It is poor business measuring the mouldered ramparts and counting the silent guns, marking the deserted battlefields and decorating the grassy graves, unless we can learn from it all some nobler lesson than to destroy. Men write of this, as of other wars, as if the only thing necessary to be impressed upon the rising generation were the virtue of physical courage and contempt of death. It seems to me that is the last thing that we need to teach; for since the days of John Smith in Virginia and the men of the Mayflower in Massachusetts, no generation of Americans has shown any lack of it. From Louisburg to Petersburg—a hundred and twenty years, the full span of four generations—they have stood to their guns and been shot down in greater comparative numbers than any other race on earth. In the war of secession there was not a State, not a county, probably not a town, between the great lakes and the gulf, that was not represented on fields where all that men could do with powder and steel was done, and valor was exhibited at its highest pitch. It was a common saying in the Army of the Potomac that courage was the cheapest thing there; and it might have been said of all the other armies as well. There is not the slightest necessity for lauding American bravery or impressing it upon American youth. But there is the gravest necessity for teaching them respect for law, and reverence for human life, and regard for the rights of their fellow-men, and all that is significant in the history of our country—lest their feet run to evil and they make haste to shed innocent blood. I would be glad to convince my compatriots that it is not enough to think they are right, but they are bound to know they are right, before they rush into any experiments that are to cost the lives of men and the tears of orphans, in their own land or in any other. I would warn them to beware of provincial conceit. I would have them comprehend that one may fight bravely, and still be a perjured felon; that one may die humbly, and still be a patriot whom his country cannot afford to lose; that as might does not make right, so neither do rags and bare feet necessarily argue a noble cause. I would teach them that it is criminal either to hide the truth or to refuse assent to that which they see must follow logically from ascertained truth. I would show them that a political lie is as despicable as a personal lie, whether uttered in an editorial, or a platform, or a President's message, or a colored cartoon, or a disingenuous ballot; and that political chicanery, when long persisted in, is liable to settle its shameful account in a stoppage of civilization and a spilling of life. These are simple lessons, yet they are not taught in a day, and some whom we call educated go through life without mastering them at all.

It may be useful to learn from one war how to conduct another; but it is infinitely better to learn how to avert another. I am doubly anxious to impress this consideration upon my readers, because history seems to show us that armed conflicts have a tendency to come in pairs, with an interval of a few years, and because I think I see, in certain circumstances now existing within our beloved Republic, the elements of a second civil war. No American citizen should lightly repeat that the result is worth all it cost, unless he has considered how heavy was the cost, and is doing his utmost to perpetuate the result. To strive to forget the great war, for the sake of sentimental politics, is to cast away our dearest experience and invite, in some troubled future, the destruction we so hardly escaped in the past. There can be remembrance without animosity, but there cannot be oblivion without peril.

The terrible conflagration was kindled by the Confederate authorities, who applied the torch to the Shockoe warehouse, it, too, being classed among the public buildings because of the tobacco belonging to France and England stored in it. A fresh breeze was blowing from the south; the fire swept on in its haste and fury over a great area in an almost incredibly short time, and by noon the flames had transformed into a desert waste all the city bounded by Seventh and Fifteenth Streets, and Main Street and the river. One thousand houses were destroyed. The streets were filled with furniture and every description of wares, dashed down to be trampled in the mud or buried where they lay.

At night a saturnalia began. About dark, the Government commissary began the destruction of its stores. Soldiers and citizens gathered in front, catching the liquor in basins and pitchers; some with their hats and some with their boots. It took but a short time for this to make a manifestation as dread as the flames. The crowd became a howling mob, so frenzied that the officers of the law had to flee for their lives, reviving memories of 1781, when the British under Arnold rode down Richmond Hill, and, invading the city, broke open the stores and emptied the provisions and liquors into the gutters, making even the uninitiated cows and hogs drunk for days.

All through the night, crowds of men, women, and children traversed the streets, loading themselves with supplies and plunder. At midnight, soldiers drunk with vile liquor, followed by a reckless crowd as drunk as themselves, dashed in the plate-glass windows of the stores, and made a wreck of everything.

About nine o'clock on Monday morning, terrific shell explosions, rapid and continuous, added to the terror of the scene, and gave the impression that the city was being shelled by the retreating Confederate army from the south side. But the explosions were soon found to proceed from the Government arsenal and laboratory, then in flames. Later in the morning, a merciful Providence caused a lull in the breeze. The terrific explosion of the laboratory and of the arsenal caused every window in our home to break. The old plate-glass mirrors, built in the walls, were cracked and shattered.

