CHAPTER LXI.

WILSON’S RAID.

We had lovely weather, sailing up the Alabama River. The shores were low, and covered with cane-brakes, or with growths of water-oak, gum, sycamore, and cotton-wood trees, with here and there dark and shaggy swamps. Then plantations began to appear, each with its gin-house and cotton-press, planter’s house, corn-crib, and negro-quarters, on the river’s bank.

The sycamores, with their white trunks covered all over with small black spots, and heavily draped with long moss, presented a peculiar appearance. Green tufts of the mistletoe grew upon the leafless tree-tops. Clouds of blackbirds sometimes covered the shore, casting a shadow as they flew. The second day, the low shores disappeared, replaced by pleasantly wooded bluffs and elevated plantations.

Nearly all the planters I met had been down to Mobile to purchase their supplies for the season. Freight went ashore at every landing. Recent rains had made the steep clayey banks as slippery as if they had been greased; and it was quite exciting to see the deck-hands carry up the freight,—many a poor fellow getting a perilous fall. The wood for the steamboat was sometimes shot from the summit of the bluff down a long wooden spout which dropped it at the landing.

Seeing some heavy bars of iron going ashore at one place, I asked an old gentleman to what use they were put on the plantation.

“They are to make ploughs of, sir.”

“Does every plantation make its own ploughs?”

“Do we make our own ploughs?” he repeated, regarding me with astonishment and indignation. “Why, sir, it wouldn’t be a civilized country, if we didn’t. How do you think, sir, we should get our ploughs?”

“Buy them, or have them made for you.”

“Buy our ploughs! It would impoverish us, sir, if we had to buy our ploughs.”

“On the contrary, I should think a plough-factory could furnish them for less than they now cost you,—that, like boots and shoes, it would be cheaper to buy them than to make them.”

“No, sir! I’ve a black man on my plantation who can make as good a plough, at as little cost, as can be made anywhere in the world.”

After that I had nothing to say, having already sufficiently exposed my ignorance.

On the third day (it was the slowest trip, our captain said, which he had made in twenty years) we reached Selma, three hundred miles above Mobile,—a pleasantly situated town, looking down from the level summit of a bluff that rises almost precipitously from the river. Before the war it had three thousand inhabitants, and exported annually near a hundred thousand bales of cotton. It is connected by railroads with the North and West, and by railroad and river with Montgomery and the East. It was a point of very great importance to the Confederacy.

I found it a scene of “Yankee vandalism” and ruin. The Confederate arsenal, founderies, and rolling-mills,—the most important works of the kind in the South, covering many acres of ground, furnished with coal and iron by the surrounding country,—together with extensive warehouses containing ammunition and military stores, were burned when Wilson captured the place. A number of private stores and dwellings were likewise destroyed; and the work of rebuilding them was not yet half completed.

Climbing the steps from the landing to the level of the town, the first object which attracted my attention was a chain-gang of negroes at work on the street; while a number of white persons stood looking on, evidently enjoying the sight, and saying to one another, “That’s the beauty of freedom! that’s what free niggers come to!”

On inquiring what the members of the chain-gang had done to be punished in this ignominious manner, I got a list of their misdemeanors, one of the gravest of which was “using abusive language towards a white man.” Some had transgressed certain municipal regulations, of which, coming in from the country, they were very likely ignorant. One had sold farm produce within the town limits, contrary to an ordinance which prohibits market-men from selling so much as an egg before they have reached the market and the market-bell has rung. For this offence he had been fined twenty dollars, which being unable to pay, he had been put upon the chain. Others had been guilty of disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and petty theft, which it was of course necessary to punish. But it was a singular fact that no white men were ever sentenced to the chain-gang,—being, I suppose, all virtuous.

The battle of Selma was not a favorite topic with the citizens, most of whom were within the stockade, or behind the breastworks, captured by an inferior force of the Yankee invaders. But on the subject of the burning and pillaging that ensued they were eloquent.

A gray-haired old gentleman said to me: “I was in the trenches when Wilson came. Everybody was. I just watched both ways, and when I saw how the cat was jumping, I threw my musket as far as I could, dropped down as if I was killed, and walked into town atter the Yankees. I stood by my own gate, when four drunken fellows came up, slapped me on the shoulder, and said, ‘This old man was in the stockade,—he’s a Rebel!’ ‘Of course I’m a Rebel,’ I said, ‘if I’m ketched in a Rebel trap.’

“They was taking me away when an officer rode up. ‘Old man,’ says he, ‘can you show me where the corn depot is?’ ‘I reckon I kin, if these gentlemen will let me,’ I says. So I got off; and when I had showed him the corn he let me go.

“The fire was first set by our own men: that was in the cotton yards. They blazed up so quick, the Yankees couldn’t have got thar without they went on wires. The next was the post-office; that they burned. The next was a drug store; the other drug store they didn’t burn, but they smashed everything in it. The Arsenal was owing me and my family fifteen hundred dollars, when they destroyed it.

“They just ruined me. They took from me six cows, four mules, fifteen hogs, fifteen hundred pounds of bacon, eight barrels of flour, and fifty-five sacks of corn. They took my wife’s and daughters’ clothing to carry away flour in. I saw a man take my wife’s best dress, empty into it all the flour he could tote, tie it up, clap it on his shoulder, and march off. Another went off with an elegantly embroidered petticoat full of flour swung on his arm. Another would take a pair of ladies’ drawers, fill the legs with flour, and trot off with ’em riding straddle of his neck. It made me feel curi’s! It made me feel like if I had ’em down in the squirrel woods, I could shoot a right smart passel of ’em with a will!”

