The angel was tickled to see me alive, and suggested to Jim and the boys, that it was easy to talk a fellow to death after he had been so sick, and told them to go back to camp, and she would stay with me all day. So the boys shook hands with me, and Jim had an attendant to roll my cot up to a window, so I could see my horse when they rode away. The boys got on their horses and Jim led my horse, and I could see that my pet had been fixed up for the occasion. He had the saddle on, and it was draped with black, a pair of boots were fastened in the stirrups, and my carbine was in the socket. The idea was to have my horse, with empty boot and saddle tied behind the wagon that took me to the cemetery where soldiers wind up their career. It was not a cheerful thing to look at, and to think of, but it did me good to see the old horse, and the boys ride away in good health, and happy at my escape, and it encouraged me to make every effort to get well, so I could ride with the gang. The rebel angel re-mained with me till almost night, and superintended my eating. No person who has never had a fever, can appreciate the appetite of a person when the fever “turns.” I wanted everything that was ever eaten, and roast beef or turkey was constantly in my mind. As anything of that kind would have made use for Jim’s coffin-handles, I had to put up with soups and gruels. The doctor thought that this thin gruel was good enough, but it didn’t seem to hit the spot, and so the girl asked the doctor if he thought nice gumbo soup and a weak milk punch wouldn’t be pretty good for me. He said it would, but nobody in the hospital could make gumbo soup, or milk punch. She said she could, and she told me not to eat a thing until she came back, and she would bring me a dish fit for the gods. She said she knew an old colored woman in town, who cooked for a lady friend of hers, who had some gumbo, and the lady had a little brandy that was seventy years old, but she said the lady was a rebel, and I must overlook that. I told her I didn’t care, as I had got considerably mashed on all the rebels I had met personally. She went out with a smile that would have knocked a stronger man than I was silly, and I turned over and took a nap, the first real sleep I had had in a week. I woke up finally smelling something that was not gruel. O, I had got so sick of gruel. The angel handed me a glass of milk punch, and told me to drink a swallow and a half. I have drank a great many beverages in my lifetime, but I never swallowed anything that was as good as the milk punch that rebel girl made for me. It seemed to go clear to my toes, and I felt strong. Then she gave me a small soup plate and told me to taste of the gumbo. I had never tasted gumbo soup before, but I had no difficulty in mastering it. No description can do gumbo soup justice, or explain to a person who has never tasted it the rich odor, and palatable taste. The little that I ate seemed to make a man of me again, instead of the weak invalid. Since then I have been loyal to southern gumbo soup, and have always eaten it wherever it could be obtained, and I never put a spoonful of it to my lips without thinking of the rebel girl in the hospital, who prepared that dish for me. If I ever become a glutton, it will be on gumbo soup, and if I am ever a drunkard, it will be a milk-punch drunkard, and the soup and the punch must be prepared in the South.
Well, my experience after that, in the hospital, was about the same as a hundred thousand other boys in blue, only few of the boys had such care, and such food. The girl kept me supplied with gumbo soup and milk punch until I could eat heartier food, and in a couple of days I got so I could walk around the hospital. At home I had never been much of a hand to be around with the sick, but experience had been a good teacher, and I found that going around among the boys, and talking cheerfully did them good and me too. I found men from my own regiment, that I did not know had been sick. The custom was to make just as little show about sending sick men to the hospital, as possible, hence they were often packed off in the night, and the first their comrades would know of their illness would be a detail to bury them, or a boy would suddenly appear in his company, looking pale and sick, having been discharged from the hospital. If the men had known how many of their comrades were sent to the hospital, it would have demoralized the well ones. For ten days I visited around among the sick men, telling a funny story to a group here and and cheering them up, and writing letters home for fellows that were too weak to write. I learned to lie a little bit in writing letters for the boys. One young fellow who had his leg taken off, wanted me to write to his intended, and tell her all about it, how the leg was taken off, and how he was sick and discouraged, and would always be a cripple and a burden on his friends, etc. I wrote the letter entirely different from the way he told me. I spoke of his being wounded in the leg but that the care he received had made him all right, and that he would probably soon have a discharge, and be home, and make them all happy. I thought to myself that if she loved him as a girl ought to, that a leg or two short wouldn’t make any difference to her, and there was no use of harrowing up her feelings in advance, and that he could buy a cork leg before he got home, and may be she would never find it out. I might have been wrong, but when he got an answer from that letter he was the happiest fellow I ever saw in this world, and he arranged at my suggestion, to stop over in New York and get a cork leg before he went home. I have never learned whether the girl ever found out that he had a cork leg, but if she did, and blames anybody, she can lay it to me. Lots of the boys that wrote letters for wanted to detail all of their calamities to their mothers and sisters and sweet-hearts, but I worded the letters in a funny sort of way, so that the friends at home would not be worried, and the answers the boys got would please them very much. The hardest work I had was a couple of days writing letters for a doctor, to relatives of boys who had died, detailing the sickness, death and burial, and notifying friends that they could obtain the personal effects of the deceased, clothing, money, pipes, knives, etc., by sending express charges. It always seemed to me that if I had been running the government I would have paid the express charges on the clothing of the boys who had died, if I didn’t lay up a cent. Finally I got well enough to go back to my regiment, and one day I showed up at my company, and the first man I met saluted me and said, “Hello, Lieutenant.” I told him he did wrong to joke a sick man that way, and I went on to find Jim. He was in our tent, greasing his shoes, and he looked up with a queer expression on his face and said, “Hello, Lieutenant.”
“Look a here.” I said, as I grasped his greasy hand, “what do you fellows mean by calling me names, I have never done anything to deserve to be made a fool of. Pard, what ails you anyway?”
“Didn’t they tell you,” said Jim, as he scraped the mud on his other shoe with a stick. “The colonel has sent your name to the governor of Wisconsin to be commissioned as second Lieutenant of the company. All the boys are tickled to death, and they are going to whoop it up for you when your commission comes. But this pup tent will not be good enough for you then, and old Jim will have to pick up another pard. You won’t have to cook your bacon on a stick when you get your commsssion, and you can drink out of a leather covered flask instead of a flannel covered canteen. But by the great horn spoons I shall love you if you get to be a Jigadier Brindle,” and the old pard looked as though he wanted to cry like a baby.
“Jim,” I said, “I think the fellows are giving us taffy, and that there is nothing in this Lieutenant business. But if there is, you will be my pard till this cruel war is over, and don’t you forget it,” and I went along the company street towards the colonel’s tent, leaning on a cane, and all the boys congratulated me, and I felt like a fool.
“Lieutenant, I am glad to see you back,” said the Colonel, as I entered his tent, and he showed it in his face. “What is the foolishness, colonel? I asked. The boys are all guying me. Can’t I stay a private?”
CHAPTER XVII.
Thanksgiving Dinner with the “Rebel Angel”—She Gives Me a World of Good Advice—Can an Officer be Detailed To Go And Shovel Dirt?—My First Day As A Commissioned Officer.
The last chapter of this history wound up in my interview with the colonel, in which he told me that what the boys had said was true, and that I had a rig
ht to to be called “Lieutenant.” He said there was a vacancy in the commissioned officers of my company, caused, by some discrepancy in regard to the ownership of a horse which an officer had sold as belonging to him, when investigation showed that there was “U. S.” branded on the horse. The colonel said he had looked over the company pretty thoroughly, and while I was not all that he could desire in an officer, there were less objections to me than to many others, and he had recommended the governor of our state to commission me. He said he didn’t want me to run away with the idea that my promotion from private to a commissioned office was for any particular gallantry, or that I was particularly entitled to promotion, but I seemed the most available. It was true, he said, that I had done everything I had been told to do, in a cheerful manner, and had not displayed any cowardice, that he knew of, though I had often admitted to him that I was a coward. He said he thought few men knew whether they were cowards or not, until they got in a tight place, and that most men honestly believed they were cowards, but they didn’t want others to know it, and they took pains to conceal the fact. He said he had rather be considered a coward than a dare-devil of bravery, for if he flunked when a chance come to show his metal, it wouldn’t be thought much of, and if he pulled through, and made a decent record for bravery, he would get a heap of credit. He said he believed it took a man with more nerve to do some things he had ordered me to do, than it did to get behind a tree and shoot at the enemy, and he was willing to take his chances on me. He congratulated me, and some of the other officers did the same.