Fort Darling was blown up, and later on the rams. It was eight o'clock when the Federal troops entered the city. It required the greatest effort to tame down the riotous, crazed mob, and induce them to take part in the struggle to save their own. The firemen, afraid of the soldiers who had obeyed the orders to light the torch, would not listen to any appeals or entreaties, and so the flames were under full headway, fanned by a southern breeze, when the Union soldiers came to the rescue.

The flouring mills caught fire from the tobacco houses, communicating it to Cary and Main Streets. Every bank was destroyed. The War Department was a mass of ruins; the Enquirer and Dispatch offices were in ashes; and the county court-house, the American Hotel, and most of the finest stores of the city were ruined.

Libby Prison and the Presbyterian church escaped. Such a reign of terror and pillage, fire and flame, fear and despair! The yelling and howling and swearing and weeping and wailing beggar description. Families houseless and homeless under the open sky!

I shall never forget General Weitzel's command, composed exclusively of colored troops, as I saw them through the dense black columns of smoke. General Weitzel had for some time been stationed on the north side of the James River, but a few miles from Richmond, and he had only to march in and take possession. He despatched Major A. H. Stevens of the Fourth Massachusetts cavalry, and Major E. E. Graves of his staff, with about a hundred mounted men, to reconnoitre the roads and works leading to Richmond. They had gone but a little distance into the Confederate lines, when they saw a shabby, old-fashioned carriage, drawn by a pair of lean, lank horses, the occupants waving a white flag. They met this flag-of-truce party at the line of fortifications, just beyond the junction of the Osborne turnpike and New Market road. The carriage contained the mayor of Richmond—Colonel Mayo—Judge Meredith of the Supreme Court, and Judge Lyons. The fourth worthy I cannot recall. Judge Lyons, our former minister to England, and one of the representative men of Virginia, made the introductions in his own characteristic way, and then Colonel Mayo, who was in command of the flag-of-truce party, handed to Major Stevens a small slip of wall paper, on which was written the following: "It is proper to formally surrender to the Federal authorities the city of Richmond, hitherto capital of the Confederate States of America, and the defences protecting it up to this time." That was all. The document was approved of, and Major Stevens most courteously accepted the terms for his commanding general, to whom it was at once transmitted, and moved his column upon the evacuated city, taking possession and saving it from ashes.

His first order was to sound the alarm bells and to take command at once of the fire department, which consisted of fourteen substitute men, those who were exempt from service because of disease, two steam fire engines, four worthless hand engines, and a large amount of hose, destroyed by the retreating half-crazed Confederates. His next order was to raise the stars and stripes over the Capitol. Quick as thought, two soldiers, one from Company E and one from Company H of the Fourth Massachusetts cavalry, crept to the summit and planted the flag of the nation. Two bright, tasteful guidons were hoisted by the halyards in place of the red cross. The living colors of the Union were greeted, while our "Warriors' banner took its flight to meet the warrior's soul."

That flag, whose design has been accredited alike to both George Washington and John Adams, was raised over Virginia by Massachusetts, in place of the one whose kinship and likeness had not, even after renewed effort, been entirely destroyed. For by the adoption of the stars and bars (three horizontal bars of equal width—the middle one white, the others red—with a blue union of nine stars in a circle) by the Confederate Congress in March, 1861, the Confederate flag was made so akin and so similar to that of the nation, as to cause confusion; so in 1863 the stars and bars was supplanted by a flag with a white field, having the battle flag (a red field charged with a blue saltier, on which were thirteen stars) for a union. This, having been mistaken for a flag of truce, was altered by covering the outer half of the field beyond the union with a vertical red bar. This was the last flag of the Confederacy.

Richmond will testify that the soldiers of Massachusetts were worthy of the honor of raising the first United States flag over her Capitol—the Capitol of the Confederacy—and also to the unvarying courtesy of Major Stevens, and the fidelity with which he kept his trust.

HUMOROUS INCIDENTS OF THE WAR.

The illustrations of this chapter are exact reproductions of cartoons published during the war in various newspapers and periodicals.

FUN FROM ENLISTMENT TO HONORABLE DISCHARGE—RECRUITS' EXCUSES—BULL RUN PLEASANTRIES—GREENHORNS IN CAMP—FUN WITH THE AWKWARD SQUAD—OFFICERS LEARNING THEIR BUSINESS—SENTRIES AND SHOULDER STRAPS—STORIES OF GRANT, LINCOLN, BUTLER, SHERMAN, ETC.—DUTCH, IRISH, AND DARKY COMEDY—EXPEDIENTS OF THE HOMESICK—ARMY CHAPLAINS—HOSPITAL HUMOR—GRANT'S "PIE ORDER"—"THROUGH VIRGINIA"—YANKEE GOOD NATURE AND PLUCK A BETTER STIMULANT THAN WHISKEY.

he hardships of campaigning, the sufferings of the hospital, the horrors of actual combat—none of these sufficed to keep down the irrepressible spirit of fun in the American soldier. From the day of his enlistment to the day of his discharge he did not cease to look upon the funny side of every situation, and the veterans of to-day talk more about the humor of the war than of privations and pitched battles. Wits in and out of the army said and did clever things, some of which have passed into the proverbs and idioms of the American people; and more than one distinguished "American humorist" laid the foundation of his reputation in connection with the war.

