EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE

Reader mine, did you live in that stormy period? In the year of our Lord
eighteen hundred and sixty-one, do you remember those stirring times?
Do you recollect in that year, for the first time in your life, of
hearing Dixie and the Bonnie Blue Flag? Fort Sumter was fired upon
from Charleston by troops under General Beauregard, and Major Anderson,
of the Federal army, surrendered. The die was cast; war was declared;
Lincoln called for troops from Tennessee and all the Southern states,
but Tennessee, loyal to her Southern sister states, passed the ordinance
of secession, and enlisted under the Stars and Bars. From that day on,
every person, almost, was eager for the war, and we were all afraid it
would be over and we not be in the fight. Companies were made up,
regiments organized; left, left, left, was heard from morning till night.
By the right flank, file left, march, were familiar sounds. Everywhere
could be seen Southern cockades made by the ladies and our sweethearts.
And some who afterwards became Union men made the most fiery secession
speeches. Flags made by the ladies were presented to companies, and to
hear the young orators tell of how they would protect that flag, and that
they would come back with the flag or come not at all, and if they fell
they would fall with their backs to the field and their feet to the foe,
would fairly make our hair stand on end with intense patriotism, and we
wanted to march right off and whip twenty Yankees. But we soon found out
that the glory of war was at home among the ladies and not upon the field
of blood and carnage of death, where our comrades were mutilated and torn
by shot and shell. And to see the cheek blanch and to hear the fervent
prayer, aye, I might say the agony of mind were very different indeed
from the patriotic times at home.