There were one hundred and fifty dwellings burned; some caught from the shops and warehouses, and others were said to have been set by marauders. These robbed everybody, even the negroes in the streets and the negro-women in their houses. Charles Mencer, a well-known and respectable colored man, related to me the following:—

“I worked here in a saddle-shop, at the time of Wilson’s raid. I hired my time of my master, and had laid up two hundred dollars in gold and silver: I had invested my earnings in specie, and in two watches, because I knew the Confederacy couldn’t last. The Yankees came in on Sunday evening; they robbed my house and stole my gold and silver, and one of my watches. Four of them stopped me in the street, and took my other watch, and my pocket-book, with all my Confederate money in it.”

The rest of this man’s story possesses a semi-historical interest.

“The next Tuesday General Wilson sent for me; he wanted somebody that he could trust to carry despatches for him down the river to General Canby, and I had been recommended to him by some colored people. I said I would take them; and I sewed them up in my vest collar. Then I went to my master, and told him there was no chance for work since the Yankees had come in, and got a pass from him to go down to Mobile and find work. Tuesday night I started in a canoe, and paddled down the river. I dodged the Rebel guard when I could, but I was taken and searched twice, and got off by showing my master’s pass. I paddled night and day, and got to Montgomery Hill on Sunday. There I saw Federal troops, and went ashore, and delivered myself up to the captain. He took me to General Lucas, who sent me with a cavalry escort to General Canby at Blakely.”

For this service Mencer was paid three hundred dollars in greenbacks, which he had recently invested in a freedmen’s newspaper, “The Constitutionalist,” just started in Mobile.

The negroes everywhere sympathized with the Federal cause, and served it when they could; but they would seldom betray a master who had been kind to them. Many stories were told me by the planters, illustrating this fidelity. Here is one, related by a gentleman of Lowndes County:—

“The Yankees, when they left Selma, passed through this side of the river, on their way to Montgomery. The streams were high; that hindered them, and did us a sight of damage. I got the start of ’em, and run off my horses and mules. I gave a valise full of valuable papers to my negro boy Arthur, and told him to hide it. He took it, and put it in his trunk,—threw out his own clothes to hide my property; for he didn’t suppose the Yankees would be mean enough to rob niggers. But they did: after they robbed my house, they went to the negro-quarters, and pilfered them. They found my valise, took out my old love-letters, and had a good time reading ’em for about an hour. Then they said to Arthur,—

“’You are your master’s confidential servant, a’n’t you?’

“’Yes, sir,’ says Arthur, proud of the distinction.

“’You know where he has gone with his mules and horses?’

“’Yes, sir, I know all about it.’

“’Jump on to this horse, and go and show us where he is, and we’ll give you five dollars.’

“’I don’t betray my master for no five dollars,’ says Arthur.

“’Then,’ says they, ‘we’ll shoot you if you won’t show us!’ And they put their carbines to his head.

“He never flinched. ‘You can shoot me if you like,’ he says, ‘but I sha’n’t betray my master!’

“They were so struck with his courage and fidelity that they just let him go. So I saved my horses. He don’t know it, but I’m going to give that boy a little farm and stock it for him.”

Another planter in Lowndes County, an old man, told me his story, which will pass as a sample of a hundred others.

“The Yankees burnt my gin-house and screw. They didn’t burn my house, for they made it a rule to destroy none but unoccupied dwellings. But they took everything from my house they wanted, and ruined about everything they didn’t want. They mixed salt with the sugar, emptied it on the floor, and poured vinegar on it. They took a great fancy to a little grandson of mine. They gave him a watch, and told him they’d give him a little pony to ride if he would go to camp with them. ‘I won’t go with you,’ says he, ‘for you’re taking away all the flour that we make biscuit of.’ They carried him a little ways, when they stopped to burn a school-house. ‘Here! You mustn’t burn that!’ he says; ‘for that’s our school-house.’ And they didn’t burn it.”

“The Confederates used me as bad as the Yankees,” said Mr. M——, a planter whom I saw in Macon County. “They had taken twenty-six horses from me, when Wilson came and took thirty more. I ran off six of my best horses to a piny hill; and there I got on a high stump, and looked over the bushes, to see if the Yankees were coming. I wasn’t near as happy as I’d been some days in my life! All I thought of was to get my horses off down one side of the hill, if I saw the raiders coming up the other.”

This gentleman had been extensively engaged in the culture of the grape,—to which, by the way, the soil and climate of Alabama are admirably adapted. He had in his cellar twenty thousand dollars’ worth of wine, when Wilson came. His wife caused it all to be destroyed, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the soldiers. The last cask was scarcely emptied when they arrived. “She thought she’d sooner deal with men sober than drunk,” said M——. “They treated her very well and took nothing from the house they didn’t need.”

The route of Wilson’s cavalry can be traced all the way, by the burnt gin-houses with which they dotted the country. At Montgomery they destroyed valuable founderies and machine-shops, after causing the fugitive Rebels to burn a hundred thousand bales of cotton, with the warehouses which contained it. I followed their track through the eastern counties of Alabama, and afterwards recrossed it in Georgia, where the close of hostilities terminated this, the most extensive and destructive raid of the war.