Chickamauga and Other Civil War Stories

by Shelby Foote

  On the seventh day of August, 1861, I was nineteen years of age. If I live to the seventh day of August this year I’ll be ninety-five years old. And the way I feel this mornin’ I intend to live. Now I guess you’ll have to admit that that’s goin’ a good ways back.

  I was born up at the Forks of the Toe River in 1842. Your grandpaw, boy, was born at the same place in 1828. His father, and mine, too, Bill Pentland—your great-grandfather, boy—moved into that region way back right after the Revolutionary War and settled at the Forks of Toe. The real Indian name fer hit was Estatoe, but the white men shortened hit to Toe, and hit’s been known as Toe River ever since.

  Of course hit was all Indian country in those days. I’ve heared that the Cherokees helped Bill Pentland’s father build the first house he lived in, where some of us was born. I’ve heared, too, that Bill Pentland’s grandfather came from Scotland back before the Revolution, and that thar was three brothers. That’s all the Pentland’s that I ever heared of in this country. If you ever meet a Pentland anywheres you can rest assured he’s descended from one of those three.

  Well, now, as I was tellin’ you, upon the seventh day of August, 1861, I was nineteen years of age. At seven-thirty in the mornin’ of that day I started out from home and walked the whole way in to Clingman. Jim Weaver had come over from Big Hickory where he lived the night before and stayed with me. And now he went along with me. He was the best friend I had. We had growed up alongside of each other: now we was to march alongside of each other fer many a long and weary mile—how many neither of us knowed that mornin’ when we started out.

  Hit was a good twenty mile away from where we lived to Clingman, and I reckon young folks nowadays would consider twenty mile a right smart walk. But fer people in those days hit wasn’t anything at all. All of us was good walkers. Why Jim Weaver could keep goin’ without stoppin’ all day long.

  Jim was big and I was little, about the way you see me now, except that I’ve shrunk up a bit, but I could keep up with him anywhere he went. We made hit into Clingman before twelve o’clock—hit was a hot day, too—and by three o’clock that afternoon we had both joined up with the Twenty-ninth. That was my regiment from then on, right on to the end of the war. Anyways, I was an enlisted man that night, the day that I was nineteen years of age, and I didn’t see my home again fer four long years.

  Your Uncle Bacchus, boy, was already in Virginny: we knowed he was thar because we’d had a letter from him. He joined up right at the start with the Fourteenth. He’d already been at First Manassas and I reckon from then on he didn’t miss a big fight in Virginny fer the next four years, except after Antietam where he got wounded and was laid up fer four months.

  Even way back in those days your Uncle Bacchus had those queer religious notions that you’ve heared about. The Pentlands are good people, but everyone who ever knowed ’em knows they can go queer on religion now and then. That’s the reputation that they’ve always had. And that’s the way Back was. He was a Russellite even in those days: accordin’ to his notions the world was comin’ to an end and he was goin’ to be right in on hit when hit happened. That was the way he had hit figgered out. He was always prophesyin’ and predictin’ even back before the war, and when the war came, why Back just knowed that this was hit.

  Why law! He wouldn’t have missed that war fer anything. Back didn’t go to war because he wanted to kill Yankees. He didn’t want to kill nobody. He was as tender-hearted as a baby and as brave as a lion. Some fellers told hit: on him later how they’d come on him at Gettysburg, shootin’ over a stone wall, and his rifle bar’l had got so hot he had to put hit down and rub his hands on the seat of his pants because they got so blistered. He was singin’ hymns, they said, with tears a-streamin’ down his face—that’s the way they told hit, anyway—and every time he fired he’d sing another verse. And I reckon he killed plenty because when Back had a rifle in his hands he didn’t miss.

  But he was a good man. He didn’t want to hurt a fly. And I reckon the reason that he went to war was because he thought he’d be at Armageddon. That’s the way he had hit figgered out, you know. When the war came, Back said: “Well, this is hit, and I’m a-goin’ to be thar. The hour has come,” he said, “when the Lord is goin’ to set up His Kingdom here on earth and separate the sheep upon the right hand and the goats upon the left—jest like hit was predicted long ago—and I’m a-goin’ to be thar when hit happens.”

