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Autobiography of Samuel Moore
Excerpts from the autobiography of Samuel Moore,
C.S.A.
- 1924 -
Our family had just got comfortably settled for living in Quitman, GA,
when the War Between The States came on. My father went into the
Southern army as a Captain in 1861. His commission, signed by Governor
(Fighting Joe) Brown, has been framed and is in the possession of my brother
Jackson. Another valued relic of those days is the "wallet" that
my father used during the war to carry his orders and papers of importance.
This relic was given to my daughter and is being carefully
preserved to be handed down to future generations.
The winter passed happily for my brother, but in the spring he bade good-bye to his friend and went to Savannah, where he enlisted in the Army of the South at the age of sixteen. I went to him the following July (1864). My service in the army began at the age of fifteen. I had wanted to go to Virginia to my Uncle Walter Moore who was a Colonel in the Second Florida Regiment, but was advised to enlist nearer home and be close to my brother. When I look back over those terrible days of my war experience, days that transformed a boy of fifteen to a full-fledged soldier, fighting for his home and defending the honor of his state, I am almost willing to change the punctuation of a well known quotation and make it read, "There is a Divinity that shapes our ends rough, hew them how we may."
When I reported for army duty at Savannah, I was sent to Whitmarsh Island, six miles below Savannah. Each Company had what they called "messes" who clubbed together, drew their rations together, and divided the days for cooking so that each one bore his share of the duties of the "mess," one for each day of the week. We drew some rice one time, and it was Tom Hall's day to cook. We did our boiling in a two gallon camp kettle. He filled it one-half full of rice to boil for dinner. When it began to boil, it began to swell, and he would take out a dipper full and put it on a piece of pine bark. He had to keep that up until he could hardly get to the pot for the piles of rice scattered around the fire. What he had left did not get done, and it made us all sick. The next time he cooked rice he did not put on enough to divide around the"mess." He said it was the "outswellingest" stuff he ever saw.
The duty of the three companies stationed at Whitemarsh Island was to watch the Savannah River and see that no boats came up the river. There were three main pickett posts, Battery B, Pinetree, and Cedartree which was six miles farther down the river. I was on duty (picket) at Cedartree once, and just before the relief guard came down the river, some alligators got in a fight in the marsh nearby, and with the impulse of a boy, I shot my musket into the bunch. A shot fired by a picket was regarded as a signal, and I realized instantly that I had made a mistake. As soon as the smoke cleared away, I saw my relief boat coming down the river. Something had to be done at once to keep me from being arrested and severely punished, so I jumped into the marsh and struck the hammer of my gun on the edge of the boat-landing, and my homemade yarn saved me that time.
I was at Battery B one night on picket duty, and about 11 o'clock I was sitting on a stool leaning on my gun, and dropped asleep. The officer of the day, making his rounds, approached my post. I heard a stick break and awoke, but had the presence of mind not to change my position, just opened my eyes. He said, "You must have been asleep. Why didn't you halt me?" I asked him what was the use to halt him when I knew who he was. He gave me a long line of instruction about the importance of my duty as an outpost picket. I had another opportunity two weeks later to show him I had remembered what he had told me. I was on the same post, and he was again the officer of the day. As he approached my post this time, I halted him just beyond a puddle of water about thirty feet wide and two feet deep, and made him dismount and wade in to me and whisper the password. He inquired who gave me such rigid instructions. I told him that he did on the same battery two weeks previous. He let it go at that but said as he rode off, "Well, son, if you stick to that line of duty, you will make a good soldier."
Major Anderson passed my post one night, and I did not halt him. He sent for me next morning and asked me about it, and I told him that I knew who he was. He said, "All right, you can pick up that bag of sand and march in front of my tent for two hours, and you will remember better next time." The peck of sand got very heavy before the expiration of the two hours, and I felt like asking the Major to carry it some, but I didn't.
I had another little experience like that. One day a man came into camp with a wagon load of watermelons. I got up in the wagon and asked him, "How much for this one," and he told me 10¢. I handed it to one of the boys, and he carried it to our tent. The man asked me for the money, and I told him I didn't have it. He took me to Major Anderson and reported me. The major paid him the dime and told me to pick up that fence rail and march in front of his tent for two hours, and it would be a good lesson for me. I believe the fence rail was worse to carry than the sand bag. Tom Hall, the boy to whom I gave the melon, came to me and offered to relieve me, but the Major said that he did not allow any substitutes in discipline.
