Rutherford, still I never laughed so much in my life at this ebullition of good feelings of the men, after all their toils and trials, especially as I would hear some one in the line call out as if in the last throes of exhaustion, ’Go on old dog,’ ‘now you are on him,’ ‘talk to him, old Ranger.’  What the Yankees thought of this fox chase at night in the valley, or what their intentions might have been is not known, but they would have been mighty fools to have tackled a lot of old ‘Confeds’ out on a lark at night.”

The negro cooks of the army were a class unique in many ways.  While he was a slave, he had far more freedom than his master, in fact had liberties that his master’s master did not possess.  It was the first time in the South’s history that a negro could roam at will, far and wide, without a pass.  He could ride his dead master’s horse from Virginia to Louisiana without molestation.  On the march the country was his, and so long as he was not in the way of moving bodies of troops, the highways were open to him.  He was never jostled or pushed aside by stragglers, and received uniform kindness and consideration from all.  The negro was conscious of this consideration, and never took advantage of his peculiar station to intrude upon any of the rights or prerogatives exclusively the soldier’s.  He could go to the rear when danger threatened, or to the front when it was over.  No negro ever deserted, and the fewest number ever captured.  His master might fall upon the field, or in the hands of the enemy, but the servant was always safe.  While the negro had no predilection for war in its realities, and was conspicuous by his absence during the raging of the battles, still he was among the first upon the field when it was over, looking after the dead and wounded.  At the field hospitals and infirmaries, he was indispensable, obeying all, serving all, without question or complaint.  His first solicitude after battle was of his master’s fate—­if dead, he sought him upon the field; if wounded, he was soon at his side.  No mother could nurse a child with greater tenderness and devotion than the dark-skinned son of the South did his master.

At the breaking out of the war almost every mess had a negro cook, one of the mess furnishing the cook, the others paying a proportional share for hire; but as the stringency of the Subsistence Department began to grow oppressive, as the war wore on, many of these negroes were sent home.  There was no provision made by the department for his keep, except among the officers of the higher grade; so the mess had to share their rations with the cook, or depend upon his ability as a “forager.”  In the later years of the war the country occupied by the armies became so devastated that little was left for the “forager.”  Among the officers, it was different.  They were allowed two rations (only in times of scarcity they had to take the privates’ fare).  This they were required to pay for at