Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 31.djvu/170

 162 Southern Historical Society Papers.

habits, and utterly regardless of personal comfort, he was always mindful of the comfort and welfare of his troops. An incident which occurred at Atlanta illustrates his habitual humanity to pris- oners. A captured Federal officer was deprived of his hat and blankets by a needy soldier of Cleburne's command, and Cleburne failing to detect the offender or to recover the property, sent the officer a hat of his own and his only pair of blankets.

Among his attachments was a very strong one for his adjutant- general, Captain Irving A. Buck, a boy in years, but a man in al soldierly qualities, who for nearly two years of the war shared Cle- burne's labors during the day and his blankets at night.

He was also much attached to his youngest brother, who was killed in one of Morgan's fights in southwestern Virginia. This brother inherited the brave qualities that belonged to the name, and after being promoted from the ranks for " distinguished gallantry," fell in a charge at the head of his regiment.

Cleburne had accent enough to betray his Irish birth. This ac- cent, perceptible in ordinary conversation, grew in times of excite- ment into a strongly marked brogue. He was accustomed to refer to Ireland as the "old country," and always in the tone of a son speaking of an absent mother. He possessed considerable powers of wit and oratory, the national heritage of the Irish people; but his wit, perhaps characterized by the stern influences that had sur- rounded his life, was rather grim than humorous. He had a marked literary turn, and was singularly well versed in the British poets, in- deed, he had at one period of his life wooed the muse himself, and with no inconsiderable success, as was evidenced by some fragments of his poetical labors which he had preserved.

It was known that he had a brother in the Federal army, but he seldom mentioned his name, and never without classifying him with the mass of the Irish who had espoused the Federal cause, of whom he always spoke in terms of strong indignation. His high integrity revolted at the want of consistency and morality shown in the course of that class of Irish who, invoking the sympathies of the world in behalf of " oppressed Ireland," gave the powerful aid of their arms to enslave another people.

Cleburne's remains were buried after the battle of Franklin, and yet rest in the Polk Cemetery, near Columbia, Term. Generals Cranberry and Strahl, brave comrades who fell in the same action, were buried at his side. On the march to Franklin, a few days be- fore his death, Cleburne halted at this point, and in one of the gen-