before we arrived there, serious trouble occurred. We had never been in an engagement, and none of us knew whether we could stand fire or not. Troops could never be de. pended upon the first time, though they generally came through all right. "Our way was

through a wooded country, and as usual in skirmishing, the orders were for every fellow to look out for himself. We pushed on in our irregular line for several hundred yards, the boys becoming more and more scattered. They realized now, for the first time in their lives that they were to be shot at. Some were eager and almost rash in their recklessness to push forward and get a shot at the rebs. At times they would be so far in advance that they would have to be ordered back. Others advanced in mortal fear, though they were patriotic and sincere enough, and made good soldiers afterward. But the terror and excitement that seized numbers of them, made them almost powerless to act, for they would lose all control of their nerves, and it is a singular but well-established fact, that under such circumstances the bowels are the first portion of the human system to feel this prostration of the nerves."

Hundreds of soldiers in our civil war became deathly sick under their first fire, though through no cowardice of their

own.

"As we went on, the woods became thicker, and the firing sharper. The excitement grew greater, and then the trouble began. Fully five hundred of our regiment were seized with the complaint, and affairs grew serious indeed. Among them was one poor fellow whom I shall never forget. He had kept well to the rear all along, but I cheered him up, pushed him ahead, and managed to keep him in the company.

"Presently we came out in a turnip patch, and when we were well in view, the rebs poured a volley into us. This

was the climax. The bullets rattled and stirred the dust about our feet, yet no one was hurt. But the panic was upon us, and it was not possible to hold the weakest. One or two of the boys rushed forward and gained the shelter of a fence beyond, but the rest rapidly retreated.

the

"I went back with the company, and in the rear found young man I had aided. He was lying on the ground, deathly pale, writhing in supposed pain, and was so weak that he could not stand. I ordered him to get up and advance immediately, knowing that with one strong effort he would regain his courage. But he was in a sad state, and with his arms tightly pressed about his stomach, he pleaded: 'Oh! my God, my God! captain, do, do let me stop here. Oh! I am so sick-oh!-oh!'

"I could only pity the poor boy, and so I let him remain until he recovered. Yet he was only one of many who passed through the same experience, and afterward became the most courageous soldiers."

The 7th Iowa was then glorified in this manner by Mr. William F. Montgomery:

"When Sherman reached Columbia, S. C., 300 Union officers were imprisoned there. These were liberated and the city was fired. But before this the prisoners were slurred with all kinds of foul insults. Nothing seemed too base for the home-guards and women to utter. They were worse than the women of New Orleans before Butler's Woman Order.'

"But there was one consolation, even though it came in the form of ebonized humanity. Every insult thrown at the Union prisoners only increased the enthusiasm of the negroes. Multitudes of negro women and children always hung about the army, and hailed the Union soldiers as their deliverers. They meant well enough, but their sympathy was generally carried to excess, and they became almost a general nuisance,

especially the ignorant and superstitious field hands.

it was a strain on moral courage to endure the majority of the negroes who worked about the houses, but these were infinitely more decent than the field hands.

"In our company was a little wiry, sawed-off man, who hated a negro worse than a snake. When the boys wanted a little sport they would call on Tom to 'cuss the niggers,' and he invariably responded. He repeatedly declared that, if the niggers is emancipated I'll leave the army.' But he didn't leave. He staid right along until the climax was reached at Columbia. As we marched up, the negroes swarmed out on all sides to meet us. Among them was an old field hand, a big, stout wench, who would weigh over 400 pounds avoirdupois. Her cheeks hung down, and so did her lower lip, which was something near an inch in thickness, and her hair seemed like the tail of a horse that had been feeding in a cockle-burr field, except that it had the hereditary kink not found in horse-hair.

"The excitement among the negroes grew greater and more intense, and their eyes protruded far beyond their usual limit, as the army came near. They sang, and danced, and She raised

shouted. The big woman was especially wild. her arms, snorted like an elephant, and started straight for me. I had been in twenty-two hard-fought battles; had heard the bullets sing past my ears, and shells over my head; many a time had faced death in a thousand forms, and was in the present emergency well armed; but for once in my life I beat a hasty retreat. The old negress gained on me, and I was almost within her reach, the ranks ringing with applause, when I stepped behind the wiry little nigger-hater, and the negress wrapped her great arms around him, lifting him off his feet, and shouting:

"Bress de Lor'! Bress de Lor'! Yooz de ones we's bin prayin' faw dese fo yeahs! Lor' bress ye, honey! I lub

ye-I lub ye! Hm-hm-,' and she squeezed the little wiry man the tighter, while the boys cheered louder than ever."

Some of the veterans present remembered the incident, and together with the Society for the Preservation of Unpub lished History, they re-echoed the applause of twenty years ago.

When the auditors were quiet again, the commander said that a drum corps from the Freedmen's Exodus Society would like to favor the camp-fire with an attack. The campfire submitted, and the drum corps filed in. Unfortunately, however, the man who tuned the drums had died soon after the war, and the position which he vacated had been unfilled up to date, so that the instruments were somewhat out of repair, and somewhat more out of tune. Then the stifled ether was stirred with rut-tut-tut, bum-bum! rut-tut-tut, bum-bum! and it was thought, from the most scientific musical analysis, that the drum corps had started out on the appropriate tune of

"Ain't I glad I'm out of the Wilderness,"

-an old edition, perhaps, revised and enlarged, with variations and side-notes complete, rearranged especially for the drum corps of the Freedmen's Exodus Society. The drummers warmed up to their performance, and the melody became more intense. After they had played a short time there began to be a remarkable prevalence of headache, and then the audience began to ache all over. The commander was petitioned for mercy. The tenor became louder and shriller, the bass deeper and heavier. The commander then deliberately but loudly ordered the music to face about and halt. But no command could be heard amidst "the clash of arms." Each burly son of Ham had now closed his eyes and nerved himself for the first grand crescendo. The result was inevitable. If the soldiers waited for the climax they would all be placed on the pension-list for broken ear-drums. There was