July 4th
Declaration of Independence Day, but as we had other business before us, we did not celebrate the day in the old time style. We marched through Halltown and Charlestown, near the old field where that fanatical murderer and abolitionist, John Brown, was hung, and halted under a heavy cannonading at Bolivar Heights, near Harper's Ferry. This place on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and on the Potomac river, surrounded by lofty mountains, was once a United State Arsenal and Government foundry. The Yankee camps had been hastily forsaken, and our men quickly took possession of them and their contents. After dark General Rhodes took his old Alabama brigade (now Battle's) into the town, where a universal pillaging of United States Government property, especially commissary stores, was carried on all night. The town was pretty thoroughly relieved of its stores, and the 4th of July was passed very pleasantly. Corporal A. F. Henderson, while in a cherry tree gathering fruit, was wounded by a minie ball or piece of shell, and carried to hospital in the afternoon. Fuller Henderson is a son of Rev. S. Henderson, D. D., a distinguished Baptist minister of Alabama, and is a true and unflinching soldier.
