't think it, but I used to
be a regular, straight-laced sort of a fellow, but since I
joined the army I have got damnably decomposed!"
Now, a drunken General and a "decomposed" Chaplain
are about as useless lumber as can cumber an army.
There is Chaplain D., well equipped with heart, but
with no head "to speak of," and, with the purest
intentions, a perfect provocative to evil. It was next
to impossible for a man to put the best side out when
he was by ; a curious two-footed diachylon plaster, he
drew everybody's infirmities to the surface. I think
the regiment grew daily worse and worse, and where
he was, words were sure to be the dirtiest, jokes the
coarsest, deeds the most unseemly. The day before

122 PICTURES OF LIFE
the battle of Chicamauga, the regiment had signed,
almost to a man, a paper inviting him to resign, but on
the days of the battles he threw off his coat and
carried water to the men all day. In the hottest places
there was Chaplain D., water here, water there, assist
ing the wounded, aiding the surgeons, a very minister
of mercy. That ' invitation ' lighted the fire under
somebody's coffee kettle on Monday night. The
Chaplain had struck the right vein at last ; the boys
had found something to respect and to love in him,
and the clergyman's future usefulness was insured.
The bond between Chaplain and men was sealed on
that field with honest blood and will hold good until
doomsday. One noble Illinois chaplain, who died in the harness,
used to go out at night, lantern in hand, among the
blended heaps of the battle-field, and as he went, you
could hear his clear, kind voice, " any wounded here ? "
and so he made the terrible rounds. That man was
idolized in life and bewailed in death. Old Jacob
Trout, a Chaplain of the Revolution, and who preached
a five-minute sermon before the battle of Brandywine,
was the type of the man that soldiers love to honor.
His faith was in "the sword of the Lord and of
Gideon," but his work was with the musket of Jacob
Trout. I do not mean to say that the Chaplain should

IN CAMP AND FIl^LD. 123
step out from the little group of non-combatants that
belong to a regiment, but I do say that he must
establish one point of contact, quicken one throb of
kindred feeling between the men and himself, or his
vocation is as empty of all blessing and honor as the
old wine-flasks of Herculaneum. No man can mis
understand what I have written. The chaplaincy, at
best, is an office difficult and thankless. It demands
the best men to fill it well and worthily, men whose
very presence and bearing put soldiers upon their
honor ; and it is safe to say that he who is fit to be a
chaplain is fit to rule a people. How nobly many of
them have labored in the Army of the Cumberland !
Ministers of mercy, right-hand men of the surgeons
and the Nightingales, bearers of the cup of cold water
and the word of good cheer, the strong regiment may
be the Colonel's, but the Wounded Brigade is the
Chaplain's. Writing of sermons, did you ever make one at a
field preaching at the Front ? If not, I must give you
a homely little picture I saw yesterday, which by the
calendar was Sunday. Blundering past a rusty camp,
the tents stained and rent, I came upon a group of
about as many as met of old " in an upper chamber,"
and not an officer among them, unless it might be a
sergeant. They were seated upon logs, and the Chap-

124 PICTURES OF LIFE
lain was just leading off in a hymn, that floated up and
was lost, like a bird in a storm, amid the clash of bands
and the rumble of army wagons in the valley below.
The Chaplain wore a hat with a feather in it, that he
might have been born in, for any evidence I have to
the contrary, for during the entire services, praise, prayer
and preaching, the voice came out from beneath the
hat with a feather in it. Perhaps it would have struck
you as irreverent, but it may be that he feared the mis
fortune of the wolf who talked hoarsely with little Red
Riding Hood, because he had a cold in his head. At
the heels of the Chaplain as he preached, a kettle was
bubbling over a fire, and a soldier-boy on his knees
beside it was apparently worshiping the hardware.
But he was no idolater for all that, since a closer look
discovered him fishing in it for something with a fork.
Around the preacher, but just out of sermon range,
boys were smoking, darning, chatting, reading, having
a frolic ; the voice of a muleteer came distinctly up
from below, as he damned the hearts of his six in
hand — for no teamster I ever heard was so wild as to
swear at a mule's soul ; the passing trains of ammuni
tion crushed the Chaplain's sentences in two, and, now
and then, whistled a truant word away with them, but
he kept right on, clear, earnest, sensible^no matter for
the hat with a feather in it — and I could not help feel-

IN CAM.P AND FIELD. 125
ing a profound respect for the preacher and the little
group around his feet.
To mingle with the men, and share in their frolics as
well as their sorrows, without losing self-respect ; to be
with them and yet not of them ; to get at their hearts
without letting them know it — these are indeed tasks
most delicate and difficult, requiring a tact a man must
be bom with, and a good, honest sense that can never
be derived from Gill's "body of divinity." "How do
you like Chaplain S. ?" I asked of a group of Illinois
boys one day. "We'll freeze to him every time," was
the characteristic reply, and not unanticipated, for I
had seen him dressing a wound, helping out a blunder
ing boy, whose fingers were all thumbs, with his letter
to "the girl he left behind him,'' playing ball, running
a race, as well as heard him making a prayer and
preaching a sermon. The Surgeon and Chaplain are
co-workers. I said the former should report to the
Women, and I half beheve that the Chaplain should
do likewise.

THE SOLDIER'S "FIRST MAN"
Sharpshooting is the squirrel-hunting of war, and it
is wonderful how utterly forgetful of self the marksmen
grow; with what sportsman-like eyes they watch the

126 PICTURES O^ LIFE
grander game, and with what coolness and accuracy
they bring it down. But indifferent as men become to
human life, they have the most vivid and minute
remembrance of the first man they brought down with
a dehberate aim ; often noting, in the instant of time
preceding the fatal shot, the fashion of features, color
of eyes and hair, even the expression of face, all painted
in a picture that shall last the life out.
" My first man," said an artilleryman to me, " I saw
but twenty seconds and shall remember him forever. I
was standing by my gun, when an infantry soldier
rushed up and made a lunge with the bayonet at one
of the horses. I whipped out my revolver, took him
through the breast, he threw up his hands, gave me the
strangest look in the world and fell forward upon his
face. He had blue eyes, brown, curling hair, a dark
mustache and a handsome face."
The gunner paused a moment and added : " I .
thought the instant I shot that I should have loved
that man had I known him. I tell you what — this
war is terrible business." And so it is — and so it is —
but "they that take the sword shall perish by the
sword."

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 127

PA YMA S TERS A ND JE WELR Y.
The coming of no officer, except a well-beloved com
manding General, is so heartily welcomed by the boys,
as that of those gilt-leafed gentlemen with the iron
trunks, the opening of which gives everything the color
of spring, bringing the " green back " to the most
withered prospect. An epitaph for a modern Pay
master can be easily stolen from Halleck's sweetest
little poem, as thus :
" Green be the turf above him."
Just finishing the inscription, I read it and the expla
nation to a rough boy near by who was making jewelry.
He looked up with, " Old Halleck write that? " " Fitz-
Greene," said I. "That's what's the matter," said he,
and worked away at his jewel again.
" Jewelry," you think and wonder, and perhaps it
may be worth an explanation. The Tennessee and
Stone rivers are strewn with shells of rare beauty and
exquisite coloring; blue, green, pink and pure pearl.
If you look in any boy's knapsack you will be quite
sure to find a shell in it. Of these queer, broken, little
chests of former life, the soldiers make rings, pins,
hearts, arrows, chains, crosses ; and to see the rough

128 PICTURES OF LIFE
tools they use, and then note the elegance of form and
finish in the things they make, would set the means
and the results incredibly apart. With a flat stone for
a polishing table, they grind down the shell, and then
with knife and file shape little fancies that would not
be out of place on a jeweler's velvet, and beautiful sou
venirs of fields of battle. Every ring and heart has its
bit of a story the maker is not reluctant to tell. This
little touch of the fine arts gives to camps a pleasant,
home-like look, and I have seen many a soldier putting
the final polish to a pearl trinket by the light of his
inch-of-candle flaring from a bayonet, as earnest over
his work as if the shell possessed the charm of Alad
din's lamp, and rubbing it would summon spirits.

HEARING FROM HOME.
Occupation is a grand thing, and quite as important
to the tone and heart of an army as hard bread and
bacon. The monster against which Dr. Kane fought
so successfully in the Arctic night, with theatre and
frolic, wanders listlessly up and down the camps.
Would you believe — and yet it is , true — that many a
poor fellow in the Army of the Cumberiand has liter
ally died to go home; died of the terrible, unsatisfied

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 129
longing, home-sickness? That it lies at the heart of
many a disease bearing a learned name ? It is languor,
debility, low fever, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, death,
and yet, through all, it is only that sad thing they call
Nostalgia. Who shall dare to say that the boy who
" lays him down and dies," a-hungered and starving for
home, does not fall as well and truly for his country's
sake as if a bullet had found his heart out ? Against it
the surgeon combats in vain, for " who can minister to
a mind diseased ? "
The loved ones at home have something to answer
for in this business, and it pains me to think that more
than one man has let his life slip out of a grasp too
weak to hold it, just because his dearest friends did not
send him a prescription once a week, price three cents —
a letter from home. Is some poor fellow sinking at
heart because you do not write to him ? If there is, lay
my letter down at once and write your own, and may
He who sent a messenger all the way from Heaven to
earth with glad tidings, forgive you for deferring a hope
to some soldier-boy. You would not wonder at my
warmth had you seen that boy waiting and waiting, as
I have, for one little word from somebody. Too proud
to own, and yet too sincere to quite conceal it, he tries
to strangle the thought of home, and goes into the
battle, whence he never comes forth. An Indiana
9

130 PICTURES OF LIFE
soldier was struck in the breast at Chicamauga and fell.
The bullet's errand was about done when it reached
him ; it pierced coat and underclothing, and there was
force enough left in it to wound if not to kill him. But
it had to work its way through a precious package of
nine letters, indited by one dear heart and traced by
one dear hand ; that done, the bullet's power expended,
there it lay asleep against the soldier's breast ! Have
you been making such a shield, dear lady, for anybody?
Take care that it does not lack one letter of being
bullet-proof.

THE NEW ENGLAND SCHOOLMA'AM.
The love for the old flag gushes out sometimes in the
most unexpected places like a spring in the desert, and
many a time have Federal prisoners been startled into
tears at finding a friendly heart beating close beside
them. A body of Federal prisoners had reached
Rome, Georgia, en route for Richmond. Weary,
famished, thirsting, they were herded like cattle in the
street under the burning sun, a public show. It was a
gala day in that modern Rome. The women mag
nificently arrayed came out and pelted them with balls
of cotton, and with such sneers and taunts as, " So you

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 131
have come to Rome, have you, you Yankees? How
do you like your welcome?" — and then more cotton
and more words. The crowds and the hours came and
went, but the mockery did not intermit, and the poor
fellows were half out of heart. A Major, faint and ill,
had stepped back a pace or two and leaned against a
post, when he was lightly touched upon the arm. As
he looked around mentally nerving himself for some
more ingenious insult, a fine-looking, well-dressed boy
of twelve stood at his elbow, his frank face turned up
to the Major's. " And he, too ? " thought the officer.
With a furtive glance at a guard who stood with his
back to them, the lad, pulling the Major's skirt, and
catching his breath boy-fashion, said, " Are you from
New England ? " "I was born in Massachusetts," was
the reply. " So was my Mother," returned the boy,
brightening up ; " she was a New England girl, and
she was what you call a ' school-ma'am ' up North ; she
married my father and I'm their boy, but how she does
love New England and the Yankees and the old
United States, and so do I ! "
The Major was touched, as well he might be, and his
heart warmed to the boy as to a young brother, and he
took out his knife, severed a button from his coat, and
handed it to him for a remembrance. " Oh, I've got
half a dozen just like it. See here ! " and he took from
his pocket a little string of gifts of other boys in blue.

132 PICTURES OF LIFE
" My mother would like to see you," he added, " and
I'll go and tell her."
"What are you doing here?" growled the guard,
suddenly wheeling round upon him, and the boy
slipped away into the crowd and was gone. Half an
hour elapsed and a lovely lady, accompanied by the
little patriot, passed slowly down the sidewalk next to
the curb-stone. She did not pause, she did not speak ;
if she smiled at all it was faintly ; but she handed to
one and another of the prisoners bank-notes as she
went. As they neared the Major, the boy gave him a
significant look, as much as to say, " that's my New
England mother." The eyes of the elegant lady and
the poor, weary officer met for an instant, and she
passed away like a vision.

DRESSING FOR BATTLE.
When soldiers address themselves to battle, they
generally go like men on business bound ; the old
blouse is good enough ; the old hat will answer ; they
look to their guns a thought more critically ; they
tighten their belts a little, and they are ready. Officers
seldom wear their finery into the field , the torn bars,
the withered leaf, the clipped eagle, the dim star, will

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 133
do ; but it is not always so. I have known a soldier
make a most careful toilette on the eve of battle,
attiring himself in his cleanest and best, as if he were
going home. Perhaps the chance of such a thing may
have drifted into mind ; perhaps he had half a thought
of anticipating the last hasty offices due the dead
soldier ; but I have been so often surprised out of my
preconceived notions of what men are thinking who set
forth to fight that I have ceased to entertain them
altogether. General Grant is a quiet gentleman in a
snuff-colored coat ; Wood is twin-brother to his orderly ; '
he went into battle in a shocking hat, a blouse
" hutched up " like a Norwegian woman's boddice, and
his pistol thrust in his belt like a whaler's knife ; the
commanding General hurled the Fourth Corps against
Mission Ridge in a uniform too sleek and slippery for a
young Lieutenant's callow dignity. I know one
General, however, who puts on his holiday apparel
when he goes to battle. There is a glitter of buttons
and stars where he is, and they were seen glancing like
meteors at Stone River, Chicamauga and Mission
Ridge, in the thick of the fight. " I want my men to
know where I am," he said, adding with a smile, " and
then those baubles light a man to danger and duty
wonderfully well. He cannot decently run by star
light ! '' And there was something in the idea worth

134 PICTURES OF LIFE
thinking about. It puts a man upon his honor; we
somehow associate mean attire with mean actions, and
it is as easy to understand the feeling of the General as
of the great composer who, whenever he sat down to
dash off an immortal score, arrayed himself in the
garments wherein he appeared before the king.

SURVEYING ON HORSEBACK.
There are a thousand things about the preparations
for a battle that never challenge public admiration.
Among them is the topographical reconnoissance of the
enemy's country, involving slow science, quick move
ments, quicker wit, and the dash and courage of a
scout. Surveying on horseback and at a quadrupe-
dante-pu gait — in plain phrase, a smart Canterbury
gallop — is one of the achievements that would have
disturbed the polarity of the sober-going old compass-
bearers that were said to " run lines " when they only
meant they plodded them.
I have upon the drum-head under my eye — a bit of
parchment, by-the-way, upon which the long-roll has
been thrice beaten — a map of all the region round
about, from west of Mission Ridge to east of the
Chicamauga, and from Chattanooga to a point below

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 135
Crawfish Spring, an area of full forty miles. It is the
work of a well known pioneer and civil engineer in the
Northwest. In the immediate service of the com
manding General, he is an improved edition of Cooper's
" Pathfinder " escaped from the pages of the novelist.
Think of a man's entering a farmhouse, demanding to
see the title-deed of the owner, finding a " corner "
therefrom, and then mounting his horse and dashing
away, compass in hand, at the head of an escort of
hard-riding dragoons, counting his horse's bounds as he
goes, and so galloping along the line to the next
"witness," as the surveyors name it. Think of his
noting every feature of the surface, the woods, the
fields, the hills, the vales, the distances, and delineating
everything, till a map to fight by grows beneath his
steady hand. Think of his doing all this, in forty-eight
hours, in a region where bullets might swarm any
minute like bees, and where they did fly like hornets.
And this, incredible as it looks, is only the plain story
in brief of an important service — one that has in it a
dash of danger and romance that almost turns the
loving needle into the flashing sword. This, at least :
he " prospected " a region that proved as rich as any
other region yet, in Federal valor and Federal blood.

136 PICTURES OF LIFE

OLD-TIME FORTS AND NEW.
There is hardly anything about the mechanism of
war that so disappoints a civilian as his first glimpse of
a modern fort. He thinks of towers and turrets and
walls of stone ; he sees a heap of reddish earth, tangled
round the base with an ugly hedge of dry branches,
and wrinkled with a deep trench. Wicker-work bas
kets — gabions, in military parlance — filled with earth,
are ranged along the parapet ; the smutty nose of a
gun appears at breaks in the clay, here and there ; he
finds it fashioned like the crust of an immense chicken
pie, though verily they that are in it are no chickens ;
a flagstaff, taken root in the hottest spot of the bare
and trodden area, flaunts a flag; men lie asleep in
the shadow of the wall ; a solitary sentry paces to and
fro, casting a glance at the landscape as he turns upon
his heel. It is Fort Defiance or Albany or Ellsworth ;
it has a story ; it has uttered a voice ; it has been
wrapped in a turban of cloud and thunder and thick
lightnings ; it has lashed a thousand men to the right
about, but our civilian can hardly see how it all is. It
has none of the pomp of war, and but precious little of
the circumstance. The earth hereaway works as kindly

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 137
into fortifications as the clay in the hands of the potter ;
much of it has a clear, red tint, and it will lie as you
leave it, the jutting angle, the firm battlement, the
smooth wall, with a look as finished as if it came from
Paisley. Great masses of barren earth, where nothing
grows but one strange flower that blossoms from a bare
and barkless spar along the ramparts. And yet,
homely and simple as it seems, nothing will so take the
vim out of a shot as a heap of earth. It plunges into
it — thug — and is dead. It is pounding dirt with ham
mers that forever fly off the handle. There are no
splinters to impale you ; a ball may sand your letter for
you a little prematurely, but a few handy shovels will
heal the wound in twenty minutes.
But there is a fort on the Potomac almost within
bugle call of Mount Vernon that will gratify any little
poetic sentiment this age of knocks may have left you :
Fort Washington. It was there in 18 12; for anything
I can see it may be there in the twentieth century.
Of hewn stone, time-stained, massive, angular, moss-
grown, it looks like a castle in a picture. The parapet
is dotted with guns in barbette ; through the narrow
embrasures in the walls below, looking like slits for air
in a dungeon, you see muzzles of more guns in the
casemates. Here are your demi-lunes and your bas-

138 PICTURES OF LIFE
tions, your sallyport, glacis and counterscarp, and your
everything that makes up a fine old figure in solid
geometry. You pant up the mountain path to the
grand entrance ; columns and capitals of stone are on
each side ; you cross a narrow bridge and come bolt
against a portcullis of a door made of massive timbers,
a door, as the song has it,
"  —as high as the sky.

To let King George and his troops pass by,"
though no royal George ever did. In this ponderous
gate is a little door, something like Saint Peter's
wicket, that he opens to see who's there. You enter
and find yourself in an arched stone passage ; at your
right a wheel and chains ; above your head pulleys and
more chains. You begin to get the idea ; you are
standing, perhaps for the first time in your life, upon a
drawbridge, and you fumble in your memory for the
shout of some old castellan, " What, warder, ho ! down
with the portcullis ! Up with the drawbridge ! " The
wind draws cool through that arch of stone as if it
came from a sunless corridor. The sentinel presents
arms and you are out in the beaten area of the old
Fort. At your left and front are the balconied build
ings of the officers' quarters, and beyond, those of the

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 139
men. You see the commandant, a fine, gray old Colo
nel, who looks as if he might be the very
 Colonel

Who galloped through the white infernal
Powder-cloud,"
in continental days.
You climb stone steps to the parapet ; you visit
kennel after kennel of the surly dogs of war. You
mount the tower over the gateway ; more dogs and a
sentinel, his bayonet as hot as a toasting-fork in the
sun. Descending, you pass dungeon-like doors going
to no end of mysterious cells for the villainous salt
petre ; piles of solid shot resembling inverted clusters of
fabulous grapes. And what a splendid view you have
from the tower ! — the ships and boats forever sliding up
and down, and the Potomac stretching away like an
arm of the sea, and the tide forever coming and going ;
you stand out upon the bluff and gaze toward Mount
Vernon.
A FLASH OF SUNSHINE.
Now and then, a little human smile brightens war's
grim visage, like a flash of sunshine in an angry day.
The amenities of battle are so few, how precious they
become ! Let me give you that little " touch of nature

%
I40 PICTURES OF LIFE
that makes the whole world kin." The 3d Ohio,
belonging to Streight's command, entered a town en
route for Richmond, prisoners of war. Worn down,
famished, hearts heavy and haversacks light, they were
herded together, " like dumb, driven cattle," to wear
out the night. A rebel regiment, the 54th Virginia,
being camped near by, many of its men came strolling
about to see the sorry show of poor, supperless
Yankees. They did not stare long, but hastened away
to camp, and came streaming back with coffee-kettles,
corn bread and bacon — the best they had, and all they
had — and straightway little fires began to twinkle,
bacon was suffering the martyrdom of the Saint, of the
Gridiron, and the aroma of coffee rose like the fragrant
cloud of a thank-offering. Loyal guests and rebel
hosts were mingled ; our hungry boys ate and were
satisfied, and, for that one night, our common humanity
stood acquitted of the heavy charge of total depravity
with which it is blackened. Night and our boys
departed together; the prisoners in due time were
exchanged, and were encamped within rifle-shot of
Kelly's Ferry, on the bank of the Tennessee. But
often, around the camp-fires, I have heard them talk
of the 54th Virginia, that proved themselves so
immeasurably better " than a brother afar off: " heard
them wonder where they were, and discuss the chance

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 141
that they might ever meet. When they denounced the
" damnable Johnny Rebs," the name of one regiment,
you may be sure, was tucked away in a snug place,
quite out of the range of hard words.
And now comes the sequel that makes a beautiful
poem of the whole of it. On the day of the storming
of Mission Ridge, among the prisoners was the 54th
Virginia, and on the Friday following, it trailed away
across the pontoon bridge and along the mountain
road, nine miles to Kelly's Ferry. Arrived there, it
settled upon the bank like bees, awaiting the boat. A
week elapsed, and I followed suit. The Major of the
3d Ohio welcomed me to the hospitalites of his
quarters, and almost the first thing he said was, " You
should have been here last Friday ; you missed the
denouement of that beautiful little drama of ours.
Will you believe that the 54th Virginia has been here ?
Some of the boys were on duty at the Landing when
it arrived. ' What regiment is this ? ' they asked, and
when the reply was given, they started for camp like
quarter-horses, and. shouted as they rushed in and out
among the smoky cones of the ' Sibleys,' 'the 54th
Virginia is at the Ferry ! ' The camp swarmed in
three minutes. Treasures of coffee, bacon, sugar, beef,
preserved peaches, everything, were turned out ' in

142 PICTURES OF LIFE
force,' and you may believe they went laden with
plenty, at the double-quick to the Ferry."
The same old scene, and yet how strangely changed.
The twinkling fires, the grateful incense, the hungry
captives, but guests and hosts had changed places ; the
star-lit folds floated aloft for " the bonny blue flag ; " a
debt of honor was paid to the uttermost farthing. If
they had a triumph of arms at Chattanooga, hearts
were trumps at Kelly's Ferry. And there it was and
then it was that horrid war smiled a human smile, and
a grateful, gentle light flickered for a moment on the
point of the bayonet.

