Reminiscencies of a Confederate soldier of Co. C, 2nd Va. Cavalry

by Rufus H. Peck

And so is you.’

Den she’ll love and I knows it.” We told him he was drunk and to go on to bed, but he said: “No sir, I’s as sober as a judge. I knows every geneman in dat tent.” Then he would call the roll again. Chas. Cahoon had a nice horse, but it had a crooked tail and Chas. Would get very mad when we teased him about it. Abe Moody had just been put on the ambulance corps and we teased him and told him he wanted to shun fighting, Griff knew all these jokes and remembered them when drunk. He said then: “I knows you all and de kind of horse you rides. Dar’s Peck R. H., did ride de flying artillery, until he flew so fast he got wounded, and now he rides de grizzly gray. Ammen Marcus, rides de roach-back, wid a hump on his back like a camel. Cahoon Chas., rides de fine bay mare, Rhody, but watch dat crooked tail. Dat horse Dr. said to tie the tail to the saddle gurf, and she’d tote it straight. But I say, tie a big rock to de tail for a sinker and I bet she’d tote it straight den.” By this time all the boys were awake and everybody roaring and laughing. He finished his foolishness by saying: “I’s gwine to git on de colonel’s horse and blow dat bugle and call out the 2nd Va. Cavalry and run dem d——d yankees clean across de Potomac. If dey don’t git out it dey’s lookout, and nobody cares, cause it aint our fault. I knows we’ll run ’em off, if the ambulance corps will jes’ keep up. (Then we had the laugh on Moody.) Geneman dis niggar is jes’ as stout as Sampson. I could pull one of des trees up by de root, but ’taint no use. Sampson pulled up dem gate posts and carried ’em on de hill. Well, I jes’ believes I could carry dat tree on de hill, but ’taint no use.” He carried on like this for a half hour or more, and it was about equal to a circus. He kept saying how sober he was and laughing occasionally, saying if Rhody would just keep her tail straight and the ambulance corps must keep up.

We crossed a very high range of the Alleghanies, as we went into Highland county, and made our first encampment near where the Cow Pasture and Bull Pasture rivers head and flow south. The southern tributaries of the Potomac rise on the same elevation and flow north. We could look both north and south, so far that nothing was discernible; it just seemed that we were looking into space, or beyond the briny deep.

While there one of our scouts captured a man butchering a beef, and as he couldn’t give any account of what he was going to do with it, or anything, they decided he was a Swamp Dragoon. These Swamp Dragoons were men who were opposed to the war and dodged both sides. We kept him several days and as we were soon going to leave for Staunton, we decided to let him get away. So some of us told him, when he saw that all of us were asleep, to just step away cautiously and go home. After he left some of us pretended to be very much alarmed and saddled and started after him, calling halt! But we saw by his tracks the next morning, that he hadn’t only run, but had bounded like a deer. He took about 11 feet at a jump. When we reported to the officer of the guard, he said let him go to the devil. We don’t need him and can’t prove he is a dragoon, anyway.

The next morning we started toward Staunton and camped near there the first night. The next day we crossed the mountain at Rock Fish Gap and went into Albemarle county. On our way we passed a large two story mill. I noticed there was a road on both the left and right of the mill and I just dropped out of ranks and went in at the lower door by the left hand road and took the sack at the meal chest that was partly filled with meal and hung my empty one in its place. The miller, I knew, would be on the upper floor watching the command pass. I hastened a little and by the time my part of the command got to where the roads met, I was there with meal enough for several days. I stopped at the next house to buy some buttermilk and eggs to make into batter-bread with my meal. The lady of the house would not charge me a cent, as I was a soldier, and I learned afterward that the mill belonged to those very people. There were several young ladies at the house, nearly grown, and in a few years a neighbor of mine, Chas. Utz, married and when I went to the reception, I recognized his bride as one of the young ladies I’d met at that house. She was Miss Jennie Hansbrough, and it was from her father, Capt. Hiram Hansbrough, that I’d taken the meal. It was steal or starve those days, though, and I told the boys that Pharoah’s dream had taught me that in time of plenty to always prepare for famine. I baked the meal into batter-cakes that night, and as no one else had gotten any provision, I had to bake it all for supper and divide among the hungry boys. I didn’t even get a good ration for myself, much less my mess-mates. We all always made it a rule to try to get enough for our mess-mates, as well as ourselves, when foraging.

We stopped at North Garden and stayed a few days and rested our horses and got supplies. The 1-2-3 and 4 regiments camped right together here, and while there, in maneuvering around we found a moonshiner, who had put a substitute in the war and had made thousands of dollars, I guess. He had a fine four story brick barn and dwelling house. He was bringing sugar, coffee, etc., into the confederate lines and selling at a great big profit. He kept two stories of the barn locked all the time and we were anxious to know what he kept in there and the boys wanted me to try to find out. So I told him one day that he ought to have a guard at that barn, that it wasn’t safe to leave it. He asked me if I wouldn’t guard for him, but I was busy, so sent Ben Foster, a very shrewd fellow. He helped the men to shuck corn and watched around, and I told him to get in one of those upper stories and unlock a window, and there were some boat “gunwales” in the barn yard that would just about reach to the window. We could put them up at night and climb up and pull the window open and help ourselves. Eight of us went and ordered the guard, Ben Foster, to leave at the point of pistols, which was sham work, of course, but he left. I climbed up and filled a sack of corn and rolled it down on the plank, and one of the boys aimed to catch it, to keep it from bursting, and when it hit him it nearly killed him for awhile. We all had a laugh over it, when we saw he wasn’t hurt, and I told one of the boys to come up and help me to explore and see what we could find. One boy came and found what he thought was a sack of sugar. I got out the window and caught the sack with my teeth, and went down the plank feet-foremost, until near enough to the ground for the other boys to get it I took all the sacks down this way and when we got back to camp and opened our sacks and fed our horses the most of the corn, we opened the sack of sugar, as we thought, but it proved to be clover seed. We wanted to get it off of our hands and carried it over to the 3rd Regiment, where they issued their rations and feed.

Next morning everybody wondered where and how it got there and when it went over. I told them it had been sent by mistake to them, of course, for sugar, or something. Some of our boys had been helping the old man to shuck corn and he came over to us the next morning to know what had become of the guard, and he had missed his clover seed, so found it, of course. He had not missed his corn, but knew some one had been in the barn, as the planks were still up at the window. He talked to me about it and I told him I expected the fellow that helped him shuck had done the mischief, and that it was a shame. He never suspected once that I was the ring leader of the crowd.

A few days later Robt. Stevens and Isaac Hinkle came down to see their sons in our company, and Ben thought he would like to send something back to the folks at home, so he came in one morning with shoes, pants, coats and socks that he had taken from his own quarter-master and sent home to his father-in-law. He laughed and told me about it. We had gotten so used to stealing that we thought it fun to see who could get things in the closest quarters. Ben said, when he was home, that the old man had on sheep skin shoes made with the wool out and looked worse than old h——, and he knew he’d be proud of those shoes.

After leaving this camp, we made our next stop at Bowling Green, Caroline county. We went into winter quarters here, but didn’t build log huts, as we sometimes did. Just lived in our tents as two-thirds or more of the winter had already passed.

We found plenty for ourselves and horses to eat. The corn was fine, ears averaging about 15 inches. Our rations, as well as that for our horses, was furnished by the Confederacy, so we didn’t have to steal now. The place abounded in wild geese. They were just about as plentiful as the English sparrows are here. They ate the growing wheat so badly that a boy would often get on a mule and drive them out of the fields until about noon, and then they would fly back toward the Chesapeake Bay.