"I saw Jeff Davis once. He was one-eyed. He had a glass eye. My old
mistiss had three girls. They got into the buggy and went to see Jeff
Davis when he come through Auburn, Alabama. We were living in Auburn
then. I drove them. Jeff Davis came through first, and then the
Confederate army, and then the Yankees. They didn't come on the same day
but some days apart.
"The way I happened to see the Yanks was like this. I went to carry some
clothes to my young master. He was a doctor, and was out where they were
drilling the men. I laid down on the carpet in his tent and I heard
music playing 'In Dixie Land I'll take my stand and live and die in
Dixie.' I got up and come out and looked up ever which way but I
couldn't see nothing. I went back again and laid down again in the tent,
and I heard it again. I run out and looked all up and around again, and
I still couldn't see nothin'. That time I looked and saw my young master
talking to another officer--I can't remember his name. My young master
said, 'What you looking for?'
"I said, 'I'm looking for them angels I hear playing. Don't you hear em
playing Dixie?' The other officer said, 'Celas, you ought to whip that
nigger.' I went back into the tent. My young master said, 'Whip him for
what?' And he said, 'For telling that lie.' My young master said to him
like this, 'He don't tell lies. He heard something somewhere.'
"Then they got through talking and he come on in and I seed him and
beckoned to him. He came to me and I said, 'Lie down there.' He laid
down and I laid down with him, and he heard it. Then he said, 'Look out
there and tell him to come in.'
"I called the other officer and he come in. The doctor (that was my
young master) said, 'Lie down there.' When he laid down by my young
master, he heard it too. Then the doctor said to him, 'You said William
was telling a damn lie.' He said, 'I beg your pardon, doctor.'
"My young master got up and said, 'Where is my spy glasses? Le'me have a
look.' He went out and there was a mountain called the Blue Ridge
Mountain. He looked but he didn't see nothin'. I went out and looked
too. I said, 'Look down the line beside those two big trees,' and I
handed the glasses back to him. He looked and then he hollered, 'My God,
look yonder' and handed the spy glasses to the other officer. He looked
too. Then the doctor said, 'What are we going to do?' He said, 'I am
goin' to put pickets way out.' He told me to get to my mule. I got. He
put one of his spurs on my foot and told me to go home and tell 'ma' the
Yanks were coming. You know what 'ma' he was talking about? That was his
wife's mother. We all called her 'mother.'
"I carried the note. When I got to Mrs. Dobbins' house, I yelled, 'The
Yanks are coming--Yankees, Yankees, Yankees!' She had two boys. They
runned out and said, 'What did you say?'
"I said, 'Yankees, Yankees!'
"They said, 'Hell, what could he see?'
"I come on then and got against Miss Yancy's. She had a son, a man named
Henry Yancy. He had a sore leg. He asked me what I said. I told him that
the Yanks were coming. He called for Henry, a boy that stayed with him,
and had him saddle his horse. Then he got on it and rode up town. When
he got up there, he was questioned bout how did he know it. Did he see
them. He said he didn't see them, that Celas Neal saw them and the
doctor's mother's boy brought the message. Then he taken off.
"Jeff Davis went on. The Confederates went on. They all went on. Then
the Yanks passed through.
"The first fight they had there, they cleaned up the Sixty-Ninth Alabama
troops. My young master had been helping drill them. He went on and
overtook the others.