The Southern Soldier Boy A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy

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Excerpt: ...to the Confederate War Department and threatened to turn his militia loose on us and drive us from the State if such conduct was not stopped and all property pressed promptly turned over to the original owners-and we had to come down off our high horses and take it afoot again. Up to that time I had not developed quite courage enough to steal a horse, but was caught red-handed with a good mount in this temporary “, critter company.”, -a furloughed man having given me his horse. So my dignity was shocked when I had to come down from my self-promoted position to a flatfooted infantryman again. Removing Federal Prisoners From Richmond, Va., to Andersonville, Ga., February and March, 1864. I was on a detail and made three trips via Raleigh, Charlotte, Columbia to Branchville, S. C. These prisoners had been confined on Belle’, s Island, in James River, and were in a most pitiable condition-half starved, half naked. Most of them had been in prison for months and very few had a change of garments. They were ragged, lousy, filthy and infested with smallpox, and most of them had diarrh&oelig, a and scurvy and were so weak that when they would swing down out of box-cars their legs would give away when their feet struck the ground, and they would fall in a heap on the ground. I don’, t think they got anything to eat except a little bread and meat, mostly cornbread. They were transferred in box-cars, forty packed into a car. We sometimes stopped at Raleigh to change cars, and always stopped at Charlotte twelve to twenty-four hours. We ran up the Seaboard to where it crossed the Statesville Railroad, then in the woods. A small branch ran under both roads east and north of crossing, with embankments on south and west, and we put them out there, where they had free access to the branch. One night several crawled up a drain ditch from branch along Pg 41 railroad and got out between the guard, others were caught in the act and...