Those Times and These. Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury
had Johnston penned off somewheres down in the Carolinas, we didn’t know exactly where, and that Johnston would have to give up before many days passed. In fact, he had already give up a week before we finally heared about it. So then accordin’ to our best information and belief, that made us the last body of organised Confederates on the east bank of the Mississippi River. That’s a thing I was always mighty proud of. I’m proud of it yit.
“All through them last few weeks the army was dwindlin’ away and dwindlin’ away. Every momin’ at roll-call there’d be a few more absentees. Don’t git me wrong– I wouldn’t call them boys deserters. They’d stuck that long, doin’ their duty like men, but they knowed good and well – in fact we all knowed – ‘twas only a question of time till even Forrest would have to quit before overpowerin’ odds and we’d be called on to lay down the arms we’d toted fur so long. Their families needed ‘em, so they jest quit without sayin’ anything about it to anybody and went on back to their homes. This was specially true of some that lived in that district.
“But with the boys frum up this way it was different. In a way of speakin’, we didn’t have no homes to go back to. Our State had been in Northern hands almost frum the beginnin’ and some of us had prices on our heads right that very minute on account of bein’ branded ez guerrillas. Which was a lie. But folks didn’t always stop to sift out the truth then. They were prone to shoot you first and go into the merits of the case afterward. Anyway, betwixt us and home there was a toler’ble thick hedge of Yankee soldiers – in fact several thick hedges. You know they called one of our brigades the Orphan Brigade. And there were good reasons fur callin’ it so – more ways than one.
“I ain’t never goin’ to furgit the night of the fifth of May. Somehow the tidin’s got round amongst the boys that the next mornin’ the order to surrender was goin’ to be issued. The Yankee cavalry general, Wilson – and he was a good peart fighter, too – had us completely blocked off to the North and the East, but the road to the Southwest was still open ef anybody cared to foller it. So that night some of us held a little kind of a meetin’ – about sixty of us – mainly Kintuckians, but with a sprinklin’ frum other States, too.
“Ez I remember, there wasn’t a contrary voice raised when ‘twas suggested we should try to make it acrost the big river and j’ine in under Kirby Smith, who still had whut was left of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi.
“Billy Priest made the principal speech. ‘Boys,’ he says, ‘South Carolina may a-started this here war, but Kintucky has undertook the contract to close it out. Somewheres out yonder in Texas they tell me there’s yit a consid’ble stretch of unconquered Confederate territory. Speakin’ fur myself I don’t believe I’m ever goin’ to be able to live comfortable an’ reconciled under any other flag than the flag we’ve fit to uphold. Let’s us-all go see ef we can’t find the place where our flag still floats.’
“So we all said we’d go. Then the question ariz of namin’ a leader. There was one man that had been a captain and a couple more that had been lieutenants, but, practically unanimously, we elected little Billy Priest. Even ef he was only jest a private in the ranks we all knowed it wasn’t fur lack of chances to go higher. After Shiloh, he’d refused a commission and ag’in after Hartsville. So, in lessen no time a-tall, that was settled, too.
“Bright and early next day we started, takin’ our guns and our hosses with us. They were our hosses anyway; mainly we’d borrowed ‘em off Yankees, or anyways, off Yankee sympathisers on our last raid Northward and so that made ‘em our pussonal property, the way we figgered it out. ‘Tennyrate we didn’t stop to argue the matter with nobody whutsoever. We jest packed up and we put out – and we had almighty little to pack up, lemme tell you.
“Ez we rid off we sung a song that was be-ginnin’ to be right fashionable that spring purty near every place below Mason and Dixon’s line; and all over the camp the rest of the boys took it up and made them old woodlands jest ring with it. It was a kind of a farewell to us. The fust verse was likewise the chorus and it run something like this:
Oh, I’m a good old rebel, that’s jest whut I am;
And fur this land of freedom I do not give a dam’,
I’m glad I fit ag’in her, I only wish’t we’d won,
And I don’t ax your pardon fur anything I’ve done.
“And so on and so forth. There were several more verses all expressin’ much the same trend of thought, and all entirely in accordance with our own feelin’s fur the time bein’.
“Well, boy, I reckin there ain’t no use wastin’ time describin’ the early stages of that there pilgrimage. We went ridin’ along livin’ on the land and doin’ the best we could. We were young fellers, all of us, and it was springtime in Dixie – you know whut that means – and in spite of everything, some of the springtime got into our hearts, too, and drove part of the bitterness out. The country was all scarified with the tracks of war, but nature was doin’ her level best to cover up the traces of whut man had done. People along our route had mighty slim pickin’s fur themselves, but the sight of an old grey jacket was still mighty dear to most of ‘em and they divided whut little they had with us and wish’t they had more to give us. We didn’t need much at that – a few meals of vittles fur the men and a little fodder fur our hosses and we’d be satisfied. We’d reduced slow starvation to an exact ‘science long before that. Every man in the outfit was hard ez nails and slim ez a blue racer.
“Whut Northern forces there was East of the river we dodged. In fact we didn’t have occasion to pull our shootin’-irons but once’t, and that was after we’d cros’t over into Louisiana. There wasn’t any organised military force to regulate things and in the back districts civil government had mighty near vanished altogether. People had went back to fust principles – wild, reckless fust principles they were, too. One day an old woman warned us there was a gang of bushwhackers operatin’ down the road a piece in the direction we were headin’ – a mixed crowd of deserters frum both sides, she said, who’d jined in with some of the local bad characters and were preyin’ on the country, hariyin’ the defenceless, and terrorism’ women and children and raisin’ hob ginerally. She advised us that we’d better give ‘em a wide berth.
“But Billy Priest he throwed out scouts and located the gang, and jest before sunrise next mornin’ we dropped in on ‘em, takin’ ‘em by surprise in the camp they’d rigged up in a live-oak thicket in the midst of a stretch of cypress slashes.
“And when the excitement died down ag’in, quite a number of them bushwhackers had quit whackin’ permanently and the rest of ‘em were tearin’ off through the wet woods wonderin’, between jumps, whut had hit ‘em. Ez fur our command, we accumulated a considerable passel of plunder and supplies and a number of purty fair hosses, and went on our way rejoicin’. We hadn’t lost a man, and only one man wounded.
“When we hit the Texas border, news was waitin’ fur us. They told us ef we aimed to ketch up with the last remainders of the army we’d have to hurry, because Smith and Shelby, with whut was left of his Missoury outfit, and Sterlin’ Price and Hindman with some of his Arkansaw boys and a right smart sprinklin’ of Texans had already pulled up stakes and were headed fur old Mexico, where the natives were in the enjoyable midst of one of their regular revolutions.
“With the French crowd and part of the Mexicans to help him, the Emperor Maximilian was tryin’ to hang onto his onsteady and topplin’ throne, whilst the Republikins or Liberals, as they called themselves, were tryin’ with might and main to shove him off of it. Ef a feller jest natchelly honed fur an opportunity to indulge a fancy fur active hostilities, Mexico seemed to offer a very promisin’ field of endeavour.
“It didn’t take us long to make up our minds whut course we’d follow. Billy Priest put the motion. ‘Gentlemen,’ he says, ‘it would seem the Southern Confederacy is bent and determined on gittin’ clear out frum under the shad-der of the Yankee government. It has been moved and seconded that we foller after her no matter where she goes. All in favour of that motion will respond by sayin’ Aye – contrary-wise, No. The Ayes seem to have it and the Ayes do have