Chapter 9

The preacher endeavored to explain: the kindness and mercy of the Lord had been so great that it was impossible for a poor sinner to make any sufficient return; but the boys would accept no explanation. "Here," they shouted, "is a nigger who will not pay the Lord!" and they groaned and cried, "Oh! Oh!" and swore that they never saw so wicked a man before. Fortunately for the poor colored man, a Dutchman began to interrogate him in broken English, and the two soon fell into a discussion of some point in theology, when the boys espoused the negro's side of the question, and insisted that the Dutchman was no match for him in argument. Finally, by groans and hisses, they compelled the Dutchman to abandon the controversy, leaving the colored man well pleased that he had vanquished his opponent and re-established himself in the good opinion of his hearers.

14. Resumed the march at two o'clock in the morning, and proceeded to a point known as the Lower Ferry. Ascertaining here that the enemy had recrossed the Tennessee, and was pushing southward, we abandoned pursuit and turned to retrace our steps to Huntsville. Leaving the regiment in command of Colonel Keifer, I accompanied General Mitchell on the return, and reached camp a little after dark.

16. Appointed Provost Marshal of the city. Have been busy hearing all sorts of complaints, signing passes for all sorts of persons, sending guards to this and that place in the city, and doing the numerous other things necessary to be done in a city under martial law. Captain Mitchell and Lieutenant Wilson are my assistants, and, in fact, do most of the work. The citizens say I am the youngest Governor they ever had.

17. Captain Mitchell and I were invited to a strawberry supper at Judge Lane's. Found General Mitchell and staff, Colonel Kennett, Lieutenant-Colonel Birdsall, and Captain Loomis, of the army, there. Mr. and Mrs. Judge Lane, Colonel and Major Davis, and a general, whose name I can not recall, were the only citizens present. General Mitchell monopolized the conversation. He was determined to make all understand that he was the greatest of living soldiers. Had his counsel prevailed, the Confederacy would have been knocked to pieces long ago. The evening was a very pleasant one.

A few days ago we had John Morgan utterly annihilated; but he seems to have gathered up the dispersed atoms and rebuilt himself. In the destruction of our supply trains he imagines, doubtless, that he is inflicting a great injury upon our division; but he is mistaken. The bread and meat we fail to get from the loyal States are made good to us from the smoke-houses and granaries of the disloyal. Our boys find Alabama hams better than Uncle Sam's sidemeat, and fresh bread better than hard crackers. So that every time this dashing cavalryman destroys a provision train, their hearts are gladdened, and they shout "Bully for Morgan!"

19. Rumor says that Richmond is in the hands of our troops; and from the same source we learn that a large force of the enemy is between us and Nashville. Fifteen hundred mounted men were within seventeen miles of Huntsville yesterday. A regiment with four pieces of artillery, under command of Colonel Lytle, was sent toward Fayetteville to look after them.

20. The busiest time in the Provost Marshal's office is between eight o'clock in the morning and noon. Then many persons apply for passes to go outside the lines and for guards to protect property. Others come to make complaints that houses have been broken open, or that horses, dogs, and negroes, have strayed away or been stolen.

23. The men of Huntsville have settled down to a patient endurance of military rule. They say but little, and treat us with all politeness. The women, however, are outspoken in their hostility, and marvelously bitter. A flag of truce came in last night from Chattanooga, and the bearers were overwhelmed with visits and favors from the ladies. When they took supper at the Huntsville Hotel, the large dining-room was crowded with fair faces and bright eyes; but the men prudently held aloof.

A day or two ago one of our Confederate prisoners died. The ladies filled the hearse to overflowing with flowers, and a large number of them accompanied the soldier to his last resting-place.

