George Cary Eggleston

“ What we call ‘Memory,’ is only a mode of consciousness, and to know a Future event is a precisely similar mode of consciousness. Memory and prevision are only different ways of knowing a fact that now is. I see no reason to regard the one as any more truly impossible than the other.
“I grant that in its ordinary Time-clogged state the mind is not capable of discovering those occurrences which to us seem future ones. But it seems to me that there are, or at least may be, conditions of mind in which one rises above the trammels of Time and sees things as they are. ”

“ One tall, lean mountaineer, Jim Thomas by name, who received a slight wound every time he was under fire, and was never sufficiently hurt to quit duty, was standing on a bank of earth slowly munching a bit of his last cracker and watching the effect of some artillery fire which was in progress at the time, when a bullet carried away his cap and cut a strip of hair from his head, leaving the scalp for a space as bald as if it had been shaved with a razor. ”

“ Of course every man who, during the truce, wandered over this perilous space for an hour, must have been impressed, if he had any imagination at all, with the historical interest of the occasion. Every one desired naturally to carry away some memento of the event. Only one man yielded to this impulse, and he did so thoughtlessly. He was a captain of Confederate infantry.
He saw lying on the ground a star that had been cut by a bullet from some officer’s coat collar. ”

“ Luckily the road from Bear’s Island to Bluffton was the easiest one in all that country to find, and the one I happened to know best. So that even if the sergeant should not get across the marsh, I was confident of my ability to make the journey alone.
“Now,” said the sergeant, “if I get across I won’t wait for you, but will go right on; if you succeed, don’t wait for me. It’s no time for ceremony. It’s better one of us should drown than that the other should be delayed.”
“Spoken like a man and a soldier, sergeant,” said I. “Now for it.” ”

“ But it was war. And a poet has justly characterized war as a “brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art.” Or as General Sherman once said,—and he knew,—“War is all hell.”
We were within sixty yards of the crater. Each one of our mortars was belching from three to five shells a minute into that hole; but Si Tucker’s enthusiasm was not satisfied. Having no personal duty to do at the moment, he began plugging shells with long fuses, lighting them, running with them to the margin of the pit, and tossing them in as hand grenades. ”

“ Federal army was as much oversupplied as we were underfurnished with all the necessaries of campaigning. What with a perfectly equipped quartermaster’s department, a sanitary commission volunteering superfluous tin cups and everything else and with other sources of lavish supply, public and private, every Federal soldier entered the campaign carrying about three times as much as any soldier should carry. The moment there was fighting to be done, they shed all these things—as a man throws off his overcoat when there is work to do. ”

“ He was as black as a negro with powder smoke. His cannoneers were equally begrimed. From the top of a hill, not more than two hundred yards distant,—pistol-shot range,—he opened fire with canister. The effect upon the crowd was instantaneous and almost startling. Its constituent members dispersed as a covey of partridges does when a shot-gun is fired into its lurking place. Some of them ran up the creek. Some of them ran down the creek. Some of them plunged into the creek, and crossed or drowned, as the case may be. ”

“ While the skirmishers are doing their work, the heaviest strain of war falls on the nerves of the men in line of battle.
They have nothing to do but wait.
They wait with the certain knowledge that in a few minutes the advancing army will throw men forward, and thus convert its skirmish line into a line of attack; while on their own side they know that their skirmish line, after making all of discovery that temporary resistance can accomplish, will fall back, and that then the crucial conflict will begin. ”

“ There was a certain gruesome delight even in standing upon ground, where for a month or more it had been impossible for a twig or a blade of grass to grow without instant decapitation, and where [217] for months to come it would be equally impossible for anything having material substance to exist. The very turf itself had been literally skinned from the surface of the earth by a continuous scything of bullets. For a month it had been impossible for any soldier on either side even to shoot over the breastworks, for he who tried to do so was sure to be instantly destroyed. ”

“ She was mounted on a superb chestnut mare, and she knew how to ride.
She might easily have escaped, and at one time seemed about to do so, but at the critical moment she seemed to lose her head and so fell into our hands.
When we brought her to Charlie Irving she was all smiles and graciousness, and Charlie was all blushes.
“You’d hang me to a tree, if I were a man, I suppose,” she said. “And serve me right, too. As I’m only a woman, you’d better send me to General Stuart, instead.” ”

