Co. Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show

by Sam Watkins

  STANDING PICKET ON THE POTOMAC

  Leaving Winchester, we continued up the valley.

  The night before the attack on Bath or Berkley Springs, there fell the largest snow I ever saw. Stonewall Jackson had seventeen thousand soldiers at his command. The Yankees were fortified at Bath. An attack was ordered, our regiment marched upon top of a mountain overlooking the movements of both armies in the valley below. About 4 o’clock one grand charge and rush was made, and the Yankees were routed and skedaddled.28

  By some circumstance or other, Lieutenant J. Lee Bullock came in command of the First Tennessee Regiment. But Lee was not a graduate of West Point, you see.

  The Federals had left some spiked batteries on the hill side, as we were informed by an old citizen, and Lee, anxious to capture a battery, gave the new and peculiar command of, “Soldiers, you are ordered to go forward and capture a battery; just pirouette up that hill; pirouette, march. Forward, men; pirouette carefully.” The boys “pirouetted” as best they could. It may have been a new command, and not laid down in Hardee's or Scott's tactics;29 but Lee was speaking plain English, and we understood his meaning perfectly, and even at this late day I have no doubt that every soldier who heard the command thought it a legal and technical term used by military graduates to go forward and capture a battery.

  At this place (Bath), a beautiful young lady ran across the street. I have seen many beautiful and pretty women in my life, but she was the prettiest one I ever saw. Were you to ask any member of the First Tennessee Regiment who was the prettiest woman he ever saw, he would unhesitatingly answer that he saw her at Berkley Springs during the war, and he would continue the tale, and tell you of Lee Bullock's pirouette and Stonewall Jackson's charge.

  We rushed down to the big spring bursting out of the mountain side, and it was hot enough to cook an egg. Never did I see soldiers more surprised. The water was so hot we could not drink it.

  The snow covered the ground and was still falling.

  That night I stood picket on the Potomac with a detail of the Third Arkansas30 Regiment. I remember how sorry I felt for the poor fellows, because they had enlisted for the war, and we for only twelve months. Before nightfall I took in every object and commenced my weary vigils. I had to stand all night. I could hear the rumblings of the Federal artillery and wagons, and hear the low shuffling sound made by troops on the march. The snow came pelting down as large as goose eggs. About midnight the snow ceased to fall, and became quiet. Now and then the snow would fall off the bushes and make a terrible noise.

  While I was peering through the darkness, my eyes suddenly fell upon the outlines of a man. The more I looked the more I was convinced that it was a Yankee picket. I could see his hat and coat—yes, see his gun. I was sure that it was a Yankee picket. What was I to do? The relief was several hundred yards in the rear. The more I looked the more sure I was. At last a cold sweat broke out all over my body. Turkey bumps rose. I summoned all the nerves and bravery that I could command, and said: “Halt! who goes there?” There being no response, I became resolute. I did not wish to fire and arouse the camp, but I marched right up to it and stuck my bayonet through and through it. It was a stump. I tell the above, because it illustrates a part of many a private's recollections of the war; in fact, a part of the hardships and suffering that they go through.

  One secret of Stonewall Jackson's success was that he was such a strict disciplinarian. He did his duty himself and was ever at his post, and he expected and demanded of everybody to do the same thing. He would have a man shot at the drop of a hat, and drop it himself. The first army order that was ever read to us after being attached to his corps, was the shooting to death by musketry of two men who had stopped on the battlefield to carry off a wounded comrade. It was read to us in line of battle at Winchester.

  SCHWARTZ AND PFIFER

  At Valley Mountain the finest and fattest beef I ever saw was issued to the soldiers, and it was the custom to use tallow for lard. Tallow made good shortening if the biscuits were eaten hot, but if allowed to get cold they had a strong taste of tallow in their flavor that did not taste like the flavor of vanilla or lemon in ice cream and strawberries; and biscuits fried in tallow were something upon the principle of ‘possum and sweet potatoes.

