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How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 5 |
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_ CHAPTER V The Funeral of the Colored Cook--I Plead for a Larger Procession--The Funeral Oration--The Funeral Disturbed--I am Arrested--My Fortunate Escape. This last chapter of these celebrated war papers closed with me saddling my mule to ride to the funeral of the colored cook, at which I was to act as chaplain. The mule evidently knew that it was a solemn occasion, for there was a mournful look on its otherwise placid face, the ears drooped more than usual, and there seemed a sweet peace stealing over the animal, which well became a funeral, until I began to buckle up the saddle, when the long-eared brute began to paw and kick and bite, and it took six men to get me into the saddle. I rode down the company street where the cart stood with the remains, and a colored driver sitting on the foot of the plain pine box, asleep. I woke the driver up with the point of my saber, when another colored man came out of a tent with a shovel in one hand, and a hardtack with a piece of bacon in the other. He climbed into the cart, sat down on the coffin and began to eat his dinner. This was my funeral. All that seemed necessary for a funeral was a corpse, a driver of a cart, and a man with a shovel. I rode up to the orderly's tent and asked him where the mourners were, and he laughed at me. The idea of mourners seemed to be ridiculous. I had never, in all my life, seen so slim a funeral, and it hurt me. In the meantime the nigger with the shovel had woke up the driver of the cart, and he had followed me, with the remains. I told them to halt the funeral right there, until I could skirmish around and pick up mourners enough for a mess, and a choir, and some bearers. As I rode away to the colonel's tent, the driver of the cart and the man with the shovel were playing "mumbleypeg," with a jack-knife, on the coffin, which shocked me very much, as I was accustomed to living where more respect was paid to the dead. I went to the colonel's tent and yelled "Say! The colonel, who was changing his shirt, came to the door with his eyes full of soap, rubbing his neck with a towel, and asked what was the row. I told him I would like to have him detail me six bearers, seven or eight mourners, a few singers, and fifteen or twenty men for a congregation. He asked me what on earth I was talking about, and just then the cart with the corpse in was driven up to where I was, the orderly having told the driver to follow me with the late lamented. I pointed to the outfit, and said: "Colonel, in that box lie the remains of a colored cook. The chaplain has appointed me to conduct the funeral service, and I find that the two colored men on the cart are the only ones to accompany the remains to their last resting place. No man can successfully run a funeral on three niggers, one of whom is dead, one liable to go to sleep any minute, and the other with an abnormal appetite for hardtack. It is a disgrace to civilization to give a dead man such a send off, and I want you to detail me some men to see me through. I have loaded myself with some interesting remarks befitting the occasion, and I do not want to fire them off into space, with no audience except these two coons. Give me some mourners and things, or I drop this funeral right where it is." While I was speaking the general rode up to visit with the colonel, with his staff, and the colonel came out with his undershirt on, and his suspenders hanging down, and he and the general consulted for a minute, and laughed a little, which I thought was disgraceful. Then the colonel sent for the sergeant-major and told, him to detail all the company cooks and officer's servants, to attend the funeral with me, and he said I could divide them off into reliefs, letting a few be mourners at a time. In the meantime, he said, I could move my procession off down by the horse-doctor's quarter's, as he did not want it in front of his tent. That reminded me that the horse-doctor had prescribed for the deceased, and had given him condition powders, and I asked the colonel to compel the horse-doctor to go with me. It had always seemed to me at home that the attending physician, under whose auspices the person died, should attend the funeral of his patient, and when I told the colonel about it, he called the horse-doctor and told him he would have to go. It took half an hour or so to get the colored cooks and servants together, but when all was ready to move, it was quite a respectable funeral, except that I could not help noticing a spirit of levity on the part of the mourners. All the followers were mounted, the officer's servant's on officer's horses, and the cooks on mules, and it required all the presence of mind I possessed to keep the coons from turning the sad occasion into a horse race, as they would drop back, in squads, a quarter of a mile or so, and then come whooping up to the cart containing the remains, and each vowing that his horse could clean out the others. I rode in front of the remains with the horse-doctor, and tried to conduct myself in as solemn a manner as befitted the occasion, and tried to reason with the horse-doctor against his unseemly jokes, which he was constantly getting on. He told several stories, better calculated for a gathering where bacchanalian revelry was the custom, and I told him that while I respected his calling, he must respect mine. He said something about calling a man on a full hand, against a flush, but I did