I was invited to sit into a game of draw poker with some of the officers. I pleaded that I was not sufficiently recovered from my sickness to play poker, and I went back to my tent to talk with Jim. I was thinking over the new responsibilities that were about to come to me, and figuring on the salary. A hundred and fifty dollars a month! It is cruel to raise the salary of a poor devil from thirteen dollars a month to a hundred and fifty. I wondered how in the world the government was ever going to get that much out of me. Certainly I couldn’t do any more than I had been doing towards crushing the rebellion for thirteen dollars. And what would I do with so much money? In my wildest dreams of promotion I had never hoped to be a commissioned officer. I had thought sometimes, a week or two after I enlisted, that if I was a general I could put down the rebellion so quick the government would have lots of nations left on its hands to spoil, but a few months active service had taken all that sort of nonsense out of me, and I had been contented as a private. But here I was jumped over everybody, and made an officer unbeknown to me, It made me dizzy. I was not very strong anyway, and this thing had come upon me suddenly I was thinking of the magnificent uniform I would have, and the fancy saddle and bridle, and the regular officer’s tent, with bottles of whiskey and glasses, when Jim asked me if I wouldn’t just hold that frying-pan of bacon over the fire, while he cooked some coffee. He said we would just eat a little to settle our stomachs, and then go out to Thanksgiving dinner.
“Thanksgiving dinner,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you know,” said Jim, “to-day is Thanksgiving? The ‘angel’ told me last night to bring you out to the plantation to-day, and I was going after you at the hospital if you hadn’t showed up. She has received a letter from her brother, who is a rebel prisoner at Madison, and he says a Yankee hotel-keeper at Madison, that you had written to, had called at the pen where they were kept, and had brought him a lot of turkey and fixings, and offered to send him a lot for Thanksgiving, so the rebel boys could have a big feed, and he says he is well and happy, and going to be exchanged soon. And she wants us to come out and eat turkey and ’possum. I had rather eat gray tom-cat than possum, but I told her we would come. So we will eat a little bacon and bread, and ride out.”
“Well, all right Jim,” I said. “We will go, but in my weak state I can’t be expected to eat possum. If there is anything of that kind to be eat, Jim, you will have to eat it. However, I will do anything the rebel angel asks me to do,” I added, remembering her kindness to me when I was sick.
The ride to the plantation, after several weeks confinement, was better than medicine, and I enjoyed every step my proud horse took. The animal acted as though he had been told of my promotion, but it was plain to me that he acted proud, because he had been resting during my sickness. It was all I could do to keep Jim alongside of me. He would fall back every little while and try to act like an orderly riding behind an officer. I had to discipline him before he would come up alongside like a “partner.” I mention this Thanksgiving dinner in the army, in order to bring in a little advice the rebel girl gave me, which I shall always remember. We arrived at the old plantation house where the girl and her mother and some servants were living, waiting for the war to close, so the men folks could come back. The old lady welcomed us cordially, the girl warmly and the servants effusively. The dinner was good, though not elaborate, except the possum. That was elaborate, and next to gumbo soup, the finest dish I ever tasted. After we had got seated at the table, the old lady asked a blessing, and it was more like a prayer. She asked for a blessing upon all of the men in both armies, and made us feel as though there was no bitterness in her heart towards the enemies of her people. During the dinner Jim told of my promotion, and the circumstance was commented on by all, and after dinner the rebel angel took me one side, and said she had got a few words of advice to give me. She commenced by saying:
“Now that you are to be a commissioned officer, don’t get the big head. During this war, we have had soldiers near us all the time, and I have seen some splendid soldiers spoiled by being commsssioned. Nine out of ten men that have received commissions in this locality, have been spoiled. I am a few years older than you, and have seen much of the world. You are a kind hearted man, and desire to treat everybody well, whether rich or poor, yankee or confederate. If you let this commission spoil you, you are not worthy of it. You will naturally feel as though you should associate with officers entirely, but you will find in them no better companions than you have found in the private soldiers, and I doubt if you will find as true friends. Do not, under any circumstances, draw away from your old friends, and let a barrier raise up between you and them. My observation teaches me that the only difference between the officers and men in the Union army, is that officers get more pay for doing less duty; they become dissipated and fast because they can better afford it, they drink more, put on style, play cards for money, and think the world revolves around them, and that they are indispensible to success, and yet when they die, or are discharged for cause, private