The Citizen Soldier - Beatty John Wesley

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galloped forward, and fired at the retreating squad. It was the best shot I could make, and I am forced to say it was a very poor one, for no one fell. On second thought, it occurred to me that it would have been criminal to have killed one of these men, for his death could have had no possible effect on the result of the war.

      Huttonville is a very small place at the foot of Cheat mountain. We halted there perhaps one hour, to await the arrival of General McClellan; and when he came up, were ordered forward to secure a mountain pass. It is thought fifteen hundred secessionists are a few miles ahead, near the top of the mountain. Two Indiana regiments and one battery are with us. More troops are probably following.

      The man who owns the farm on which we are encamped is, with his family, sleeping in the woods to-night, if, indeed, he sleeps at all.

      14. The Ninth and Fourth Ohio, Fifteenth Indiana, and one company of cavalry, started up the mountain between seven and eight o'clock. The Colonel being unwell, I followed with the Third. Awful rumors were afloat of fortifications and rebels at the top; but we found no fortifications, and as for the rebels, they were scampering for Staunton as fast as their legs could carry them.

      This mountain scenery is magnificent. As we climbed the Cheat the views were the grandest I ever looked upon. Nests of hills, appearing like eggs of the mountain; ravines so dark that one could not guess their depth; openings, the ends of which seemed lost in a blue mist; broken-backed mountains, long mountains, round mountains, mountains sloping gently to the summit; others so steep a squirrel could hardly climb them; fatherly mountains, with their children clustered about them, clothed in birch, pine, and cedar; mountain streams, sparkling now in the sunlight, then dashing down into apparently fathomless abysses.

      It was a beautiful day, and the march was delightful. The road is crooked beyond description, but very solid and smooth.

      The farmer on whose premises we are encamped has returned from the woods. He has discovered that we are not so bad as we were reported. Most of the negroes have been left at home. Many were in camp to-day with corn-bread, pies, and cakes to sell. Fox, my servant, went out this afternoon and bought a basket of bread. He brought in two chickens also, which he said were presented to him. I suspect Fox does not always tell the truth.

      16. The Fourteenth Indiana and one company of cavalry went to the summit this morning to fortify.

      The Colonel has gone to Beverly. The boys repeat his Rich mountain speech with slight variations: "Men, there are ten thousand secessionists in Rich mountain, with forty rifled cannon, well fortified. There's bloody work ahead. You are going to a butcher-shop rather than a battle. Ten thousand men and forty rifled cannon! Hostler, you d—d scoundrel, why don't you wipe Jerome's nose?" Jerome is the Colonel's horse, known in camp as the White Bull.

      Conway, who has been detailed to attend to the Colonel's horses, is almost as good a speech-maker as the Colonel. This, in brief, is Conway's address to the White Bull:

      "Stand still there, now, or I'll make yer stand still. Hold up yer head there, now, or I'll make yer hold it up. Keep quiet; what the h—ll yer 'bout there, now? D—n you! do you want me to hit you a lick over the snoot, now—do you? Are you a inviten' me to pound you over the head with a saw-log? D—n yer ugly pictures, whoa!"

      18. This afternoon, when riding down to Huttonville, I met three or four hundred sorry-looking soldiers. They were without arms. On inquiry, I found they were a part of the secession army, who, finding no way of escape, had come into our lines and surrendered. They were badly dressed, and a hard, dissolute-looking lot of men. To use the language of one of the soldiers, they were "a milk-sickly set of fellows," and would have died off probably without any help from us if they had been kept in the mountains a little longer. They were on their way to Staunton. General McClellan had very generously provided them with provisions for three days, and wagons to carry the sick and wounded; and so, footsore, weary, and chopfallen, they go over the hills.

      An unpleasant rumor is in camp to-night, to the effect that General Patterson has been defeated at Williamsport. This, if true, will counterbalance our successes in Western Virginia, and make the game an even one.

      The Southern soldiers mentioned above are encamped for the night a little over a mile from here. About dusk I walked over to their camp. They were gathered around their fires preparing supper. Many of them say they were deceived, and entered the service because they were led to believe that the Northern army would confiscate their property, liberate their slaves, and play the devil generally. As they thought this was true, there was nothing left for them to do but to take up arms and defend themselves.

      While we were at Buckhannon, an old farmer-looking man visited us daily, bringing tobacco, corn-bread, and cucumber pickles. This innocent old gentleman proves to have been a spy, and obtained his reward in the loss of a leg at Rich mountain.

      19. To-day, eleven men belonging to a company of cavalry which accompanied the Fourteenth Indiana to the Summit, were sent out on a scouting expedition. When about ten miles from camp, on the opposite side of the mountain, they halted, and while watering their horses were fired upon. One man was killed and three wounded. The other seven fled. Colonel Kimball sent out a detachment to bring in the wounded; but whether it succeeded or not I have not heard.

      A musician belonging to the Fourth Ohio, when six miles out of Beverly, on his way to Phillippi, was fired upon and instantly killed. So goes what little there is of war in Western Virginia.

      20. The most interesting of all days in the mountains is one on which the sky is filled with floating clouds, not hiding it entirely, but leaving here and there patches of blue. Then the shadows shift from place to place, as the moving clouds either let in the sunshine or exclude it. Standing at my tent-door at eleven o'clock in the morning, with a stiff breeze going, and the clouds on the wing, we see a peak, now in the sunshine, then in the shadow, and the lights and shadows chasing each other from point to point over the mountains, presenting altogether a panorama most beautiful to look upon, and such an one as God only can present.

      I can almost believe now that men become, to some extent, like the country in which they live. In the plain country the inhabitants learn to traffic, come to regard money-getting as the great object in life, and have but a dim perception of those higher emotions from which spring the noblest acts. In a mountain country God has made many things sublime, and some things very beautiful. The rugged, the smooth, the sunshine, and the shadow meet one at every turn. Here are peaks getting the earliest sunlight of the morning, and the latest of the evening; ravines so deep the light of day can never penetrate them; bold, rugged, perpendicular rocks, which have breasted the storms for ages; gentle slopes, swelling away until their summits seem to dip in the blue sky; streams, cold and clear, leaping from crag to crag, and rushing down nobody knows whither. Like the country, may we not look to find the people unpolished, rugged and uneven, capable of the noblest heroism or the most infernal villainy—their lives full of lights and shadows, elevations and depressions?

      The mountains, rising one above another, suggest, forcibly enough, the infinite power of the Creator, and when the peaks come in contact with the clouds it requires but little imagination to make one feel that God, as at Sinai, has set His foot upon the earth, and that earth and heaven are really very near each other.

      21. This morning, at two o'clock, I was rattled up by a sentinel, who had come to camp in hot haste to inform me that he had seen and fired upon a body of twenty-five or more men, probably the advance guard of the enemy. He desired me to send two companies to strengthen the outpost. I preferred, however, to go myself to the scene of the trouble; and, after investigation, concluded that the guard had been alarmed by a couple of cows.

      Another lot of secession prisoners, some sixty in number, passed by this afternoon. They were highly pleased with the manner in which they had been treated by their captors.

      The sound of a musket is just heard on the picket post, three-quarters of a mile away, and the shot is being repeated by our line of sentinels. * * *

      The whole camp has been in an uproar. Many men, half asleep, rushed from their tents and fired off their guns in their company grounds. Others, supposing the enemy near, became excited and discharged theirs also. The tents were struck, Loomis' First Michigan Battery

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