“ We plunged forward across every ford and along every road that led from Bull Run towards Centreville. At every point we found “chaos come again.”
A squad of ten men, armed only with sabres and pistols, but backed by the Mameluke tradition, would call out to eighty or a hundred fully armed infantry: “Throw down your arms, or we’ll put you to the sword! Throw down your arms, or we’ll put you to the sword!”
The panic-stricken men would obey the order instantly, disregarding the fact that with a single volley they might have swept the insolent squad instantly out of existence. ”

“ Hunger to starving men is wholly unrelated to the desire for food as that is commonly understood and felt. It is a great agony of the whole body and soul as well. It is an unimaginable, all-pervading pain, inflicted when the strength to endure pain is utterly gone. It is the great, despairing cry of a wasting body—a cry of flesh and blood, marrow, nerves, bones, and faculties for strength with which to exist and to endure existence. ”

“ No man in the firing squad was permitted to know whether his gun had a bullet in it or not.
The officer in command spoke scarcely above his breath, but so hushed was the time that his words were audible to the three thousand men there assembled, as he said to each alternate man: “Fire at his head,” and to the intervening man: “Fire at his chest.” Then turning his back, which was perhaps not an officer-like thing to do, the lieutenant gave in a husky voice the word of command. ”

“ When the news came that Stuart wanted to communicate as quickly as possible with the commandant at Fredericksburg, Ham Seay volunteered to carry the message.
“But you’re ill,” said Stuart.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Ham. “I can ride my horse, and my horse is a good one.”
“But you’re ill,” said Stuart again. “And I don’t want to send an ill man on such a journey as this.”
Then Ham Seay rose in the majesty of his manhood.
“General,” he said, “I am a doomed man. I cannot live long to render service in the war. I want to render what service I can. ”

“ It is a horror which, once suffered, leaves an impression that is never erased from the memory, and to this day the agony of that campaign comes back upon me at the mere thought of any living creature’s lacking the food it desires, even though its hunger be only the ordinary craving, and the denial be necessary for the creature’s health. ”

“ The absolute truth is not that which we see through a distorting medium of Time, but that which we should see if we were in Eternity and freed from the illusions of Time. To beings who see thus clearly and truthfully, all things must exist in an eternal Present. ”

“ We had absolute faith in Lee’s ability to meet and repel any assault that might be made, and to devise some means of destroying Grant. There was, therefore, no fear in the Confederate ranks of anything that General Grant might do; but there was an appalling and well-founded fear of starvation, which indeed some of us were already suffering. From the beginning of that campaign our food-supply had been barely sufficient to maintain life, and on the march from Spottsylvania to Cold Harbor it would have been a gross exaggeration to describe it in that way. ”

“ The Manassas panic always did impress Stuart as an irresistible joke.
A moment later he said: “I’m glad you reported those rockets. Always report whatever you see. Even a shooting star may mean something at headquarters.”
But I have never ceased to wonder why we guards that night had no orders to look out for red, white, and blue rockets, since they meant so much. If they had not been reported by a tired and lonely sentinel, we should have been run over in our tents by a force of ten thousand men.
A celebrated writer says: “War is a hazard of possibilities, probabilities, luck, and ill luck.” ”

“ They knew also that we must not waste a moment if Petersburg, the key to Richmond, was not to be lost.
So they formed themselves in platoons—God bless them!—bearing gifts of sandwiches and coffee.
We could not stop even to take, much less to eat, the food they offered, so they thrust their platoons between ours and marched backward as fast as we marched forward, serving their food and drink to us as we went.
Every now and then a Federal shell would come bowling down the street, but these alert women would jump it as nimbly as if its passage [71] had been a prearranged figure in the dance. ”

“ He was ready at any time to affront a man and to treat a woman with conspicuous contempt. He hated life, and was ready to give it up at any moment which might suit the decrees or the aspirations of Fate. He was ready to fight anything in the world, or anybody, under any circumstances, or upon any issue. ”

“ Immediately opposite the position occupied by the battery to which I belonged, and about six or eight hundred yards distant across an open field, lay a Federal battery, whose commander was manifestly a man deeply in earnest for other and higher reasons than those that govern the professional soldier: a man who fought well, because he fought in what he felt to be his own cause and quarrel. ”

