I should have pronounced these particular mules safe anywhere, even under a hot fire, if extreme emaciation had been a sure index of departed strength and nerve in this variety of brute. But that is not mule at all. The next day, at Sailor’s Creek, my corps (Second), after a short, sharp contest, made a capture of thirteen flags, three guns, thirteen hundred prisoners, and over two hundred army wagons, with their mules. And such mules! the skinniest and boniest animals that I ever saw still retaining life, I sincerely believe. For a full week they had been on the go, night and day, with rare and brief halts for rest or food. Just before their capture they would seem to have gone down a long hill into a valley, a literal Valley of Humiliation as it proved, for there they were compelled to stay and surrender, either from inability to climb the opposite hill and get away, or else because there was not opportunity for them to do so before our forces came upon them. And yet, in spite of the worn and wasted state of those teams, it is doubtful if their kicking capacity was materially reduced by it.
The question frequently raised among old soldiers is, What became of all the army mules? There are thousands of these men who will take a solemn oath that they never saw a dead mule during the war. They can tell you of the carcasses of horses which dotted the line of march, animals which had fallen out from exhaustion or disease, and left by the roadside for the buzzards and crows. These they can recall by hundreds; but not the dimmest picture of a single dead mule, and they will assure you that, to the best of their knowledge and belief, the government did not lose one of these animals during the war. I recently conversed with an old soldier who remembered having once seen, on the march, the four hoofs of a mule—those and nothing more; and the conclusion that he arrived at was that the mule, in a fit of temper, had kicked off his hoofs and gone up. Another soldier, a mule-driver, remembers of seeing a mule-team which had run off the corduroy road into a mire of quicksand. The wagon had settled down till its body rested in the mire, but nothing of the team was visible save the ear-tips of the off pole mule.
“But the noblest thing that perished there,
Was that old army mule.”
As a fact, however, the mules, though tough and hardy, died of disease much as did the horses. Glanders took off a great many, and black tongue, a disease peculiar to them, caused the death of many more. But, with all their outs, they were of invaluable service to the armies, and well deserve the good opinions which came to prevail regarding their many excellent qualities as beasts of burden. Here is an incident of the war in which the mule was the hero of the hour:—
CHARGE OF THE MULE BRIGADE.
On the night of Oct. 28, 1863, when General Geary’s Division of the Twelfth Corps repulsed the attacking forces of Longstreet at Wauhatchie, Tennessee, about two hundred mules, affrighted by the din of battle, rushed in the darkness into the midst of Wade Hampton’s Rebel troops, creating something of a panic among them, and causing a portion of them to fall back, supposing that they were attacked by cavalry. Some one in the Union army, who knew the circumstances, taking Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” as a basis, composed and circulated the following description of the ludicrous event:—