“Of course the leaders knew better than this, but the stories were intended for the ignorant masses of the people, to excite them to rush to the defense of the imperiled South and save their homes from the desecration and destruction that they said would be certain if the Yankees once obtained possession of the country. But in one way they were 'hoist by their own petard,' to use an old phrase, as the fear of what might happen to them in case of capture caused many of the rebel soldiers at Pea Ridge to run away rather than face the terrible Yankees. From what the soldiers said, I'm certain that this is what caused several regiments to break and run after they had fired only a few rounds from their shotguns and squirrel-rifles.
“If this were a place for moralizing, I would say that lying never pays, whether by wholesale or retail. The rebel leaders in Arkansas found it out before the end of the second year of the war.
“We got to Van Buren, on the north bank of the Arkansas river, three days after leaving Bentonville, and were pretty well used up by the time they brought us to a halt. The colonel was sent to the military hospital, which was in some wooden barracks just outside the town, and I was allowed to go with him as his personal attendant, on the same conditions as before. I ought to say that on the closing day of the journey I got my old place on the seat by the driver for the last five or six hours, the wounded captain having stopped in a house where he had friends who would take care of him until his arm was well enough to allow him to return to his regiment.
“There was plenty of room in the hospital when we got there, but the wounded came in fast, and within two days it was crowded full. I made myself as useful as I could, and soon got into the good graces of the surgeons, by helping them to dress wounds and do anything else that came in my way. I was about the hospital during the day, and could come and go as I liked, only I was under parole not to go outside the building and the one adjoining it. At night I slept in a sort of a guard-room at one end of the building, but there was n't much of a guard there, and I might have run away without any trouble if it had not been for my parole not to do so. It is just possible, however, that I was watched in a way I was not aware of, and my old friend may have 'looked out for me,' as he promised to do.
“The army followed closely after us, and there was no doubt of the defeat and retreat of the rebels. The soldiers were very much disappointed and disheartened, and if they could have got away without rendering themselves liable to be shot for desertion, I'm sure that half of them would have gone within two days after they got back to camp. As it was, there was a great deal of straggling, and I heard an officer say they had lost not less than five thousand men in one way and another by the campaign to Pea Ridge and back again.
“By the fourteenth the whole army, such of it as held together, had come in and was encamped around Van Buren. Some of the regiments were ferried over the river to Fort Smith, but the most of the troops remained on the north bank. I did n't have much chance to see them, as I was kept in the limits of the hospital, but so far as I could observe they were a forlorn-looking lot.
“Only a few regiments wore the gray uniforms of the Confederacy, the greater number of the men being clad in the ordinary home-spun cloth of the country familiarly known as 'butternut.' During the Pea Ridge campaign they had been very poorly fed—some of them going for thirty or forty hours during the retreat without a morsel of food other than a few grains of corn; raw turnips and carrots had been considered a luxury, and the men who secured them were envied. Raw cabbages were eagerly devoured, but unfortunately the country was not stocked with these products of the soil, or the troops might have been better fed.”