“ For only two or three times in any war do men with fixed bayonets on one side actually meet in physical shock men armed with fixed bayonets on the other.
Wherever there is advantage on either side, the general commanding that side throws troops forward in as heavy masses as possible to make the most of it. If one line or the other be broken, every conceivable effort is made to convert the breach into victory. And if victory comes, the cavalry thunder forward in pursuit and in an endeavor to convert the enemy’s defeat into rout. ”

“ The army that is standing on the defensive holds its lines in position—every battery placed where it will do the most good, and every infantryman lying down and taking the utmost advantage of every tree stump, log, or inequality of the ground, to protect himself as much as possible.
The men on horseback are either in front with the skirmishers, minutely observing the strength and movements of the enemy, or, having finished [5] that work, are thrown out at the two ends of the lines, called “flanks,” to watch there for possible movements of the enemy that might be otherwise unobserved. ”

“ We were stationed on the coast of South Carolina, and never was there an idler set of soldiers than we.
We were in the midst of a great war, it is true, and ours was a fighting battery with dates on its battle banner; but on the coast we had literally nothing to do. The position of our camp was determined by military geography, and it could not be changed. A fight was possible any day, and now and then a fight came. But we knew in advance precisely where it must be waged, and until our foemen chose to bring it about, we had no occasion for marching or bivouacking. They were on the sea islands. ”

“ So when he was sentenced to death, he adjusted his blankets in the proper order so that he might not have a nightmare, and slept the sleep of the contented.
With all my contempt for Beavers I was sorry that he was to die. There was something in the reckless character of the man that appealed to me. Something that made me feel that it was a pity that this abundant life should be extinguished by a rifle shot. ”

“ He had to stand astride the poor dying fellow, in order to do his work, for Fulcher’s wound was beyond the possibility of a surgeon’s help.
After two or three more shots of the gun, Joe heard Fulcher feebly calling to him: “Joe—Joe.” Inclining his ear, Joe received this last message: “I’m done for, sergeant. But won’t you just write to my father and tell him I died like a man? I’d like him to know that about his only boy.”
Joe wrote the letter and it was blotted with tears.
After all, it is hard to guess what a man is made of till you know his motives. ”

“ As there can be no such thing as Time in Eternity, there can be no such thing there as a Past or a Future event. If Eternity is anything more than Time exaggerated and extended,—if, indeed, there is any such thing as Eternity,—it is not subject to the laws and conditions of Time. ”

“ But he held his ground and continued to fight in spite of all, firing at one time as from two faces of an acute triangle.
His determination was superb, and the coolness of his gunners and cannoneers was worthy of the unbounded admiration which we, their enemies, felt for them. Their firing increased as their difficulties multiplied, but it showed no sign of becoming wild or hurried. Every shot went straight to the object against which it was [202] directed; every fuse was accurately timed, and every shell burst where it was intended to burst. ”

“ By the time that the outburst was over, Si Tucker had learned his first lesson in war. He had learned to realize that a man may endure a lot of very savage fire, and yet come out of it alive.
A few hours later, when the guns were at work again, Si was steady enough in his nerves to carry shells to the guns. ”

“ He seems to know how to handle sharp steel.”
The captain nodded assent, and Jack put spurs to his horse. The two men met in midfield. They crossed swords as a couple of gladiators might, while a thousand eyes watched anxiously for the result.
It was manifestly to be a contest of experts, a battle of the giants, for both men were above the average in height and weight, and both knew every trick of the sabre.
Their swords drew fire from each other’s edge at the first onset. ”

“ As we rode through the plantation, decay manifested itself on every hand. There was a small, straggling crop in process of growth, but sadly ill attended. There were no animals in sight except five sheep that we saw grazing on a hillside.
As we turned the corner of the woodland the mansion came into view. Only its walls were left standing. Fire had destroyed the rest. At the gate we met an old negro serving-man, whom I had known in the palmy days as Uncle Isham. ”

“ I never had any use for a pincushion because I never could pin any two things together the way a woman can, but a man can’t make his womenkind believe that: I’ve kept it all through the war, and when I go back home—if it suits the Yankees that I ever go back at all—I’m going to give it as a souvenir to the little sister that made it for me. And I’m going to tell her that it was that pincushion, little three-cornered thing that it is, that made a man out of me that day. ”