The night before the battle I shared blankets in a barnyard with General Leonidas Polk, Bishop of Louisiana. The battle began at break of day by an artillery duel, the Federal battery being commanded by Colonel Charles Carroll Parsons and the Confederates by Captain William W. Carnes. Colonel Parsons was a graduate of West Point and Captain Carnes was a graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. I took position upon an eminence at no great distance, commanding a fine view of the engagement, and there I watched the progress of the battle until duty called me elsewhere.
Captain Carnes managed his battery with the greatest skill, killing and wounding nearly all the officers, men and horses connected with Parsons' battery. Parsons fought with great bravery and coolness and continued fighting a single gun until the Confederate infantry advanced. The officer in command ordered Colonel Parsons to be shot down. As the muskets were leveled at him, he drew his sword and stood at "parade rest," ready to receive the fire. The Confederate Colonel was so impressed with this display of calm courage that he ordered the guns lowered, saying: "No! you shall not shoot down such a brave man!" And Colonel Parsons was allowed to walk off the field.
Subsequently I captured Colonel Parsons for the ministry of the Church in the Diocese of Tennessee. He was brevetted for his bravery at Perryville and he performed other feats of bravery in the war. At Murfreesboro he repelled six charges, much of the time under musketry fire. He was often mentioned in official reports of battles. After the war he was on frontier duty until 1868 when he returned to West Point as a Professor. Shortly after my consecration as Bishop of Tennessee, I preached in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Brooklyn, New York, on "Repentance and the Divine Life." This sermon made a deep impression upon Colonel Parsons, as he told me when I subsequently met him at a reception at the residence of the Hon. Hamilton Fish.
I visited him twice at West Point by his invitation, and a correspondence sprang up between us. In 1870 he resigned his commission in the army to enter the ministry. He studied theology with me at Memphis, and it was my privilege to ordain him to the diaconate and advance him to the priesthood. His first work was at Memphis. Then for a while he was at Cold Spring, New York. He returned, however, to Memphis and became rector of a parish of which Mr. Jefferson Davis was a member and a vestryman. He remained heroically at his post of duty during the great epidemic of yellow fever in 1878. He was stricken with the fever and died at my Episcopal residence on the 6th of September. Captain Carnes was the first man I confirmed after my consecration to the Episcopate of Tennessee.