One morning while we were camped in this neighborhood, one of the boys came to me with an invitation to visit a lady residing between our camps and Benton. She wished to see me because I had lived in Huntsville, Ala. When I called I found Mrs. Walker, daughter-in-law of General L. P. Walker, of Huntsville. She was a beautiful young woman, bright, educated and refined, easy and self-possessed in manner, and a great talker. She lived with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, her husband being in the army. Mrs. Walker was an enthusiastic friend of the brigade, and would not admit that they had ever done anything wrong, and contended that, inasmuch as they had defended the city and county so gallantly, anything they needed or wanted belonged to them, and the taking it without leave was not theft. And this was the sentiment of many of these people.
For the remaining days of March we occupied practically the same territory we had been guarding from the fall of Vicksburg. On or about the last of March General Ross sent Colonel Dudley W. Jones, in command of the Third and Ninth Texas regiments, to attack the outpost of the force at Snyder’s Bluff, destroy Yankee plantations, etc., etc. I did not accompany this expedition, I am sure, as I have no recollection of being with it; nor do I now remember why I did not do so. The Yankee plantations alluded to were farms that had been taken possession of by Northern adventurers, and were being worked under the shadow of the Federal army by slaves belonging to the citizens. Cotton being high, they expected to avail themselves of confiscated plantations and slaves to make fortunes raising cotton. Colonel Jones captured and destroyed at least one such plantation, captured one hundred mules, some negroes, and also burned their quarters.
Early in April we started east, with the ultimate purpose of joining General Joseph E. Johnston’s forces in Georgia, moving by easy marches. There was some dissatisfaction among the men on account of heading our column toward the rising sun, as they had been promised furloughs on the first opportunity, and this looked like an indefinite postponement of the promised boon. Arriving at Columbus, Miss., we rested, and here Lieutenant-General Leonidas Polk, then commanding the department, made a speech to the brigade, alluding to the fact that they had been promised furloughs, postponed from time to time, and assured us that as soon as the present emergency ended Ross’ brigade should be furloughed. He assured the men that he had the utmost confidence in their bravery and patriotism, and though it had been hinted to him, he said, that if he allowed these Texans to cross the Mississippi River they would never return, he entertained no such opinion of them.
We now moved from Columbus to Tuscaloosa, Ala., the former capital of that grand old State. The good people of this beautiful little city on the banks of the Black Warrior had never before seen an organized command of soldiers, except the volunteer companies that had been organized here and left the city and vicinity, and their terror and apprehensions when they learned that a brigade of Texans had arrived was amusing. They would not have been in the least surprised if we had looted the town in twenty-four hours after reaching it. As we remained here several days, and went in and out of the city in a quiet orderly manner, they soon got over their fears. There were numbers of refugees here from Huntsville, Florence, and other north Alabama towns, and some of us found acquaintances, especially General Ross and his adjutant-general, Davis R. Gurley, who had been in college at Florence. During our stay the ladies gave several nice parties for the benefit of the brigade. While we were here a great many fish were being caught in a trap above the city, and the men would sometimes go at night in skiffs up to the trap and get the fish. On one occasion Lieutenant Cavin, Harvey Gregg, and a man named Gray, of Company A, went up, and getting their boat into a whirlpool, it was capsized and the men thrown out into the cold water, with overcoats and pistols on. Gregg and Gray were drowned and Cavin was barely able to get out alive.
After several days we moved some miles south of the city, where forage was more convenient. In the meantime General Loring, with his division, had come on from Mississippi. Receiving an invitation through Captain Gurley to attend a party given by a Florence lady to him and General Ross, I went up and spent two or three days in the city. While there I visited my friends in Loring’s division, and also visited the State Lunatic Asylum, where I found in one of the inmates, Button Robinson, of Huntsville, a boy I had known for years. I also attended a drill of the cadets at the university. Friends of the two young men that were drowned had been here dragging the river for their bodies for some days, and finally they got one of General Loring’s batteries to fire blank cartridges into the water, and their bodies rose to the surface, when they were taken out and buried.
The mountainous country lying north of Tuscaloosa and south of the Tennessee valley was at this time infested with Tories, deserters, “bushwhackers,” and all manner of bad characters, and it was reported that the Tories in Marion County were in open resistance. So on the morning of the 19th of April Colonel D. W. Jones, of the Ninth, was sent with detachments of the Sixth and Ninth Texas and a squadron from the Third, under Captain Lee, amounting in all to about 300 men, up into that county to operate against these Tories. On the same morning I was ordered to take fifteen men of Company C and accompany Lieutenant De Sauls, of the Engineers’ Corps, from Tuscaloosa, up the Byler road to Decatur, on the Tennessee River, and return by way of the old Robertson road, leading through Moulton and Jasper to the starting point, for the purpose of tracing out those roads to complete a military map then in preparation. Applying to the quartermaster and commissary for subsistence for my men and horses, I was instructed to collect “tax in kind.” We moved out in advance of Colonel Jones’ command. Our duties on this expedition necessitated our stopping at every house on the road to obtain the numbers of the lands,—that is, the section, township, and the range,—ascertain the quarter section on which the house stood, learn the names of all creeks, note all cross roads, etc., etc. I subsisted the men and horses on tax in kind, which I had to explain to the poor people in the mountains, as they had never heard of the law. There was not much produced in this country, and there were so many lawless characters in the mountains that the tax collectors were afraid to attempt to collect the impost. The people offered me no resistance, however, and to make the burden as light as possible I would collect a little from one and a little from another. I had the horses guarded every night, but really had no trouble. I met with one misfortune, much deplored by me, and that was the killing of James Ivey by Luther Grimes, but under circumstances that attached no blame to Grimes in the eyes of those who saw the occurrence, as Ivey made the attack and shot Grimes first, inflicting a scalp wound on the top of his head. I reported the facts when I reached the command, and there was never any investigation ordered.
CHAPTER XIII
UNDER FIRE FOR ONE HUNDRED DAYS