  Well, Pfifer had got the fat from the kidneys of two hind quarters and made a cake of tallow weighing about twenty-five pounds. He wrapped it up and put it carefully away in his knapsack. When the assembly sounded for the march, Pfifer strapped on his knapsack. It was pretty heavy, but Pfifer was “well heeled.” He knew the good frying he would get out of that twenty-five pounds of nice fat tallow, and he was willing to tug and toil all day over a muddy and sloppy road for his anticipated hot tallow gravy for supper. We made a long and hard march that day, and about dark went into camp. Fires were made up and water brought, and the soldiers began to get supper. Pfifer was in a good humor. He went to get that twenty-five pounds of good, nice, fat tallow out of his knapsack, and on opening it, lo and behold! it was a rock that weighed about thirty pounds.

  Pfifer was struck dumb with amazement. He looked bewildered, yea, even silly. I do not think he cursed, because he could not do the subject justice. He looked at that rock with the death stare of a doomed man. But he suspected Schwartz. He went to Schwartz's knapsack, and there he found his cake of tallow. He went to Schwartz and would have killed him had not soldiers interfered and pulled him off by main force. His eyes blazed and looked like those of a tiger when he has just torn his victim limb from limb. I would not have been in Schwartz's shoes for all the tallow in every beef in Virginia. Captain Harsh made Schwartz carry that rock for two days to pacify Pfifer.

  THE COURT-MARTIAL

  One incident came under my observation while in Virginia that made a deep impression on my mind. One morning, about day-break, the new guard was relieving the old guard. It was a bitter cold morning, and on coming to our extreme outpost, I saw a soldier—he was but a mere boy—either dead or asleep at his post. The sergeant commanding the relief went up to him and shook him. He immediately woke up and seemed very much frightened. He was fast asleep at his post.31 The sergeant had him arrested and carried to the guard-house.

  Two days afterwards I received notice to appear before a court-martial at nine. I was summoned to appear as a witness against him for being asleep at this post in the enemy's country. An example had to be made of someone. He had to be tried for his life. The court-martial was made up of seven or eight officers of a different regiment. The witnesses all testified against him, charges and specifications were read, and by the rules of war he had to be shot to death by musketry. The Advocate-General for the prosecution made the opening speech. He read the law in a plain straightforward manner, and said for a solider to go to sleep at his post of duty, while so much depended upon him, was the most culpable of all crimes, and the most inexcusable. I trembled in my boots for on several occasions I knew that I had taken a short nap, even on the very outpost. The Advocate-General went on further to say, that the picket was the sentinel that held the lives of his countrymen and the liberty of his country in his hands, and it mattered not what may have been his record in the past. At one moment he had forfeited his life to his country. For discipline's sake, if for nothing else, you gentlemen that make up this court-martial find the prisoner guilty. It is necessary for you to be firm, gentlemen, for upon your decision depends the safety of our country. When he had finished, thinks I to myself, “Gone up the spout, sure; we will have a first-class funeral here before night.”

  Well, as to the lawyer who defended him, I cannot now remember his speeches; but he represented a fair-haired boy leaving his home and family, telling his father and aged mother and darling little sister farewell, and spoke of his proud step, though a mere boy, going to defend his country and his loved ones; but at one weak moment, when nature, tasked and taxed beyond the bounds of human endurance, could stand no longer, and upon the still and silent picket post, when the whole army was hushed in
slumber, what wonder is it that he, too, may have fallen asleep while at his post of duty.

  Some of you gentlemen of this court-martial may have sons, may have brothers; yes, even fathers, in the army. Where are they tonight? You love your children, or your brother or father. This mere youth has a father and mother and sister away back in Tennessee. They are willing to give him to his country. But oh! gentlemen, let the word go back to Tennessee that he died upon the battlefield, and not by the hands of his own comrades for being asleep at his post of duty. I cannot now remember the speeches, but one thing I do know, that he was acquitted, and I was glad of it.

