General Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant

[119] pushed his chair forward toward the general, and said, with a bow and a smile, “Here, take my chair, sir.” General Grant looked at him, and replied: “Ah, you need that chair much more than I; keep your seat. I see you are badly hurt.” The officer answered goodnaturedly: “If you folks let me go back to our lines, I think I ought to be able to get a leave to go home and see my girl; but I reckon she would n't know me now.” The general said, “I will see that one of our surgeons does all in his power for you” ; and soon after he told one of the surgeons who was dressing the wounds of our own men to do what he could for the Confederate. The despatches were afterward written in another room. Thirty-three years afterward I discovered that this corporal's name was W. R. Thraxton, and that he was in excellent health and living in Macon, Georgia.

The enemy had now set to work to discover the real meaning of our present movements. In the afternoon skirmishers pushed forward on our right, and found that Warren's corps was no longer there.

In the night of the 14th Lee began to move troops to his right. Grant now directed Hancock's corps to be withdrawn and massed behind the center of our line, so that it could be moved promptly in either direction. When the general got back to camp that evening his clothes were a mass of mud from head to foot, his uniform being scarcely recognizable. He sat until bedtime without making any change in his dress; he never seemed particularly incommoded by the travel-stained condition of his outer garments, but was scrupulously careful, even in the most active campaigns, about the cleanliness of his linen and his person. The only chance for a bath was in having a barrel sawed in two and using the half of it as a sort of sitz-bath. During most of this campaign the general, like the staff-officers, used this