A LITTLE PICTURE.
Even rough war has its bits of poetry, and to show
how coarse and cheap materials may make a pretty
picture, take the following : I was down on the bank
of the Tennessee one bright day, and at my feet, with
their square noses out of the water upon the rocky
ledges, lay a school of pontoon boats, like a group of
ungainly crocodiles. The architecture of one of those
boats would give a yacht-fancier a fit of indigestion ;
of all the works of the ship-builder it is a menial
donkey, with the proportions and finish of a watering-

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 143
trough. Busy about these boats were as hearty and
dirty a set of boys as ever fingered a rifle, and in each
boat was a stained rag of a dog-tent. Well, the order
came to move off up the river, sixteen miles, to Battle
Creek, where the pontoon bridge was to be laid down ;
and the square noses backed off the rocks, one after
another ; the dingy dog tents were bent on improvised
spars of red cedar, the old flag floated from the leading
boat in far-away mockery of the Admiral's flag-ship,
and so they slipped off, in a huddle at first, but
gradually streaming out and standing away, a fleet of
sixty sail. The dirty canvas grew clean in the sun
shine ; distance smoothed the rude boats ; the red
woolen of the boys turned into the gay jackets of
gondoliers; they swept up to the bend of the river,
cutting the still shadows of the willows that fringed
the water, grew beautiful and strange and melted out
of sight.
The scene but an hour ago so full of life and noise
was silent ; nothing audible but the stamping of the
horse that brought me there and the lapse of the lazy
water. A hawk far up in heaven floated slowly round
and round ; across the river a thin spiral of smoke rose
above the trees ; confiding in the stillness, a dappled
lizard glided along the log whereon I was seated.

144 PICTURES OF LIFE
scanning me with his curious jet bead of an eye, and as
instinct with motion as a speckled trout.
It was a Southern noon in a Southern wilderness, the
last boat had loitered out of sight, and I made my
lonely way back through the woods, along the red
ribbon of a road, stopped at a wayside well by a
deserted cabin, and drew up the white, warped bucket
by its rope of grapevine, glad of the creak of the
parched windlass calling for water, and rode on till the
rattle of the picket's piece made music and I was again
at home within the living, bristling girdle of the old
flag.

"DINNER TO THE FRONT."
The Front— syllable oftenest written, least under
stood — is an iron veneering mounted upon many legs.
The moon's census reports nothing but a man. Life at
the Front and life in the moon are alike. They are
both worlds without women — such women as your
mother and mine. The Front trails its kitchen after it
like the train of a comet, and trundles its dinner across
sovereign States.
If we cannot fight battles without powder, neither
can we win them without pork ; bread and bayonets go

IN CAMP AND FIELD. I45
together, and so whatever pertains to an army's sup
plies possesses hardly less interest than the army itself.
There is something upon the map to which the eye will
turn quite as earnestly as to Chattanooga. It will be
sure to trace that slender .thread of communication
drawn across two States, and to see in it the life-nerve
of the Army. I give you a plain, unpainted deal box
to bear with you to Chattanooga for the waiting boys.
You shall go with it through a breadth of two hundred
and fifty miles, where guerrillas range ; shall cross three
States and three great rivers ; shall encounter a thou
sand perils and an hundred thousand foes who'would
care more to destroy that unpainted box than to save
your soul alive. You shall be twelve days on the way,
and the wonderful thing about the journey is that
you reach your destination at all. The Chattanooga
Railroad has grown historical. In its dilapidated,
bullet-riddled cars, over the worn-out, ragged rails,
hostile legions have fled and Federal columns moved
on. These seats have sustained, in their turn, Bragg,
Breckenridge and Johnston, Buell, Rosecrans and
Grant. What victors and what vanquished, what
burdens of hope and strength, what heavy freights of
pain, what wounded and what dead have passed along
those tattered bars of iron ! And their office was never
more important to Federal triumph than when over
10

146 PICTURES OF LIFE
them went that plain deal box, not filled with jewels
or medals of honor, but only with hard bread.
Night and day, day and night, forever to and fro,
move the army wagons. If " England's morning drum
beats round the world," the postillions' whips crack in
ceaseless volleys from Nashville to Chattanooga. Think
of an unbroken column of wagons two hundred and
twenty miles long, rumbling over that bridge of boats
across the Tennessee, as if the long roll were forever
beating and remember that they bear the munitions
of life, without which the munitions of war would be
harmless as a drift of sand, and you feel that if the
Front is formidable, the narrow bridge at Bridgeport,
that can be swung round like a farm-yard gate, or
trundled away upon wheels like quilting-frames, is vital
to the well-being of the army. Nobody but a soldier
can understand the difficulties of the tumbled-in and
heaped-up world of mountains, nor the horrible gashes
and torrent-beds called roads, over which our half-
empty army-wagons have been knocking to pieces,
or sinking below a wheelwrights resurrection. The
mountain achievements of Hannibal and Bonaparte
were trifles in comparison, and going over the ridges
and through the clefts and up the craggy sides, the
wonder grows, not so much how a -vast army with
ponderous artillery could ever have surmounted them.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 147
as how, once over, it ever could have been main
tained. Possibilities are suggestive. Take a time when
Chattanooga was a chicken-pie with the top off, and
the enemy looking down into it like the father of a
family at a Christmas dinner ; looking down upon an
army one hundred and twenty-three miles from its base
of supplies by a single line of rail ; the distance eked
out on thirty miles of river by three feeble little boats,
and finished off at last with nine miles of a mountain
road; a time when the 19th Illinois did duty upon
parched acorns ; when the outlines of horses and mules
had their noses thrust in the morning feed of corn, and
were only sure of what they had in actual punishment
under the grinders, for soldiers would filch it away,
kernel by kernel — pick the stray grains out of the dirt,
to help on the hungry day. And this sharing of
rations was checked at last, for they locked up the corn
with a bayonet ! A sentry paced before the noses of
the brutes, and mule and horse champed on unrobbed ;
when many a soldier has picked a bone out of the
heap of offal, hiSden it under his coat and slipped
away as if h&^had been a thief! And yet nobody was
starving. It was only the shadow of a possibility
beginning to lengthen along the ground.
Why, here I have been riding a round hundred miles
to-day, and have had glimpses of the turnpikes all the

148 PICTURES OF LIFE
way, and everywhere have seen an unbroken line of
army wagons moving steadily toward Chattanooga,
winding down into the ravines, creeping up the
acclivities, drawing out into the little plains ; and all
the while, another line moving toward Nashville, with
hardly a break in the stupendous procession. Arrived
at Murfreesboro, it was moving still. Advanced to
Stevenson, the head of the column is yet beyond. As
I saw the white canvas of the wagons through the
clouds of dust, I could liken them to nothing but a
thousand ants, each hastening away with its little white
grain of an egg. And all these tremendous arteries of
life, subsistence and ammunition, that meander a broad
State, constitute what Caesar calls the impedimenta of
but a single grand army, whose victories are only
the results of marvelous combinations of machinery
gathered from all quarters, detailed, arranged and
converged by the sturdiest labors of thousands of men
whose names never appear in the brilliant dispatches
that flash over the whole land from commanding
Generals in the field. Stand besid'e a siege gun, a
hundred pounder, and you must be within musket
spatter of the enemy to know just how a man's heart
warms to those sturdy fellows that put in the pedal
base of a battle. Thirteen feet in length, a circum
ference of seven feet at the breach and weighing ten

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 149
thousand pounds, it will toss a mass of iron without
trying, as far as you can trot a sober pony in a round
hour. It seems ponderous to be moved at all. Gravi
tation tugs at it as it tugs at the Cumberlands. Now
attach to it the ten horses ; set the broad mill wheels
that bear it, deep in the ruts of a mortar-bed of a road ;
put the muscle of blue-shouldered wagoners to the
wheel ; heap the way before it with whole families of
Bunyan's " Hill Difficulty," and then multiply that one
gun by fifty, and set them all in motion, and you will
begin to know how much it means when the General
easily orders thunder and dinner for the Front.

'GETTING THE IDEA,"
A sharpshooter at the battle of Chicamauga fancying
General Granger to be game worth the powder, coolly
tries his hand at him. The General hears the zip of
the ball at one ear, but hardly minds it. In a minute
away it sings at the other. He takes the hint, sweeps
with his glass the direction whence the couple came,
and brings up the marksman just drawing a bead upon
him again. At that instant a Federal shot strikes the
cool hunter and down he goes. That long range gun

150 PICTURES OF LIFE
of his was captured, weighed twenty-four pounds, was
telescope-mounted, and a sort of mongrel howitzer.
At one point there was a lull in the battle ; at least
it had gone shattering and thundering down the line,
and the boys were as much " at ease " as. boys can be
upon whom any moment the storm may roll back
again. To be sure, occasional shots and now and then
a cometary shell kept them alive, but one of the boys
ran down to a little spring, and towards the woods
where the enemy lay, for water. He had just stooped
and swung down his canteen, when tick — a rifle-ball
struck it at an angle and bounded away. He looked
around an instant, discovered nobody, thought it a
chance shot — a piece of lead, you know, that goes at a
killing rate without any malice prepense — and so, no
wise infirm of purpose, he again bent to get the water.
Ping — a second bullet cut the cord of his canteen, and
the boy got the idea ; a sharpshooter was after him, and
he went to the right-about and the double-quick to the
ranks. The idea that he got might be pleasanter;
when the notion that somebody is making a target of
you creeps with its chilly feet slowly up your back, you
can hardly help shrinking into yourself, though you
may not be quite ready to own it.
A division surgeon was riding across a field where
the battle had raged fiercely but just swept on, and

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 151
was making his way slowly among the drifts of friends
and foes — the blue and the gray together — when a
wounded Federal soldier asked for water. The surgeon
gave him the draught, when a voice from a gray heap
near by said, "Won't- you give «^ one too. Doctor?"
" Certainly I will," and he was just raising the soldie"r
and bringing round the canteen slung under his arm to
put it to his lips when a cannon shot from a hostile
battery struck th^ earth on one side; a second bounded
by- on the other. The man looked up in the surgeon's
face with a half smile,- "I am afraid they mean us.
Doctor." At that instant, a third shot hit the target,
and a headless trunk fell from the supporting arm.
Soldiers own to litfle fear of shells unless they come
in a swarm. They are great, droning, humdrum hum
ble-bees, and go to the tune of " get out of the way,"
but your miserable little pellets of lead — zip and thug
out of the cedars ! Shell are queerly behaved things,
often harmless against all probabilities, and when you
would think they must be deadly, only hatching
thunder. If a shell passes you by only a few feet
before it bursts, you are pretty sure to be good for the
next one that comes, since each fragment takes its
share of the motion and flies on. If a shell shows
symptoms of making a landing just in front of you,
your best route woul.d seem to be towards and past the

152 PICTURES OF LIFE
shell, but how rapidly one could run in that- direction I
have no means of knowing, never having seen the man
that tried it. A solid shot is the most deceptive of
projectiles. It may seem to move lazily, to be almost
dead, but so long as it moves at all beware of it. Just
before the battle, an artilleryman received his discharge
for disability, but delaying for some reason his north
ward, journey, he was- yet with his battery on the eve
of the engagement, , and . true to his instincts took his
old place beside his horse, and was just preparing to
mount when a solid shot ¦ came ricochetting across the
field, bounded up and struck him in the lower part of
the body. Crying out, '' I've got the first ticket, boys,"
he sank down and only added, with that strange dread
of a. little hurt a terribly wounded -man almost always
seems to feel, "lay me' by a tree where they wont run
over, me." They complied with his request, hastened
into position, and saw him no more. The poor fellow's
discharge was confirmed by Heaven. Now, that fatal
ball, when, having - finished its work there, it leaped
lazily on, pushed out the skirt of the artillerist's. coat as
a hand would move a curtain, without rending it 1

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 153

A MEDAL STRUCK IN THE SKY.
The night after the battle of Mission Ridge an officer
had gone in pursuit of the flying enemy and met with a
sharp resistance near Chicamauga Station, some two
miles beyond the Ridge.
At about seven o'clock on that November evening,
he sent a regiment to take possession of a little promr
ontory jutting out into the valley, which would give
him a vast advantage. The musketry were briskly
playing all the while, time was precious, the position
important, the regiment a long time executing the
movement,' and the commander, anxious and impatient,
was watching the sky line to see the troops emerge
from the shadows and move along the clear-cut crest of
the promontory. The moon, then hear the fiill, had
just risen above the edge of ¦ the hill, when the
battalions moved out of the darkness and exactly
across the moon's disc' There for- an instant was the
regiment, colors and gleaming arms in bold relief and
motionless; a regiment trahsfeired to .heaven! And
there was the moon, a grea:t medallibh struck in- the
twinkling of an eye, as if in honor df that ' deathless

154 PICTURES OF LIFE
day. The General's eye brightened at the sight.
Even there it was something to be thought of; to be
seen but a moment ; to be remembered forever.

-SMALL DEER."
Rats, files — the old-fashioned brown house-fly — and
— well, you know what Burns spied oh a lady's bonnet,
and so, in his
" Oh, wad some power the giltie gie us,"
endowed it with immortality — all follow the army.
They are everywhere. The last named creature,
against which care and cleanliness are no adequate
defense, is a superior production. Equip a kernel of
half-macerated wheat with a small detail of legs — say
six or eight — a mouth and an appetite, and then draw
a modest gray stripe along its back, and you have the
famous " gray-back,'' the crowning entomological tri
umph of the army. It has no more respect for the
" deeply, darkly, beautifully blue " of the officers than
it has for the ragged blouse of the men. Tenacious of
life and woolen shirts, it thrives in water at any less
temperature than 212 degrees, Fahrenheit, and the
only use made of its belongings is to throw the name

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 155
it bears at the next meanest creature encountered in
these regions. Now the rats, the flies, and the gray-
backs are blessings ! The two former are nature's
licensed scavengers and deserve protection. Consider
the camp offices they perform, and you will leave them
unharmed ; and as for the gray-backs, they furnish
most uneasy and intolerable arguments for personal
cleanliness, and a single gray-back has driven a soldier
to soap and water who could hardly have been per
suaded thither by a bayonet.
I saw this morning a squad of the pioneer corps,
with the train of led mules, each one - having managed
to creep- under a pair of immense willow panniers, and
to get upon his legs, the handles of spades, pickaxes
and shovels bristling from the tops of the panniers like
the shafts of arrows from the quiver of Apollo.
The impression you gain from looking at any one
mule, is of a very lean rat under a couple of clothes-
baskets — such as Falstaff got into, if we can credit
Shakespeare — but the whole train winding its way
among the mountains, the little emblem X of crossed
axes glittering on the blue sleeves of the pioneers,
suggests a scene in the Orient, and has not the least
of an American look. The mule is an " institution ; '
dead or alive, he is everywhere ; he trails the great
banging wagons up mountains and down ravines where

156 PICTURES OF LIFE
cavalry can hardly ride ; of the six-mule power and the
musketry of the postillion's whip you never get out of
sight and hearing. If the wagon — of the exaggerated
Pennsylvania species — gets the better of brake and
chain, and goes hammering itself to pieces down £l
rocky path that nothing ever went down before but a
crazy torrent, the driver adroitly throws his rear team,
chucks them under the wheels, and brings everything
to a jingling, crashing halt. No wonder the mule
brays in its rusty way — the only creature extant that
can slip all its misery to the tip of its tongue. I only
wonder it does not pray. Its tail a miserable wisp, its
mane a worn-out shoe brush, its ears " the chief end "
of- it, the mule is about as much an artificial production
as! a wooden nutmeg; and yet no steed from Barbary
ever had, a foot so beautiful. And yet, without the'
creature tb which a thistle is a treat, the battle of
Mission' Ridge could- never have been won.

ARMY PETS.
They have the strangest pets in the army, that
nobody would dream of " taking to " at home, and yet
they are little touches of the gentler nature that
give you some such cordial feeling when you see

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 157
them, as there is in the clasp of a friendly hand.
Observation attests that the tenderest care for suffering
comrades does not come from the recruit fresh from
home and its endearments, but from the rough, battle-
worn, generous fellows to whom they are only a long
cherished memory. One of the boys has carried a red
squirrel " through thick and thin " over a thousand
miles. " Bun " eats hard-tack like a veteran, and has
the freedom of the tent. Another's affections overflow
upon a slow-winking, unspeculative little owl, captured
in Arkansas, and bearing a name with a classical smack
to it — Minerva. A third gives his heart to a young
Cumberland Mountain bear. But chief among camp
pets are dogs. Riding on the saddle-bow, tucked into
a baggage-wagon, mounted on a knapsack, growling
under a gun, are dogs brought to a premature end
as to ears and tails, and yellow at that ; pug-nosed,
square-headed brutes, sleek terriers, delicate morsels of
spaniels, "Tray, Blanche, Sweetheart, little dogs and
all." A dog, like a horse, comes to love the rattle and
crash of musket and cannon. There is one in an
Illinois regiment, and, I think, regarded as belonging
to it, though his name may not be on the muster-roll,
that chases half-spent shot as a kitten frolics with a
ball of worsted. He has been under fire and twice
wounded, and left the tip of his tail at the battle of
Stone River. Woe to the man that shall wantonly kill

158 PICTURES OF LIFE
him. But I was especially interested in the fortunes
of a little white spaniel that messed with a battery and
delighted in the name of " Dot." No matter what was
up, that fellow's silken coat must be washed every day,
and there was need of it, for when the battery was on
the march they just plunged him into the sponge-
bucket — not the tidiest chamber imaginable — that
swings like its more peaceful cousin, the tar-bucket,
under the rear axle of the gun-carriage — plumped him
into that, clapped on the cover, and Dot was good for
an inside passage. One day the battery crossed a
stream and the water came well up to the guns.
Nobody thought of Dot, and when all across, a gunner
looked into the bucket ; it was full of water and Dot
was as dead as a little, dirty door-mat. Departed,
mourned and buried, it is time to put a dot to his
story. All about the camps — the wildest and roughest of
them — you cannot get out of sight of the one touch
of nature. Thus, reared aloft on a single stilt, through
the camp whence I am now writing, you may see neat,
snug cottages for the Martin family, that despite war
and high prices, yet wear the rich satin of the old-time.
I close my eyes, a moment, and their pleasant talk, as
they sit upon their balconies, bears me, like the song
of a dear, dead singer, back to the homes afar and the
days that are no more.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 159

A FLAG OF TRUCE.