My personal experience and observation of the attitude of the officers of the Confederate Army toward the enlisted men left an indelible impression on my mind. They were as kind, tolerant, and lenient as they could have been to have maintained the discipline absolutely necessary. During the last two years of the war, the Southern Army was largely composed of mere untrained schoolboys like myself, and the officers recognized our mistakes and shortcomings as a result of our youth and lack of military training, and justice was tempered with mercy.
The Pinetree picket post, of which I have spoken, was a small platform in the top of a pinetree, eighty feet from the ground, and when the wind blew, it was "Rock-a-by Baby." I have been on duty on this little platform eighty feet from the ground, when the tree swayed so that I had to hold on with both hands, expecting every minute to to be my last. If ever a sentry had gone to sleep on this post, it would have been "Good-night, sweet dreams." Pinetree pickett post was a very important position, because it commanded a perfect view of the mouth of the Savannah River, Tybee, and the Atlantic Ocean, where several gunboats were standing by all the time. Even though I was a boy, I realized the value of the information that was expected of this post, and tried to give a good account of my stewardship.
One day, shortly after I enlisted, an attempt was made by a couple of Federal gunboats to "ease" up the Ogeechee River, but they were met by some hot shot from 12 inch Columbias and 32 pound rifles. The boats sped back to their moorings.
Major Anderson knew that Sherman was marching toward Savannah, so he called in two companies of my regiment from Whitmarsh Island as reinforcements for Fort McAllister, twenty-five miles from Savannah on the Ogeechee River, six miles below the railroad bridge. Major Anderson was in charge of Fort McAllister, and he took all of the men who were not on outpost or guard duty and prepared for the battle that was coming. The fort was built on the south side of the river, and east of it was a marsh. The south and west side were protected by a moat ten feet wide and six feet deep, full of water. Fifty feet outside the moat was a "Cheval-de-frise" made of pinetrees with all of the limbs sharpened and the butts of the logs pointing toward the moat. We planted one hundred torpedoes that would explode with five pounds pressure. Major Anderson issued orders to burn all officer's quarters which were outside the fort, excepting his milk dairy which was six by eight feet. He ordered all the trees within two hundred yards of the fort to be cut down with the exception of some large pines near his dairy. Within the fort, there was a "bomb-proof" in the center, built of heavy timber and covered with soil. The gunchambers in the fort were constructed in the same manner. A few days before battle, after our preparations were about complete, a hog that had wandered through the woods stepped on one of our torpedoes and was killed instantly. Fresh meat was scarce, so we boys welcomed this accidental supply of pork, "out of the clear sky," as it were. Great was our preparation for a pork & rice stew, and we enjoyed it almost as much as if we had not been on the eve of one of the decisive battles of the war. While we were eating our stew, fragments of shell were falling all around us, coming from the battle that was being fought at the railroad bridge six miles away. My father was commanding a company in that battle, but I did not know it at the time. An old man was sitting near me eating stew when a piece of shell fell right between us and threw some ash from our campfire into his plate. His name was Stone. I will never forget how that old man looked. He looked straight up as if expecting another shell and exclaimed, "Egad, they like to have got me that time, didn't they, Sam?" This old man, Stone, froze to death in what was called the Bullpen at Port Royal, South Carolina. This stockade was made of logs, ten feet long, standing on the end of a trench which made a solid fence eight feet high. The boys were exposed to all changes of weather without any shelter or fire to keep them warm, and three of the old men froze to death one cold night in January of 1865. I was on the sick list, and we were put in some tents January of 1865. I was on the sick list, and we were put in some tents inside of the army barracks, and we did not suffer much from the cold. My brother Spencer was in the hospital outside the barracks. I begged the authorities everyday to let me see him and was so persistent that they finally let me go see him, the day before he died! I spent two hours with him, and he died the next day. He told me that he joined the Presbyterian church on the island, and he was going to die in the hope of a glorious resurrection. The last word he said to me as he held my hand was, "Be true to the South and your God." The following lines were penned by my father when he heard of his death:
We mourn for thee when cold, blank night the chambers
fill
We pine for thee when morn's first light reddens the
hill
Farewell, my boy! For a while, farewell,
... pride of my heart!
It cannot be very long we dwell, thus torn apart.
Sherman had to capture the bridge up the river before he could get to us. There was nothing but marsh between us and the bridge, and we boys stood on the battery walls and saw the fight which did not last over an hour. We knew that our time would come next day, and the necessary preparations were made to give Mr. Sherman as warm a reception as we could.
