Notes of a Private

by John Milton Hubbard

The details of surrender were all arranged without the appearance of a Federal officer in our camp, the same being conducted in the most punctilious manner and without any effort to humiliate. We were pleased to learn that the same terms upon which Lee and Johnston had surrendered would be accorded to us. The officers retained their arms and horses and the men their horses. Blank paroles were furnished by the Federals. Those of Company E were filled out in my handwriting.

The noble address of General Forrest, urging his men to become as good citizens in peace as they had been soldiers in war, was pronounced entirely appropriate and a model in sentiment and expression.

The ceremony of tearing up the flag, fashioned from the bridal dress of an Aberdeen lady, was gone through with and small bits of it distributed among the soldiers and officers of the Seventh Tennessee Regiment. I did not think then that this was exactly the thing to do and have regretted the proceeding since, particularly because of the liberality of the Federal government in restoring the captured flags of the Southern States. Ours was a regular confederate flag and made of such material that it could have been preserved indefinitely.

In our camp it was “pretty well, I thank you; how do you do yourself?” Billy Yank, Johnny Reb, or anybody else—a pleasant abandon in regard to environments and no thought of prolonging the war beyond the Mississippi or helping Maximilian to a throne in Mexico. We were going home. The direct road to Bolivar, Tenn., over two hundred miles in length, was uppermost in our minds. At Macon, Miss., we drew our last rations, which were bountiful, as there was now no need of economy, and we had a long road before us. The men were entirely without official restraint, but those of Company E preserved their organization till we reached Saulsbury, Tenn., where we gave the first friendly salute to Federal soldiers, and the men went their several ways. I was riding the last few miles with three of my former pupils. That dear good fellow and gallant little soldier, James E. Wood, the man who rode “Sal’s Colt,” but has been more recently a well known editor and a distinguished member of the Arkansas senate, turned off at Middleburg and left George Bright, now of Danville, Ky., and Billy Myrick, long since dead, with me to face the folks at home.

The transition from soldier to citizen was easy. By a dive into my ancient wardrobe, I secured several articles of wearing apparel, among them a Prince Albert coat. I was not exactly a la mode, or whatever the French say, but with a new blockade hat I felt “mighty fine,” and doubtless looked as innocent of war as the Goddess of Peace. “Whatsoever cometh to your hands to do, do it with all your might.” I acted upon that. I opened a summer session of the Bolivar Male Academy in the railway station on the 31st of May, 1865. The Academy building had been defaced by the Federal army to such an extent that it was untenable, and we had no cars running for more than three months. So much changed had conditions become that of the sixty-six pupils in school in May, 1861, only four, James J. Neely, Jr., George B. Peters, Jr., James Fentress, Jr., and Charles A. Miller, returned to greet me. Seventeen of the sixty-six entered the army, fourteen as members of Company E and three as members of other commands. Four of the fourteen were killed on the field and all of the others served till the close of the war. Eleven of the seventeen are dead and six are living.

The station was a pleasant place for a summer session and boys were so anxious for instruction that I was soon teaching seven hours a day. They wanted Latin and Greek and mathematics, and we went at them with a will. The roots of the verbs and the rules of syntax had only lain dormant in my own mind during the four years and were easily recalled. The work became so much a part of my life, and the homelike feeling of the schoolroom returned so readily, that an assurance of my forty-odd years of like employment would have come as a pleasing announcement. But so it is, the forty years and more have come and gone, and I am still walking among my fellows, hardly knowing how to put on the ways of an old man, but in good humor with all the world. I have concluded to conclude this book with the following conclusions:

1. That it is an everlasting pity the war was not averted because of the great mortality of good citizens on both sides, the backset given to the morals of the whole country, the sectional feeling engendered and likely to endure for a season, and the loss of wealth and prestige by the Southern people.

2. That the victors in a civil war pay dearly for their success in the demoralization of the people at large by having so numerous an element supported by the government; in the rascally transactions connected with army contracts; and in the enlargement of that class of pestiferous statesmen (?) who have been aptly described as being “invisible in war and invincible in peace.”

3. That the most peaceful of Southern men can be readily converted into the most warlike soldiers when convinced that they have a proper grievance; can march further on starvation rations and in all kinds of weather, and will take less note of disparity of numbers in battle than will any other soldiers on earth.

4. That the South, in the war period, was essentially a country of horseback riders, and her young men furnished the material out of which was formed, when properly handled, regiments of cavalry that were practically invincible, even when confronting an adversary of twice or thrice their own strength.