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A Confederate Soldier's Tale: Sam Watkins' Civil War Experiences from 1861-63

Sam Watkins was only 21 when his home state of Tennessee seceded from the Union in the spring of 1861. Swept away by the patriotic fervor and thirst for adventure that gripped an entire generation of unfortunate young men, Watkins and most of his childhood friends enlisted in the Confederate Army, joining Company H of the 1st Tennessee Regiment. They marched off to war, little knowing that four long, horror-filled years awaited them, in which they would see action in almost every major battle of the western theater, including Shiloh, Perryville, Chickamauga, Atlanta, and Franklin. Out of the 120 young men who formed Company H in that hope-filled spring of 1861, only seven lived to see the end of the war. One of these was Samuel Rush Watkins.

Watkins Enlists

Watkins was born in June 1839 near Columbia, Tennessee, on the farm owned by his father. Like thousands of other young Southern men, he had never strayed far from this little patch of land and was readily seduced by the promise of adventure and glory offered by service in the Confederate Army. Watkins could still vividly recall the enthusiasm surrounding secession as he penned his memoirs in 1882, more than 20 years later. Entitled Company Aytch: Or, a Side Show to the Big Show, these memoirs boosted Watkins to postwar fame, offering one of the most detailed accounts of the American Civil War from a private soldier's perspective. The entirety of the following passages are taken from these memoirs. In its earliest pages, he recalls the war fervor that swept through the South in the days just after secession. "Reader mine," he wrote:

Do you remember those stirring times? Do you recollect in that year, for the first time in your life, of hearing Dixie and the Bonnie Blue Flag? Fort Sumter was fired upon…war was declared, and Lincoln called for troops from Tennessee and all the Southern States, but Tennessee, loyal to her sister States, passed the ordinance of secession and enlisted under the Stars and Bars. From that day on, every person almost was eager for war, and we were afraid it would be over and we not in the fight. Companies were made up, regiments organized…everywhere could be seen Southern cockades made by the ladies and our sweethearts…flags made by the ladies were presented to companies, and to hear the young orators tell of how they would protect that flag, and that they would come back with the flag or come not at all, and if they fell they would fall with their backs to the field and their feet to the foe, would fairly make our hair stand on end with intense patriotism, and we wanted to march right off and whip twenty Yankees.

But, of course, it would be a while before Watkins would get a chance to 'whip' any Yankees. Company H spent the first months of the war marching through the mountains of western Virginia, shivering in their inadequate clothing and taking potshots at the Union sentries, who always seemed to leer uncomfortably close. Like most other privates, Watkins was often posted on picket duty, tasked with standing guard in the night and watching for enemy movements. On such a post, a private would often have to fight off sleep and contend with the paranoia conjured up by the dark night around him. Watkins was standing guard on one dark, snowy night, when he thought he saw movement in the shadows:

I could hear the rumblings of the Federal artillery and wagons, and hear the low shuffling sound made by troops on the march. The snow came pelting down as large as goose eggs. About midnight, the snow ceased to fall and became quiet. Now and then the snow would fall off the bushes and make a terrible noise. While I was peering through the darkness, my eyes suddenly fell upon the outline of a man. The more I looked the more I was convinced that it was a Yankee picket. I could see his hat and coat – yes, see his gun…what was I to do? The relief was several hundred yards in the rear…at last a cold sweat broke over my body. Turkey bumps rose. I summoned all my nerves and bravery and said: 'Halt! Who goes there?' There being no response, I became resolute…I marched right up to it and stuck my bayonet through and through it. It was a stump.

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