The day before the battle, two men were in a boat going down the river. The river was half a mile wide at this point. The pickett on the fort signalled for the boat to go ashore. They paid no attention to him, and he emptied his musket at them. The ball hit so close to them, but they went right on. Major Anderson gave orders to try a 32 pound cannon ball at them. The ball knocked water into their boat, and they waved their kerchiefs, turned their boat, and came ashore. They were just some fishermen going to fish their trot lines down the river which shows that even civilians have to respect orders from the military authorities in time of war.
The roll was called next morning, and 155 men answered for duty. About 10 o'clock in the morning the enemy entered the woods and began to form in line of battle. We could see the Yankees hiding behind the big trees near the little dairy, and the dairy itself was as full of them as it would hold. Our sharpshooters would take a crack at every "Bluecoat" that exposed himself. One of the boys asked permission to put a cannon ball through the dairy, which was granted, and a 30 pound rifle shot was sent through the center of it. According to common parlance, "that was where things picked up at once."
Just at 4 p.m. the bugler of the enemy sounded for the charge, and it took them exactly four minutes to capture the fort, as we had only 155 men and the enemy numbered 9,000. Our casualties were 55 killed and 60 wounded. The enemy's losses were 200 killed and 250 wounded. The last shot fired was a 12 pound Howitzer cannon. The man who was to fire the cannon had hold of the lanyard and was ordered to let it go by a Yankee officer before the flag was raised. The man said, "I am not taking orders from you yet." The officer shot him with his pistol, and the weight of his body when he fell pulled the lanyard. Some of the enemy were not three feet from the mouth of the cannon, and the ball opened a space through the crowd.
We killed more men than we had on our side of the battle. It was always a mystery to me how those Yankees moved that barricade, crossed the moat, and captured Fort McAllister inside of four minutes.
General Sherman made the McAllister homestead his headquarters, and the wounded of both sides were taken there for medical treatment. I was on the sick list and was placed on a bunk with a badly wounded Yankee boy who died before morning. I told the nurse that the boy was dead, and he said, "All right, I will take him out directly." I guess he forgot about it, for the body was still there when I awoke the next morning. The nurse came and said he was sorry he had not removed the body when I told him. I said, "Oh, that's all right; he has not disturbed me at all." It has always been my policy to accept conditions over which I had no control without question or complaint.
The morning after the battle I was sitting on a log talking to a messmate of mine exchanging experiences of the day before, and a Yankee soldier came and sat with us. His head was so bandaged that one of his eyes was closed. My chum was one of the sharpshooters and was telling me that he was pretty sure he got one of the Yankees because he shot at him just as he peeped around a tree; he said he saw the bark fly, but did not see the man anymore. The Yank said, "I guess I was the one." He showed us where the bullet had just grazed his eyebrow, and said he thought he would lose his eye. He talked about it without any apparent animosity. In times of peace, it is difficult to form a mind picture such as I have described, two men on opposite sides of a battle, sitting on a log after the smoke has cleared away, calmly and peaceably discussing having tried to kill each other.
There were vicissitudes and situations that presented themselves during the war between the North and the South that were never true of any other conflict. For several days after the capture of Fort McAllister, I stood around the operating tables where the surgeons were patching up the wounded of both sides. I saw one Yankee terribly dismembered. About twenty years afterward, I was talking with a small crowd in a railroad station waiting room, and the topic of conversation was how slight a wound will sometimes prove fatal and how another person would recover when terribly mutilated. I told them that I knew a case in point. My brother died of a flesh wound in the thigh, and I saw a Yankee soldier carved just to my taste. His left arm was unjointed at the shoulder, three fingers taken from his right hand, his left leg was amputated below the knee, his right leg amputated above the knee, and a liberal slab of his skull had been trepanned and replaced with a silver plate, and the man got well. An old man who was sitting near the fire said nothing until I got through talking, then he said, "You told it just right, for I saw that same operation, if I am not mistaken." He asked where it had happened, and I told him and asked him what he was doing there. He said that he was the Captain of the lead boat that came up the Ogeechee River to feed Sherman's army. It was known as "the White Cracker Line." He said the much-mutilated man got well, was still living, owned a bootblack stand in New York City, and was rich.
My brother Spencer died from the wound received at the battle of Fort McAllister, and I was captured with the other survivors of the battle on December 13th, 1864. The prisoners were carried first to Hilton Head, South Carolina. All of the prisoners there were issued what was called "retaliation rations" which consisted of one pint of rotten meal and a pickle per day. They were retaliating for Andersonville. Sherman heard of it and issued an order that no prisoners captured by him should be put on retaliation rations. Then we drew our "grub" with the Yankee soldiers.
