PAT CLEBURNE AS AN ORATOR.
Gen. Cleburne was a better fighter than speaker, and yet his oratory was sometimes very effective. Of his address on the occasion above referred to I recall but a single sentiment uttered by him. After referring to the outrages committed by Northern troops on Southern soil he said, "I am not fighting for right, I am fighting for vengeance." Of another address delivered by him on the same day I retain a more vivid recollection. Two soldiers of our brigade had appropriated a hog belonging to some citizen living near Gadsden, and the matter was reported to Gen. Cleburne. The brigade was ordered out and formed into a hollow square facing inwards. The two culprits were brought in under guard and placed in the center of the square and then Cleburne and his staff rode in. With the culprits before him and in the presence and hearing of the entire brigade he for fifteen minutes abused and demeaned and shamed them until I think they were thoroughly reformed on that particular line of moral depravity. On the march, some days later, the road we were traveling changed direction abruptly to the right. A corn field lay on that side and a number of the boys, with the view of shortening their tramp that day, leaped the fence and took the hypotenuse of the triangle rather than walk the longer distance represented by the other two sides. Gen. Cleburne, who was riding at the head of the division, probably suspected such a result and when he had reached the corner of the field where they would come out he stopped his horse and quietly awaited their coming. As they reached the road, singly or in pairs, the General gave them a brief but pointed lecture on the sin of straggling, and to impress it more forcibly on their memories he told them in his suave Irish way that they could each take a rail from the fence and carry it on their shoulders for the next half mile. It was a new, but not a pleasant form of traveling by rail. If my memory is not at fault one of the Oglethorpes had the honor of membership in the rail squad that day, and probably has still a feeling recollection of the incident. He was something of a vocalist in those days and was wont to enliven the march with the tender strains of "Faded Flowers," "The Midnight Train," "Benny Havens Ho," and other popular musical selections, but on that day his lyre was voiceless and all its music hushed.