  Well, we didn’t ask him which side he was goin’ to be on, but we all knowed which side without havin’ to ask. Back was goin’ to be on the sheep side—that’s the way he had hit figgered out. And that’s the way he had hit figgered out right up to the day of his death ten years ago. He kept prophesyin’ and predictin’ right up to the end. No matter what happened, no matter what mistakes he made, he kept right on predictin’. First he said the war was goin’ to be the Armageddon day. And when that didn’t happen he said hit was goin’ to come along in the eighties. And when hit didn’t happen then he moved hit up to the nineties. And when the war broke out in 1914 and the whole world had to go, why Bacchus knowed that that was hit.

  And no matter how hit all turned out, Back never would give in or own up he was wrong. He’d say he’d made a mistake in his figgers somers, but that he’d found out what hit was and that next time he’d be right. And that’s the way he was up to the time he died.

  I had to laugh when I heared the news of his death, because of course, accordin’ to Back’s belief, after you die no thin’ happens to you fer a thousand years. You jest lay in your grave and sleep until Christ comes and wakes you up. So that’s why I had to laugh. I’d a-give anything to’ve been there the next mornin’ when Back woke up and found himself in heaven. I’d’ve give anything just to’ve seen the expression on his face. I may have to wait a bit but I’m goin’ to have some fun with him when I see him. But I’ll bet you even then he won’t give in. He’ll have some reason fer hit, he’ll try to argue he was right but that he made a little mistake about hit somers in his figgers.

  But Back was a good man—a better man than Bacchus Pentland never lived. His only failin’ was the failin’ that so many Pentlands have—he went and got queer religious notions and he wouldn’t give them up.

  Well, like I say then, Back was in the Fourteenth. Your Uncle Sam and Uncle George was with the Seventeenth, and all three of them was in Lee’s army in Virginny. I never seed nor heared from either Back or Sam fer the next four years. I never knowed what had happened to them or whether they was dead or livin’ until I got back home in ’65. And of course I never heared from George again until they wrote me after Chancellorsville. And then I knowed that he was dead. They told hit later when I came back home that hit took seven men to take him. They asked him to surrender. And then they had to kill him because he wouldn’t be taken. That’s the way he was. He never would give up. When they got to his dead body they told how they had to crawl over a whole heap of dead Yankees before they found him. And then they knowed hit was George. That’s the way he was, all right. He never would give in.

  He is buried in the Confederate cemetery at Richmond, Virginny. Bacchus went through thar more than twenty years ago on his way to the big reunion up at Gettysburg. He hunted up his grave and found out where he was.

  That’s where Jim and me thought that we’d be too. I mean with Lee’s men, in Virginny. That’s where we thought that we was goin’ when we joined. But, like I’m goin’ to tell you now, hit turned out different from the way we thought.

  Bob Saunders was our Captain; L. C. Mclntyre our Major; and Leander Briggs the Colonel of our regiment. They kept us thar at Clingman fer two weeks. Then they marched us into Altamont and drilled us fer the next two months. Our drillin’ ground was right up and down where Parker Street now is. In those days thar was nothing thar but open fields. Hit’s all built up now. To look at hit today you’d never know thar’d ever been an open field thar. But that’s where hit was, all right.

  Late in October we wa
s ready and they moved us on. The day they marched us out, Martha Patton came in all the way from Zebulon to see Jim Weaver before we went away. He’d known her fer jest two months; he’d met her the very week we joined up and I was with him when he met her. She came from out along Cane River. Thar was a camp revival meetin’ goin’ on outside of Clingman at the time, and she was visitin’ this other gal in Clingman while the revival lasted; and that was how Jim Weaver met her. We was walkin’ along one evenin’ toward sunset and we passed this house where she was stayin’ with this other gal. And both of them was settin’ on the porch as we went past. The other gal was fair, and she was dark: she had black hair and eyes, and she was plump and sort of little, and she had the pertiest complexion, and the pertiest white skin and teeth you ever seed; and when she smiled there was a dimple in her cheeks.

