The Blue and the Gray; Or, The Civil War as Seen by a Boy / A Story of Patriotism and Adventure in Our War for the Union

by Annie Randall White

T was the autumn of 1864, and the supplies for the boys in blue were being hurried forward. The Government purchased cattle in the North and West, and sent them to its soldiers, for they must be fed or they could not fight. The Southern army had not fared so well—they were destitute of nearly everything. Foraging had been kept up the troops on both sides, until the land was almost devastated. Families were suffering from hunger, for most of the able-bodied men were at the front, and only old men and pretended farmers remained to till the land. These latter belonged to the roving bands of guerrillas who pretended to work the farm lands. Want stared women and children in the face. Little ones who could not understand the dreadful fever of hate and blood that was abroad in the land looked into the faces of their elders, and asked for food.

Thomas Grant was a young fellow of nineteen who had seen some service in the Missouri militia, and was full of life and youth. His early days had been spent on a farm in Northern New York, where his reckless courage and fine horsemanship had made him a leader among his boy comrades. When he entered the Government service it was for the purpose of driving cattle to the army for its use.

The position was one of great danger. Their steps were watched by guerrillas by night and by day, and many a stray shot picked off a cattle driver or one of the soldiers who accompanied them as guards. Hurrying them over hill and dale, now in dense woods, and now over country roads, sometimes struggling and sticking in the clayey beds, it was a common event to have many of the tired animals, worn and footsore, fall down in their tracks, to be abandoned. These animals were a rich harvest for the guerrillas who hovered in their wake, like birds of prey, for they would capture the weary beasts, and convert them into food. It was the pride of a cattle driver when he could bring the bulk of his drove to the destined point, and deliver them to the quartermaster.

It was sultry, and the dust lay in heaps along the highway. The news had come that a large body of Confederate cavalry were about to attack Stevenson, Alabama, which was held by the Union forces, and the cattle were hurried out of the town as soon as the first beams of the morning sun lighted up the earth. The boom of cannon and the rattle of musketry lent wings to their going.

“The rebs are after us, and we'll lose every steer we have,” the foreman said to Tom Grant, who rode beside him.

The morning breeze brought the scent of the wild flowers on its wings, and as the soldiers guarding the train marched with easy, swinging step, it seemed more like a lively walk taken for pleasure than a dangerous undertaking. The hills ahead were clothed in a beautiful green, sprinkled thickly with the white clover so dear to the bovine tongue.

“We'll get away all right, Tom,” said the foreman, Jim Morrison. “But we must make quicker time than this. Our usual twelve miles a day ain't going to bring us out of the reach of the Johnnies, and before we get far they'd overtake us, and then good-bye to the steers, and to our own liberty as well.”

“There's trouble ahead already,” Tom replied. He was active and lithe, and ever on the alert, showing much skill in managing cattle.

“Blast that long-horned steer,” Cleary, the assistant foreman, cried. “They're on the stampede. Boys, go after them, lively.”

A score of drivers set spurs to their horses, while the frightened animals, with tremendous leaps, thundered across an open field, and made straightway for a gully just beyond the field. The scene was one of wild confusion. The shouts and oaths of the drivers, the trampling and crowding of the maddened creatures, as they tore over the grassy field, and the sounds of the firing behind them, in the beleaguered town, were indescribable.