Who goes there? : $b The story of a spy in the Civil WarBenson, B. K. (Blackwood Ketcham)
History
Who goes there? : $b The story of a spy in the Civil War
Benson, B. K. (Blackwood Ketcham)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
"No, Captain; I hardly think so; these are the days of three initials."
"Yes, you are right in that," he said.
"And I know I am right about my name." said I.
"Still, the whole affair may be a compound of coincidences. We have
three--or did have three--other men in the company whose initials are
J.B.,--Bail, Box, and Butler. Of course you could not recognize your own
work in the lettering?"
"No, sir; anybody might have cut those letters; just as anybody might
imitate print. And I think, Captain, that there is not another J.B. in
Lee's army who would have supposed for an instant that he had any
connection with that gun."
"Suppose, then, that I call you Berwick hereafter?"
"No, I thank you, Captain. I'd rather be to you Jones than Berwick.
Beside, if you should change now, it would cause remark."
"I think I shall ask my brother Aleck to find out what South Carolina
regiments were in the first battle of Manassas," said he. "You may go
with me to see him to-night if you will."
That night Captain A.C. Haskell, the assistant adjutant-general, was
able to inform me that Bee's brigade had not been composed of troops
from South Carolina, although General Bee himself was from that state.
After hearing my description of the place which I thought I had
revisited, he expressed the opinion that no Confederate troops at all
had reached the spot in the battle of sixty-one. The place, he said,
was more than a mile from the position of the Confederate army in the
battle; still, he admitted, many scattered Federals retreated over the
ground which interested me so greatly, and it was possible that some
Confederates had been over it to seek plunder or for other purposes; but
as for pursuit, there had been none. I asked if it could have been
possible for me to be a prisoner on that day and to be led away to the
rear of the Federals. "If so," he replied, "you would not have been
allowed to keep or to break your gun. Moreover, the whole army lost in
missing too few men to base such a theory on; the loss was just a
baker's dozen in both Beauregard's and Johnston's forces. For my part, I
think it more likely that, if you were there at all, you were there as a
scout, or as a vedette. General Evans--Old Shanks, the boys call
him--began the battle with the Fourth South Carolina. He was at Stone
Bridge, and found out before nine o'clock that McDowell had turned our
left and was marching down from Sudley. You might have been sent out to
watch the enemy; yet I am confident that Evans would have used his
cavalry for that purpose, for he had a company of cavalry in his
command. A more plausible guess might be that you were out foraging that
morning and got cut off. I will look up the Fourth South Carolina for
you, and try to learn something. Yet the whole thing is very vague, and
I should not advise you to hope for anything from it. I am now convinced
that you did not originally belong to this brigade. You would have been
recognized long ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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