When the Third South Carolina Regiment of Infantry was in East Tennessee, in the month of January, 1864, not only did the soldiers find it difficult to get enough to eat, but their supply of shoes and clothing ran pretty low.  Those who had extra pants or jackets helped their needy friends.  Lieutenant Colonel Rutherford had turned over his extra pair of pants to some one, which left him the pair he wore each day as his only stock on hand in the pants line.  Heavy snows fell.  The regiment was encamped very near a pleasant residence, where a bevy of pretty girls lived.  After an acquaintance of sometime, a snow-balling was indulged in.  It was observed that Colonel Rutherford used his every endeavor to constantly face the girls, who were pelting him pretty liberally on all sides.  After awhile he slipped up and fell, but in his fall his face was downward, when lo! the girls discovered that he had a hole in his pants.  Too good-natured to appear to see his predicament, no notice was seemingly taken of his misfortune; but as the officers were about going off to bed that night, the married lady said to him: 

“Colonel, lay your pants on the chair at your room door tonight, and you will find them there again in the morning.  We hope you won’t mind a patch.”

The Colonel, who was always so gallant in actual battle, and could not bear to turn his back to the Federal soldiers, was just as unwilling to turn his back to snow-balls, who happened to be Confederate lasses, and the reason therefor, although never told, was discovered by them.

The weather had gotten down to two degrees below zero, the ground frozen as hard as brick-bats, and the winds whistled gaily through our tattered tents, our teeth beating tattoo and our limbs shivering from the effects of our scanty clothing and shoes.  But our wagons were gathering in supplies from the rich valleys of the French Broad and the Nolachucky, and while we suffered from cold, we generally had provisions sufficient for our want.  By the middle of January we had to temporarily break up camp to meet the enemy, who had left Knoxville with the greater part of the army, and was marching up on the right banks of the French Broad to near Dandridge.  General Foster seeing the penalty put upon General Burnside for not driving out Longstreet from East Tennessee, the former undertook to accomplish in this bitter weather what the latter had failed to do in comparative good season.  Our cavalry, with Jenkins’ Division, headed direct towards the moving column of the enemy, while McLaws’ Division marched in the direction of Strawberry Plains, with a view to cutting off the enemy and forcing him to battle in an open field.  But General Granger, in command of the Federal column, was too glad to cross the French Broad and beat a hasty retreat to Knoxville.  We returned to our old camps, and waited, like Micawber, “for something to turn up.”