These brief memoirs of the War between the States have been written
with care. More elaborate detail might have been employed but habits
of a professional life have led to terseness of expression, hence the
story unembellished is given, based on personal recollections aided
by facts from others and such records as I have been able to reach,
including Strickler's Statistics of dates of battles.
No effort has been made to do more than to give a brief account of the
events seen and known directly or from sources above mentioned. This
was undertaken for the purpose of leaving to comrades who still live,
to the families of those who are dead, to our own families and to
posterity some record, from our view-point, of the most stirring events
and enactments of our lives.
To the extent of my rank I was a participant in the scenes
described--except two battles--from which disability from wounds
prevented. "The Regiment" creditably participated in all.
The performance of this work though unavoidably deferred, is a duty I
have long since felt incumbent upon myself as well as others who can
and care to do so, to give to our country the benefit of our testimony
as we saw it, of the achievements, sufferings and sacrifices through
which our comrades and country passed in those eventful years before
the same shall fade from our memory. Our ranks are rapidly thinning and
soon there will be none left to tell the tale, hence the importance of
the testimony of actors who yet live. From their direct testimony truth
can be reached by the future historian. It is becoming in us and we
do revere the memory of our dead comrades, thousands of whom sleep in
unknown graves, and their achievements and devotion to the cause they
believed to be just have almost been forgotten. Yet while the questions
involved in the War were forever settled and so accepted in good faith
by the people of the South, it is the duty of the survivors to preserve
from oblivion the names and deeds of their dead comrades. To this end
this narrative, for whatever it is worth, has been written.
"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses,
Instead of speech may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper--even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his."