It commenced raining very hard and the night was as dark as pitch. Our train jogged along at the rate such trains usually do. We came to an up-grade, when all at once there came a crash and a smash. I was in the hindmost end of the rear car and was jerked up to the front end in a shorter time than you could say Jack Robinson. A trainload of new recruits was coming to the front, the cars being full inside and many on top. The engineer should have stopped at the station and switched until the train with the wounded went by. He paid no attention to the signal and went right ahead to the top of a grade, where he pulled the throttle of his engine wide open and let her go. Jumping off his engine, he made his escape. He was a rebel, and took advantage of his first opportunity to apply his vengeance. It was a terrible sight to look at. Many of the wounded were killed and some of the new recruits and many were disabled. It took till late next day to get fixed up for our destination. There I lost my diary, with the address of that good Union woman that did so much for me at Calhoun, Georgia.
After I recruited up some, and others the same as myself, who were supposed not to be fit for duty within a certain time, we were sent farther north to make room for new-comers. I was sent to New Albany, Indiana, where I remained two weeks, when a general order was issued that all not fit for duty inside of sixty days should be sent to their respective state hospitals. An examination was made by the surgeon in charge, and I was sent to Madison, Wisconsin. After I was a few weeks in Madison I called on Governor J. T. Lewis in regard to my commission. It was then the tenth in order on file in his office, but he would give me one then and there. There were vacancies in my company. I refused to take it. There were others higher in rank than I, and I did not want to jump over them; and, in fact, we came home without a commissioned officer, an orderly sergeant in command of the company, John N. Keifer, who received his commission dated back, as captain, as brave a boy as ever lived to draw saber. Ed. Blake, a corporal in my company, carried a commission in his pocket that he received from the Governor, but never reported for duty as an officer. Such was the honor the old boys had for each other in rank.
I stayed in Madison about two months and could have had my discharge given me by Surgeon-General Swift, medical director of the Western Department, with headquarters at Milwaukee, but would not take it. I wanted to go back and take my chances of coming home with the rest of the boys. I had the use of my limbs all right and could shoot, but had to be very careful how I bit the cartridge. There were six pieces of bone taken from my left lower jaw, and it hurt very much to bite off the cartridge.
My memory now takes me back to my regiment, with which I was in several battles after my four months' absence on account of my wound. And now this brings me to the last battle of Nashville, December 15th and 16th, 1864. We fought the rebel General Hood, who had followed us from Franklin and fortified himself in our front, near Nashville. We marched out to them and made the attack. They held us back. We were relieved by a brigade of colored troops. While we were cooking something to eat the colored troops made a charge on the rebel works and got as far, or to a distance where the rebels had fallen trees towards us, as an obstruction to our advancement. There the colored brigade fired one volley and then lay down. The rebels peppered it to them so thick and fast, they even stood up on their breastworks and took aim at that black cloud, as they called them. We were marched down there again, in double-quick time, the rebels shouting and shooting and waving their hats like so many demons. When they saw us coming for them right through and over the colored troops and tree branches they ceased firing and had their arms stacked when we climbed their breastworks, took off their hats and surrendered, saying, "Hello, Jack; hello, Tom; hello, Jim. Say, Yanks, never send a black cloud to take our breastworks. We were retreating when we saw them coming. When some one said, 'It's a black cloud, boys; let's every man stand fast; never be taken prisoners or surrender to them darkies, or give them our breastworks while there is a man of us left alive.'"
And then we commenced shaking hands with each other. There were some of them who were nearly barefooted, with pants ripped nearly up to their knees; tall, fine-looking, good-hearted fellows, from Georgia. This ended the battles of the war, so far as we were concerned, and old Pap. Thomas drank the health of the old Army of the Cumberland. We stayed around Nashville for some time, got our discharge, and, on the 10th day of June, 1865, broke ranks in Milwaukee. I bought a suit of citizen's clothes for $85 that could be bought to-day for $25.
There was a strong Fenian movement in Milwaukee just about that time, with the object in view of taking Canada. I happened in to Melm's, a saloon where the new Pabst building now stands, if my memory serves me right, and I think it does. There was a big crowd of men in there talking war, Fenians and Canada, all feeling good. Of course, I had a say about the war and other topics of conversation that were sprung into discussion as well as anybody else had, and seemed to interest some of my hearers. They wanted me to get up on a round table near by. There were two or three rows of tables in there. I would not get up on the table. I was taken hold of and placed on the table. Well, I talked a little while, and then came down to war matters. I said the Battle of Stone River lasted seven days and it cost this government nine millions of dollars a day, and asked, "What would we do if we didn't have a government to back us? Do you think we could carry on a war by some one of us having a few dollars in our pockets? Foolish idea; that is your predicament, gentlemen." Of course, that was disparaging the movement, but I did not intend it for that particular purpose. I was simply telling the truth as well as I knew how, when somebody hit me. I jumped off the table, lost my hat in the row and never found it.
I went to Illinois to work as a farm hand for $1 a day for every day in the year, wet or dry, hail, rain or sunshine, board and washing free, and with what money I had saved up, bought a piece of land at twenty dollars per acre, with a mortgage of $1,500 on it, payable in gold coin, but it was paid off with the greenback dollar. I lived on that farm for twenty-six years and brought it to a very high state of cultivation. I sold it out seven years ago, at one hundred dollars per acre, the first $100 acre land that was ever sold in my township, and came to Milwaukee, the scene of my boyhood days. I have been a delegate to state and county conventions and held offices of trust in the township where I lived; but, commander and comrades, I can say to you, with candor, that I never saw an assembly of men that act more gentlemanly with each other, and that I felt more proud of, and that I felt more at home with than I do with the members of E. B. Wolcott Post.