09 16 1862 [Tuesday]

Capt. J. N. Aiken, Co. K, in a letter to the Athens Post, wrote:

Sallersville, Magoffin Co., Ky.

September 16, 1862

Mr. IIvins: Permit me, through your paper, to pay a last tribute to

the worth of a departed friend. The 43d Regiment Tennessee

Volunteers, which is for the present attached to Gen. Humphrey

Marshall’s Brigade, having for nine days marched over the

heights and down the depths of the mountains and ravines of

Eastern Kentucky, weary and foot-sore, pitched their encampment,

on the evening of the 13th inst., along a narrow defile between two

tall mountains spurs on Middle Creek, ten miles above Prestonsburg,

and stationed pickets above and below the encampment to guard

its only two approaches.

Camp was aroused by the pickets firing off their guns and running

into camps and announcing that a cavalry attack was being made

upon us. This being the first thing of the kind that had ever taken

place in the regiment, of course great excitement and confusion

prevailed. The men had carried their guns for several days ex-

posed to the rain and dew, without an opportunity of rubbing them

up. Some of the guns had been loaded for guard purposes, and

these they began to discharge for the purpose of re-loading them,

and others bursted caps to dry out the tubes of their guns. Some

one unfortunately held his gun carelessly and shot Lieutenant

Ben McCarty, of Captain McKamy’s Co. through the head, an

ounce ball and two buck-shot piercing his temple and killing him

instantly. It was soon learned that the alarm was false, the pickets

having mistaken some moving objects for an enemy; the sad

accident in Company I threw a deep gloom over the whole regiment,

for Ben McCarty was with the regiment, as he was wherever he was

known, a favorite. We placed his body in a wagon and sent it to

Prestonburg for internment, and the regiment moved on in silence.

No laughter or ballooing disturbed the quiet of that Sabbath morning.

The silence and thoughtfulness of eight hundred men paid a last sad

tribute of respect to the worth of their departed friend. I have seen

many of the evils of this unholy war, and much of the suffering that

it has brought upon our devoted people. I have seen our brave

soldiers struck down by disease in camp. I have seen them struck

down in action, and I have seen them waste away in hospitals; but

I have never witnessed a scene so sad as the death and burial of an

old friend among strangers, in the mountains of Kentucky. Many of

our brave soldiers have fallen by the hand of disease, and many

have been killed by the accidents incident to the careless handling

of firearms, but to them no load peans articles are devoted to the

praise of their gallantry; and yet none the less have fallen in the

service of their country. The Republic may not find room in its heart
for praise and gratitude to the man struck down by camp disease, or

by an accident while doing his duty as a soldier, but none the less
sad are the hearts of his comrades and friends than if he had fallen
amid the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry, in battle. And
although he whose death I now chronicle never met the enemy in
deadly conflict and signalized his devotion to his country by deed of
arms, we knew him as the true soldier, the high-toned gentleman,
and kind hearted friend; and our loss of his friends in East

Tennessee is none the less than if he had fallen in battle.

J. N. A. (Athens Post, 10/10/62)