The foolish, yet absolute, devotion of the women to the Southern cause does much to keep it alive. It encourages, nay forces, the young to enter the army, and compels them to continue what the more sensible Southerners know to be a hopeless struggle. But we must not judge these Huntsville women too harshly. Here are the families of many of the leading men of Alabama; of generals, colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants in the Confederate army; of men, even, who hold cabinet positions at Richmond, and of many young men who are clerks in the departments of the rebel Government. Their wives, daughters, sisters, and sweethearts feel, doubtless, that the honor of these gentlemen, and possibly their lives, depend upon the success of the Confederacy.

To-day two young negro men from Jackson county came in with their wives. They were newly married, and taking their wedding journey. The vision of a better and higher life had lured them from the old plantation where they were born. At midnight they had stolen quietly away, plodded many weary miles on foot, confident that the rainbow and the bag of gold were in the camp of the Federal army.

25. This in-door life has made me ill. I am as yellow as an orange. The doctors say I have the jaundice.

JUNE, 1862.

3. Have requested General Mitchell to relieve me from duty as Provost Marshal; am now wholly unfit to do business.

We have heard of the evacuation of Corinth. The simple withdrawal of the enemy amounts to but little, if anything; he still lives, is organized and ready to do battle on some other field.

5. Go home on sick leave.

* * * * *

25. There were three little girls on the Louisville packet, about the age of my own children. They were great romps. I said to one, "what is your name?" She replied "Pudin' an' tame." So I called her Pudin', and she became very angry, so angry indeed that she cried. The other little girls laughed heartily, and called her Pudin' also, and then asked my name. I answered John Smith; they insisted then that Pudin' was my wife, and called her Pudin' Smith. This made Pudin' furious, and she abused her companions and me terribly; but John Smith invested a little money in cherries, and thus pacified Pudin', and so got to Louisville without getting his hair pulled. I saw no more of Pudin' until she got off the cars at Elizabethtown. Going up to her, we shook hands, and I said, "Good-by, Pudin'." She hung her head for a moment, and tried to look angry, but finally breaking into a laugh she said, "I don't like you at all any way, good-by."

27. Reached Huntsville. The regiment in good condition, boys well; weather hot. General Buell arrived last night. McCook's Division is here; Nelson, Crittenden, and Wood on the road hither.

JULY, 1862.

2. We know, or think we know, that a great battle has been fought near Richmond, but the result for some reason is withheld. We speculate, talk, and compare notes, but this makes us only the more eager for definite information.

I am almost as well as ever, not quite so strong, but a few days will make me right again.

3. It is exceedingly dull; we are resting as quietly and leisurely as we could at home. There are no drills, and no expeditions. The army is holding its breath in anxiety to hear from Richmond. If McClellan has been whipped, the country must in time know it; if successful, it would be rejoiced to hear it. Why, therefore, should the particulars, and even the result of the fighting, be suppressed. Rumor gives us a thousand conflicting stories of the battle, but rumor has many tongues and lies with all.

General Mitchell departed for Washington yesterday.

The rebels at Chattanooga claim that McClellan has been terribly whipped, and fired guns along their whole line, within hearing of our troops, in honor of the victory.

A lieutenant of the Nineteenth Illinois, who fell into the enemy's hands, has just returned on parole, and claims to have seen a dispatch from the Adjutant-General of the Southern Confederacy, stating that McClellan had been defeated and his army cut to pieces. He believes it.

My horse is as fat as a stall-fed ox. He has had a very easy time during my absence.

To-morrow is the Fourth, hitherto glorious, but now, like to-day's meridian sun, clouded, and sending out a somewhat uncertain light. Has the great experiment failed? Shall we hail the Fourth as the birthday of a great Nation, or weep over it as the beginning of a political enterprise which resulted in dissolution, anarchy and ruin? Let us lift up our eyes and be hopeful. The dawn may be even now breaking.

