Submitted by descendant Virginia Greene

Written when he was eighty-five or older. Virginia says that when he wrote this, he would get so excited reliving the war that his daughter would make him stop for a few days. The Cobbs lived at Cobb Hollow between Lynchburg and Tullahoma.

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Born 14th of March 1844 in Lynchburg, Tenn. Lived at the same place until the war started.

The war started because two Yankees in New York started to Africa to get negroes to sell as slaves. They landed in Africa on the 13th of May 1617 and opened a show on the boat and when the boat was full of negroes they cut loose and left the shore and carried the entire load of negroes back to New York. The negroes couldn’t stay in the north on account of the cold so they decided to run them into the south and sell them to the cotton planters. The negroes stayed in the south two hundred and nine years and at the beginning of the war they had multiplied til at the beginning of the war there were millions of them and after Abe Lincoln issued a proclamation to free all these captive negroes and not pay a cent for them, then there were thirteen states withdrew from the United States and raised a war. They did that in order to try to save their negroes.
In 1861, the 21st day of April I enlisted. Tennessee had not at that time withdrawn from the union and I had to go to Virginia to fight. I enlisted in Tennessee in a volunteer regiment under Colonel P. TURNEY, Company E. This regiment was called the First Tennessee but it was in reality the first Confederate. We went to Richmond and camped there a while and practiced shooting and drilling, then the fight started. The Yankees sent some men across the Potomac River into Virginia. They formed a line of battle near Winchester Virginia and we were ordered there to attack them and we whipped them out and drove them back across the river, killing artillery horses, men and destroying equipment as they crossed.

Then we were ordered to Camp Fisher on the Potomac in east Virginia to guard the river against the Union gunboats coming up to Richmond. We had a battle at Richmond and we were ordered back to Richmond. The Yankees attacked us at Gaines Mill and we ran them back six miles to Malvin Hill and they formed three lines of battle there and they were in the woods and we had to attack them again and Stonewall Jackson sent a dispatch to General Archer, Brigadier general, to attack them at one o’clock sharp and that he would be in the rear. We were in the open field attacking them against one hundred and sixty thousand. Our force was only thirty thousand. Jackson attacked them in the rear while we were in the front. In seventy-five yards of them we had orders to start firing and keep at the double quick. The Yankees didn’t run until we were right on top of their brestworks and ready to use bayonets. I was just ready to stick my bayonet in a Lieutenant when he turned to run and I shot him. As they ran we killed them by the thousands, thirty thousand in that one day, killed and wounded. We fought them for five days more, scirmishing, until they got back to their gun boats, then we were ordered back to Fredricksburg.

After Fredricksburg we were ordered to Yorktown and from there to the battle of seven pines at Seven Pines, Virginia. From Seven Pines to Cedar Run, and then to Petersburg, from Petersburg back to Fredricksburg.
I was discharged at this time because I had enlisted too young, after serving 16 months. The enlistment to have been only 12. From Fredricksburg I went back home, Lynchburg. At Chattanooga there was a merchant who had been conscripted who offered me two thousand dollars in gold to take his place, but I told him that if I went any more I would go for Cobb and not some other fellow.

I went home and stayed three months. They run the conscription in Lynchburg, but I wouldn’t go up to Tullahoma to enlist, as I did not want to be conscripted. Enlisted with Buckner’s Guards, in Capt. Sanders company C. In this company I was detailed a courier to the Generals in Braggs army. Generals Buckner, Hardee, Cheatham, Claiborn, Polk, Woods, Joseph E. Johnson, Sidney Johnson, and Bushrod Johnson. First and last I carried all them Generals orders from Bragg.

General Bragg ordered General Claiborne to take Franklin, Tenn. He says, “General, have you got anything else to tell me?” He charged right down the big road til he got to the fortifications. I was with the general, and he was killed on the brestworks at Franklin, and I was there with him when he was killed. There was seven generals killed at this battle; five Confederates and two Yankees. It was a bloody battle. They put up iron posts there and engraved all these generals names on them. Then we had to retreat away from Franklin back to Hoover’s Grove scirmishing all the way, then we had to retreat from there back to Chattanooga and very nearly lost our entire command. When we crossed the Tennessee River at Chattanooga they were near enough to us to shell the town. Then we went from there to Tanner’s Station and camped there until the Chicamaga battle.

