Joseph L. Hogg was appointed brigadier-general by the Confederate War Department in February, 1862. When his commission came he was ordered to report for duty at Memphis, Tenn., where he would be assigned to the command of a brigade of Texas troops. After the battle of Elkhorn a number of Texas regiments were ordered to cross the Mississippi River, among them the Third and Tenth Texas Cavalry—Company C of the Third and Company I of the Tenth were made up at Rusk. General Hogg’s oldest son, Thomas E. Hogg, was a private in Company C, and these two regiments formed part of the brigade.
General Hogg met the Third Texas at Duvall’s Bluff on White River, where we dismounted, sent horses home, and went by steamer to Memphis, accompanied by General Hogg. (The battle of Shiloh was fought while we were on this trip.) After the delay incident to the formation of the brigade, getting up necessary supplies, etc., we were transported by rail, in command of General Hogg, to Corinth, or rather we were dumped off on the side of the railroad some two or three miles west of that town. Here General Hogg remained in command of his brigade until he was taken sick and removed by the assistance of our very efficient surgeon, Dr. Wallace McDugald, attended by his negro body servant, Bob ——, than whom a more devoted, a more faithful and trustworthy slave never belonged to any man.
General Hogg was taken to a private house some two miles west of our camp, where he had every necessary attention until his death. The faithful Bob was with him all the time. Dr. McDugald turned his other sick over to young Dr. Frazer, his assistant, and spent the most of his time with the General,—was with him when he died,—giving to him during his illness every medical care known to the science of his profession.
Thomas E. Hogg also was frequently with his father—was there when he passed away. I visited General Hogg only once during his illness, some two or three days before his death. I was kept very busy during this time, and owing to a change in our camps I had to ride six or seven miles to see him, and only found one opportunity of doing so. I found him as comfortably situated as could be expected for a soldier away from home, and receiving every necessary attention.
I will state that General Hogg came to us neatly dressed in citizen’s clothes—never having had an opportunity of procuring his uniform, so that in fact he never wore the Confederate gray. He was not wounded, was not under fire of the enemy; neither was his brigade, until the battle of Farmington, which occurred the day that General Hogg died. After his death and after the army was reorganized, “for three years or during the war,” Dr. McDugald,—who afterwards married General Hogg’s daughter,—Dr. I. K. Frazer, Thomas J. Johnson, one of the General’s staff, Thomas E. Hogg, and the ever-faithful Bob all came home, and of course related minutely to the widow, the two daughters, and the three minor boys, John Lewis, and James Stephen, all the circumstances of the sickness, the lamented death and burial of the husband and father, Brigadier-General Joseph Louis Hogg.
Our camp was moved to a point about three miles east of Corinth. Decherd, the quartermaster, resigned and W. F. Rapley was appointed quartermaster by General Cabell. The rate at which our men fell sick was remarkable, as well as appalling, and distressing in the extreme. The water we had to drink was bad, very bad, and the rations none of the best. The former we procured by digging for it; the earth around Corinth being very light and porous, holding water like a sponge. When we first went there the ground was full of water, and by digging a hole two feet deep we could dip up plenty of a mean, milky-looking fluid; but as the season advanced the water sank, so we dug deeper, and continued to go down, until by the latter part of May our water holes were from eight to twelve feet deep, still affording the same miserable water. My horse would not drink a drop of the water the men had to use, and if I failed to ride him to a small running branch some two miles away he would go without drinking. The rations consisted mainly of flour, made into poor camp biscuit, and the most unpalatable pickled beef.
