Part 17

_June 18._--I have just returned from a visit to the works and batteries at the intrenched camp at Randolph’s Point, sixty miles above Memphis, by which it is intended to destroy any flotilla coming down the river from Cairo, and to oppose any force coming by land to cover its flank and clear the left bank of the Mississippi. The Ingomar is lying under the rugged bank, or bluff, about 150 feet high, which recedes in rugged tumuli and watercourses filled with brushwood from the margin of the river, some half-mile up and down the stream at this point, and Brigadier-General Pillow is still riding round his well-beloved earthworks and his quaint battalions, while I, anxious to make the most of my time now that I am fairly on the run for my base of operations, have come on board, and am now writing in the cabin, a long-roofed room, with berths on each side, which runs from stem to stern of the American boats over the main deck. This saloon presents a curious scene. Over the bow, at one side, there is an office for the sale of tickets, now destitute of business, for the Ingomar belongs to the State of Tennessee; at the other side is a bar where thirsty souls, who have hastened on board from the camp for a julep, a smash, or a cocktail, learn with disgust that the only article to be had is fine Mississippi water with ice in it. Lying on the deck in all attitudes are numbers of men asleep, whose plumed felt hats are the only indications that they are soldiers, except in the rare case of those who have rude uniforms, and buttons, and stripes of colored cloth on the legs of their pantaloons. A sentry is sitting on a chair smoking a cigar. He is on guard over the after part of the deck, called the ladies’ saloon, and sacred to the general and his staff and attendants. He is a tall, good-looking young fellow, in a gray flannel shirt, a black wide-awake, gray trousers, fastened on a belt on which is a brass buckle inscribed “U. S.” His rifle is an Enfield, and the bayonet sheath is fastened to the belt by a thong of leather. That youthful patriot is intent on the ups and downs of fortune as exemplified in the pleasing game of euchre, or euker, which is exercising the faculties of several of his comrades, who, in their shirt sleeves, are employing the finest faculties of their nature in that national institution; but he is not indifferent to his duties, and he forbids your correspondent’s entrance until he has explained what he wants and who he is--and the second is more easy to do than the first. The sentry tells his captain, who is an euchreist, that “It’s all right,” and resumes his seat and his cigar, and the work goes bravely on. Indeed, it went on last night at the same table, which is within a few yards of the general’s chair. And now that I have got a scrap of paper and a moment of quiet, let me say what I have to say of this position, and of what I saw--pleasant things they would be to the national general up at Cairo if he could hear them in time, unless he is as little prepared as his antagonist. On looking out of my cabin this morning, I saw the high and rugged bluff of which I have spoken, on the left bank of the river. A few ridge-poled tents, pitched under the shade of some trees, on a small spur of the slope, was the only indication immediately visible of a martial character. But a close inspection in front enabled me to detect two earthworks, mounted with guns, on the side of the bank, considerably higher than the river, and three heavy guns, possibly 42-pounders, lay in the dust close to the landing-place, with very rude carriages and bullock-poles to carry them to the batteries. A few men, ten or twelve in number, were digging at an encampment on the face of the slope. Others were lounging about the beach, and others, under the same infatuation as that which makes little boys disport in the Thames under the notion that they are washing themselves, were bathing in the Mississippi. A dusty track wound up to the brow of the bluff, and there disappeared. Some carts toiled up and down between the boat and the crest of the hill. We went on shore. There was no ostentation of any kind about the reception of the general and his staff. A few horses were waiting impatiently in the sun, for flies will have their way, and heavy men are not so unbearable as small mosquitos. With a cloud of colonels--one late United States man, who was readily distinguishable by his air from the volunteers--the general proceeded to visit his batteries and his men. The first work inspected was a plain parapet of earth, placed some fifty feet above the river, and protected very slightly by two small flanking parapets. Six guns, 32-pounders, and howitzers of an old pattern were mounted _en barbette_, without any traverses whatever. The carriages rested on rough platforms, and the wheels ran on a traversing semicircle of planks, as the iron rails were not yet ready. The gunners, a plain looking body of men, very like railway laborers and mechanics, without uniform, were engaged at drill. It was neither quick nor good work--about equal to the average of a squad after a couple of days’ exercise; but the men worked earnestly, and I have no doubt, if the nationalists give them time, they will prove artillerymen in the end. The general ordered practice to be made with round shot. After some delay, a kind of hybrid ship’s carronade was loaded. The target was a tree, about 2,500 yards distant I was told. It appeared to me about 1,700 yards off. Every one was desirous of seeing the shot; but we were at the wrong side for the wind, and I ventured to say so. However, the general thought and said otherwise. The word “Fire!” was given. Alas! the friction-tube would not explode. It was one of a new sort, which the Tennesseeans are trying their ’prentice hand at. A second answered better. The gun went off, but where the ball went to no one could say, as the smoke came into our eyes. The party moved to windward, and, after another fuse had missed, the gun was again discharged at some five degrees elevation, and the shot fell in good line, 200 yards short of the target, and did not ricochet. Gun No. 2 was