  Well, neither of us knowed these gals, and so we couldn’t stop and talk to them, but when Jim saw the little ’un he stopped short in his tracks like he was shot, and then he looked at her so hard she had to turn her face. Well, then, we walked on down the road a piece and Jim stopped and turned and looked again, and when he did, why, sure enough, he caught her lookin’ at him too. And then her face got red—she looked away again.

  Well, that was where she landed him. He didn’t say a word, but Lord! I felt him jerk there like a trout upon the line—and I knowed right then and thar she had him hooked. We turned and walked on down the road a ways, and then he stopped and looked at me and said:

  “Did you see that gal back thar?”

  “Do you mean the light one or the dark one?”

  “You know damn good and well which one I mean,” said Jim.

  “Yes, I seed her—what about her?” I said.

  “Well, nothin’—only I’m a-goin’ to marry her,” he said.

  I knowed then that she had him hooked. And yet I never believed at first that hit would last. Fer Jim had had so many gals—I’d never had a gal in my whole life up to that time, but Lord! Jim would have him a new gal every other week. We had some fine-lookin’ fellers in our company, but Jim Weaver was the handsomest feller that you ever seed. He was tall and lean and built just right, and he carried himself as straight as a rod: he had black hair and coal-black eyes, and when he looked at you he could burn a hole through you. And I reckon he’d burned a hole right through the heart of many a gal before he first saw Martha Patton. He could have had his pick of the whole lot—a born lady-killer if you ever seed one—and that was why I never thought that hit’d last.

  And maybe hit was a pity that hit did. Fer Jim Weaver until the day that he met Martha Patton had been the most happy-go-lucky feller that you ever seed. He didn’t have a care in the whole world—full of fun—ready fer anything and into every kind of devilment and foolishness. But from that moment on he was a different man. And I’ve always thought that maybe hit was a pity that hit hit him when hit did—that hit had to come jest at that time. If hit had only come a few years later—if hit could only have waited till the war was over! He’d wanted to go so much—he’d looked at the whole thing as a big lark—but now! Well she had him, and he had her: the day they marched us out of town he had her promise, and in his watch he had her picture and a little lock of her black hair, and as they marched us out, and him beside me, we passed her, and she looked at him, and I felt him jerk again and knowed the look she gave him had gone through him like a knife.

  From that time on he was a different man; from that time on he was like a man in hell. Hit’s funny how hit all turns out—how none of hit is like what we expect. Hit’s funny how war and a little black-haired gal will change a man—but that’s the story that I’m goin’ to tell you now.

  The nearest rail head in those days was eighty mile away at Locust Gap. They marched us out of town right up the Fairfield Road along the river up past Crestville, and right across the Blue Ridge there, and down the mountain. We made Old Stockade the first day’s march and camped thar fer the night. Hit was twenty-four miles of marchin’ right across the mountain, with the roads the way they was in those days, too. And let me tell you, fer new men with only two months’ trainin’ that was doin’ good.

  We made Locust Gap in three days and a half, and I wish you’d seed the welcome that they gave us! People were hollerin’ and shoutin’ the whole way. All the women folk and childern were lined up along the road, bands a-playin’, boys runnin’ along beside us, good shoes, new uniforms, the finest-lookin’ set of fellers that you ever seed—Lord! You’d a-thought we was goin’ to a picnic from the way hit looked. And I reckon that was the way most of us felt about hit, too. We thought we was goin’ off to have a lot of fun. If anyone had knowed what he was in fer or could a-seed the passel o’ scarecrows that came limpin’ back barefoot and half naked four years later, I reckon he’d a-thought twice before he ’listed up.

  Lord, when I think of hit! When I try to tell about hit thar jest ain’t words enough tell what hit was like. And when I think of the way I was when I joined up—and the way I was when I came back four years later! When I went away I was an ignorant country boy, so tenderhearted that I wouldn’t harm a rabbit. And when I came back after the war was over I could a-stood by and seed a man murdered right before my eyes with no more feelin’ than I’d have had fer a stuck hog. I had no more feelin’ about human life than I had fer the life of a sparrer. I’d seed a ten-acre field so thick with dead men that you could have walked all over hit without step-pin’ on the ground a single time.

