December 3. The scouts brought in word that Longstreet had given up the siege and was preparing to withdraw from our front; and the next day it was reported that the Johnnies were really moving off to the right up the valley. On the 5th, a party of us boys went over and took a look at the Johnnies’ camp and works. There was a good deal of camp refuse lying around. The weather was getting very cold.
The 7th. We started after Longstreet, going toward Morristown. We marched up to the vicinity of Blaine’s cross-roads and stayed there until we re-enlisted. It was a cold, hard time we had those days. My feet were cold all the time. I was not comfortably warm for a number of days, and rations were dreadfully short. Some of the time we had nothing to eat but corn on the cob. We roasted that and eat it and it kept us from starvation. The 9th, I helped to catch a pig, but it was very small. There was not much meat on it.
December 24. The order concerning re-enlistment was read to a part of the regiment, the other part of the regiment was off on picket duty. When the question of re-enlistment was put to the boys there was a good deal of hesitation. A few only put up their hands. The idea of going home on a furlough for thirty days was a strong inducement, but the conditions under which we were living at the time were unfavorable. December 26. Our supply train was captured out in the vicinity of the gap with all our hardtack, sugar and coffee, etc. Re-enlistment was growing popular. I re-enlisted to-day. The temperature hovered around the freezing point. One hour it rained, another hour it snowed or the moisture fell in a sort of sleet. We were camping in a little hollow in the wood sloping towards the south.
December 28. It was reported that two-thirds of the men of the regiment had re-enlisted. That proportion was sufficient to enable the regiment to go home, as a regiment, on veteran furlough. It was reported about camp that the 21st was the first regiment in the 9th Army Corps to report thus re-enlisted.
January 6, 1864. Orders came directing that we be in readiness to start for Camp Nelson and the north at once, and in the afternoon of the 7th we set out. About two hundred Confederate prisoners were to be taken along. My shoes were in pretty good shape, but those of some of the boys were very poor. The 8th we made an early start. The air was clear and cold and we made a good day’s march. The 10th, we reached Cumberland Gap—were disappointed not to get any rations, but after passing the gap and marching a few miles beyond, we came on to a supply train and drew two full days’ rations. What a treat to have a meal of good fresh hardtack and a cup of good coffee again. The 11th, we did not get far, we were delayed by the train. The roads in the mountains were something terrific. In many places we were obliged to cut ruts in the ice for the wheels of the wagons to go in. Forded the Cumberland River at Cumberland Ford. Pretty cold business fording large rivers in midwinter with the temperature down to 15 degrees above zero.
January 12. Waited until noon for the train to come up. The train has delayed us all along the way. The roads are so very bad. Came upon a supply train and drew two days’ rations.
We reached Loudon, Kentucky, January 14. Here, some of the boys were able to get new shoes, to their great relief. It snowed all day the 15th and at night we camped in deep snow. The next day the roads not having been broken out, we lost our way and floundered around all the forenoon.
January 16. The home stretch. Made a long march of twenty-five or thirty miles in the rain, reaching Camp Nelson just before dark. Found our old Adjutant, Theron E. Hall, detailed there in command of the post. He put us in a big empty storehouse where we had a fine night’s sleep.
From the 17th of November to January 18th, a period of two months and one day, was a period in which we suffered more from privation and exposure than any other period of the same length during the war. During the siege we were under fire and short of rations all the time. The next period up in the vicinity of Morristown and Blaine cross-roads we were on duty nearly all the time. It was very cold. We were very short of clothes and had almost nothing to eat. Then the tramp over the Cumberland mountains through the snow, with almost nothing to keep us warm for eleven days, was something terrific. The fact that we were on our way home was the only thing that buoyed us up during the last part of it. I am writing this at seventy-four years of age, and as I go over that march through the snow, fording great streams in midwinter on that trip across the mountains, I am entirely unable to comprehend how we were able to endure it. We had a very good opportunity to observe the Johnnies we were taking along at short range, and to get their viewpoint of the war. They were from Longstreet’s command and while they had nothing but good to say of old Pete, Stonewall Jackson was their idol. He had been killed at Chancellorsville only a little while before and they felt his loss deeply. “Stonewall did a heap of praying—he do ’specially just before a big battle,” said one. Another lean old fellow: “’Lowed Stonewall was a general, he war. If you-uns had a general like him, ar reckon you-uns could lick we-uns.” One of them lamented that, “It was no use to fight, now old Stonewall war dead.” One I asked what he was fighting for. “’Cause I don’t want to be licked. What you-all come down here for—to invade our country and run away with our niggers? You-uns must have a powerful spite against we-uns-all.” In stature they averaged much smaller than our men, and they were very ignorant; I doubt if one out of ten of them could write his name.
January 19. We remained at Camp Nelson; drew clothing, ate hardtack and drank coffee to our heart’s content and were as happy a lot of mortals as ever walked the earth. The next day we marched to Nicholasville and took a train for Covington. There was a hole in one of my teeth that had added measurably to my misery on the trip over the mountains. As we passed through Nicholasville, I saw the sign of a dentist. I walked in and sat down in the dentist’s chair and told him I wished he would pull that tooth. He pulled it without any ceremony. When he put the forceps on to it, it rebelled fiercely, gave one final gasp and the maddening pain was ended.