egin laughing and talking as if they had just risen from a good
feather bed, and were perfectly refreshed and happy. We would usually
stop at some branch or other about breakfast time, and all wash our hands
and faces and eat breakfast, if we had any, and then commence our weary
march again. If we were halted for one minute, every soldier would drop
down, and resting on his knapsack, would go to sleep. Sometimes the
sleeping soldiers were made to get up to let some general and his staff
pass by. But whenever that was the case, the general always got a worse
cursing than when Noah cursed his son Ham black and blue. I heard Jessee
Ely do this once.

We march on. The scene of a few days ago comes unbidden to my mind.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the soldiers are marching. Where are many of my old
friends and comrades, whose names were so familiar at every roll call,
and whose familiar "Here" is no more? They lie yonder at Perryville,
unburied, on the field of battle. They lie where they fell. More than
three hundred and fifty members of my regiment, the First Tennessee,
numbered among the killed and wounded--one hundred and eighty-five slain
on the field of battle. Who are they? Even then I had to try to think
up the names of all the slain of Company H alone. Their spirits seemed
to be with us on the march, but we know that their souls are with their
God. Their bones, today, no doubt, bleach upon the battlefield. They
left their homes, families, and loved ones a little more than one short
twelve months ago, dressed in their gray uniforms, amid the applause and
cheering farewells of those same friends. They lie yonder; no friendly
hands ever closed their eyes in death; no kind, gentle, and loving mother
was there to shed a tear over and say farewell to her darling boy;
no sister's gentle touch ever wiped the death damp from off their dying
brows. Noble boys; brave boys! They willingly gave their lives to their
country's cause. Their bodies and bones are mangled and torn by the rude
missiles of war. They sleep the sleep of the brave. They have given
their all to their country. We miss them from our ranks. There are no
more hard marches and scant rations for them. They have accomplished all
that could be required of them. They are no more; their names are soon
forgotten. They are put down in the roll-book as killed. They are
forgotten. We will see them no more until the last reveille on the last
morning of