"Ramblins from Forrests 'Riter"
By Ed Butler, Tennessee Division Heritage Defense Chairman

A few weeks ago I called a prospective member to invite him to a camp meeting. It was the second time I had called to extend an invitation. The first time I called he had a previous engagement. His response to the second invitation left me speechless.

I am almost immune to the standard excuses for not honoring our Confederate ancestors and simply go to the next prospect. I understand that those who think our ancestors fought to preserve slavery have never read the truth and I can ignore those that imply insults. Those that think "The War" was fought to preserve slavery are simply exposing their ignorance while those that make subtle derogatory remarks expose their bad manners. Both groups are to be pitied. I have thought of this man's excuse a hundred times since that night and cannot understand how he could make such a statement.
Many times as a boy, I rode my saddle mare through fields and forest looking for Yankees. Often I charged a clump of bushes or weeds and with a quick thrust of my tobacco stick sword, dispatched the Yankees that had sought refuge in their protective cover. T'was a glorious game and somehow I never lost.

Dad often talked about the Confederate Veterans in our family. His stories were about the love and respect they had for General Forrest and their belief in the cause for which they fought. He never told me about the men that fought from dawn to dusk in the Georgia heat and humidity during the summer of 1864. He did not tell me they fired their muskets so much the barrel got so hot the minie balls would melt as they were rammed home. I did not know these men had to hold their muskets with the muzzle pointed down to drain the molten lead from the barrel. They fought all day without food or shade. They had little water to wash the taste of the black powder from their mouth. I never knew of the suffering that even the survivors experienced on the battlefield. War was glorious for a boy on a horse.

Dad never told me about the young Confederate soldier that lay on a cot in a Georgia hospital with a sheet covering his body. Anyone that pulled back the sheet quickly placed it back over his body. The sight of a man that had taken a cannon ball in the abdomen was too much for even a hardened hospital attendant. This man's intestines had not been blown away, they lay on the cot beside his body. What a glorious way to die!