The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1896-06-18

commissions came not through ability so
much as the fact that we had joined the
loyal mountaineers Of the Cumberland
range, and we knew more about the
"three RS" than the brave, sturdy fellows
who rejoiced at our appointment and sub
nitted to our command.
Two years ago this spring Colonel Dud-
ley, now a successful lawyer In Bslti-
more, proposed to me to take an early va
cation, and to spend 1t riding over the
trails where, 50 years before, we had
marched by night and fought by day and
starved most Of the time, while praying
as never done before or since-that help,
more than our rugged divisions could give,
might be sent to the naked, hungry heroes
so resolutely holding the east shore Of the
Tennessee at Chattanooga.
I decided to give up newspaper work,
more wearing than war in the long run,
and to go with my friend. On the way
down to Chattanooga he asked me If re-
membered story he told me the night be-
fore we assaulted the northern spur Of
Mission Ridge sometimes called Mission
airy Ridge, under Sherman. I remembered
the story very well-I knew of many cases
of the same kind in the border states-but
was anxious to hear it again.
Dudley's story in brief was this: His
father was Tennesseean of good family.
He fell in love with beautiful girl, whose
family were the founders of Portsmouth,
O., on the southern rim of the state, across
from Kentucky. The young man, after
graduating in medicine, married and set
tied down In Portsmouth. His family
disowned him because his wife's people
were said to be abolltionists but, happy
in his love and his three boys, he pursued
his profession successfully till South Caro-
lima seeded and the first hOarse rumblings
of the war came up from Charleston.
Up to this time DR.. Dudley had taken
no great interest in politics, though he
always voted, and jokingly made bets with
the opposition. But with the first sound
of war his life and his manner changed
changed so suddenly and radically that
those who knew him best whispered that
he had become insane, and those who did
not know him SO we'll threatened to hang
him for what they called "his treason to
the Union. -
Mrs. Dudley and her youngest son were
opposed to secession; the doctor and Frank
and Edgar, the first and second sons an
nounced themselves as 'rebels.
Ii was we'll known in Portsmouth that
DR.. Dudley's was another case of "divided
house, yet there was great deal of sur
prise in the pretty river town, when one
evening, in the fall of 1851, it became
known that the doctor and two of his sons
had disappeared.
Under the circumstances Harold became
dearer, If that were possible, to his mother
and for the love of her he would have re-
M Ton of bnvpa haA ha 40,
of love, less sensitive to the opinions of
others. The schoolmates and playmates of
his childhood and boyhood were going into
the war, and although they never openly
chided him with disloyalty to the Union,
yet he felt that he was under cloud, and
that there was but one course left him,
and fortunately that course was in the line
Of his inclinations.
Harold Dudley told his mother his pur-
pose, and she, realizing the situation with
woman's quick intuition, consented to
his going. He crossed the Ohio, met up
with Union refugees in the mountains of
southeastern Kentucky, and with them
pressed north and joined the Union army.
This was the story Captain Dudley told
me, as, with our horses to the rear, we
Rugged the freezing earth that Wednesday
AiShG-Vuo IlOrrOW Was TO Dc IQaQkSglV-
ing-and waited for daylight and the
bugles to sound the advance
am aware there Is the voice, the detail
and the setting wanting to give life to this
crude outline, but in our hotel at Chatta-
nooga that night my old friend added an
interesting postscript to the story of gen.
Grafton before
After the war he returned to the north
to Cincinnati, whittier his mother had
gone-and studied law She died of
"heartache," her friends said, in 1869. In
the meantime she and Harold had made
| every effort to learn the fate of the doctor
and the two sons who had gone south with
him.
Through Confederate friend who had
come to Cincinnati they learned that Ed
gar was killed with General Cheatham at
Lookout Mountain, and that Frank went
down to death with General Cleburn. on
whose staff he served during that final Sc
ries of desperate battles south Of Nashville.
when the power of the Confederates in the
west was irretrievably broken.
DR.. Dudley had served as. surgeon at
| many points south during the war Init aa