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Updated: May 18, 2025
Near a house I met Generals Howard and Logan, who explained that there was an intrenched battery to their front, with the appearance of a strong infantry support. I then walked up to the ridge, where I found General Morgan L. Smith. His men were deployed and engaged in rolling logs and fence-rails, preparing a hasty cover.
I got somebody else's big pillow, and slept in a better bed than I did on the "River Queen." He enjoyed it greatly; but I do think if I had given him two fence-rails to sleep on he would not have found fault. That was Abraham Lincoln in all things relating to his own comfort. He would never permit people to put themselves out for him under any circumstances."
We had but few tools, and as the difficulties to overcome were serious, our progress was slow, until some genius conceived the idea that the track, rails and ties, might be lifted from its bed bodily, turned over, and subjected to a high heat; a convenient supply of dry fence-rails would furnish ample fuel to render the rails useless.
Ivory was season-wise and his quick eye had caught many a sign as he walked through the woods from his schoolhouse. A new and different color haunted the tree-tops, and one had only to look closely at the elm buds to see that they were beginning to swell. Some fat robins had been sunning about in the school-yard at noon, and sparrows had been chirping and twittering on the fence-rails.
For each yard of cloth required he split four hundred fence-rails, and as he was over six feet in height it took fourteen hundred rails to pay for his trousers. On April 19, 1831, he went to New Orleans with a flat-boat load of pigs, corn, pork, and beef; the pigs refusing to walk, Lincoln carried them aboard in his arms.
"Turning from the road into an orchard, he fastened up his horse, and asked his companion if he could make a fire, adding, "We shall have to burn fence-rails to-night." The major soon had a roaring fire, and was making a bed of rails, when the general wished to know what he was doing. "Finding a place to sleep," was the reply.
The track was heaved up in sections the length of a regiment, then separated rail by rail; bonfires were made of the ties and of fence-rails on which the rails were heated, carried to trees or telegraph-poles, wrapped around and left to cool.
"I feel just like I was burglarizing a house," chuckled Gallegher, as he dropped noiselessly to the floor below and refastened the shutter. The barn was a large one, with a row of stalls on either side in which horses and cows were dozing. There was a haymow over each row of stalls, and at one end of the barn a number of fence-rails had been thrown across from one mow to the other.
A pile of brush and some broken fence-rails were left with Charlotte, the horses made as snug as possible, and then the two others jumped the fence and plunged off into the snow. Guided by glimpses of the apparently fitful fire of the sleighing party, Doctor Churchill and Just made their way. Sometimes the course was comparatively free from drifts; again they had to wallow nearly to their waists.
Hundreds of fires were soon started with the fence-rails, and the men were busy roasting the ears. Thomas and I were walking up and down the road which led to the church, discussing the chances of the movement, which he thought were extra-hazardous, and our path carried us by a fire at which a soldier was roasting his corn.
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