Under the murderous leaden hail that swept the open field over which they passed, the First Florida Regiment was ordered to lie down to secure some immunity from the fire that was rapidly thinning their ranks. The entire regiment sank to the ground, save one of their number. The color-bearer, unwilling to lower his flag, yet willing to show his foe how a brave man could die, refused to avail himself of the partial protection which a change in position would bring, and standing erect, calmly faced the storm of shot and shell; faced it unmoved, while seven of the eight color guards lying at his feet were killed or wounded; faced it unflinchingly while the staff he held in his brave right hand was three times shattered by hostile shot; faced it without a tremor while the folds of his tattered flag were thirty times rent and torn by hissing minies or shrieking shell; faced it calmly until the blessedness of night had come to end the carnival of death, and stood there at its close the very incarnation of courage and yet without the smell of fire on his garments or the mark of shot or shell on his grey-clad form.
I know not whether he still survives. I know not whether his radiant deed has found a fitting recognition save in the memory of surviving comrades. But living or dead, famous or forgotten, my hat goes off to you today, George Register, in loving admiration of a heroism that in soldierly devotion to the colors that you bore, crowns you an immortal and rises to the region of the morally sublime.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CLOSING CAMPAIGN.
A weeks' stay in the vicinity of Corinth, Miss., and orders were received for the transfer of Stewart's and Cheatham's corps to the East to aid Hardee in an effort to prevent a junction of the armies of Grant and Sherman.
AN ARCTIC RIDE.
Transportation by rail was furnished only to the sick and barefooted, who were ordered to report at Corinth at daylight, Jan. 10th. Weakened by an attack of chill and fever I joined the sick squad, which left camp at 1 a. m., tramped through the mud and rain, waded several streams and reached Corinth in the early morning with our clothing wet to our knees. In this condition, with no opportunity to dry our drenched garments, we rode in a box car without fire on a cold winter day from 8 a. m. until 3 p. m. The car was crowded and the heating arrangements were confined to such exercise as we could take in the limited space we were forced to occupy. I had never been taught to "trip the light fantastic toe" and the figures I cut that day were more continuous than graceful. At 3 p. m. I told the Oglethorpes, who were with me, John Kirkpatrick and Will Dabney among them, I remember, that while I was willing to die in a soldierly way in battle, I did not propose to freeze to death, and suggested that in order to secure an opportunity to thaw, we stop at the next station, which chanced to be Baldwin, Miss. The motion was carried unanimously, though not by a rising vote, as we already occupied from necessity a standing position, our car having no furniture except a floor and a door. To give the reader some gauge of the condition of the railroads in that section at that stage of the war, it is only necessary to say that we had traveled only 31 miles in 7 hours. We were kindly received by a Mr. Kent, an old citizen of Baldwin, who regretted his inability to furnish us anything but shelter and fire, as he had been foraged upon by Yankees and Confederates alike until there was very little meal in the barrel or oil in the cruse and "no prophet in all the land to bless the scanty store." When the evening meal was ready, however, he came to our room and with an apology to my comrades for failing to include them in the invitation, he pressed the writer to share his humble fare. Whether this discrimination in my favor was due to my good looks, my winning ways or the appearance of chronic hunger in my face, has remained to this day an unsolved problem. And yet whatever may have been the right solution, it gives me pleasure through this humble record to waft back over the waste of years my earnest appreciation of his kindness to a sick and underfed Confederate.