Soldiers -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
On that terrible 30th of August, 1864, when the mine was exploded at
Petersburg, Goodwin was detailed to act as courier for General Lee and
General Beauregard.
A Northern negro soldier had broken somehow out of the crater and
through the lines. He rushed madly into headquarters. He struck
frantically at General Lee with his bayonet. General Beauregard parried
the blow with his sword. The negro turned and ran out of the door.
Beauregard, in his excitement, called out to Goodwin, “Go and kill that
man!”
Stepping quickly, as was his custom, Billy gave pursuit. A few moments
later he returned. He presented himself in all his superb length
of limb. He gave the military salute to General Beauregard. When
that officer asked: “What is it, orderly?” Billy replied: “I beg
respectfully to report that I have killed that man in accordance with
orders.”
That was Billy. As a soldier he was a good kind. He obeyed all orders
without questioning them. He did all his duties as he understood them.
But, as I have said, I have never been able to determine whether he was
really a brave man, or whether he was merely a man so constituted as to
be insensible to personal danger.
But I will say this for Billy, which may help to decide this point,--
We were marching from Spottsylvania to Cold Harbor. We marched for
fifty-six hours at the double quick. Now and then we had to fight at
the quadruple quick. We had no food. We had no sleep. We had no rest.
Near the end of this tremendous strain Billy came to me under a tree,
where I was snatching a five minutes’ repose. He said, with an air of
great mystery: “I’ve got a coon for my mess. I bought it of a nigger
back there. So I don’t want this piece of corn-bread. I wish you’d take
it. I know you’re hungry.”
We did not readily accept food from each other in those days, lest we
starve each other.
I struggled to resist this proffer, but Billy insisted on that coon as
satisfying all his personal wants. At last, therefore, I accepted the
three or four ounces of powder-grimed corn-bread which he pressed upon
me.
I learned afterwards that Billy had lied.
There wasn’t any coon.
MANASSAS
I call it Manassas.
That is the name we Southerners gave it. We won that battle more
completely and more conspicuously than any other battle was won by
either side during the Civil War.
It is the right of the victor always to name the action. We named it
Manassas. In the North it is called Bull Run.
We reached Manassas after two days and nights of ceaseless marching, at
ten o’clock on the evening of the 20th of July, 1861.
We knew that trouble was at hand; otherwise Stuart would not have swung
us at such a breakneck speed across the mountains from the valley to
this point. We were six hundred strong.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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