Humorous situations began at the very recruiting office, or the citizens' meeting which stimulated recruiting, and continued to the end of the service. It was at one of the meetings held in a New England village that the wife of a spirited citizen, whose patriotism consisted in brave words, said to him: "I thought you said you were going to enlist to-night." Well, he had thought better of it. "Take off those breeches, then, and give them to me, and I will go myself." There was not much prospect of "peace" for him in a life at home after that; so he went to the front. Countless excuses were offered by candidates for the draft in the hope of proving themselves physically disqualified for service. The man who had one leg too short was let off; but the man behind him, who pleaded that he had "both legs too short," failed to prove a double incapacity, and he wore the blue, and that creditably.

Officers who tarried too long in Washington on their way to the front were not seldom rendered uncomfortable by the remarks made to them or in their hearing. One who was eager for news from the first battle of Bull Run bought an "extra" of a newsboy who was calling, "All about the battle!" Glancing over it, he shouted after the boy: "Here! I don't see any battle in this paper." "Don't you?" said the boy. "Well, you won't see any battle if you loaf around this hotel all the time." It was of the battle of Bull Run that a wit said, it was so popular it had to be repeated the very next year, to satisfy the public demand for it. And one of the participants in this first experience of the new army said: "At Bull Run we were told that the eyes of Washington were upon us; when we knew very well that what we were most anxious about was to get our eyes on Washington." It was said of the soldiers on both sides in that battle, that their guns trembled in their hands, so that if the enemy was dodging he was almost certain to be hit, and that the conclusion arrived at by the rearward experiments of both armies was that a soldier may retreat successfully from almost any position if only he starts in time. Thus the pleasantry of the day turned to account the "baptism of fire" of some of the bravest troops that ever wore blue or gray.

Once in camp, the school-boy spirit revelled in larks of every description. A few weeks of experience developed military manners and prepared the recruit to enjoy the greenness of the newer comers. On drill, a new recruit was sure to get his toes exactly where a "vet" wanted to drop the butt of his musket as he ordered arms, and if there was a mud-puddle within a yard of him he was sure to "dress" into it. The new men were sent to the officers' quarters on the most absurd errands, usually in quest of some luxury which, fresh from the comforts of home, they still regarded as a necessity. The drilling of the awkward squad was a never-ending source of amusement; for some men are constitutionally incapable of moving in a machine-like harmony with others, and these were continually out of place. One of them was a loose-jointed fellow from, say, Nantucket, who was so thorough a patriot that he was always longing for home, and he met every hardship and discouragement with a sigh and the wish that he was back in Nantucket. He was exceedingly awkward at drill. He seemed to make every movement on the "bias." One day, in responding to a command, he figured it out so badly as to find himself all alone, several yards away from the rest of the squad. All at sea, he said: "Captain, where ought I to be now?" The captain, thoroughly out of patience, shouted back: "Why, back in Nantucket, gol darn you!" There was the Irishman who said he had spent two years in the cavalry learning to turn his toes in, and two years in the infantry learning to turn his toes out. "Divil take such a sarvice," said he; "there's no plazing the blackguards, anyhow."

The drill jokes were not all on the men. The officers, who at the beginning were nonmilitary citizens like their soldiers, had their business to learn. Indeed, it was not an easy matter at first to preserve thorough discipline, because of the frequent equality, in military knowledge, between the officers and the men. It was said that the American soldier was perfectly willing to endure hardships, to fight, and if necessary to die, for his country; but the hardest thing for him to submit to was to be bossed around by his superior officer, who might, like enough, be his next-door neighbor at home. One captain, who had abandoned railroading for the war, in his excitement over the necessity of halting his men suddenly, true to his former calling, shouted out, "Down brakes!" And another, who had forgotten the command for breaking ranks, dismissed his company with the order, "Adjourn for rations!" It was a Georgian commandant of a Home Guard who, while showing his men off before a visiting officer, invented his own tactics on the basis of "common sense." His first order after falling in was, "In two ranks, git!" It was not long before he had his men pretty well mixed up; but, equal to the occasion, he shouted, "Disentangle to the front, march!" which was as effective as anything in "Hardee's Tactics." Drill sergeants were often peremptory fellows, and they sometimes called on their men to perform difficult feats. One under-sized sergeant had much trouble with an Irish recruit, whose enormous height had given him the habit of looking down, and he could not keep his chin up to the military angle. Finally the sergeant reached up to the Irishman's chin (for which he had to stand on tip-toe) and poked it up, saying, "That's the place for it; now don't let us see your head down again."—"Am I always to be like this, sergeant?" asked the recruit. "Yes, sir."—"Then I'll say good by to yez, sergeant, for I'll niver see yez again." It was a very fresh recruit who was found on his sentry post sitting down and cleaning his gun, which he had taken entirely to pieces. The officer who discovered him rebuked him sternly and asked, "Are you the sentinel here?"—"Well, I'm a sort of a sentinel."—"Well, I'm a sort of officer of the day."—"All right," said the undismayed recruit, "just hold on till I get my gun together, and I'll give you a sort of a salute."