In the prison there, they had what was called a "galvanized ward" where they kept deserters. A man named Jones, whose home was on the St. Johns River in Florida tried to get me to take the oath and go home with him. He was an orange grower and farmer on a large scale. I told him I would think about it. One day an officer came into the barracks and said for all the "galvanized Yankees" to fall in line to be marched to new quarters. I fell in line with the deserters and was six weeks out of all guard lines and could have run away without being missed, but would have had to swim three miles to the mainland. One day I was playing cards with three Yanks, and a herald came into the barracks, and said, "All who want to go and be exchanged, get your dunnage and get in line." I said to the Yankees, "I am going on that trip." They asked me what I was doing where I was without taking the oath. I tried to explain to them, and one of them wanted to whip me, but one of the elder men said, "Let the boy alone. You would have done the same thing." Some of the boys who got home before I did told my father that they saw me with the "galvanized Yankees" at Port Royal. When I got home, my father told me that there was no room in his yard for deserters, and I had to explain the situation immediately.
On the 10th of March, 1865, I was one of a boat load of boys carried to Norfolk, Virginia, to be exchanged. We stayed there three days, and while waiting, General Grant issued his order for no more exchange, and said, "Kill all you can, capture all you can, and keep them, and starve the balance in the South, and we will win the war sooner." He gave as one of his reasons for not exchanging any more prisoners the fact that one "Reb" was worth five "Yanks" because the "Reb" would go back to his command, pick up his gun, and fight again. The "Yanks", four out of five, would go home and stay there. So we were carried back to Fort Delaware, a downcast, disappointed lot of boys.
A lot could be said about my prison experience, how much I did not gain in weight on six crackers a day and an occasional rat-stew. I would like to have my picture, standing in the doorway with a piece of stone coal in my hand, waiting for a hungry rat to come from under the house for some crumbs I had left as bait. How we boys would charge the slop barrel as it was being carried from the officers' quarters, turn it over, rake the ham skins and beans into our caps, and use them to mix in our rat stew! The boys made bone and guttapercha rings, split white pine fans, and sold them to visitors as souvenirs to get a little money to buy tobacco. Once the prison was guarded by a regiment of U.S. regulars who had been badly cut up and disabled in a battle in Virginia. They were kind to the southern prisoners. They sold our little handcarved trinkets for us and many times would do errands for us which was not in accordance with orders. They even invested a little part of our souvenir money in extra rations for us, and smuggled them into the prison. The officers in charge of the fort decided that the regulars were too good to the prisoners, so removed them to other duty, putting a negro regiment in their place.
The Southern officers were given quarters in a barracks division separated from the privates' barracks by a twenty foot ditch full of water. No communication was allowed between them. Before my arrival at Fort Delaware, some of the Southern prisoners had dug a tunnel large enough to accomodate the body of a man under the twenty foot ditch of water and established a method of communication with the officers' barracks. The Federal officers searched the privates' barracks from time to time as new prisoners arrived, and if a man had both a blanket and an overcoat, he was given his choice between the two, and the other was taken from him. I had no overcoat, and the only clothes I had were on my back. They had become almost unbearable. When I washed my shirt in the canal, I had to stand in the shade until it dried, as I had no other shirt to put on. The tunnel mentioned served me one good turn. One day I sent a note by one of the boys to Lieutenant Archer of my company and asked him to send me a change of clothes if he had any to spare, stating the condition of my wardrobe. He sent me a shirt and pair of trousers, the suit I had on when I got home.
My prison chum was a boy about my age named Wesley Lamb of Appling County, Georgia. We divided everything we had, even slept together on the quilt I had given him, and covered with my one blanket. The fortunes of war make strange bedfellows. Wesley was a fine, lovable fellow, but his family was poor, and he had had no school advantages. One characteristic of both of us, however, was that we were about as bashful as boys ever got to be. A pleasant little episode happened to us that went a good way toward relieving the monotony of camp-life, before the fall of Fort McAllister. He received a letter from his sweetheart, and not being able to read, he asked me to read it for him. I appreciated his confidence and volunteered to answer the letter for him. He was delighted and left me to use my own judgement in composing the letter. I was too bashful to ever have mustered the courage to write to my own sweetheart such glowing love letters as I wrote to Wesley's girl for him. I kept copies of every letter, and as the answers came, I read them to him. About the fifth letter, I had them engaged to be married. Wesley's joy was beyond bounds, and he could not understand just how it happened until I read the whole correspondence to him. When he finally realized the truth of the situation, he remarked, "I'll be glad when this old war is over so I can go back to her."