soldiers take their place and become better officers than they did, until they in turn become spoiled. I can think of no position better calculated to ruin a young man than to commission him in a cavalry regiment. Now take my advice. Do not run in debt for a new uniform and a silver mounted sword, and don’t put a stock of whisky and cigars into your tent, and keep open house, because when your whisky and cigars are gone, those who drank and smoked them will not think as much of you as before, and you will have formed habits that will illy prepare you for your work. You will not make any friends among good officers, and you will lose the respect of the men who have known you when you were one of them, but who will laugh at you for getting the big head and going back on those who are just as good as you are, but who have not yet attained the dignity of wearing shoulder straps. I meet officers every day, who were good soldiers before they were raised from privates, and they show signs of dissipation, and have a hard look, leering at women, and trying to look blasé. They try to act as near like foreign noblemen who are officers, as they can, from reading of their antics, but Americans just from farms, workshops, commercial pursuits, and the back woods and country villages of the north, are not of the material that foreign officials are made of, and in trying to imitate them they only show their shallowness. Do not, I beg of you, change one particle from what you have been as a private soldier, unless it is to have your pants fit better, and wear a collar. O
f course, you will be thrown among officers more than you have before. Imitate their better qualities, and do not compete with them in vices. Always remember that when a volunteer army is mustered out, all are alike. The private, who has business ability, will become rich and respected, after the war, while the officer, who has been promoted through favoritism, and who acquires bad habits, will keep going down hill, and will be glad to drive a delivery wagon for the successful private, whom he commanded and snubbed when he held a proud position and got the big head. Now, my convalescent red-headed yankee, you have the best advice, I know how to give a young man who has struck a streak of luck. Go back to your friends, and may God bless you.”
Well, I had never had any such advice as that before, and as Jim and me rode back to camp that Thanksgiving evening, her words seemed to burn into my alleged brain. I could see how easy it would be for a fellow to make a spectacle of himself. What did a commission amount to, anyway, that a fellow should feel above anybody. When we arrived in camp, and went into our tent to have a smoke, the chaplain came in. I had not seen much of him lately. When I was sick I felt the need of a chaplain considerably. Not that I cared particularly to have him come and set up a howl over me, as though I was going to die, and he was expected to steer me the right way. But I felt as though it was his duty to look after the boys when they were sick, and talk to them about something cheerful. But he did not show up when I needed him, and when he called at our tent after I was well, there wasn’t that cordiality on my part that there ought to have been. He had a package which he unrolled, after congratulating me on my recovery, and it proved to be a new saber, with silver mounted scabbard and gold sword handle. The chaplain said he had heard that I was to be commissioned, and he had found that saber at a store down town, and thought I might want to buy it. He said of course I would not want to wear a common government saber, as it would look too rude. He said he could get that saber for forty dollars, dirt cheap, and I could pay for it when I got my first pay as an officer. I could see through the chaplain in a minute. He had thought I would jump at the chance to put on style, and that he could make ten or fifteen dollars selling me a gilt-edged saber. I thanked him warmly, and a little sarcastically, for his great interest in the welfare of my soul, in sickness and in health, but told him that I was going to try and pull through with a common private’s saber. I told him that the few people I should kill with a saber, would enjoy it just as well to be run through with a common saber. My only object was to help put down the rebellion, and I could do it with ordinary plain cutlery, as well as silver-mounted trappings. I said that to smear a silver-mounted saber all over with gore, would spoil the looks of it. The chaplain went out, when a drummer for a tailor shop came in with some samples, and wanted to make up a new uniform for me, regardless of expense. I stood him off, and went to bed, tired, and thought I had rather be a private than a general. The next morning it was my turn to cook our breakfast, and I turned out and built a fire, cut off some salt pork, and was frying it, when the orderly sergeant came along and detailed Jim and me, with ten or a dozen others to go to work on the fortifications. The rebels-were preparing to attack our position, and the commanding officer had deemed it advisable to throw up some earthworks. I told the orderly that he couldn’t detail me to work with a shovel, digging trenches, when I was an officer, but he said he could, until I received my commission and was mustered in. I left my cooking and went to the colonel’s tent. He was just rolling out of his bunk, and I said:
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