We had followed the successes and reverses of the flag of the Lost Cause through all these years of blood and strife.
I was simply one of hundreds of thousands in the same fix.

The tale is the same that every soldier would tell, except Jim Whitler.

Jim had dodged about, and had escaped being conscripted until "Hood's raid," he called it.

Hood's army was taking up every able-bodied man and conscripting him into the army.

Jim Whitler had got a position as over-seer on a large plantation, and had about a hundred negroes under his surveillance.