This And That

From Bulls Gap to Lexington and Back

By Gould Hagler · Originally published March 2024 · pp. 28–29

From Bulls Gap to Lexington and Back The Military Memoirs of a Confederate Line Officer: Captain John Reed’s Civil War from Manassas to Appomattox, edited by William R. Cobb, was published in 2023 by Savas Beatie. Captain Reed was a young officer who served throughout the war in the 8th Georgia Infantry Regiment. Son of the proprietor of a school near Lexington, Ga., Reed was well-educated, with degrees from Princeton, one for his studies at the school and a second awarded for his private study of Greek and Latin after he left. After reading law under T.R.R. Cobb* in Athens, Reed practiced his profession from 1857 until 1861, when he went to war. His memoirs do not provide a full chronology of his wartime experiences, but instead offer a series of vignettes about selected events and people. Reed’s regiment served throughout the war, mostly in Virginia, but with detours to Georgia and Tennessee under Gen. James Longstreet. Among the interesting sketches is a touching story of a soldier who had a premonition of his death. A more lighthearted chapter tells of Brig. Gen. Henry Benning, an officer notable for his blunt ways and down-to-earth language, and some of the amusing encounters he had with the soldiers under his command. I found two short chapters to be of particular interest. These chapters did not tell of the fighting or generals cursing at their men, but about a furlough, more specifically about the journey home and back. Why is this interesting? Well, traveling from the mountains of eastern Tennessee to northeast Georgia was no easy matter, and the route taken was not remotely as the crow flies. Reed’s account tells us something about the life of a soldier, a young officer in this case, and the effort it took to get away from war for a short visit home.

Bulls Gap to Lexington by Rail 1864.

Today one can drive from Bulls Gap to Lexington, a distance of about 250 miles, in four and a half hours. In the spring of 1864 it was a different kind of trip. Reed took a circuitous, thousandmile route, riding on railroads worn down by three years of war. Moreover, the rail journey began only after an 18-mile walk from Bulls Gap to Greeneville. Captain Reed did not expect his furlough application to be approved and, caught by surprise, he had not prepared for his journey. He hastened to get ready, borrowing $10 in Confederate money to add to the $3 in silver he had been holding on to in case he was captured and in need of money in a Yankee prison. He also had recently received a gift from his father, a new pair of shoes. He didn’t wear them, but carried them along to use as currency. He packed the shoes and some biscuits and set out on foot to the Greeneville depot, 18 miles distant. Reed bought a ticket and hopped on the train’s single passenger car. However, as he settled in, “a sergeant, with a file of men” began to remove all the passengers. The car was being commandeered for some military necessity or another, and all the seats were needed by a group of indispensable officers. Fortunately for Reed, he knew the sergeant, who had served earlier in Reed’s regiment and who owed Reed a favor. Reed had defended him in a court of inquiry and won an acquittal. Reed made his needs known with a subtle gesture; the sergeant made a quiet nod. With a somewhat irregular exercise of discretion the sergeant repaid his debt by discreetly allowing Reed to keep his seat. The train chugged along to Bristol, where Reed encountered another acquaintance, this time a surgeon, a man with a willingness to help a comradein-arms. As Reed’s funds were limited, his medical friend agreed to put him in the sick car bound for Lynchburg. The surgeon, however, warned Reed that when he arrived the provost guard would have to deliver him to the hospital. The resourceful captain knew he could find a way around the problem when the time came. He boarded the sick car and grabbed some much-needed sleep. Once in Lynchburg, he was confronted by the provost guard as he tried to leave the depot.

With some fast talking he bluffed his way out. “Though he objected to my leaving,” Reed wrote, “he did not have the heart to shoot me, and he could not leave all the sick to pursue me alone.” Reed traded his three silver dollars for $48 in Confederate bills and set out for Petersburg. To make good time he ignored a regulation that he “could never see the sense of.” This rule required everyone passing through Petersburg to show his papers and obtain a pass from the provost marshal. For Reed it was a choice: follow the rules or catch his train. The captain raced to the Weldon depot, slipped passed the guard and leapt on the train as it pulled away. “I felt sure he would not fire,” he wrote. Reed had had some fun en route to Petersburg. “I must have rioted away nearly all my money on the way from Lynchburg,” he wrote, “for I distinctly remember that soon after I had boarded the Weldon train I went into the second-class car and put my shoes up for auction.” He didn’t say more, but his revelry must have cost something close to $48 Confederate. As the train rattled southward, Reed met up with an enlisted man, also from Longstreet’s Corps and also on furlough. “We discussed my pecuniary necessities,” Reed wrote. The scheme he concocted is far too complex to explain here, but Reed managed to ride using the enlisted man’s ticket, while his new friend traveled on the strength of his signed furlough. The pair fooled conductors all the way from the Virginia-North Carolina line to Augusta, Ga., a trip of over 500 miles on at least three roads. Of the conductors responsible for collecting the fares, Reed wrote that “not a single one ever showed that he suspected the trick.” In Augusta, the enlisted man headed to his sister’s house. Reed, still in an embarrassed financial condition, headed for the Georgia Railroad depot, where he made his needs known. He received what he thought was a loan from a “large, fat benevolent looking man.” The citizen handed Reed $20 and walked away before Reed could record his name and address. “I saw he intended the money as a gift to a soldier,” Reed wrote, “and I thanked him.” Reed bought the ticket and rode west. “I paid my fare, and got my dinner at Union Point.” Lexington is 26 miles from Union Point by rail. Reed wrote nothing about that final leg of his journey home, but “In the afternoon I ran in on my wife and surprised her gloriously.” The trip had been long and arduous. Getting home required resourcefulness, some boldness, a bit of chicanery, a large portion

CivilWarNews.com of good luck and the generosity of a “large, fat, benevolent looking man.” “I had not lost a connection,” Reed boasted in his memoirs. In recording his adventure, Reed didn’t say how many days he spent on this journey, but I estimate it took at least five. He did not state the date he left Bulls Gap, nor did he tell how long he stayed in Lexington. He gave few details about his return trip. He did write, however, that he re-joined his regiment in Virginia in time for the Battle of the Wilderness and the start of the Overland Campaign. On the way he helped two enlisted men from his regiment who were in trouble for overstaying their furlough. Like the sergeant who allowed him to keep his seat on the first leg of his rail journey, Reed exercised some irregular discretion and cut through red tape. The men got back to their unit instead of facing punishment for their misdeeds. They too fought at the Wilderness. Reed later received an angry letter from an officer, a provost marshal, threatening to prefer charges against him for what he had done for the two miscreants. Reed wrote a reply to the officious communication, advising the provost marshal that instead of remaining under arrest the two men returned to their regiment and fought at the Wilderness. One was killed, Reed wrote, and the other severely wounded. That ended the matter. Reed suffered no consequences for his violation of policy, but the two privates in question certainly did. John C. Reed returned to Georgia after the surrender and lived until Jan. 11, 1910. At the time of his death, he resided with his son in Alabama. His memoirs found their way to the Alabama

Department of Archives and History where, as the Introduction to the memoirs states, they “lay unnoticed until the latter part of the 20th century.” Reed is buried in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery. *Cobb was the principal author of the Constitution of the Confederate States and later a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. He was killed at Fredericksburg.

Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He is a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table and the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation, published by Mercer University Press in 2014. He has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016 with over 90 published columns. He can be reached at gould.hagler@gmail. com.