Lieut. to find Donoho, and his bugle
soon sings out the familiar notes. At the end of which, each man is in
ranks, front faced by the Orderly Sergeant who calls the company roll
and then a new day's duties are begun.

Thereafter Rosser's bugle forms part of his pillow, for allowing such a
mishap to occur again would mean extra work at some drudgery. The
officers daily report would show up the excuses, but the boys got some
little fun out of such tricks. We were all afraid of Major Robertson.
His reputation was that of a harsh disciplinarian and our company was
largely composed of young men of the highest social ranks. The fear was
general that for some little disobedience of orders, or some infraction
of military red-tape, some punishment might be ordered by him, that the
culprit would rather die than submit to something degrading. We had
some object lessons. The Major's hostler came to camp one night drunk.
At some order of the Major, the fellow let in and gave the officer a
vile cursing, with opprobrious epithets, called him a half "Injin",
etc., and worse still, common rumors had it that the Major did have
Indian blood in him and he was called generally "Comanche Robertson",
but its only foundation was his unusually dark complexion and eyes.

The sergeant of the guard was sent for and the obstreperous fellow
forced off to the guard house. Next morning the sergeant was ordered to
bring the poor devil to the Major's quarters, and hang him up by
strings tied to his thumbs, with hands behind his back, till only his
toes could touch the ground. So he was kept until he was almost frozen
stiff. The whole command recognized the fact that the culprit deserved
the severest kind of punishment. He was of a class that could not
appreciate leniency and yet the men were inexpressibly shocked to see
such torture. To see a confederate soldier subjected to brutal
punishment under the very eyes of the insulted officer did not seem to
be the proper thing. Had he been courtmarshalled and shot, it would not
have shocked us half so much, but to see a white man, a volunteer
serving the Confederacy subjected to a punishment that public opinion
of the South would have considered brutal on even a negro slave,
notwithstanding the recognized heinousness of the officer, went to our
hearts.

The effect on the men in the ranks was not good, the utter helplessness
of a private was brought home to us. It was hurtful to pride as
Confederate soldie