CAMP LIFE THE WINTER BEFORE THE SPOTTSYLVANIA
CAMPAIGN 17

Morton's Ford--Building camp quarters--"Housewarming"
on parched corn, persimmons and water--Camp duties--Camp
recreations--A special entertainment--Confederate soldier
rations--A fresh egg--When fiction became fact--Confederate
fashion plates--A surprise attack--Wedding bells and a
visit home--The soldiers' profession of faith--The example
of Lee, Jackson and Stuart--Spring sprouts and a "tar heel"
story.

II. BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS 63

"Marse Robert" calls to arms--The spirit of the soldiers
of the South--Peace fare and fighting ration--Marse
Robert's way of making one equal to three--An infantry
battle--Arrival of the First Corps--The love that Lee
inspired in the men he led--"Windrows" of Federal dead.

III. BATTLES OF SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 96

Stuart's four thousand cavalry--Greetings on the field
of battle--"Jeb" Stuart assigns "a little job"--Wounding
of Robert Fulton Moore--A useful discovery--Barksdale's
Mississippi Creeper--Kershaw's South Carolina
"rice-birds"--Feeling pulses--Where the fight was
hottest--Against heavy odds at "Fort Dodge"--"Sticky" mud
and yet more "sticky" men--Gregg's Texans to the front--
Breakfastless but "ready for customers"--Parrott's reply
to Napoleon's twenty to two--The narrow escape of an
entire company--Successive attacks by Federal infantry--
Eggleston's heroic death--"Texas will never forget
Virginia"--Contrast in losses and the reasons
therefore--Why Captain Hunter failed to rally his men--
Having "a cannon handy"--Grant's neglect of Federal
wounded.

IV. COLD HARBOR AND THE DEFENSE OF RICHMOND 189

The last march of our Howitzer Captain--The bloodiest
fifteen minutes of the war--Federal troops refuse to
be slaughtered--Dr. Carter "apologizes for getting
shot"--Death of Captain McCarthy--A Summary.

INTRODUCTORY

=The Cause of Conflict and the Call to Arms=

In 1861 a ringing call came to the manhood of the South. The world knows
how the men of the South answered that call. Dropping everything, they
came from mountains, valleys and plains--from Maryland to Texas, they
eagerly crowded to the front, and stood to arms. What for? What moved
them? What was in their minds?

Shallow-minded writers have tried hard to make it appear that slavery
was the cause