The military rule that a sentry must challenge everybody, and not pass unchallenged even those whom he knew to be all right, was often as slow in taking possession of the officers' minds as those of the least experienced of the men. A full-uniformed lieutenant, much disgusted at the "Who goes there?" of one of his own company on guard, expressed his sentiments by indignantly exclaiming, "Ass!" To which the sentry promptly responded, "Advance, Ass, and give the countersign!" Not infrequently general officers and high dignitaries had experiences with the guards of their own camps. It is said that every great general in history has been halted by a guard, the approach of a well-known superior officer giving the sentry an opportunity of showing off his discipline. General McClellan was not only halted on a certain occasion, but forced to dismount and call up the officer of the guard before a sentry would let him pass. General Sherman, who used to see for himself what was going on among his men, under the incognito afforded by a rather unmilitary dress, once interfered with a teamster who was pounding a mule, and told him who he was. "Oh, that's played out!" said the mule driver; "every man that comes along here with an old brown coat and a stove-pipe hat claims to be General Sherman." This suggests the story of a mule driver in the army who was swearing at and kicking a span of balky mules, when the general, who was annoyed at his profanity, ordered him to stop. "Who are you?" said the mule driver. "I'm the commander of the brigade," said the general. "I'm the commander of these mules, and I'll do as I please, or resign, and you can take my place!" The general passed on. Even the President of the United States had his encounter with a guard, and was for a short time kept waiting outside General Grant's tent under the order, suggested by his somewhat clerical appearance, "No sanitary folks allowed inside!"

Lincoln always made friends among the soldiers. On one occasion he came on some men hewing logs for a hospital, and remarking, with a reminiscence of his rail-splitting days, that he "used to be pretty good on the chop," made the chips fly for a while like a veteran lumberman. The President's half-pathetic saying, that he had "no influence with this administration," has passed into history; but less familiar is his remark, when some one applied to him for a pass to go into Richmond, and he said, "I don't know about that; I have given passes to about two hundred and fifty thousand men to go there during the last two years, and not one of them has got there yet."

Ben Butler was credited with a lawyer-like disinclination to be cross-questioned when he gave orders. Word was brought to him that his favorite horse, "Almond-eye," had fallen into a ravine and been killed, and he called an orderly and told him to go to the ravine and skin the horse. "What, is Almond-eye dead?" asked the man. "Never you mind whether he is or not," said the general, "you obey orders." The man came back in about two hours and reported that he had finished. "Has it taken you all this time to skin a horse?" asked Butler. "Oh, no; it took me half an hour to catch him," was the reply. "You don't mean to say you killed him?" shouted the irate general. "My orders were to skin him," said the soldier, "and I obeyed them without asking any questions."

Officers and men alike showed much wit in their way of dealing with impossible or unwelcome orders. A lieutenant protested against an order to take a squad of men across a swamp where he knew the depth was enough to drown every man of them. He was sternly rebuked by his superior, who ordered him peremptorily to make the crossing, telling him that his requisition would be honored for whatever he might require for the purpose. So he made a requisition for "twenty men eighteen feet long to cross a swamp fifteen feet deep."

We will give another of the many similar stories. After a long march a captain ordered, as a sanitary precaution, that the men should change their under-shirts. The orderly sergeant suggested that half of the men had only one shirt each. The captain hesitated a moment and then said: "Military orders must be obeyed. Let the men, then, change with each other."

Orders against unauthorized foraging were very strict. A youthful soldier was stopped on his way into camp with a fine goose slung over his shoulder, and he was required to account for it. "Well," said he, "I was coming through the village whistling 'Yankee Doodle,' and this confounded rebel of a goose came out and hissed me; so I shot it."

