I have received from a friend the following record of Capt. J. W. Nichol prior to his company’s being attached to the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, which I take pleasure in making a part of this narrative:
Capt. J. W. Nichol was born and reared near Readyville, Rutherford County, Tenn., February 26, 1839. He entered the Confederate service at Murfreesboro, Tenn., May 21, 1861, as a lieutenant in Captain Wood’s Company H, Joe B. Palmer’s Eighteenth Tennessee Regiment, serving in same until a few days before the first battle at Fort Donelson, February, 1862. On a march from Bowling Green, Ky., we left him, sick of measles, at Russellville, Ky.; therefore he was not in the fight at Fort Donelson, where the Eighteenth Tennessee Regiment was captured and sent to prison. He was sent back with the sick to Bowling Green, thence to Nashville and Murfreesboro. At Murfreesboro he reported to Gen. A. S. Johnston, who directed him to get together all the members of the Eighteenth Tennessee Regiment who might be at home on sick furlough, also any who might have made their escape from prison, organizing them into a company or battalion, and connect the same with some other regiment. But before Captain Nichol could do this General Johnston, with his army, moved to Shelbyville, where Nichol reported to him again, informing him that he had met a number of the command who desired to join other regiments instead of forming a new command. General Johnston directed him to assign these men to any desired company until the Eighteenth should be exchanged. Nichol then, with nine others of the Eighteenth Tennessee, procured horses and fell back with General Johnston to Corinth, Miss., where they attached themselves to General Buckner’s old escort, a Kentucky company commanded by Captain Kerr, who had made their escape from Fort Donelson and were serving as an escort for General Hardee. Nichol served as a private soldier with this company until after the battle of Corinth, April 6, 7, 1862. Some time after this battle he went to General Beauregard’s headquarters (General Johnston having been killed in the engagement on April 6), and asked permission to go into Middle Tennessee and make up a cavalry company, which request was granted. With considerable difficulty he made his way to the neighborhood of his old home, there being Federal troops, stationed at Murfreesboro, who were scouting the surrounding country frequently. On one occasion Captain Unthanks, with a Yankee company of seventy-two men, came out from Murfreesboro to Readyville (Captain Nichol’s old home), and went on to Woodbury and McMinnville on a scouting expedition. Colonel Starnes, commanding the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry, was near McMinnville and, upon learning of the scouting party headed by Captain Unthanks, moved into McMinnville in a few hours, and made inquiry for a man fully acquainted with the roads leading therefrom. Captain Nichol, who was just in from Corinth, Miss., reported to Colonel Starnes that he was conversant with all the roads leading to Murfreesboro. Leaving McMinnville late in the afternoon, Colonel Starnes and his men reached Woodbury about daylight of the next day, finding that Captain Unthanks had stopped there to feed his horses and had just left. Instantly pursuing, Starnes caught them at Readyville (Nichol’s old home), eating breakfast, Captain Unthanks and most of his men being at Major Tallay’s (the old Ready residence). Starnes was upon them before they were aware, killing three and capturing all except two others, who made their escape to Murfreesboro. Captain Nichol was then engaged in making up his company. Gen. Bedford Forrest passed through Readyville July 13, 1862; and Nichol, with a few unorganized men, fell in line and proceeded to Murfreesboro, where they participated in the first fight at Murfreesboro, in which they were victorious, taking all the prisoners to McMinnville to parole them. From there Nichol proceeded to Readyville, where he made up his company. About this time, learning of the approach of General Bragg toward Middle Tennessee, he, with about seventy unarmed young boys and men, riding all night, passing through Liberty, the home of Stokes and Blackburn (Yankee bushwhackers), got safely through to Sparta just in time to meet Bragg on his march into Kentucky. General Polk took Nichol’s company for a time as couriers. Soon afterwards they were ordered to report to Maj. J. R. Davis, commanding a battalion of cavalry, and were in the fight at Perryville, Ky., fighting every day until they reached Cumberland Gap, losing several men. Thence they went to Murfreesboro, in which battle they were in Davis’s Battalion. Shortly after this Smith’s Fourth Tennessee Regiment was formed, composed of Smith’s Battalion and Davis’s Battalion. Immediately after this formation Wheeler and Forrest were ordered to Fort Donelson, where Nichol received his first serious wound. He was in all other engagements until the close of the war, being dangerously wounded at Bentonville, N. C., the last general engagement of the war. He surrendered at Greensboro, N. C., with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army, and was paroled at Charlotte, N. C., April 26, 1865.
