The privations of a private — Story, Setting & Ideas

“THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME” 9

CAMPAIGN UNDER GENERAL STONEWALL JACKSON 27

THE RETURN TO TENNESSEE 35

BRAGG’S INVASION OF KENTUCKY 39

THE CHICKAMAUGA CAMPAIGN 56

CARRY ME BACK TO OLD VIRGINIA 66

THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 72

PRISON LIFE, POINT LOOKOUT, MD. 84

PRISON LIFE AT ELMIRA, N. Y. 93

THE PRIVATIONS OF A CITIZEN 123

A UNITED CITIZENSHIP 130

THE PRIVATIONS OF A PRIVATE.

“THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME.”

The purpose of this volume is to follow the life of a Confederate private as I lived it and saw it lived by others in the great struggle of 1861-65. The causes leading to the Civil War are history, and need not be enumerated here, except to say that our New England cousins first engaged in the African slave trade, but, finding their labor not profitable in that section, sold their slaves to the Southern people, and a few years afterwards looked upon the institution as horrible and the Southern people as barbarians. Their continued onslaught against it caused the separation of the Methodist Church, and we of the Southern branch have been known as the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Many of the older people of that date predicted that the agitation of the question would lead to the secession of the Southern states, which they thought would be done peaceably. In their fight against slavery in the South the abolitionists vilified and abused the Southern people; their school primers were illustrated with pictures of Southern farmers with whip in hand chastising brutally the poor blacks. The book written by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe and the drama therefrom, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” were a libel upon the Southern people; yet they served their purpose in inflaming the minds of the people North and prejudicing the South against the North. Mrs. Stowe may have visited a Southern plantation in which, the owner being absent, the overseer may have treated some of the slaves in a cruel manner; but this would have been an isolated case, and not representing the Southern people as a class. Mrs. Stowe could have said she had visited the Southern plantations and was surprised to see such a degree of harmony as existed between master and servant, maid and mistress, who were living as one great family in peace and harmony; that the master and servant had grown up boys together, that the young servant had attended his young master to school, and that they had played together the games common to young people of that day; and that the maid had attended the mistress from girlhood to womanhood, and there existed a mutual confidence between them; and there was the old black mammy who had nurtured the young master and mistress from her breasts, nursed them in her arms, and sang them to sleep many a night with her plaintive and sweet lullaby. Mrs. Stowe could have gone to black mammy’s and Uncle Tom’s cabin and said she was surprised with what neatness it was kept, and that the table was supplied from the products of the farm and old master’s larder, and that the black folks dressed about as well as the whites, and that on Sunday Uncle Tom put on broadcloth and high silk hat and was better dressed than old master. After supper Mrs. Stowe could have seen Uncle Tom take down his banjo and play “Billy in the Low Grounds” and “Arkansas Traveler,” while the young pickaninnies danced around him. Mrs. Stowe could have gone up to the mistress’s room of the old plantation, and there have seen two old-fashioned wooden cradles, one on each side of the bed, the one containing the white the other the black baby; not that the blacks did not have time to attend to their offspring, but they would neglect them.

I will say here that my black mammy did not have the affection for her children that she displayed toward me. Next to my own mother, black mammy was as gentle to me; but with her own children I have seen her manifest an ungovernable temper, and twice in my boyhood I have seen my father take her children from her and say: “That child has been whipped enough!”

Mrs. Stowe could have visited our jails and penitentiaries and wondered why there were so few black prisoners; she could have been told that the blacks were imprisoned for murder and arson only, that for petty crimes the master was responsible and stood between the law and the slave; that they were not allowed to prowl after night without a pass from the master, or the patrol would get them; hence the slaves kept regular hours, which was beneficial to them.