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[Illustration: From left to right, back row--Private Thrower, Orderly
Sergeant George Little, Sergeant John Little, Bugler Minardo Rosser.
Second row, left--Lieut. Harvey Cribbs; right, Artificer William
Johnson. Front row, left--Corporal Thos. Owen, Walter Guild. Seated,
on right--Sergeant James R. Maxwell; left, Rufus Jones or "Rube,"
T. A. Dearing's servant.]




A HISTORY
_of_
LUMSDEN'S BATTERY
C. S. A.



Written by Dr. George Little
_and_
Mr. James R. Maxwell



Published by R. E. Rhodes Chapter
United Daughters of the Confederacy
Tuskaloosa, Alabama




Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Original spellings, punctuation and discrepancies have
been retained, including the list of Privates with numerous names out
of alphabetical order.




This History of Lumsden's Battery was written from memory in 1905 by
Dr. Maxwell and Dr. Little, with the help of a diary kept by Dr. James
T. Searcy.

From organization Nov. 4, 1861, to Oct. 15, 1863, this data is the work
of Dr. George Little, from Oct. 15, 1863, to its surrender May 4, 1865,
the work of Mr. James R. Maxwell.




LUMSDEN'S BATTERY

Its Organization and Services in the Army of the Confederate States.


At the close of the spring term of the Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa
County, Alabama, in May, 1861, Judge Wm. S. Mudd announced from the
bench that Mr. Harvey H. Cribbs would resign the office of Sheriff of
the County for the purpose of volunteering into the Army of the
Confederate States and would place on the desk of the Clerk of the
Court an agreement so to volunteer signed by himself, and invited all
who wished to volunteer to come forward and sign the same agreement.
Many of Tuscaloosa's young men signed the same day.

By the end of the week following the list had grown to about 200 men.
Capt. Charles L. Lumsden, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute
was commandant of Cadets at the University of Alabama and had been
contemplating the getting up of a company for service in Light or Field
Artillery and had been corresponding with the War Department and Army
officers already in service concerning the matter.

These volunteers, on learning this fact, at once offered themselves to
Capt. Lumsden as a company of such artillery.

Dr. George W. Vaughn, son of Edward Bressie Vaughn (who afterwards gave
two other younger sons to the cause) and Mr. Ebenezer H. Hargrove, also
of Tuscaloosa County, had married two Mississippi girls, sisters, the
Misses Sykes of Columbus, Mississippi, and were engaged in planting in
Lowndes County, Miss. Hearing of this Artillery Co. they sent their
names to be added to the list. Dr. George Little, Professor of
Chemistry in Oakland College, Mississippi, and his younger brother,
John Little, Principal of the Preparatory Department, resigned their
places and returned to Tuscaloosa to join this Company. Edward Tarrant,
Superintendent of Education for Tuscaloosa County, had a flourishing
educational institute called the Columbian Institute at Taylorville
four and a half miles south of Tuscaloosa. He gave up his school and
joined the Company, where two of his sons, Ed William and John F.,
afterwards followed him.

Joseph Porter Sykes, a nephew of the Sykes sisters, had been appointed
by Pres. Davis a Cadet in the regular C. S. Army and at his request was
assigned to this Company. Dr. Nicholas Perkins Marlowe and Drs. Caleb
and Wm. Toxey served as surgeons at different times and Dr. Jarretts
and McMichael and Dr. Hill also later. We mention these doctors who
entered the ranks as privates as emphasizing the spirit that was moving
the young men of the time in every trade and profession. But their
country had too crying a need of medical men, in a few weeks, to permit
them to continue to serve with arms in their hands, and all of them
were soon promoted to the service for which their education fitted
them, serving as Regimental and Brigade surgeons and high in their
profession after the close of the war. In May the election of officers
was held and resulted in election of Charles Lumsden, Captain; George
W. Vaughn, Sr., First Lieutenant; Henry H. Cribbs, Jr., First
Lieutenant; Ebenezer H. Hargrove, Sr., Second Lieutenant; Edward
Tarrant, Jr., Second Lieutenant; Joseph Porter Sykes, Cadet.

The following were appointed non-commissioned Officers:

George Little, Orderly Sergeant; John Snow, Quartermaster Sergeant;
John A. Caldwell, Sergeant; A. Coleman Hargrove, Sergeant; Sam
Hairston, Sergeant; Wiley G. W. Hester, Sergeant; Horace W. Martin,
Sergeant; James L. Miller, Sergeant; Wm. B. Appling, Corporals; Wade
Brooks, J. Wick Brown, James Cardwell, Thomas Owen, Alex T. Dearing,
Wm. Hester, Seth Shepherd, Wm. Morris, Artificer, Wheelwright; Wm.
Worduff, Artificer, Harness; C. W. Donoho, Bugler; John Drake, Farrier.

At the request of Capt. Lumsden, Dr. George Little went to Mobile and
offered the service of the Company to Maj. Gen. Jones M. Witters, who
accepted it and promised a six gun Battery fully equipped and ordered
the Company to report at once for duty at Mobile. It went down on a
service steamboat and was first quartered in a cotton warehouse,
Hitchock's, on Water St., and mustered into service by Capt. Benjamin C.
Yancy of the regular C. S. Army. Horses and equipments were furnished
and the Captain was ordered to take two 24-lb. siege guns to Hall's
mills, a turpentine still fourteen and a half miles south west of
Mobile where Gen. Gladden was encamped with a Brigade of Infantry and
where a battalion of artillery was organized under the command of Major
James H. Hallonquist, a West Point graduate, and when in a camp of
instruction we were broken into the life and duties of soldiers, a life
very different from the experience of any of the company hitherto. On
March 3, 1862, the command was marched to Dog River Factory, a march of
about fifteen miles, when we boarded the Steamer Dorrance and were
carried to Ft. Gaines on Dauphin Island at the mouth of Mobile Bay.

