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HAVE remarked in a previous chapter with regard to the men be longing to the battalion which I recruited in Arkansas, that they seemed to be under the idea that they were going on a pleasant holiday excursion, rather than that they were engaging in a very serious business, which would demand all their energies, if the object they had in view was to be secured. I frankly confess that I was not altogether free from the feeling which prevailed, not merely with the young fellows like my Arkansas recruits, who were glad of any pretext for getting away from their rather dismal surroundings, and who thought that fighting the Yankees would be good fun, but with all classes of society. The expression constantly heard, that one Southerner could whip five Yankees, was not mere bounce, but it really represented what nearly everybody thought; and very few had any doubt as to the speedy end of the conflict that had been begun, or that it would end in the recognition of Southern independence: It took time to convince our people that they had no holiday task to perform; but the difficulty of effectively forcing the Federal lines, in spite of victories won by