Did you ever go out with a flag of truce ? If not, let
me give you a touch of a new experience. A group of
horsemen approach our pickets with a white flag.
They are halted, wheeled about, their backs to the
Federal lines, their rank demanded, and a messenger
dispatched to headquarters announcing the arrival and
asking if the flag will be received. If disposed to grant
an interview, a Federal officer of equal rank with the
bearer of the message is sent out, and, if fortunate, you
accompany him. As you ride up, it surprises you a
little to see each salute the flag ; surprises you more to
see that they shake hands and smile like old friends ;
surprises you most when a Confederate officer produces
a bottle of wine and challenges his vis-a-vis to a stirrup-
cup. The officers bearing and receiving the message
dismount, move apart and confer. The errand may be
to pass a lady through our lines to the North, or to
propose a four-and-twenty hours' armistice, or to play
a card or two in the game of Bragg. The little aside
conference over, the groups meet and mingle on that
hand's breadth of neutral ground, spend a few moments
in conversation, apparently free and frank, salute each

l6o PICTURES OF LIFE
other and wheel away, returning each to his own. The
white flags have hardly flickered out of sight, when,
blow, great guns ! Lookout may growl, and Moccasin
Point crack a fiery whip. While the interview lasts,
the opposing pickets lean upon their muskets and look
on. Dark-blue clusters watch it from the parapets of
the forts in sight, and the butternut and gray enemy
crawl out from their rifle-pits and look on, too. It is a
grateful breathing spell for all colors.
Flags of truce and the bearing of hostile pickets
toward each other always puzzle a civilian. He can
not imagine how men can stand front to front that may
turn upon each other any hour, even as the upper and
nether mill-stones, and grind out life and heart like
grain, and not bear, man to man, the deadliest hate.
And yet nothing can be further from the truth. Right
on the eve of the battle Federal pickets contentedly
munch biscuit that their neighbors-in-law have tossed
to them ; and an examination of many a plug of the
Indian weed in a picket's pocket would show the print
of a rebel's teeth at one end, and a "Yankee's " at the
other. The small currency of gibe and joke passes as freely
among them as it does around a steamboat landing in
the " piping times of peace," and I half fancied that a
sort of rough, rude friendship might have sprung up

IN CAMP AND FIELD. l6l
among some of them. On Monday, the day of our
reconnoissance in force at Mission Ridge, when the
Federal skirmish line moved out, the hostile pickets
stood and looked wonderingly upon it, and not till our
advancing line was tipped with fire did they get the
idea that serious work, work with blood and death in it,
was actually beginning.
No elbow pagans in a little village at the hateful age
of gossip, who divine each other's breakfast by the
smell of the kitchen smokes, ever knew more of their
neighbors' business than the troops on Mission Ridge
and Lookout seemed to know of ours. On Sunday
night, before the battle, rations of hard-tack and eighty
rounds of ammunition had been issued. That very
Sunday night, an Indiana regiment went out to picket
duty, and the first salutation from the rebel line was,
" Ho, ho ! you Yanks think of fighting, do you ? Got
eighty rounds, did you, and hard bread to match ! "
There were five thousand men in Chattanooga at that
moment, to whom it would have been the freshest of
news. Two hostile armies may be wonderfully
intimate. II

l62 PICTURES OF LIFE

A RIVER ROUTE IN WAR TIME.
I used to wonder at an eccentric old father who
named his daughter " Tennessee," but now I can under
stand and pardon the strange conceit, for it is, indeed,
a beautiful thing that girl was named for. The
steamers that navigate the Tennessee are not gems of
naval architecture ; the gilded saloons are " in the
mind's eye ; " the state-rooms are in a state of nature ;
the whole craft is scow-y to a degree and dangerously
dirty, and yet neither Cleopatra nor the Doge of Venice
ever floated in barge so graceful as the " Paint Rock "
seemed to me before the battle of Mission Ridge. To
be sure, she sat on the river like a tub, but in my eyes
she " walked the waters like a thing of life." The last
throw of the locomotive dice-boxes has tumbled you
out at Bridgeport within an ace of your life, and con
cluding to take to the water, you make for a tall smoke
under the river bank, and slide down a slippery path,
in a turbulent current of box and barrel. Beside you,
swaying like the tethered elephant in the menagerie, is
a broad-nosed, amphibious-looking creature, apparently
bliilt around .a very quaint and greasy engine, while
you can hardly persuade yourself that the chimneys

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 163
were not set up on end and thrust above the tree-tops
simply because there was no room for them below. On
the edges around this engine are masses of blue, thinly
sprinkled with sutlers and contractors. Here and there
a gentleman in black, with a haversack blacker still,
represents the Christian Commission.
You pick your way amid box and bale to the upper
deck, with its warped and creaking floor, and the cabin
is before you ; a flapping canvas reared on the slender
est of umbrella frames, and looking like the tent of a
side-show. Within is neither fire nor light nor seat.
You plump down incontinently upon the floor, produce
a candle and a sandwich from your knapsack, button
up your coat, and there you are, a first-class passenger.
The aguish steamer moans ; the solemn trees begin to
glide along the river banks ; you are under way, and so
giving your blanket a wisp you fall asleep, and make a
night of it. In the gray of the morning you look out,
and to your delight the steamer lies with its nose to the
shore, and Bridgeport in plain sight. You have been
waiting for the fog to lift ; you have not gone a mile !
Starved with hunger and cold you get under the lee of
a log cabin, two stories high, built up square and strong
in the middle of the deck, and discovering that it is the
bullet-proof pilot-house you catch yourself wishing you
had a lease of it.

164 PICTURES OF LIFE
Little bells tinkle, big bells clang, there is a rush of
steam, the great wheel, hung on behind, like a reel at
the stern of an emigrant's wagon, because there was no
room for it aboard, begins to turn slow, and the craft
swings shoreward, just abreast of a garden, to wood up.
A couple of dozen negroes stream duskily out from the
lower deck, and the garden fence of red cedar is
shipped in ten minutes, leaving not a rail or a wreck
behind ; innocent onions and infant cabbages, every
esculent and succulent of them all, left to the tendei
mercies of hungry pigs and the cold world. Bang goes
the bell, the hungry fires lick up the sweet morsels of
cedar, the engine gives great sighs of content, we push
bravely against the current, and such is "wooding up "
on the Tennessee.

THE DEVIL'S COFFEE MILL.
Did you ever see one of the Devil's Coffee-mills?
I saw ten of them to-day, like the immemorial black
birds, " all in a row," — the " Union Repeating Gun "
— an implement that might do tremendous execution
in skirmishing were it not as liable to get out of order
as a lady's watch. Imagine a big rifle mounted upon
a light pair of wheels, and swung easily upon an arc

IN CAMP ANti FIELD. 165
of a circle by a lever under the gunner's left arm so as
to sweep the enemy like a broom. Fancy a coffee-mill
hopper where the lock ought to be, and a crank to
match. Then here is a little copper box fitting the
hopper. You fill it with a dozen or twenty cartridges,
clap it into the hopper, and the thing is ready for
business. The gunner seats himself comfortably
behind the gun, elevates or depresses it with a touch,
and takes sight. Before his face as he sits, and
attached to the gun-barrel, is a steel shield about the
shape of an overgrown shovel and inclined a little
towards the miller, so that a shot aimed affectionately
at his head glances up and flies harmlessly away.
Through the center of this shield is a narrow slit — a la
Monitor-turret — which enables him to take sight.
Now, all things ready, the diabolical grist of bullets
in the hopper, the gunner — if he is a gunner — with the
rudder under his left arm, turns the crank with his
right hand, and the play begins. I saw one of them
work; it was tick, tick, tick, sixty to the minute, as
fast as you could think ; no brisk little French clock
ever beat faster. When the barrel gets hot, there is
another in that chest ; when the grists are all out and
the battle over, you pack the whole affair in a sort of
traveling-trunk, slip in a pair of shafts, with a horse
between them, in a twinkling, and trundle it off as

l66 ¦ PICTURES OF LIFE
lightly as the cart of a Bowery butcher-boy. But
soldiers do not fancy it. Even if it were not liable to
derangement, it is so foreign to the old, famiHar action
of battle — that sitting behind a steel blinder and
turning a crank — that enthusiasm dies out ; there is no
play to the pulses ; it does not seem like soldiers' work.
Indeed, they regard it much as your genuine man-of-
war's man is apt to look upon the creeping,, low-lying
mud turtles of Monitors, when, shut up in an iron box,
he remembers with a sigh the free decks and upper air
broadsides of his dear, old, stately ship-of-the-line,
whose " fore-foot " lifts grandly on the waves as if she
were going up a sea-green stairway, and who shakes
her splendid plumage as if she were ready to fly.

FATIGUE
How slow we are to learn that a battle is only the
apex of a pyramid it has worn out thousands to build ;
the apex on which the sun streams a single ray of
glory, while all the rest is lost in the shadows below.
As I write, bodies of cavalry and baggage-wagons
and pontoon trains are moving by, eight days from
Nashville over the mountains, each whiff of hot air
hatching a trooper out of the yellow cloud of dust, not

IN CAMP AND FIELD 167
a discemible trace of uniform, and ready to throw
himself upon a couple of fence rails laid side by side,
mutter thanks, as Sancho Panza did, to the man who
invented sleep, and fall out of conscious existence in a
twinkling and make no sig
On one occasion, when Roddy and Forrest, with five
thousand men, were hard after Streight, a halt was
ordered for an hour's rest. The boys rolled from their
saddles into the bed of dust beside their horses' feet,
and were asleep in a minute ; a slumber so nearly own
brother to death that the hour elapsed, the trumpet
could not waken them, and the officers had actually to
shake each man as he lay, and that, too, in a hostile
land and a strong, swift enemy behind him. This is
fatigue in its fullest sense, and, if you will multiply
that trooper by eighty thousand, and parch him with
thirst and set him on his feet in the burning dust, and
bid him take his life in his hands and march and watch
and fight until the burden of his thought is, " just one
wink of sleep," that would be unbroken by the spatter
of muskets and the growl of great guns, possibly you
will have an approximate idea of what it is to be
fatigued.

l68 PICTURES OF LIFE

THE LITTLE ORDERLY.
You remember the story of little Johnny Clem, the
atom of a drummer-boy, " aged ten," who strayed away
from Newark, Ohio, and the first we know of him,
though small enough to live in a drum, was beating the
long roll for the 22d Michigan. At Chicamauga, he
filled the office of a " marker," carrying the guidon
whereby they form the lines, a duty having its counter
part in the surveyor's more peaceful calling in the
flagman who flutters the red signal along the metes and
bounds. On the Sunday of the battle, the little
fellow's occupation gone, he picked up a gun that had
slipped from some dying hand, provided himself with
ammunition, and began putting in the periods quite on
his own account, blazing away close to the ground, like
a fire-fly in the grass. Late in the waning day, the
waif left almost alone in the whirl of the battle, one of
Longstreet's Colonels dashed up, and, looking down at
him, ordered him to surrender : " Surrender ! " he
shouted, " you little d— d son of a  ! " The words
were hardly out of the officer's mouth, when Johnny
brought his piece to "order arms," and as his hand
slipped down to the hammer he pressed it back, swung

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 169
up the gun to the position of "charge bayonet," and
as the officer raised his sabre to strike the piece aside,
the glancing barrel lifted into range, and the proud
Colonel tumbled dead from his horse, his lips fresh
stained with the syllable of reproach he had hurled at
the child.
A few swift moments ticked off by musket shots, and
the tiny gunner was swept up at a swoop and borne
away a prisoner. Soldiers, bigger but not better, were
taken with him, only to be washed back again by a
surge of Federal troopers, and the prisoner of thirty
minutes was again John Clem " of ours," and General
Rosecrans made him a Sergeant, and the stripes of rank
covered him all over like a mouse in a harness, and the
daughter of Mr. Secretary Chase presented him a silver
medal appropriately inscribed, which he worthily wears,
a royal order of honor, upon his left breast, and all
men conspire to spoil him, but, since few ladies can get
at him here, perhaps he may be saved. Think of
a sixty-three pound Sergeant, fancy a handful of a
hero, and then read the " Arabian Nights " and believe
them.

I/O PICTURES OF LIFE

NASHVILLE STREET SCENES.
The scene is strange enough to have been born of a
heavy supper at midnight. Tented towns where rose
spacious and elegant homes ; red, trodden earth where
landscape gardens undulated ; the old households scat
tered and gone ; the old home charm departed ; the
stranger within the gates. One incessant, turbulent
stream rolls through the streets all day long. Through
tangles of all-colored humanity, from Congo to
Christendom, meeting now the Beauty and now the
Beast, you make your way. As far as you can see,
army wagons raised to six-mule power ; now ambitious
barrels mounted upon two wheels borne along in the
current ; a wave of cavalry swelling the tide ; stars,
single and double, glittering on the top of the stream,
and spread eagles floating, and silver leaves drifting on
in pairs ; now in an eddy at a corner, whirl ponderous
artillery and little Africans, ambulances and ammuni
tion, bread and bayonets. Horsemen tack their way
on, doubling a cape of mules' ears, beating up in the
lee of a school of caissons, astern of a baggage wagon ;
orderlies dash by at a gallop, while soldiers make a
dive into the channel, dart like trout among hoofs.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 171
wheels and noses, and come up safely on the other
shore. The city pulsates like a heart with regiments moving
to the Front. Depots are congested, trains show blue
like full veins, sidewalks are azure, hotels cerulean, but
not heavenly. You see, linked in the same train, cars
labeled "Memphis," " Charieston," "New Orleans,"
" Indianapolis," " Galena and Chicago," " Michigan
Southern " — a perfect pentecost of railroads — and such
a train. Next to the engine is a block-house on
wheels, bullet-proof, and filled with armed soldiers, the
effect of the whole, with its broad ungainly front, being
that of an anomalous " bull-head."
There is a blue elbow angling in each side, and a
regulation shoe planted exactly across your single file
of toes, and there seems to be no place for you any
where, and you begin to see that while " the pen is
mightier than the sword" is all very well in the play
and among the Scribes, it is very far from being true in
a wide-awake department of the army, where the scale
of being runs downward thus : men, munitions, mules,
scribblers ; brigades, batteries, bacon, beasts, Bohemians.
But everybody knows that despite the absurd declama
tion of a very few officers against the press as a power
in time of war, the work of the army correspondents
was worth tons of powder to the Federal hosts, while

172 PICTURES OF LIFE
of those who denounced the press so wildly it may be
justly said, " nations could be saved without them."
The first thing in the street scenes that startles
you with a loud knock at the left breast is this:
in the endless procession of army trains comes a
two-horse, canvas-covered wagon, with very much the
look of the noisy vehicles that churn pure country
milk over city pavements. You cannot tell why you
looked at it at all, but, as you did so, you saw
lashed to its side a device something like a bier —
two parallel shafts connected by a piece of sacking. In
the rear of the wagon, on each side of the door, the
end of a keg was visible, neatly fitted into place. It
needed nobody to tell you it was your first glimpse of
an ambulance — the flying hospital — that, with its
burdens of anguish and death, moves to and fro upon
the field of blood. Like the flag of truce — that most
beautiful emblem in the world — the ambulance should
be free of all fields. One passed you a minute ago,
labeled " 805," and the figures are as solemn as the
Dead March in Saul. You may make a charge without
flinching, when the heart beats the long roll like a
drum, but to enter the terrible storm again and again
with an ambulance, and assist to place tenderly within
it its freight of agony, calls for the coolest courage and
the firmest resolution.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 173
You see the undertakers jostling the vanities to gain
a glance of your eye ; the undertaker, who of all trad:;s-
men succeeds in his undertaking, and whose work once
done for you i.z done " for good and all." The
embalmers, too, elbow each other and wrangle over
their coffins as to which you shall lie down in. One
exhibits a dog in a glass case, upon which he has tried
his art preservative ; he declares it a triumph, for
though the bark is gone the body remains. Coffins
stand up on end, empty and hungry, and petition you
to get in and be composed ; a transparency suggests
that you be embalmed ; a lantern persuades vou to go
to the " Varieties." You see, standing here and there,
oblong, unpainted boxes, awaiting shipment, with the
word, " head " written upon one end, and you shall
think, as I do, "Yes, there is where he fell — in the
front, at the head of the army."
But the sad scenes daily witnessed in their rooms
make you forget the strange rivalry of the undertakers ;
mothers and wives with tear-stained faces waiting there
for the dear, dead boy and love they would save, just a
little longer, from the sweeping yet merciful sentence,
" to dust shalt thou return." Old fathers, tremulous
and yet content, for the agony of suspense is over, and
the soldier " sleeps well," are waiting to bear the silent

174 PICTURES OF LIFE
burdens back to the homes they left so brave and
strong. Amid these whirls and eddies of intensest life and
wildest death, you encounter something every day that
might have walked forth from an unbolted tomb, or
stepped out of a tarnished old picture frame of a
hundred years ago. Wagons, rickety and ribbed,
resembling so many scows worn down to skin and
bone, creep painfully into town, drawn by two horses
tied up with ropes and strings, and tapered out with a
third ; wagons filled with the nursing mothers of Africa,
the ragged children of Ham and various " truck." It is
a picture " toted " straight out of the Old Dominion,
the visible symbol of a plantation break-down. Look
at that wheel, its rim guiltless of any iron ; there,
before your eyes, are the meaning and burden of the
song, " Old 'Virginny never tires ! "
Sometimes you see old-world mourners, the black
crape streaming out broadly from their hats behind,
and slowly turning to larboard and starboard like a
rudder, as they walk. The old gentlemen of the ruf
fled bosoms — so ruffled and yet so placid ! — you might
have seen a dozen years ago on the shady side in the
morning, looking as if they had stepped out of a dim
and ancient picture into life and light again, have

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 175
disappeared. You see old hand-organs, in the green
baize petticoats, grinding out, in the midst of phthisicky
gasps, the grist of tunes taken to the mill " when cats
wore fillets." But when a swarthy fellow plants a
monstrous quadrant before your quarters, and begins to
vex the nerves of what proves to be a harp old enough
to have been King David's, and to sing about " der
Rhein " in a voice that, like Paul's, would " almost
persuade you to be a Christian " and escape to Heaven
and be out of hearing, you half suspect there must have
been a partial resurrection.
You ask for the young men of Nashville ; the high-
spirited, delicately-nurtured sons. They are not here.
They are sleeping on many a battle-field all over the
South ; they have perished. Nay, look over yonder,
on the slope below the weeping willows ; that field
checked with little white head-boards is full of them.
You walk along the streets sweet with the white
blossoms of the Magnolia tree, and you will see the
tokens of black crape poured out like a grief from
between the closed blinds, and hundreds of the women
of Nashville clad in mourning for the misguided dead.
You meet them everywhere, and a feeling made up of
sadness and loneliness comes over you as you think
of these circles scattered and stricken forever for a
worthless sake. I shall never be done admiring the

176 PICTURES OF LIFE
patriotic devotion of the loyal women of the land, but
I must tell you that the women of the South are
worthy, in everything but a sacred cause, of their
Northern sisters. There is nothing they will not
surrender with a smile ; the gemmed ring, the diamond
bracelet, the rich wardrobe. They cut up the rich
carpets for soldiers' blankets without a sigh ; they take
the fine linen from their persons for bandages. In all
there is a defiant air, a pride in their humility strange
to see. Of a truth they carry it off grandly. And
almost all are in mourning for the dead brothers,
lovers, friends, whom they had smiled into the army
and driven into rebellion, and who have billowed all
the South with their graves.