not pretend to know what he meant. We had to go out of town about two miles, to the cemetery. Unfortunately we were in the watermelon growing section, and the horse-doctor called my attention to the fact that my procession was becoming scarce, when I looked around, and every blessed one of the cooks and servants, and the man with the shovel, had gone on into the field after melons, and I stopped the cart and yelled to them to come back to the funeral. Pretty soon they all rode back, each with a melon under his arm, and every face looked as though there was no funeral that could prevent a nigger from stealing a watermelon. After several stops, to round up my mourners, from corn fields and horse racing, we arrived at the cemetery, and while the grave was being dug the niggers went for the melons, and if it had been a picnic there couldn't have been much more enjoyment. The horse-doctor took out a big knife that he used to bleed horses, and cut a melon, and offered me a slice, and while I did not feel that it was just the place to indulge in melon, it looked so good that I ate some, with a mental reservation, however. It was all a new experience to me. I had never believed that in the presence of death, or at a funeral, people could be anything but decorous and solemn. I had never attended a funeral before, except where all present were friends of the deceased, and sorry, but here all seemed different. They all seemed to look upon the thing as a good joke. I had read that in New York and other large cities, those who attended funerals had a horse race on the way back, and stopped at beer saloons and filled up, but I never believed that people could be so depraved. I tried to talk to the coons, and get them to show proper respect for the occasion, but they laughed and threw melon rinds at each other. Finnally the colonel and the general, with quite a lot of soldiers, who were out reconnoitering, rode to where we were, and the coons acted a little better, but I could see that the officers were not particularly solemn. They seemed to expect something rich. They evidently looked upon me as a star idiot, who would make some blunder, or say something to make them laugh: I made up my mind that in my new position I would act just as decorous, and speak as kindly as though the deceased was the president. During all my life I had made it a practice never to speak ill of any person on earth, and if I could not say a good word for a person I would say nothing, a practice which I have kept up until this writing, with much success, and I decided that the words spoken on that occasion should not reflect against the poor man who had passed in his checks, and laid down the burden of life. The grave was completed, and with a couple of picket ropes the body was let down, and there was for a moment a sort of solemnity. I arose, and as near as I can remember at this late day, spoke about as follows: "Friends: We have met here today to conduct the last rites over a man, who but yesterday was among us but who, in an unguarded moment drank too much whisky, and paid the penalty. (There was a smile perceptible on the faces on the officers.) The ignorant man who died, did not know any better, but I see around me men who know better, but who drink more than this man did, and if they are not careful they will go the same way. (There was less smiling among the officers.) It is said of this man that he was bad, that he would steal. I have investigated, and have found that it is true, but that his peculations consisted of small things, of little value, and I am convinced that the habit was not worse with him than with any of us. In war times, everybody steals. We are all thieves to a certain extent. The soldier will not go hungry if he can jay-hawk anything to eat. The officer will not go thirsty if he can capture whisky, nor will anybody walk if he can steal a horse. The higher a man gets the more he will steal. Shall we harbor unkind thoughts against this dead man for stealing a pair of boots, and honor a general who steals a thousand bales of cotton? (No! no! shouted the cooks and servants, while the officers looked as though they were sorry they attended the funeral.) Friends let us look at the good qualities of our friend. I say, without fear of successful contradiction, that a man, however humble his station, who can bake beans as well as the remains could bake them, is entitled to a warm place in the heart of every soldier, and if he goes to the land that is fairer than this,-and who can say that he will not,--he is liable to be welcomed with 'well done, good and faithful servant,' and he will be received where horse doctors can never enter with their condition powders, and where there will never be war any more. To his family, or several families, as the case may be, I would say----" At this point I had noticed an uneasiness on the part of my mourners and bearers, as well as the officers. Nine of the negroes fell down on the ground and groaned as if in pain, and the general and his stall looked off to a piece of woods where a few shots had been fired, and rode away hurriedly, the colonel telling me I had better hurry up that funeral or it was liable to be interrupted. The horse-doctor went to the negroes who were sick, and after examining them he said they had been poisoned by eating melons that had been doctored, and he advised them to get to town as quick as possible. They scrambled on their horses the best way they could, and just then there was a yell, and out of the woods came half a dozen Union soldiers followed by fifteen or twenty