Some typographical errors have been corrected;a list follows the text. (etext transcriber's note) |
RECOLLECTIONS
OF
THOMAS D. DUNCAN
A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER
Nashville, Tenn.
McQUIDDY PRINTING COMPANY
1922
Copyrighted, 1922
By Thomas D. Duncan
FOREWORD
HIS unpretentious work is not the product of a literary ambition.Though my story deals with events that will live forever in the recordsof our country, I have not sought to give it the wings of poetic fancywhereby it may fly into the libraries of the earth.
Within the happy family circle, from which my children are now gone,these oft-recounted recollections became a part of their education. Ipermitted them to turn the pages of my memory, as the leaves of a book,that they might learn the vanished glory of the old South—the lovingloyalty and the sad travail of her people. And I trust that they learnedalso that our unfortunate Civil War—now, thank God, nearly sixty yearsbehind us—was a clash of honest principles.
That there were wild-eyed agitators and extremists on both sides, andthat each had its scalawags and low-flung ruffians, there can be nodoubt (and some of these—alas!—still live); but the masses of thesoldiers of both armies, who bore the brunt of battle and suffered theprivations of those sorrowful years, were patriots; and he who speaks orwrites to the contrary is an enemy to our reunited country and anelement of weakness and danger in the strength of the nation.
My two beloved daughters have prevailed upon me to record my experiencesof four years as a Confederate soldier, in the form of a brief printedmemoir; and so, impelled by my regard for their wishes, I enter the workfor them and for their descendants, without any thought of placing aliterary commodity upon the counters of the country; and yet I must sowrite that, wherever this volume may chance to fall into the hands of astranger, he may find in it that one essential to such a story as thisis—Truth.
Thomas D. Duncan.
DEDICATION
HIS brief reminiscent story is affectionately dedicated to my twograndsons, Shelby Curlee, Jr., and William Peyton Dobbins, Jr., in thehope that it may help to teach them two great truths—that the old Souththa