Produced by Mary Meehan and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) LIFE IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY BEING PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF A PRIVATE SOLDIER IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY BY ARTHUR P. FORD AND SOME EXPERIENCES AND SKETCHES OF SOUTHERN LIFE BY MARION JOHNSTONE FORD NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1905 COPYRIGHT, 1905 BY ARTHUR P. FORD [Illustration: Arthur Peronneau Ford] CONTENTS. LIFE IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 7 KENT--A WAR-TIME NEGRO 73 ROSE BLANKETS 88 SOME LETTERS WRITTEN DURING THE LAST MONTHS OF THE WAR 100 TAY 129 LIFE IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY BEING PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF A PRIVATE SOLDIER IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY The following account of my experiences as a private soldier in the Confederate Army during the great war of 1861-'65 records only the ordinary career of an ordinary Confederate soldier. It does not treat of campaigns, army maneuvers, or plans of battles, but only of the daily life of a common soldier, and of such things as fell under his limited observation. Early in April, 1861, immediately after the battle of Fort Sumter, I joined the Palmetto Guards, Capt. George B. Cuthbert, of the Seventeenth Regiment South Carolina Militia. Very soon after, the company divided, and one half under Captain Cuthbert left Charleston, and joined the Second South Carolina Volunteers in Virginia. The other half, to which I belonged, under Capt. George L. Buist, remained in Charleston. Early in the fall Captain Buist's company was ordered to Coosawhatchie, and given charge of four howitzers; and thenceforth for three years, until December, 1864, it served as field artillery. I did not go with my company, as at that time I was a clerk in the Charleston post-office, and really exempt from all service. On April 2, 1862, however, then being about eighteen years of age, I resigned my clerkship, and joining the company at Coosawhatchie, with the rest of the men enlisted in the Confederate service "for three years or the war."