A HINT OF DESOLATION.
All the region around Chattanooga is so rich in caves
that it seems almost invested in a cellular tissue. You
find them in unexpected places. Remove the little
wash of earth at the base of a ledge and there yawns
a cell, the entrance worn smooth by unknown feet in
some forgotten time. In the sides of the mountains
are caverns, often of great extent, and yet waiting the
torch of the explorer. Lookout has two ; to one of

IN CAMP AND FIELD. • 177
them a large number of women and children fled for
refuge, on the approach of the swarm from the
Yankees' northern hive, and there some of them are
said to have died. This is of so great extent, and
works its way into the gloom by passages so numerous
and uncertain, as if it would feel out the secret of the
mountain, that although adventurous boys — and what
will thev not dare to do ! — have groped their way into
it, yet its recesses remain a mystery. Some of these
caves have figured in the story of the rebellion, from
the "villainous saltpetre" they supplied. Others,
within a half hour's stroll of the heart of Chattanooga,
that have evidently failed to awaken the lazy indiffer
ence of the former residents, had they been within
Yankee reach would have been long ago explored and
christened, had their little legends, and borne upon
their rocky lintels the names of many a pair of
pilgrims. I visited one, where, perhaps a month ago, a dis
covery was made, that anywhere else but in the Front
would have been a nine-days' wonder. Here it
sui^vived nine minutes. The entrance to the cave is
abrupt, and a tree trunk had been thrust down, perhaps
by a curious Indian of the tribe of John Ross that
once ranged those lovely valleys and raised " a far cry "
from the summit of Mission Ridge ; thrust down so
12

178 PICTURES OF LIFE
long ago, that a dendrologist— -a tough word for a
writer of plain English — would be puzzled to class it.
Well, one of our soldier boys, with an inch of candle
in hand, bestrode the trunk, as coolly as he would have
mounted a mule, and slid down into the under world.
His venture was rewarded, for far under the hill, upon
a shelf of rock, he found the bones of a man, and
beside him, within reach of the crumbling hand, an
extinguished torch. The story was meagre but it was
all there : " there lived a man ; " he set out to explore
that hollow artery of the mountain ; he grew bewild
ered, wearied, and the light of his torch and the light
of his life went out pretty nearly together. No matter
for his name ; he died so long ago that nobody
remembers that he ever lived ; they that mourned him
have been mourned in turn. So, in caves and out of
them, " runs the world away." The soldier generously
offered me a memorial bone, — say, of the forearm — as
he told the story. I declined the bone but kept the
story. But of course the boy managed to grave
his autograph at the entrance of the cave, for the
American man has a passion for scribbling. He begins
by scrawling his name in every fly-leaf of his spelling-
book — " Jim Boggs — ^his book" — he goes on by writing
for the newspapers, and he ends by tracing that same
illustrious patronymic upon everything he can reach.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 179
He has been known to peril his neck to inscribe it on
the everlasting arch of the Natural Bridge of Virginia.
He would have appended it to the old stone tables
of the law, had he been in the corps of Moses.
But what has this to do with illustrating the desola
tion of war, asks some reader. I will tell him : visit
any one of those clefts and caves, and a cat will be
sure to put on her rough angry coat and growl at you ;
a cat will dart out of the cave as you go in, followed
by another and more yet, until a perfect cataract of
cats pours over the ledges and down into the ever
greens. You can see them everywhere ; cats grizzled
and mottled, white and black and gray. It will amuse
you till you begin to think of it, and then, when it
occurs to you that these creatures were once tenants
of hundreds of households ; purred the winter nights
out by hearths the armed stranger now treads upon ;
pets of children now scattered and gone ; that if the
people have not called upon the rocks of the moun
tains to hide them, at least the cats have fled to the
caves, and are fast relapsing into a strange, fierce wild
ness, then you begin to understand the desolation of
the land. Those houseless creatures tell you as plainly
as if they spoke English with most miraculous organ,
"there are no homes among these mountains!" And
this is the hint of desolation. But to turn from the

l8o PJCTURES OF LIFE
caves of the mountains to human habitations, perhaps
no better idea can be gained of how rough the touch
of War is, even at the gentlest, than a look about
these headquarters. The grounds in front show traces
of the hand of taste, and that hand a woman's.
Graceful shapes, some day beautiful with flowers,
written over with the autograph of dead and gone
springs, are now trampled beneath the feet of orderlies ;
and groups of horses, fastened to the trees, stamp upon
the broken borders of boxwood. The fences are swept
away; the summer-house has been torn down, trellis
by trellis, for kindling wood ; tents fill the spaces
among the evergreens ; sentries pace in paths where
ladies used to linger, and army wagons craunch through
the garden turned out to common.
Within, are suggestive souvenirs of the old time ;
the curtains are removed, but the gilded supports
remain ; a tall and ancient clock ticks away in the
corner, marking Federal time as faithfully as if its
master were not recreant. Very grand, in its day, was
that clock. Among the books left is an Album belong
ing to some "Ada," daughter of this house; its pages
filled with crow-quill assurances of love forever, by
girls, dating all the way from New Orleans to Chatta
nooga ; its dainty little devices of hearts and doves
scrawled over with rude soldier comments in huge

IN CAMP AND FIELD. l8l
soldier fists. But three living relics of the old regime
remain : " Aunt Jane " yet nods her turbaned head,
lone queen of the kitchen, and her button-headed boy.
Bill, kicks up his heels on the broken porch or swings
from the grape vine as he wills, " for massa's gone
away." Last but not least, the great honest New
foundland, " Shiloh," watches the opening door for the
children that shall never come again, or runs distract
edly about, called many ways, like Mercury, by many
masters. Thus the " darkeys " and the dog are the
sediment in the empty cup of chivalry.
You sometimes encounter so remarkable a fitness in
things as to suggest the doubt whether there is any
such thing as accident. Thus, the exact locality in
Chattanooga, whence I have written many letters, is a
two-winged mansion, a little inclined to be stately,
wherein aforetime the Gothic North got used to being
buttered and eaten like a sweet potato, and the shell
of the Union was regularly cracked with the walnuts
at aristocratic desert. A painting in oil covered the
wall above the mantel in the room where I passed
many an anxious day, crowned at last with a few
golden hours of exultation. I had been there days
and had only given it a careless look, for an army
forever on the eve of battle does not furnish the
surroundings most favorable for fine-art contemplation.

l82 PICTURES OF LIFE
But one night as I sat in a lazy mood, my eyes rested
upon the picture brought out by the flashes of the
sweet, cedar fire. It was Arnold and Andre conferring
by the light of " a lantern dimly burning," on the
banks of the Hudson. The treason lay between them
in certain folded papers ; the trick of the lantern lit up
the features of traitor and martyr ; I was surprised to
find it a startling and effective picture. And there, in
the gloomy background, the three patriots were waiting
— Paulding, Williams and Van Wirt. Find me, if you
can, place and picture more accurately adjusted than
this Arnoldic faith in this old homestead of secession.
Two Sundays ago, had you strolled beyond the
picket line where Mission Ridge trends away to the
South, you would have come upon an old homestead
standing " where once a garden smiled," the ruined,
fenceless grounds lying blank and bare. The meaning
of the word " desolation," not to be found in lexicons, is
written along the face of all these regions. Think of
the dumb field that makes no answer to the blessed
sun. And the people only add human intensity to the
picture, for they look like men and women whose
almanac is a fragment ; people without a to-morrow ;
and if there be anything in this world more desolate,
I have yet to see it, It was a lovely morning and
the sun brought out the picture painfully; the silent

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 183
threshold, the orchard standing like broken ranks after
a battle. You strike upon the door, and it returns a
hollow sound like a clod upon a coffin-lid. And yet
the birds, brave in the loneliness, sang all the same.
A poor, old horse, was feebly grazing near by, and a
man sat on the ground by the angle of the wall,
reading. A few words told the story: that man was
once the head of the vanished household ; of that
little firm there had once been more than enough to
say " ours." A son whom he had educated, became
principal of the Academy at Rome, was conscripted,
and his fate unknown. Stripped of all, garner empty,
fields unsown, the little band wandered away, and now
he came, that pleasant morning, on a lonely pilgrimage,
to linger out the day around what was the very ceno
taph, the empty burial place, of a dear, old home.
Of how much tender and delicate sentiment those
scattered and strown inmates were possessed, I cannot
tell. Probably not much, and it was better so, for if
GOD does not always " temper the wind to the shorn
lamb," he sometimes blesses the creature with tough
endurance.

l84 PICTURES OF LIFE

A LATE BREAKFAST AT CHATTANOOGA
The January days of the year '64, when the first
train of cars was vainly waited for, were long — winter
days though they were — and the nights disastered.
Clerks in the Departments held their pens poised in air,
the word unfinished upon the page, as they listened for
the shriek of the coming train. Soldiers intermitted
duty as they bent a strained ear toward the angle of
the wall of Lookout. Even hard bread was a luxury ;
they would have picked up the crumbs in thankfulness
that fell from poor men's tables. Somebody — I think
it was Liebig — said, that one man who eats beef and
another who eats bread view a difficulty from entirely
different stand-points ; that a man's dinner " flies into
his head " by the same sign that it goes into his stom
ach; that what he eats makes thought as well as
muscle. And so, to learn a people thoroughly, you
must either examine their larders, smell their chimney
smokes, or stroll through their markets. I wonder
how the Professor would locate the stand-point at
Chattanooga. The mules and horses were starving, and gnawed the
rugged bark from the trunks of trees. That day was a

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 185
Tuesday ; Wednesday went and no train. Men thought
they heard it a thousand times, but it was only the
sough of the wind among the mountains. Thursday
came, and men's faces grew fixed like daguerreotypes ;
there was but one anxious expression on them all.
They lifted up their eyes and saw Bridgeport and Ste
venson and Nashville filled with abundance and for
them, and here Famine looking them full in the face !
They were like men athirst in the desert, for whom the
magic of the mirage lifts the clear waters with their
cool margins of green, and mocks with the shadow of
blessing their dry and dying eyes. At last a faint and
distant cry, then nearer and clearer, till it whistled
down the winter wind.
Encampments swarmed and all men worshiped
toward the mountain. And then, with its plume of
smoke, the engine came creeping round on the wall of
Lookout, like a fly, and after it trailed three platform
cars laden with men and tools. Slowly it felt its way
over the rebel track, round the fearful curves, on to the
town ; then to and fro, steaming up here, backing
down there, and, at last, wheeling upon its heel at the
turn-table, away went the engine with the only plat
forms ever heard of that all men could agree on,
round the fore-foot of the mountain and was out of
sight. Men took a long breath ; homely as it all was.

l86 PICTURES OF LIFE
it was an avant courier they had seen ; the pioneer of
great joy. A few hours went by — but men could afford
to wait then ; nobody was famished then — and seven
trains, laden with the staff of life, came thundering
through the valley, and poured their treasures into the
empty lap of Chattanooga. And it is a Thursday they
take for Thanksgiving.

A POTOMAC TRIP IN WAR TIME.
A drop down the Potomac in a splendid day is a
thing to be remembered. The undulating shores,
crowned with groves, spangled with gardens, dotted
with mansions, tipped on the sky-line with forts, and
finished out with flags, present an exquisite picture.
Milder than the Hudson, grander than the Connecticut,
and lovelier than either. We make out into the
stream, and, looking back, have a view of the Chain
Bridge, a canary-bird cage flung for a full mile across
the broad river. At our right, looking out from among
the trees, lifts the columned front of Arlington House,
the abandoned home of General Lee ; at our left swells
over the city the dome of the Capitol, that, like Look
out at Chattanooga, you can never lose sight of
Villas, encampments, golden checkers of grain fields,

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 187
spires and plumes of foliage, landings, and there, almost
in our front, the ancient city of Alexandria, clustered
in the valley, and sitting grandly about upon the hills.
Following the sweep of the Potomac, we make Fort
Foote upon the left, a bold, bluffy work, able to load
iron on hostile vessels a thought or two faster than
they can stow it away.
But the scene on the river will make you forget its
shores. There is everything in sight but a Venetian
gondola and a Chinese junk. Coming, going, at-
anchor ; with one wing a-flutter ; with canvas piled in
pyramids, cloud above cloud ; under bare poles ;
steaming it to and fro. We meet fine, sea-weedish
ocean-going steamers, the slender tracery of their side-
wheels looking more like a spider's web than things to
walk the water with. These steamers are black-and-
blue as a pugilist's eye with soldiers ; the yards dotted
with them ; the figure-head bestridden by a bold
soldier boy. There goes a North River steamer, as
light and home-like as a country villa. A couple of
canal boats are drifting lazily down to Alexandria , a
sea-gull of a yacht is bracing up to the wind there ;
saucy little tugs, with their noses out of water, and a
frill of a wake about their sterns like a scalloped petti
coat, are screaming their way yonder. One of them
cuts in under our bows and scuds away before us as

l88 PICTURES OF LIFE
impudently as a dog-fish. It is a curious truth that it
takes a little creature to be impudent ; your human
tugs and terriers are as brassy as a " Napoleon gun."
You pass a gunboat, homely as a mud-turtle ; you are
hailed by a guard-ship as black and sleek as an old-time
snuff-box. Our blades dip dull wood and rise glittering
silver ; tubs of vessels seem oscillating in one place for
an hour together, while arrowy craft dart around them
like swallows on a mill-pond. Among the flock of
various craft you will be sure to notice a dark, rakish-
looking vessel, sharp in the nose, long in the body, with
its two black chimneys at half-cock, and its masts a-tilt,
and altogether making you think of Captain Kidd, " as
he sailed." The craft are as varied as a sailor's notions,
but they are all alike in one thing; from the cockle
shell of a sail-boat to the ocean-going monster, they all
carry the flag; vast and broad, and flapping like an
eagle's wings, or slight and fluttering as Desdemona's
handkerchief, it is the flag still. This gorgeously
inscribed fly-leaf of the Republic floats everywhere
here.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 189

IN MEMORIAM,—AD ASTRA.
There is one, away there in Georgia, of whom I
think with an aching heart — Brigadier General Charles
S. Harker. So young — not twenty-nine — so courteous,
so generous, so modest, so winning, so gallant, " with
an eye that takes the breath ' — can it be the shot was
ever moulded that could chill such vigorous life, and
still a heart so noble ! A Colonel, at first, of the 65th
Ohio, he was at Shiloh, at Corinth, at Stone River, at
Chicamauga, at Mission and Rocky Face Ridges, and
a hero everywhere ! I knew him well. With the
frankness and simplicity of a boy he united the dash
of a Marion and the wisdom of a veteran. I saw him
earn his " stars," at Mission Ridge, as he led on his
brigade like the tenth wave of the sea, right into the
hell of splintery fire and shattered shell. I saw him
the next morning, and nothing about himself — not a
word — but everything about some valiant lieutenant,
some gallant fellow in the rank and file. I had to go
elsewhere for the details of his own story. And he
is dead ! For them that loved him longest, God
strengthen them. Young General, good night ;
Good night to thy form, but good morn to thy fame !

190 PICTURES OF LIFE
While threading a guerrillaish forest road with a
Division pushing on to the Front, we came to a deep
mountain run bridged with logs. " Here," cried one
of the boys, " is the old star-gazer's bridge," for so was
General O. M. Mitchell, commanding the First Division
of the Fourteenth Corps, known in the army. " Here,"
they said, " in a rainy night as dark as a wolf 's mouth
he drew his woolen, plunged into mud and water,
tugged at the logs and worked like a beaver, and when
the bridge was done, off with his hat and cried, ' now
boys, three cheers for the minute bridge ! ' and they
were given with a will."
And yet that man was at first one of the most unpop
ular of generals. The men, impatient of restraint,
worked restively in the snug harness of rigid discipline.
Some of them even muttered threats of making his
quietus with a bullet on some fighting day. He was
everywhere, at all hours, wherever men had duty to do ;
he was severe, stern, and, as some thought, heartless.
But when duty, hardship and danger came in a cluster
within reach of his hand, and he plucked it with a
ready grasp and the lion's share, and the word was
' come, boys," and not " go," then the discipline he had
given them worked like a charm. Admiration followed
distrust, love succeeded hate, and when the brief his-

IN CAMP AND FIELD. I91
toiy — alas, how brief! — ended, the proud record might
well be graven on his monument :
His men would have died for him !
A Division General turned abruptly to me with, " If
you write anything about Wednesday's affair, as you
will, don't forget Colonel Miller, of the 36th Illinois —
one of the most gallant little fellows that ever drew a
sword." I did not need that injunction, for Colonel
Silas Miller rode through the storm to the summit of
the Ridge at the head of his regiment like a veteran,
inspiring his men till the little 36th was a phalanx of
heroes. The Colonel used to be adjutant of types and
lead a column, now and then, in the old days, and, true
to his early love, he headed a column at Mission Ridge.
But before The March to the Sea was fairly begun, the
noble soldier obeyed the Great Commander and lay
front-face to the stars. The 36th, twelve hundred
strong a breath or two ago, but now a skeleton regi
ment — and yet its soul of fire within those ribs of
death ! — bearing a banner whereon were blazoned such
words as " Perryville ' and " Pea Ridge," went into the
battle at Chattanooga with four hundred and fifty men,
and stacked, when they came forth from the fiery bap
tism, one hundred and fifty-nine guns. Not a man in
the broken ranks but will answer for him when Fame

192 PICTURES OF LIFE
calls the roll, as did his comrades for the dead grenadier
of old. Not in our day shall Silas Miller want a tongue
to speak for him and answer " Here ! "
Eight years ago, a week after the battle of Chica
mauga, the following paragraphs were written. In the
light of history the world confirms the judgment :
When you read the story of the immortal " Hill
Difficulty," whereon General Thomas planted, on that
battle-Sunday, at Chicamauga, a grander growth than
ever crowned one little hill before, if you exalted
George Henry Thomas to a very lofty niche, you may
just leave him and History will keep him there forever.
I do not assert that he saved the Army of the Cumber
land, but I believe he did ; that the salvation was not a
lucky blunder, but the result of brains as well as guns ;
that it was a disposition of force to defeat the enemy's
design, struck out with a rapidity so wonderful and a
wisdom so masterly that a month of mathematics would
not have materially modified the adjustment. It was a
stroke of what, for the want of a better name, we must
call genius. Not one of those men that draws his
sword every time he bids you good morning. General
Thomas is, perhaps, the most modest. Combining the
energy, resolution and tenacity of the soldier with the
simple manners of a gentleman, he can handle a corps
and make a hammer or an anvil of it at will, and yet

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 193
he is one of the few in the Cumberland Mountains who
does not beheve he could handle the Cumberland
Army. Meeker than his Second Lieutenants, he thinks
quite as well of his peers as he does of General Thomas-
Do you know how he looks ? Well, if you will just
think what manner of man he must be that should be
hewn out of a large square block of the best-tempered
material that men are made of, not scrimped anywhere,
and square everywhere — square face, square shoulders,
square step ; blue eyes, with depths in them, withdrawn
beneath a pent-house of a brow, features with legible
writing on them, and the whole giving the idea of mas
sive solidity, of the right kind of a man to " tie to,"
you will have a little preparation for seeing him as
he is.
Thus ran the record eight years ago, and now the
war-cloud over and gone. Death found him where he
sat in the midst of his friends, and no foe within all
the broad horizon. You recall that dread, tempestuous
day when 'Mid the gusts of wild fire, when the iron clad rain
Did ripen brown earth to the reddest of stars,
And baptized it anew and christened it Mars.
In that moment supreme, to their bridles in blood,
Like a rock in the wilderness grandly he stood
Till the Red Sea was cleft and he rode down tne street
With the fame on his brow and the foe at his feet !
13

194 PICTURES OF LIFE
Oh, be muffled, ye drums ! Let artillery toll !
Cloud up, all ye flags ! Earth has lost a great soul.
Gallant Thomas, good night, bui good morn to thy glory.
Outranking them all in the charm of thy story !
Like a shadow in sunshine they have borne thee in state
Far across the new world to the true "Golden Gate" —
Philip Sidney, make room, for thy comrade is late I

KEEPING HOUSE UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
When people hear of an army's being on half-rations,
they are apt to think of a man's eating his boots or his
brother, or some such tough morsel. So far from this,
the soldier does not live who can eat his full ration and
have life enough left to quote Shakespeare, " thou
canst not say / did it ! " Eating a whole ration is
eminently an irrational act. Ordinarily it would make
a man as torpid as an anaconda after swallowing a
buffalo. On the contrary, the men drive brisk bargains
with their surplus rations, and very absurd stories could
be told of the trades they strike up. Half of them
are locomotive groceries, and always on the qui vive for
a barter. To be sure, you will not see the delicate
bones of many quails strowing the camps, or hear
much of oysters on the half shell ; the food is coarse
but abundant. I have sat down to a cup of coffee

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 195
that would make an Arab call upon Allah and the
Prophet, if he could get his breath, and have eaten
pork as rusty as the swords of the dead Knights
of Malta, " Whose souls are with the saints, we trust ; "
have attacked a cracker, and no man could declare that
I went hungry away. Half rations does not mean
half starved.
I can tell you, though, when the Federal cause and
the Federal army wpre both in uniform and both decid
edly blue, and the Federal larder was about as bare as
the cupboard of Mother Hubbard. It was in the fall
of '62, when General Buell began to worship the North
Star, and Nashville was in a state of siege for three
such months as it only takes six of to make a round
year. Inside, the city swarmed with enemies ; there
was one of them at every soldier's elbow ; they fronted
Headquarters, they flanked Headquarters, they wore
pantaloons, they wore petticoats, they toddled about in
rifle-dresses, they almost rustled in long-clothes. Out
side, there was a perfect cordon of foes ; courier after
courier was sent out who never got through or never
returned ; Nashville was hermetically sealed.
General Negley was in command, and Captain
Edwin F. Townsend of the i6th U. S. Infantry, in

196 PICTURES OF LIFE
charge of the Ordnance Department. But then it was
nearly a department without any ordnance, though the
enemy in the city did not suspect it. A train was laid
to the magazine and it was solemnly announced that
should the outside rascals attack the town and worse
come to worst, why that train would be set off, and the
inside rascals and Nashville would be blown out of the
State of Tennessee. This pleasant assurance kept
them all in a distracting state of hoping and fearing.
Ten thousand tons of powder could not have done
better execution so long as the Captain did not light
the train !
Sunday after Sunday was set for Morgan and Breck-
enridge's coming. How their friends within the city
knew it, no man could divine, unless they discerned
their approach in the tainted air. But they would
gather in little knots in the streets, both men and
women, and it was as plainly read as if their faces had
been fresh-lettered guide-boards, whenever they had
any welcome intelligence. Many a Saturday night,
turkeys were killed and dainties prepared in expectation
of their gray-clad knights of rescue, and in a mansion
adjoining the quarters of Captain Townsend, the lady
actually spread her bounteous table, on one of the
hopeful Sabbaths, for the special delectation of John
Morgan. The forces within the city stood thus : five

IN CAMP AND FIELD. I97
thousand Federal troops and two thousand Confeder
ates ready to rise. The General and his officers acted
with the utmost energy, but they were like Sterne's
starling — "they couldn't get out;" nay, worse' than
that, they were like cats in a bag, they could not see
out ; the enemy, his numbers and proximity were mys
terious ; the friend, his position and purpose were alike
unknown. Perhaps nothing will give a more vivid idea of how
near they were to playing Robinson Crusoe, than a
little incident. Two or three times during the siege,
adventurous persons in disguise, and by a circuitous
route — as if one hundred and eighty-five miles from
Louisville to Nashville were not miles a-plenty! — ¦
worked their way through the lines with a Louisville
paper in their pockets, old enough, had it been a puppy,
to have had its eyes open five days ! — and the Union,
the only paper in the besieged city, paid twenty-five
dollars for the copy, and straightway dispensed small
portions in extras, to a struggling crowd starving for
tidings from "the rest of mankind." At night the
dwellings were locked up from the outside with
bayonets ; there was no other way ; it was a city of
enemies. But those days, whose story has never been written,
were not idle ones. Strong fortifications were thrown

198 PICTURES OF LIFE
up, and every preparation was made for a stout defense.
Not an ounce of cannon-powder in Nashville, the Ord
nance officer set about emptying disabled cartridges, of
which he had as many as of effective ones, and pulver
izing charcoal to incorporate with his cartridge glean
ings, that the mixture might behave as cannon-powder
should, and burn with more dignified deliberation.
And then about the canister : they had no tin, but they
found and confiscated it ; and that done, the sides of
the canisters made, how about the ends ? They found,
in a coffin warehouse, sheet-iron cut to the pattern of
that last piece of farniture mortal man is supposed to
want, and it was just the thing. They did not direct
that iron from its original purpose so very much ; in
stead of boxing up the dead foe, it was only to box up
death to him. Thus they made six hundred rounds
and were ready for business.
Were they? They had forts, but how about the
guns? Well, they found down at the landing by the
Cumberland river, lying flat as a raft of logs, guns that
the enemy had stolen here and there — some from the
Norfolk Navy Yard — all stolen but one, and as to that,
they pilfered the materials of which they made it — a
columbiad marked " Memphis." These guns were all
loaded^ some with three charges of powder, and spiked
when the chivalry departed, but the garrison made

IN CAMP AND FIELD. I99
wheels and mounted them, and put them in position,
and had nine twenty-four-pounders and four one-hun
dred-pound " Parrotts " as a part of their armament,
and were ready for business.
Were they? They had guns, but how about the shot
and shell? And so they took to digging around the
town, and prying into improbable places, and the hid
den shot and shell turned out a bountiful crop. And
the secession women were delighted at last. Morgan
and Breckenridge appeared over the edge of the hills.
Our guns showed their teeth and growled at them
twice, and they slipped back out of sight to make ready
for new approaches. To bring a brief story of long
days to an end, one fine day — " December " a/<2.r "as
pleasant as May " that moming ! — about eight o'clock,
the cavalry vanguard of the army of Rosecrans
clattered on to the bridge and streamed into the city ;
and so boxed up had the besieged been, that they
did not know the army had left Bowling Green till its
troopers rode through their narrow horizon into sight.
And so ended the story of the Robinson Crusoes
of Nashville,

200 PICTURES OF LIFE

"NEARNESS OF MIND."
In war, if anywhere, men must sleep with the soul,
like the revolver, under their pillows — must have what
the old Greeks called nearness of mind, and their wits,
like their weapons, within easy reach So Farragut,
the Admiral, lashed to the mast-head like Ulysses pass
ing the Isle of the Syrens, when his ships went
courtesying like stately dames into the Bay of Mobile,
always kept his wits where he could find them in the
dark ; the man who, when the Southern lady asked him
why he did not take Charleston, and was he not afraid
of Fort Morgan, replied, " Madam, if I were ordered to
take ' the other place ' I would sail for it ! '" Nothing
so inspires the rank and file with faith in their leaders —
the faith that tones men up and makes more and
nobler of them than there was before. It is the prin
ciple recognized by the great Frederick when he
addressed his General : " I send you against the
enemy with sixty thousand men." " But, sire," said
the officer, " there are only fifty thousand." " Ah, I
counted you as ten thousand," was the monarch's wise
and quick reply. I have a splendid illustration of this
in an incident that occurred on the dreadful Sunday at

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 201
Chicamauga. It was near four o'clock on that blazing
afternoon, when a part of General James B. Steedman's
division of the Reserve Corps bowed their heads to the
hurtling storm of lead, as if it had been rain, and
looked at each other, and betrayed signs of breaking.
The line wavered like a great flag in a breath of wind.
They were as splendid material as ever shouldered a
musket, but then what could they do in such a blinding
tempest ? General Steedman rode up. A great, hearty
man, broad-breasted, broad-shouldered, a face written
all over with sturdy sense and stout courage, he realized
the ideal of my boyhood, when I used to read of the
stout old Morgan of the Revolution. Well, up rode
Steedman, took the flag from the color-bearer, glanced
along the wavering front, and with that voice of his
that could talk against a small rattle of musketry cried
out, "Go back, boys, go back, but the flag can't go
with you ! " — grasped the staff, wheeled his horse and
rode down into the harvest of death. Need I tell you
that the column closed up, grew firm and true and, tem
pered as steel, swept down on the foe like a blade in
the archangel's hand, and made a record that shall live
when their graves are as empty as the cave of Machpe-
lah ! The blood of the Minute-men of Concord and
Lexington was not all lost in the thirsty earth of the
Revolution.

202 PICTURES OF LIFE
Within the same hour and on the same field
occurred one of those incidents that make the stoutest
heart stand still. Word was brought to General Gor
don Granger of the Reserve Corps, in the midst of the
tempest, that a certain regiment had but one round of
ammunition. The blessed saltpetre was expected
every moment, but it had not come. " But one round
of ammunition, have you ? " said the General. " Go
back and tell them to fix bayonets, to save that one
round — to lie down and wait till the enemy are within
eight feet, to deliver their fire and give them the. bal
ance in cold steel. May I depend on you ? " " You
may," was the reply, and the trust was well placed, and
the pledge was honored.

WAR AND WORDS.
No one has failed to observe the effect of the War
upon common speech. It shuts the old-time tedious
talks together as if they were telescopes the observers
had done with. It makes people sharp, short and
decisive as a telegram. When the men of the 79th
Pennsylvania presented their colonel with an elegant
sword, the speech and the reply were like two sweeps
of a sabre : " Colonel, here is a bully sword — it comes

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 203
from bully fellows — take it and use it in a bully
manner ! "
And the Colonel cut back again with, " Captain, I
accept the bully gift — that was a bully speech — let us
take a bully drink ! " The whole ceremonial dwindled
down to something as direct as a duel and as brief as
a proverb. One April evening, while in Lookout Valley, General
Hooker had a grand time clearing his guns of rust,
bringing his batteries into brisk play in the semblance
of a battle. Right, left and center, the columns of
white smoke rolled up over the valley's brim and hung
in hea-vy clouds over the scene. It was a regular set-to
of loud talk, but, like some speakers we have heard,
the words were round and fine, but the meanings had
somehow gone out of them. William the Quaker can
not conceive quite as well as William the Conqueror,
how much more eloquent and mementous are the utter
ances of artillery as heard in battle than when resonant
with the empty thunders of the blank cartridge.
Even the directest of soldiers do not object to speech,
but they want the fire delivered from shotted guns.
A little while ago you might have listened out half
a session, in Representative Hall or Senate Chamber,
and never heard one word that would prove the
prophetic day unborn, when the leopard and the lamb.

204 PICTURES OF LIFE
the lion and a little child shall make up the happy
family of " the good time coming." But now, you can
hardly be there an hour that the nation's new and
bloody business does not intrude ; debate is broken in
upon by tidings from our armies in the field ; the very
dialect of war has crept into legislative speech ; the
Senator " changes his base " or " flanks " his opponent
or " carries the works." The Representative " steals
a march " or leads " a forlorn hope " or delivers an
" enfilading fire."
And this new tongue has gone into the sacred desk
as well. The " God of battles " is the being to whom
they pray, and the declaration of the Great Apostle
to the Gentiles, " I have fought the good fight — I have
kept the faith," is deemed as much the utterance and
the epitaph of the true soldier as of him who stood on
Mars' Hill ; for do not we all stand on Mars' Hill ? It
is " the sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and " the
soldier of the Cross," and "terrible as an army with
banners" they tell us of; the war-horse of Job is as
bright as a new picture, and the story of those out
stretched arms, sustained till the going down of the
sun, while the battle rolled on, is read with an interest
before unknown. Illustrations are no longer plucked
from the gentle Sermon on the Mount; the lilies of
the field and Sharon's roses bloom on untouched.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 20$
Even a piece of artillery is christened out of the
beatitudes — those melodious blessings that hang like
a chime of bells in the very top of the Saviour's
speech, and " blessed are the peacemakers " is trans
lated out of the original Greek into the dialect of
gunpowder.

ALEXANDRIA IN '64..— SOLDIERS REST.
A steam ferry, asthmatic and greasy, is a very slender
provocation to much poetry, but when the boatman
threw out the line, and I set foot on shore, I could
not forget it was my first touch of '¦ the mother of
Presidents." A narrow street, paved with boulders,
invites you grimly, and a barricade thrown across it lets
you through its ponderous gateway. You go banging
up the street as if you were riding a trip-hammer.
The signs that glare at you along the river are sugges
tive — " Plaster mills and Guano " — and you remember
that the " sacred soil " is worn so poor and. thin that it
needs all sorts of tonics to keep it up, for the sweat of
the brow that used to fall there never yet fattened the
ground it fell on. But the fields of " the old Domin
ion " are growing richer, day by day, and the rain is red
that waters them. GOD clear away the cloud.

206 PICTURES OF LIFE
In Alexandria five Colonial Governors met, almost an
hundred years ago, and hence Braddock set forth on
the expedition from which he never returned. The
church yet stands that claims a dead vestryman in the
man of Mount Vernon. Like a quiet, old Virginia
gentleman, with nothing to do, Alexandria sits by the
Potomac, seven miles below Washington, and lazily
watches the dome of the capitol all the long summer
afternoons. But its sleepy glory has departed, and it
has pulsated like a great heart, and through it men
have throbbed out to battle by the hundred thousand,
and rations by millions.
Going through the old burial places of the ancient
city, you reach a beautiful spot of seven acres, only a
little breadth of the ridged and mighty field of graves.
It is the United States Military Cemetery in Virginia.
Begun in 1862, the willing, years have helped the taste
ful hands; tree, flower and shrub lend fragrance and
beauty ; a monument is to lift its graceful shape, a sort
of strange vignette with a broad border in Death's
hand-writing all around. At the right, as you enter,
the white head-boards glitter in the sun. Two thou
sand three hundred and forty-six. of them already — a
whole brigade of soldiers fast asleep ! Here and there,
a tablet bears that dreary word, " Unknown ; " many
show the touch of a loving hand ; all are laid like

IN CAMP AND FIELD.

207

Christians in their beds of peace. A httle building in
the center, flanked with a green-house, is occupied by a
clerk in charge, who dwells in the heart of that strange,
silent neighborhood. It is proposed to erect a
monument in the center of this acre of GOD, and
contributions are daily made. Many a, boy in blue
passes along the breathless ranks, and, turning away,
leaves his little offering for his dead comrades' sake,
thinking, I dare to say, not once in a thousand times
that perhaps he is paying a tribute for his own.
Approaching the Cemetery, I fell into line behind a
funeral procession, and so passed within the white gate
of the field of silence. There were three ambulances,
each bearing a stained coffin covered with the flag.
Twelve soldiers marched with them to this edge of the
living world, and there drew up in line, with uncovered
heads, beside the open graves. As the coffins one after
one were lowered, the drums gave three low ruffles, as
sad as a sighing, and the sword of the officer sank rev
erently earthward. And then, the Chaplain stood forth
and read, " Lord, hadst thou been here my brother had
not died;" and then he prayed a soldier's prayer, for
the flag and them that bear it ; the ambulances wheeled
away, tlje escort filed after them, the fifes and drums
struck up a merry tune — " so dies in human hearts the

208 PICTURES OF LIFE
thought of death " — and the strange pageant, bare and
severe as if a Puritan had planned it, was ended.
And yet it was such a scene as would leave a litho
graph on the heart. Rachel was not there ; no veiled
and speechless sorrow. I thought of the mother, sister,
sweetheart, wife, and, for the moment, I stood mourner
in her stead. I looked around as the simple rites went
on. Negroes, that were digging graves and making
paths had ceased their work, and stood with uncovered
heads all over the cemetery ; one grizzled sexton, the
" Uncle Tom " aforetime of some old plantation, knelt,
his gray head bowed between his hands , four or five
little atoms of Africa that had been dropping pebbles
in a waiting grave — the man not dead who yet should
be its tenant ! — stood dumb and dark as the head of a
note in a musical score, each with his box of ivory shut
tight ; and they all made a striking picture of the pro
verbial reverence of the race. But a robin on a tree
near by sang as if nothing had happened, and the sun
shone on, as if there were no clouds in the world save
those that float in heaven.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 209

.WASHINGTON IN JULY, '64.
Washington, " the only child of the Union," has ten
dencies to ague. Perhaps it is not strange, since in
1 8 14, it had a chill and a flash of British fever that
should have crimsoned England with the blush of
shame. From the beginning of this war it has had
repeated attacks of the old complaint, and shivered in
its shoes with the fear of the enemy.
Surely, never was child so girded with an iron zone.
A sweep of forty miles of massive works, encircling
both Alexandria and the capital, studded with almost
sixty forts, filled in with sixty batteries more, ribbed
with rifle pits, beaded with bombs, this battle sash of
wonderful fabric woven in the loom of war, is bound
about the Federal city.
It is Sunday morning, the tenth of July. That the
enemy is within sixteen miles of Baltimore, and, like
John Brown's soul, still "marching on," does not dis
turb this city's lazy lassitude ; it just rises on its elbow
and listens in the sun. To be sure, it hums a little
around the hotels, but the more important movements
go noiselessly on. The newsboys, as I finished that
sentence, were rushing frantically by, crying "wolf"
and the "extra" with voices like young roosters.
14

2IO PICTURES OF LIFE
Bands of music, bodies of infantry and little clouds
of cavalry begin to pass across the city ; hard riders
dash through the streets ; engines are harnessed to the
trains ; steamers draw heavy breaths and give symptoms
of waking ; the treble of the newsboys flaunting their
second extra, and singing out, " rebels a marchin' on to
Washin'ton ! " again startles you, and at last the city
brushes the poppy leaves off its eyelids and is broad
awake. It leans out of windows ; it comes fairly out
of doors ; it ties itself in knots on street corners ; it
buys " extras " and reads them ; it hears rumors and
believes them ; it whistles a little and tries to look
unconcerned. The President visits the works ; heavy artillery and
reserve guards are moved to the northern fortifications,
and the capital is thoroughly aroused. But it need not
be ashamed of a good honest sensation. Roast pig —
according to Lamb, strangely enough — was a discovery.
Washington has a sensation. Possibly it is not pleas
ant, but then it is a tonic. I stroll along the Avenue.
Everybody from king to kaiser is saying " trenches —
cavalry — defenses — rebels." Night comes, and the
tramp of marching regiments beats the pavements, and
the glittering barrels of muskets flash in the uncertain
glimmer from windows along the way. It is the ad
vance of the Sixth Corps, General Wright commanding.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 211
en route for Fort Stevens, and not a minute too soon.
Probably no man in Washington — the President not
excepted — bore about with him so great a burden of
care and solicitude as William H. Seward, the Secre
tary of State. From his point of observation the mere
material destruction was immaterial ; it was not a ques
tion of battle lost or won ; of works carried or defended,
but something above and beyond them all. The At
lases, with starry worlds on their shoulders, are dealing
with sections of our own country, but his relations are
with the civilized globe ; the feelings of an American
North, in view of possible disaster, concern him less
than the judgment of a watching World. It was this
thought that may have lent a dignity to the raid it had
not otherwise attained. With masterly skill he had
kept the ship upon an even keel ; no nation on the
planet had sought to bring it to, with a saucy gun ;
what logic the Christendom across the sea would find
in the mere suspicion that the Capital could be
insulted, if not imperiled, might well provoke a
thought. Whatever the Secretary might have felt,
there was an unwonted briskness in his step ; he leaped
.into his carriage like a boy ; he rode out to the fortifi
cations and watched the movements with an earnest
eye. I do not think there was a trace of anxiety
apparent ; but I believe that he was looking beyond

212 PICTURES OF LIFE
the battle-zone of Washington, beyond possible assault
and gallant defense, at the consequences of this strange
antic that might lie in the far future.
Monday the eleventh, the guns of the enemy can be
heard in the suburbs of the Federal capital ; he threw
out his skirmish line at Tennally-town, and has slowly
advanced cityward ; he appears near Silver Springs and
occupies the mansion of Montgomery Blair. The
farmers have turned their backs upon rural delights
and fled from green fields to gray pavements. Generals
Breckenridge and Early stood beneath the trees on Mr.
Blair's beautiful grounds, and saw the sunset upon the
dome of the capitol. Just beyond the Ridge lay fifteen
thousand of the enemy, and parks of artillery. All
those houses, the fringes of bushes and every conceiv
able shelter, swarmed with sharp-shooters, who picked
off our men upon the parapets, and to whom nobody
seemed out of range. Creeping up almost under the
muzzles of the guns, the whistle of the bullets would
admonish the cannoneer that little messengers fly on
grave errands. To the left of Fort Stevens, in the
Carberry House, the rebel sharpshooters had taken
shelter in most uncomfortable neighborhood, when a
shell from the Fort struck the cupola, and fairly
drummed them out of quarters.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 213
So passed the day, and the enemy never showed his
hand. His artillery was over the ridgy edge of the
horizon, and never gave General Alexander McCook,
in command of the northern defenses, a glimpse of it.
His infantry, whatever he had, was there too ; his
fashion was to come down the hill with a heavy
skirmish line, to feel us here and there, to scatter out
into groves and bushes, and play squirrel hunter ; then
a crack or two from a heavy Federal whip, and away
he went. He evidently thought the works were
manned by clerks never under fire, and what he calls
" condemned Yankees." He fairly snapped his fingers
at us and played " the siege of Washington " Among
the novelties he sent us were piano tuning-screws in
place of bullets, and bits of chains and buttons, and
all in all, he behaved in a very eccentric manner.
Altogether, these fellows were a queer, mischievous,
rollicking set. They brought along hymn books and
song books; they wrote bad verses and pasted them
upon trees; they left saucy letters for the President.
They even brought along with them spelling books!
General McCook showed me one belonging to James
Regan, "his book," 29th Georgia regiment, and the
first page I opened to read " The Fate of the
Robber."

214 PICTURES OF LIFE
Tuesday morning finds the Federal capital humming
like a bee in a hollyhock. Long gun's sprouted with
bayonets are going about in company with short clerks ;
black-coated civilians take the beat of blue-coated
guards. Admiral Goldsborough has put a heavy force
of his men in Fort Lincoln and the rifle-pits ; General
Rucker, Chief Quartermaster, has rallied an army from
his Department, two thousand strong, and led them
himself, as you might know he would, to look at him,
out to Forts Stevens and Reno ; the clerks in the
Departments have " grounded " pens and shouldered
arms and are drilling under the trees near the War
Department, and everybody is tugging home some sort
of a death-dealing tool. The Sixth Corps is in
position ; other troops are arriving ; the enemy's oppor
tunity, if he ever had one, is utterly gone, for "blue
Monday " and the opportunity departed together.
Taking either Seventh or Fourteenth street, you
leave the city, cross the old stamping ground of
McClellan, pass beautiful residences, gardens and
groves, and so, up hill and down dale, until you reach
a " Uriah Heep " of a tavern, squatted by the road
side — the headquarters of General McCook. Just
beyond stands Fort Stevens, a little ragged to look at,
with an abattis of dry branches of trees under its chin,
like a scraggy whisker, but a strong piece of War's

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 215
solid geometry for all that. You are three miles from
the border of Washington, looking north ; Fort De
Russey is to your left ; Slocum to your right, and a
little nearer the city ; Totten yet further to the east ;
Lincoln more distant still, and beyond it to the north
east is Bladensburg. This fan-like section of the
northern defenses fronted the hostile apparition. A
heavily undulating sweep of landscape is before you."
Descending away from the Fort, you have a little,
shallow valley, three-fourths of a mile broad, then a roll
of the land, with a depression beyond, and then a
swelling ridge, perhaps a mile and a half distant, that
bounds the horizon. It is confused with shrubbery,
sprinkled with trees, dotted with homes.
And all the time, up to Tuesday evening — July 12th —
there had been no battle ; only skirmishing and dashes
of cavalry and soundings of our line. Ransom's troop
ers, and squads of Imboden's command, and Mosby's
men, had broken out in spots all over the country
round about, like a case of malignant rash, but nothing
tangible ; they melted out of hand like a wisp of
smoke. Meanwhile, our men were ready. Admiral
Goldsborough's blue jackets fairly made a frolic of it,
taking a hitch in their pantaloons and smoking their
pipes and keeping a jolly eye out for squalls, with as
much composure as if they were in the forecastle,
listening to Tom Longbow's last yarn.

2l6 PICTURES OF LIFE
The sun had burned its way clean through the day
down into Tuesday afternoon, and the enemy in that
orchard, you see yonder, was getting saucy. And then
there would be a lull ; and then, it was crack, bang and
scatter ; the gray and blue skirmish lines, within short
pistol shot in places, and elsewhere widening away to
rifle range, were playing "balance to partners." It
looked very little like a battle ; very much like the
prefatory sparring of a couple of pugilists finding out
the length and muscle of each other s arms.
The Sixth Corps were held well in hand, for they
chafed a little at hanging round the hea-vy artillery,
and were eager to strike out. The enemy's style of
rushing up, delivering his fire, dodging behind trees
and scudding back to cover, making a rabbit-warren of
the landscape, was not at all to their liking. Things
could not go on after this fashion. Under the darkness
of the night, the enemy might advance his line, throw
UD breastworks within four hundred yards of the guns
and pick off the gunners at his leisure. And so it was
determined to find out what this Udolpho with his
Mysteries was made of.
The charge was ordered at six o'clock, Tuesday eve
ning, three guns the signal for moving out. At the
last tick of the battle clock they went. The enemy,
six full brigades, dra-wfi up in two lines, watched and

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 217
waited, and made no sign. They thought them clerks
and invalids ; handfuls of tow to be licked up at the
first touch of fire. They hurled opprobrious epithets
at them as they came, as if so they would save their
gunpowder. Out into the open ground moved six
sifted regiments — ah, with what terrible winnowing on
old fields ! — numbering eleven hundred men, led by
Colonel Bidwell of the 49th New York ; eleven hun
dred and no more. Fort Stevens let drive a salvo of
artillery over their heads as they went. The enemy
delivered his fire, but the Federal line, not scorched and
curled like a leaf, came easily and steadily on. The
enemy recognized them in an instant. Toughened to
battle as a sailor is to the sea, the veterans of the Poto
mac pushed out into the open ground, and to use their
own camp phrase, "sailed in." There was no mistaking
them. "Are you there, Yanks ? " was the cry, and then,
" the Sixth Corps ! the Sixth Corps is here, by G — d ! "
was shouted from rank to rank, and the rebels stiffened
sinews stoutly, but it was useless. The old smoky fel
lows, that snuff the battle like the war-horse of Job,
broke through the first line, and shut it back upon the
second like the battered lid of an old book, and away
went the six brigades into the hollow and over the hill,
one and a half miles, by the memory of John Gilpin !
It took sjxty minutes in all, and 4hat was the end of it

2l8 PICTURES OF LIFE
and that was all of it. No. not all, for the defense of
the city cost us three hundred and fifty in killed and
wounded, and, as I write, they are engaged in the sad
work of removing the dead who were buried upon the
field, to a more befitting resting place. All who fell
before the city are to lie as they fought, shoulder to
shoulder, in one place.
In the morning, the whole " Front," for miles out,
was as empty as a drum. They came here hungry and
active, every man's belt drawn up to the last hole ;
empty stomachs make light heels. Their flocks and
herds were well under way, every nose of them all
pointed toward the Antarctic ; their wagons, laden
with " leather and prunella," and entertainment for
man and beast, were stringing across the flat Potomac,
the Sixth Corps was behind them, "there was no use
knocking at the door any more."

THE SCOUT AND THE SPY.
There is a description of invaluable service requiring
the coolest courage, and the clearest head and the
quickest wit of any soldierly duty, but which, from its
nature, seldom appears in print. I refer to the achieve
ments of the scout. He passes the enemy's -lines, sits

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 219
at his camp-fire, penetrates even into the presence of
the commanding General ; he seems a Tennesseean, a
Georgian, an Irishman, a German — anything indeed but
what he reafly ' is ; if he falls, no friendly heart may
ever know where ; his grave is nameless. The scout
voluntarily signs away his right to be treated as a
prisoner of war. If he is detailed from the ranks to
render this special service, he is denounced as a
deserter by his comrades and as a spy by the enemy.
He takes his life in one hand and seeming dishonor in
the other. Like the Nomades he reckons time by
nights and not by days ; he lurks like a wild creature
in darkness when it is in his heart all the while to
stand forth like a man in the day. " John Morford,"
known in civil life as Lewis Carter, and one of the
most daring of Federal scouts, was found dead in the
mountains near Chattanooga, and John Carlock, who
had achieved fame for his tact and daring in the
Department of the Cumberland, was killed by a com
rade, a member of the Anderson cavalry, whom he
halted. The latter, supposing him to be an enemy,
instantly fired a fatal shot. The story of Harvey
Birch, as inimitably wrought up in Cooper's " Spy,"
lends at once a romance and a dignity to the office
that has undoubtedly led many a brave fellow to peril
life or to live it on under a clou^, in playing the role of
the scout.

220 PICTURES OF LIFE
There is William Crutchfield. An old resident, and
for years proprietor of the " Crutchfield House," know
ing every road, stream, wood, hill, in all the country
round, he has rendered invaluable service to the
Federal cause ; brigades have moved by routes he
designated, and halted at camping grounds of his
selection A rough, angular, uncourtly man, of good,
strong sense, I have heard him address Major-Generals
as "you fellows." and rattle on about the geography
of the region with more accuracy than a gazetteer.
While he himself has been obliged to do considerable
of what Leatherstocking would call " sarcumvention "
to keep out of the enemy's hands, his family has
remained at Chattanooge through all weathers. In
one or two instances.it rained iron on the old home
stead, but the inmates lived on content, having read,
perhaps, Marryatt's story of the Fire-eater, who escaped
in battle, because he always put his head into the hole
the first cannon ball made in the ship's side, as, accord
ing to Professor Truman, the odds were 32,647 and
some decimals that another shot would never come in
at the same hole.
Women — not invariably any "better than they
should be" — have always been employed to persuade
information out of suspected person^, and they bring
a degree of tact and shrewdness into play that hirsute

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 221
humanity can never hope to equal. Many a wasp has
been caught with their honey of hypocrisy. A subor
dinate Federal officer in Nashville had been long
suspected of disloyalty, but no proof to warrant his
arrest rould be obtained, and so as a last resort a
woman was set at him. She smiled her way into his
confidence, and became his "next best friend," but,
finding that ears were of no use, for he could not be
induced to say one word of matters pertaining to his
office, she changed her plan of attack, and turned a
couple of curious and beautiful eyes upon him.
Frequently he would ride out of town into the coun
try, be absent three or four hours and return. For all
the hours of the twenty-four but just these she could
account. Within them, then, lay the mischief if mis
chief there was, and she began to watch if he made
any preparations for these excursions. He loaded his
old-fashioned pistol, drew on his gloves, lighted a cigar,
bade her good by — "only that and nothing more."
Was he deep and she dull ? Time would show. At
last, she observed that he put an unusual charge into
the pistol, one day, and all at once she grew curious in
pistols. Would he show her some day how to charge a
pistol, how to fire a pistol, how to be a dead shot?
And just at that minute she was athirst, and would he
bring her a lemonade ? She was left toying with the

222 PICTURES OF LIFE
weapon, and he went. The instant the door was closed
behind him, she drew the charge, for she knew quite as
much of pistols as he, and substituted another. She
was not a minute too soon, for back he came, took the
weapon and rode away. No sooner had he gone than
she set about an examination of the charge, and it
proved to be plans and details of Federal forces and
movements, snugly rolled together. The mischief was
in the pistol, then, though none but a woman would
have thought of it, and so it was that he carried infor
mation to his rebel friends with rural proclivities. The
woman's purpose was gained, and when the officer
returned, had vanished like an Arab or a vision, and he
had hardly time to turn about before he was under
arrest. Admiring the adroitness of the achievement, we
cannot help regretting that a woman performed it.
The memory of a man's mother is sacred, and he feels
that whoever wears her form unworthily and debases
woman's graceful gifts, profanes it.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 223

A DIVIDED HOUSEHOLD.
The complications caused by this most cruel war
astonish me. I learned much of them in Georgia.
Tennessee and Alabama, but they are even more sad
in Washington. Young men disappeared from their
homes on the Sunday of the enemy's approach, and the
next I knew of them they were deploying into the hos
tile skirmish line. A few squares distant, one of those
poor, misguided fellows is lying in his father's house,
fearfully wounded, and by a Federal shot in front of
Fort Stevens. So sure were the sympathizers of the
capture of the capital that rooms long darkened were
opened, swept and garnished, and preparations made to
give high banquet to the conquering heroes.
In the Federal trenches before the capital was Gen
eral Rucker, Chief of the Quartermaster's Department,"
and across the little valley was General Ransom, Chief
of rebel cavalry, his old regimental comrade, as were
Ewell and Longstreet. Rucker had a letter from the
latter just as the little cloud of trouble, "no bigger
than a man's hand," began to show in the horizon.
Longstreet was with his regiment away on the frontier,
and the boding sounds in the hollow air had reached
him.

224 PICTURES OF LIFE
" What," he writes, " does it all mean ? Is anything
serious impending ? " To General Rucker's reply that
he trusted not, Longstreet substantially responded, " I
hope to God you are right ; that the dissolution of the
Union is not threatened." This was his last loyal word
to his old companion in arms, and the first audible
monosyllable at Sumter found them arrayed face to
face, enemies in war, though in peace they had been .
friends. Take it at Chattanooga : Colonel Fullerton, Gran-
gei''s Chief-of-Staff, and a Confederate officer are
talking of old days beneath the white flutter of a flag
of truce. They were once neighbors and friends.
They belonged to a young men's club ; there were
thirty of them. Among them were Frost, Major-Gen
eral in rebeldom, and Basil Duke. Twenty-six of them
cast off their allegiance, as if it had been a worthless
garment instead of a costly vesture that should have
clothed their souls with honor ; Colonel Fullerton and
the three other true-hearted comrades stood by the old
flag. Even the writer had two schoolmates over yon
der on Mission Ridge ; one of them a Colonel from the
Palmetto State, the other risen to the doubtful dignity
of a rebel General. Alas, for the days that are no
more !

IN CAMP AND FIELD.

225

Look at the grand old Second Regular Cavalry, and
you will marvel to see the rebel Generals file out of
it ; Robert E; Lee was its Lieutenant-Colonel ; Albert
Sydney Johnson, kifled at Shiloh, belonged to it, and
so did Generals Van Dorn, Hardee, E. Kirby Smith
and Fitz Hugh Lee. So runs the tarnished, tattered
roll of the dashing troopers of the old Second.
"Blood is thicker than water." At Murfreesboro
two brothers lived apart and estranged for years only
to meet face to face on that tremendous field, and
more than one musket was turned aside in the flash
of mutual recognition, that a brother's blood should
not cry out from the ground.
Keep on entangling the world in the web of the
telegraph ; bind it a little more firmly with railroad
bars ; quicken, by a few plunges a minute, the shaft of
the steam engine ; affiliate men a little more in affairs
sacred and secular by the agency of art, science, litera
ture and religion, and foreign war in any accepted
meaning of the term will be a thing impossible ; the
battle roll will bda record of sharper, bitterer struggles
than have yet distracted the race, all kindled to the
intensity of civil conflict. There will be neither Greek
nor Barbarian, and from being the clash of organized
mobs of strangers war will become the fiercer, deadlier
strife of an alienated brotherhood.
15

226 PICTURES OF LIFE

THE WAR DEPARTMENT.
The thought saddens, as it goes the heavy rounds of
the twenty-one hospitals in the Federal city, these July
days of '64, where thousands languish, the stricken
heroes from the battles of Virginia. The leaves of the
linden beneath my window, that swing at a breath, as
if the tree were laden with the green pendulums of
little French clocks all going at once, have "run down ;"
and there, a soldier's emblem of these broad, brazen
days, they lie motionless upon the air. With the poor,
wounded boys, time, indeed, stands still. I wish I
could tell you, in words befitting, of the patience of
those men ; how they treasure their terrible wounds ;
no " Old Guard " of the Corsican so prized his cross of
the Legion of Honor. But they crave the gentle touch
and voice of woman. The " well done, my men ! " of
the commanding General is much, but the cup of cold
water from a loving hand is more. She is not repre
sented in the Cabinet ; she has no voice in the Capitol,
but in the thought and heart of the Federal armies she
abideth forever.
Next to the hospitals, perhaps, the stranger regards
the War Department with the deepest interest. He

IN CAMP AND FIELD.

227

thinks of it, as the spot whence the slender nerves radi
ate, that move the mailed and clenched hand of the
Government, and hurl a million of men, like mighty
hammers, upon its enemies. And so, he strolls up the
Avenue, by the great, white city and stately columns
of the Treasury ; by the sober front of the State Depart
ment ; by the uncertain magnificence of the President's
mansion ; and pauses at last before a brown brick build
ing,, three stories in height, with a little growth of white
columns at the entrance, and altogether, looking as
meek and harmless as a Ladies' Seminary. No trace
of " the pomp and circumstance " anywhere.
It is Mars' horrid front hidden in a Quaker bonnet.
A foreground of green grass, dappled with the shadows
of linden, maple, ash and elm, completes the illusion,
and he expects to see a group of white-skirted girls
blossom out of the open door in the portico, any mo
ment. True, the iron fence, with its fasces tipped out
with tomahawks, and the escutcheon of cannon over
the entrance, and the gilded eagle, are a little suspi
cious ; and when he discerns a couple of soldiers' knap
sacks lying beside the door, and sees "leaves" silver
and golden drifting on blue shoulders over the thresh
old, and now and then a " star ;" and hears the positive,
energetic step of the Secretary of War upon the pave
ment, and catches a gHmpse of his next neighbor, the

228 PICTURES OF LIFE
President, coming across the shady green, the suspicion
turns to certainty ; the War Department is before him.
There are the nerves I wrote of, strung away on to
Sherman before Atlanta, and down to Grant before
Petersburg, and out to banditti-haunted Missouri, and
messages from fifty fields flock like doves to their
windows ; and it seems to him fitting they should come
in flashes of lightning, and not, as of old, beneath the
wing of " the bird let loose in Eastern skies," the
carrier-pigeon. What tales of triumph and disaster,
of wounds and death, have reached those chambers, as
if the birds of the air had brought them. Perhaps he
says to himself, " ah, no love messages there," but he
thinks wrong. The grandest of love tokens have
flickered in at that window : how men have given right
hands and right hearts for love of liberty and land ;
how they are " married unto death " every day ; how
they press their bloody brows upon the breast of the
bride, fall asleep under the flag and are content.
There is no pageantry about that quiet building, and
yet, there is no marble pile in Washington on which
the thoughtful eye will linger with more earnest
look. Beneath the shade along the iron fence, a detach
ment of tired soldiers lies fast asleep on Jacob's piflow,
the stony pavement. And may be, it is a Bethel to

IN CAMP AND FIELD.

229

some of them, too ; and wife and child, or the girls they
left behind them, may be ascending and descending, in
the guise of angels, the silver ladder of a dream.
Leaving the gate of the Capitol to-night, I met an
old man hastening to the Baltimore cars. He carried
a sword tenderly upon his arm, as if it had been an
infant. And yet he was no soldier, and the weapon
was no new toy. He was a father, fresh from the June
fields of the West — the scabbard was battered and the
hilt was stained. He had given a son to GOD and
liberty, and was going home with the sword ! It was
not the first time I had seen old swords borne north
ward by hands unused to wield them, but it was the
first time its full meaning had come home to me.
All this summer of the year of grace '64, Wash
ington is thronged with strangers seeking a sorrow, or
a joy so like a grief that the tear will express it far
oftener than the smile. They come from New England
valleys and God's Western pastures ; from every State
that has a soldier in the Front. You will see men in
the home-made suit, and women in the garments of
some dead and gone fashion. Altogether, it is a
strange mingling of this new element of homeliness
and heart with the gay whirl of Vanity Fair. Five
hundred, a thousand miles these wanderers come, and

230 PICTURES OF LIFE
they all have one errand : they seek a soldier languish
ing, a brother wounded, a husband dying, a first-bom
dead. There are scenes almost every day that stand at the
door of the heart and knock audibly for entrance.
Take one incident from hundreds. I was fellow-
passenger with a lady bound ' for Washington, and she
was going upon the one errand. She had a son, a
young Lieutenant of Company E, 2d Michigan, who
was wounded the other day. Ah, how brave George
was, and how dutiful he was, and how — ^but it is all
told in this : he had a mother to love him. And she
was hastening to take care of the brave soldier; she
that his young eyes had worshiped, looking up as he lay
smiling in her arms, just twenty years ago.
" How long will you remain in Washington ? " was
the question. " Till he is ready to go home," was the
quick reply. So, through the mountains of Pennsyl
vania, through the monumental city, sped the train.
The capital was reached ; the location of the boy's
hospital ascertained, and the mother hurried away.
The next day I went to the hospital, but the mother^
was not there. " Is Lieutenant George S. Williams, of
Company E, 2d Michigan, here?" The leaves of the
record are slowly turned, and the finger moves down

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 231
the fines, of name after name, in that roll of honor.
The finger halts at last : the officer reads,
"¦ George S. Williams, Lieutenant, 2d Michigan,"
turns with a quick look and says, " died day before
yesterday ! " "I shall stay till he is ready to go," were
the words of the mother, and he was ready, even while
she uttered them. Why not write upon his head-stone
for eulogy and epitaph, " He was ready to go ! "
Ah, the bravery, in these battle years, is not all at
the Front ! Bullets fly far, borne on from flight to
flight, northward, even as the silver arrow of Arabian
story, that, driven from the bow, led the archer a weary
way to a distant land.

TWO BA TTLE FIELDS A YEAR OLD.
The arts of peace follow the battle, even as the
peaceful rainbow the grim and roaring cloud, and grain
grew rank at Waterloo, and violets fulled like the moon
and turned to pansies on the field of Inkermann. So
at Mission Ridge and Stone River.
The calm-faced clock that, across the Hall of Repre
sentatives, forever looks the Speaker in the eye, has

232 PICTURES OF LIFE
seen laws born without emotion, and generations of
legislators come and go, like shadows on a dial, without
regret. With what patience it has timed dull speeches
unnumbered ; with what indifference it has told off
little moments of eloquence ; and how unrelentingly it
lifts those bloodless hands to heaven in sign of twelve
o clock. Were battle-fields as changeless as that clock's dead
face ; had the passing year no way of hiding the
unseemly scars ; did not the sharp acanthus sometimes
turn Corinthian and crown a capital ; did not time grow
loving and smoothe the ridged and rolling graves till
they subside at the caress, and, like the troubled sea
at Christ's command, have rest, how hideous a scrawl
of War's wild autographs would mar the planet's
disc !
It took ten tons of ammunition to fight the battle of
Stone River, and here is Murfreesboro as calm as if it
had always lain in the lap of peace. Asleep in the
April sun of '64 lies the broken field of Stone River.
Could I help regarding it with an earnest eye ? The
little thread of water in midsummer, but a torrent in
spring-time, working its winding way between high
banks to the North, curves abruptly toward the western
side of Murfreesboro, and makes a horse-shoe where the
enemy formed their line of battle, sixty-two thousand

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 233
strong. You remember the closing words of Rosecrans
in front of Murfreesboro on that New Year's eve :
" Be cool. I need not ask you to be brave. With God's grace
and your help, I feel confident of striking this day a crushing blow
for the country. Do not throw away your fire. Fire slowly, delib
erately — above all, fire low, and be always sure of your aim. Close
steadily in upon the enemy, and when you get within charging
distance, rush upon him with the bayonet. Do this, and victory
will certainly be yours."
Asleep around me lie two thousand Federal dead.
It is a broad Golgotha, a place of skulls. Were it not
demonstrated that it takes about a man's weight of
lead to kill him, I could never believe that from the hot
places of the field, where the trunks of trees are honey
combed with bullets, and where your brothers and
mine stood up to the storm without flinching, and sank
beneath it without sorrowing, one man could have
come forth alive. So hasty and imperfect was the
sepulture, that yesterday, hands shriveled and black
ened in the sun, looking like those of some mummy
from the pyramid of Cheops, were visible, thrust out of
the earth in mute appeal ; and as a strange memento
of the battle, the skeletons of a horse and his gray-
coated rider were found, only the other day, lying
where they fell, the missile passing through the thighs
of the trooper and the body of the horse, and there

234 PICTURES OF LIFE
they lay together, the rider, the ridden, and the solid
shot. Our dead boys were decently buried, and head
boards bearing the names and regiments of the sleepers
made check-work of the field ; but already many of
these are gone, and of them who sleep under the little
ridges all traces are effaced forever.
The Federal fortifications cover three hundred acres,
and require a garrison of fifteen thousand men. Rifle-
pits, angles and willow bastions make a grand geomet
rical diagram of the whole landscape, breaking it up
most strangely, to a man who had seen nothing more
formidable than an Osage-orange hedge planted to stay
the progress of errant flock and herd.
How wildly upon this spot the old year '62 closed in ;
how red and angry was the glare that lighted on the
new ! Standing here to-day I keep forgetting that I
look upon the scene of deeds that shall outlast the
house of the grave-maker. Amid the homely sounds
of common life, with only the snarl of an idle drum in
the distance, I cannot clearly trace the lines of fire
drawn here and yonder in the terrible geometry of
battle. In this lazy air I can hardly think how right
over my head the curtains of the thunder shook to the
top of heaven. The ranks of corn may wave along
these acres, and the monumental shaft sink wearily
away into the Italic of time, but these sleepers here

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 235
shall spring to resurrection in song and story, and gtone
River be stereotyped among the battle-fields of Liberty.
How swiftly the plowshare follows the sword, no man
can quite appreciate who has not seen from a single
stand-point, the sweep of the one and the sober going
of the other. Think of it ! Where, last November, I
saw Hooker move up to the battle in the clouds, his
stout and steady legions swinging round the mountain
disc, six plows are scarring a spot, the colters cutting
the willing earth, these April days, for a potato-field !
Horses that thundered bravely on in a charge of cav
alry, are going soberly to and fro along the glistening
furrows. Where, last November the crest of Lookout
all day long gave growls of thunder, now stands the
cabin of a photographer, and hundreds of groups has
he taken at long range, standing upon its brink. Thus
closely does trade tread upon the heels of war.
" How is business ? " I asked a dealer in clothing, a
day or two ago. "Dull," was the reply. "But," I
returned, ''it will be better after a payment." "Better
after a battle" was the prompt and business-like reply.
It gave me something to think of
All these regions will turn into a vineyard at the
least provocation, and I do not see why the sweeps of
the Tennessee may not be the Rhine of the South.
Grapes, large and luscious, drape the little islands, climb

236 PICTURES OF LIFE
everything that will let them, and, the woods are purple
with muscadines. Figs grow and ripen in the valleys,
and here, if anywhere on the continent, the old Scrip
ture may be verified, and the dwellers of a truth may
" sit under their own vine and fig-tree."
The mountain echoes of artillery had just died away
when a lively cricket of a newspaper appeared in Chat
tanooga, and with the daily came the newsboy — the
same boy I saw curled up in a box in Nassau street.
New York ; the same boy that cries the " E nyn Yurn'l "
on Dearborn street, Chicago ; the same shrewd, sharp,
old-before-his-time urchin that jumps into the clothes
of his ancestors, and runs out into the world with the
shell upon his back, like a young quail. If anything,
he is smaller here, but then he has slipped into a pair
of cavalry pantaloons when the owner was out, and he
is overwhelmed in the coat of a rebel who is done with
it, and altogether, resembles a shagbark walnut — more
cover than kernel.

