This is the second of three installments, transcription of the text of a long memoir headlined "Early Experiences of Sumner Smith" and published in The Albia Republican of March 14, 1912. I'd planned to do this in two posts, but three seems like a better idea. Part 1 is here.
Sumner and his family lived in Melrose, just over the Lucas-Monroe county line to the east, from 1873 until his death during 1913. Health impaired by service during the Civil War, he had given up trying to farm while teaching school and gone into business, for many years as a grocer. He continued to teach now and then, however, and was widely known in Lucas County in part because of that.
Born April 25, 1838, in a cabin on the current site of Keosauqua in Van Buren County, he moved with his family to the vicinity of Montrose, along the Mississippi in Lee County, as a boy, and both of his parents died there. This installment picks up his story during the winter of 1854 when he moved from Lee to Louisa County with a sister and brother-in-law.
It includes his service as a sergeant in Company K, 8th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, during the Civil War. The photo here is of the Shiloh battlefield monument to the 8th Iowa, which incorporates a bronze plate that reads in part as follows: "The regiment held this position from about 11 a.m. April 6, 1862, until about 4 p.m. when it changed front to the left and held this second position until about 5 p.m. when nearly surrounded it attempted to retreat, but finding all avenues of escape cut off, surrendered about 6 p.m. The regiment entered the engagement with an aggregate of about 600 men. Its loss was killed 40, wounded (18 mortally) 113, missing 340; total 493."
Sumner survived Shiloh and several weeks thereafter as a prisoner of war, but those experiences when combined with typhoid fever ruined his health, he was discharged for disability during February of 1863 and returned home to Louisa County weighing 90 pounds. This certainly was a defining aspect, if not the defining aspect, of his life.
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We moved from Lee county to Louisa county in the winter of 1854, and went into our new house on the last day of December, 1854, and up to that time there had not been any snow, and the ground had not been frozen a particle; but on the 17th day of January, 1855, there came a terrible blizzard and the snow drifted very badly. We could drive with heavy loads over rail fences as the snow was packed very solid. Our nearest neighbor was a mile away, and we on the open prairie with no fences, or other improvements.
During that winter we could see from where we lived great droves of deer, and they would come up close to the house, so we got a rifle, and my brother-in-law stood within fifteen feet of the house and shot a fine buck.
In November, 1856, I quit working for my brother-in-law and started to school at Crawfordsville in Washington county, which was seven miles from where we lived. I remained there for five months. Some time the first part of December there came a snow of about three or four inches, then it turned into sleet, and the whole country was a glare of ice. I remember that on the day before Christmas I went home and skated all the way back.
That was a very cold winter, but there was not very much snow on the ground. I worked on the farm in summer and went to school in the winter until 1858, when I started to the Iowa Wesleyan university, at Mount Pleasant.
In the fall of 1859 I began teaching school and continued to teach until I enlisted in September 1861. I had a school engaged at forty dollars per month, but gave it up to go into the army to be shot at for thirteen dollars per month; you see it was for the money that I enlisted, not.
When we went south, we drilled at Benton Barracks in st. Louis and from there we went to Syracuse, Missouri, on the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Here we spent about two weeks in drilling.
Now right here I want to relate a little circumstance that occurred while we were at this place. Gen. Steele was at this time our colonel, and as he was the oldest colonel at that place, he was in command of all the troops, which left the command of the regiment (8th Iowa Infantry) to Lieut. Col. Geddes. Steele had given very strict orders that no stock should be killed, and as we had had no meat for several days, we were all getting mighty hungry for meat. One morning as the guard was sent outside of the camp to fire off their guns, so they could be ready for inspection, one of the men, whose name was Amos L. Graves, and a member of my company, shot the head off from a yearling wether, and it was short work to dress that sheep. Some of the boys told him that he would be tied up by the thumbs, but he said he was going to have mutton for dinner that day, so he shouldered the dressed sheep, and just as we were entering camp, the Lieut. Col. came riding along, and as he saw Graves, he said, "don't you know it is against orders to kill any stock?" Graves saluted and said, "Yes, Col., but I wasn't going to let any damned sheep to bite me." At this the Col. rode away, his sides shaking with laughter. I saw Geddes in Des Moines a good many years after the war, and he told me that was the funniest thing he had ever seen or heard.