When Colonel Smith returned, on exchange, from Johnson’s Island Prison, just before the battle of Averyboro, N. C., he at once assumed command of the brigade as senior colonel. Adjt. George B. Guild became his adjutant general, and Capt. J. R. Lester, of Company F, became his inspector general, all of them serving in this capacity till the surrender of the army at Greensboro, N. C., April 26, 1865. The coming of Colonel Smith created a scene of rejoicing with the Regiment, as it had created one of pronounced sorrow when he had been captured. The men pressed around him to show him the joy and pleasure it afforded. He was called upon to make a talk, when he expressed to them the pleasure it gave him to be with them again after his long, weary, and dark night as a prisoner in a Northern fortress. He said the saddest part of it was that he missed many familiar faces who were camping to-day on Fame’s battle ground, and but a remnant remained of what they had been; that he had learned from time to time, as other prisoners came in, of the glorious record they were making and had made as soldiers. He expressed his pride in them, and said that their names would be remembered by grateful countrymen. Choking for utterance and in tears, he sat down. A few minutes after this the order was given to mount, and the brigade marched away to take part in the battle of Averyboro, N. C. A very interesting incident occurred before the foregoing took place. The Regiment had learned that his name had been registered for exchange and were expecting him. At the battle of Fayetteville, N. C., a few weeks before, Lieutenant Massengale had been killed, and his horse, which was a most excellent one, a rich bay, evidencing the qualities of a thoroughbred, was in the hands of a relative. It was proposed to purchase the horse for Colonel Smith when he reported, which was done. The men paid the relative $2,600 for the horse, which was christened “Lieut. Joe Massengale” in memory of his gallant rider who was killed upon his back while leading a charge in the fight with Kilpatrick’s forces. Colonel Smith rode this horse in the battles that occurred afterwards and until the surrender. He brought “Joe Massengale” home with him. After this the horse was conspicuous as a part of all the reunions that took place, and was named the regimental mascot, by which name he was called until he died, in his twenty-sixth year.
It has been assumed that the loss of life chargeable to the War between the States was over one million individuals. The number of great battles fought and the deadliness of the conflict are without a parallel in all modern history. In the Dark Ages of the world it frequently transpired that the victors assumed the divine right to massacre the defeated with fire and sword. We had a reminder of what that meant in the march to the sea and in the raids through the valleys of Virginia with a well-defined smell of fire and destruction about them. Truly it has been said that every messenger from the front told of the wreck of a living hope, and every home of both the North and South was made a house of mourning. But my object in giving the following incident is particularly to refute what has sometimes been unjustly said about the Confederate army as a band of slaveholders.
About the beginning of the war there lived in an adjoining county a young farmer who was a substantial, intelligent, and industrious citizen. By his energy he had accumulated means to buy a small hilly farm and erected upon it a plain but neat cottage, where he and his young wife lived. He had no farm help but a younger brother. In the fall of 1861 he and his brother enlisted in the Confederate army. His aged father and mother came to live with the wife, and in a short time the Tennessee regiment to which he and his brother were attached was ordered to the Army of Northern Virginia. The younger brother was killed the day Gen. Bob Hatton fell at Seven Pines, near Richmond, Va., in 1862. The old mother died in a short time after hearing of the death of her baby boy, as she affectionately called him. In 1863 the older brother was desperately wounded at Gettysburg in the charge of Archer’s Tennessee Brigade on Cemetery Hill and taken a prisoner by the enemy. He was reported killed in action by his comrades, and was so reported on the rolls of his company during the remainder of the war. In fact, his leg had been shattered by a cannon ball, and it was hastily amputated above the knee when he was sent to Rock Island Prison. The shock from the wound, exposure, and want of attention impaired his health, making him a patient of the prison hospital until the war ended. His wife, on learning of his death, sickened and died of a broken heart, it is said. The old father, having been left alone, went off to Kentucky to live with a married daughter. Marauding parties burned and destroyed the fences around the little farm, and the house was ruined and broken down. Nothing was left to remind one of the happy home it once had been.
Such was the health of the soldier that he was not discharged from the Rock Island hospital until some three months after the surrender of the Confederate armies, when he was paroled and permitted to return to his home. Upon reaching his home depot, in the first days of September, 1865, good-hearted Tom Day furnished him a horse to go out to his home. We will not attempt to depict his feelings on seeing the devastation that was spread before him upon reaching home. He sought the house of a neighbor, where he was told in sympathetic words the sad, sad story. He had not been able to write himself during his year or more as a prisoner; and confiding it to others, they had failed either willfully or negligently to do so. He listened in a dazed state of mind to the information imparted to him by his friend, but spoke not a word, remaining silent during the evening. As the lengthening shadows of the setting sun grew longer, he arose, saying that he would go down home again. He was asked to wait till morning and take a good night’s rest, to which he gave no heed, hobbling off on his crutches in that direction. He did not return that night, and the next morning at the breakfast table the neighbor announced that he would go down and see if he could hear anything of his friend. On approaching the house, he found the door slightly ajar. Pushing it open, to his horror he beheld the soldier stretched upon the bare floor—dead. He, too, had died of a broken heart. The next day he was buried by a few sorrowing friends by the side of his wife, at the Old Salem Camp Ground, where his rude forefathers sleep.
The wrecks created along its pathway by a state of war are indeterminable. The destruction of property, public and private, is its natural consequence. Nor does its blighting effect end upon the battle field, but drags into its maelstrom of death the innocent, the helpless, and the unprotected. Truly can it be said that war makes countless thousands mourn.
These two young men were a type of the soldiery of which the Confederate armies were composed. They had no particular property rights to fight for; they owned no slaves; they were not personally interested in the slavery question. The doctrine of State rights had been the policy of the government since its existence. The Constitution and the laws made thereunder recognized it, and the Supreme Court of the United States in numerous decisions had sustained them. These were to be set at naught by force of arms, their country invaded, and their people to be subjugated. To prevent this they risked their lives and their all. Rebels they were in the sense that their forefathers had been, but patriots in the cause of freedom and in their efforts to preserve the inalienable rights of the citizen.