DANGER AND DESOLA TION,
I saw a strange-looking party the other day, one
hundred and fifty strong, attired in butternut and shirt
sleeves, mounted upon horses of every tint and action,
from blue to calico, and from a limp to a lope.

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 237
Rozinante was there and the steed of Dr. Syntax, and
so, for that matter, were Sancho Panza and " the
knight of the sorrowful countenance." Equipped with
fowling-pieces, squirrel-guns, bell-mouthed muskets that
would scatter like a flock of sheep, rifles, huge target
guns weighing thirty pounds that ought to go on
wheels, fancy little pieces, flint-lock, percussion-lock, no
lock, and the old Queen's arm, they looked as if they
had ridden right out of a dead and gone age bravely
down into our own. They proved to be men from
Middle Tennessee, who had traveled, like the Nomades,
a long joumey by night, to fall in to the Federal line.
Writing of arms, have you happened to think what
a world of ingenuity has been expended upon imple
ments of death ? Take the muskets, Springfields, Aus-
trians, big Belgians, old United States ; and what tribes
of carbines — Sharpe's, Merrill's, Burnside's, Gallagher's,
Joslyn's. Of the whole hundred and ten varieties of
small-arms, the Springfield rifled musket is the most
valued and trusty. Every soldier that carries one gives
it gender and makes a " Brown Bess ' of her at once.
The Tennesseeans who have thus taken arms are
terrible. Shot at in their own doors, waylaid in their
own fields, their fair land made desolate around them,
their families driven homeless, shelterless from the old
roof-tree, do you wonder they never take a prisoner.''

238 PICTURES OF LIFE
That rebels are found hanging here and there from
low-limbed oaks that never bore such fruit before?
That such a colloquy as this should have occurred at
Murfreesboro, when the enemy's cavalry flashed through
it like a shuttle ?
Tennessee Cavalryman to General Ward : " We just
took four prisoners, a couple of miles out of town. Gen
eral, but could gain no information."
General : " Well, where are they ? "
Cavalryman : " We don't know precisely. The
last we saw of them they were going away into the
woods with some of the boys."
The General made no comment, but in less than
sixty minutes a party of Federal soldiers came into
town, stating that they had just seen four "rebs"
hanging from one tree.
You see, now and then in Tennessee, a quaint old
house among the mountains, with the dormer windoAvs,
and the little two-seated porch, and the roofs slipping
off almost down to the ground behind, like a school
girl's sun-bonnet ; the oven squatted out of doors like
a great mud-turtle, and the " slice " leaning against it ;
the well-sweep accenting the low, mossy eaves; the
old-time flowers growing in the garden ; the sun-flower
• making ready to rise ; the hollyhock buflding its small
orchestra wherein the little negroes used to bag many a

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 239
bee to. hear "its small and mellow horn ;" earth and
sky drawn very near together all around, with the spurs
of the Cumberland grooved into the horizon ; the clean
world it all looked, and so home-like and sheltered
those valleys, that it would have seemed to me next
safest to being literally held in the hollow of God's
hand to dwell in them, had I not known that death
lurked in every cedar.
Everything grows skittish in such regions except the
mule. He would bray at the gates of — Dante, if a
ration of corn could be made of it. I wonder what
Charles Lamb—" the gentle Elia " — would have thought
of it, if just entering a car at Murfreesboro, bound
down, he should happen to see the side of the coach
freshly peppered with shot ; and if, being fairly seated,
he should spy a suggestive hole in the oak panel just
above his head, and on probing it should find a lazy
minie-ball lying perdu at the bottom. What with the
enemy's devilish delicacy in the shape of torpedoes
which, placed beneath the rail, explode with the
slightest pressure, and make kindling wood of things
in a twinkling, and the swoops of hostile cavalry upon
the road, running a train is nervous work, and our
engineer may be pardoned for whistling " down brakes"
yesterday with unusual emphasis. Something suspi
cious lay upon the track, and a skirmisher was sent

240 PICTURES OF LIFE
forward to reconnoiter. A cautious examination dis
closed the dilapidated leg of a cavalry boot, a harmless
waif from some passing train ; and with unusual
pressure to the square inch our postillion succeeded in
bringing his shy and skittish engine down to her work
again. All the eyes of all the engineers in this region
are in the fronts of their heads.
The Chattanooga, the very Jordan of railroads, rag
ged to a degree, and as full of perils as a brisk skirmish,
has done noble service, and cast aside its tattered rails
as they may, it will have " the right of way " and an
enduring Station on the historic page. The wrecks of
seven engines and one hundred and forty cars strow the
road between Nashville and Bridgeport — that capital
place for liars to tell the truth in. Verily they cannot
lie if they try. From Bridgeport to Chattanooga it is
twenty-seven miles, fifty-five miles, seventy miles. They
consume one day, three days, ten days, and it is all
true. Fancy a Potomac General ordering thirty break
fasts and rooms for his suite at Stevenson by light
ning! — Stevenson with its "Alabama House," a good
piece of property to begin a new Tophet with, should
the old one be burned out. Think of his coveting a
dinner at Bell Buckle, to which place the conductor
took fare of a passenger who profanely declared he was
bound for "the other place." "You'll get off at BeU

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 24I
Buckle then — it s the nearest station on this road," said
the conductor, and so landed him to make the rest of
his journey as he could. Eight miles an hour is the
passenger rate of running, and I have as yet met
nobody who talked of mud-turtles, for in that eight
miles you get motion enough for eighty. Worn out
before the enemy had done with it, they had spiked
plank upon the ties, making a broad road whereon their
army wagons were driven, and the first time I passed
over it, the thick double rows of beans and corn — raw
succotash — growing along the rails were as good as a
bill of lading as to the freight they carried.
Many of the bands that attack the trains in Tennes
see are made up of desperate and abandoned citizens,
whose predatory propensities are indulged under the
color of war; for, they do not belong to the army
at aU.
General Hooker issued a two-edged sword of an
order which illustrates the fact that a steel blade may
be made of no tougher material than honest English.
It holds residents within twenty miles upon each side
of the Railroad, responsible for any damage done by
guerrillas, upon the ground that the latter can only
approach the line with the connivance or knowledge
of such residents, and announcing further that the
homes will be- destroyed and the property confiscated
16

242 PICTURES OF LIFE
of all who shall either by actual deed or by silence
facilitate the approach of the raiders. The order cuts
both ways, for it declares that under no circumstances
will the surprise, abandonment or surrender of any
Federal force, work or bridge along the line be
pardoned. Waiting at a desolate station in the gray of the
morning, a ghostly mist hiding the river lowlands, and
nothing but a ruin in sight, I saw two blots on the
thick air, that took shape in a moment and loomed out
of the fog a mounted picket leading a riderless horse.
The saddle was stained with something heavier than
dew, for it had just been emptied by a shot from an
unseen hand, and the picket's comrade had fallen dead
in the rank weeds. Such incidents were frequent, but
a scene more eloquent of utter loneliness can hardly be
imagined. It impressed me much as did another and
widely different picture. Riding through a region
emptied like that hapless rider's saddle of all life — the
houses tumbling down in their desolateness, and the
breathless chimneys standing like dumb monuments to
dead households, the silence dotted now and then by a
shot in the distance, ticking, perhaps, some patrolman's
last minute, we halted at the 'foot of a great oak.
Glancing up the trunk, there were slips nailed along,
the rounds of a rude ladder leading to a little platform

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 243
like a hawk's nest among the foliage at the top. A
single telegraph wire was trailed up amid the leaves
like the floating thread of that brave aeronaut, the field
spider. It was a deserted station where our signal
corps had made observations at the distance of fifteen
miles. The corps had moved on, the storm had swept
by, but the look-out remained.

UNDER WHICH KING?
I had read from boyhood the passage where the
orator talks so finely of the drifts of New England and
" the snows of the cotton field ; " I had seen cotton
batting ; heard of cotton breastworks at New Orleans
and — elsewhere , met cotton kings and attended a cot
ton court, but a cotton field was a thing in cotton I had
yet to see. Beginning with a boy's first boots, almost
all first things are memorable. Riding along one
pleasant day, I came upon a row of negroes, " a sitting
on a rail." Of different heights, their inky heads
looked like the ups and downs of a queer stave of
music, and their crooked bodies finished x)ut the notes
with grotesque stems.' This bit of a tune would have
been nowise remarkable, had not every note of it been
spotted with white. They were cotton-pickers, and

244 PICTURES OF LIFE
looked as if they had been out in a storm of it. Over
the fence beyond I beheld the cotton field. It was late
in the season and the green had faded out ; the earth
showed dark beneath, and the cotton thickly sprinkled
the landscape. It was as if the first great flakes of
a snow-fall should be halted a foot or so from the
ground, and should hang obedient there. And so I
looked my first at the field whence they had picked the
fabric worn by " the girl with the blue dress on," and
gathered the folds of the star-lit flag.
I was looking upon a deposed monarch without
thinking of it ; for cotton is no longer king.
I saw four hundred of the mothers of Ethiopia — and
about every one of them a nursing mother — " doing "
the woolens of the army in the morning shadow of the
mountain, the dingy crowd freckled a little with yellow
girls, and nothing sweet about any of them but the
laugh of the women. It almost startles you to hear
light, musical laughter from a pair of lips that might
have exuded from the india-rubber tree. I have heard
the originals of some of the songs that jumped " Jim
Crow " into much smutty immortality and clean money,
but I heard them from the poor, ragged performers
with a feeling of pain rather than amusement. " Way
down in Alabama " had lost its power to charm, and so
had the rollicking Sambos and die-away Dinahs of old

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 245
times. The nearer you get to his Guinea and Gold
Coast fathers the more elastic the negro grows. He
seems india-rubber all the way through. He resists by
yielding, and the rebound is as light and airy as a bird.
He brushes off grief as if it were a sprinkle of rain.
With him " sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,"
and he lets the strife and fever of his life go down with
the sun.
Some hunter of the White Nile has said, " When the
sun sets all Africa dances." In Washington when Sun
day comes all Africa dashes if it does not dance. It is
rampant and saltant. It is easy to see on a sunny
Sabbath what has become of the old mantle of the
aristocracy They pepper the city as from a dredge-
box, and sober it into a sort of mitigated mourning.
During the capital's troubled days in July, '64,
everybody was toned up a little but the shady side of
humanity Hz waspish at the waist and with that
voluminous Allegheny-and-Monongahela flow of trous
ers that suggests the idea of something pulled up by
the roots before it has done growing, sports his best,
swings his cane and cocks his hat over his north-east
eyebrow, and gives the old plantation laugh. She is
out, beflounced, belaced and beatified, and so in pairs,
as Noah's passengers entered the ark, they go, light of
heart and of head, up and down the Avenue. Every

246 PICTURES OF LIFE
shade of the bleaching process is visible everywhere.
Blue eyes, straight hair, and lips m.odeled from Apollo's
bow here ; Dinahs that might be Dianas there.
Ebony is not king.
Here at the Front nothing is exempt from the
fragrance of pig-tail, cavendish, fine-cut and the wilted
leaf Everything smokes on the trains, from engine to
wheel-axle. Negroes will sing, dance or cry for
tobacco. Give it to them and their eyes round out to
saucers of delight, and the siftings of a soldier's pocket
are eagerly scraped up by the natives. Picture a lank,
tallowish female of the human species, guiltless of
reading, writing, soap, water and religion, who says
" we'uns " and " you'uns," in a dress hanging limp, with
the look and grace of a dish-cloth on a fork, and resem
bling in tint the inky map of the benighted portions of
the globe, a piece of tobacco in her mouth and two
batches of children at her heels, and you have the
counterfeit presentment of a certain type of white folks,
fairly pushed over the edge of decent existence, that
grow among these mountains. She indulges, when she
can, in the luxury cafled "dipping." Take a little
stem of althea, chew it into a bit of a broom at one
end, dip it in snuff, sweep your mouth- out with it, and
leave the handle sticking out of one corner, like a
broom in a mop-pail, and remember all the while that

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 247
it is a woman's mouth, and you have as much of the
fashion as I mean to describe.
But the supremacy of the weed of which we have a
king's word for saying " it was the Devil sowed the
seed," is not confined to Front or race. The blue-coat
will pay a half dollar for an ounce of it as easily as he
winks at the flash of a rifle, and many a dull, rainy
night is beguiled with the laurel-wood pipe around the
camp-fire. Only give him light enough to see the
smoke of the sacrifice, and his troubles roll up from the
glowing bowl, melt silently into the night and vanish
away. Amid the pagodaish adomings of the new Represen
tative Hall, a single curious relic of the old time and
the everlasting love remains: a little russet box, that
you might put in your pocket, stands at each end of
the marble desk of the Clerk, 'and its use puzzles you
for a while. But pretty soon an honorable member —
that gray father yonder^ — passing by, inserts a thumb
and finger in one of them, and abstracts a pinch of
something that explodes the secret in a sneeze. They
are, of a truth, snuff-boxes, and restore, like the powder
of a rare magician, the old dead fashion and them that
followed it ; you look again into the round, black
beetle of a box and see the Vanilla bean half smoth^
ered in titillating " Scotch ; " you hear the two little

248 PICTURES OF LIFE
knocks upon the rim as the lid is deftly lifted off and
the box extended to you with a winning grace that
even testy James of the " counter blast " would not
repulse , the dear old grandmothers of the elder Anne,
they of the spotless cap and snowy hair, are plain
before you. " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see GOD ; " the beatitude was prophetic ; they
have died and fulfilled it !
In the glorious days that are no more, while the
eloquent air yet trembled and grew grand with those
tones of his, as if descending angels were lighting in
the Hall, the gallant " Harry of the West " would near
the desk, they say, and with the hand but just now
beckoning to obedient Fame, would take a pinch of
" Maccaboy ! " The smile with which I first saw the
brace of snuff-boxes in such a presence, has faded out
at last, for now they seem to me two little handfuls
of dust from the perished years of many a long gone
Congress. And so Sambo and Senator touch ground
together. The great capitals that cry out at you from
wall and column of the National Capitol, short and
sharp as the bark of a Scotch terrier, " Don't deface the
building ? Don't spit on the floors ! " ought to be an
insult to the visitor, but they are not.
Man is a ruminant and tobacco is king.

ISr CAMP AND FIELD. 249

FLOWERS, POETRY AND HEROES.
When on my way down to the Front I caught my
first glimpse of "the beautiful river," with its wooded
shores and its graceful sweeps, and Louisville with sur
roundings that nature and art have conspired to beau
tify ; saw for the first time a country under martial law,
and bayonets sprouting on every corner, you will wonder
that I thought less of the gleam of swords than of the
flash of wit ; more of the rhythmic march of poetry than
of the clanking tramp of soldiers. I was thinking of a
veteran editor of Kentucky. There is no city in the
land that owes so much, perhaps, to a newspaper for
rendering its name a sort of Western classic, and mak
ing it known far beyond all knowledge of its fashion,
wealth and commercial importance, as Louisville. I
need not add that the paper is the " Journal," and the
editor, George Dt Prentice. All through these many
years, " Louisville " was a word to conjure with. Say
it, and you thought of flashes of wit and thrusts of
satire, of poetry the most melodious and heartful ; of
gallant dashes and sturdy battle, in the old time, for
" Harry of the West."

250 PICTURES OF LIFE
And so, as speedily as I could, I found him in his
sanctum. An old man with a round head and frosty
hair, and an eye black, keen, sagacious, sparkling, sat
there without coat or cravat, feet half-shod in slippers,
dictating to an amanuensis. When my name was an
nounced, though that of a stranger, he met me more
than half way, extended both his hands, his face bright
ened with welcome, and he made me at home in a
minute. Not a school girl's poet to look at — not slim
and pale as a candle, but square-built, thick-set and
compact, carrying his sixty years with a brisk and elas
tic step. The fire of the old days was not quite out, it
only smouldered, and he talked of the brighter time
long gone and the better time to come, but I could see,
and there was a pain in my heart the while, that the
dew was scorched off the flower of life, and the flower
lay withered and worthless in his hand.
I remembered how his Journal used to open brightly
upon me like the countenance of a familiar friend ; how
he laid his hand on the shoulders of young aspirants for
literary fame like an elder brother, and bade them God
speed ; how he kindled the Western sky with a constel
lation of poets, leading them off with his gifted "Amelia
of the West." Generous, impulsive, social, rich in the
fearful gift of genius, he strowed flowers and flashed
swords through the pages of the daily press and never

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 251
halted to gather them up. Time robbed him, year by
year, of some sweet grace of youth ; and there came a
day when the Muse stood silent and pensive on his
threshold. The friends that had cheered him on fell
away from him; the men that had battled with him
and loved him wearied and slept ; the women whose
bright eyes brightened at his wit and softened with his
song, had gone away tp be seen no more. And so the
old man diedj and so in his own words —
" Within the deep.
Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim.
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions that have passed away.
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts
The coffin-lid of Hope, and Joy, and Love,
And bending mournfully above the pale.
Sweet forms, that slumber there, scatters dead flowers
O'er what has passed to nothingness.
Remorseless Time .
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe ! — what power
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt
His iron heart to pity ? On, still on
He presses, and forever."

252 PICTURES OF LIFE
I had an old song brightened up for me, one day — a
doleful tale of a bride who played "hide-and-seek,"
between one generation and another, on a Christmas
day, and descended to people who should have been
her grand-children, in " an old oak chest." I saw
the burden of that song in Alabama and Tennessee,
hanging in round green clusters upon oaks impover
ished of any leaves of their own. The effect of those
globes of verdure was singular enough to arrest my
attention even in the midst of graver things for
thought, and to provoke an inquiry, and the answer
was the burden of that identical song :
" Oh, the Mistletoe Bough ! "
In vividness and variety, the autumnal colorings of
Southern woods far surpass our own. It may be that
the keen shafts of green thrust up here and there serve
to set off "the coat of many colors." You can see
cones of hills that burn like strange and wonderful
gems, and would put out the light in Sindbad's Valley
of Diamonds ; great trees whose entire foliage resem
bles a single crimson or golden flower, so evenly and
wonderfully are the tints laid on, and ah you can think
of, as you look, is not a trunk of a tree bearing its
crown of painted leaves, but a stem lightly lifting its
one majestic blossom up before the Lord. I saw such

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 253
trees and woods touched and set on fire with the
sinking sun, last night. I had read, in an old volume,
of the Burning Bush, but I never saw it until then.
How they did kindle and flash up, as Day walked
along the tops of the forest ! I believe that if ever I
have to take up the blind man's " but not to me returns
day nor the sweet approach of even or mom," that
scene will come back again and again — one of the
brightest and loveliest pictures in memory. I pray all
practical men and women to pardon me for strowing
this paragraph very broadly with such trifles as leaves
and flowers. But I cannot help thinking, with another,
that the Lord loves to look at them Himself. Would
anybody have liked it better, do you think, had I told
him that I saw oak leaves, as early as September, more
richly colored than any I saw last night ? — costlier far
than the dye of Tyre ?
And speaking of flowers, I have seen soldiers go
into battle with a rose or a geranium leaf carefully
pinned upon the breast. Does anybody think the love
of a posy made against their manhood — that they were
any less the hero? It was the touch of the same
poetic feeling that, toned up and glorified, makes epics
— that made Sergeant Williams, the color-bearer of
Company D, 51st Illinois, when the flag was shot clean
away at Chicamauga, grasp the standard and cry out.

