s, but how did I know but those Confederate
girls had revolvers concealed about their persons, and might have killed
me. To feel that I was once more safe with my regiment, where there was
no danger as long as they did not get into a fight, was bliss indeed,
and I rode along in silence, wondering when the cruel war would be
over, and what all this riding around the country, burning buildings
and tearing up railroad tracks amounted to, anyway. I didn't enlist as
a section hand, nor a railroad wrecker, and there was nothing in my
enlistment papers that said anything about my being compelled to commit
arson. The recruit-officer who, by his glided picture of the beauties
of a soldier's life, induced me to enlist as a soldier, never mentioned
anything that would lead me to believe that one of my duties would be
to touch a match to another man's bales of cotton, or ditch a locomotive
belonging to parties who never did me any harm, and who had a right to
expect dividends from their railroad stock. If I had the money, that was
represented in the stuff destroyed by our troops that day, I could run
a daily newspaper for years, if it didn't have a subscriber or a
patent medicine advertisement. And who was benefitted by such wanton
destruction of property. As we rode along I told the colonel I thought
it was a confounded shame to do as we had done, and that such a use of
power, because we had the power, was unworthy of American soldiers. He
said it was a soldier's duty to obey orders and not talk back, and if
he heard any more moralizing on my part he would send me back to my
company, where I would have to do duty like the rest. I told him I
was one of the talking backest fellows he ever saw, and that one of my
duties as a newspaper man was to criticise the conduct of the war. Then
he said I might report to the captain of my company. It seemed hard to
go into the ranks, after having had a soft job with the chaplain, and
again as colonel's orderly, but I thought if I got my back up and showed
the captain that I was no ordinary soldier, but one who was qualified
for any position, that maybe he would be afraid to monkey too much with
me. I knew the captain would be a candidate for some office when the war
was over, and if he knew I was on to him, and that I should very likely
publish a paper that could warm him up quite lively, he would see to
it that I wasn't compelled to do very hard work. So I rode back to my
company and told the cap