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The Battle of Chickamauga
Living near Ringgold, Georgia, as a boy
about 10 years of age, G.W.S. Ware witnessed events during the Battle of Chickamauga
during the Civil War:
"As the year 1864 came
along, battles were further South. One day the calvary met, and I, from a safe
distance saw the skirmish in the open plain. They played back and forth like boys.
The yanks away to the North sent a cannon ball at the Rebs, which barely
missed their own men. Soon the yanks were reenforced and here they came, and away
dashed the Rebs on foot. One threw up his hands, and was rushed back. Another
man did not throw up his hands, and I saw him shot, and he fell on his back and lay still
-- the only human being I ever saw killed. Afterwards I learn, he told them that he
surrendered to no yankee. How foolish, of him. That's been 70 years ago, and
he is still dead. Later I saw one cannon being fired at yanks. About a mile to
the North was a stack of wheat straw. A yankee captain stood on it with a spy glass.
When he saw the white smoke from a cannon's fuse flare up, he dashed down, to
escape, but just right for the ball to cut off his head. They buried his body on the
creek bank, where every freshet sent water over it. After the war, when they dug to
his body, to take it North, a tunnel had been made, from the creek to his body, by
varmints, and had their den in his coffin. One day a Reb. Major came in and watched
my sister spin. He then remarked that he thought that was a slow way to serve the
Lord. After his visit his command was later chasing yankees, who had taken to the
woods on a mountain North of us. They followed on foot. In the twilight he
cried out to the top of his voice: 'Hurry up that infantry around there, hurry them
up.' There were no infantry, but he did it to scare the yanks. We heard that
he lost his life in a battle a short time later." |
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