then discharged, and off went the ball at no particular mark, down the river; but if it did go off, so did the gun also, for it gave a frantic leap and jumped with the carriage off the platform; nor was this wonderful, for it was an old-fashioned chambered carronade or howitzer, which had been loaded with a full charge, and solid shot enough to make it burst with indignation. Turning from this battery, we visited another nearer the water, with four guns (22-pounders), which were well placed to sweep the channel with greater chance of ricochet; and higher up on the bank, toward a high peak commanding the Mississippi, here about 700 yards broad, and a small confluent which runs into it, was another battery of two guns, with a very great command, but only fit for shell, as the fire must be plunging. All these batteries were very ill constructed, and in only one was the magazine under decent cover. In the first it was in rear of the battery, up the hill behind it. The parapets were of sand or soft earth, unprovided with merlons. The last had a few sand-bags between the guns. Riding up a steep road, we came to the camps of the men on the wooded and undulating plateau over the river, which is broken by watercourses into ravines covered with brushwood and forest trees. For five weeks the Tennessee troops under General Pillow, who is at the head of the forces of the state, have been working at a series of curious intrenchments, which are supposed to represent an intrenched camp, and which look like an assemblage of mud beaver-dams. In a word, they are so complicated that they would prove exceedingly troublesome to the troops engaged in their defence, and it would require very steady, experienced regulars to man them so as to give proper support to each other. The maze of breastworks, of flanking parapets, of parapets for field-pieces, is overdone. Several of them might prove useful to an attacking force. In some places the wood was cut down in front so as to form a formidable natural abattis; but generally here, as in the batteries below, timber and brushwood were left uncut, up to easy musket-shot of the works, so as to screen an advance of riflemen, and to expose the defending force to considerable annoyance. In small camps of fifteen or twenty tents each the Tennessee troops were scattered, for health’s sake, over the plateau, and on the level ground a few companies were engaged at drill. The men were dressed and looked like laboring people--small farmers, mechanics, with some small, undersized lads. The majority were in their shirt sleeves, and the awkwardness with which they handled their arms showed that, however good they might be as shots, they were by no means proficients in manual exercise. Indeed, they could not be, as they have been only five weeks in the service of the state, called out in anticipation of the secession vote, and since then they have been employed by General Pillow on his fortifications. They have complained more than once of their hard work, particularly when it was accompanied by hard fare, and one end of General Pillow’s visit was to inform them that they would soon be relieved from their labors by negroes and hired laborers. Their tents, small ridge-poles, are very bad, but suited, perhaps, to the transport. Each contains six men. I could get no accurate account of their rations even from the quartermaster-general, and commissary-general there was none present; but I was told that they had “a sufficiency--from ¾lb. to 1¼ lb. of meat, of bread, of sugar, coffee and rice daily.” Neither spirits nor tobacco is served out to these terrible chewers and not unaccomplished drinkers. Their pay “will be” the same as in the United States army or the Confederate States army--probably paid in the circulating medium of the latter. Seven or eight hundred men were formed into line for inspection. There were few of the soldiers in any kind of uniform, and such uniforms as I saw were in very bad taste, and consisted of gaudy facings and stripes on very strange garments. They were armed with old-pattern percussion muskets, and their ammunition pouches were of diverse sorts. Shoes often bad, knapsacks scarce, head-pieces of every kind of shape--badges worked on the front or sides, tinsel in much request. Every man had a tin water-flask and a blanket. The general addressed the men, who were in line two deep (many of them unmistakable Irishmen), and said what generals usually say on such occasions--compliments for the past, encouragement for the future. “When the hour of danger comes I will be with you.” They did not seem to care much whether he was or not; and, indeed, General Pillow, in a round hat, dusty black frock-coat, and ordinary “unstriped” trousers, did not look like one who could give any great material accession to the physical means of resistance, although he is a very energetic man. The major-general, in fact, is an attorney-at-law, or has been so, and was partner with Mr. Polk, who, probably from some of the reasons which determine the actions of partners to each other, sent Mr. Pillow to the Mexican war, where he nearly lost him, owing to severe wounds received in action. The general has made his intrenchments as if he were framing an indictment. There is not a flaw for the enemy to get through, but he has bound up his own men in inexorable lines also. At one of the works a proof of the freedom of “citizen soldiery” was afforded in a little hilarity on the part of one of the privates. The men had lined the parapet, and had listened to the pleasant assurances of their commander that they would knock off the shovel and hoe very soon, and be replaced by the eternal gentlemen of color. “Three cheers for General Pillow” were called for, and were responded to by the whooping and screeching sounds that pass muster in this part of the world for cheers. As they ended a stentorian voice shouted out, “Who cares for General Pillow?” and, as no one answered, it might be unfairly inferred that gallant officer was not the object of the favor or solicitude of his troops; probably a temporary unpopularity connected with hard work found expression in the daring question.

