Commander and Comrades: The history of the late war is generally known by the whole civilized world; but the history of each private individual in that conflict is known much less by others than by myself.

In presenting to you a few sketches of the many incidents and privations of my army life, you must not expect me, in my humble rank as private, corporal and sergeant, to give you as broad a view of the army in which I served as other men of higher rank and station can give you. My duty was with my company and its immediate surroundings, as others in the same rank and file.

The Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment was organized in August, 1862, and on the 8th of October following were engaged in the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky. Just before starting for the battlefield that morning (I had not been feeling very well for a week past) I went to Dr. Hasse, our regimental surgeon, and told him about it.

"Well," he said, "Ford, I don't know what to do for you. All the medicine is packed away but that five-gallon can of castor oil there. Just set it on the top of that stump and take a swallow of it."

I did so. "And now," he said, "I will give you an order to have your luggage carried in the wagon." I packed up everything that I could get along without, which left nothing on my person but my red shirt, pants, shoes and cap. We got into battle sooner than was expected. As we were in the reserve line of battle waiting for orders the rebel bullets were dropping thick and fast around us, for they were preparing to charge on one of our batteries. A brigade orderly rode up to Col. Larrabee, of our regiment, the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin, and said, "Colonel, the General wants you to march your regiment to the left of that battery and hold it at all hazards; the rebels are about to charge on it."

The Colonel was somewhat hard of hearing. He placed his hand to his ear and said, "What's that, sir?"

The order was repeated. The Colonel answered, "I will, by God, sir;" and called the regiment to attention. We marched to the left of that battery in double-quick time. The size and appearance of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin swinging into line with ten hundred and twenty-four men and firing a few volleys of musketry at them checked the advancing foe and the battery was saved. I was in the front rank in my company with no coat on and the only red shirt visible in the regiment. The order was given to fall back about twenty paces to the rear. We were too far out near the crest of the hill looking down on the cornfield where the rebels were, but I did not fall back. I was so interested loading and firing at the rebels down in that cornfield that I did not hear the command to cease firing or to fall back. The regiment was ready to fire in its new position, but the command was not given until the red-shirted man fell back into line. The Colonel was calling for me. He sent Adjutant McArthur out in front after me, at the same time calling aloud, "You man with the red shirt, fall back."

I knew that meant me, so I looked around and saw Adjutant McArthur galloping to the front and the regiment was back in the rear. Too quick did I about face and double-quick to my place in the front rank of my company. That night I lay on the ground with nothing between me and the blue sky but my shirt, pants, shoes and cap.

Another incident. Just before the Battle of Stone River I received a box of fine cut chewing and smoking tobacco from an uncle of mine in Milwaukee. We got orders that night to get ready for the march in the morning. I did not know what to do with my big box of tobacco, containing eleven dollars' worth, done up in Milwaukee. A rare thing to get—Milwaukee tobacco. Some of the company boys helped me to do it up in packages from fifty cents' worth to a dollar and a half size packages, and we went around and sold all the tobacco in an hour's time to officers and privates alike, but got very little money, the regiment not being paid yet, so we had to trust until pay day. We got into the fight, however, at daybreak, one gray, frosty morning, after lying on our arms all night, and our fingers were all benumbed with the cold and frost. As for myself, I can say that I had to place my finger on the trigger of the gun with my left hand before I could bring it up to an aim. The rebels came down on us, colors flying and in solid column, shouting and hollering as if certain and sure of victory. We fell back before them. They crowded us into a cedar woods, where there was nothing but cedar trees and rocks, and it seemed as if all the birds and rabbits in that large field were looking for protection around our feet. So thick and fast did the rebels send their shot and shell after us that you might think it impossible for a bird to escape them. The rebels had us surrounded for a while. You could see the rebel officers and orderlies galloping on their horses in the near distance, urging their men on to make a complete capture, but we got out of that battle all right, as history fully explains. When we were in the thickest of this fight an incident took place about that tobacco I sold on time. A comrade of mine, James Mangan, formerly a school teacher in the Town of Franklin (and I was a pupil at his school myself), came near me and said, "Thomas, this is terrible. It seems impossible for any of us to escape being killed by those shells and bullets, if they continue this way much longer." (At the same time I noticed one of the boys that I sold some tobacco to, on time, drop.)

