Southern Soldier Stories

by George Cary Eggleston

TO “JOE”

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE “JOE” SO OFTEN
MENTIONED IN THESE STORIES
HE WAS MY LOVED COMRADE IN ARMS, AND A
SHARER IN ALL MY WAR EXPERIENCES
HE IS NOW
Dr. Joseph W. Eggleston
OF RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

PREFACE

The use of the first personal pronoun singular in any of these stories does not of necessity mean that the author had anything to do with the events chronicled.

“I tell the story as ’twas told to me.”

CONTENTS

	PAGE
How Battles are Fought	[ 1]
Joe	[ 7]
Around the Camp-fire	[ 11]
An Unfinished Fight	[ 18]
A Family that had no Luck	[ 22]
William	[ 25]
A Cradle Captain	[ 29]
Who is Russell?	[ 31]
“Juanita”	[ 48]
Scruggs	[ 52]
Joe on Horseback	[ 55]
A Rather Bad Night	[ 57]
The Women of Petersburg	[ 70]
Ham Seay	[ 74]
Old Jones’s Dash	[ 76]
A Woman’s Hair	[ 80]
A Midnight Crime	[ 85]
A Little Rebel	[ 90]
Twenty-one	[ 97]
A Beef Episode	[ 104]
Bernard Poland’s Prophecy	[ 107]
A Breach of Etiquette	[ 121]
The Lady of the Green Blind	[ 124]
Youngblood’s Last Morning	[ 128]
Billy Goodwin	[ 133]
Manassas	[ 137]
My Last Night on Picket	[ 143]
Griffith’s Continued Story	[ 147]
A Cheerful Supper of Cheers	[ 155]
How the Tar Heels Stuck	[ 157]
“Little Lamkin’s Battery”	[ 159]
Curry	[ 171]
Gun-boats	[ 175]
Two Minutes	[ 179]
Si Tucker—Coward and Hero	[ 182]
War as a Therapeutic Agent	[ 188]
“Notes on Cold Harbor”	[ 191]
A Plantation Heroine	[ 203]
Two Incidents in Contrast	[ 206]
How the Sergeant-major told the Truth	[ 210]
Two Gentlemen at Petersburg	[ 215]
Old Jones and the Huckster	[ 220]
A Dead Man’s Message	[ 223]
A Woman’s Last Word	[ 225]
An Incomplete Story	[ 228]
Random Facts	[ 231]
My Friend Phil	[ 237]

ILLUSTRATIONS

J. E. B. Stuart—The Cavalier	[ Frontispiece]
	FACING PAGE
“Get up here and do your duty”	[ 30]
A Good-bye to a Friend	[ 56]
She was singing “Dixie”	[ 91]
The last that was seen of Bernard Poland	[ 119]
A Dead Man’s Message	[ 224]

SOUTHERN SOLDIER STORIES