In honor of the 161st anniversary of Hood’s push into Lawrence County, please enjoy this story told by a man who was present with the army during the action, in his own words.

John Johnston, from West Tennessee, was a private in the Fourteenth Tennessee Cavalry. Around the turn of the 20th century, assisted by his diary, he wrote his memories of the Nashville Campaign in Lawrence County.

He was part of the cavalry screen serving Stephen D. Lee’s Corps in the central column of the army, which came through Lawrence County by way of West Point and what is now Hood Road and Greenwood Road, which he said “was hilly and the roads were wet and rough.”

Johnston recounted a funny incident that happened around the evening of November 22.

“We reached, at night, a little place called West Point, where we went into camp. I remember very little about it, except that I spent the night on picket. It turned colder and the next day was bright and clear.

Finding a blacksmith shop there, Wharton and I stopped to have our horses shod, while the command went ahead. As this consumed several hours, we were left far behind and traveled rapidly all the remainder of the day to catch up. About night, we caught up with the rear of our men going into camp along the sides of a valley on each side of a small stream. Having been told that our regiment was ahead, we rode rapidly on until we had passed entirely beyond all the encampments of all soldiers on the road.

It was now dark and, thinking our regiment must have gone still ahead of us, we rode on and on through the dark, until we must have gone three or four miles. We then concluded that we had better go back as it was evident we had gone wrong and we were in a dangerous country.

Turning about, we rode back in a rapid walk for several miles, when upon plunging into a small stream across our road, we were greeted with a loud and excited call to halt from a sentinel sitting his horse some fifty or a hundred feet away; but whom we could not see through the dark. Answering his challenge and assuring him that we were friends, he allowed us to approach. When we got up with him, we found him ramming home a charge and handling his gun in an excited manner, and he said to us, ‘If I had had my gun loaded, I would certainly have shot you.’

We were duly thankful that his gun was not loaded, but thought it somewhat ludicrous that he should be standing sentinel away out in the dark and in the enemy’s country with an unloaded gun. We frequently laughed over the incident afterwards.

The pickets had been put out after we had gone out beyond the camps. We were sent back under guard to the colonel commanding the guard and were immediately released and bivouacked alone on the side of a hill where we passed a quiet night.”