Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/373

 General M. P. Lowrey. 367

nine miles southwest of Corinth was quietly pursuing my theological studies had the pastoral care of some religious congregations to whom I was much attached, and who cherished the warmest affection for me as their spiritual guide and instructor. In political questions I took no part, as I did not think it became a minister of the gospel to engage in the heated discussions that then prevailed throughout the country, and naturally led to the indulgence of immoderate feel- ings and passions. But our people were all aroused, and were, to a man, for the Confederacy. My feelings ran in the same channel, and there was no neutral ground to occupy. I was called out in several public meetings, and gave free expression to my sentiments. I was also appointed beforehand to address public meetings, and was thus brought prominently before the public in a manner I had endeavored to avoid. As I had had some experience in military service in the Mexican war, I was soon urged to accept the command of men, and was more than once waited on and urged to do so, but positively declined.

But in the fall of 1861, the Legislature of Mississippi passed an act calling out ten thousand men for sixty days, to arm and equip themselves for an emergency. My neighbors raised a company and elected me captain of it, urging that I could go with them for sixty days and that it was my duty to do so. I could not refuse. In a few days I was with my company at Corinth, the place of rendezvous; and at the organization of a regiment, I was almost unanimously elected colonel of it. About the first of December, my regiment being fully organized (which was numbered at the State capital " the Fourth regiment of sixty days' volunteers"), I was ordered to Bowl- ing Green, Kentucky, with other State troops, all of which were commanded by General Reuben Davis, who had been made a major- general in the State service. My men having left comfortable homes in the cold winter, and being unused to camp-life, nearly all got sick. Measles and pneumonia prevailed to an alarming extent, and many good men died. At the close of our term we were discharged, and I felt that my military career was at an end. I attempted to return to civil life and to the care of my Christian congregations.

But after the fall of Fort Donelson, the clamor for my services in the field so increased that it was irresistible. Many who had been with me in the sixty days' State service, and who wanted to volun- teer for the war, begged me to go with them. Old ladies and old gentlemen earnestly entreated me to go with their sons. Tishomingo county had lost a regiment at Fort Donelson (the Twenty-sixth Mis-