Part 3

Liquor was plenty around Loudon, but at very high prices. One man paid $10 for a canteen full. He became disorderly and wanted to shoot somebody. He was court-martialed and sent to Dry Tortugas. I learned afterwards that he was pardoned and came home. The bridge across the river that the rebels burned was rebuilt by government employes with the assistance of the pioneer corps, and we crossed to the opposite side on another campaign. Our regimental bakers at this place turned out several loaves of bread with an old chew of tobacco in the center of the loaf.

From Resaca we followed up the rebel General, Johnston, and came very close to his rear guard at a place called Calhoun, Georgia. We crowded them very closely. The next day Johnston had his advanced troops stop at Adairsville and build breastworks of logs and earth, and located themselves in the houses, while the main army passed through and formed ready for battle. We followed them right up, but we suddenly came to a halt. They were ready for us. Johnston managed his retreat with good generalship from Resaca. We could not budge them. We marched across the road into a field by the right flank, right in front, towards the rebels' left, when Col. MacArthur gave the command "By the left flank, charge." When I was in the act of executing the command I got a broadsider in the left jaw bone. The bullet struck me in the lower angle of the jaw, breaking the bone at that place, and coursed downwards, inside the collarbone, and lodged in the cavity of the chest. Dr. Hasse, our regimental surgeon, treated me on the battlefield. I remember he cut my accoutrements with his knife and left them on the ground, cut the string of my blanket, spread it out and laid me on it.

Our regiment advanced and was stubbornly resisted, but held their ground by inch until the rebels withdrew. A great many of our boys bit the dust that day. It was a very severe fight for the time it lasted, just a few hours. It was estimated that the loss was 500 killed and wounded. Such was rebel General Johnston's fighting tactics on a retreat. He punished his pursuers very severely. General John Newton had charge of our division in the absence of General Sheridan. It was thought at one time during the fight that our side would have to give way, and an order came from headquarters to the surgeons in the field to move their wounded a certain distance to the rear. There were four rebel bullets dropped on my blanket while I lay there. We moved to where there were a lot of small houses and a large mansion. In going along the turnpike road the rebel bullets and cannon balls came fast and lively. This was the trying moment. It was desperate, as I could plainly hear, and very well understood the situation. The brave boys began coming in wounded thick and fast, as the battle raged on. But at last victory was ours. The battle was won; but a high price was paid for it; the loss of life, limb, health and blood. I remember in going to the rear, as ordered, a Union captain was with us. He had his nose shot off, or all but a part of the skin near his forehead, which was holding it from falling. It was swinging on his face like the pendulum of a clock. The rebels sent a cannon ball down the road. As it passed by, this captain turned around, and, with much emphasis, said, "You rebel sons of guns, I hope you will get your belly full before night," and at that instant a rebel bullet took him right in the abdomen and went through his body. He fell dead where he spoke the words. We arrived at our new hospital off the battlefield. Dr. Hasse placed me in a chair on the porch and ran a probe down in my neck.

"Ah, Ford," he said, "the bullet has passed downwards; it is in your chest; perhaps I can find it," and I began to faint away. He pulled out his probe and turned around his canteen, placed it in my mouth and told me to take a swallow. I took hold of the canteen and held it until I had three good swallows.

The doctor took the canteen and said, "Do you think you can stand it now?"

"Yes, doctor, probe away now all you mind to." And he did, and said it was no use in punishing me. He could not locate the bullet, and even if he did, it could not be removed without loss of life; it may never injure me, but he could not tell now what the result might be in the future.

I was assigned to a place to lie down on the floor. I soon fell asleep, and when I awoke my neck, face and breast seemed to be one thickness. Well, I thought I would get up, but no, my head would not rise by my will. I thought if I just had somebody to lift my head for me I would be all right, when, seemingly by instinct, my right hand raised and caught myself by the hair of my head, and I was on my feet.

An order came to the surgeons to send the wounded to Chattanooga. All who were shot in the legs and not able to walk would be carried in ambulances to Resaca and there take the train for Chattanooga. I came under the order of able to walk, as the meaning of that term is applied in cases of emergency, where transportation is limited, as it was in that case. We struck out, a lot of us that had to walk, but soon commenced trudging along according to our strength, until there were hardly two together. Every stream I would cross I would dip my head in the water and then fill my old Kossuth hat full and put it on my head. Arriving at Calhoun early in the afternoon, I stopped at the first house. There were two rebel ladies standing on the porch looking at the wounded as they passed by. I was very weak and wanted some milk, as I could not eat or chew anything, my mouth being nearly closed. By a great many signs and mutterings I succeeded in getting one to understand what I wanted, but she said they had no milk; that there was a Union woman in the next block over there that had two or three cows and she most always had some milk.