About the middle of October we started for Springfield, Mo., under Gen. McKinstry, with the 6th Iowa, and the first Nebraska infantry, making the brigade. There had been no provision made as to our rations, and when we got to Pomme de terre or Potato river, the rations we started with had become exhausted, and for five days we got nothing but fresh beef and navy beans, without a particle of salt. I would like to see some of the people who are always and eternally complaining about the pensions that old soldiers are getting, have to live on that kind of diet for five days, just to see what would happen. During those five days I did not eat anything but parched corn, but had to keep eating about all the time, as it made a rather light diet.
The place where we camped was on the river bottom, being a nice blue grass pasture, but to the west was an old field and the cockle burrs were about eight feet high and as thick as they could stand, and the 6th Iowa being in the lead, they were marched into that cockle burr field, and five of the companies of the 8th Iowa got the same treatment, but as I was in Company K, it being well in the rear, we were left in that blue grass pasture. I don't think I ever saw madder men than those who were in the cockle burr field; their clothing being of wool and they were a sight to behold. I don't believe they ever got all the burrs out of their clothing. Some of you who are very skeptical might ask Harry Hickenlooper, for I think he still has some of those burrs, but if he has none of them, he can tell more about them than I can, as he had the actual experience, while I was only an onlooker.
We went from here to Springfield, on a forced march, over the Ozark mountains, and if there is a more God foresaken country on earth than what we passed over, I have never seen it.
On that march we made seventy-five miles in two days, and carried our knapsacks, and I believe we lost more men on that march than we ever lost in a battle. We only remained at Springfield a few days, as Price had withdrawn his troops, then we went up to Sedalia, and were there only three days when two companies, E and K, were ordered to go as a guard for a train of teams and wagons to Fort Leavenworth where they were going into winter quarters.
We remained in western Missouri and eastern Kansas for three months, fighting Quantrill and other bushwhackers, and did not return to our regiment till the later part of February 1862. During the time we were away from the regiment we never got a letter from home.
About the 10th of March, we started for St. Louis, where we took a boat for the south and arrived at Pittsburgh Landing on March 23rd, or just two weeks before the battle of Shiloh.
Early in the morning of April 6, we were awakened by hearing the roar of artillery and got out of our tents in a hurry. We did not even have time to make coffee, but put in our haversacks just what we could get, and did our eating while making double quick time to the fire line.
We went into the scrap about 8 o'clock in the morning and continued till about 6 o'clock in the evening, at which time we were surrendered as prisoners of war. I had always been called a real good shot with a gun, and I distributed forty-eight pounds of ammunition during the day. I have been asked many times if I knew positively that I ever killed a man, and I have always said that I did not, and did not want to know. I was wounded about 15 minutes before we surrendered.
We were taken to Corinth on the next day, and from there to Memphis, then to Mobile, Ala., where we took boats up to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. where we were confined for more than a month, and from there we went to Montgomery, and after some time we were paroled and sent to Chattanooga where we were turned over to the Union forces.
Soon after we took a boat at Mobile, I felt that I must be breaking out with the prickly heat, as I itched so badly, and asked one of the boys to look down my back and see if it was the heat. He only just give a glance, then yelled with laughter, and said it was gray backs (lice; also a reference to Confederate troops) that were biting me.
After we were paroled, we were sent to Nashville, and from there to St. Louis. Soon after we got to St. Louis, I was taken down with typhoid pneumonia and was sick in the hospital for more than two moths.
While we were in prison, Henry Wirz was in charge of prison and he was practicing on us, so see how much misery and meanness we could stand without killing him. He is the same old scoundrel who was in charge of Andersonville later on and who was hung after the war. We were nearly starved while in prison. I have often though that if there was one place in hades that was a good deal hotter than another, and where the brimstone was more plentiful, that Wirz should have the full benefit of it and there sizzle throughout all eternity.
Our regiment was reorganized on January 1, 1863, at which time our exchange took place, but as I had been sick so long and was only just able to get around, I was sent to the hospital again and on February 19, I was discharged, and when I got home I weighed just 90 pounds and was not able to do anything at all.
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