  “THE DEATH WATCH”

  One more scene I can remember. Kind friends—you that know nothing of a soldier's life—I ask you in all candor not to doubt the following lines in this sketch. You have no doubt read of the old Roman soldier found amid the ruins of Pompeii, who had stood there for sixteen hundred years, and when he was excavated was found at his post with his [weapon] clasped in his skeleton hands. You believe this because it is written in history. I have heard politicians tell it. I have heard it told from the sacred desk. It is true; no one doubts it.

  Now, were I to tell something that happened in this nineteenth century exactly similar, you would hardly believe it. But whether you believe it or not, it is for you to say. At a little village called Hampshire Crossing, our regiment was ordered to go to a little stream called St. John's Run, to relieve the 14th Georgia Regiment and the 3rd Arkansas. I cannot tell the facts as I desire to. In fact, my hand trembles so, and my feelings are so overcome, that it is hard for me to write at all. But we went to the place that we were ordered to go to, and when we arrived there we found the guard sure enough.

  If I remember correctly, there were just eleven of them. Some were sitting down and some were lying down; but each and every one was as cold and as hard frozen as the icicles that hung from their hands and faces and clothing—dead! They had died at their post of duty. Two of them, a little in advance of the others, were standing with their guns in their hands, as cold and as hard frozen as a monument of marble—standing sentinel with loaded guns in their frozen hands! The tale is told.32 Were they true men? Does He who noteth the sparrow's fall, and numbers the hairs of our heads, have any interest in one like ourselves? Yes; He doeth all things well. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His consent.

  VIRGINIA, FAREWELL

  After having served through all the valley campaign, and marched through all the wonders of Northwest Virginia, and being associated with the army of Virginia, it was with sorrow and regret that we bade farewell to “Old Virginia's shore,” to go to other fields of blood and carnage and death. We had learned to love Virginia; we love her now. The people were kind and good to us. They divided their last crust of bread and rasher of bacon with us. We loved Lee, we loved Jackson; we loved the name, association and people of Virginia. Hatton, Forbes, Anderson, Gilliam, Govan, Loring, Ashby and Schumaker were names with which we had been long associated. We hated to leave all our old comrades behind us. We felt that we were proving recreant to the instincts of our own manhood, and that we were leaving those who had stood by us on the march and battlefield when they most needed our help. We knew the 7th and 14th Tennessee regiments; we knew the 3rd Arkansas, the 14th Georgia, and 42nd Virginia regiments. Their names were as familiar as household words. We were about to leave the bones of Joe Bynum and Gus Allen and Patrick Hanly. We were about to bid farewell to every tender association that we had formed with the good people of Virginia, and to our old associates among the soldiers of the Grand Army of Virginia.—Virginia, farewell!

  Away back yonder, in good old Tennessee, our homes and loved ones are being robbed and insulted, our fields laid waste, our cities sacked, and our people slain. Duty as well as patriotism calls us back to our native home, to try and defend it, as best we can, against an invading army of our then enemies; and, Virginia, once more we bid you a long farewell!33

  * * *

  1. Yancey was an Alabama politician and leading secession advocate. He served in the US Congress from 1844–1846 and was later a senator in the Confederate Congress. In the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston, SC, he was instrumental in leading Southern delegates to walk out rather than accept Illinois's Stephen Douglas as the party's candidate. The result was a party split with both Douglas and John Breckinridge running as Democrats, thereby virtually assuring the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in November.

  2. Robert Barnwell Rhett, a South Carolina politician, congressman, and US senator, was a long-time proponent of Southern interests. He was among the first to agitate for secession. Robert Toombs was a Georgia politician and US senator. Originally more moderate than Yancey or Rhett, he eventually became a prime secession advocate. Toombs hoped to become president of the Confederacy, but Jefferson Davis was selected instead. Toombs had a reputation as a heavy drinker, which was one factor working against his informal candidacy.

  Watkins's comment about the direction of “water courses” refers to the fact that most rivers in the populated areas of the Civil War-era United States drained south.

  3. Horace Greely was a forceful opponent of slavery and founded the New York Herald Tribune. Shortly after the war he urged settlement of western territories, famously quoted as urging, “Go west, young man, go west.” By using the name “Horrors,” Watkins provides an early display of characteristic humor.

