CHAPTER VI.
Thearmy was getting ready to start on the march for East Tennessee. I had bought my officer’s uniform, with my straps on my shoulders and a sword hanging by my side. I do not think that General Grant or General Sherman ever felt as big as I did. Of course we had been lying in the mountains of East Tennessee for nearly two years, and had been chased by rebels and in danger of our lives every minute of our time, and had to leave our families to be treated like thieves—why not feel good as we were going back to relieve them? I have known rebels to take women and whip them to make them tell where their husbands were.
About the first of August we were ordered to be ready to march at a minute’s notice, and in a few days the orders came for us to fall in line. The band struck up the tune, “Going back to Dixie;” the men cheered, and some shed tears of joy. The army concentrated at Danville, Ky., and General Burnside took command of the 23d Army Corps. We remained there a few days, and then took up our march in fact for East Tennessee. We had a pretty hard time getting across the mountains, as the roads were very bad, and the horses and mules were not used to traveling; a great many of them gave out, and a large number died.
We reached East Tennessee, below Knoxville, about the last of August, 1863, and marched in the direction of that city,passing between it and Bean Station. We skirmished with the rebels on our way, and then camped at Bull’s Gap for a few days.
While at Bull’s Gap, I asked Col. Reeve for a detail of six men to go across the country about eighteen miles, to visit my home and find out if any rebels were lurking around in the neighborhood. When we got within a mile of Parrottsville, Cocke County, near where I lived, we sent a Union woman to the town, requesting her to see an old colored man by the name of Dave Rodman, who we knew had been living there all his life, and to tell him to come out to a piece of woodland just above the town.
About ten o’clock in the night we heard the old man coming in our direction. We met him and he informed us that Henry Kilgore (the man who conscripted me), Tillman Faubion and Cass Turner were in the town; that Kilgore was at his home, and the other two men were across the street at Faubion’s house. We went into the town, and George Freshour, who was a Sergeant in my company, and one other man and myself surrounded the Kilgore house, while the other three men went across the street to the Faubion house and captured Faubion and Cass Turner. Their horses were hitched to the fence, ready to mount and make their way to North Carolina. It was raining, and the night was very dark.
Freshour went to the front door and knocked; some one came to the door, and he asked if Kilgore was at home. They said that he had gone. As I was at the back kitchen door and the other man at the south door, we knew he had not passed out. Freshour insisted that Kilgore was in the house, and demandedthat the door be opened. Finally they let him in.
There was no light in the house. Freshour searched under the beds and every place that he thought a man could hide in, but failed to find his man. He then went into the kitchen and found Kilgore crouched behind some old barrels. We brought him out and took him across the street where the other two prisoners were. We then started down Clear Creek, which ran through the Knobs, and we had to cross it ten or fifteen times on foot logs that were narrow, smooth and slippery.
At the beginning of the Rebellion this man Henry Kilgore was a conscript officer, and gave Leadbeater’s Command, which was stationed at Parrottsville for the purpose of hunting Union men, all the information he could obtain as to where the Union men kept their corn, wheat, bacon and bee gum. He was a terror to the country.
Tillman Faubion was a nice man, and I never heard of him giving any information, but he was a strong rebel sympathizer.
Cass Turner lived between Sevierville and Newport, Cocke County, Tenn. He was a conscript officer, and one of the worst men in that section. While hunting Union men who were lying out in the hills, trying to get to Kentucky, he found that two or three men were hid in a cave in his neighborhood. He and two others went to the cave and found the men, and it was said he shot them and left their bodies in the cave.
I remember when we started with these three men, Sergt. Freshour walked behind Kilgore, and he insisted upon my giving him permission to kill Kilgore, but I would not let him do any harm to any of the men.
Cass Turner was a short man, weighing about two hundred pounds. He could not walk the foot-logs, and had to get down and slide across on his stomach. He and Kilgore pleaded with the boys to let them ride, but they refused.
About ten miles below where we captured these men we came to the home of a Mrs. Bible, whose husband had been captured by the rebels, taken to Tuscaloosa and died. Freshour asked her if she had any honey, and she replied that there was a bee hive in the barn that the rebels had not found. Freshour went to the bee hive, took out a pound of soft honey, put it in Kilgore’s tall white “plug” hat, and made him wear it. The honey ran down his face, eyes and ears. The cause of the Sergeant’s little act of “pleasantry” was the fact that Kilgore had sent the rebels to Freshour’s father’s house, and they took all of his bee hives, wheat, corn and bacon—in fact all he had. The rebel now had an opportunity to taste the “sweets of adversity.”
We took these men to Knoxville and turned them over to the authorities, and then returned to our command, at Bull’s Gap.