Soldiers -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
The author of that letter who now occupies a prominent position in
public life will understand, after reading this sketch, what Bernard
meant in saying that I would remember the spot on which he fell.
A BREACH OF ETIQUETTE
We had marched nearly all night, in order to join Jeb Stuart at the
time appointed. This was in the early summer of 1861.
We regarded ourselves with more or less of self-pity, as
sleep-sacrificing heroes, who were clearly entitled to a full day’s
rest.
Jeb Stuart didn’t look at it in that way at all. He was a soldier,
while we were just beginning to learn how to be soldiers. These things
make a difference.
We hadn’t got our tents pitched when he ordered us out for a scouting
expedition under his personal command.
Our army lay at Winchester. The enemy was at Martinsburg, twenty-two
miles away. Stuart, with his four or five hundred horsemen, lay at
Bunker Hill, about half-way between but a little nearer to the enemy
than to his supports. That was always Stuart’s way.
In our scouting expedition that day, we had two or three “brushes” with
the enemy--“just to get us used to it,” Stuart said.
Finally we went near to Martinsburg, and came upon a farmhouse. The
farm gave no appearance of being a large one, or one more than
ordinarily prosperous, yet we saw through the open door a dozen or
fifteen “farm hands” eating dinner, all of them in their shirt-sleeves.
Stuart rode up, with a few of us at his back, to make inquiries, and we
dismounted. Just then a slip of a girl,--not over fourteen, I should
say--accompanied by a thick-set, young bull-dog, with an abnormal
development of teeth, ran up to us.
_She distinctly and unmistakably “sicked” that dog upon us._ But as
the beast assailed us, the young girl ran after him and restrained his
ardor by throwing her arms around his neck. As she did so, she kept
repeating in a low but very insistent tone to us: “Make ’em put their
coats on! Make ’em put their coats on! Make ’em put their coats on!”
Stuart was a peculiarly ready person. He said not one word to the
young girl as she led her dog away, but with a word or two he
directed a dozen or so of us to follow him with cocked carbines into
the dining-room. There he said to the “farm hands”: “Don’t you know
that a gentleman never dines without his coat? Aren’t you ashamed of
yourselves? And ladies present, too! Get up and put on your coats,
every man jack of you, or I’ll riddle you with bullets in five seconds.”
They sprang first of all into the hallway, where they had left their
arms; but either the bull-dog or the fourteen-year-old girl had taken
care of that. The arms were gone. Then seeing the carbines levelled,
they made a hasty search of the hiding-places in which they had
bestowed their coats. A minute later they appeared as fully uniformed,
but helplessly unarmed Pennsylvania volunteers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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