"You got hit, did you?" she asked. "Well, we don't like to see you'uns get hurt, but we do like to see you'uns get licked. You'uns killed my true love when you went by here the other day. He stayed behind his command to bid me good-bye and to have a little talk, when you Yankees came onto him and three others of our boys. They ran into the brush down there," pointing in the direction that she wanted me to know, "and there you killed my true love."

I listened very attentively, with my eyes fixed on a picture that she wore on her breast. I recognized the picture and muttered out to her as best I could that if she thought so much of her true love she ought to see about it and have him buried. He was lying down there a little ways from the turnpike road, swelled up as big as a two hundred pounder.

The circumstances concerning my knowledge of this incident are: Those four rebels ran from the brush to a small log-house about fifteen or twenty rods from the road where we were marching, and were firing from their hiding place. A squad was sent out there and surrounded the little log-house. This true love escaped by jumping through the window, and was shot and killed. The other three were taken prisoners.

I made my way to the Union woman in the next block. I saw a dozen wounded men go into the house. Thinks I to myself, "There is no chance there for me to get any milk," but before I reached the house they came out again, and I went in. She was a fine, clever-looking woman, with three little girl children. I made known my wants.

"Yes," she said, "I have plenty of milk for you, although I have been refusing it all day; so many came together that the little I had would do them no good." At the same time she poured the milk out into a cooking utensil and placed it on the stove and said, "As you came alone I have plenty for you; and indeed you need it more than any one who has come in here to-day."

She broke some round crackers into the milk, inquired about my wound, said it smelled bad, took off the bandage, washed it and dressed it with new linen and threw my old bandages out doors. By this time my milk and crackers were cooked. As I could not chew or open my mouth to take in coarse food, she fixed it so it was thin, like gruel; cooled it sufficiently, spread a table cloth on part of the table where I sat, and I felt just ninety-nine per cent. better than when I first entered that house. Her cheerfulness and willingness to do good made me feel so much better that I could not express it by words. I drew that food through my teeth with such force that it did not take a very great length of time to put it where it was much needed for a nourishment.

I will say right here when you found a Union man or woman in the Southern States, you found them as loyal and as true as steel. I was now ready to go on my journey to Resaca. The train was to leave there at 8 o'clock. Before I left Adairsville hospital I changed a $5 bill and gave half of it to a comrade of mine, John Howard, who was shot in the elbow. Twenty-six pieces of bone were taken out of his elbow. Dr. Hasse wanted to cut it off, but Howard said he would rather die with it on than live with it off. The doctor thought possibly that he might save it. The weather was very warm. Gangrene set in. His arm was cut off three times, and the poor fellow, after a long season of suffering, went to the other shore. Changing the $5 bill, which was all the money I had, left me with two dollars and a half in fifty cent shinplasters, as we called that kind of money. In bidding good-bye to my good Union woman, with tears in my eyes I offered her all the money I had. She would not take any. She said it did her so much good to do something for a Union soldier that she only wished she could do more. I took her address and bade her good-bye. Her three little girls followed me out to the gate leading on the sidewalk, and I slipped fifty cents apiece in their little hands. I felt so much better, and my heart was so filled up with the kindness that I received from that good Union woman in the very heart of the Confederate States, that if I had had it I could have given those little ones one hundred dollars apiece as willingly as I gave them fifty cents each. That woman saved my life, for gangrene was beginning to show itself, and I never could have reached Resaca without that nourishment and the cleansing of my wound. I reached Resaca just as the train was pulling out, grabbed hold of the side door of the last box-car and the boys pulled me in while the train was moving quite fast.

It commenced raining very hard and the night was as dark as pitch. Our train jogged along at the rate such trains usually do. We came to an up-grade, when all at once there came a crash and a smash. I was in the hindmost end of the rear car and was jerked up to the front end in a shorter time than you could say Jack Robinson. A trainload of new recruits was coming to the front, the cars being full inside and many on top. The engineer should have stopped at the station and switched until the train with the wounded went by. He paid no attention to the signal and went right ahead to the top of a grade, where he pulled the throttle of his engine wide open and let her go. Jumping off his engine, he made his escape. He was a rebel, and took advantage of his first opportunity to apply his vengeance. It was a terrible sight to look at. Many of the wounded were killed and some of the new recruits and many were disabled. It took till late next day to get fixed up for our destination. There I lost my diary, with the address of that good Union woman that did so much for me at Calhoun, Georgia.

