The Lone Star Defenders 11

The Lone Star Defenders 11

I had been riding on a rear platform, conversing with Mr. Wingo, when I

proceeded to General Hogg’s coach, and found him considerably excited.

In answer to my inquiry he told me what had been intimated and said

the suggestion, he thought, was a plausible one, and that he had about

determined to order the train forward at all hazards. He was rather an

irritable man, and his suspicions were easily aroused. I endeavored

to quiet him, and did so for a time, by explaining the situation, and

pointed out the danger we would be in of colliding with some other

train unless the utmost caution was used, as was being done; and

finally told him that I had known the conductor since he was a small

boy, had gone to school with him, and was sure there was no treachery

in him. It was not a great while, however, before others came around

with similar evil suspicions, until the general was wrought up to such

a pitch that he peremptorily ordered the train run through to Corinth,

regardless of consequences, else some dire calamity would overtake

every person in charge of it. Well, we made the rest of the journey

in very good time, at the risk of many lives, but fortunately without

accident. For this our friend and new brigadier-general was on the next

day ordered under arrest by General Beauregard. But nothing more ever

came of it.

 

After dragging along for more than thirty hours over a distance

ordinarily made in six or seven, we finally disembarked, in the middle

of the night, on the north side of the railroad, about two miles

west of Corinth. So here we were, without horses, to confront new

conditions, under new commanders, constrained to learn the art of war

in a different arm of the service, and to drill, to march, and fight as

infantry.

 

The next morning after our arrival I mounted the quartermaster’s horse,

and rode into town, which was my duty as the quartermaster’s right-hand

man, to procure forage for our stock—that is, for the regimental and

brigade headquarters horses, artillery horses and the wagon teams. I

found the road leading from our camp to town almost impassable owing to

the mud, impassable even for a good horse and rider, and utterly and

absolutely impassable for a wagon at all, as the best team we had could

not have drawn an empty wagon over the road.

 

I found Corinth all aglitter with brass buttons and gold lace, the

beautiful Confederate uniform being much in evidence everywhere. I

never had seen anything like it before.

 

The Battle of Shiloh had been fought while we were on the steamer

between Duvall’s Bluff and Memphis, General Albert Sidney Johnston had

been killed, and the army under General Beauregard had fallen back to

Corinth, and the town was literally alive with officers and soldiers.

There were more headquarters, more sentinels, and more red tape here

than I had ever dreamed of. I had not seen uniformed officers or men

west of the Mississippi River, and had known nothing of red tape in

the army. Knowing nothing of the organization of the army beyond our

own brigade, I had everything to learn in reference to the proper

quartermaster, forage master, and master of transportation, as I must

needs have railroad transportation for my forage.

 

So beginning at the top, I made my way to General Beauregard’s

headquarters; from there I was directed to division headquarters;

thence to a quartermaster; and from one quartermaster to another,

until I had about done the town—and finally found the right man. One

lesson learned not to be gone over. Finding there was no difficulty in

getting forage delivered in Corinth, I had now to hunt up the master

of transportation and satisfy him of the impossibility of hauling

it on wagons. Owing to the immense business just then crowding the

railroad and the scarcity of rolling stock, it was really a difficult

matter to get the transportation; but by dint of perseverance in the

best persuasive efforts I could bring to bear, I succeeded in having

one day’s rations sent out by rail. The next day the same thing as to

transportation had to be gone over, and the next, and the next, and

each succeeding day it became more difficult to accomplish, until a day

came when it was impossible to get the forage hauled out at all.

 

I rode back to camp and notified the battery and the different

headquarters that I would issue forage in Corinth, which would have to

be brought out on horseback. All accepted the situation cheerfully

except Rogers, who didn’t seem to like me, and I suppose it was because

I called him _Mr._ Rogers, instead of General Rogers, as others did.

He went directly to General Hogg and said: “I think that fellow Barron

should be required to have the forage hauled out.” General Hogg said:

“I do not think you should say a word, sir; you have been trying for a

week to get a carload of ammunition brought out and have failed. This

is the first day Barron has failed to get the forage brought out; if

you want your horses to have corn, send your servant in after it.” I

had no further trouble with Mr. Rogers.