Randolph’s Point is, no doubt, a very strong position. The edges of the plateau command the rear of the batteries below; the ravines in the bluff would give cover to a large force of riflemen, who could render the batteries untenable if taken from the river face, unless the camp in their rear on the top of the plateau was carried. Great loss of life, and probable failure, would result from any attack on the works from the river merely. But a flotilla might get past the guns without any serious loss, in the present state of their service and equipment; and there is nothing I saw to prevent the landing of a force on the banks of the river, which, with a combined action on the part of an adequate force of gun-boats, could carry the position. As the river falls, the round-shot fire of the guns will be even less effective. The general is providing water for the camp, by means of large cisterns dug in the ground, which will be filled with water from the river by steam-power. The officers of the army of Tennessee with whom I spoke were plain, farmerly planters, merchants, and lawyers, and the heads of the department were in no respect better than their inferiors by reason of any military acquirements, but were shrewd, energetic, common sense men. The officer in command of the works, however, understood his business, apparently, and was well supported by the artillery officer. There were, I was told, eight pieces of field-artillery disposable for the defence of the camp.

Having returned to the steamer, the party proceeded up the river to another small camp in defence of a battery of four guns, or rather of a small parallelogram of soft sand covering a man a little higher than the knee, with four guns mounted in it on the river face. No communication exists through the woods between the two camps, which must be six or seven miles apart. The force stationed here was composed principally of gentlemen. They were all in uniform. A detachment worked one of the guns, which the general wished to see fired with round shot. In five or six minutes after the order was given the gun was loaded, and the word given, “Fire.” The gunner pulled the lanyard hard, but the tube did not explode. Another was tried. A strong jerk pulled it out bent and incombustible. A third was inserted which came out broken. The fourth time was the charm, and the ball was projected about sixty yards to the right and one hundred yards short of the mark--a stump, some 1,200 yards distant, in the river. It must be remembered that there are no disparts, tangents, or elevating screws to the guns; the officer was obliged to lay it by the eye with a plain chock of wood. The general explained that the friction tubes were the results of an experiment he was making to manufacture them, but I agreed with one of the officers, who muttered in my ear, “The old linstock and portfire are a darned deal better.” There were no shells, I could see, in the battery, and, on inquiry, I learned the fuses were made of wood at Memphis, and were not considered by the officers at all trustworthy. Powder is so scarce that all salutes are interdicted, except to the governor of the state. In the two camps there were, I was informed, about 4,000 men. My eyesight, as far as I went, confirmed me of the existence of some 1,800, but I did not visit all the outlying tents. On landing, the band had played “God Save the Queen” and “Dixie’s Land;” on returning, we had the “Marseillaise” and the national anthem of the Southern Confederation; and by way of parenthesis, it may be added, if you do not already know the fact, that “Dixie’s Land” is a synonym for heaven. It appears that there was once a good planter, named “Dixie,” who died at some period unknown, to the intense grief of his animated property. They found expression for their sorrow in song, and consoled themselves by clamoring in verse for their removal to the land to which Dixie had departed, and where, probably, the revered spirit would be greatly surprised to find himself in their company. Whether they were ill-treated after he died, and thus had reason to deplore his removal, or merely desired heaven in the abstract, nothing known enables me to assert. But Dixie’s Land is now generally taken to mean the seceded states, where Mr. Dixie certainly is not, at this present writing. The song and air are the composition of the organized African association, for the advancement of music and their own profit, which sings in New York, and it may be as well to add, that in all my tour in the South, I heard little melody from lips black or white, and only once heard negroes singing in the fields.

Several sick men were put on board the steamboat, and were laid on mattresses on deck. I spoke to them, and found they were nearly all suffering from diarrhœa, and that they had had no medical attendance in camp. All the doctors want to fight, and the medical service of the Tennessee troops is very defective. As I was going down the river, I had some interesting conversation with General Clark, who commands about 5,000 troops of the Confederate States, at present quartered in two camps at Tennessee, on these points. He told me the commissariat and the medical service had given him the greatest annoyance, and confessed some desertions and courts-martial had occurred. Guard-mounting and its accessory duties were performed in a most slovenly manner, and the German troops, from the Southern parts, were particularly disorderly. It was late in the afternoon when I reached Memphis. I may mention, _obiter_, that the captain of the steamer, talking of arms, gave me a notion of the sense of security he felt on board his vessel. From under his pillow he pulled one of his two Derringer pistols, and out of his clothes-press he produced a long heavy rifle, and a double gun, which was, he said, capital with ball and buckshot.