254 PICTURES OF LIFE
" the staff is left yet, boys — it's enough to fight by ! "
A soldier of the 79th Illinois was struck by the frag
ment of a shell upon the hip, and the next minute a
musket-ball penetrated a case containing the portraits
of his wife and . two children, and lay there as harm
lessly amid that little family of shadows as a trinket
in a woman's bosom.
" Do you know," said he, " that for all that lump of
lead left the picture not worth a Continental I wouldn't
swap it for a farm ? It isn't so much, you see, that my
life was saved by anything as that it was saved by such
a thing — my wife and babies, and they a thousand
miles off all the while ! " Was there not a vein in that
man's soul of the sort of stuff that makes lyrics ?
Ah, many a rude and sturdy trooper in the old wars
of York and Lancaster fought as much for an emblem,
for the white rose or the red, as if it had been a love-
gift from the woman of his heart.
Going up Mission Ridge, Colonel Wiley, of the 41st
Ohio, fell terribly wounded at the first line of rifle-pits,
and General Hazen rode up, with the words, " I hope
you are not badly wounded." " Do you think we'll
make it ? " asked the Colonel. " I do," was the reply.
"That's enough," said the gallant officer; "I can stand
this ! " — and there he lay bleeding and content, and
the tide of battle went on. What, but a grand ideal

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 255
inspired that man and summoned back his ebbing soul ?
As he, lay there with closed eyes he saw the 41st roll
over the height like a blue wave, "distinct like a
billow" in that "one like the sea."
At Shiloh a white dove, bewildered by the thunder,
flew in and out amid the clouds of the battle, and at
last fluttered panting down upon the wheel of a gun.
It was a strange place for the emblem of purity and
peace ; it belonged to the white flag and not to the red.
An artilleryman captured' it in his grimy hands, caressed
it a moment, freed it, and in an instant it was lost in .
the storm. Had that caressing touch been translated
into English speech can you doubt it would have been
a word of love and memory melodious as a little song ?
Had that bird flown with the captor's thought, can you
doubt it would have fluttered at last at a window of
the gunner's far-off home ?
The story of the war contains abundant proof that
the negro may possess a yet nobler quality than mere
animal courage; that he can touch the heroic height
that makes life grand and death a poem. Very seldom
indeed, for in any race the sparrows are many, but the
eagles are few. Do you not think the black color-
bearer, who planted the flag on the enemy's works, and
who, though brought down by a shot, yet held it flying
clear of the earth, and when the recall was sounded.

256 PICTURES OF LIFE
crept away bleeding and faint, still bearing the flag
aloft, and when he had brought it off in safety, sinking
down with the exulting words, " I never let it touch the
ground ! " — do you not think that man had at least one
foot on the pedestal where stands the white Apollo of
the superior race ?

A SOLDIER'S " TILL,"
Is the reader old-fashioned enough to know what a
"till" is? That bit of a chest in one comer of the
bureau where they used to deposit the little trinkets of
memory — the odds and ends of times past ; fragments
of Susan's wedding-dress and Jessy's shroud, a lock of
the baby's hair that heard the Saviour's sweet injunc
tion, "suffer little children to come unto me and forbid
them not " — ^heard it and went ; two or three beads
from a broken string, two or three letters in faded ink.
Now, this letter is a " till," filled with trifles from camp
and field.

From November 24th, 1863, to April 24th, 1864, of
one thousand and twenty-six who had been laid in the
Soldiers' Rest at Chattanooga, one hundred and sixty-
seven were killed on the field of battle. When, with

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 257
my finger running down the long lines of names, I came
to the end of the roll of honor, and my thought rested
at one hundred sixty-seven, will you believe that I
could not credit the count, and went over all the pages
again, sure that I should find a few more, opposite
whose names — with a running pen, and a flourish now
and then — the clerks had written the three words,
"¦Killed in action," But the sixty-eighth was not
there ! There it was : one hundred and sixty-seven fell
on the field ; three hundred and seventy-eight died from
wounds ; five hundred and forty-five in all, from bullets ;
only fifty-three per cent, of the thousand and twenty-
six. And what of the four hundred and eighty-one?
Hardships, exposure, the wasting fever, " the slings and
arrows" of rheumatism, and all the ills of the empty .
box that stands wide open in the midst of camps, but
at whose bottom is " Hope, the charmer," still, even
as she lingered there in the old time. ' The battle
ended, the Surgeon's duty done, how does the work of
Physician and Sanitary Commission rise almost to the
dignity of the army's salvation !
The battle is the red blossom of War, but the roots,
dark and bitter, run beneath ten thousand tents and
cabins, creep through unnumbered wards of hospitals,
and feel their way like the fingers of a hand in all this
ground we tread upon, save that great, solemn acre,
rich in Soldiers dead — the acre of the living GOD.
17

258 PICTURES OF LIFE
If anybody thinks that when our men are stricken
upon the field they fill the air with cries and groans, till
it shivers with such evidence of agony, he greatly errs.
An arm is shattered, a leg carried away, a bullet pierces
the breast, and the soldier sinks down silently upon the
ground, or creeps away, if he can, without murmur or
complaint ; falls as the sparrow falls, speechlessly, and
like that sparrow, I earnestly believe, falls not without
the Father. The dying horse gives out his fearful
utterance of almost human suffering, but the mangled
rider is dumb. The crash of musketry, the crack of
rifles, the roar of guns, the shriek of shells, the rebel
whoop, the Federal cheer, and that indescribable under
tone of grinding, rumbling, splintering sound, make up
the voices of the battle-field.

Among the curiosities of army life is this : dress
eighty thousand men pretty nearly alike, and everybody
resembles his neighbor, and nobody looks like himself.
Take those men and sprinkle a half-section, as they say
in the West, pretty thickly with them ; put them under
the big umbrellas of the camps, chink a little town full
of them till every house swarms like a hive in June, set
them all in the usual motion of army life and then
begin to look for your next best friend, and I wish you

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 259
joy of your journey ; you might better be "Japhet in
search of his father." Perhaps you may remember
having passed a familiar friend who was reclining in the
chair with his face upturned, as is the fashion of those
who come under the barber's hands — passed without
recognizing him. Of course it was the unwonted posi
tion that gave him the look of a stranger, the shadows
fell in new places, and the effect was a new impression.
You would be struck with this in looking down upon
the faces turned towards heaven -after a battle, either
on the field or in the hospital ; the Hght falls squarely
down : no shadows under the brow, no shading beneath
the chin, and the whole face so clears up, softens and
grows delicate, that you may be looking upon a friend
and not know it. Death, I think, generally impairs the
beauty of women, but it sometimes makes homely men
wonderfully handsome.

Did you ever go to a soldier's harvest? A dozen
mule teams are geared up, an hundred men detailed,
and, with tin kettles swung aloft from their bayonets,
away they go over the mountains, to a broad corn forest
of an hundred and fifty acres. It is splendid corn;
the ears are as long as a Marshal's baton, close set,
with kernels as clean, white and firm as the teeth that

26o PICTURES OF LIFE
Richard was born with. The arms are stacked. Two
hours finish the business. Two sabres do duty as com
cutters, and the rustling ranks succumb. The boys fol
low after, gather up the forage, load the wagons, and
away moves the train en route for camp, with the strang
est harvest-songs and the wildest surroundings. No
children's happy shouts follow the reapers ; no women
smile a welcome home. No harvest cheer makes glad
the closing day. It is one of those scenes conjured up
by the stern necessities of war, to which let all men
pray we may evermore be strangers.

I got in good company on the Tennessee one day,
being a fellow-voyager with General Hooker's horse
" White Surrey," ridden by him in no end of battles,
and I must say I have been in "worse company with
fewer feet. Large, strong, short in the back, broad in
the breast; not so very clean-limbed, but then all
muscle and endurance, and a noble bearer for his noble
burden, He stood upon a barge towed beside the
steamer, and when the engine gave a shrill, loonish cry
above his head, instead of bounding about and acting
like a coward, he looked quietly up with those great,
wide-open eyes of his ; and when the steam rushed out

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 261
from the escape pipe almost under his nose, with a
fierce hiss that made the groom start, he just turned an
eye inquiringly downward, his nostrils dilating a little,
but he never stirred out of his tracks. He is a fearless,
generous creature, worthy the respect even of a Major-
General. It is no new statement, perhaps, but then
you have rich opportunities for verifying it in the
Army : horses do not always " keep their distance "
from mankind. Some of them meet the best of men
full half-way in almost every noble thing except a
living soul.

The poetry of many a scene -will slip out of it if you
only wait long enough. I wish you could have been
with me this lovely morning, for you would have seen a
line of poetry written in dark blue across the plain from
the base of Lookout, one and a half miles. It might
have been a hedge with rich, deep foliage, blossomed
out at intervals with flowers, only it was not there last
night. You might think so still, but the line is growing
before your eyes. As you look, an electric light flickers
along the blue, even as the lightning played upon
Roman spears in Caesar's time ; it is the flash of bur
nished arms in the sunshine. As you look, men by
companies and regiments are born from the narrow

262 ¦ PICTURES OF LIFE
breadth ; the flowers are those whose fibers feel out the
graves of them that sleep. As you listen, the swell
from band after band rolls in, and on they come. And
now the words of Reginald Heber's sweet, old song,
escaped from the book, are written out before you in
War's bold autograph, and
"You see them on their winding way.
About their ranks the sunbeams play."
Nearer they come, the music intermits, and you have
the heavy tread of men, and the tinkling of four thou
sand tin cups, 'like a whole Chaldea of bell-wethers.
Heber slips back into the book again, poetry exhales,
and you have the prose of six regiments df fighting
men, the I20th, 123d, 124th, 128th, 129th and 130th
Indiana, of General Hovey's Division, the vanguard of
the twenty thousand on the way from that same
State — new men, indeed, but worthy guardians of the
old fame. Five pairs of flags, gay as the wings of but
terflies, went glittering by, that never rose and fell on
the surges of battle, and one poor rag, tattered by the
tempest, borne proudly in their midst ; the dyes of the
dyer were dim, but the death of the heroes had made
the tints sublime. Your heart would have warmed to
the old flag as it never could warm to the new. This
was nothing but silk yet, at so many dollars a yard, but

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 263
that had gone up the ladder of meaning, like the
angels in the vision of the patriarch in the wilderness —
it had become COLORS, The productions of Indiana
have grown grand. By what stately marches she steps
into glory forever : hogs, hominy, horses, Hoosiers and
Heroes.

The blessed rain washed down the smoky air for the
first time in two months, and came to the men in the
trenches before Petersburg in July, 1864, like a bene
diction. The little gopher holes they had scooped out
with cup and bayonet ceased, for a few hours, to be
wallows of ashes, and when the great, clean drops came
down, sharpshooters opened both eyes ; by common
consent there was a lull in the scattering gusts of leaden
rain, and our fellows straightened up in their burrows,
and showed themselves to the waistbands, and doffed
their broad-brimmed hats, for such of them as can
read, believed the saying that the LORD sendeth His
rain upon the evil as well as upon the good. The
patter upon the baking earthworks and the tinkle
upon the tin kettles were about as sweet as the bugle-
note of victory, and some of the boys, recalling a
snatch of an old psalm tune, sang, albeit the spot

264 PICTURES OF LIFE
where they lay is not half as much like a garden as
it is like a kennel, " The Lord into his garden comes,"
and a hearty voice burst out with,
" Refreshing showers of grace divine
From Jesus flow to every vine.
And make the dead revive,
And make the dead re-vi-ve " —
Crack ! Ping — the enemy are short of gratitude ; there
comes a bullet ! and again there are ridges of earth and
not a man in sight ; every head is sowed like a kernel
of corn in a drill.

A single Congressional District has sent more men to
the war for the Union than Washington led over the
Delaware ; six times as many as went up to Bunker
Hill and glory on that long-gone day in June. The
battle of Tippecanoe, that wrought one man's name
and fame into imperishable story, was fought with
seven hundred men — less than a round regiment.
What would the old Continentals have thought of such
a veneering of men and iron : this April day, 1864, the

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 265
F cjral line extends from Huntsville, on its extreme
i at, along the Tennessee to Chattanooga, the center,
and thence onward, our left resting on Knoxville, and
showing a grand iron front of two hundred and ten
miles, ready at every point to do battle. Beyond our
left, a thinner line extends for twenty miles, and
beyond Huntsville another away to Memphis, present
ing an impregnable barrier to infantry, unless in strong
force, and through which only cavalry would venture to
break. Think of that front with its two hundred mile
sweep, swelling out into fortifications, like the muscular
ridges of a strong arm, the rear clamped to it by iron
bars all along, thus placed in daily and bodily commu
nication, and made one by the instinctive flash of the
telegraph !
War has become an exact science. Take Fort Neg
ley at Nashville, as it was, with its glittering howitzers,
its Parrots, those mighty birds of prey, its crowded
magazines, its shot and shell, its salient angles — a
grand star of earth and stone resting on the summit of
the hill, with a radiating power of thunder and death
that commands the approaches in all directions. The
distance to each visible grove and eminence has been
accurately measured and mapped out upon paper in
diverging lines from the Fort, giving the length of the
swing of the iron hammers. So the science of War,

266 PICTURES OF LIFE
like the arts of Peace, has been developed with the
accuracy of matherriatics, and quickened by lightning
and by steam, till smoky battery and dusty harvester
move to the compound table of time and space that
characterizes the age :
Sixty seconds make one  mile.

Thus I have turned over the trifles in the " till " and
selected a little handful, and for the last let it be a
pleasant picture and a mention of the dear old neigh
bors of my country home, who donned the blue and
went away, some to wounds and sorrow and death, but
all to honor and duty and a loving memory. "Winter
quarters " does not mean ragged tents crackling with
frost, and snow-drifts in the corners, but something as
comfortable as a Christmas pie. Take the most natty
bit of a log cabin you ever saw, give it a toy of a chim
ney, as cunning as a swallow's nest, a close-fitting door,
and a couple of hands' breadths of a window beside it,
as if the alert little cottage slept with one eye open,
and you have the picture of thousands of soldiers'
homes in Alabama and Tennessee. I have ridden
through dozens of such villages within the month just
ended, strown all along upon the mountain sides and in

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 267
the valleys, and there is about them an air of comfort
as warm as a hearty welcome. Now and then, a hamlet
wears decidedly a city look. One has its doors num
bered and porches before them. Indeed, I saw several
tenements that would have graced elegant grounds as
rustic cottages ; and one little Gothic structure, midway
between Chattanooga and Kelly's Ferry, should have
its portrait in some volume of " Rural Architecture."
It was in such a beautiful encampment that I last
saw the 105th Illinois, and no better material ever went
to the Front from the Prairie State — of such stuff as
made the 34th and 79th Illinois, that stood in their
tracks and fired eighty rounds without a backward step.
Daniel Dustin, its Colonel, won and wore a star; its
Lieutenant-Colonel was Henry F. Vallette ; Major, E.
F. Dutton; Surgeons, H. S. Potter — who at once
assumed Brigade duties, was killed on the field, and
when they made a grave for him they laid in it one of
nature's truest noblemen — ^A. Waterman and G. W.
Briggs. Its Captains were of the sort that lead a for
lorn hope without faltering. The rank and file -were
like a field of wheat, the bearded grain and the flowers
that grow between, -stalwart manhood and youth, with
the springing step. I can count with a glance of the
eye from the threshold of my old cottage home, in the
little village of Wheaton, thirteen dwellings, and from

268 PICTURES OF LIFE
every one of them soldiers, sometimes in pairs, have
departed ; struggling in the terrible days of the Poto
mac ; crowding on into the rough weather of northern
Georgia. The old enthusiasm that kindled the homes
of Du Page into altars of sacrifice seems to me most
like the song of bugles in a dream.
Time passed, and again I went in sight of the little
mountain city of the 105 th. It was dismantled and
lone. The triumphal curves of evergreen had faded
and fallen ; the blue smokes no longer threaded their
way up from the little chimneys ; the smooth streets
were deserted. Where were the groups of blue I had
seen ; the gay laugh I had heard ; the glittering arms
that flashed on my sight ? Fleeting as a dream, the
regiment had slung the knapsack and beat the drum
and gone on towards the terrible Front. Wading in
deep waters, falling on fields of red fame, languishing
in hospitals — who shall read the record of those strong,
manly ranks without a throb of pain and pride ? — and
through all, fighting for the homes in Kendall, De Kalb
and Du Page, the gardens of Illinois. And to-day I
call out of the loneliness, and as so many times before,
so now out of my heart I bid ye, old friends of the
105th Illinois, hail and farewell!

IN CAMP AND FIELD. 269

ENDED,
It was a day in later autumn. In a fire-place, laid in
mud like a swallow's nest, its wild sprout of a chimney
budded out at the top with a barrel, and looking like a
monument to the last bricklayer, burned an old-fash
ioned, fire built of wood from Mission Ridge, and
crackling with feeble memories of the musketry of the
grand old battle. The drums, with their flutters and
cheers, their single ruffles and double drags, like the
wicked, had " ceased from troubling ; " Bonaparte had
got over the Rhine ; " Nancy Dawson " slipped out at
the shrill end of the fifes, and the bugles had warbled
good night.
Again it is a day in later autumn. The trees have
struck their colors to grace the dying year. This wood,
now burning at my feet, never shook in the tempest of
battle. These old Chenango hills never mocked the
thunder of the shotted gun. The robin in the mountain
ash sits silent mid the rubies, and takes his last supper in
the chilly North. The songs of the summer are over
and gone. I turn these leaves as Hebrew children
read, back to the book's beginning, and every chapter
is a hook whereon to hang a memory — one glorious,
another sad, but all imperishable. Clear, earnest eyes

270 PICTURES OF LIFE
and faces brave and grand, no other reader sees, look
at me from the pages as I turn ; some with a dying
glance, and some with a bright smile of friendly recog
nition. The graves are made ; the sword is sheathed ;
the musket hangs dumb upon its wooden hooks ; the
white blessings of peace like lilies strow the water
and blossom along the land like daisies in the June
pastures. Then
" Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars ! "
Among the mountains, for the first time in my life, I
have seen clouds born. Breaths of vapor, like smokes
from camp-fires, wreathe their way up above the tops
of the trees in one place and another, looking thin and
pale in the early morning. You have not the least idea
what will come of it all ; but, by and by, they melt into
one, assume volume and color, and before you think of
it, a cloud, made up of a whole family of the little
breaths, is sailing grandly away. Thunder is born of
it. There are clouds that are born of the thunder.
May they never again darken the valley or mantle the
mountain in this our day, till War in the new world
shall be a calm and pensive memory, far off and beau
tiful as the thought of a crimson and golden sunset in
the West.

LETTER LIST.

On the Threshold,  5
From one World to Another, .... . . 7
Going to the Front,  11
Three Novemher Days  17
The Theatre,  17
The Smiting of the Shield,  27
The Capture of Lookout Mountain,  3g
The Storming of Mission Ridge  51
Thanksgiving at Chattanooga,  7g
After the Battle  85
A Mountain Camp, ......... 88
A Soldier's Morning,  91
Every-day Life under Canvas, ....... 94
The Hospital after the Battle,  103
Woman, the Soldier's Friend,  108
Night Ride of the Wounded Brigade  no
Army Chaplains,  119
The Soldier's "First Man,"  125
Hearing from Home,  128
The New England Schoolma'am  130
Dressing for Battle,  132
Surveying on Horseback,  134
Old-time Forts and New,  136
A Flash of Sunshine,  139
A Little Picture,  142
"Dinner to the Front,"  144
"Getting the Idea,"  149

272 LETTER LIST.
A Medal Struck in the Sky, .  153
"Small Deer,''  154
Army Pets,  156
A Flag of Truce  159
A River Route in War Time,  162
The Devil's Coffee Mill  164
Fatigue, ............ 166
The Little Orderly, . .  168
Nashville Street Scenes,  170
A Hint of Desolation,  176
A late Breakfast at Chattanooga,  184
A Potomac Trip in War Time,  1 86
In Memoriam. — Ad Astra,  1 8^
Keeping House under Difficulties,  194
" Nearness of Mind,"  200
War and Words, ......... 202
Alexandria in '64. — Soldiers' Rest,  205
Washington in July, '64,  209
The Scout and the Spy,  218
A Divided Household  223
The War Department,  226
Two Battle-fields a Year Old,  231
Danger and Desolation,  236
Under which King  243
Flowers, Poetry and Heroes,  249
A Soldier's "Tih,"  256
Ended, . . j  - - . . . 269

YALE UNIVERSITY I.

3 9002 02424 0336

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