“When a child we shed tears when reading of Washington at Valley Forge; of his men leaving bloody tracks in the snow. Little then did we dream that we would witness similar scenes. The sufferings and hardships endured by Hood’s army on its retreat were greater than any endured by our revolutionary forefathers. We cannot even now think of them without emotion. Hundreds made the march with clothing hardly sufficient to hide nakedness, barefooted, or with their feet wrapped in an old rag or piece of blanket. The winter was intensely cold, the ground frozen, hard and stiff. Almost every step tore and bruised their feet, whilst many did in reality leave a bloody track every time they put their feet down from Columbia to the Tennessee River. We saw numbers of privates and some officers trudging along with feet as bruised and bloody almost, as of beef steak and swollen twice their natural size. That they could even stand was a mystery to us. Others had wounds bleeding and sore, with nothing to eat.” – Sumner A. Cunningham, formerly of the 41st Tennessee Infantry, C.S.A., page 112, Reminiscences of the 41st Tennessee, 1872