"Yes," said I. "But what will I do now for the price of my tobacco? Most of those are killed that I sold it to, and I will never be paid."

"To the devil with you and your tobacco," said he, "if that is what you are thinking of now, in place of your soul."

We went into that battlefield early in the afternoon, without anything to eat; lay on our arms all night in line of battle in the immediate front of the enemy and fought all the next day without anything to eat or drink. Our supply train was cut off. General Rosecrans had a large pile of forage corn near his headquarters. The boys commenced stealing it for food. There was a strong guard placed around it, and an order issued to give each man one ear of corn as far as it went until supplies would arrive. In dealing out the corn the plan was to put one ear of corn into each empty hand as it reached out. Some got two ears of corn by placing the first behind their back and thrusting forth the other empty hand. The pile of corn did not supply one-hundredth part of the vast numbers clustered around it. We ate the ear of corn, and that was all we had to eat at that time.

Closing this incident of the Battle of Stone River, I might as well remark right here that my father and his three sons were in the War of the Rebellion from 1861-1865, and the first he knew of two of his sons being in the war and in the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin was after the Battle of Stone River. He took part in the same battle with Captain Bridges' battery. Father came to see Col. Larrabee of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin with a view of getting his two sons, Daniel and Thomas, transferred to Bridges' battery, so that we could be together with him. He told the Colonel about it, and the Colonel said he would not allow it to be done; they were two good boys and he was going to keep them.

"But they are my boys," said the old man, "and I want them with me."

"They are not your boys, by God, sir," said the Colonel; "they are my boys, and I am going to keep them; you cannot have them."

The other son was in the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, and at the Battle of Fredericksburg was shot through the heart while planting the Stars and Stripes on the rebels' breastworks. The color-bearer being shot down, he picked up the flag and both he and the flag lay on the rebels' breastworks, our side being repulsed.

There was a general order one time that our boys should not steal anything in a certain part of the country where we were located during Col. Larrabee's command over the regiment. The General ordered the Colonel that he should punish those two men that were caught as an example for the rest. I heard the Colonel pronounce the sentence in these words, as I was standing guard near his tent, "Now, boys, I have to punish you. I am so ordered by the General. I want you both to understand that I am not punishing you for stealing, but for getting caught at it, by God." This seemed to be a common byword of the Colonel.

General Rousseau had command of our division for a short time near a place in Tennessee that we addressed our letters from as Camp Starvation, near Cowan's Station. The citizens were nearly all loyal to the Union cause. It was a rough, stony and hilly country. They seemed to have only a few sheep for their meat. The General ordered that the men should not kill any of those sheep. Shortly after we broke ranks of course some went off foraging, as usual. They killed a sheep and dressed it and had it on their shoulders coming back to camp when they met the General and his staff out reconnoitering.

"Halt those men there," said the General to one of his orderlies, "and place them under arrest. Take that mutton up to my headquarters and have it cooked for supper." He released the men on the promise that they would not do it again. Next day about the same time the same four boys went out again. They knew where there was a large, fat Newfoundland dog. They killed him, cut off his head and legs, skinned and dressed him up nicely in the shape of a mutton. They met the General nearly in the same place as the day before.

"What, those same men disobeying my orders again? Place those men under arrest and report their commanding officer. Orderly, take that mutton to headquarters and tell the cook to hurry up with it for supper." They ate that mutton for supper, and all declared it sweeter and better mutton than the one eaten the night before.

