ies
of American soldiers did not appear in altogether a favorable light.
But at that time the fact is that the volunteer armies on both sides
were not much better than mere armed mobs, and without discipline or
cohesion. But those conditions didn't last long,--and there was never
but one Bull Run.

Enoch Wallace was home on recruiting service some weeks in the fall of
1862, and when he rejoined the regiment he told me something my father
said in a conversation that occurred between the two. They were talking
about the war, battles, and topics of that sort, and in the course of
their talk Enoch told me that my father said that while he hoped his
boy would come through the war all right, yet he would rather "Leander
should be killed dead, while standing up and fighting like a man, than
that he should run, and disgrace the family." I have no thought from
the nature of the conversation as told to me by Enoch that my father
made this remark with any intention of its being repeated to me. It was
sudden and spontaneous, and just the way the old backwoodsman felt. But
I never forgot it, and it helped me several times. For, to be perfectly
frank about it, and tell the plain truth, I will set it down here that,
so far as I was concerned, away down in the bottom of my heart I just
secretly dreaded a battle. But we were soldiers, and it was our
business to fight when the time came, so the only thing to then do was
to summon up our pride and resolution, and face the ordeal with all the
fortitude we could command. And while I admit the existence of this
feeling of dread before the fight, yet it is also true that when it was
on, and one was in the thick of it, with the smell of gun-powder
permeating his whole system, then a signal change comes over a man. He
is seized with a furious desire to kill. There are his foes, right in
plain view, give it to 'em, d---- 'em!--and for the time being he
becomes almost oblivious to the sense of danger.

And while it was only human nature to dread a battle,--and I think it
would be mere affectation to deny it, yet I also know that we common
soldiers strongly felt that when fighting did break loose close at
hand, or within the general scope of our operations, then we ought to
be in it, with the others, and doing our part. That was what we were
there for, and somehow a soldier didn't feel just right for fighting to
be going on all round him, or in his vicinity, and he doing nothing but
lying back s