"Where did you get that turkey?" said the colonel of the —— Texas regiment to one of his amiable recruits that came into camp with a fine bird.

"Stole it," was the laconic reply.

"Ah!" said the colonel, triumphantly, to a bystander, "you see my boys may steal, but they won't lie."

During a battle the interest in the work was so intense as to leave small room for fear, either of the enemy or of superior officers. An Irish private was ordered to take up the colors when the color-bearer was shot down. "By the holy St. Patrick, colonel," said he, "there's so much good shooting here, I haven't a minute's time to waste fooling with that thing."

The desire to get home for a few days developed much ingenuity among the enlisted men. "What do you want, Pat?" asked General Rosecrans, as he rode along the line, inquiring into the wants of his men. "A furlough!" said Pat. "How long has your sister been dead?" asked a sympathetic comrade of a soldier who had obtained a leave on account of the family trouble. "About ten years," was the cool reply. General Thomas asked a man who applied for leave to go and see his wife how long it was since he had seen her. "Over three months," was the answer. "Three months!" exclaimed the general; "why, I haven't seen my wife for three years!" "That may be," said the soldier, "but you see, general, me and my wife ain't o' that sort."

The "intelligent contraband," the irrepressible darky, is one of the few types of mankind that furnish as much fun in real life as on the stage. He was a source of constant amusement in the army. A colored refugee from the Confederate lines brought word, as the only news worth mentioning (referring to himself), that "a man in Culpeper lost a mighty valuable nigger this mornin'." The driver of a commissary wagon exemplified the general non-combativeness of his race, when, in describing his emotions during an attack on the train, he said he felt "like every hair of his head was a bugle, an' dey was all a-playin' 'Home, Sweet Home.'" An officer tried to induce his servant, who was a refugee, to enlist, saying he must trust the Lord to keep him safe. "Well," he said, "I did trust de Lord when I was tryin' to get into de Union lines, but I dun dare resk Him again!"

The army chaplain now and then ran against the rough soldier wit. One of them, who took a practical view of his responsibility for the souls of his regiment, welcomed some recruits with the suggestion that, having joined the army of their country, they should now also join the army of the Lord. "What bounty does He give?" was the irreverent rejoinder. Even in hospital the disposition to look on the humorous side of life—or of death—never forsook men. One who had lost three fingers held up the maimed member and sorrowfully regretted that he "never could hold a full hand again." A pale-faced sufferer in a hospital near a large city was asked by a visiting lady if she could not do something for him. No. Could she not bathe his head? "You may if you want to very much," he replied; "but if you do, you will be the fourteenth lady that has bathed my head this morning." It was an Irish surgeon who remarked that "the man who has lost his finger makes more noise about it than the man who has lost his head." A nurse was shocked one morning to find two attendants noisily hammering and sawing at one end of a ward where a very sick man was lying. In reply to her questions, they said they were making a coffin. "Who for?" "Him"—pointing to the sick man. "Is he going to die?" she asked, much distressed. "The doctor says he is, an' I guess he knows what he give him!" It was a Confederate guerilla who comforted himself, while lying on his hospital cot, with the reflection, "I reckon I killed as many of them as they did of me."

A soldier was wounded by a shell at Fort Wagner. He was going to the rear. "Wounded by a shell?" some one asked. "Yes," he coolly answered. "I was right under the durned thing when the bottom dropped out."

The occurrences in the enemy's country, and stories that originated there, furnished no small portion of the humor that was current during the war. "Where does this road lead to?" asked the lieutenant in command of a reconnoitering party. "It leads to h——!" was the surly reply of the unregenerate rebel thus interrogated. "Well, by the appearance of the inhabitants of this country, I should judge that I'm most there," was the retort. An old man in Georgia was called upon to declare which side he took, and, uncertain as to the identity of his captors, he said: "I ain't took no side; but both sides hev took me!" It must have been his wife who said: "I ain't neither Secesh nor Union—jest Baptist."

The devotion of Southern women to the Confederacy has often been remarked. One of the minor officers of the army, who marched with Sherman to the sea, and who states that he tramped, all told, at least two thousand miles during the war through the South, says that he saw many Southern men who were loyal to the Union, and who regretted the secession of their respective States, but he saw only one Southern woman whom he even suspected to be Union in sentiment. He saw this woman during a foraging expedition in connection with the march to the sea. He had charge of a squad of thirteen men who had marched through the woods some distance away from the army. As they rounded a sharp curve in the road, they suddenly came upon a house almost covered with foliage. In front of the house, and only a few yards from the men, was a woman picking up chips. Her back was toward the soldiers, and she had not noticed their approach. The commanding officer motioned to his men to stop, and, tip-toeing up to the side of the woman, he put his arm around her waist and kissed her. Stepping back a pace or two, he waited for the bitter denunciation and abuse that he was sure would come. The woman, however, straightened herself up, looked at the officer for a moment, and then said slowly: "You'll find me right here every morning a-picking up chips." The officer said he strongly suspected that she was disloyal to the South.

