Thursday, May 8, 2025

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: August 24, 1861

Last night a sentinel on one of the picket posts halted a stump and demanded the countersign. No response being made, he fired. The entire Fifteenth Indiana sprang to arms; the cannoniers gathered about their guns, and a thousand eyes peered into the darkness to get a glimpse of the approaching enemy. But the stump, evidently intimidated by the first shot, did not advance, and so the Hoosiers returned again to their couches, to dream, doubtless, of the subject of a song very common now in camp,to wit:

"Old Governor Wise,
With his goggle eyes."

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 64

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