Everyone in camp knew what had happened. We had those little dog tents at that time. The General and staff came galloping down our company streets the next morning, when every soldier, as if with one accord, thrust his head out of the little tents and commenced barking like so many dogs. The horses commenced prancing; the General's hat fell off; he stuck the spurs into his horse's side, and galloped off to Col. Larrabee's tent, just in front of him.

"I say, Colonel, what does this mean, your men barking at me like so many dogs?"

"Well, I don't know, General," said the Colonel, "unless you have some dog in you."

The General scratched his head and said, "Out-generaled by my own men. That is the last damned 'order' I will ever issue in this camp."

Col. Larrabee was a good man, but he seemed to get tired of the war after a certain time when he did not receive a brigadier-generalship, which he was entitled to by seniority. We were taking a rest one day under the shade of some trees waiting for orders, lying down full length, taking the best advantage of the precious moments given us, when the Colonel raised himself up to a sitting position and said, "Boys, I brought the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment into the field ten hundred and twenty-four men strong. Now I have but three hundred and sixty men, a regiment that I can take anywhere and feel proud of them; a regiment that every man of them knows as much if not more than I do myself."

The orders came to fall in, and right here the curtain drops on Col. Larrabee. I have never heard of or seen him since. It is true that a great many different men had their turn in commanding the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment, and it is also true that they were all good men, viz., West, Kennedy, Bombach, Parsons, and last of all that young and brave boy, Col. McArthur, whose gallantry at the Battle of Franklin I shall never forget. The rebels had driven our men out of the breastworks that we were relieved from about an hour or so before in order to cook some refreshments, for we were on advance guard duty about 48 hours and were bothered so much with rebel cavalry that we did not have much time to rest or eat. Marching into Franklin we were closely followed up, in the rear of our army, by rebel General Hood's infantry. We stacked arms, after being "relieved," a quarter of a mile, I should think, from those breastworks. Our coffee was just beginning to boil and our sow-belly and crackers frying, when the rebels charged those breastworks and drove our men out, and followed them up. They came through our stacked arms and over our fires, upsetting our coffee pots and frying pans, with the rebels right at their heels and at our stacked arms as soon as we were. Every one of us was as mad as he could be after losing his nearly cooked dinner, and we felt as if we could whip the whole rebel army just at that moment, when Col. McArthur called out, "Fall in, Twenty-fourth; take arms. Charge. Give um hell, boys. Give um hell, give um hell, Twenty-fourth." We did "give um hell," and drove them back over the breastworks again. When he got the run on them we commenced shooting as they were jumping back again over the breastworks, and they'd holler out, "Don't shoot, Yanks. For God Almighty's sake, don't shoot." Then some of them would get hit and cry out, "Oh."

We got the breastworks and held them against several attempts to take them from us, until darkness came and everything was still. About 2 o'clock in the morning, under cover of darkness, after the supply train and everything was across the river, we stole away out of those breastworks without making any noise, crossed the river, burned the bridge and were safe on our journey to Nashville, where ended the last of our battle of the war.

Right here I will mention a little incident that happened at one of the rebel attempts to take those breastworks from us at the Battle of Franklin. Capt. Fillbrooks, of Company D, a very brave man, noticed one of his men dodging or ducking his head from the noise of the rebel bullets. "Mike," said the Captain, "quit dodging your head there. Stand up to it and take it like a man." The word was no sooner out of the Captain's mouth when a bullet hit him in the middle of the forehead and laid him out dead. Mike said to him. "Why the devil in hell don't you stand up and take it like a man." And the word wasn't out of Mike's mouth when he got a scalp wound on the right side of his forehead. "Holy Moses," said he, "there is nothing like the dodging after all. Every time I heard it before I dodged it and it never hit me."

