in the mountains
several months, where much apple brandy, fat beef, milk and honey
abounded, we returned to Randolph and the adjoining counties of Davidson,
Moore, Montgomery and Chatham, where there was much work to do. Here we
began pressing property, especially horses and feed, from the disloyal to
force them to bring in their conscript sons, and soon a number of our
company was mounted, only intending to use the horses while operating in
that vicinity; but Governor Vance, being advised of it, complained to the
Confederate War Department and threatened to turn his militia loose on us
and drive us from the State if such conduct was not stopped and all
property pressed promptly turned over to the original owners--and we had
to come down off our high horses and take it afoot again. Up to that time
I had not developed quite courage enough to steal a horse, but was caught
red-handed with a good mount in this temporary "critter company."--a
furloughed man having given me his horse. So my dignity was shocked when I
had to come down from my self-promoted position to a flatfooted
infantryman again.

REMOVING FEDERAL PRISONERS FROM RICHMOND, VA., TO ANDERSONVILLE, GA.,
FEBRUARY AND MARCH, 1864.

I was on a detail and made three trips via Raleigh, Charlotte, Columbia to
Branchville, S. C. These prisoners had been confined on Belle's Island, in
James River, and were in a most pitiable condition--half starved, half
naked. Most of them had been in prison for months and very few had a
change of garments. They were ragged, lousy, filthy and infested with
smallpox, and most of them had diarrhoea and scurvy and were so weak
that when they would swing down out of box-cars their legs would give away
when their feet struck the ground, and they would fall in a heap on the
ground. I don't think they got anything to eat except a little bread and
meat, mostly cornbread. They were transferred in box-cars, forty packed
into a car. We sometimes stopped at Raleigh to change cars, and always
stopped at Charlotte twelve to twenty-four hours. We ran up the Seaboard
to where it crossed the Statesville Railroad, then in the woods. A small
branch ran under both roads east and north of crossing, with embankments
on south and west, and we put them out there, where they had free access
to the branch. One night several crawled up a drain ditch from branch
along railroad and got out between the guard; others were caught in the
act and stopped.

Old m