The night we left St. Louis I had my first impressive object lesson showing the difference between the conditions of the commissioned officers and the enlisted men. I had spread my blanket at the base of the little structure called the "Texas," on which the pilot house stands. All around the bottom of the "Texas" was a row of small window lights that commanded a view of the interior of the boat's cabin below, and I only had to turn my head and look in and down, to see what was passing. The officers were seated in cushioned chairs, or sauntering around over the carpeted and brilliantly lighted room, while their supper was being prepared. Colored waiters dressed in white uniforms were bringing in the eatables, and when all was ready, a gong was sounded and the officers seated themselves at the table. And just look at the good things they had to eat! Fried ham and beefsteak, hot biscuits, butter, molasses, big boiled Irish potatoes steaming hot, fragrant coffee served with cream, in cups and saucers, and some minor goodies in the shape of preserves and the like. And how savory those good things smelled!—for I was where I could get the benefit of that. And there were the officers, in the warm, lighted cabin, seated at a table, with nigger waiters to serve them, feasting on that splendid fare! Why, it was the very incarnation of bodily comfort and enjoyment! And, when the officers should be ready to retire for the night, warm and cozy berths awaited them, where they would stretch their limbs on downy quilts and mattresses, utterly oblivious to the wet and chill on the outside. Then I turned my head and took in my surroundings! A black, cold night, cinders and soot drifting on us from the smoke stacks, and a drizzling rain pattering down. And my supper had consisted of hardtack and raw sow-belly, with river water for a beverage, of the vintage, say, of 1541. And to aggravate the situation generally, I was lying on a blanket which a military necessity had compelled me to steal. But I reflected that we couldn't all be officers,—there had to be somebody to do the actual trigger-pulling. And I further consoled myself with the thought that while the officers had more privileges than the common soldiers, they likewise had more responsibilities, and had to worry their brains about many things that didn't bother us a particle. So I smothered all envious feelings as best I could, and wrapping myself up good in my blanket, went to sleep, and all night long slept the unbroken, dreamless sleep of youth and health.
The weather cleared up that night, and the next day was fine, and we all felt in better spirits. Our surroundings were new and strange, and we were thrilling with excitement and bright hopes of the future. The great majority of us were simple country boys, who had so far passed our lives in a narrow circle in the backwoods. As for myself, before enlisting in the army I had never been more than fifty miles from home, had not traveled any on a steamboat, and my few short railroad trips did not amount, in the aggregate, to more than about seventy-five miles, back and forth. But now the contracted horizon of the "Whippoorwill Ridges" adjacent to the old home had suddenly expanded, and a great big wonderful world was unfolding to my view. And there was the daring, heroic life on which we were entering! No individual boy expected that he would be killed, or meet with any other adverse fate. Others might, and doubtless would, but he would come out safe and sound, and return home at the end of a victorious war, a military hero, and as such would be looked up to, and admired and reverenced, all the rest of his life. At any rate, such were my thoughts, and I have no doubt whatever that ninety-nine out of a hundred of the other boys thought the same.
On the afternoon of this day (March 27th) we arrived at Cairo, rounded in at the wharf, and remained a short time. The town fronted on the Ohio river, which was high at the time, as also was the Mississippi. The appearance of Cairo was wretched. Levees had been constructed to protect it from high water, but notwithstanding the streets and the grounds generally were just a foul, stagnant swamp. Engines were at work pumping the surface water into the river through pipes in the levee; otherwise I reckon everybody would have been drowned out. Charles Dickens saw this locality in the spring of 1842 when on a visit to America, and it figures in "Martin Chuzzlewit," under the name of "Eden." I never read that book until after the close of the war, but have several times since, and will say that if the Eden of 1842 looked anything like the Cairo of twenty years later, his description thereof was fully warranted.
Our boat had hardly got moored to the wharf before the word went round that some Confederate prisoners were on the transport on our right, and we forthwith rushed to that side to get our first look at the "Secesh," as we then called them. It was only a small batch, about a hundred or so. They were under guard, and on the after part of the lower deck, along the sides and the stern of the boat. We ascertained that they were about the last installment of the Fort Donelson prisoners, and were being shipped to a northern military prison. Naturally, we scanned them with great curiosity, and the boys soon began to joke and chaff them in a perfectly good natured way. They took this silently, with no other manifestation than an occasional dry grin. But finally, a rather good looking young fellow cocked his eyes toward us and in a soft, drawling tone called out, "You-all will sing a different tune by next summah." Our boys responded to this with bursts of laughter and some derisive whoops; but later we found out that the young Confederate soldier was a true prophet.
Our halt at Cairo was brief; the boat soon cast off and proceeded up the Ohio to the mouth of the Tennessee, and from thence up that river. Some time the next day we passed Fort Henry. We had read of its capture the month previous by the joint operations of our army and navy, and were all curious to see this Confederate stronghold, where a mere handful of men had put up such a plucky fight. My ideas of forts at that time had all been drawn from pictures in books which depicted old-time fortresses, and from descriptions in Scott's "Marmion" of ancient feudal castles like "Tantallon strong," and the like. And when we approached Fort Henry I fully expected to see some grand, imposing structure with "battled towers," "donjon keep," "portcullis," "drawbridges," and what not, and perhaps some officer of high rank with a drawn sword, strutting about on the ramparts and occasionally shouting, at the top of his voice, "What, warder, ho!" or words to that effect. But, to my utter amazement and disgust, when we steamed up opposite Fort Henry I saw only a little squatty, insignificant looking mud affair, without the slightest feature of any of the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war." It had been built on the low bottom ground near the bank of the Tennessee river, the stream was now high, and the adjacent land was largely covered with water, while the inside of the fort looked a good deal like a hog pen. I couldn't imagine how such a contemptible looking thing had stood off our gunboats as long as it did. But I did not know then that just such works, with earthen walls, were the strongest and best defenses against modern artillery that could be constructed. In fact, what I didn't know about war, at that stage of the proceedings, was broad and comprehensive, and covered the whole field.
As we journeyed up the Tennessee we began to notice queer-looking green bunches of something on the trees. As the forest had not yet put forth its foliage, we knew that growth could not be leaves, and were puzzled to imagine what it could be. But we finally learned from some of the boat's crew that it was mistletoe. So far as I knew none of the private soldiers had ever before seen that curious evergreen, and it was to us a strange curiosity. But we got well acquainted with it later.
We arrived at Pittsburg Landing on the evening of March 31, about sundown. On going into camp in our position upon the line, for the first time in our service we dwelt in tents. We had what was called the Sibley tent, an affair of a conical shape, rather large, and capable of accommodating about twelve men, with their accoutrements. As a circumstance bearing on our ignorance of life in tents, I will say that we neglected to ditch around them, and on the very first night we slept in them there came a heavy rain, and the next morning found us lying more or less in the water, and our blankets and other stuff sopping wet. But after that, on pitching our tents one of the first things we did was to dig around them a sufficient ditch with a lateral extension.
I retain a vivid recollection of the kind of army cooking we had for the first few months in Tennessee. At Camp Carrollton and Benton Barracks we had company cooks who prepared the food for the