Wesley and I were together at Fort McAllister, were captured together, an spent our prison term together, only separating when we got back to God's country, and he went back to his farm home in Appling County, Georgia, and I made my way back to Jacksonville, Florida. I have never seen him since, and even now as I write this rambling reminiscence at the age of seventy-six, it would give me the keenest pleasure to see Wesley Lamb and renew our wartime friendship. We were boys, but friendship like ours is not easily broken.
I was at Fort Delaware when Lincoln was assassinated, and the prisoners were treated even worse than usual. The negro guards would kick and cuff the Southern prisoners for the slightest cause. An order was issued that at the sound of the bugle calling "Taps" at 9 p.m., all lights must be put out immediately. The guards were ordered to shoot at any light that was burning one minute after the call. Several of the boys were killed that way. One boy was writng to his mother and was all through but for signing his name when a guard shot at his light and killed him.
When a boatload of coal was received at the fort, the guard would go into the barracks and take out as many men as he needed to unload the boat. They would hitch about ten of us to a wagon and haul the coal up to headquarters about a half a mile. They would do the same when a carload of lumber came. We would have to carry it to where it was to be used. The boys were glad to get out on those details because it gave them a little outing for exercise and we were paid fifty cents per day.
My general health was good all the time. I only had one spell that needed a doctor. On one occasion, I began to choke up and could not speak above a whisper. I went to the guard at the gate and told him I wanted to see a doctor. He sent me to the hospital. The doctor looked at my throat and said I had a bad case of tonsilitis. He assigned me to a bunk and said he would attend to me directly. He came with a roll of bandage ten feet long and four inches wide, and a bottle of turpentine. He saturated the cloth with turpentine and wrapped it all around my neck and pinned it. He said it might burn a little, but I must not touch it. I stood it for an hour or more, and when the doctor passed by, I told him it was killing me. He looked under the bandage, and said, "It will have to stay on a little longer, so be patient." He told me not to think about how bad it hurt but to think about how good it would feel when it quit hurting. He came back in an hour with another roll of bandage, and wet it with water, and I began to cheer up a little. But when he put it on in place of the turpentine, it hurt worse than ever, but not so long. As it dried, it quit hurting so bad. They gave me a bowl of soup, and I went to sleep. Next morning the doctor examined my throat and said it was all right. I was blistered from my ears to my collarbone. I got hide enough off of my neck to have made a side-saddle, so to speak.
July 18th, 1865, I took the Amnesty Oath and was sent with about 500 other prisoners of war to New York to be transported south. We went by way of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and were marched up into the city and were halted on an open square. Children were sent among the prisoners with baskets of sandwiches and pitchers of lemonade. One beautiful girl sat at a window and dispensed lemonade. It was lucky for me when her supply gave out for I was near the breaking point. That was the nearest I had been to a girl in a year. Just think of my being transplanted from a bunch of 20,000 dirty prisoner-soldiers to a bunch of a hundred beautiful girls! It was like a change from purgatory to the seventh heaven. I was ashamed of my personal appearance, but I was not ashamed of the Cause that had put me there.
I must not fail to mention one little circumstance that happened while we were stationed on the square in Philadelphia. I was located right in front of a beautiful mansion, and the entrance to the flower conservatory opened on the square. I happened to be just opposite this entrance when a splendid looking woman came out and said, "I want ten of you boys to come with me." I was one of the ten. We followed her through the conservatory which was filled with the choicest of flowers that were a feast for the eyes. I had never seen any orchids and was impressed by the gorgeous display they made. Fresh from the terrors of war and the horrors of military prison as I was, that vision of flowers was like a glimpse of heaven to me. We were ushered into a very elegant dining room and were served a cup of cold milk and a slice of bread each. Our hostess said, "I am sorry that this is all that I am allowed by the authorities to serve you, boys. I am under government orders, and they are very rigid because sixty Mississippi boys killed themselves eating yesterday, right here in Philadelphia." It certainly would have been dangerous for any of the Fort Delaware prisoners to have eaten a square meal just then.