  And that was where I made my big mistake. If I’d only knowed a little more, if I’d only waited jest a little longer after I got home, things would have been all right. That’s been the big regret of my whole life. I never had no education. I never had a chance to git one before I went away. And when I came back I could a-had my schoolin’ but I didn’t take hit. The reason was I never knowed no better: I’d seed so much fightin’ and killin’ that I didn’t care fer nothin’. I jest felt dead and numb like all the brains had been shot out of me. I jest wanted to git me a little patch of land somewheres and settle down and fergit about the world.

  That’s where I made my big mistake. I didn’t wait long enough. I got married too soon, and after that the childern came and hit was root, hawg, or die: I had to grub fer hit. But if I’d only waited jest a little while hit would have been all right. In less’n a year hit all cleared up. I got my health back, pulled myself together and got my feet back on the ground, and had more mercy and understandin’ in me, jest on account of all the sufferin’ I’d seen, than I ever had. And as fer my head, why hit was better than hit ever was: with all I’d seen and knowed I could a-got a schoolin’ in no time. But you see I wouldn’t wait. I didn’t think that hit’d ever come back. I was jest sick of li vin’.

  But as I say—they marched us down to Locust Gap in less’n four days’ time, and then they put us on the cars fer Richmond. We got to Richmond on the mornin’ of one day, and up to that very moment we had thought that they was sendin’ us to join Lee’s army in the north. But the next mornin’ we got our orders—and they was sendin’ us out west. They had been fightin’ in Kentucky: we was in trouble thar; they sent us out to stop the Army of the Cumberland. And that was the last I ever saw of old Virginny. From that time on we fought it out thar in the west and south. That’s where we war, the Twenty-ninth, from then on to the end.

  We had no real big fights until the spring of ’62. And hit takes a fight to make a soldier of a man. Before that, thar was skirmishin’ and raids in Tennessee and in Kentucky. That winter we seed hard marchin’ in the cold and wind and rain. We learned to know what hunger was, and what hit was to have to draw your belly in to fit your rations. I reckon by that time we knowed hit wasn’t goin’ to be a picnic like we thought that hit would be. We was a-learnin’ all the time, but we wasn’t soldiers yet. It takes a good big fight to make a soldier, and we hadn’t had one yet. Early in ’62 we almost had one. They marched us to the relief of Donelson—but law! They had taken her before we got thar—a
nd I’m goin’ to tell you a good story about that.

  U. S. Grant was thar to take her, and we was marchin’ to relieve her before old Butcher could git in. We was seven mile away, and hit was comin’ on to sundown—we’d been marchin’ hard. We got the order to fall out and rest. And that was when I heared the gun and knowed that Donelson had fallen. Thar was no sound of fightin’. Everything was still as Sunday. We was sittin’ thar aside the road and then I heared a cannon boom. Hit boomed five times, real slow like—Boom!—Boom!—Boom!—Boom!—Boom! And the moment that I heared hit, I had a premonition. I turned to Jim and I said: “Well, thar you are! That’s Donelson—and she’s surrendered!”

  Cap’n Bob Saunders heared me, but he wouldn’t believe me and he said: “You’re wrong!”

  “Well,” said Jim, “I hope to God he’s right. I wouldn’t care if the whole damn war had fallen through. I’m ready to go home.”

  “Well, he’s wrong,” said Captain Bob, “and I’ll bet money on hit that he is.”

  Well, I tell you, that jest suited me. That was the way I was in those days—right from the beginnin’ of the war to the very end. If thar was any fun or devilment goin’ on, any card playin’ or gamblin’, or any other kind of foolishness, I was right in on hit. I’d a-bet a man that red was green or that day was night, and if a gal had looked at me from a persimmon tree, why, law! I reckon I’d a-clumb the tree to git her. That’s jest the way hit was with me all through the war. I never made a bet or played a game of cards in my life before the war or after hit was over, but while the war was goin’ on I was ready fer anything.

  “How much will you bet?” I said.

  “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars even money,” said Bob Saunders, and no sooner got the words out of his mouth than the bet was on.

  We planked the money down right thar and gave hit to Jim to hold the stakes. Well, sir, we didn’t have to wait half an hour before a feller on a horse came ridin’ up and told us hit was no use goin’ any farther—Fort Donelson had fallen.