War Experiences of Samuel Wheeler, Private in the First West Virginia Cavalry Regiment, Part II

See the previous introduction for a more detailed analysis of the memoir as well as information on the Wheeler family and editorial policies followed in transcribing, editing, and annotating the content.

In 1911, forty-six years after the close of the Civil War, Samuel Wheeler (1840–1919), a veteran of that great conflict, “yielding to the pleas of his children,” sat down to record his war memories. Raised in Mason County, western Virginia, along with his seven siblings, he was a twenty-one-year-old farmhand at Cottageville, Jackson County when he answered his country’s call to service. He began his story with his enlistment in Company E of the First Loyal Virginia Cavalry Regiment (later, with WestVirginia statehood, the First West Virginia Cavalry) then being formed at Parkersburg in September 1861. His two eldest brothers, Newberry and James, joined him in Company E; another brother, Wilhelm, served brief stints in Ohio infantry units. Two other brothers, Thomas and Joseph, however, cast their allegiance with the South and enlisted in the Twenty-second Virginia Infantry.

The memoir that Wheeler produced, long forgotten, has recently come to light among papers in a descendant’s estate; never published, it is a six by nine inch, forty-three page pamphlet, typeset, presumably in a very small edition for Wheeler’s family members. The first half of the edited document appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of West Virginia History. The second half now follows: it picks up with Wheeler’s incarceration as a prisoner of war in Richmond in 1863 after the battle of Gettysburg, continues with the final two years of the war and concludes with his regiment’s discharge in July 1865.

War Experiences of Samuel Wheeler, Part II

From Stanton [Staunton] we marched to Waynesboro. There we were put on flat cars bound for Richmond, the cars filled so full we only had standing room, and the railroad company was scarce of oil and we had not run very long when the smoke began to ascend and a blaze appeared, and then we raised a fuss with the guard and made it so warm for them that they had to stop the train and put the fire out.

That was just a short time before we entered the Blue Ridge tunnel. . . . The next stopping place was Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Southern Confederacy. We marched through town, down to the James river canal and lined up in front of Libby &Sons’ warehouse and the Irish ladies had willow baskets that would hold about a bushel, filled with bread and they were selling it to us at twenty-five cents a loaf, and we had the money and were laying in a supply when an officer came riding down the line and ordered the ladies to stop selling that bread and get out of there. That order made their Irish blood raise and they just emptied their baskets in among the Yankee boys, and you bet the Yankee boys got to it.

Well, we had to march into the building and upstairs. I was with the lot who had to go up into the garret next to the rafters and about half of the floor space was covered with tobacco three feet thick. After resting a while they served the banquet dinner and the menu consisted of a tin cup half full of bean soup and maggots from old shoulder bacon they had boiled with the beans, as the bones were of that part of the hog and the boys ate what little meat there was on them and threw the bones out the window and some of them struck the guard who was at the door of our prison and soiled his clothes. He wore nice clothes for a common soldier and it made his angry passions rise.

I had my head stuck out of a window trying to get some fresh air and the guard read the riot act to us. It was in this style, “If there were any more bones...