A military peculiarity of General Bragg's was touched on in the remark that, when he died and approached the gate of heaven and was invited in, the first thing he'd do would be to "fall back." Gen. W. T. Sherman never seemed to suit the Confederates, no matter what he did. One of the prisoners who fell into the hands of his army gave the following graphic expression of the Southern idea of the general: "Sherman gits on a hill, flops his wings and crows; then he yells out: 'Attention, creation! by kingdoms, right wheel, march!' And then we git!" It was a solitary relic left behind after one of Sherman's advances, that, communing with himself, said: "Well, I'm badly whipped and somewhat demoralized, but no man can say I am scattered."

Among the humorous miscellanies of the war, General Grant's "pie order" must have an immortal place. It was during Grant's early campaign in Eastern Missouri that a lieutenant in command of the advance guard inspired the mistress of a wayside house with exceptional alacrity in supplying the wants of himself and men by announcing himself to be Brigadier-General Grant. Later in the day the general himself came to the same house and was turned away with the information that General Grant and staff had been there that morning and eaten everything in the house but one pumpkin pie. Giving her half a dollar, he told her to keep that pie till he sent for it. That evening the army went into camp some miles beyond this place, and at the dress parade that was ordered, the following special order was published:

"HEADQUARTERS, ARMY IN THE FIELD.    

"SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. —.

"Lieutenant Wickfield, of the —th Indiana Cavalry, having on this day eaten everything in Mrs. Selvidge's house, at the crossing of the Ironton and Pocahontas and Black River and Cape Girardeau roads, except one pumpkin pie, Lieutenant Wickfield is hereby ordered to return with an escort of one hundred cavalry and eat that pie also.

"U. S. GRANT,            
"Brigadier-General Commanding."    

Virginia mud and Virginia swamps were celebrated by the invention of the response to the question, "Did you go through Virginia?" "Yes—in a number of places;" and the exclamation of the trooper who was fording a stream flanked by miles of swamp on either side: "Blowed if I don't think we have struck this stream lengthwise."

It is impossible here to attempt more than a suggestion of the combination of good nature and pluck that, all through the dreadful days of the war, rendered hardships endurable, lent courage to the faint-hearted, and cheered the low-spirited. "The humor of the war" was no mere ebullition of school-boy fun; it was as potent a factor in accomplishing the results of the war as powder and shot—a stimulant that carried men over hard places better than whiskey.

The colonel of a South Carolina regiment, having returned from his furlough with a pair of high top boots—boots were then worth seven or eight hundred dollars—had the temerity to run the gauntlet of a neighboring brigade, and heard comments like these: "I say, mister, better git out'r them smokestacks; know you're in thar 'cause we kin see yer head stickin' out." "Boys, the kern'l 's gone into winter quarters." "What mout be the price o' them nail kags?" etc. An officer wearing noticeably bushy whiskers was unfeelingly invited to "come out from behind that bunch of har! 'Taint no use t' say yer aint in thar, 'cause yer ears is workin' monstrous powerful." It was rarely safe, under these circumstances, to answer with either wit or abuse.

Our soldiers had little respect for what were known as "bombproofs"—the fellows who had easy positions in the rear. On one occasion a smartly dressed young officer belonging to this kindred cantered up to a depot where a regiment of men were awaiting transfer. As soon as they saw him they began whooping: "Oh, my! aint he pooty!" "Say, mister, whar'd ye git that biled shut?" "Does yer grease that har with ham fat, or how?" And so they plied the poor fellow with all manner of questions concerning his age, occupation, religious and political convictions, that were calculated to make a man feel uncomfortable. One feather, however, broke the camel's back. A long, cadaverous specimen of humanity, who had evidently been making a comical survey of the victim—his handsome uniform, and well-polished boots—taking a step or two forward as if to show his intense interest, solemnly drawled out: "Was yer ra-a-ly born so, or did they put yer together by corntract? Strikes me yer must have got yere in a drove or ben picked afore you was ripe." Then somebody suggested that "sich a nice-lookin' rooster ought to git down and scratch for a wurrum"; and amid the laughter that followed, he was glad to put spurs to his horse and gallop out of hearing.

