The same fall I was at High Point, N. C., and saw Longstreet's Corps pass.
The trains all stopped there and I mingled and talked much with them. I
never saw soldiers in higher spirits. As they had come through Raleigh,
they had destroyed the late ex-Governor W. W. Holden's _Raleigh Standard_
printing press. They exhibited papers fastened to sticks like flags, with
handfuls of type. Holden had been advocating peace and they considered him
a traitor to the South. They said those western Yankees had been having
things their own way out there, but Lee's men were going to give them
something that they would not forget soon. "We will put them in a trot
like we have been chasing them out of Virginia." They were traveling on
freight and flat-cars, with as many on top of freight boxes as inside.
About a week after that we were at High Point again, conveying some
arrested conscripts to Raleigh, when train load after train load of
Federal prisoners passed going from Chickamauga to Richmond. The trains
stopped and we talked with those western prisoners and found them very
sassy and determined about the Union. One big, red-whiskered fellow said
to me: "What you fellers doing back here so far in the rear?" We replied:
"We have plenty of men at the front to attend to you fellows. We are just
resting and having a good time." He replied, "Yes, d----n you; I guess you
are back here hunting for conscripts and trying to force good Union men
into your d----d army." His train pulled out and we let him go at that,
but thinking from the grit he displayed that he must be a Tennessean or
Kentuckian.