Web
and Book design,
Copyright, Kellscraft Studio 1999-2007 (Return to Web Text-ures) |
(HOME)
|
XXXI A Boy on a
Plantation 1 WE had a
six-room
farmhouse on the south edge of the battlefield. It was a double house,
one
story high, and between the two parts was a hallway that was open at
front and
back. Near by was a whole lot of darky houses. They were log cabins
with two
rooms. We owned four or five hundred slaves, little folks and all. Just
before the
battle my father refugeed south about seventy-five miles with the
niggers. He
went with three wagons, and there was hogs and cattle to drive and some
loose
horses. Most of the niggers walked, but the little fellers rid in the
wagons. After
Father went
away the only ones of our family left here at home were my mother and
my two
sisters and me. Three of my brothers were in the army. The
fightin' begun
here on a Friday. Late that day the Union troops done passed over on
this side
of Chickamauga Creek. The Confederates was close behind 'em, and some
of the
Yankees waded through the water at the fords, and some crossed on trees
they
cut down. We had a patch of sorghum that was getting about ripe enough to grind, but so many of the boys came tramping through it that it was just ruined. Some cut off stalks, and brought 'em along. The stalks are sweet, you know, and they wanted 'em to chew. Quite a
number of
the soldiers stopped in our yard to wait for orders. They were setting
around
cutting up sorghum stalks into pieces short enough to get into their
haversacks
when a shell hit one of the fellers and took the top of his head off.
The shell
went into the ground and never busted. It scattered the man's brains
around on
the ground, and the chickens e't 'em up. Me and my
sister
Mary was lookin' out of a window. She was twenty years old then, and I
was
twelve. We saw the man keel over when the shell hit him, but we didn’t
know he
was killed, and we went down where he was. The soldiers picked him up
and put
him in an army wagon and took him off a little way and buried him. He's
still
there in an unmarked grave. Things
looked
dangerous at our place, and an officer ordered us out. He had a couple
of
cavalrymen escort us through the lines to the home of a neighbor.
Guards were
posted at our house to keep everything all right and not let the boys
carry off
our property. But we were anxious to get back and take care of the
place
ourselves, and it was so quiet after dark that we came home about nine
o'clock.
The
Yankees had
retreated, and there was a Confederate camp beside the creek. We could
look
down on the open field where it was and see the tents and campfires and
we
could see the men moving around. There's always a little stir going on
in a
camp. Early
Saturday
morning these troops marched away to go to battle. Soon we heard the
noise of
guns, and by and by prisoners begun to be sent back. There were so many
that
their captors fenced in about three acres for a prison pen, not far
from our
house, and stationed guards all the way round at intervals. They put
tents in
the inclosure for the wounded prisoners. Our whole place was just a
hospital.
We had to live in the dining-room for a few days. The doctors took
possession
of all the other rooms and the hallway, and they used the outdoor
kitchen and
the darkies' cabins, too. The battle
hadn’t
been going long when one of my brothers was brought to the house
wounded. A few
hours later another brother who had been hurt in the fight was brought
there.
The first one stayed with us several months, got well, and went back to
the
army. The other had been hit in the body by a grape shot, and I don't
believe
he ever spoke. He came in an ambulance, and he died as the men took him
out.
They brought the body right into the dining-room and left it there. The
next
morning we had the neighbors come and make a coffin and put the body
into it.
Then they lifted the coffin into a spring wagon. There were a number of
other
wagons, and we all rode to the cemetery, five miles away. Some of the
neighbors
sang at the grave, and there we buried my brother while the battle was
still
goin' on. Monday the
fightin'
was over, and several of us boys went to look around on the
battlefield. We
went where there'd been some of the hottest fighting. Guns and shells
and
bullets were strewed about, and the trees were all battered and
splitted up,
and lots of dead men and dead horses were lying there — you bet there
was! It
was horrible, but we got used to it. A Union
force came
back under a flag of truce to bury the dead Yankees. They just rolled
each man
in his blanket, if he had one, and laid him away in a shallow grave.
The work
was done hurriedly and more or less carelessly, and here and there
they'd leave
an arm or a leg sticking out of the earth. The battlefield was all
cleaned up
in a week. Some claimed that bodies lay here on the ground for months
afterward, but I never saw anything thataway. Soon after
the
battle the prisoners that had been held on our place were marched off
ten miles
to Ringgold and shipped on a train down South. Then we were able to
start
cleaning up and making what we could of the wrecked plantation that was
left to
us. _________________ |