The National tribune., 1900-11-08
REcoLLEcTIoNs OF THE REBELLION.
Slim Pickings in East Tennessee in the
Winter of '63

| EDITOR NATIONAL TRIBUNE: The Win
ter of '63 found us with Burnsidas men
in East Tennessee, playing a frequent
game with the forces under Longstreet.
All old soldiers yet living who crossed the
Cumberland Mountains with Burnside's
army and remained in East Tennessee till
the Spring of '64 have reasons to appre-
ciate a square meal and warm, dry spot
on which to rest their weary bones. We
were then far from Uncle Sans grub
pile" and were ''roughing it." By the
coming of December we had eaten every
thing in the valleys from Loudon TO Bris-
tol except the scrub-oaks and cedar
bushes, and our horses and mules were
fast getting away with them.
During the coldest part of the Winter
my crowd was sneezing and freezing at
Messy Greek, and but few miles farther
| on toward Old Virginia were the John
nies under LOngstreet trying to make veg
etable soup out of snowballs and icicles.
| Our bloodthirsty advance-pickets frequent
ly became so pacified with cold that Il
truce with the enemy's pickets was agreed
on in order to get warm. Our daily bill
of fare was corn on the cob, when we
were lucky enough to find any, and when
we could not after q days hunt we sub
| sisted on expectations of what we might
| find on the morrow. Each day large de-
tails of men would start out, often riding
70 miles before finding corn enough to feed
sick turkey.
Frequently we found the corn-crib
Jumped" by the wide-awake enemy, and
! when that happened we ofttimes were
glad to return to camp in ballast" That
'63 Winter for Tennessee was a 'corker"
| certain and sure-cold, wet, sleet, snow
and ice. Old timers proclaimed it q rec
I l,N,.II nI-z,, . l.,.l
never been known in that section.
For many weeks the whole surface of
the earth was one vast sheet of ice, and
so slick that one in moving about was
liable to slip up and receive worse
wound than that from gun-shot. Many
Of the boys measured their lengths on the
CONCEALED mass and saw stars at midday.
The mountain air from Cumberland's
peaks came bowling down to us colder
than zero, and we crowded closer around
our fires from green wood, and became
as smokestained as n chunk of Georgia
bacon. Our daily amusement, when not
hunting feed, was parching corn and play
ing chuckaluck.
In order to move about on the CLASSY
ice with safety we covered cur feet with
mOccasnS made from pieces of horse
blankets. One day q squad of US went
on still hunt in the hills for. huckleber-
ries. Not far from camp we came onto
a force of the enemy, and they being un-
shod we outran them and took them in.
On inquiring what they were doing in
that vicinity they replied, "Out coon
hunting for corn"
Our Winter quarters were of the cav
airy pattern, noted more for airiness than
elegance, being the one-half of a pup
tent stretched over a ridgepole, and this
dog-like kennel covered with brush and
leaves.
In uniform our crowd looked laughable
and resembled an army of modern tramps
Our clothing was of all kinds and shapes
My wardrobe consisted of an overcoat, the
tails of which had gone up in smoke, while
l had been hugging the campfire during
one cold night; jacket with sleeves off
at the elbows; pants out at the knees and
two large ventilating windows at the rear;
socks made from an old saddle-blanket,
and mOccasins constructed from pieces of
rubber poncho; one suit of underwear, the
seams of which were homestitched by that
pesky little varmint that caused so much
camp life profanity.
Kitchen novelties consisted of fry-pan
made from half of a canteen, knife and
fork, teaspoon, tin cup, tin pail used in
making coffee from parched corn, and the
other half of canteen answered for plate.
For breakfast we had an abundance of
corn coffee, minus sugar, plus weakness,
fapjacks of cornmeal minus salt, and
from meal by patting to fat rock and
cooked by setting up close to fire. For
dinner we ate the fragments left over
from breakfast, and for supper we
munched on corn that we had parched dur
ing the day.
tied to scrub-oaks, shivering and shaking,
thinking of the oats they ate ere we
crossed the mountains into Tennessee.
They had eaten the bark from the trees
as high UP as they could reach, and We're
continually paving, hoping to fell the
trees so as to eat the roots. l had often
heard of horses feeding on stake oats. In
East Tennessee l saw the fact verified.
The horses got so hungry that they ate
the hair from their own tails.
oh, what Godsend to US poor, half
starved, half-frozen fellows would have
been rotten canned beef of Cuban war no
tOriety! Even our horses would have glad |
white-oak bark. Along about the first
part of January, '64, just after the siege
of Knoxville was raised, we We're issued
beef that had hoofed it from Cincinnati |
via Chattanooga to Knoxville. There was
quite herd of the rawhide, and to pre-
vent the buzzards from carrying off the |
skeletons the Critters were killed and |
issued to Burnsides men as a luxury
My company got the forequarter of an
old bull that had paved dirt in '49. In |
looks it resembled somewhat huge piece |
of rubber packing, and was so tough that |
a starved ''yaller dorg" would have |
it. An ak was used in cutting |
it up into chunks ready to issue. The |
bones were the tenderest part of it.
Pat Donohue, of my company, put a |
piece of the stuff in his half canteen to |
fry. As soon as it got warm it began to
squirm and wriggle, and finally rolled |
from the pan into the ashes.
'Begorra," says Pat, 1.-THE thing is alive,
and I'm a spalpeen if | ate it,
My portion of the tissue was a choice
piece of brisket, good boiling piece, /
thought Putting it on to boil, and keep,
ing it dancing in the water for a half day,
l found it to be diminishing in size and
getting tougher. Fearing that it might
vanish altogether, l took it from the broth
and tried to carve it with my camp-knife.
Cut it? No. 1t was as blue in color as
indigo, and as tough as sole-leather. Pick
ing it up / placed it on a stump, hit it q
whack with my saber and away it went,
over the frozen ground like a
baseball. That was army beef, the kind
that the boys "chawed'' on when in East
Tennessee during the Winter of '63-4. We
cavarymen Jared badly and used to think
hat the infantrymen Jared worse, for the
reason that they could not raid over the
Il l