Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 41616-h.htm or 41616-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41616/41616-h/41616-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41616/41616-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/reminiscencesofp00mixs [Illustration: PRIVATE F. M. MIXSON, Forty-five years after the war.] REMINISCENCES OF A PRIVATE by FRANK M. MIXSON Company "E" 1st S. C. Vols. (Hagood's) Jenkins' Brigade Lee's Army 1861 1865 1910 The State Company Columbia, S. C. Copyright, 1910 By The State Company DEDICATION. Dedicated to the Sons and Daughters of "the Lost Cause," who should know of the valor, trials, suffering and privations of the noblest people and the grandest army that God ever put on this earth, so that _they too_ can pass down to their children and their children's children a true history of the great deeds of this glorious Southland, for the cause and principles they loved so well and for which they suffered, bled and died. THE AUTHOR. PREFACE In the summer of 1865 I first met Frank M. Mixson, the writer of these reminiscences. He was then a boy of eighteen summers, with four years of continuous service in the army of the Confederate States to his credit. In that depressing time, when the old civilization of the South had been prostrated by the cyclone of war, when every hope seemed forever gone from the sky of the darkened future, he was full of the steady, unflinching courage of the Confederate Veteran, looking with unwavering faith to the resurrection that loyalty to principle, trust in the right and confidence in the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon would assure in the peace of the patient coming years. Heroes of the Lost Cause were not then so scarce as now, and from time to time many of the older comrades of the boy soldier told me of his deeds of cool daring on the battle line, of mischievous life in the winter bound camps or on the weary march. And so the years passed, but they did not dim the memories of those who had touched elbows with him from Charleston to Appomattox.