This General Ledbetter, from the State of Maine, was the willing tool selected by the Rebel officials to punish and abuse the Unionists—very much as Wirz was permitted to do at Andersonville. If I write harshly of this officer it will be accepted as an excuse from me to explain that I saw him do a great many mean acts, but that which turned my stomach worst were his roughly-spoken words to an old Unionist bridge-burner, a man with bushy, grey hair, who was at the time shrinking and cowering in a corner, looking at me with his frightened eyes like a crazy man at bay. His distress was being caused by the dreadful shrieks of his son, at that moment on the scaffold, to which the old father was led in a few moments.
"Get up here, you damned old traitor," while he deliberately tied the rope around the trembling old man's neck.
"GET UP HERE, YOU DAMNED OLD TRAITOR."
It was a horrible, horrible sight—one that I shall never cease to remember. I wish it were possible for me to efface it from my memory.
After the delightful evening at the Craig's, part of which I have tried to describe here, because there was a short, sweet interview at the garden gate after most of the guests had retired, in which the readers are not at all interested, I went to bed, determined in my own mind that in the morning I should make the final break for home. I do not remember now whether I dreamed of the girl I was to leave behind me there, or that my visions were of "Home, sweet home." Of course, it was cruel to be obliged to tear myself away from them so ruthlessly, just when it was becoming interesting, but I consoled myself with the reflection that I had survived these heart-troubles before—several times.
In the first place I had deliberately separated from my really and truly girl at my own home, when I joined Patterson's army in Pennsylvania, but I had succeeded in finding another, in dark-eyed Capitola, at Richmond, who in turn had been almost forgotten, in the new-found treasure at Knoxville, from whom I was now to be estranged by the fortunes of war—perhaps forever. It was now time to return to the first love again; and that's the way it was "evolved" with me right along. I always managed to have a girl, to keep me from attending to business, and to get me into trouble, whether I was in the Rebel or Union armies, or lines.
I was being "recuperated" so pleasantly, that I enjoyed playing off sick after I felt strong and active enough to have undertaken to walk right through Tennessee and Kentucky to my home.
The greater part of our company being at Cumberland Gap, Captain Latrobe was somewhere near Knoxville with General Ledbetter. I can not definitely recall exactly how it was—only that in order to reach him, to report for duty, it was necessary for me to go out of town some distance, where I found him in a camp at Ledbetter's headquarters.
I was a little out of favor with the Captain about this time. His greeting was not calculated to make me feel exactly comfortable.