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Table of Contents

The Funeral of the Colored Cook—I Plead for a Larger

Procession—The Funeral Oration—The Funeral Disturbed—I am

Arrested—My Fortunate Escape.

This last chapter of these celebrated war papers closed with me saddling my mule to ride to the funeral of the colored cook, at which I was to act as chaplain. The mule evidently knew that it was a solemn occasion, for there was a mournful look on its otherwise placid face, the ears drooped more than usual, and there seemed a sweet peace stealing over the animal, which well became a funeral, until I began to buckle up the saddle, when the long-eared brute began to paw and kick and bite, and it took six men to get me into the saddle. I rode down the company street where the cart stood with the remains, and a colored driver sitting on the foot of the plain pine box, asleep. I woke the driver up with the point of my saber, when another colored man came out of a tent with a shovel in one hand, and a hardtack with a piece of bacon in the other. He climbed into the cart, sat down on the coffin and began to eat his dinner. This was my funeral. All that seemed necessary for a funeral was a corpse, a driver of a cart, and a man with a shovel. I rode up to the orderly's tent and asked him where the mourners were, and he laughed at me. The idea of mourners seemed to be ridiculous. I had never, in all my life, seen so slim a funeral, and it hurt me. In the meantime the nigger with the shovel had woke up the driver of the cart, and he had followed me, with the remains. I told them to halt the funeral right there, until I could skirmish around and pick up mourners enough for a mess, and a choir, and some bearers. As I rode away to the colonel's tent, the driver of the cart and the man with the shovel were playing “mumbleypeg,” with a jack-knife, on the coffin, which shocked me very much, as I was accustomed to living where more respect was paid to the dead. I went to the colonel's tent and yelled “Say! The colonel, who was changing his shirt, came to the door with his eyes full of soap, rubbing his neck with a towel, and asked what was the row. I told him I would like to have him detail me six bearers, seven or eight mourners, a few singers, and fifteen or twenty men for a congregation. He asked me what on earth I was talking about, and just then the cart with the corpse in was driven up to where I was, the orderly having told the driver to follow me with the late lamented. I pointed to the outfit, and said:

“Colonel, in that box lie the remains of a colored cook. The chaplain has appointed me to conduct the funeral service, and I find that the two colored men on the cart are the only ones to accompany the remains to their last resting place. No man can successfully run a funeral on three niggers, one of whom is dead, one liable to go to sleep any minute, and the other with an abnormal appetite for hardtack. It is a disgrace to civilization to give a dead man such a send off, and I want you to detail me some men to see me through. I have loaded myself with some interesting remarks befitting the occasion, and I do not want to fire them off into space, with no audience except these two coons. Give me some mourners and things, or I drop this funeral right where it is.”

While I was speaking the general rode up to visit with the colonel, with his staff, and the colonel came out with his undershirt on, and his suspenders hanging down, and he and the general consulted for a minute, and laughed a little, which I thought was disgraceful. Then the colonel sent for the sergeant-major and told, him to detail all the company cooks and officer's servants, to attend the funeral with me, and he said I could divide them off into reliefs, letting a few be mourners at a time. In the meantime, he said, I could move my procession off down by the horse-doctor's quarter's, as he did not want it in front of his tent. That reminded me that the horse-doctor had prescribed for the deceased, and had given him condition powders, and I asked the colonel to compel the horse-doctor to go with me. It had always seemed to me at home that the attending physician, under whose auspices the person died, should attend the funeral of his patient, and when I told the colonel about it, he called the horse-doctor and told him he would have to go. It took half an hour or so to get the colored cooks and servants together, but when all was ready to move, it was quite a respectable funeral, except that I could not help noticing a spirit of levity on the part of the mourners. All the followers were mounted, the officer's servant's on officer's horses, and the cooks on mules, and it required all the presence of mind I possessed to keep the coons from turning the sad occasion into a horse race, as they would drop back, in squads, a quarter of a mile or so, and then come whooping up to the cart containing the remains, and each vowing that his horse could clean out the others. I rode in front of the remains with the horse-doctor, and tried to conduct myself in as solemn a manner as befitted the occasion, and tried to reason with the horse-doctor against his unseemly jokes, which he was constantly getting on. He told several stories, better calculated for a gathering where bacchanalian revelry was the custom, and I told him that while I respected his calling, he must respect mine. He said something about calling a man on a full hand, against a flush, but I did not pretend to know what he meant. We had to go out of town about two miles, to the cemetery. Unfortunately we were in the watermelon growing section, and the horse-doctor called my attention to the fact that my procession was becoming scarce, when I looked around, and every blessed one of the cooks and servants, and the man with the shovel, had gone on into the field after melons, and I stopped the cart and yelled to them to come back to the funeral. Pretty soon they all rode back, each with a melon under his arm, and every face looked as though there was no funeral that could prevent a nigger from stealing a watermelon. After several stops, to round up my mourners, from corn fields and horse racing, we arrived at the cemetery, and while the grave was being dug the niggers went for the melons, and if it had been a picnic there couldn't have been much more enjoyment. The horse-doctor took out a big knife that he used to bleed horses, and cut a melon, and offered me a slice, and while I did not feel that it was just the place to indulge in melon, it looked so good that I ate some, with a mental reservation, however. It was all a new experience to me. I had never believed that in the presence of death, or at a funeral, people could be anything but decorous and solemn. I had never attended a funeral before, except where all present were friends of the deceased, and sorry, but here all seemed different. They all seemed to look upon the thing as a good joke. I had read that in New York and other large cities, those who attended funerals had a horse race on the way back, and stopped at beer saloons and filled up, but I never believed that people could be so depraved. I tried to talk to the coons, and get them to show proper respect for the occasion, but they laughed and threw melon rinds at each other. Finnally the colonel and the general, with quite a lot of soldiers, who were out reconnoitering, rode to where we were, and the coons acted a little better, but I could see that the officers were not particularly solemn. They seemed to expect something rich. They evidently looked upon me as a star idiot, who would make some blunder, or say something to make them laugh: I made up my mind that in my new position I would act just as decorous, and speak as kindly as though the deceased was the president. During all my life I had made it a practice never to speak ill of any person on earth, and if I could not say a good word for a person I would say nothing, a practice which I have kept up until this writing, with much success, and I decided that the words spoken on that occasion should not reflect against the poor man who had passed in his checks, and laid down the burden of life. The grave was completed, and with a couple of picket ropes the body was let down, and there was for a moment a sort of solemnity. I arose, and as near as I can remember at this late day, spoke about as follows: