The next point threatened was Corinth, in order to concentrate the forces in that neighborhood. Leaving Middleburg, we passed through Purdy, took the Corinth road, and moved briskly until night, went into camp, fed, and slept until 1 A. M., when we saddled up, mended up the camp-fires and moved through neighborhood roads, into the Ripley road. Reaching Ripley at noon we rested, fed, and ate our Christmas dinner. In about two hours we moved out, and looking back we could see the enemy’s cavalry from Corinth entering the town. They fired a piece of artillery at us, but as they were in our rear we paid no attention to them. Crossing the Tallahatchie at Rocky Ford we camped on the banks of the stream. Here General Van Dorn waited for the enemy until noon the next day, but Colonel Grierson, who was pretending to follow us, never put in an appearance. In the afternoon we moved to Pontotoc and camped there that night in a terrible drenching rain. We then moved leisurely back into our lines, with “no one to molest us or make us afraid.”
January, 1863—Jake Arrested—Detailed—My Brother Visits Me—Elected Second Lieutenant—Battle of Thompson’s Station—Duck River—Capture of the Legion—The “Sick Camp”—Murder of General Van Dorn.
“THE Holly Springs raid,” never to be forgotten by the participants therein, having now become a matter of history, we rested for a time. January, 1863, came, and with it a great deal of rain, making mud very abundant and the roads very bad. During one of these cold rainy days, who should come pulling through the mud nearly half a leg deep, but the “aforesaid Harvey N. Milligan, late of Indiana.” He had made his escape from the enemy, and, minus his horse, had made his way back to us through the rain and mud afoot. “I told you Milligan was all right,” was a remark now frequently to be heard. A day or two after this, word came around that there were a half dozen horses at regimental headquarters to be drawn for by the companies. I went up to represent Company C, and drawing first choice, I selected a horse and gave him to Milligan. During that same year he deserted on that very horse, and rode him into the Federal lines.
My boy Jake having brought my horse out of the enemy’s lines, of course I expected he would wish to return home, and I proposed to give him the mule and let him go to his master. But no, he begged me to allow him to stay with me, to feed and attend to my horse, do my mess duties and such work. Of course I could not drive him off. This boy, eighteen or nineteen years old, perhaps, became a splendid servant, and as much devoted to me, apparently, as if I had raised him. Some months after this we were passing through Columbus, Miss., one day, and his owner, happening to be there, saw him, arrested him and sent him home. When I heard of it that night of course I supposed I would never see Jake any more, but to my surprise he came back in a short time, mounted on a splendid mule. When I started back to Texas in February, 1865, Jake was anxious to go with me, but I gave him a horse and saddle, and told him to take care of himself.