The day before the Franklin battle we got into a brush with the rebel cavalry at a place called Spring Hill. The sun was settling down in the west. They had been picking at us all day, so they prepared for a charge. We could see the sun glisten on their swords as they drew sabers. They were on the east of us and charged across that plain with a seeming determination to play great havoc in our ranks. But the old First Brigade let them come near enough to give them one volley of musketry and then came to a charge against cavalry, the front-rank men standing firmly placed in proper position all with fixed bayonets. Here they come hollering like demons, carbines empty, sabers drawn over their heads ready to come down with a cut and slash, but they couldn't do it. Every man stood firm. The Twenty-fourth was in the front of the brigade, facing the enemy. They tried to force their horses to open a gap, but it was impregnable. They withdrew in disorder. We lay down and our batteries played havoc with those rebel cavalry. You could see a rebel's head falling off his horse on one side and his body on the other, and the horse running and nickering and looking for its rider. Others you could see fall off with their foot caught in the stirrup and the horse dragging and trampling them, dead or alive. Others, the horse would get shot and the rider tumble head over heels, or may be get caught by his horse falling on them. I used to think before that cavalry charge what a terrible thing it would be to get into a battle with cavalry and imagine how they could cut and slash and shoot at us and trample us down with their horses; but I thought different after that experience with the rebel cavalry. Why, it is the greatest fun imaginable in time of war for a solid column of infantry prepared for the attack to have a cavalry charge on them. The horses won't do it for the rider, and the rider can do nothing with a body of solid infantry.

There was a little incident that happened before the Battle of Chickamauga in a place we called the Devil's Basin, in Georgia. We had fifty rebel officers and soldiers as prisoners. There was one rebel captain who was continually cursing and abusing Abe Lincoln and the Stars and Stripes. I was sergeant of the guard in charge of the prisoners. The officer of the day gave me orders to have that kind of language stopped if I had to do it with the point of the bayonet. I put a new guard on, a man that I knew would stop it. After a while this rebel captain thought he would make the acquaintance of the new guard, and asked him what countryman he was. The guard replied with great emphasis, "My father is an Irishman, and my mother is a Dutch woman; the damnedist breed that ever lived; and if you don't keep your mouth shut I'll run this bayonet right through you," at the same time going right for the rebel captain. The next day we let the rebel officers go and withdrew from the Devil's Basin towards Chickamauga. Our line was too long and weak, a great mistake of General Rosecrans. We were double-quicked into the Battle of Chickamauga on the morning of September 20, 1863, and filled a gap that was wide open right in front of a large body of rebel soldiers that was lying on the ground waiting for orders to go, as it appeared to me, when General Little, our brave Brigadier-General, led us up within plain sight of them. General Little was wounded slightly in the arm. The rebels peppered it into us, as our brave Henry G. Rogers can tell you. Little moved his line back, which I think was wrong, for it encouraged the rebels and they came right for us. Just when the new line was formed General Sheridan rode by in a gallop down the right of the line. In passing the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin he said a word to General Little and went on. A limb of a tree brushed off his hat, but he did not stop. One of his orderlies dismounted and made several attempts before he replaced the hat on Sheridan's head, Sheridan paying no attention whatever to the hat business, as it appeared to me. The rebs came for us in our new line. The firing commenced. Our brigade, General Little, was right behind our colors. I was between him and the colors. Oh, how the boys did load and fire. I saw rebels crawling on their hands and knees through the underbrush to get the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin flag. They never got the flag, neither did they ever go back. A man in my company was firing high. I drew his attention to the fact, and ordered him to aim low.

"Sergeant," said he, "I have a son in the rebel army, and I imagine he is forninst me out and I don't want to shoot him."

"Well, then, aim low," said I, "and shoot the son of a gun right in the heart." Strange to say the son deserted the rebels and ate supper with his father that night.

So determined and persistent was the fight in our part of the line, I heard a voice behind me saying, "Sergeant, what regiment is this?"

I looked around and saw General Little, and said, "This is the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin, General."

He commenced falling off his horse and said, "Brave boys, brave boys."

