Brig. Gen’l., J. C.
CHAPTER XIX
THE END OF THE WAR
Christmas—I Lose All My Belongings—The “Owl Train”—A Wedding—Furloughed—Start for Texas—Hospitality—A Night in the Swamp—The Flooded Country—Swimming the Rivers—In Texas—Home Again—Surrender of Lee, Johnston, and Kirby Smith—Copy of Leave of Absence—Recapitulation—Valuation of Horses in 1864—Finis.
Although we moved in a very leisurely manner in order to give General Hood a chance to put a pontoon bridge across Tennessee River and cross his infantry, artillery, and wagon trains, the enemy never came in sight of us again.
Our Christmas was spent on this march. The weather was quite cold and many of our poor soldiers had to march over frozen ground barefooted. Between the 25th day of December, 1864, and the 1st day of January, 1865, everything had crossed to the south side of the river, during a little more than a month having seen much hard service, severe fighting, and demoralizing disaster. We continued to move leisurely southward. The main army moved to Tupelo, Miss., while our command moved to Egypt Station on the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. After crossing the river General Ross detailed Captain H. W. Wade, of the Sixth Texas, Lieutenant Thompson Morris, of the Legion, and myself as a permanent brigade court-martial.
Egypt Station is situated in one of the richest of the black land districts. Corn was abundant, and we remained there several days, during which time it rained almost incessantly, but the court-martial procured quarters in a house and was able to keep out of the black mud, which was very trying on the men in camp. Being scarce of transportation for baggage when we started to Georgia, the officers’ trunks and valises, containing all their best clothes, were left in Mississippi in charge of a detail of two men, afterwards reduced to one. While we were moving out of Tennessee the baggage was run up to a small station on the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, and just before we reached it a small scouting party of the enemy’s cavalry swooped down, fired the station, and all our good clothes went up in smoke. In fact, this and Kilpatrick’s raid left me with almost “nothing to wear.”
Leaving Egypt, we moved slowly back to our old stamping-ground in the Yazoo country. We camped one night some seventy-five miles north of Kosciusko, and in the morning, before the command was ready to move, about 180 men from the brigade, including several from Company C, Third Texas, mounted their horses and moved out, without leave, and started for the west side of the Mississippi River. They had organized what they were pleased to call an “owl train,” a term of no significance worth explaining. It meant that they had become demoralized and impatient for the promised furlough, and had determined to go home without leave. It was a source of great regret to see numbers of men who had been good soldiers for fully three and a half years thus defiantly quit the command with which they had so faithfully served, but not a harsh word was said to them, nor was effort made to stop them. Whether they would have returned or not, I do not know; perhaps many of them would, but circumstances were such that they never did. To this day many of them, perhaps all, live in constant regret that they were induced to take this one false step when we were so near the end.