After I recruited up some, and others the same as myself, who were supposed not to be fit for duty within a certain time, we were sent farther north to make room for new-comers. I was sent to New Albany, Indiana, where I remained two weeks, when a general order was issued that all not fit for duty inside of sixty days should be sent to their respective state hospitals. An examination was made by the surgeon in charge, and I was sent to Madison, Wisconsin. After I was a few weeks in Madison I called on Governor J. T. Lewis in regard to my commission. It was then the tenth in order on file in his office, but he would give me one then and there. There were vacancies in my company. I refused to take it. There were others higher in rank than I, and I did not want to jump over them; and, in fact, we came home without a commissioned officer, an orderly sergeant in command of the company, John N. Keifer, who received his commission dated back, as captain, as brave a boy as ever lived to draw saber. Ed. Blake, a corporal in my company, carried a commission in his pocket that he received from the Governor, but never reported for duty as an officer. Such was the honor the old boys had for each other in rank.

I stayed in Madison about two months and could have had my discharge given me by Surgeon-General Swift, medical director of the Western Department, with headquarters at Milwaukee, but would not take it. I wanted to go back and take my chances of coming home with the rest of the boys. I had the use of my limbs all right and could shoot, but had to be very careful how I bit the cartridge. There were six pieces of bone taken from my left lower jaw, and it hurt very much to bite off the cartridge.

My memory now takes me back to my regiment, with which I was in several battles after my four months' absence on account of my wound. And now this brings me to the last battle of Nashville, December 15th and 16th, 1864. We fought the rebel General Hood, who had followed us from Franklin and fortified himself in our front, near Nashville. We marched out to them and made the attack. They held us back. We were relieved by a brigade of colored troops. While we were cooking something to eat the colored troops made a charge on the rebel works and got as far, or to a distance where the rebels had fallen trees towards us, as an obstruction to our advancement. There the colored brigade fired one volley and then lay down. The rebels peppered it to them so thick and fast, they even stood up on their breastworks and took aim at that black cloud, as they called them. We were marched down there again, in double-quick time, the rebels shouting and shooting and waving their hats like so many demons. When they saw us coming for them right through and over the colored troops and tree branches they ceased firing and had their arms stacked when we climbed their breastworks, took off their hats and surrendered, saying, "Hello, Jack; hello, Tom; hello, Jim. Say, Yanks, never send a black cloud to take our breastworks. We were retreating when we saw them coming. When some one said, 'It's a black cloud, boys; let's every man stand fast; never be taken prisoners or surrender to them darkies, or give them our breastworks while there is a man of us left alive.'"

And then we commenced shaking hands with each other. There were some of them who were nearly barefooted, with pants ripped nearly up to their knees; tall, fine-looking, good-hearted fellows, from Georgia. This ended the battles of the war, so far as we were concerned, and old Pap. Thomas drank the health of the old Army of the Cumberland. We stayed around Nashville for some time, got our discharge, and, on the 10th day of June, 1865, broke ranks in Milwaukee. I bought a suit of citizen's clothes for $85 that could be bought to-day for $25.

There was a strong Fenian movement in Milwaukee just about that time, with the object in view of taking Canada. I happened in to Melm's, a saloon where the new Pabst building now stands, if my memory serves me right, and I think it does. There was a big crowd of men in there talking war, Fenians and Canada, all feeling good. Of course, I had a say about the war and other topics of conversation that were sprung into discussion as well as anybody else had, and seemed to interest some of my hearers. They wanted me to get up on a round table near by. There were two or three rows of tables in there. I would not get up on the table. I was taken hold of and placed on the table. Well, I talked a little while, and then came down to war matters. I said the Battle of Stone River lasted seven days and it cost this government nine millions of dollars a day, and asked, "What would we do if we didn't have a government to back us? Do you think we could carry on a war by some one of us having a few dollars in our pockets? Foolish idea; that is your predicament, gentlemen." Of course, that was disparaging the movement, but I did not intend it for that particular purpose. I was simply telling the truth as well as I knew how, when somebody hit me. I jumped off the table, lost my hat in the row and never found it.