_June 19._--Up at three A. M., to get ready for the train at five, which will take me out of Dixie’s Land to Cairo. If the owners of the old hostelries in the Egyptian city were at all like their Tennesseean fellow-craftsmen in the upstart institution which takes its name, I wonder how Herodotus managed to pay his way. My sable attendant quite entered into our feelings, and was rewarded accordingly. At five A. M., covered with dust, contracted in a drive through streets which seem “paved with waves of mud,” to use the phrase of a Hibernian gentleman connected with the luggage department of the omnibus, “only the mud was all dust,” to use my own, I started in the cars along with some Confederate officers and several bottles of whiskey, which at that early hour was considered by my unknown companions as a highly efficient prophylactic against the morning dews, but it appeared that these dews are of such a deadly character, that, in order to guard against their affects, one must become dead drunk. The same remedy, I am assured, is sovereign against rattlesnake bites. I can assure the friends of those gentlemen that they were amply fortified against any amount of dew or rattlesnake poison before they got to the end of their whiskey, so great was the supply. By the Memphis papers, it seems as if that institution of blood prevailed there as in New Orleans, for I read in my papers, as I went along, of two murders and one shooting as the incidents of the previous day, contributed by the “local.”

To contrast with this low state of social existence there must be a high condition of moral feeling, for the journal I was reading contained a very elaborate article to show the wickedness of any one paying his debts, and of any state acknowledging its liabilities, which would constitute an individual _vade mecum_ for Basinghall street. At Humboldt there was what is called a change of cars--a process that all the philosophy of the Baron could not have enabled him to endure without some loss of temper, for there was a whole Kosmos of southern patriotism assembled at the station, burning with the fires of liberty, and bent on going to the camp at Union City, forty-six miles away, where the Confederate forces of Tennessee, aided by Mississippi regiments, are out under the greenwood tree. Their force was irresistible, particularly as there were numbers of relentless citizenesses--what the American papers call “quite a crowd”--as the advanced guard of the invading army. While the original occupants were being compressed or expelled by crinoline--that all absorbing, defensive and aggressive article of feminine war reigns here in wide-spread, iron-bound circles--I took refuge on the platform, where I made, in an involuntary way, a good many acquaintances in this sort: “Sir, my name is Jones--Judge Jones, of Pumpkin County. I am happy to know you, sir.” We shake hands affectionately. “Colonel (Jones’ _loquitur_), allow me to introduce you to my friend, Mr. Scribble! Colonel Maggs, Mr. Scribble.” The colonel shakes hands and immediately darts off to a circle of his friends, whom he introduces, and they each introduce some one else to me, and, finally, I am introduced to the engine-driver, who is really an acquaintance of value, for he is good enough to give me a seat on his engine, and the bell tolls, the steam trumpet bellows, and we move from the station an hour behind time, and with twice the number of passengers the cars were meant to contain. Our engineer did his best to overcome his difficulties, and we rushed rapidly, if not steadily, through a wilderness of forest and tangled brakes, through which the rail, without the smallest justification, performed curves and twists, indicative of a desire on the part of the engineer to consume the greatest amount of rail on the shortest extent of line. My companion was a very intelligent Southern gentleman, formerly editor of a newspaper. We talked of the crime of the country, of the brutal shootings and stabbings which disgraced it. He admitted their existence with regret, but he could advise and suggest no remedy. “The rowdies have rushed in upon us, so that we can’t master them.” “Is the law powerless?” “Well, sir, you see these men got hold of those who should administer the law, or they are too powerful or too reckless to be kept down.” “That is a reign of terror--of mob ruffianism?” “It don’t hurt respectable people much; but I agree with you it must be put down.” “When--how?” “Well, sir, when things are settled, we’ll just take the law into our hands. Not a man shall have a vote unless he’s American-born, and, by degrees, we’ll get rid of these men who disgrace us.” “Are not many of your regiments composed of Germans and Irish--of foreigners, in fact?” “Yes, sir.” I did not suggest to him the thought which rose in my mind, that these gentlemen, if successful, would be very little inclined to abandon their rights while they had arms in their hands; but it occurred to me as well that this would be rather a poor reward for the men who were engaged in establishing the Southern Confederacy. The attempt may fail, but assuredly I have heard it expressed too often to doubt that there is a determination on the part of the leaders in the movement to take away the suffrage from the men whom they do not scruple to employ in fighting their battles. If they cut the throats of the enemy they will stifle their own sweet voices at the same time, or soon afterward--a capital recompense to their emigrant soldiers!