“All through them last few weeks the army was dwindlin' away and dwindlin' away. Every momin' at roll-call there'd be a few more absentees. Don't git me wrong—I wouldn't call them boys deserters. They'd stuck that long, doin' their duty like men, but they knowed good and well—in fact we all knowed—'twas only a question of time till even Forrest would have to quit before overpowerin' odds and we'd be called on to lay down the arms we'd toted fur so long. Their families needed 'em, so they jest quit without sayin' anything about it to anybody and went on back to their homes. This was specially true of some that lived in that district.
“But with the boys frum up this way it was different. In a way of speakin', we didn't have no homes to go back to. Our State had been in Northern hands almost frum the beginnin' and some of us had prices on our heads right that very minute on account of bein' branded ez guerrillas. Which was a lie. But folks didn't always stop to sift out the truth then. They were prone to shoot you first and go into the merits of the case afterward. Anyway, betwixt us and home there was a toler'ble thick hedge of Yankee soldiers—in fact several thick hedges. You know they called one of our brigades the Orphan Brigade. And there were good reasons fur callin' it so—more ways than one.
“I ain't never goin' to furgit the night of the fifth of May. Somehow the tidin's got round amongst the boys that the next mornin' the order to surrender was goin' to be issued. The Yankee cavalry general, Wilson—and he was a good peart fighter, too—had us completely blocked off to the North and the East, but the road to the Southwest was still open ef anybody cared to foller it. So that night some of us held a little kind of a meetin'—about sixty of us—mainly Kintuckians, but with a sprinklin' frum other States, too.
“Ez I remember, there wasn't a contrary voice raised when 'twas suggested we should try to make it acrost the big river and j'ine in under Kirby Smith, who still had whut was left of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi.
“Billy Priest made the principal speech. 'Boys,' he says, 'South Carolina may a-started this here war, but Kintucky has undertook the contract to close it out. Somewheres out yonder in Texas they tell me there's yit a consid'ble stretch of unconquered Confederate territory. Speakin' fur myself I don't believe I'm ever goin' to be able to live comfortable an' reconciled under any other flag than the flag we've fit to uphold. Let's us-all go see ef we can't find the place where our flag still floats.'
“So we all said we'd go. Then the question ariz of namin' a leader. There was one man that had been a captain and a couple more that had been lieutenants, but, practically unanimously, we elected little Billy Priest. Even ef he was only jest a private in the ranks we all knowed it wasn't fur lack of chances to go higher. After Shiloh, he'd refused a commission and ag'in after Hartsville. So, in lessen no time a-tall, that was settled, too.
“Bright and early next day we started, takin' our guns and our hosses with us. They were our hosses anyway; mainly we'd borrowed 'em off Yankees, or anyways, off Yankee sympathisers on our last raid Northward and so that made 'em our pussonal property, the way we figgered it out. 'Tennyrate we didn't stop to argue the matter with nobody whutsoever. We jest packed up and we put out—and we had almighty little to pack up, lemme tell you.
“Ez we rid off we sung a song that was be-ginnin' to be right fashionable that spring purty near every place below Mason and Dixon's line; and all over the camp the rest of the boys took it up and made them old woodlands jest ring with it. It was a kind of a farewell to us. The fust verse was likewise the chorus and it run something like this:
Oh, I'm a good old rebel, that's jest whut I am;
And fur this land of freedom I do not give a dam',
I'm glad I fit ag'in her, I only wish't we'd won,
And I don't ax your pardon fur anything I've done.
“And so on and so forth. There were several more verses all expressin' much the same trend of thought, and all entirely in accordance with our own feelin's fur the time bein'.