Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 301, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1912 — STORIES of CAMP and WAR PRESENTED HAM TO GEN. LEE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

STORIES of CAMP and WAR

PRESENTED HAM TO GEN. LEE

Young Lieutenant Couldn’t Withstand Hungry Look of Superior and Gave Up Hia Meat, The Christmas story entitled, "Where the Heart Is,” by Will Irwin, In the American Magazine contains the following: “It was just before Christmas of *64 that I saw Lee last on the south bank of the Appomattox. I wonder if any of the northern army knew what it was to be as hungry as we all were those days? The captain sent me up with a report to the general’s house — he had an old farm buildingh-fpr bis headquarters. I went on foot, because we were sparing our horses. And right there happened about the greatest piece of luck I ever had in my life, I kicked something in the road. Well, I could scarcely believe my eyes ■when I saw what it was. It was half a boiled ham. How it got there I’ve never known to this day. Some raiders making camp dropped it, I reckon. If I found SIO,OOO in the street tomorrow, it wouldn’t seem so lucky. I wrapped it up under my cape, just unable to think of anything but how good it was going to taste. You see I wasn’t much more than a boy. I enlisted at seventeen in ’62; I was only nineteen then, and just wearing my second lieutenant’s shoulder straps. "Well, I came to the turn of the road, and looked up. And there came the general and his staff.* Some of the boys had been complaining. I’d heard them say that the general was living in a house, eating fried chicken while we were eating bran and going meat hungry. I thought of that, with the ham under my cape. I dropped it down so I could hold it with my left hand when I saluted, and stood there by the road at attention. “I hadn't seen the general for a year. But Lordee —what a year had done to that man! Then his hair was gray-brown —now it was almost white. Then his eyes were clear like a boy’s —now they were old. And his face was pinched and hollow. You couldn’t fool me. I’d seen that look -often enough before. The general was hungry. “Well, I went on up to headquarters with the report. And all the time I held the ham, and all the time I was thinking of the general and the way he looked. And when I got ready to start back, something struck me. I wasn’t much use to the Confederacy. He was everything. I just turned and went out to the kitchen. I found the nigger boiling a little handful of corn meal. I t6ok out that ham and said, ‘Get a knife, nigger, and slice up this meat. It’s for the general. And if I ever find you haven’t fed it to him, you won’t have to wait for the Yanks to get you.’ And I went back and ate a corn cake and a little sliver of bacon for dinner that day.”