I left there and went down to Chattanooga to General McKister’s office and he detailed me as a spy to go inside the Yankee lines anywhere I pleased.
The Yankees had Tennessee then and I went down to Gunter’s Landing, Ala. and gave a fellow by the name of Payne fifty dollars to ferry me and Bill Davis, my partner across the river. It was nite when we crossed so we went into a corn field and fed our horses and laid down to spend the nite. There was a regiment of Union cavalry went by on the other side of the river just after we crossed. We were posted as to where to go the next morning to get feed for our horses and selves. The man’s name was Woodall and he lived about three miles from the river at Paint Rock, Ala. He carried us twenty miles to another man on Keel’s Mountain, and then he carried us from there to Trenton, Ga. We knew where we were there and we turned all our guides loose and rambled anywhere we pleased. After that we went back across the river to Chattanooga and reported all we had see and learned.

On the way to Chattanooga I stopped at home and my nephew, Asbury Cobb, who was sick at the time told me that when I came back to bring an extra horse that he wanted to rejoin his command. When I went back to get Asbury to carry him back, the Yankees were hiding nearby and saw me. They captured both of us in the house. Captain Rickman was in command of the force that captured us. He was trying to catch my brother. He thought I was him when I went in. He tried to make me tell where he was. I told him I wouldn’t do it. He says, “Well if you don’t we are going to hang you.” I told him, “You can just hang, I’ll never tell you.” They carried me down to a mill shed and tied a rope over a joist and tied the other end around my neck. They drew me nearly up to the joist and let me hang there and let me down. Captain Rickman says, “I’ll give you another chance and if you’ll tell we won’t hang you.” I still wouldn’t tell so they drew me up again and then let me down. I still wouldn’t tell. They started up with me for the third time. He says, “Damn you, you’re gone this time.” I said, “Let ‘er go, you’ll hang a good one when you do it.” I didn’t fear it a bit more than nothing. They got me about half way to the joist, when there was a boy in his company who I had gone to school with, slept with, and eaten with, whose name was Shade Cleak said, “General that’s a regular soldier you are about hanging.” They let me down and he asked the boy, “Are you sure of that?’ He said, “He went out of here in ’61 and I haven’t seen him since. I know he is a regular soldier.” I was captured on Wednesday and on Sunday before two Yankees soldiers went out to my father’s and ordered dinner for themselves and horse food and cavorted around. I had heard that they were there and I said to my partner, “Bill let’s way lay the road and capture them.” He said alright. So we did. They were mounted and when they came charging down the road we stepped out and ordered them to halt, dismount and give up their arms. And they did it without any argument. Then we put them on one horse and carried them down in the woods, over to where my brother was hiding. He told us to take them off somewhere and kill them. We took them out and killed them. We left them in a sink hole, they were never heard from again. The Yankees had every man in that neighborhood summoned to Tullahoma to see if they had seen them after they left Pa’s and he said that he saw them heading toward camp after they left the house.

Captain Rickman took me and Asbury to Tullahoma and put us in a box car to send us to Nashville. There were two Yankees standing by the car and we asked our guards where they were going with us. They answered that they were taking us to Nashville to the penitentiary, but that we would never get there. I said to the guard, “The hell we won’t.” I whispered to Asbury to watch me and when I grabbed one of them for him to grab the other one and we would pitch them out. We were going to do this on the road out from town, but they didn’t give us a chance to do it. There was a passenger car with thirty prisoners from Georgia. They took us out of the box car and put us in that with the rest of them. There was an officer came up to the car and called for them to send one of us out, and I told Asbury to go, but when he went out the officer said that he was not the one that he wanted and for me to come out. I went out of the car and stepped down on the car step and he reached over and pulled up my trouser leg to look at my boots, thinking that I might have on the boots of one of the Yankees that had disappeared. I wasn’t fool enough to kill a man and then put on his boots. We didn’t even rob the men or take a thing that they had. It was too easy to get caught with anything like that. When he saw that I didn’t have on the boots I said to him, “Is that all you want?” He said yes and I went back in the car.

