SULPHUR TRESTLE, ALA.
The capture of the Union Army at Athens, Ala., was indeed the
fulfillment of a great necessity with us. We took over a large supply of
provisions and camp equipment, twenty carloads of clothing, a number of
horses, several cannon, and about 4,000 small arms, with a quantity of
ammunition for same.
On the day following the fall of Athens we moved against Sulphur
Trestle, in Alabama. At this place the railroad had spanned a small
stream with a high, covered bridge, which was of such consequence to the
Union Army that a strong fort and garrison were maintained here, guarded
with mounted cannon. When General Forrest examined the structure, he was
satisfied that we would have to fight for it. The commander promptly
refused to comply with our demand for a surrender.
There were good positions for our batteries, but the gunners would be
dangerously exposed to the fire of the sharpshooters of the fort, and
the only way to protect them was to march an attacking force across an
open field to a point within range of the fort, so that we could direct
a continuous fire against their loopholes.
The crossing of that field and the bloody results made an impression
upon me that time cannot efface. In all the fights I had engaged in up
to that time I had never had an uncomfortable foreboding of danger, but
in that strangely charged hour I had a presentiment that I would not get
through; and as we rode toward the place where we were to dismount for
the charge, I confided my feeling to my companion and asked him if he
would be willing to exchange places with me in case it should fall to
his lot instead of mine to hold horses. (It was the plan of our
commander that every fourth man in the line should hold horses in the
rear, while the others were charging as infantry.) He promised; but when
the show-down came, he flickered; and I went forward as usual, for I
had never acted as a horse holder. The enemy’s artillery was firing at
us incessantly; and as we turned the top of a slight ridge, Colonel
Kelly’s horse was killed and fell just a few feet behind my position. As
we cleared the hill and came into full view of the fort, we were met
with a veritable hail of lead and iron. We were charging in a run, but
men were falling at every step. We moved close up and lay down, and kept
up a continuous fire until our batteries reduced the fort and caused it
to surrender.
Just as we reached the stopping point I was in the act of firing, when a
ball struck my left hand between the first and second knuckles. It
passed entirely through my hand and struck the trigger guard, knocking
the gun violently against my head, and I thought for the moment that I
had been struck by a cannon ball. I was practically unconscious for a
few moments; and when my senses returned, I was lying on the ground,
very sick, my head roaring like a freight train, and the wound in my
hand bleeding profusely. Our battle line was flattened out on the ground
within fifty yards of the fort. Quite a number in my immediate location
had been wounded, and one poor fellow within a few feet of me was
moaning pitifully, when a bullet struck him in the center of the
forehead and killed him instantly. When I saw this, I told the boys that
as I could not fight I was going out of the danger zone. They thought
the risk of making the run in full view would be greater than to remain
in the line; but I did not like the idea of lying there helpless in a
veritable slaughter pen, so I took the chance, and evidently outran the
bullets, as I got back through that awful open field without being hit.
Just as I thought I was out of danger, I heard a shell coming, as it
seemed, on a bee line for me. To dodge it I flattened myself on the
ground; and as I looked up, I saw that the shell was fully a hundred
feet above the ground. It exploded about a half mile from where I lay. I
think that was the last shot from the fort, as it was surrendered in a
few minutes. I chanced to meet Col. D. C. Kelly, our commander, and he
gave me a drink of water and bandaged my wound with a napkin.
I then went to the field hospital, where the surgeon dressed my wound
and gave me something to quiet my nerves. When night came, I slept; and
in the morning that followed I learned that a number of my comrades had
gone away on the long and silent march beyond the gates of eternity.
After being wounded, I was sent south with other disabled soldiers. We
had also about 5,000 prisoners captured at Athens and Sulphur Trestle. I
rode my own horse to Cherokee, Ala., where the wounded were separated
from the prisoners and guards.
At Cherokee we were given a temporary train of cars, in which the
wounded were transported to Okolona, Miss.
On this trip, by the merest chance, I met a former slave of my father
acting as porter on our train. He was a practical barber and a general
handy man. His interest in me was intensified when he saw my condition,
and he took the tenderest care of me until I was able to leave.
After the war was over and this former slave and I were both citizens of
Corinth again, with earnings of my own I bought him a good barber’s
outfit and set him up in business.
It is a regrettable fact that the world, with its garbled histories and
its false legends of violence, will never understand the true relation
between the master and the slave of the old South.
That there were many individual cases of brutality, there can be no
doubt, and that slavery as an institution of human government is wrong,
no right-thinking man can deny; but in all the records of mankind there
is nothing that parallels the conditions and practices which governed
that slavery, now forever banished from the industries of our beloved
country and expunged from its Constitution.
The gentleness and sympathy of the masters of Dixie and the faithfulness
and loyalty of the black slaves should be jealously written into an
impartial history of that South that was, but is no more. They are the
incontrovertible evidences of the greatness of our people who inherited
the dark burden of human bondage from another age and who were innocent
heirs to the sunny lands of cotton and cane, on which alone, of all our
wide country, this shackled, tropical race could labor with profit to
their owners.
During those awful years when every Southern home was the probable stage
of a tragedy it was not uncommon to see only the mistress of a
plantation left with her children in the care of her slaves, who stood
by her and respected and protected her through every danger.
After the army left Sulphur Trestle, General Forrest gave his attention
to the destruction of forts and blockhouses up and down the Memphis and
Charleston and the Louisville and Nashville Railroads. While thus
engaged, we threatened Pulaski, Tenn., sufficiently to hold a large
Union force there behind breastworks, so that they did not attempt to
interfere with our raids.
To hold the Union garrison at Huntsville, Ala., on the Memphis and
Charleston, within its works, we threatened it with the division of
General Buford.
The one unfortunate feature of our continued successes was that we could
not save and put to use the vast amount of stores captured on these
raids, in view of the sore need of them among all the armies of the
Confederacy.
Our mission was to hit as the lightning strikes--to wreck and terrify
and then disappear.
Our enemy had no cavalry force in this theater of the war that could
cope with us, and his slow-moving infantry and artillery found us a
moving target, too swift and restless for their sluggish aim.
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