"My Civil War" Topic

"As a teenager growing up in the piney woods of Winn Parish, La., I frequently looked out our front window to see an old man in well-worn overalls gingerly climb over the fence and walk up the hill toward the house.
Uncle Alce, short for Alson, lived next door, and he would come over to drink coffee and catch up on local news when my father was home from his pipeline construction job. Uncle Alce's father, Elisha, was my great-great-grandfather and is one of six generations of Joneses buried in the local cemetery. Elisha and his extended family were poor dirt farmers in 1861, and they chose to sit out the Civil War after Winn Parish voted against secession. Not until the Yankees captured New Orleans and a conscription law was passed in 1862 did Elisha join several hundred other parish men in enlisting in the 28th Louisiana Volunteers. Military records show that he deserted the following summer while the regiment was serving in southern Louisiana. When asked about it, Uncle Alce quickly answered, "Pa wasn't a deserter. He came home to get in the corn crop and then went back."

Nevertheless, Elisha's military career ended less than a year later. On April 8, 1864, he and the other Winn Parish boys in Gen. Alfred Mouton's division made a dramatic bayonet charge at the Battle of Mansfield, La. "Pa and one of his neighbors were running side by side when a bullet went through Pa's right hand breaking all the bones but his little finger," Uncle Alce recalled. "The bullet then hit his neighbor in the leg. They were both crippled by one shot and cussed that Yankee for the rest of their lives." When family members learned of Elisha's wounding, they drove a wagon 70 miles to Mansfield to bring him home. His hand drew up into a useless claw, and he was later awarded an $8 USD a month state pension…"
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