Those were the last words he ever spoke. He had his hand on the pone of his saddle, and as he was falling his hat fell off, his long auburn hair hung down, and he seemed to hang on to that saddle with his right hand until he was nearly to the ground. It is a sight I will never forget. I then looked to our left, and saw the rebels in our rear. The troops on our left had left us and we also left. As we were retreating in pretty good time, one of our boys was just in front of me, making the best time he could, and I keeping right up with him, when he was hit and killed. He fell across my track and I fell on top of him. I thought we were both shot with the same bullet. I got up again all right and lit out. You could see the rebels and you could hear the bullets plainer because there was but one side shooting. The bullets went zip, zip, into the leaves on the ground and around your ears as thick as bees.

We got down to the turnpike road. General Rosecrans and other generals were there, and tried to have us halt and form a line and charge the rebels back. Rosecrans said, "The rebels are defeated and are retreating at another part of the line, and if you could have held them here five minutes longer the battle would be ours." Some stood and listened, and three times as many went on.

The general took off his hat and said, "Boys, form a line here; there are enough of us to whip those rebels. We have them on the run in another part of the field. If you won't do it for my sake, do it for God's sake and for your country's sake." That brought a great many to halt and ready in line when a rebel solid shot, about a fifteen-pounder, came along and took off the right hand of one of the generals and part of the saddle he was resting on. That was seen too quick. Some one started, and away we went until we found ourselves near a gap leading into Ringgold.

General Sheridan took command of everything he could find. We got through the gap and into Chattanooga, and we were not long there before every man was three feet under ground with a breastwork against the enemy. We thought they would be right on to us, but they were too glad to take a rest and too glad to get rid of us, for they were nearly as badly whipped as we were.

This reminds me of the story of the Irishman and the Georgian who met and fought until both laid down along side of each other, completely exhausted. The Irishman threw his hand over on the Georgian's face and got him by the throat, but the Georgian got the Irishman's thumb in his mouth. They both held their grip and were found in that position and taken to the hospital. The Irishman got better first, but with his hand in a sling on account of his wounded thumb. He went to see the Georgian, and at first sight greeted him with, "Give me your hand, be jabers, you're nearly as good a man as meself."

So we went to see the rebels at Mission Ridge, and reminded them of Chickamauga, and I'll tell you how we did it. The rebels had us hemmed in in the Valley of Chattanooga for two months and five days, as near as I can recollect, with railroad and river communication cut off. Our line was sixteen miles long, the shape of a horseshoe, with the hind calking resting on the river. We were subjugated to quarter rations, not knowing how long a time we might be held inside of that circle. We would draw our quarter rations and eat them up right away, not having drawn for four days before, and take chances on foraging or gobbling or in any way that we could pick up anything to eat. At first we had candles and had some light. We ran out of candles, and we used grease in a tin can with a rag, a piece of an old shirt, or anything that would answer the purpose of a wick, to make light. After a while we ran out of grease. So whatever was left of the grease and wick in the old tin cans was thrown away and we did without light. After a while, when hunger began to pinch me very severely, I hunted up the old tin can that belonged to my messmates and myself, and I found it with considerable grease in it, mixed with some flies and the old rag wick. I ate them all and relished them very much at the time, but did not have very much appetite for my next quarter ration. I will say right here that if every soldier inside that line was asked to volunteer to drive the rebels off Mission Ridge there would be but one answer, and that would be, "I will go, let me go." Such was the feeling of the troops hemmed in in the Valley of Chattanooga. Every man was healthy and hungry, could run a race or turn a somersault. General Grant noticed that when he ordered a general review; that is what it turned out to be, but the order was not given in that shape. The order was, "Be ready to march tomorrow, at such an hour, in light marching order." We went out in the valley right at the edge of the timber near Orchard Knob and had a fine general review. General Bragg commenced concentrating his troops. He thought the Yankees were coming. A widow woman, at whose house he had his headquarters, asked him if he didn't think it better for her to move her family away from there to Ringgold. He said, "No, there were not Yankees enough in all Christendom to take that ridge."