From Philadelphia we were carried across the river to Camden, New Jersey, and thence to Amboy on the East River, and thence by boat to New York. On the boat was a lot of butter in firkins. I got a marlinspike and knocked in the head of one of them and filled an oyster can with butter, then went out on deck and feasted on crackers and butter. Not being used to such rich food, I soon fed it to Neptune. While I was at Castle Garden awaiting orders, I sold the cotton that was between my quilted blankets and my woolen socks to an Irish woman for $1.50, the first greenback I ever saw, and I felt rich.
The authorities would allow only a few of us to go into the city at a time. One day my chum and I went to the Castle Garden gate and asked permission to go into the city. The guard said, "No more today." We were determined to find a way to get out. In rambling around we found a large pile of wheat straw right against the fence. We crawled under the straw and "grabbled" a hole under the fence. In this way we got out whenever we pleased. We were strolling along Broadway one day, and a man spoke to us saying, "Johnnie, you look like you want a cold drink." I told him he had guessed it the first time. He took us in some place and gave us a drink. I do not know what it was, but the taste of it lingered in my memory a long time. I have often remembered that man in my prayers after I got home and got fat again.
After a few weeks stay in New York, I was sent south with a boat load of other discharged soldiers. We had some bad times on that boat. 500 men were crowded into the hold of that boat of "built-in" bunks. Nearly all of them were seasick at one time, and only a few at a time were allowed to go on deck. I did not occupy one of the bunks. I took two soda cracker boxes and put them together, doubled my chum's quilt and my blanket, and put them on the boxes, and we slept on that all the way to Hilton Head. I asked one of the sailors why it was that Wesley and I did not get seasick on the trip. He said it was because we were sleeping in the middle of the ship where it was steadier than at either end. Something got the matter with the drinking water, and they had to condense the water for the passengers. We were given one pint of hot water per day. One day I crawled under one of the tarpaulins stretched over a lifeboat and found a barrel of water there. I made a hole in the barrel with my knife, took two pieces of wood and made a groove in them, wrapped them together, and inserted the handmade tube into the hole in the barrel. My chum and I sucked all the water we wanted out of that barrel.
One day I went up on the deck to enjoy the cool air and removed my shoes to let my feet cool while I sat on the hatch and watched the pelicans and flying fish. When we crossed Cape Hatteras going to Charleston, it was very stormy, and they had to go 100 miles out to sea for safety. When we came back by the Cape, there was not a ripple on the water. One of the sailors said that he had been passing that place for twenty years and had never seen it so calm before.
When a big fish got into a school of flying fish, the air would be full of them. While I was sitting there, a sailor was swabbing the deck, looked at my shoes, looked at me, and picked up my shoes and threw them overboard. As I was a poor little boy, so thin from starvation that I couldn't tell colic from backache, I did not say anything as I might have followed the shoes.
As soon as the boat landed at Port Royal, South Carolina, the boys rushed up town for water and went into the first yard where they saw a well. The boys actually drank it dry in a little while and went to the next one, but the bucket and chain had been taken off. The boys got a small tin bucket and a twine string and drew water until they were satisfied.
There were no U.D.C. or Red Cross Chapters to look after the boys in those days, and they had to look after themselves. I bought a dime's worth of cheese and a dime's worth of soda crackers, and that was all I had to eat until I got supper with Jim Barrs at Madison County, Florida, the next day. I did not feel the loss of my shoes until I got to Jacksonville, Florida, and had to walk twelve miles barefooted where the railroad was torn up. The train took us up finally, and when I got to Madison, Florida, I had to walk sixteen miles with Mr. Jim Barrs to his home, and I spent the night with him. Mr. Barrs was very kind to me and sent me to Quitman, my home, with his little boy on a mule.
When I got home, my mother did not know me, and I was indeed a sad looking spectacle. I had on a U.S. blue shirt, a pair of pants 44 inches in the waist, buttoned around to the suspender button. One leg of my pants was torn off half way to the knee, and the other leg rolled up to match it. I had on a Confederate gray hat with the visor torn off. I was barefooted, and my hair was down to my shoulders. My appearance did not dampen the joy of my mother, and the home folks, however, when they finally realized I was home at last. The first thing my mother did,of course, was to fix me a bath, and give me some clean clothes. She burned the ones I wore home because they had "things" on them. Some of these things are said to have had I.F.W. on the little white spots on their backs, and I was told that it meant "In For the War." I guess Sherman had these in mind when he made his little Sunday School remark about what war was. He made a good off-hand shot at it, but he had never been hungry, nor thirsty, nor ever in range of bullets, nor in prison. If he had had my experience with his knowledge of observation, I guess he would have said that war was HELL and then some.