  4. Charles Sumner was a US senator from Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans. About five years prior to the war, he was nearly killed on the Senate floor by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, who beat him with a cane. Brooks was angered because during a Senate speech, Sumner had characterized Brooks's uncle, Senator Andrew Butler, as a “pimp for slavery.”

  5. Jefferson Davis had bad eyesight in one eye. Alexander Stephens, a Georgia congressman, was elected vice president of the Confederacy. During the 1840s, Lincoln and Stephens served on friendly terms in Congress together.

  6. Nancy Hanks was the biological mother of Abraham Lincoln, but she died while he was a boy. From the age of ten, Abe had a stepmother named Sarah. Sam's memory fails him regarding the name of Abe's dad. It was Thomas, not Robert.

  7. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was vice president during Lincoln's first term. His dark complexion led to erroneous speculation that he had African blood. During the Civil War era, and earlier, the biblical sons of Ham were often presumed to be Negroes.

  8. Given his combat experiences, it is remarkable that Sam could have such a reconciling attitude less than twenty years after the war.

  9. Watkins consistently misspells the term “vedette,” which is a sentry mounted on a horse. In the infantry, a sentry was commonly referred to as a “picket.”

  10. Camp Cheatham was named for Confederate General Benjamin Cheatham, who eventually became a corps commander of the Army of Tennessee. Watkins served under Cheatham when the latter was both a division and corps commander. Cheatham fought in almost every major battle in the western theater east of the Mississippi River.

  11. During the English Civil War of the seventeenth century, Cavaliers were Royalist supporters of King Charles I and his son, Charles II. The war ended with the execution of Charles I, and the replacement of monarchy with the Commonwealth of England.

  12. Hotel proprietor James Jackson in Alexandria, Virginia, displayed a Rebel flag over his hotel within easy sight of viewers on the north side of the Potomac. Colonel Elmer Ellsworth was a young Illinois friend of the Lincoln family's who was killed by Jackson when he took down the flag. Ellsworth commanded the 11th New York Regiment, which was outfitted with elaborate uniforms patterned after French Zouaves, featuring colorful baggy pants and short jackets.

  13. Warm Springs, Virginia, remains an unincorporated community near the West Virginia border. In the nineteenth century it was a popular location for mineral baths from the nearby natural springs. The altitude is twenty-three hundred feet.

  14. At thi
s point, Feild was captain of Company H, but he would later command the entire 1st Tennessee Regiment.

  15. Civil War muzzle-loading rifles like the ubiquitous Enfield and Springfield used paper cartridges. Thus, if the cartridges got wet, the cap on top of the firing nipple would pop, but powder in the barrel would fail to ignite. Consequently the rifle would not shoot the minié ball.

  16. The identity of Captain Feild's rifle is uncertain. Seven-shot repeaters were impossibly rare early in the war. Later, Sam refers to the rifle as a “needle-gun,” thereby suggesting it might be a single-shot breech-loading weapon. Like repeating rifles, breech-loaders used brass cartridges, which could keep the powder dry on rainy days. Even though they could not match the firing rate of a repeater, they could shoot faster than muzzle-loaders. Furthermore, small numbers of single-shot breech-loaders were available early in the war, whereas repeaters were largely unavailable at this time, particularly for Confederates. Later the seven-shot Spencer repeater would become a famous Union weapon. Sam may have confused Feild's gun with a Spencer.

  17. It seems unlikely that Captain Feild could kill twenty to twenty-one enemy soldiers in this incident. Presumably this is the first of a few instances when Sam yielded to a temptation for a tall tale.

  18. Robert E. Lee was fifty-four at the time, which presumably makes him an “old gentleman” from the perspective of a twenty-one-year-old volunteer. Lee was sent to western Virginia in July 1861 to deal with incursions by federal forces that began in May with Union General George McClellan and his subordinate General William Rosecrans. Later, Rosecrans would command a federal army in Tennessee that Watkins would fight.