At Ft. Gaines the drudgery of camp life was experienced in mounting
guns, blistering hands with shovels and crowbars and noses and ears by
the direct rays of a semi-tropical sun.

When bounty money was paid to the command, another new experience was
had by many, for released from restraints of home, church and public
sentiment, it did not take long for many to learn to be quite expert
gamblers. But the more thoughtful sent most of their money home to
their families and parents, and the general sentiment being against
such a lowering of the moral tone of the command, Capt. Lumsden issued
orders, absolutely forbidding all gambling in the camp, with the
approval of the great majority of his men.

About this time by some unknown means, it was reported in Tuscaloosa
that Capt. Lumsden was intemperate or addicted to drink. As soon as the
command heard of this report, they took immediate steps to "sit down on
the lie," to the great relief of friends and relatives at home. Neither
then nor in any succeeding years could any such charge have been
truthfully made against him. The boys thought this year's service
around Mobile a tough experience. They could not keep cleanly in their
dress nor enjoy all luxuries of life to which they had been accustomed
but the time soon came when they could look back to their first year's
experience of soldier life as luxurious, in comparison to rags and
semi-starvation that afterwards fell to their lot for months at a time.

Two steamboats were each making their weekly trips to Tuscaloosa and
back. Parents and friends came and went. The least expression of a
need, to the folks at home brought the wished for articles. Nothing was
too good for the boys at the front and fish and oysters were abundant
in season. The latter were in those days only considered eatable in the
R. months, as the saying was: i.e., during the months whose names
contained the letter R. So that from May to August, the poor things
could enjoy life without the fear of man. Ice was not then available to
preserve them during the summer months.

At Fort Gaines, Lt. Cribbs was given charge of the Ordnance Department.
In the early spring, the company received as recruits from Tuscaloosa
many good men. Feb. 24, 1862 there arrived with Lt. Tarrant, James T.
Searcy, John Chancellor, James Manly, Ed. King, Jno. Molette, T. Alex
Dearing and ten or twelve others, E. R. Prince, Jas. F. Prince. It is
from a personal diary kept by James T. Searcy that much of this first
and second year's experience of the command has been culled and all of
the dates.

On the trip down the boat "scraped the woods" considerably, butted out
one tree by the roots, butted another that staggered the boat without
injuring the tree, but left about twenty feet of the guards in the
water as the tree's trophy in the encounter. Such incidents were in
those days quite common in steamboat travel in low water.

Mumps, measles and kindred camp diseases made their usual inroads on
the health of the command, and many of them had to spend a part of the
time in the hospital in Mobile, George W. Smith and James L. Miller
among them.

Major Hallonquist was in command of the Artillery at Ft. Gaines but on
April 4th was ordered to join Gen. Bragg at Corinth, Tenn., and Col.
Melanclhan Smith took command of the Fort. Officers and men were
longing to meet the enemy in battle.

At Ft. Gaines, a few Yankee vessels blockading could be seen in the
distance, but the monotony was wearing, and each commanding officer was
pulling all possible ropes to secure orders to proceed to the front, in
this case to Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston's army near Corinth. Capt.
Lumsden got promises but by perhaps some political pull Gage's Mobile
battery secured the deserved privilege to report at Corinth and in the
battle of Shiloh got badly cut up and after the battle was ordered back
to Mobile to recuperate and Lumsden's was ordered to Corinth and given
the same guns and equipment.

On Sundays near Mobile Dr. Hill, a private, often officiated as a
preacher so that during this first year, Sundays could be distinguished
from the other days of the week. He was from near Columbus,
Mississippi, and a practicing physician as well. Tuesday, April 15,
1862, three days after the battle of Shiloh, found the command at
Corinth, having left Mobile on Monday and it took possession of Gage's
guns, etc., on April 16th, got tents 4:00 p.m. April 17th, so for the
first time for two nights, they slept on the ground in the open air, a
new thing then, the general rule thereafter.

Several Tuscaloosa Doctors were near Corinth, assisting in caring for
the wounded, amongst them Drs. Leland and Cochrane. Even to see so many
gathered as in this first army was a new sight and experience to these
raw troops.

On April 23rd the battery was attached to Chalmers Brigade, and marched
twelve miles over awful roads of sticky mud and water to Monterey,
where everything was next morning put in line of battle but the rifle
and cannon firing was a mere reconnaissance of the enemy and all hands
bivouaced in place on the wet ground.

Here much sickness prevailed and the rains were continuous. The
hospital tent was soon filled and on one day Orderly Sergeant Little,
out of a roll of 170 men took to a church in Corinth used as a hospital
in charge of Dr. N. P. Marlowe, sixty men sick. They had measles,
pneumonia, erysipelas, typhoid fever and chronic diarrhea. At this
evacuation of Corinth, the battery had barely enough men to drive the
horses and Gen. Chalmers made a detail from the 10th Mississippi
infantry to fill out the company.

Want of vegetable food, drinking water from seep wells and exposure to
cold rains caused the sickness. It was general in the army and probably
made necessary the retreat to Tupelo when, with better water, the
company and army quickly secured usual health. The evening of May 3,
1862 and that night found company under arms in line of battle with
Chalmer's Brigade, but no enemy appeared. Within two weeks ending May
8th, five of the men died: Fulgham, Hall, Hyche, Sims and Lingler. They
gave their lives to the cause.

To die in hospital was harder, much harder, than to die in the
excitement of battle,