After a lapse of more than forty years, I here record brief sketches of my experiences as a Confederate soldier, beginning about the 1st of May, 1861, and ending the 21st day of May, 1865, and some things since. Many of the occurrences herein related remain indelibly fixed on my memory through all these years and can never be effaced.
The scenes and events of the battles are burned into the faculty of recollection so deep that they remain more firmly fixed than any other events in my experience. Amidst the rush and roar and crash of battle, every fibre of the brain is intensified and highly wrought, and receives the scenes and events of the hour with the accuracy and permanency of the camera.
As to many of the dates, marches and camps, my memory has been refreshed by memoranda and data collected during the years, since the close of that memorable struggle, and by the perusal of wartime letters, and some assistance from old comrades.
I have headed these sketches "Personal Reminiscences," which I have designed to be a simple narrative of what I saw, heard and felt, without any desire to recount deeds of my own; but rather, at the solicitation of my children and others, that they may know something of my comrades and that I may leave to those who come after me some record of the part, inconspicuous as it was, which I took in that fierce and bloody conflict, my reasons, therefor, and my convictions and actions since. These things alone have prompted me to undertake this task.
I find already that the personal pronoun will appear in the narrative much oftener than I would wish. This seems unavoidable, according to the plan and scope designed.
I read sometime ago Gen. Fitzhugh Lee's life of Gen. Robt. E. Lee. When the book was finished, I remarked that I had a higher opinion of Fitz Lee than ever before, for the reason that his modesty caused him to leave himself out of the book, only a few times mentioning Fitz Lee's Brigade or Division incidentally, showing him to be a great man. I would like to do likewise, but this will be impossible.
In the year 1860, at Pigeon Run—now Gladys, Campbell County, Va.,—near where I was born and reared, the young men of the neighborhood, catching the military spirit that swept over the State and South immediately after the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry the year before, organized a volunteer infantry company, "The Clifton Grays," named after a small stream near by, the name being suggested by my father, the late Richard Morgan.