Читать книгу Notes of a Private - John Milton Hubbard - Страница 8

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After the battle of Corinth the Confederate army under Van Dorn was entirely on the defensive. Grant and Sherman advanced from Memphis into Mississippi with the evident purpose of taking Vicksburg in the rear. The cavalry had frequent skirmishes with the Federal advance and no little excitement. There was an encounter with Sherman’s troops near Old Lamar in Marshall County, Miss. In relating this incident, I feel the need of a faculty that would enable me to tell three or four things at the same time and make my readers have a clear conception of a number of particulars which run through the mind so rapidly that it is difficult to arrange them in a well connected narrative. As in a dream, we travel over a vast extent of country and talk with many people in the short space of a few seconds, so when armed forces unexpectedly clash, we can see very many things at the same moment, but can speak of only one incident at a time. In the last days of a very dry October the Seventh Tennessee Cavalry was marching by fours in a dusty lane with ditches intervening between the road and the fences. The enemy must have seen that a fine opportunity was at hand, and advanced rapidly on our flank. The clouds of dust so obscured the vision that it was impossible to see just where the enemy were. Having the advantage of an open field they made good use of it. The Confederates were compelled to fall back or be enveloped. The command to right about by fours was given. This order threw about one-half the regiment into a position fronting the other half, which had, in the confusion, never heard it. The red dirt rose in clouds as those who were trying to get to the rear struggled to pass by those who had not heard the command. Horses and riders went into the ditches in a confused mass.

The time for obeying orders had passed. Amid the shouts of the enemy’s flanking lines, the neighing of horses and the curses of desperate men, there seemed to be one thought uppermost, and that was to get out of this trouble alive, if possible. No doubt there were instances of individual bravery and unselfish acts of gallantry, quite common occurrences in the Seventh Regiment, but nobody had anything of this incident to relate on that score around future campfires. Many had thrilling stories of how they escaped. Captain W. J. Tate of Company E, and Captain C. C. Clay went into the ditch together. Tate lost his saddle, but got hold of Clay’s, which he placed on his own horse, mounted and rode out of danger. Captain Clay with many others was captured. This all happened in much less time than it takes to tell it, but it was a remarkable stampede, the second and last the regiment ever was in. The fighting was so constant from that time till Christmas, 1862, that the men learned to stand firm on the firing line and to fall back in good order.

It were a long story to tell of the sullen retreat of the army even now not fully recovered from the effects of the disastrous Corinth campaign. Mansfield Lovell’s division and Price’s Trans-Mississippi veterans, however, were always ready for a fight. The cold, rainy days of winter were upon us, and nothing seemed quite so sure as a great battle on the line of the Tallahatchie. That line was abandoned and the enemy made a fierce attack on our rear guard of cavalry at Oxford. We were expected to hold them in check till our trains were safe beyond the Yokona. It was one of those times in which the woods were alive with bluecoats. But I shall intermit this narrative here and insert a sketch, which is entirely apropos, though printed some time ago. It follows: