I SELL A TEN DOLLAR GOLD PIECE FOR FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.
I will recite an incident occurring while we were camped about six miles
on a plank road from Fayetteville, North Carolina, which place was also
a manufacturing point for war munitions on a small scale, also had a
large cotton factory: The enemy were moving on two roads, converging
into Fayetteville, one road opposed by Rhett’s Brigade of South
Carolinians (General Rhett having been captured a few days before).
General McLaws sent for me about daylight and instructed me to take one
or two members of the company and ride across the country to the road
occupied by Rhett’s Brigade, stating that Rhett’s pickets had been run
in the night before, then after watching the road for some time, if I
found no enemy passing, to ride up the road until we met or heard of
them. We rode up the road to the eleventh milepost, when we discovered
some women up in a field near a house, watching the road and decided to
go and interrogate them on whether they had seen any enemy passing. I
told Jim Freeman, one of the party, to stay in the road and carefully
watch the direction from whence we were expecting the enemy and Joe
Hungerford and I would go up and talk with these women, suggesting to
Jim if the enemy came in sight and he had time to come to us, to do so,
but if he had not, to fire his pistol and run in toward town or go back
the way we had come and report to General McLaws and on his firing his
pistol we would make our way across from where we were. After reaching
the women they told us they had been watching for an hour or more and
had seen no passing, but had heard, the night before, that the enemy
were advancing on that road. After getting this information they
insisted on our waiting a little while, that they were cooking breakfast
and wanted us to share it with them, which we decided to do, remaining
on our horses. Very soon Jim Freeman came up to us and reported that he
saw a Yankee vidette picket about a half a mile ahead of where he stood.
We concluded, as we had time, that we would finish our breakfast and go
down and run him in, which we proceeded to do. When reaching the place
in the road where Jim saw this Yankee, he could not be found. I then
suggested that he was not a picket, but had strayed away from his
command for some purpose and would no doubt be found at some house. We
soon discovered a house a few hundred yards ahead, but a little swamp
between us and the house prevented us from going directly to it and
after proceeding a couple of hundred yards down the road, we found a
dirt road coming into the plank road, but at the mouth of this road,
owing to a turn in it, we were unable to see the house. I then suggested
to the boys that they wait there and I would go up to the house and see
if this Yankee was there.
After proceeding some little distance, the road turned and brought me in
full view of the house, with this Yankee at the gate, his gun on his
shoulder, just starting in. Having on my Yankee overcoat, I slipped my
pistol out of its holster, intending to ride up and make him lay down
his gun, when he discovered me and smiled, mistaking me for one of their
own men. Just as I got ready to throw my pistol down on him the boys on
the plank road started in a fast lope down the way we had come, which
was notice to me that the enemy were on to them. I had but little time
to decide. I knew if I shot this Yankee it would attract those on the
plank road and if I wheeled to run away from him he would perhaps shoot
me, but I decided to take my chance on the latter and broke for the
plank road. Just as I entered the plank road I noticed a column of
infantry within about one hundred and fifty yards. I wheeled to the
right very suddenly, which threw the cape of my overcoat over my head,
put spurs to my horse, made him do his best, expecting every moment to
be shot off the horse, but they never fired a shot, simply calling,
“Halt, halt!” The blue overcoat no doubt saved my life, as they
evidently thought I was one of their own men. When the boys heard me
coming, they stopped and after we got together we struck across the
country the way we had come and reported to General McLaws, which soon
started our little army on a hasty march into Fayetteville, where we
found Rhett’s Brigade, who had moved in during the night, and had sent
notice by a courier, which notice never reached General Hardee. Our army
then passed through Fayetteville very rapidly, whatever stores there
were in the place, of any value to our army, had been removed, and the
bridge across the river was all ready to be burned in an instant.
After the army had safely passed over, as also our cavalry, I stopped at
a store near the market-house to try to sell a ten dollar gold piece,
belonging to one of my comrades, for Confederate money. This was perhaps
the last gold piece we had in the command and the last of two hundred
dollars in gold my comrade had sent to him from Texas. I found in this
store a few yards of butternut jeans and forty or fifty pairs of knit
socks, all the goods the fellow had and with his little safe half full
of stacks of Confederate money. I asked him a hundred and fifty for one
for the gold piece, when he offered me seventy-five for one and while
dickering on this trade, we heard the guns fire up the street, when he
counted me out fifteen hundred dollars, very quickly for my gold piece.
I just had time to spring on to my horse and cross the bridge, which
very soon after, was burned, with the enemy moving into Fayetteville.
The army then moved down the river to Averysboro, where they built an
earth breastworks from a swamp, through which had passed a hurricane
down to the Cape Fear River and in front of this, another, perhaps a
half mile from the main works—a short line of works, which was occupied
by Rhett’s Brigade, with a battery of artillery. While our company with
General McLaws and staff, were awaiting developments near where the
roadway ran through the earthworks, General Hardee dashed up and called
to General McLaws to send two of your Texas people down the line on our
left and ascertain if the enemy are flanking in force, when I, in
company with Lieutenant Bennett, dashed down the line until we struck
the swamp, then turned into the swamp among fallen trees and brush until
we became separated, when I was finally fired on by the enemy’s skirmish
line, which forced me to run back through this fallen timber. But having
a clear-footed horse, I succeeded in getting through to the end of the
woods, and there started to run back, away from the fire of the
infantry, when a Colonel Fizer commanding the brigade immediately behind
the works, called me back and gave me a message to General Hardee, which
I was forced to carry up the line, exposed to the fire of the main line
of the enemy, which struck our works obliquely. I delivered my message
to General Hardee just as Rhett’s Brigade was moving inside of the works
from their advanced position, protected by the gallant defense of a
regiment of Georgians he had thrown forward outside of the main works.
When the main line of the enemy poured a hot fire onto that part of the
works where we were halted, we dashed into the woods somewhat out of
range. Here a ball struck Captain Lamar’s fine mare on the back and she
commenced laming. Lamar thought that she would fall with him and begged
me to take him up behind me, which I refused to do, unless his mare
actually fell. He still insisted on my taking him behind, when I
proposed to swap, to which he readily assented, but the mare never gave
out and I brought her into camp safely that night.
This animal, one of the finest in the army, was a present to Captain
Lamar from a friend of his in Savannah and was said to have cost a
thousand dollars in gold. After eating our supper that night General
McLaws sent for me to come up to his camp fire, when he asked me to
exchange back with Lamar, saying that Lamar prized the mare very highly,
as she was a present to him. I told him most certainly I would do so,
that I did not expect to keep her, but tender her back to him, which, of
course, was very gratifying to all concerned.