By the light that I saw on her radiant brow,
She watches and waits there and prays for me now.
My captain, bend low; for this poor, wounded side
Is draining my heart of its last crimson tide.
Some day, when you leave this dark place, and go free,
You will meet a fair girl—she will question of me!
She has kissed this bright curl, as it lay on my head;
When it goes back alone, she will know I am dead.
And tell her the soul, which on earth was her own,
Is waiting and weeping in heaven alone.
My Mother! God help her! Her grief will be wild
When she hears the mad Hessians have murdered her child;
But tell her 'twill be one sweet chime in my knell,
That the flag of the South now waves where I fell!
It is well, it is well, thus to die in my youth,
A martyr to Freedom and Justice and Truth!
Farewell to earth's hopes—precious dreams of my heart—
My life's going out; but my love shall depart,
On the wings that my soul has unfurled,
Going up, soft and sweet, to that beautiful world.
A Joke on an "Egyptian" Regiment.
A well-known commander was drilling a brigade at "Kripple Kreek," a short time since, and in it was a slim portion of the "1159th" Illinois. Quite a large number of this regiment have deserted upon every occasion offered, the men generally being very inattentive. The commanding officer of "all that is left of them" was severely censured, the other day, for dereliction of duty. The General swore by the Eternal he wished the Colonel of the "1159th" would "go home and join his regiment."[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER VI.
General Turchin — Mrs. General Turchin in Command of the Vanguard of the 19th Illinois — The 18th Ohio at Athens — Children and Fools Always Tell the Truth — Picket Talk — About Soldiers Voting — Captain Kirk's Line of Battle.
It is well known by all that General Turchin has been fully vindicated. Captain Heaton, of Columbiana County, who was an eye-witness of his trial, and who knew the noble Russian, said to me, in speaking of this gallant soldier, "He looked like a lion among a set of jackals!" General Turchin was basely persecuted. He came out of the ordeal unscathed. The correspondent of the Gazette, who was in Huntsville, gave an account of affairs under Rousseau, who was as rigid in the punishment of rebels as Mitchel was before him. The court-martial convened to try Turchin for punishing traitors bid fair to last for months, under Buell's management.
Mrs. Turchin, before the arrest of her husband, had been making the campaign of Northern Alabama in his company, enduring, with the utmost fortitude, and for weeks together, all the hardships incident to a soldier's life. To ride on horseback, forty or fifty miles per day, was to her a mere matter of amusement, and in the recent march of the 19th Illinois, from Winchester to Bellefonte, she is said to have taken command of the vanguard, and to have given most vigorous and valuable directions for driving off and punishing the infamous bushwhackers who infested the road. These and similar things had so much excited the admiration of Colonel Turchin's men, that they would have followed his gallant lady into the field of battle with all the enthusiasm that fired the hearts of the French chivalry when gathered around the standard of the Maid of Orleans. As soon as Colonel Turchin was arrested, Mrs. Turchin suddenly disappeared. The next that was heard from her she was in Washington City; and now the story goes, that when she left the South she hastened to Chicago, enlisted the sympathies of noble-hearted men in the cause of her husband, prevailing upon a delegation of noble Illinoisans to accompany her to Washington, and, with their assistance, secured the confirmation of the Colonel as a brigadier-general of volunteers. Truly, in the lottery matrimonial, Colonel Turchin had the fortune to draw an invaluable prize.