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Updated: May 3, 2025
I was marching by the side of a soldier by the name of James Galbreath, and a conscript from the Mt. Pleasant country. I never heard a man pray and "go on" so before in my life. It actually made me feel sorry for the poor fellow. Every time that our line would stop for a few minutes, he would get down on his knees and clasp his hands and commence praying.
I tried to be cheerful, and said, "Hello, Galbreath, old fellow, I thought you were in heaven long before this." He laughed a sort of dry, cracking laugh, and asked me to hand him a drink of water. I handed it to him. He then began to mumble and tell me something in a rambling and incoherent way, but all I could catch was for me to write to his family, who were living near Mt. Pleasant.
Gibbie shook his head as before, and again resumed his seat. Presently he brought her the slate, with all the rest rubbed out, and these words standing alone sir giby galbreath. Janet read them aloud, whereupon Gibbie began stabbing his forehead with the point of his slate-pencil, and dancing once more in triumph: he had, he hoped, for the first time in his life, conveyed a fact through words.
He kept saying, "O, my poor wife and children! God have mercy on my poor wife and children! God pity me and have mercy on my soul!" Says I, "Galbreath, what are you making a fool of yourself that way for? If you are going to be killed, why you are as ready now as you ever will be, and you are making everybody feel bad; quit that nonsense." He quit, but kept mumbling to himself, "God have mercy!
I saw a man of the Twenty-seventh, who had lost his right hand, another his leg, then another whose head was laid open, and I could see his brain thump, and another with his under jaw shot off; in fact, wounded in every manner possible. Ah! reader, there is no glory for the private soldier, much less a conscript. James Galbreath was a conscript, as was also Fain King. Mr.
I asked him if he was badly wounded. He only pulled down the blanket, that was all. I get sick when I think of it. The lower part of his body was hanging to the upper part by a shred, and all of his entrails were lying on the cot with him, the bile and other excrements exuding from them, and they full of maggots. I replaced the blanket as tenderly as I could, and then said, "Galbreath, good-bye."
King was killed at Chickamauga. He and Galbreath were conscripted and joined Company H at the same time. Both were old men, and very poor, with large families at home; and they were forced to go to war against their wishes, while their wives and little children were at home without the necessaries of life. The officers have all the glory.
She read them all, and at the last, which, witnessing to his success, she pronounced to his satisfaction, he began another dance, which again he ended abruptly, to draw her attention once more to the slate. He pointed to the giby first, and the galbreath next, and she read them together. This time he did not dance, but seemed waiting some result.
It lasted so long that Janet resumed her previous household occupation. At length he rose, and with thoughtful, doubtful contemplation of what he had done, brought her the slate. There, under the fore-gone success, he had written the words galatians and breath, and under them, galbreath.
In reprimanding a boy, the other day, for ill behavior, he said to him, "I expect better things of you as an American; I consider you all in a different light from that of a d d set of French monkies." Mr. Galbreath is, likewise, a Scotchman; and he, too, is a very worthy man.
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