Before reaching the front, it was learned that we had been called out on a false alarm. Our return to Frederick's Hall was by a more circuitous route, near which was an establishment where apple-brandy was for sale. The stock had been heavily watered, and the price of shares (in a drink), even then, too far above par for eleven dollars a month to afford scarcely more than a smell. However, after reaching camp, more than ordinary wrestling and testing of strength were indulged in.
Two years had elapsed since any furloughs had been given, except to the sick and wounded. The granting of them was now revived, and those who had been longest from home were, of course, to be served first. My turn came in March. I shall never forget the impression made on me as I sat at the supper-table at home, on the evening of my arrival. My father, mother, sisters, and little niece were present; and, after the noise, loud talking, etc., in camp, the quiet was painful. It was just as it had always been, except the vacant places of the boys at the front; still, I felt that something was wrong. Equally as impressive was the mild diet of cold bread, milk, and weak-looking tea. The effect was the same as that produced by a sudden transition from a low to a high altitude, or vice versa, requiring time for adaptation, as I soon experienced. My fifteen days' leave of absence having expired, I returned to camp.
To induce the boys who were under age, and still at home, to enlist, a thirty-day furlough was offered to every soldier who would secure a recruit for the service. By this means many boys of only fifteen or sixteen years joined the army, to enable a long-absent kinsman to get home. McClintic, of my mess, got this furlough by the enlistment of his brother, and while at home drummed up the son of a neighbor, William Barger, whom he brought back with him to repeat the operation. To allowing this second furlough the authorities, right or wrong, objected. The matter was compromised by McClintic very generously assigning the young recruit to my credit, by which I got the furlough.
Before my return to the army, at the expiration of the thirty days, the Grant campaign had opened and the great battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania had been fought. Our battery had escaped without serious loss, as the character of the country afforded little opportunity for the use of artillery. From Staunton I traveled on a freight train with the cadets of the Virginia Military Institute and their professors, who were now the conspicuous heroes of the hour, having just won immortal fame in their charge, on May 15, at New Market. Among the professors was my friend and former messmate, Frank Preston, with an empty sleeve, now captain of a cadet company, and Henry A. Wise, Jr., who took command of the cadets after the wounding of Colonel Shipp, their commandant.
Our army was now near Hanover Junction, twenty-five miles from Richmond, and engaged in its death struggle with Grant's countless legions. If any one period of the four years of the war were to be selected as an example of Southern endurance and valor, it probably should be the campaign from the Wilderness, beginning May 5 and closing a month later at Petersburg, in which the Confederate army, numbering 64,000 half-clothed, half-fed men, successfully resisted a splendidly equipped army of 140,000—inflicting a loss of 60,000 killed and wounded.
Much has been said and written concerning the comparative equipment, etc., of the two armies. A striking reference to it I heard in a conversation at General Lee's home in Lexington after the war. Of the students who attended Washington College during his presidency he always requested a visit to himself whenever they returned to the town. With this request they were very ready to comply. While performing this pleasant duty one evening, during a visit to my old home in Lexington, Mrs. Lee, sitting in her invalid-chair, was discoursing to me, feelingly, on the striking contrast between the ragged clothing worn by Confederate soldiers as compared with that worn by the Federals, as she had seen the Federal troops entering Richmond after its evacuation. The General, who was pacing the floor, paused for a moment, his eye lighting up, and, at the conclusion of her remarks, said, as he inclined forward with that superb grace, "But, ah! Mistress Lee, we gave them some awfully hard knocks, with all of our rags!"
After parting with my cadet friends at Hanover Junction, soon after day-dawn, I readily found our battery bivouacking in sight of the station. Some of the men were lying asleep; those who had risen seemed not yet fully awake. All looked ten years older than when I had bidden them good-by a month before—hollow-eyed, unwashed, jaded, and hungry; paper-collars and blue neckties shed and forgotten. The contents of my basket (boxes were now obsolete), consisting of pies sweetened with sorghum molasses, and other such edibles, were soon devoured, and I reported "returned for duty." In a few hours we were on the road to Richmond, with the prospect of another sojourn in the surrounding swamps.
On the night of June 1 our battery was bivouacked in the edge of a dense piece of woods, the guns being parked in open ground just outside, while the men were lying in the leaves, with the horses tied among them. About midnight one of the horses became tangled in his halter and fell to the ground, struggling and kicking frantically to free himself. A man close by, being startled from sleep, began halloaing, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" The alarm was taken up by one after another as each roused from slumber, increasing and spreading the noise and confusion; by this time the horses had joined in, pawing and snorting in terror, completing the reign of pandemonium. As darkness prevented successful running, some of the men climbed trees or clung to them for protection, while the sentinel over the guns in the open broke from his beat, supposing Grant's cavalry was upon us. In a space of two minutes all suddenly became still, the climbers stealthily slid from their trees, and others gingerly picked their way back to their lairs, "ashamed as men who flee in battle." For some time, as the cause and absurdity of the incident was realized, there issued now and then from a pile of leaves a chuckle of suppressed laughter.
