When I was a boy in Anson County, North Carolina, where I was born “with a full suit of hair” about the time “the stars fell,” I had two brothers living in Sumter County, Alabama, which was said to be six hundred miles away. That seemed to me then to be about as much as six thousand miles seem now. It was an inscrutable order of Providence that, after having lived in four other States, attended two colleges, become the father of a family, and served four years in a great civil war, I should lay down my arms in that same Sumter County.

The details of surrender were all arranged without the appearance of a Federal officer in our camp, the same being conducted in the most punctilious manner and without any effort to humiliate. We were pleased to learn that the same terms upon which Lee and Johnston had surrendered would be accorded to us. The officers retained their arms and horses and the men their horses. Blank paroles were furnished by the Federals. Those of Company E were filled out in my handwriting.

The noble address of General Forrest, urging his men to become as good citizens in peace as they had been soldiers in war, was pronounced entirely appropriate and a model in sentiment and expression.

The ceremony of tearing up the flag, fashioned from the bridal dress of an Aberdeen lady, was gone through with and small bits of it distributed among the soldiers and officers of the Seventh Tennessee Regiment. I did not think then that this was exactly the thing to do and have regretted the proceeding since, particularly because of the liberality of the Federal government in restoring the captured flags of the Southern States. Ours was a regular confederate flag and made of such material that it could have been preserved indefinitely.

In our camp it was “pretty well, I thank you; how do you do yourself?” Billy Yank, Johnny Reb, or anybody else—a pleasant abandon in regard to environments and no thought of prolonging the war beyond the Mississippi or helping Maximilian to a throne in Mexico. We were going home. The direct road to Bolivar, Tenn., over two hundred miles in length, was uppermost in our minds. At Macon, Miss., we drew our last rations, which were bountiful, as there was now no need of economy, and we had a long road before us. The men were entirely without official restraint, but those of Company E preserved their organization till we reached Saulsbury, Tenn., where we gave the first friendly salute to Federal soldiers, and the men went their several ways. I was riding the last few miles with three of my former pupils. That dear good fellow and gallant little soldier, James E. Wood, the man who rode “Sal’s Colt,” but has been more recently a well known editor and a distinguished member of the Arkansas senate, turned off at Middleburg and left George Bright, now of Danville, Ky., and Billy Myrick, long since dead, with me to face the folks at home.

The transition from soldier to citizen was easy. By a dive into my ancient wardrobe, I secured several articles of wearing apparel, among them a Prince Albert coat. I was not exactly a la mode, or whatever the French say, but with a new blockade hat I felt “mighty fine,” and doubtless looked as innocent of war as the Goddess of Peace. “Whatsoever cometh to your hands to do, do it with all your might.” I acted upon that. I opened a summer session of the Bolivar Male Academy in the railway station on the 31st of May, 1865. The Academy building had been defaced by the Federal army to such an extent that it was untenable, and we had no cars running for more than three months. So much changed had conditions become that of the sixty-six pupils in school in May, 1861, only four, James J. Neely, Jr., George B. Peters, Jr., James Fentress, Jr., and Charles A. Miller, returned to greet me. Seventeen of the sixty-six entered the army, fourteen as members of Company E and three as members of other commands. Four of the fourteen were killed on the field and all of the others served till the close of the war. Eleven of the seventeen are dead and six are living.

The station was a pleasant place for a summer session and boys were so anxious for instruction that I was soon teaching seven hours a day. They wanted Latin and Greek and mathematics, and we went at them with a will. The roots of the verbs and the rules of syntax had only lain dormant in my own mind during the four years and were easily recalled. The work became so much a part of my life, and the homelike feeling of the schoolroom returned so readily, that an assurance of my forty-odd years of like employment would have come as a pleasing announcement. But so it is, the forty years and more have come and gone, and I am still walking among my fellows, hardly knowing how to put on the ways of an old man, but in good humor with all the world. I have concluded to conclude this book with the following conclusions:

1. That it is an everlasting pity the war was not averted because of the great mortality of good citizens on both sides, the backset given to the morals of the whole country, the sectional feeling engendered and likely to endure for a season, and the loss of wealth and prestige by the Southern people.

2. That the victors in a civil war pay dearly for their success in the demoralization of the people at large by having so numerous an element supported by the government; in the rascally transactions connected with army contracts; and in the enlargement of that class of pestiferous statesmen (?) who have been aptly described as being “invisible in war and invincible in peace.”

3. That the most peaceful of Southern men can be readily converted into the most warlike soldiers when convinced that they have a proper grievance; can march further on starvation rations and in all kinds of weather, and will take less note of disparity of numbers in battle than will any other soldiers on earth.

4. That the South, in the war period, was essentially a country of horseback riders, and her young men furnished the material out of which was formed, when properly handled, regiments of cavalry that were practically invincible, even when confronting an adversary of twice or thrice their own strength.

5. That Forrest’s men demonstrated the fact that Southern cavalrymen, fighting on foot, can meet, with good chances of victory, a superior number of veteran infantry in the open field.

6. That in cavalry operations, the most essential thing is a bold and clashing leader, who will strike furiously before the enemy has time to consider what is coming, and with every available man in action.

7. That Nathan Bedford Forrest, by his deeds in war, became an exemplar of horseback fighting, whose shining qualities might well become the measure of other deeds on other fields when war is flagrant.

8. That there is not an instance recorded where so large a body of defeated soldiers returned so contentedly to their former pursuits, “beating their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks;” yes, thousands of them going into the fields to plough and plant with the same horses they rode in battle.

9. That the unpreparedness of both sides at the beginning of the war emphasizes the necessity for a thorough preparedness of our united country for any emergency, that is to say, that while Uncle Sam needs not to be strutting around “with a chip on his shoulder,” and his hat cocked up on the side of his head, he should be able to say to “the other fellow” that he is rich in men and munitions, and, moreover, has the finest navy that floats.

10. That having taken an humble part in a great war in which I ofttimes looked upon the pale faces of the dead and heard the groans of the wounded, having now had fifty years, from its beginning, to reflect upon its calamities, I am firmly of the opinion that all enlightened nations will finally come to arbitration in the settlement of international questions.

11. That no true picture of war can be drawn, either in words or on canvas, because of the elements so numerous and so complex to be considered. And even if this were possible, it would be a representation of a horrifying spectacle.

12. That the victorious shouts of men in battle bring small remuneration and poor consolation to the bereaved widows and orphans of their dead comrades at home.

13. That Gen. Grant, after a wonderful experience in the bloody work of war, knew himself thoroughly well when he uttered the memorable words:

“LET US HAVE PEACE.”