Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 33.djvu/268

 264 Southern Historical Society Papers.

pretty thoroughly relieved of its stores, and the 4th of July was passed very pleasantly. Corporal Henderson, while in a cherry tree, gathering fruit, was wounded by a minie ball and carried to hospital in the afternoon. Fuller H. is the son of Rev. S. Hender- son, D. D., a noted Baptist minister of Alabama, and is a true and unflinching soldier. (Note. The poor fellow was editor, after the war, of the Tuskegee News, and fora few weeks, at his request, I edited the paper for him, as he was the owner, publisher, printer, editor and job printer, and overcrowded with his duties. During the time I wrote some mysterious orders, as if emanating from a Kuklux organization, signing them by order of "Grand Cyclops," calling upon the Klan to meet at a certain cave in the woods, near the town of Tuskegee, for the transaction of important business. Fuller, the night of the publication of the News, got out some pos- ters and pasted them on the doors of certain stores in the town, and excitement and alarm was created by our innocent joke. There was no kuklux organization in or near Tuskegee, and it was our boyish prank. The result was that more than one carpet bagger left Alabama for his late home in the North.)

In Company with Capt. James P. Smith, A. I. G., and late of Stonewall Jackson's staff, Capt. Greene of the 6th Ala., and Sergt. Reid of my company, I returned to town in the morning and pro- curred some envelopes, writing paper, preserved fruits, etc. The enemy's sharpshooters from Maryland Heights fired pretty close to us repeatedly, and bullets fell so rapidly it was dangerous to walk over the town, but as we were on a frolic, resolved to see everything and dare everything, we heeded the danger very little. We re- turned to camp near Halltown.

July 6. Rodes' and Ramseur's divisions crossed the Potomac at Shepherdstown, and marched through the famous town of Sharps- burg. Signs of the bloody battle fought there in Sept. 1862, be- tween Lee and McClellan, were everywhere visible. Great holes, made by cannon balls and shells, were to be seen in the houses and chimneys, and trees, fences and houses showed countless marks made by innumerable minie balls. I took a very refreshing bath in Antietam creek, upon whose banks we bivouacked. Memories of scores of army comrades and childhood's friends, slain on the banks of this stream, came before my mind and kept away sleep for a long while. The preservation of such an undesirable union of States is not worth the life of a single southerner, lost on that mem-