I went to Illinois to work as a farm hand for $1 a day for every day in the year, wet or dry, hail, rain or sunshine, board and washing free, and with what money I had saved up, bought a piece of land at twenty dollars per acre, with a mortgage of $1,500 on it, payable in gold coin, but it was paid off with the greenback dollar. I lived on that farm for twenty-six years and brought it to a very high state of cultivation. I sold it out seven years ago, at one hundred dollars per acre, the first $100 acre land that was ever sold in my township, and came to Milwaukee, the scene of my boyhood days. I have been a delegate to state and county conventions and held offices of trust in the township where I lived; but, commander and comrades, I can say to you, with candor, that I never saw an assembly of men that act more gentlemanly with each other, and that I felt more proud of, and that I felt more at home with than I do with the members of E. B. Wolcott Post.

PULPIT AND PRESS.

An Argument in Favor of the Power of the Press as Compared with that of the Clergy.

Delivered at Phenix School House, Towanda Township, Ill., February 8, 1877, by Thomas J. Ford.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen and Honorable Judges: In choosing a side on the question before you I am influenced by nothing save conviction, and, in saying what little I do, to show that the press has more influence than the pulpit, I am not guided by a desire to detract from the merits of the pulpit, but simply by a wish to have the press estimated at its proper value. In discussing the question we must seek effects, and, by comparing them, arrive at a correct decision. And right here I wish, honorable judges, ladies and gentlemen, that you would remember that all examples of times past are not fair ones. When we consider that preaching has been practiced from the earliest ages, even from before the time of Christ, the great Preacher, down through the Middle Ages, when there was no such thing as printing even, and that printing itself was invented as late as 1441, while the press, as we now know it, is a product of the latter part of the present century, all examples of the power of the pulpit, therefore, that are taken from olden times are unfair, and the question must be considered as it is framed, "Which has the most influence at the present time?" And even now your decision must be arrived at by cool, patient investigation, and you must set down Bible banging and pulpit shouting at their proper worth and estimate the influence of the press, which acts like the still small voice of conscience, at its real value; you must bring scales, more delicate than Fairbanks cattle scales, and be prepared to weigh small pigs one by one as carefully as your Christmas beeves, for you may be assured if we bring enough of them the sum of their weights will be greater than that of the monster cattle. Here is where the advocates of the pulpit have the advantage. Anyone can see the effect of the conversion of a sinner or the result of a revival, but to measure the silent influence of the paper requires greater judgment. The most casual observer can see the dust of the threshing machine, but the man must be right there who sees the number of bushels threshed. So, gentlemen, if the sum of all the influence of the press outweighs the influence of the pulpit, then must you decide for the press.

They may point you to revival preaching and show you how Moody converts his thousands; but you must consider how much he is helped by Sankey and the daily papers that create a kind of spiritual atmosphere about him, because a force acts at an instant of time. You must not infer that its effect is greater than if it acts through ages. Constant dropping wears the rock, and mechanics teaches us that a force creates the same result, whether acting in a moment or at length. You may burn a cord of wood in the open air, but because its blaze is seen the farthest you must not infer that it has a greater effect than if burned in the furnace that makes the steam that grinds your daily bread. In England, where the pulpit has an influence in temporal as well as spiritual affairs, they speak of the third estate of the kingdom, and enumerate those estates or classes of men, such as the lawyers, the Parliament, the clergy, the crown. They call the houses of Parliament the two estates, and the third is not the clergy or even the crown, but the press. There the whole kingdom bows before the utterances of the London Times, which is called the Thunderer. The papers there influence finance, legislation and the policy of the government. The press there is recognized as having more influence than the pulpit or the clergy, and, why? Go with me to our own legislature, and you will see the reason, and you will see also how much the press has to do with the laws that govern us. You will see before each member his pile of newspapers, and can notice how eagerly he scans the columns to see words of commendation or condemnation. You can see how much he is influenced by his little home papers in his votes and speeches. Some years ago the financial editor of the London Times was indicted and removed from his position because he wrote articles that influenced the money markets. It shook the money centers when corruption was shown in a newspaper editor, but it scarcely causes a ripple of excitement when a minister is corrupt. The church itself concedes the power of the press and supports them accordingly. In simple numbers it is plain that the papers have the greatest power.

If you consider how each man's thoughts and actions are controlled by what he reads you must say that the influence of the press is greater than the pulpit. It has been well said that the pen is mightier than the sword, and it might be added or the pulpit either.