Recollections of Thomas D. Duncan, a Confederate Soldier — Edition Insights

severe and hurtful blow by the soldiers who composed that army. They pronounced it the most unhealthful place on the Western Hemisphere. Evidently they thought it the supreme upas of human ills, overlooking the fact that all was due to the conditions of their camps rather than to any natural causes from water or climate.

From close observation of those camps I was led to believe that under the same conditions the result would have been the same had our men been encamped around the peaks of Ben Vair or on the slopes of the Rockies.

I saw those young, white-handed men, who had never been exposed to a hardship, attempting to cook bread and meat in a frying pan that scorched the outside and left the inside raw. Eating such food and drinking water from surface wells only a few feet deep, into which every rain washed the refuse of the camps, were not diarrhœa, typhus, and many other diseases, very natural consequences?

Thus did insanitation and infection become more deadly enemies than the armed foe, reaping an inglorious harvest of loathsome death among those gallant and fearless boys of the South who had sought to stake their lives beneath a fluttering battle flag.

After a time, this splendid army of the Confederacy was organized and equipped and sent to Virginia. The hurry and bustle of camp life were gone, the ceaseless noises that so long had dinned our ears had died into quietude, and for a period Corinthians were permitted to contemplate, thoughtfully and with misgivings, the war cloud then rapidly approaching.

Meantime the remnant of our cavalry company accepted an invitation to join with a like number from North Alabama, and the consolidated command was ordered to rendezvous at Columbus, Miss., where there were several companies already assembled and forming a regiment of cavalry. We marched through the country, and after four or five days arrived at our destination on a bright, sunny morning. The companies stationed there were lined up along the principal thoroughfares to receive us. In new uniforms and well mounted, these troops seemed the very spirit of war. They were equipped with new and formidable arms, and their horses were in trappings of gay ribbon.

Ordinarily the scene would have been thrilling and inspiring, but the shabby appearance of our company, travel-worn and but few of the men in uniforms or carrying weapons of any kind, presented a contrast that was humiliating and embarrassing. Our general aspect was more that of a bunch of immigrants than of a company of militant patriots. My young heart was almost overcome with shame, for at this stage of the war I was considering the outward appearance rather than the inward condition. I looked upon the great and tragic issue as depending upon tinsel trappings and martial splendor. But in the hard school of experience I was soon to learn a different lesson.

At Columbus we went into camp for instruction, and were taught the use of cavalry arms, how to manage our horses, and were drilled in the tactics and movements of troopers in action. We were also instructed in camp and guard duties and put through the regular service of mounting guard day and night.

I had been in camp only a short while when my time came to go on guard duty. I was detailed to go out on a dark and stormy night. It was a bitter trial for a boy to be out alone in the open, in the blackness of such a night, and to walk up and down a

deserted pathway and keep the vigil of the camp. There was no enemy near us, but orders were given and obedience demanded just the same as if a hostile army were in front of us. We were camped along the banks of the Luxapeilial, a large creek that flows southeast of Columbus and empties into the waters of the Tombigbee River a short distance south of the city. Etched upon my memory is the trying experience of that first night on guard duty. As I paced my post, the whole camp wrapped in slumber, I thought of home and the comfortable surroundings I had exchanged for this situation. I did not then know much about the “prodigal son,” but I have since learned that I was very much in the same condition as he when he came to himself. It was not very cold, but the rain poured down, and there were no other sounds except an occasional neigh of some restless horse and the melancholy hooting of an owl.