In the morning we were on the road betimes; and I managed to stow away my saddle in a wagon. There were all manner of rumors concerning the whereabouts of Longstreet, and we kept on until we reached the little village of Stevensburg. No positive information could be obtained here; but we found a man who was willing to let us have dinner. We enjoyed the meal thoroughly, chatting merrily the while. Two or three citizens came into the room and scrutinized us closely, but we paid no attention to them. Presently, after whispering among themselves, one of them approached me and said: “What battery do you belong to, sir?” “None at all,” I replied; and went on with my dinner. Shortly he returned, and said: “What State do you hail from, sir?” “None at all,” I replied, “except a state of semi-starvation.” This seemed to annoy him, and he tried me once more: “Where are you going to?” “To General Longstreet’s head-quarters,” I answered. “What for, sir?” questioned the stranger. In the meanwhile I had finished my dinner, and feeling very comfortable, I turned to Captain Taylor and said: “I have heard a great deal of the curiosity of Americans, and I am disposed to gratify it as far as I can conveniently; but this man is becoming a bore.” The inquiring citizens now took a new turn, and asked Captain Taylor where he was going to. Whereupon he told them that it was none of their business. We paid our bill, and got up to leave the room, when one of the citizens quietly closed the door, and said: “Men, you can’t leave here until you show your papers!” “The devil we can’t!” said I. “What right have you to ask for our papers?” The answer came sharply enough: “We ask for your papers by the right that every true citizen has to question men whom he suspects to be deserters or worse.” Both Captain Taylor and I were rather high tempered. I had a great idea of my own dignity as a Confederate officer, and I told our inquiring friends at once that we positively refused to show any papers or answer any more questions. They told us that they would not allow us to depart until we did. Captain Taylor drew his pistol, and I drew my Confederate-iron sabre, and a lively fight of two to four was imminent. At this moment there was a violent knocking at the door, and a cavalry officer with two or three dismounted cavalrymen, came in. The citizens took him out and talked with him; and when they returned the officer asked us where we wanted to go to. Captain Taylor said he wanted to find General Lee’s head-quarters; and that I wanted to find General Longstreet. The officer told us very demurely that he was going along in the right direction, and if we would accompany him he would show us the road. We thought that we now had the best of the bargain; and the citizens who had so tormented us smiled grimly as we rode off. After riding for some distance without anything being said, I asked our escort whether we were nearing the place to which we were going, and he replied in the affirmative. Passing through a thick skirt of woods, he suddenly wheeled to the right, and ordered us to follow him. We did so; and a few paces further on we saw the body of a man dangling from the bough of a tree; a halter having been used instead of a rope, to swing the poor devil up by. Asking what this meant, I was told that the dead man was a spy, and that all spies were treated in that way in this army. I was glad to receive the information, but did not see that it had any personal application until we reached a tent in front of which a stern looking man, in a General’s uniform, was lolling on the ground. The officer dismounted, saluted, and said: “General, here are two men who have been arrested by some citizens of Stevensburg on suspicion of being spies.” “Ah, indeed,” said the General, rising with some interest. “What proofs have you of this?” “No particular proofs, General; but they refuse to show any papers, or to give any account of themselves.” “Well!” said the General, “that’s the best proof in the world. I have a short way of dealing with these rascals.” Then turning to a courier who was standing by, he said: “Tell Captain —— to detail a non-commissioned officer and three men to report to me immediately.” Turning to us he kindly said: “Fine morning! men. Any message or any other little thing that you would like to send to your friends in the North?” Captain Taylor and I had been so completely taken aback that, up to this time, we had said nothing; but the joke was becoming rather serious, and I said frankly that Captain Taylor and I had refused to show our papers because they had been asked for impertinently, and without any authority; but that we had in our pockets our orders and our passports, and that I had letters of introduction to General Longstreet from General Randolph and Colonel Gorgas. The order for the detail was countermanded as soon as our papers had been glanced at; but our friend, the General, told us that it was a suspicious circumstance, as we must admit, to find two officers of artillery wandering about the country without any command, and on foot. I suspect the nautical bearing of Captain Taylor, which his uniform did not disguise, and my own fresh color and English accent, had more to do with our trouble than the fact that we were dismounted and alone. I really had some little difficulty in making myself understood at Stevensburg. When I asked for water at the house, the man hesitated until I had repeated the word two or three times; and then asked if I meant “wat-ter.” We started off again, and I parted from Captain Taylor, who went to General Lee’s head-quarters, while I plodded along to Brandy Station. I had seen Captain Taylor for the last time. He was killed in action soon afterwards.