 

I cannot remember exactly the time we spent at Corinth. It was from

the time of our landing there until about the 29th day of May, say six

or seven weeks; but to measure time by the suffering and indescribable

horrors of that never-to-be-forgotten siege, it would seem not less

than six or seven months. From the effects of malaria, bad water, and

other combinations of disease-producing causes, our friends from home

soon began to fall sick, and, becoming discouraged, the staff officers

began to resign and leave the service. Rogers, I believe, was the first

to go. He was soon followed by the quartermaster and commissary, and

soon all the gentlemen named as coming to the front with General Hogg

were gone, except John T. Decherd, who had been made quartermaster

in place of William T. Long, resigned. I bought Long’s horse and

rigging, and Decherd and myself continued to run that department for

a time, and Tom Johnson was made ordnance officer in place of Rogers,

resigned. General Hogg, being stricken down with disease, was removed

to the house of a citizen two or three miles in the country, where he

was nursed by his faithful servant Bob, General W. L. Cabell meantime

being placed in command of the brigade. General Hogg died a few days

later—on the day of the battle of Farmington.

 

The following “pathetic story of Civil War times” having been published

in the Nashville (Tenn.) _Banner_, _Youth’s Companion_, Jacksonville

(Tex.) _Reformer_, and perhaps many other papers, I insert it here in

order to give its correction a sort of permanent standing:

 

 

A SOLDIER’S GRAVE

 

A pathetic story of Civil War times is related to the older people of

Chester County in the western part of Tennessee by the recent death

of ex-Governor James S. Hogg of Texas. Some days after the battle of

Shiloh, one of the decisive and bloody engagements of the war, fought

on April 6-7, 1862, a lone and wounded Confederate soldier made his

way to a log cabin located in the woods four miles west of Corinth,

Miss., and begged for shelter and food. The man was weak from hunger

and loss of blood, and had evidently been wandering through the woods

of the sparsely settled section for several days after the battle. The

occupants of the cottage had little to give, but divided this little

with the soldier. They took the man in and administered to his wants

as best they could with their limited resources. They were unable to

secure medical attention, and the soldier, already emaciated from the

lack of food and proper attention, gradually grew weaker and weaker

until he died. Realizing his approaching end, the soldier requested

that his body be buried in the wood near the house, and marked with a

simple slab bearing his name, “General J. L. Hogg, Rusk, Texas.”

 

The request was complied with, and in the years that passed the

family which had so nobly cared for this stranger moved away, the

grave became overgrown with wild weeds, and all that was left to

mark the soldier’s resting-place was the rough slab. This rotted by

degrees, but was reverently replaced by some passer-by, and in this

way the grave was kept marked; but it is doubtful if the few people

who chanced to pass that way and see the slab ever gave a thought to

the identity of the occupant of the grave, until after the election

of Hon. James S. Hogg to the governorship of the State of Texas. Then

someone of Chester County who had seen the grave wrote Governor Hogg

concerning the dead soldier. In a short time a letter was received,

stating that the soldier was Governor Hogg’s father, and that he

entered the Confederate army when the war first broke out, and had

never been heard of by relatives or friends.

 

After more correspondence Governor Hogg caused the grave to be

enclosed by a neat iron fence, and erected a handsome plain marble

shaft over the grave. This monument bears the same simple inscription

which marked the rough slab which had stood over the grave of one of

the South’s heroic dead.

 

Conceding the truth of the statement that General J. L. Hogg, of Rusk,

Texas, died at a private house four miles west of Corinth, Miss., in

the spring of 1862, was buried near by, and that his grave has been

properly marked by his son, ex-Governor James S. Hogg, not a word

of truth remains in the story, the remainder being fiction pure and

simple, and the same may be refuted by a simple relation of the facts

and circumstances of General Hogg’s brief service in the Confederate

army and his untimely death—facts that may easily be verified by the

most creditable witnesses.

 

Joseph L. Hogg was appointed brigadier-general by the Confederate War

Department in February, 1862. When his commission came he was ordered

to report for duty at Memphis, Tenn., where he would be assigned to

the command of a brigade of Texas troops. After the battle of Elkhorn

a number of Texas regiments were ordered to cross the Mississippi

River, among them the Third and Tenth Texas Cavalry—Company C of the

Third and Company I of the Tenth were made up at Rusk. General Hogg’s

oldest son, Thomas E. Hogg, was a private in Company C, and these two

regiments formed part of the brigade.