Such was the typical Confederate soldier in camp as I knew him in 1863. What he was in battle the world has already heard and will continue to hear through the ages to come. His camp life, as well as his exploits on the field, is a worthy subject of study for this generation.

Of course there were departures from the type. There are some men who are shiftless everywhere, in peace and in war. Such men in the army, to a great extent, suffered the consequences of their shiftlessness. They were usually without all comforts and many necessities. I have known them to cook and eat two days' rations at one meal and take their chances for the rest of the two days. As the war advanced and the Confederacy became poorer and battles became almost incessant, there was absolutely no time nor place for anybody to enjoy comfort or ease, and the shifty and the shiftless in a great measure suffered alike.

When we broke up camp on the morning of May ist, it was not generally known what was the object of the movement. The soldiers had learned the futility of asking questions and of paying much attention to rumors. But every one knew that the winter was over, that the time for active operations had come, and that we should never occupy that camp again. The consequence of this knowledge was a wholesale destruction of such articles as could not be carried on the back. The household furniture, the object of so much toil and care, was de

voted to the fire over which the three days' rations were cooked; extra blankets and oil cloths were divided out among those who had not a full supply; and the soldier quickly stripped himself of all unnecessary incumbrances, "as a strong man to run a race." There were no regrets over these sacrifices. The articles cast aside or destroyed had served their day and were now no longer needed or desired.

McGowan's Brigade moved out into the road which intersects with the railroad at Hamilton's Crossing, and took the nothwestern prong leading up the river. We soon became aware that the whole army was in motion, not that we saw any great portion of it nor that we asked questions, nor that we were informed of the fact in words. There is something about an army which I can only call a mysterious magnetism, that diffuses itself through every part of it and unites it into one living, compact, sensitive organism. An army is like an octopus with tentacles radiating from a common center, each tentacle obedient to the impulses that flow out from that center and hold it in sympathy by the subtle fluid of life, or perhaps I could better express the idea by saying an army is like a huge geometrical spider that constructs a network of radiating web, and, as the poet aptly expresses it, "feels at each thread and lives along the line." Be this as it may, I believe that every old soldier of today will tell you that the quick instincts of the trained veteran will realize the difference between a general

and a partial movement of an army, and that, too, when neither his eyes nor his ears have aided him. Somehow, he knows not how, he finds himself marching with a firmer tread and he realizes by intuition that he is a part of a vast power that is moving as with the resistless sweep of destiny, and he feels in his inner being that it is not a few companies or regiments only that are on the march but that the whole army is in motion.

I do not remember any unusual incidents of the march, neither do I remember the distance marched, if I ever knew. I measure the distance from Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville by the time it took our brigade to pass over it, and judging by that measurement it is somewhere between twelve and fifteen miles. The boys were in high life, and there were the usual jokes passing along the lines, the usual sallies of wit whenever a citizen showed his head from his door or window, the usual straggling and the usual work for the guard, notwithstanding peremptory orders to keep the lines closed and the men in ranks.

About the middle of the afternoon the booming of cannon was heard in our front apparently several miles ahead of us, and as we advanced, the rattle of musketry soon became audible. The enemy had sent down the road heavy reconnoitering forces and as the troops ahead of us were compelled to halt frequently and form line of battle and drive them back, this necessitated frequent halts

along our entire line. As the advance forces of the enemy fell back they were reinforced from the main body, so the fighting gradually increased in extent and intensity as more troops on both sides were brought into action, and our progress became correspondingly slower. It was, however, only a reconnoisance in force on the part of the enemy, and it was not his purpose to bring on a general battle outside of his breastworks, which were already completed and manned by his powerful army in the vicinity of the Chancellorsville house, some three miles from the point at which the advance forces met. As we advanced, the evidences of the fight ahead of us thickened and freshened, and during the last mile the debris was to be seen on the right hand and the left, as if a small tornado had swept up the road. I noticed several tall trees with seats of planks near the tops on which the enemy's scouts and sharpshooters had sat, and from which with their glasses they had probably seen the advance of our army a long distance away.

It was after sundown when our brigade reached a road crossing the one we were on at right angles and running parallel with Hooker's line of breastworks not more than three hundred yards from them.

In the right hand angle made by the cross roads there was a sunken place in the ground, just such as I have often seen in the vicinity of Gaffney, made no doubt in the past by miners digging for

iron ore.

Indeed the whole country about Chancellorsville at that time was very much like the section of country below Gaffney, which we now call "the coal grounds;" and to perfect the resemblance, there were the remains of some old iron works about a mile to the west of the cross road, to which I have now conducted the reader. In this site of an old mine in the angle of the roads Gen. A. P. Hill, then the commander of our division, was standing with several officers around him. He was holding the reins of his horse's bridle in his left hand, was talking rapidly, and at the same time gesticulating vigorously with his right hand. We passed near enough to him to hear the sound of his voice and to note his earnest manner, but were not able to catch any of his words. I remember that his appearance and manner inspired me with confidence, for he impressed me with the conviction that he was a man whose spirit was rising as dangers gathered and thickened, that he meant business, and that he was going in to win. The South never brought forth and nurtured a truer son than A. P. Hill. She had men of greater intellect and soldiers and statesmen of wider renown, but for constant courage, faithful service, and bull dog tenacity A. P. Hill had few equals. The fact that both Lee and Jackson in the struggle with the last enemy, and in the last moments of that struggle, called upun A. P. Hill, is a grand and eloquent tribute to his character.