Almost broken down, I was trudging wearily along the road when I heard some one bawling out my name. Looking around I found that it was Lieutenant McGraw, of the Purcell Battery. In a minute or two I was in comfort and at ease in the midst of my old comrades. I had not seen Captain Willie Pegram since the fight at Mechanicsville, and we had a great deal of news to tell each other. The battery was parked in the woods, and, although we had no supper, I slept without waking. In the morning there was an artillery duel with the enemy at the Rappahannock River, in which we lost one or two men. Willie Pegram then lent me a poor old rip of a horse, with a hole in his side, punched there at Gaines’ Mill by a piece of a shell; and I sallied forth once more to find General Longstreet. By this time I was about half starved, and I was very much disgusted by a soldier whom I met at the roadside with a huge pile of corn-dodgers, and who refused to sell me a piece of bread, although I offered him $5 for it. But I found General Longstreet at last, and was introduced by him to his Chief Ordnance Officer, Colonel Peyton L. Manning, who directed me to return to Brandy Station, where I should find the Ordnance train of the corps.
About night I found the train, and met with a cordial reception at the hands of Lieutenants Leech and Duxberry. A good supper of coffee, biscuit, and fried bacon was improvised, and I heartily enjoyed the quiet luxury of a pipe.
[XIV.]
A day or two after my arrival at my post, I succeeded in buying a very good riding horse, and hired a capable servant. I may as well say just here that I found Colonel Manning, my immediate superior, an exceedingly easy man to get along with. Unquestionably a gentleman in his tastes and habits, and brave as a lion, he knew comparatively little of his work as Ordnance officer, and was unable to write an ordinary official letter correctly. Spelling was indeed his weakest point. He was from Aberdeen, Miss., and died at his home there three or four years after the surrender. Lieutenant Leech was from Charlottesville, Va., and was very quiet and unassuming. Lieutenant Duxberry was good tempered, but exceedingly conceited, and casting about always to make himself friends at head-quarters. One of his peculiar conceits was that his name, Duxberry, was a corruption of Duc de Berri, from whom he supposed himself to be in some extraordinary way descended. I found out afterwards that, at the beginning of the war, he was an assistant in a drug store at Montgomery, Ala., and that he was born somewhere in Massachusetts.
Longstreet pressed through Thoroughfare Gap and reached Manassas just in time to save Jackson from being overwhelmed there. I knew but little of what was going on, and did not see much of the great battle itself. Here I made my first capture in the shape of a Gatling gun which had been abandoned by the enemy, and what was of more importance, I secured a commissary wagon containing a barrel of ground coffee.
The army now advanced to the Potomac, which we crossed at Point of Rocks; the bands playing “Maryland, my Maryland!” There was no cause to complain any longer of a lack of provisions, and we were able to buy whatever we wanted with Confederate money at fair prices. After resting a day or two at Hagerstown, where we completed the equipment of our mess, we moved rapidly to South Mountain, where we had a brisk fight, and were driven back. This was on August 15th, I think. Late at night I rode back to the camp to get some supper, but had hardly told the cook to make the necessary preparations when an order came from General Longstreet to me to take charge of the Ordnance trains of the corps, and move them to Williamsport. The order was imperative, and I was directed to move as rapidly as possible.
At about ten o’clock at night I started. It was intensely dark and the roads were rough. Towards morning I entered the Hagerstown and Williamsport Turnpike, where I found a cavalry picket. The officer in charge asked me to move the column as quickly as I could, and to keep the trains well closed up. I asked him if the enemy were on the road, and he told me that it was entirely clear, and that he had pickets out in every direction. It was only a few miles now to Williamsport, and I could see the camp-fires of our troops across the river. I was hungry, sleepy and tired, and the prospect of camp and supper in an hour seemed the summit of bliss. I was forty or fifty yards ahead of the column, when a voice from the roadside called out “halt!” The gloss was not yet off my uniform, and I could not suppose that such a command, shotted with a big oath, was intended for me. In a moment it was repeated. I quickly rode to the side of the road in the direction of the voice, and found myself at the entrance of a narrow lane, and there adown it were horses and men in a line that stretched out far beyond my vision. To the trooper who was nearest to me I said indignantly: “How dare you halt an officer in this manner.” The reply was to the point: “Surrender, and dismount! You are my prisoner!” Almost before the words were uttered I was surrounded, and found that I had ridden right into the midst of a body of Yankee cavalry, numbering about two thousand, who had escaped from Harper’s Ferry that night to avoid the surrender which was to take place in the morning. I was placed under guard on the roadside, and as the trains came up they were halted, and the men who were with them were quietly captured. In a short time the column moved off in the direction of the Pennsylvania line. I was allowed to ride my own horse. By the side of each team a Federal soldier rode, and, by dint of cursing the negro drivers and beating the mules with their swords, the cavalrymen contrived to get the jaded animals along at a gallop. While we were halted, one of my Sergeants had knocked the linchpins out of the wheels of the leading wagons, in the hope that this would delay the march. The wheels came off and the wagons were upset, but a squad of men dismounted instantly, threw the wagons out of the road, and set fire to them, so that there was no halt of consequence. I had a cavalryman on each side of me, and tried vainly to get an opportunity to slip off into the woods.