Confederates, and all was confusion. The niggers scattered towards town, the driver of the cart taking the lead, trying to catch the general and his start, who were hurrying away, leaving the horse-doctor, myself and the deceased. The horse-doctor seized the shovel and threw a little dirt on the coffin, then mounted his horse, I mounted my mule, and away we went towards town, with the rebels gaining on us every jump. The horse-doctor soon left me, and with a picket I had pulled off the fence of the cemetery, I worked my passage on that mule. I mauled the mule, and the more I pounded the slower it went. There was never a more deliberate mule in the world. I forgot all the solemn thoughts that possessed me at the grave, and tried to talk to the mule like a mule-driver, but the animal just fooled along, as though there was no especial hurry. Occasionally I could hear bullets 'zipping' along by me, and the rebels were yelling for all that was out. O, how I did wish I had my old race horse that the chaplain had beat me out of. In my first engagement my horse was too fast, and there was danger that I would catch my friend, the rebel, and I complained of the horse. Now I had a mule that was too slow. What I wanted was a 'middling' horse, one that was not too confounded fast when after the enemy, and one not so all-fired slow when being pursued. The Johnnies were coming closer, but we were only half a mile from town. Would they chase us clear into town? At that critical moment the blasted mule stopped short, never to go again, and began to kick. What on earth possessed that fool mule to take a notion to stop right there and kick, is more than I shall ever know, but it simply kicked, and I felt that my time had come. The Union soldiers that were being chased by the Confederates passed me, and told me I better light out or I would be captured, but I couldn't get the mule to budge an inch. It just kicked. The good Lord only knows, what that mule was kicking at, or why it should have been scheduled to stop and kick at that particular time, when every minute was precious. I saw the rebels very near me, and as it was impossible to get the mule to go a step farther, I raised the large, flat, white-washed picket which I had torn on the cemetery fence to maul the mule with, in token of surrender, and the Confederate boys surrounded me, though they kept a safe distance, after my mule had kicked in the ribs of one of their horses. The rebs had gone about as far towards the town as it was safe to go, and and they knew the whole garrison would be out after them pretty soon, so they laughed at me for being armed with a whitewashed picket, and asked me if I expected to put down the rebellion by stabbing the enemy with such things. I told them I had been burying a nigger. One of my captors run the point of his saber into my mule, to stop its kicking, and then he said to his comrades, "Boys, we came out here with the glorious prospect of capturing a Yankee general and his staff, and instead of getting him, we have broken up a nigger funeral and captured the gospel sharp, armed with a picket fence, and a kicking mule. Shall we hang him for engaging in uncivilized, warfare, by stabbing us with pickets poisoned with whitewash, or shall we take the red-headed slim-jim back with us as a curiosity." The boys all said not to hang me, but to take me along. I saw that it was all day with me this time. I felt that I was helping put down the rebellion rapidly, as I had been a soldier four weeks, been captured twice, and not a drop of blood had been spilled. The rebels started back, with me and my mule ahead of them, and they kept the mule ahead by jabbing it with a saber occasionally. I felt humiliated and indignant at being called slim-jim, sorrel-top, and elder. They seemed to think I was a preacher. I stood it all until a cuss reached into my pocket and took my meershaum pipe and a bag of tobacco, filled the pipe and lit it, then I was mad. I had paid eight dollars of my bounty for that pipe, and I said to the leader: "Boss, I can stand a joke as well as anybody, but when you capture me, in a fair fight, you have no right to jab my mule with a saber, or call me names. I am a meek and lowly soldier of the army of the right, and want to so live that I can meet you all in the great hereafter, but by the gods I can whip the condemned galoot that stole my meershaum pipe. You think I am pious, and a non-combatant, but I am a fighter from away back, and don't you forget it." The young man who seemed to be in command told me to dry up, and he would get my pipe. He went and took it away from the one who had stolen it, filled it and lit it himself, and said it was a good pipe, and then he passed it around among them all. We moved on at a trot, and were getting far away from my regiment, and I realized that I was a captive, and that I should probably die in Andersonville prison. I looked at the dozen stalwart rebels that were riding behind me, and knew I could not whip them all with one picket off the cemetery fence, and so I resolved to remain a captive, and die for my country, of scurvey, if necessary. I turned around in my saddle to ask if it wasn t about time for me to have a smoke out of my own pipe, and as I looked up the road we had come over I saw a large body of our own cavalry, coming like the wind toward us. I said nothing, but my face gave me away. I looked so tickled to see the boys coming that the rebels noticed it, and they looked back and saw the soldiers in pursuit, they yelled, "The Yanks are coming!" put spurs to their horses, stabbed my mule