On another occasion a party of five or six men stole out of camp at midnight, in quest of poultry. They knew of a farm-house where poultry was kept, but to ascertain its exact whereabouts at night was no easy task. On looking around the premises they found that there was no isolated out-building, whereupon they at once decided that the ell to the main house must be the place which contained the “biddies”; but to enter that might rouse the farmer and his family, which they did not care to do. However, a council of war decided to take the risk, and storm the place. Investigation showed the door to be padlocked, but a piece of iron which lay conveniently near, on a window-sill, served to pull out the staple, and the door was open. Meanwhile, guards had been posted at the corners of the house, with drawn revolvers (which they would not have dared to fire), and the captures began. One man entered the ell, and, lighting a match, discovered that he had called at the right house, and that the feathered family were at home. Among them he caught a glimpse of two turkeys, and these, with four fowls taken one at a time by the neck, to control their noise, were passed to another man standing at the door with a pen-knife, who, having performed a successful surgical operation on each, gave them to a third party to put in a bag.
Back of our camp stood the house of a secessionist,—at least, “Black Mary,” his colored servant, said he was one,—and in his kitchen and cook-stove, for the sum of twenty-five cents in scrip, having previously dressed and stuffed them, Mary cooked the turkeys most royally, and one commissioned officer of our company, at least, sat down to one of the feasts, blissfully ignorant, of course, as to the source from which the special ration was drawn.
Bee-hives were among the most popular products of foraging. The soldiers tramped many a mile by night in quest of these depositories of sweets. I recall an incident occurring in the Tenth Vermont Regiment—once brigaded with my company—when some of the foragers, who had been out on a tramp, brought a hive of bees into camp, after the men had wrapped themselves in their blankets, and, by way of a joke, set it down stealthily on the stomach of the captain of one of the companies, making business quite lively in that neighborhood shortly afterwards.
NO JOKE.
Foragers took other risks than that of punishment for absence from camp or the column without leave. They were not infrequently murdered on these expeditions. On the 7th of December, 1864, Warren’s Fifth Corps was started southward from Petersburg, to destroy the Weldon Railroad still further. On their return, they found some of their men, who had straggled and foraged, lying by the roadside murdered, their bodies stark naked and shockingly mutilated. One of Sherman’s men recently related how in the Carolinas one of his comrades was found hanged on a tree, bearing this inscription, “Death to all foragers.” A large number of men were made prisoners while away from their commands after the usual fruits of foraging—just how many, no one will ever know; and many of those not killed on the spot by their captors ended their lives in the prison-pens.
During the expedition of the Fifth Corps alluded to, while the column had halted at some point in its march, a few uneasy spirits, wishing for something eatable to turn up, had made off down a hill, ahead of the column, had crossed a stream, and reached the vicinity of a house on the high ground the other side. Here a keen-scented cavalryman from the party had started up two turkeys, which, as the pursuit grew close, flew up on to the top of the smoke-house, whence, followed by their relentless pursuer, they went still higher, to the ridge-pole of the main house adjoining. Still up and forward pressed the trooper, his “soul in arms and eager for the fray,” and as the turkeys with fluttering wings edged away, the hungry veteran, now astride the ridge-pole, hopped along after, when ping! a bullet whistled by uncomfortably near him.
THE TURKEY HE DIDN’T CATCH.