COMRADE TURK'S ACCOUNT OF THE RESULT OF THE STAMPEDE. Dear Dick: Yours just received requesting a sketch of the battle of Sunshine Church. I did not participate in the battle. I was detailed from the Army of Northern Virginia and sent to Georgia, my home State, to buy horses for the Confederate government for cavalry and artillery purposes. I was riding along looking for horses for sale eight or ten miles west of Milledgeville, when I distinctly and very unexpectedly, heard field artillery. I banished all thought of my mission and put out as fast as my horse would carry me in the direction to ascertain the meaning of the cannonading. The only weapon I had with me was my fine cavalry pistol. My idea was to serve as courier. After riding fifteen or twenty miles, my horse almost exhausted, I rode right into Iverson's command. The battle had ceased, and I was told that Stoneman had surrendered near what is now known as Round Oak. Just at that time General Iverson was informed that one of Stoneman's regiments had stampeded. Iverson did not have men enough to make pursuit. He was busy rounding up the rest of Stoneman's command. Seeing that the fighting was over and no courier was needed, I, with several citizens, put out after the fleeing regiment, though not with any hope of catching them on their wild stampede. They made no effort to follow any road or path, but going east they ran over bushes, rail fences, and gullies. After going about two miles, we came to a gulley in a pine thicket, about eight feet deep and twelve or fifteen wide, in which there were many horses and men, nearly all of which seemed to be dead. Those in front had filled the gulley, and the others passed over the gulley on the men and horses that filled it. One or two men and horses were killed in crossing a small branch on a pole bridge something like two miles beyond the big gulley mentioned. The first three or four miles of the stampede the men seemed to have bunched pretty well, making a roadway about thirty feet wide. It was almost as clear of bushes, weeds, and everything of that kind as a regular public road. Even the ground rails of fences were torn from their places, and one could scarcely tell that there had ever been a fence there except by the fences on either side of the newly made road. I was about to forget to state that the clothes of the men and the hide of the horses that filled the gulley already mentioned were badly torn by the shoes of the horses as they passed over them, the flesh of both being considerably mangled. I suppose there were twelve or fifteen horses piled in the gulley and half as many men. After about four miles of this wild and reckless riding, the trail became wider and wider and more dim. Here the stampeders crossed a large public road, where I left the trail and took the public road back to where I started from that morning. I spent the afternoon and until nine or ten o'clock at night sending word to young ladies in the neighborhood and to two or three young boys to meet me at a designated point the next morning and we would take a horseback ride over the battlefield and trail of the stampeded Federals. The battlefield was a novel sight to the girls. The floor of Sunshine Church was almost covered with wounded soldiers. Horses, guns, pistols, and the like were to be seen all around, with now and then a dead soldier. When we reached the gulley that had been filled with men and horses, the awful sight caused nearly all of the girls to shed tears, and one or two almost collapsed. We followed the trail to where I left it the day before and farther on for about five miles. The stampeders took the second public road to Eatonton, where about two hundred of them stopped in the woods that night. They made their way back to Sherman's army. When General Sherman's army passed through this section. several persons living here recognized several men who were with General Stoneman in the battle of Sunshine Church. These Yanks inquired particularly about Joe Funderbeck. Joe was at home on furlough, and his mother and sisters persuaded him to put on one of his mother's dresses as a disguise. Stoneman's men detected his disguise and captured him as a spy, and took him on the wild stampede to Eatonton to hang him, but Joe slipped away in the night. Joe says all his dress was torn off of him except the. collar, and his own clothes were badly torn on the wild ride.