Cavalrymen were called by the infantry "buttermilk rangers," and the musicians came in for more than their share of good-natured chaff. Rather than be tormented, the latter would sometimes leave the line of march and go through the fields, thus avoiding the frequent invitation to "give us a toot on yer old funnel," or "brace up with yer blow-pipe." One day a bass drummer, plodding along, was attracted by a pitiful voice coming from a group of men resting by the roadside: "Mister, oh, mister, please come yere?" Turning in the direction, he found it proceeded from a woe-begone-looking Mississippian, whose sickly appearance was well calculated to arouse the sympathy of a tender-hearted musician. "Well, what can I do for you?" said the man with the drum. "Oh, a heap, a heap. I've got a powerful misery, and I thought as how you mout set down yere and pick a chune for a sick man on that ar thing you tote around on your stomach." Shouts of laughter told him that he was "sold," and he never heard the last of the applications for the soothing tones of "that ar thing."

This drollery of expression cropped out even amid the turmoil and excitement of the battlefield. The story is told of a young fellow who was under fire at Manassas for the first time, one of those hundreds of thousands on both sides behind whose inexperience was too much pride of character to permit them to show the white feather, and whose fear of the contempt of their comrades, as well as of the disgrace at home, made them good fighters. He had become pretty well warmed up and was doing excellent service when suddenly he caught sight of a rabbit loping across the field between the lines. Dropping his gun, as he was about to shoot, he looked dolefully at the little animal for an instant and then yelled with honest pathos: "Go it, cotton tail, go it. I'm ez skeered ez you be, an' ef I hadn't a reputation to lose I'd run too."

At the battle of Kinston, N. C., Gen. N. E. Evans, of South Carolina, familiarly known in the old army as "Shanks," posted a body of raw militia at the crossing of a creek, but they were met by a severe fire and forced to give way. In the disorder that followed, the general caught one of the fugitives and with a number of emphatic adjectives demanded: "What are you running away for, you blank, blank coward? You ought to be ashamed of yourself." "I ain't runnin' away, gineral, I'm jes' skeered. Why, them fellers over thar are shootin' bullets at us big as watermillions, boo-hoo-hoo! One on 'em went right peerst my head—right peerst—an' I want ter go home."

"Well, why didn't you shoot back, sir? You are crying like a baby."

"I know it, gineral, I know it, boo-hoo! and I wish I was a baby, and a gal baby too, and then I wouldn't have ben cornscripted."

This reminds us of another North Carolina story. During the Rebellion the staff of General Wise was riding through a rather forlorn part of that State, and a young Virginian of the staff concluded to have a little fun at the expense of a long-legged specimen of the genus homo who wore a very shabby gray uniform and bestrode a worm fence at the roadside. Reining in his horse, he accosted him with "How are you, North Carolina?"

"How are you, Virginia?" was the ready response.

The staff officer continued: "The blockade on turpentine makes you rather hard up, don't it? No sale for tar now?"

"Well—yes—" was the slow response. "We sell all our tar to Jeff Davis now."

"The thunder you do! What on earth does the President want of your tar?"

North Carolina answered, "He puts it on the heels of Virginians to make them stick on the battlefield."

The staff rode on.

Speaking of General Evans, an incident is recalled concerning his brother-in-law, Gen. Mart Gary, who succeeded Wade Hampton in the command of the Hampton Legion. Gary employed many phrases, especially in battle, that are not often heard in polite society. His old body-servant, commenting on this habit, gave the following description of the manner in which his master stormed and swore at some disobedience of orders during one of the fights.

"I golly, massa, but de way de ole man moub about dat day was 'scrutiatin'. He went dis away an' he went dat away wabin his sword like a scythe blade. He went yere and he went dar; but to hear de ole man open battery on de hard wuds in de langidge and jes' frow um aroun'—frow um aroun' loose—I declar, boss, it were plum nigh like preachin'."

At first, the necessity for discipline was not recognized by the raw Southern volunteers, and instances of the verdancy which prevailed were common. When a picket guard at Harper's Ferry, where our first troops assembled, was being detailed for duty, one of the men stoutly protested against any such arrangement, because, as he remarked, "What's the use of gwine out thar t' keep ev'rybody off? We've all kim here t' hev a fight with the Yankees, and ef yer keep fellers out thar t' skeer 'em off, how in thunder are we gwine to hev a scrimmage?"

An officer, while inspecting the sentinel lines one day, asked a picket what he would do if he saw a body of men coming. "Halt 'em, and demand the countersign, sir!" "But suppose they wouldn't halt?" "Then I'd shoot." "Suppose they didn't stop then, what would you do?" "I reckon I'd form a line, sir." "A line? What kind of a line?" "A bee-line straight for camp, and run like thunder!"

