Left Palestine about
5 o'clock a. m., in a two-horse wagon; same company, with the addition of Mr.
Mathus of the First Texas. The ride to Rusk would have been insupportably dull
but for good company; nothing but red clay hills and deep gullies, ornamented
with pine and oak. It, however, brought up some pleasing reminiscences of old
South Carolina and my boyhood days—the season when ambitious hopes, burned in
my breast and I determined I would be a man—little dreaming then that I would
have the satisfaction of striking a blow in the holiest cause that ever fired
the breast of man, and illustrating by action the feelings which glowed and
burned in my little heart, on reading the stories of Wallace and of Tell.
We reached Rusk
about 4 o'clock in the afternoon without an incident of interest, and found W.
G. Thomas to be the quartermaster there.
He appears to be an
accommodating and clever officer and refunded our transportation which we had
paid out at Palestine.
To-day is the fifth
anniversary of my wedding day, and I have thought often of my dear wife and
little ones and wished I could be with them, but I am resolved not to remain
quietly at home another moment while a foe is on our soil.
SOURCE: John Camden
West, A Texan in Search of a Fight: Being
the Diary and Letters of a Private Soldier in Hood’s Texas Brigade, p. 15-6
