Personal Recollections of the Civil War by James Madison Stone

Author:James Madison Stone [Unbekannt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Geschichte
ISBN: 9783849619930
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2012-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter V THE FREDERICKSBURG CAMPAIGN

A hard race for a pig. Chaplain Ball returns home. Picket duty along the river. The Battle of Fredericksburg. Burying the dead. Christmas revels with the Confederates. A band of horn-blowers. A raid on the sutler. A costume ball at Hotel de Ville.

General McClellan was relieved of command, November 8th, 1862, and General A. E. Burnside succeeded him in command of the Army of the Potomac.

The same day we left our camp at Orleans, we marched to Jeffersonton and went into camp in the village. About twenty men of Company K were detailed to go on outpost duty about a mile from the center of the town on one of the roads leading from it. It was my fortune to be one of that detail. We camped near the house of a Virginia farmer with whom, during the three days we remained there, I came to be on very good terms. He was about fifty years old, seemed honest and talked freely and fairly about the war. He gave me an account of the experience he had with “our men,” as he called the Confederates. As they were passing his place one time, he said to his wife in the morning as they began to pass, “Wife, shall we do something for these men? They have a hard time of it.” After some consideration it was agreed that he would kill a pig. He would also arrange a fire down by the road for doing the frying. The house was located back on high ground about fifteen rods from the road. The negroes were to bake corn bread up at the house and carry it down to them at the road. He was to fry pig meat and his wife was to make sandwiches and as far as possible she would give each soldier a sandwich as he passed by. They worked there until nearly night, when a sergeant asked him if he had been up to the house lately and told him he had better go up. Just back of the house was an old road leading off across the fields, and beside that old road he found the soldiers were working the same scheme, he and his wife were carrying out down by the main road, the negroes doing the work. They had killed another pig, were frying meat, baking corn bread, making and passing out the sandwiches, and business was flourishing.

Toward evening of the 11th it was noised about that we—our brigade and a battery of artillery only were at Jeffersonton—were in an exposed position and that we should be ready to move at a moment’s notice. During the first part of the night I was on picket duty out on the old road above referred to back of the house. I was lying flat on the ground behind a rail fence. I saw a man approaching. He was coming up that old road. I waited until he was about thirty feet from me, then I ordered him to halt.

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