As fared General Hogg and his staff, so fared all the new troops who saw their first service at Corinth. While many of the old troops were taken sick, it was much worse with the new. We had one or two new Texas regiments come into our brigade, whose first morning report showed 1200 men able for duty; two weeks from that day they could not muster more than 200 men able to carry a musket to the front. The sick men were shipped in carload lots down the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, some dying on the trains, and hundreds of others succumbing at the different towns and stations where they were put off along down that road south of Corinth. It seemed impossible for the surgeons and their assistants properly to care for the number of sick on their hands. Day after day as I passed the Mobile & Ohio depot, I saw scores of the poor sick fellows on the platform waiting to be hauled off. On the day we left Corinth I passed Booneville, a station ten miles below Corinth, and here were perhaps fifty sick men lying in the shade of the trees and bushes. One of the attendants with whom I was acquainted told me he had just returned from a tramp of two or three miles, after water for a wounded man. At every house he came to the well buckets had been taken off and hid, and he finally had to fill his canteen with brackish pond water. Why these sick men had been put off here in the woods, when the station was the only house in sight, where they could not even get a drink of water, I do not know. The mere recollection of those scenes causes a shudder to this day. I was told that two dead men were lying on the platform at Booneville, and a Federal scouting party burned the station during the day. If it was true, they were cremated.
As for myself, I was sick, but was on duty all the time. I performed all the active duties of the brigade quartermaster, being compelled to go to Corinth and back from one to three times daily, looking after forage and other supplies; carried all orders and instructions to the regimental quartermasters; superintended the moving of the trains whenever and wherever they had to be moved; and, in fact, almost lived in my saddle. But, with the exception of two or three nights spent with the troops at the front, when the day’s duties were over, I was comfortably situated at headquarters, having a good wall tent, a cot, and camp-stool, and was kindly treated by General Cabell and the members of his staff. Dr. S. J. Lewis of Rusk was our brigade surgeon, and did everything he could for my comfort and, had I been well, my position would have been as pleasant as I could have desired in the army, as my duties mainly involved active horseback exercise, while my personal surroundings were very agreeable. Nevertheless, I lost my appetite so completely that I was unable to eat any of the rations that were issued to the army. I could no more eat one of our biscuits than I could have eaten a stone, and as for the beef, I could as easily have swallowed a piece of skunk. The mere sight of it was nauseating. Had I not been at headquarters doubtless I would have starved to death, since there we were able to get a ham or something else extra occasionally, and I managed to eat, but barely enough to keep soul and body together. Dr. Lewis saw me wasting away from day to day, and advised me to take a discharge—and quit the service; but this I declined to do. I paid General Hogg a short visit one afternoon during his illness, and another afternoon I rode over to Colonel Bedford Forrest’s camp, to see my brother and some other Huntsville, Ala., friends. I found that my brother had gone, on sick leave, with Wallace Drake, one of his comrades, to some of Drake’s relatives, down the railroad. With these exceptions I was not away from my post at any time. I must have gained some reputation for efficiency, as the quartermaster of our Arkansas regiment offered to give me half his salary if I would assist him in his office.
All the time we were at Corinth Major-General Halleck, with a large army, was moving forward from Pittsburgh Landing, on the Tennessee River, near the Shiloh battlefield, by regular approaches. That is, he would construct line after line of intrenchments, each successive line being a little nearer to us. Hence our troops were often turned out and marched rapidly to the front, in expectation of a pitched battle that was never fought, sometimes being out twenty-four hours. On one occasion an active movement was made to Farmington in an effort to cut off a division of the enemy that had ventured across Hatchie River, and the move was so nearly successful that the enemy, to escape, had to abandon all their camp equipage. On one of the days when our troops were rushing to the front in expectation of a battle, I came up with an old patriot marching along through the heat and dust under an umbrella, while a stout negro boy walking by his side carried his gun. This was the only man I saw during the war that carried an umbrella to fight under. As the battle failed to come off that day, I had no opportunity of learning how he would have manipulated the umbrella and gun in an engagement.
After General Hogg’s death and the promotion of Colonel Louis Hebert to brigadier-general, the Third Texas was transferred to Hebert’s brigade, and I was temporarily separated from it. On May 8 our year’s enlistment having expired, the men re-enlisted for three years, or during the war, and the regiment was reorganized by the election of regimental and company officers, when all the commissioned officers not promoted in some way returned to Texas. Captain Robert H. Cumby, of Henderson, was elected colonel, Captain H. P. Mabry, of Jefferson, lieutenant-colonel, and our Captain J. J. A. Barker, major. James A. Jones was elected captain of Company C, John Germany, first lieutenant, William H. Carr and R. L. Hood, second lieutenants. I was not present at the election. Dr. Dan Shaw, of Rusk County, was made surgeon of the regiment.