When the review was over Grant ordered each commander to march his command to camp. The next week Grant had that same review over again. It annoyed Bragg as before. Review over with, we marched to camp again. The next week we got orders to get ready for the march to-morrow morning, heavy marching order, with eighty rounds of ammunition. Every man knew what that meant. Everybody knew we were going to take that ridge, or at least make the attempt, but the rebel General Bragg said it was nothing but that damned Yankee review again. The orders came from Grant after he had his lines all arranged, that when six cannons were fired in succession, 1-2-3-4-5-6, the whole line was to advance and take the first line of rebel breastworks. There is no doubt in my mind but that Grant thought that sufficiently far enough to go; with Hooker on Lookout Mountain; our communications opened up; with boatloads and carloads of supplies arriving, the rebels would not be very likely to hang onto Mission Ridge any very great length of time. We (the first brigade of Sheridan's division) were near those cannons, however, that gave the order to advance, and we went clear up to the top of the Ridge. We were after something to eat, and we got it, too. All the generals in the Union army could not stop us if they tried to after we got started up that Ridge. I remember in crossing the first line of trenches some of our boys fired into the trenches, and I made the remark that it was cowardly, but we went on, on and up. The color-bearer of Company C, with the colors, myself and Nelson of Company H were the first men upon that Ridge in the line of our brigade. The first thing I did after the rebels skedaddled was to grab a full haversack and jerk it off a wounded rebel captain's neck. He was shot in the shoulder and his hand lay on the mouth of the haversack on the down-hill side. I opened it and divided its contents with my comrades in the immediate vicinity. It was saturated with the rebel captain's blood, but we ate it all the same.

Mission Ridge was ours. The rebels were running down the other side of the Ridge and we shouted "Chickamauga, Chickamauga." The sun was just going down, beautiful and bright. It was a splendid sight to witness. In a short time General Sheridan made his appearance. At sight of the General, the boys clustered around him and commenced cheering that gallant commander. Some shouted for hard-tack, some for sow-belly and some for beef, while others shouted for whisky.

The General raised his hat off his head until silence prevailed, and said, "Boys, in less than two hours' time you will have all the hard-tack, all the sow-belly and all the beef you want; as for the whisky I can't say yet for sure."

And in less than that time the boats and railroad cars were unloaded without any detail being made for that purpose. There were sixteen hundred head of cattle driven up on that Ridge, and in an hour's time they were in the frying pan. You could see men as far as the eye could reach, several lines of them, with boxes of crackers on their shoulders. Sheridan made his word good, with the exception of the whisky. He advised with the surgeon-general, and he said, "No whisky, General. Your men will eat enough, and perhaps too much, without whisky;" and true enough, some died eating that night. You might wake up any time in the night and see men cooking and eating. A great many of us flung our blankets away coming up the Ridge. When it was time to lie down I went back to the battlefield for a blanket. The moon was full and shining bright. I found nothing to suit till I came to a rebel Colonel who had a fine, large, gray overcoat with large cape and trimmed with gold braid. I rolled him over and took it off; took it to camp under my arm thinking, "Now I will have something fine and warm to put about me;" but, alas! when I got nicely settled down for sleep I could not sleep. The thoughts of lying under that rebel overcoat and taking it off him in that lonely battlefield, overcame me. The way he appeared to me in the bright light of the moon made me think that I was robbing my dead enemy, when he was helpless to defend himself, and no witness to the action but the sweet silver moon. My heart filled with emotion and I got up and took it back and laid it over him, then returned to my company and lay down under a part of my comrade's blanket, and immediately went to sleep with a full ration in my stomach.

So ended the Battle of Mission Ridge, and the boys all felt happy. And let me say right here that those few sketches of mine are not dreams, nor misty recollections of the past. It is not a play that you might read of in your parlor, or see acted on the stage with fine sceneries and blue and red lights; but it is a living actuality—a play that we all had a hand in ourselves with a pure and manly motive—to save our country and protect our country's flag.