A young lieutenant, fresh from a country drill ground and sadly ignorant of the tactics of Hardee or Scott, didn't know exactly what to do when the commanding officer ordered him one morning to "mount guard." He marched off with his squad of men, however, and about an hour afterwards was found sitting under a tree and talking to some one in the branches. "Well, lieutenant, have you mounted guard?" "Oh, yes, sir," was the cool reply; "got 'lev'n up this tree and t'others 'r' over yander roost'n' in another."

The Southern negroes also furnished abundant humor of their peculiar kind. During the occupation of Yorktown, Va., a shell entering camp made a muddle of a lot of pots and kettles. Mingo, the cook, at once started off for a safe place in the rear. On the way he was met by one of his brother servants, who inquired: "Wot's de matter, Mingo? Whar's yo' gwine wid such a hurrification?"

"'Ain't gwine nowhar p't'c'lar; jis' gittin' outen de way dem waggin hubs dey's t'rowin' at us."

"Eh, eh, Mingo, I 'spects dat's a sign you's a wicked nigger, for ef yo' was a good Chrishun yo' nebber be skeer by dem shell. Ef yo' listen to de Good Book, yo' find dat Massa up yander am pintin' eb'ry one ob em, an' know 'zactly whar to drap um!"

"Da' mebbe so, mebbe so; but yo' can't fool dis chile. Hear me, Jupiter. Dar's too much powder in dem t'ings for the good Lor' to meddle wid 'em, and dis chile ain't gwine ter bu'n hisself, needer. And dar's dem Minnie bullets, too. When dey come flyin' troo de air singin' de chune, whar is yer, whar is yer? I ain't gwine for to stop and say whar I is fur de bessest cotton patch in the lan'. I'se a twenty-two-hundred-dollar nigger, Jupiter, an' I'se gwine t' tek keer ob what b'long t' massa."

It is said that the body-servant of Stonewall Jackson always knew when he was about to engage in a battle. Some one asked him how he came to be so much in the confidence of his master. "Lor', sir," was the reply, "de gin'rul nebber tell me nuffin'. De way I know is dis: massa say he prayer twice a day—mornin' an' night; but w'en he git up two or t'ree time in de night to pray, den I begin to pack de haversack de fus' t'ing, ca'se I know dere'll be de ole boy to pay right away."

In the early part of the war there was much equality between the officers and privates. Many of the latter were socially and intellectually superior to the former. In the course of an altercation one day, a subordinate made an irritating remark, when his captain exclaimed: "If you repeat that, I'll lay down my rank and fight you." "Lay down your rank!" was the indignant response. "That won't make you a gentleman. A coward ought to fight with straps on his shoulders, but it takes a gentleman to fight for eleven dollars a month!"

The women of the South furnished what may be called the nerve-force of the war. From the very beginning they made it disgraceful for any man of fighting age to stay at home without sufficient cause. Their earliest associations were soldiers' sewing societies. Yet not all of the ladies were at first adepts in fashioning men's attire, and sometimes comical results followed. Stockings failed to match, and buttons would be sewed on the wrong side of a man's shirt or breeches. In one instance a friend of the writer turned over to the matron president of her society in Charleston a pair of trousers with one leg. "Why, what in the world did you make that thing for?" was asked by the old lady. "Oh—er—er, why, that's for a one-legged soldier, of course," gasped the young patriot in her confusion. "That's all right, Miss Georgia; very thoughtful, very thoughtful. But," looking at them quizzically through her spectacles, "Miss Georgia, you've got 'em buttoned up behind."

After the battle of Leesburg, Va., a group of ladies visited the wounded, and seeing one of the latter prone upon his stomach, the sympathetic question was asked, as would be quite natural: "Where are you hurt?" The man, an Irishman, pretended not to hear, and replied: "Purthy well, I thank ye, mum." "But where were you wounded?" again fired away one of the ladies. "Faith, it's nothing at all, at all, that I want, leddies. I think I'll be on me way to Richmond in about tin days," again answered Pat, with a peculiarly distressed look, as if he wished to avoid further conversation on a delicate subject.

Thinking that he was deaf, an old lady, who had remained in the background, now put her mouth down to his ear and shouted: "We—want—to—know—where—you—are—hurt—where—you—are—wounded— so—we—can—do—something—for—you!"

Pat, evidently finding that if the bombardment continued much longer he would have to strike his flag, concluded to do so at once, and with a face as rosy as a boiled lobster and a humorous twinkle in his eye replied: "Sure, leddies, it's not deaf that I am; but since ye're determined to know where I've been hurted, it's—it's where I can't sit down to take my males. The rascally bullet entered the behind o' me coat!"

Sudden locomotion followed, and the story circulated among the fair sex like quicksilver on a plate of glass; but while Paddy had plenty of sympathy, the pestered him with no more questions of "Where are you hurt?"

HENRY W. B. HOWARD.