not more than a hundred men in the regiment fit
for duty, and even those were not much better than shadows of their
former selves. And, judging from the few men that were visible, the
soldier told the plain, unvarnished truth. Our regiment and the 14th
Wisconsin soon drifted apart, and I never saw it again. But as a matter
of history, I will say that it made an excellent and distinguished
record during the war.

On June 16 our brigade left Bethel for Jackson, Tennessee, a town on
the Mobile and Ohio railroad, and about thirty-five or forty miles, by
the dirt road, northwest of Bethel. On this march, like the preceding
one, I did not carry my knapsack. It was about this time that the most
of the boys adopted the "blanket-roll" system. Our knapsacks were
awkward, cumbersome things, with a combination of straps and buckles
that chafed the shoulders and back, and greatly augmented heat and
general discomfort. So we would fold in our blankets an extra shirt,
with a few other light articles, roll the blanket tight, double it over
and tie the two ends together, then throw the blanket over one
shoulder, with the tied ends under the opposite arm--and the
arrangement was complete. We had learned by this time the necessity of
reducing our personal baggage to the lightest possible limit. We had
left Camp Carrollton with great bulging knapsacks, stuffed with all
sorts of plunder, much of which was utterly useless to soldiers in the
field. But we soon got rid of all that. And my recollection is that
after the Bethel march the great majority of the men would, in some
way, when on a march, temporarily lay aside their knapsacks, and use
the blanket roll. The exceptions to that method, in the main, were the
soldiers of foreign birth, especially the Germans. They carried theirs
to the last on all occasions, with everything in them the army
regulations would permit, and usually something more.

Jackson, our objective point on this march, was the county seat of
Madison county, and a portion of our line of march was through the
south part of the county. This region had a singular interest for me,
the nature of which I will now state. Among the few books we had at
home was an old paper-covered copy, with horrible wood-cuts, of a
production entitled, "The Life and Adventures of John A. Murrell, the
Great Western Land Pirate," by Virgil A. Stewart. It was full of
accounts of cold-blooded, depraved murders, and other vicious, unlawful
doings.