They carried us to Nashville from there and kept us in the penitentiary there for three weeks. From there we went to Louisville, Ky., and stayed eight days there, and from there to Camp Chase, Ohio and stayed there three months. Then from Camp Chase to Rock Island, Ill. We stayed in prison there til the end of the war. They detailed us there to work and clear up the land to build a town. I stayed there twenty-one months and ten days. They exchanged all the Tennesseans but me at the end of this time. One day General Layden came riding by and I hailed him and asked him why it was that they didn’t exchange me the day before with the rest of the Tennesseans and he said, “Hell, you’ll never be exchanged, we’ve got charges against you.” They thought that I had killed them Yankees, but they didn’t know.

They exchanged the Alabama men next. That wound up the exchanging and everybody else that got out had to take the oath of allegiance to the Union. There was thirteen of us left that had refused to take it. They called the roll twice a day to see if we were all there. One day I said to the rest of the boys that if they gave us a chance the next morning to take the oath for us all to take it. The next morning the officer called the roll and said that if there were any of us ready to take the oath to step to the front. We all stepped to the front at the same time. They took us down to headquarters and took our heights, weights and all identification marks. Then they swore us all and gave us the oath on a piece of paper. I told them, “I’ll take the damn thing but it never would change me, that it was just from my teeth out.” Then they gave us transportation and sent us all home, down the river to Tullahoma. Pa died during the war and they preached his funeral the day I got home. [This record was typed and ends in handwriting, which is very faint]: “this is not record in the Confederate army your loving Dad to Kate Shipp. Marion Rice Cobb.”

This continues with a page entitled “Life At Rock Island Ill Prison.”

When I was captured and sent to the prison I didn’t have a cent. The first day there they issued each man ten days rations. We each got a pint of sugar. I sold this for a dime and did without sugar. I bought two gutta-percha buttons with the dime and made two plain black rings with my knife and a little file. I sold them for a nickel apiece. Then there was a boy came in each morning to gather up the waste that we had put in fifty-four tubs. He hauled it out to his hogs. I helped him empty the tubs each morning for a nickel. In the meantime I had managed to buy a little silver by paying fifteen cents for a dime. I hammered it out and made a ring with three little sets in it. I sold that for twenty-five cents. Then I put three buttons together and made a big ring, and sold it for seventy-five cents. By this time I had got a few little tools to work with. Bill Hasty had bought a set of jewelry tools of thirty-three pieces, but he couldn’t learn the work so he offered to sell it to me. I said, “Bill, I ain’t got no money, just seventy-five cents.” He said he knew I was going to learn the trade, and that he would sell it to me and let me pay him what I had and give him the rest when I got it. He had paid Three dollars for the set and sold it to me for two and a half.

In less than two weeks I had the tools paid for and a lot of materials on hand. I worked every day while I was in prison and I made from a dollar to five dollars every day. I would work till about an hour by sun and then I would go out and walk about and polish the work that I had done.

1863 Confederate money was worth three dollars a hundred and 64 was worth four dollars. I kept buying it until I had four thousand dollars worth. I had plenty of jewelry and lots of money.
The Yankees had said that they would [pay] a man a hundred dollars to join their

had said that they would [pay] a man a hundred dollars to join their frontier guards. They kept the frontiers in a Bull pen against the prison walls and they would throw a note over the wall to me telling me what kind of jewelry they wanted, and I would make the jewelry and throw it over to them. One man wanted five dollars worth of jewelry and I had told him when to throw the money over. When he threw it the rock it was tied to was a little too heavy and the sentry on the wall heard it hit the ground and just as he whirled to see what it was I grabbed it and ran around the end of the house. He shot at me just as I went around the corner of the house.
When I left prison I had four thousand dollars in Confederate money and one hundred and twenty-five dollars in green back, and three hundred dollars worth of jewelry. I sold jewelry all the way home down the river.

I also made a fiddle while in Rock Island. I was offered fifty dollars for it but I wouldn’t take it. After we had taken the oath we went out to take dinner with an old copperhead (Northern Democrat, also called Butternut). After dinner we were dancing and playing and having a big time, and while we were having a big time the boat whistled for us down river and I rushed out so hurriedly that I left my fiddle behind.