L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

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[148] back for his clothes, and found that the contending parties had disappeared, and that the railroad tunnels had been filled with wood and fired. Hastily gathering his effects together, he made his way to Tyree Springs, and thence to Nashville.

For a short time he acted as a detective of the army police at Nashville, assuming the character of a rebel soldier, and living in the families of prominent secessionists. In this work he was very successful; but it had too little of danger and adventure, and he returned again to scouting, making several trips southward, sometimes without trouble, but once or twice being arrested and escaping as best he could. In these expeditions he visited McMinnville, Murfreesboro, Altamont, on the Cumberland mountains, Bridgeport, Chattanooga, and other places of smaller note. He travelled usually in the guise of a smuggler, actually obtaining orders for goods from prominent rebels, and sometimes the money in advance, filling them in Nashville, and delivering the articles upon his next trip. Just before the battle of Stone river, he received a large order to be filled for the rebel hospitals; went to Nashville, procured the medicine, and returned to McMinnville, where he delivered some of it. Thence he travelled to Bradyville, and thence to Murfreesboro, arriving there just as the battle began. Presenting some of the surgeons with a supply of morphine, he assisted them in attending the wounded for a day or two, and then went to a hospital tent in the woods near the railroad, where he also remained one day and part of another. The fight was now getting hot, and, fearful that somebody would recognize him, he left Murfreesboro on Friday, and went to McMinnville.