and told me to pound it with the picket, and hurry up, and then they passed me, and away they went, leaving me in the road alone between them and my own soldiers, I yelled to the leader to give me back my pipe, and I can hear his mocking laugh to this day, as he told me to "go to hell." This made me mad, and drawing my picket I dashed after the retreating rebels, knowing that the men of my regiment would soon overtake me, and they would think I had chased the rebels three miles from town, armed only with a picket off the fence, and saved the garrison from capture. The thing worked to perfection, and when our command came up, the horses panting and perspiring, and the boys looking wild, the captain in command asked me how many there was of em, and I told him about forty, and he said I had done well to drive them so far, and he charged by me after them. I yelled to the captain to try and kill that long-legged rebel on the sorrel horse, and get my meershaum pipe, but he didn't hear me. I hurried along as fast as I could, but before I caught up, there was a good deal of firing, and when I got there flankers were out in the woods, and there was sorrow, for three or four boys in blue had been killed in an ambush, and the rebels had got away across a bayou. As I rode up on my mule, with the picket still in my hand, I saw the three soldiers of my regiment lying dead under a tree, two others were wounded and had bandages around their heads, and for the first time since I had been a soldier, I realized that war was not a picnic. I could not keep my eyes off the faces of my dead comrades, the best and bravest boys in the regiment, boys who always got to the front when there was a skirmish. To think that I had been riding right amongst the rebels who had done this thing but a few minutes before, and never thought that death would claim anybody so soon. I wondered if those rebels were not sorry they had killed such good boys. I wondered, as I thought of the fathers and mothers, and sisters of my dead companions, whether the rebels would not sympathize with them, and then I thought suppose our fellows had not been killed, and we had killed some of the Confederates, wouldn't it have been just as sorrowful, wouldn't _their_ fathers, mothers and sisters have mourned the same. Then I made a resolve that I would never kill anybody if I could help it; I even decided that if I should meet the rebel that had my meershaum pipe, I would not fight him to get it. If he wasn't gentleman enough to give it up peaceably, he could keep it, and be darned. Just then some of our skirmishers came in carrying another dead body, and we were all speculating as to which one of our poor boys had fallen, when we noticed that the dead soldier had on a gray suit, and it was soon found that he was one of the Confederates. He was laid down beside our dead boys, and I don't know but I felt about as bad to see him dead, as it was possible to feel. It is true he had told me, half an hour before, when I asked him for my pipe, to go to hades, but I did not have to go unless I wanted to. And he was gone first. I saw something sticking out of the breast pocket of the dead Confederate, and could see that it was my pipe. Then I thought of the foolish remark I made to the captain, to kill that long-legged rebel and get my meershaum. God bless him, I didn't want anybody to kill him for a bad smelling old pipe, and I wondered if that remark would be registered up against me, in the great book above, when I didn't mean it. I tried to make myself believe that my remark did not have any influence on the man's fate. He just took his chances with his comrades, and was killed, no doubt, and yet it was impossible to get the idea off my mind that I was responsible for his death. Anyway, I would never touch the confounded old pipe again, and if I ever heard of his mother or sister, after the war was over, I would stand by them as long as I had a nickel. An ambulance was sent for and the dead and wounded were placed in it, and we went back to town, a sad procession. There was no need to detail any mourners for this occasion, and there was no straggling for watermelons. Everybody was full of sorrow. The next day there was a Union funeral in that Southern town, and the three Union boys were laid side by side, while a little, to one side my Confederate was buried, receiving the same kind words from the chaplains. As a volley was about to be fired over the graves, I picked a handful of roses, buds and blossoms, from a rose bush in the cemetery, and went to the grave of the Confederate and tenderly tossed them upon the coffin. The horse doctor saw me do it, and in his rough manner said, "What you about there? It ain t necessary to plant flowers on the graves of rebels. "O, no, it isn't necessary, I said, as the volley was fired over the graves, but it will make his mother or his sister feel better to know that there are a few roses in there, and it won't hurt anybody. I will just play that I am the authorized agent of that Confederate soldier's sister. "O, all right if you say so, said the horse-doctor, as he drew the sleeve of his blue blouse across his eyes, which were wet. The last volley was fired, and the soldiers returned to camp, leaving the dead of two armies sleeping together. As I went in the chaplain's tent and sat down to think, the chaplain handed me something, saying: "Here's your pipe. They found it on that Confederate soldier that captured you." I pushed it away and said, "I don't want it. I have quit smoking." _ |
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