night-alone

The U.D.C. Committee on Reminiscences has requested me to write of some of
my experiences during the Civil war, and I shall try to give a brief account of
some of those that I remember most vividly.

I have tried vainly to forget some of the ordeals through which I passed, as my
experiences were many and sad. Well do I remember one afternoon in October,
1862, I, with my two little children, went to spend the afternoon with a neighbor
living near by. We had been there but a short time when we heard the firing of
guns and the whooping and yelling of men. Looking towards my home, which was
in sight, I soon saw that it was surrounded by a company of Federal soldiers. I
with my little ones hastened home and soon learned the cause of the excitement.
The Federals had caught up with three Confederate soldiers who had been cut off
from General Price's army a few days previous and were trying to make their way
back to the south by traveling in the night and hiding in the brush during the day.

These boys, for the eldest had barely attained his majority, had gone into my field
and taken out some corn and fodder to feed their horses and had carelessly
dropped fodder through the brush by which the Federals tracked them to their
hiding place, and finding them asleep, shot and killed two of them and wounded
the third.

I knew one of the young men well, had known him all his life, but the other two
were strangers to me.

After the shooting was over the company of soldiers surrounded my house and one
of the number told what they had done. He said they had found the boys napping
and had sent them where they would cause no more trouble. I saw the company
was making arrangements to leave, and I asked one of them what they were going
to do with the men they had killed and wounded. He replied, "We are going to
leave them right where they are, they will make good food for the hogs; that is as
good as they deserve, and I don't think it will be very safe for anyone to interfere
with them."

I stepped out on the doorstep and called to the soldiers to know if the captain of
the company was there. A man rode up to where I was standing and said, "Yes, I
am the captain; what will you have?" I said, "Will you give me permit to have the
men you killed buried and the wounded one care for?" He said, "Certainly I will,"
and took from his pocket a blank book and pencil, and with trembling hands wrote
the permit giving the privilege of doing the best I could with them, assuring me he
would see that I was protected by him and his men.

It was almost impossible to get a man to help me care for the dead and wounded,
as the few men left at home felt it would be risking their own lives to give any
assistance in a case of that kind.

My brother was living with me at the time, but, like all other southern men, was
in danger whenever he came home. However, he came home that evening and
obtained the help of an old negro man and two boys to bring the dead and
wounded men to the house. We felt that he was risking his life in doing that
much. I was afraid for my brother to try to stay with me, and finally prevailed
upon him to leave.

I and my children, one five and the other seven years old, spent the night alone
with the dead and wounded. What thoughts and feelings attended me through the
long and lonely hours of that night none but God can ever know; my eyes were not
closed once in sleep. I was kept busy trying to relieve the suffering of the poor
wounded boy who I thought could not live through the night.

The next day two or three men ventured to come and dig a grave to bury the dead.
It was impossible to get coffins or even planks to make a box. The men lined the
grave with rough boards, I washed the blood from their faces and hands, had each
wrapped in a clean sheet and blanket and we laid them to rest side by side in the
same grave.

The captain of the company sent a physician from Clinton to attend the wounded
man. He improved slowly, but his life was threatened and we lived in dread until
his friends came one night and smuggled him away.

A still sadder experience, to me the most dreadful of that terrible war, happened
on Sunday morning in August, 1863. My brother, who had stayed with me since
the death of my husband in 1859, and who would have been in the Confederate
army had it not been that he was so nearsighted he was unfit for duty, was called
out by a company of Federal soldiers who, unheeding my prayers and pleading
with them to spare his life, took him a short distance from the house and cruelly
murdered him almost in sight of my door. I heard the report of the gun and ran to
him, but he had breathed his last before I reached him. As it was in the other case,
there was not a man we could get to help in our great need.

The women in the neighborhood came to my assistance and brought his body to
the house and washed and dressed him for burial.

The old men living some distance from us heard of it and came the next morning
and made a box of planks--which was the best we could do for a coffin--and with
the help of the women, dug a grave and laid him away the best they could.

This was the hardest trial I had to bear. I thought at the time I could not possibly
live through it, but found we never know what we can endure until we are put to
the test.

As I look back over the years that have passed since we heard with aching hearts
of Lee's surrender, I thank God for the white-robed angel, Peace, that has hovered
over us and dwelt in our hearts these many years. I am glad the bitterness of that
long struggle had passed away and we can forget many of the hardships and
sorrows of that trying time, but I do not wish to forget the bravery, the heroism of
our gallant boys in gray who gave their lives for a cause they felt to be so just and
holy. All honor to the private in ranks. "No stars and bars to deck his homespun
jacket." Oh! May we never forget what we owe his memory.

Mrs. Ann C. Everett

Reminiscences of the Women of Missouri During the Sixties
Missouri Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy