"No, it wouldn't; and if it did they would be careful not to say so."
"Then I don't see what reason you have to get huffy over a thing that can't be helped," continued the officer. "We must have men, and if they will not come in willingly, they must be dragged in. We can't be subdued; we never will consent to be slaves. But you two will get out all right."
"We knew it all the while; at least I thought of it," replied Dick, "but I didn't want to mention it while the rest of the boys were around. They are mad already, and it might make them worse to know that we two are better off than they are."
"But I want to tell you that you will make a big mistake if you accept your discharges," the captain went on to say. "You ought by all means to stay in until this thing is settled and the invaders driven from our soil. You'll wish you had when you see the boys come home covered with glory. And then think of the possibilities before you! You are bound to be promoted, and that rapidly. If I had your military education I would not be satisfied with anything short of a colonelcy."
"Well, you may have it, and since you want it, I hope you will get it; but I wouldn't accept it if it were offered to me," answered Dick, turning on his heel. "I'll not serve under such a fraud of a government as this has turned out to be a day longer than I can help. I'll take my discharge as soon as they will condescend to give it to me, and then they can hunt somebody to fill my place. I'll never volunteer again, and sooner than be conscripted I'll take to the woods."
"Now, sergeant, you know you wouldn't do any such thing," said the captain.
"Yes, I would," Dick insisted. "There is a principle at the bottom of this whole thing that is most contemptible; but what more could you expect of men who induced us to enlist by holding out the promise of an easy victory? 'The North won't fight!' This looks like it. We're whipped already."
These were the sentiments of thousands of men who wore gray jackets in the beginning of 1862, but it wasn't every one who dared express them as boldly as Dick Graham did, nor was it every officer who would have listened as quietly as did Captain Jones. Everything went to show that the officers had been drilled in the parts they were expected to perform long before the men dreamed that such a thing as a Conscription Act was thought of; for, as a rule, all discussion regarding the policy of the Richmond government was "choked off" with a strong hand. In some armies, Bragg's especially, the men were treated "worse than their niggers ever were." They dared not speak above a whisper for fear of being shoved into the guard-house; and "when some regiments hesitated to avail themselves of this permission (to volunteer) they were treated as seditious, and the most refractory soldiers, on the point of being shot, only saved their lives by the prompt signature of their comrades to the compact of a new enlistment." Things were not quite as bad as this in Price's army, but still Captain Jones thought it best to tell his men, especially the out-spoken Dick Graham, that they had better be a little more guarded in their language, unless they were well acquainted with those to whom they were talking. They went to Memphis, as the captain said they would, marching over a horrible road and leaving some of their artillery stuck in the mud at Desarc on White River, and from Memphis they went to Corinth forty miles farther on, packed in box cars like sheep, and on top like so much useless rubbish. Their train was rushed through at such a rate of speed that the men on top shouted to the engineer:
"Go it. Let out two or three more sections of that throttle. Run us off into the ditch and kill us if you want to. There are plenty more men where we came from."
Rodney Gray afterward declared that he had never seen a grander sight than Beauregard's camp presented when the troops from the West marched through it, greeted everywhere by the most vociferous cheering, to take their positions on the right. Their arrival brought the strength of the army up to more than a hundred thousand men, and, somewhat to their surprise, they were introduced to their new comrades as "Invincibles." At any rate that was what General Bragg called them in an address which he issued to his soldiers a few days afterward: