Samuel Rush Watkins

'Co. Aytch' - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment Samuel Rush Watkins

Book Excerpt: ...but they laughed at them. We only fought for our State rights, they for Union and power. The South fell battling under the banner of State rights, but yet grand and glorious even in death. Now, reader, please pardon the digression. It is every word that we will say in behalf of the rights of secession in the following pages. The question has been long ago settled and is buried forever, never in this age or generation to be resurrected. The vote of the regiment was taken, and we all voted to go to Virginia. The Southern Confederacy had established its capital at Richmond. A man by the name of Jackson, who kept a hotel in Maryland, had raised the Stars and Bars, and a Federal officer by the name of Ellsworth tore it down, and Jackson had riddled his body with buckshot from a double- barreled shotgun. First blood for the South. Everywhere the enemy were advancing; the red clouds of war were booming up everywhere, but at this particular epoch, I refer you to the history of that period..