The day before the election, Captain Keeling came to my tent, where I was sitting in conversation with Orderly Sergeant John W. McNeely, my mess-mate, and astonished me by asking me why I did not run for second lieutenant. I replied that I was a Georgian, in an Alabama regiment, and had not entertained the thought of such an aspiration. He replied: ‘You can be easily elected, for I have been talking among the men about it.’ He then informed me that the understanding was that Captain R. F. Ligon, who had been elected to the Alabama Senate, would decline a re-election to the captaincy, and that he himself would be elected captain without opposition; that Sergeant McNeely would be elected first lieutenant, and that it was believed that neither Lieutenant Zuber nor Lieutenant Jones would be candidates for re-election, and that the company were undecided as to who should be elected second and third lieutenants.
Encouraged by this conversation, and advice, I acted upon Lieutenant Keeling's suggestion and visited each one of the occupants of the nine tents used by members of Company F.
The first tent, or number one, fortunately, had its members sitting down ready for dinner, and I recall that there were present Sergeant M. A. Flournoy, of Opelika, Corporal E. P. Hendree, of Tuskegee, later promoted to first lieutenant in the Sixty-first Alabama regiment, and killed at the Wilderness on the 5th of May. Private James W. Fannin, of Tuskegee, afterwards captain in the Sixty-first Alabama. Private A. Fuller Henderson, son of the distinguished Baptist minister, Rev. Samuel Henderson, D. D., of Tuskegee, and who afterwards became editor and proprietor of the Tuskegee News, and who killed himself, whether intentionally or accidentally, is unknown, in 1867. Private Robert F. Hall, of Auburn, afterwards first sergeant, and who was wounded in the foot at Chancellorsville and retired from service, becoming foreman of the Montgomery Advertiser, being an accomplished printer. Private Robert W. Drake, now of Laneville, Ala., and perhaps two or three others.
In response to my statement that I would be a candidate for second lieutenant at the election the following day, the boys instantly spoke up and told me that they would vote for me.
I then visited the second tent in which were equally as good friends, and some of them former college mates at Auburn, as in the first tent, among them being Private Thomas H. Clower, of
