With Fire and Sword

by S. H. M. Byers

In they moved, bag and baggage, and the women folks soon commenced preparing a meal outside, under the shadows of the front door. This half-finished room had been used as a butcher shop in the past, it seemed, and the meat hooks in the corner had served me as a ladder to mount to my perch on the ceiling. "Now, Johnny," chirped the wife, "do run uptown and buy some red and white muslin. We will make a Union flag, and when Sherman gits in, as he's bound to, we're jest as good Union folks as he is. You know I'm dyin' for real coffee. I'm tired of chicory and Injun bread, and I don't keer if Sherman's folks is in to-morrow. We'll draw government rations, and be Union."

These good people were probably "poor trash" of the South, not caring much which way the war went provided they could get rations. Their general talk, however, was of the real Rebel character, and it was an unsafe place for me to stop in. In an hour the banquet before the front door was prepared, and all hands went out to partake. Soon they were joined by a Rebel soldier, who seemed to be on a half-hour's furlough to visit the young lady of the party, whom I took to be his sweetheart. Sherman's army, I was sorry to learn from this soldier, was being simply "mowed out of existence." "All the woods about Atlanta were as a reeking corpse." Sherman himself was in flight northward.

By looking more closely through a chink in the weather-boarding of my hiding-place I discovered that he was reading all this dreadful information from a Copperhead newspaper from Chicago, and then I felt easier.

Again, there was the talk about money purses made of Yankee's scalps and finger rings from Yankee bones; and during the dinner I was no little astonished to see this valiant Southerner exhibit to his eager listeners a veritable ring, rough and yellow, made, as he said, from the bones of one of Sherman's cavalrymen. This was probably brag.

The banquet of cucumbers, chicory, and Injun bread was about terminating. My soldier with the ring had used up his furlough and was gone. The house was still empty, and it was now, or never, if I proposed getting down from my perch without alarm. My plan was silently to climb down the meat hooks which I had ascended and to slip out at the still open back door of the house. On peeping over the edge of the ceiling, however, what was my amazement to see a bull-dog of immense proportions tied to one of my hooks!

Here was a "situation"! He was sound asleep, but had an amiable countenance. I dropped a bit of plaster on his nose. He looked up amazed, and smiled. Then I smiled, and then he smiled again; and then I carefully crept down, patted him on the head, said good-by in a whisper, and in a twinkling was out at the back door. My gratitude to this dog is boundless.

I had found it unsafe to be about houses, and again I took my lodgings in the field. Again I was busy, just going to my division, but never getting there. Once, near the sacred quarters of a brigadier, the guard arrested me. I protested, and our loud talk brought the brigadier to the rescue. I explained how I was "just going to my regiment," and how my pass had been lost, and the necessity of my going on at once. The brigadier took in the situation at a glance, and with a pencil wrote me a pass, good for that day.

Fighting was going on about Atlanta constantly, but with so many apparent reverses to our arms that I feared I should never get away.

The memorable 22d of July came, and with it the most terrific fighting on Hood's right, and in fact all round the semi-circle about the city. A division, with my Alabama regiment, entered the battle on Hood's right wing, and I followed, at a safe distance, as an ordnance sergeant. Everybody was too busy and excited to ask me questions, and in the hope that Hood would be defeated and an opportunity for getting through the lines be at last presented, I was feeling good. Hundreds, thousands possibly, of wounded men fell back by me, but all shouting, "The Yankees are beaten, and McPherson is killed."

It was too true! McPherson had fallen and, if reports were correct, Sherman's army had met with an awful disaster. For me, there was nothing left but to get back to the rear and try another direction. I knew that Sherman's advance was at the ford, at Sandtown, on the Chattahoochie River, at our left. Could I only get there, I might still be saved. I had now been seen among the Rebel forts and troops so much that there was the greatest danger of my being recaptured, and shot as a spy. On the night of the 22d I took refuge under a hedge, near to a field hospital.