I suppose that some of his class did desert to the enemy, but the large majority were true as steel to their masters and their duty, from the beginning to the end, often at great personal risk and none attached to our company ever deserted. They could have done so easily at any time, and been free inside of the enemies' lines, but personal loyalty to their masters and their own people, as they considered their master's families held them cheerfully to their duty. There was no compulsion about it. They struggled and foraged and speculated at their own sweet will, yet all the time, looking out for their master's interests over and above all else.
These facts are some of the strongest proofs, that between masters and slaves of those old days, there were ties as strong as steel, in the close personal relationship that neither forgot. It had its counterpart in the love and service of the old "Mammy" to her master's family and children. She loved them, and delighted to serve and care for them, sometimes to the neglect of her own flesh and blood.
One morning in bivouac, near Tuka, at breakfast, around the officers fire, there was served a fine skillet full of fried pigeons, with gravey and biscuit, washed down with burnt corn coffee. Old "Ike," Lt. Caldwell's darky had come in during the night from a forage, Lieut Hargrove with the others of the mess, was enjoying the meal when all at once, Hargrove says: "Ike, where did you get these pigeons?" "Oh! Marse Cole, don't you bodded about dat. You eat your breakfast." "Ike, you old rascal, I believe you stole these pigeons, and if I had anything else to eat, I wouldn't eat them." "Dar now, Marse Cole, it's a blessed thing, dat you'se got me and dese udder fellows to look atter dis mess, kaze if it twant for us, you'd go hungry many a time, and dats a fac." "Well," said another officer, "its a bully old breakfast any how, and we don't know when we'll get such another." From Tuka, the command with its wagons marched to Columbus, Mississippi, where it went into camp near the outskirts of the town. Here, there came down from Corinth, Aleck Dearing and John Bartee, who having been on sick furlough in Tuscaloosa, had missed the Tennessee campaign, with them were some others and also some conscripts among whom was Richard Maxwell, the youngest of the old firm of T. J. R. & R. Maxwell, who had to at last take the field, having served some time in Leach & Avery's hat factory and thus exempt for that time from conscription. This squad of returning men, had charge of boxes of clothing for most of the men in the command and provisions furnished by friends and relatives in Tuscaloosa, which they had gotton up to Corinth with it trying to reach Hood's army, wherever it might be. At Corinth some quartermaster had furnished them a wall tent with "fly" to protect the goods. When ordered to move with the goods from Corinth, down to Columbus, by train, they were ordered to return the tent and fly. But they were too experienced old soldiers for that, so they hustled boxes, tent and all to the train, and came on to Columbus, with the whole lay out. They made a present of the fly to the officers of the company, and kept the tent to protect the goods until distributed, and incidently themselves. This tent and fly were the only ones left in the company now, as nothing of the kind had been on hand for many a month.