The boys propose to have a barbecue to-morrow, and roast a corpulent, good-natured Ethiopian, named Cæsar. They are now discussing the matter very voluminously, in Cæsar's presence. He thinks they are probably joking; but still they seem to be greatly in earnest, and he knows little of these Yankees, and thinks maybe his "massa tole him de truff about dem, after all." "The Fourth is a great day," the boys go on to say, "whereon Yankees always dine on roast nigger. It is a part of their religion. It is this which makes colored folks so scarce in the North." Shall Cæsar be stuffed or not? That is really the only question. One party claims that if Cæsar be stuffed with vegetables and nicely roasted, he will be delicious. The other party insists that Cæsar is sufficiently stuffed already; vegetables would not improve him. They have eaten roast nigger both ways and know. So the discussion waxes hot, and the dusky Alabamian has some fear, even, that his last day may be drawing very near.

4. Thirty-four guns were fired at noon.

5. An Atlanta paper of the 1st instant says the Confederates have won a decisive victory at Richmond. No Northern papers have been allowed to come into camp.

6. McCook moved toward Chattanooga. General W. S. Smith has command of our division.

The boys have a great many game chickens. Not long ago Company G, of the Third, and Company G, of the Tenth, had a rooster fight, the stakes being fifteen dollars a side. After numerous attacks, retreats, charges, and counter-charges, the Tenth rooster succumbed like a hero, and the other was carried in triumph from the field. General Mitchell made his appearance near the scene at the conclusion of the conflict; but, supposing the crowd to be an enthusiastic lot of soldiers who were cheering him, passed on, well pleased with them and himself.

The boys have a variety of information from Richmond to-day. One party affirms that McClellan has been cut to pieces; that a dispatch to that effect has been received by General Buell. Another insists that he has obtained a decided advantage, and is heating the shot to burn Richmond; while still another affirms that he has utterly destroyed Richmond, and, Marius-like, is sitting amid the ruins of that ill-fated city, eating sow belly and doe-christers.

7. Am detailed to serve on court-martial.

DETAIL FOR THE COURT.

General James A. Garfield. Colonel Jacob Ammen. Colonel Curren Pope. Colonel Jones. Colonel Marc Mundy. Colonel Sedgewick. Colonel John Beatty.

Convened at Athens at ten o'clock this morning. Organized and adjourned to meet at ten to-morrow.

General Buell proposes, I understand, to give General Mitchell's administration of affairs in North Alabama a thorough overhauling. It is asserted that the latter has been interested in cotton speculations; but investigation, I am well satisfied, will show that General Mitchell has been strictly honest, and has done nothing to compromise his honor, or cast even the slightest shadow upon his good name.

The first case to be tried is that of Colonel J. B. Turchin, Nineteenth Illinois. He is charged with permitting his command, the Eighth Brigade, to steal, rob, and commit all manner of outrages.

10. Our court has been adjourning from day to day, until Colonel Turchin should succeed in procuring counsel; but it is now in full blast.

Nelson's division is quartered here. The town is enveloped in a dense cloud of dust.

14. There are many wealthy planters in this section. One of the witnesses before our court has a cotton crop on hand worth sixty thousand dollars. Another swears that Turchin's brigade robbed him of twelve hundred dollars' worth of silver plate.

Turchin's brigade has stolen a hundred thousand dollars' worth of watches, plate, and jewelry, in Northern Alabama. Turchin has gone to one extreme, for war can not justify the gutting of private houses and the robbery of peaceable citizens, for the benefit of individual officers or soldiers; but there is another extreme, more amiable and pleasant to look upon, but not less fatal to the cause. Buell is likely to go to that. He is inaugurating the dancing-master policy: "By your leave, my dear sir, we will have a fight; that is, if you are sufficiently fortified; no hurry; take your own time." To the bushwhacker: "Am sorry you gentlemen fire at our trains from behind stumps, logs, and ditches. Had you not better cease this sort of warfare? Now do, my good fellows, stop, I beg of you." To the citizen rebel: "You are a chivalrous people; you have been aggravated by the abolitionists into subscribing cotton to the Southern Confederacy; you had, of course, a right to dispose of your own property to suit yourselves, but we prefer that you would, in future, make no more subscriptions of that kind, and in the meantime we propose to protect your property and guard your negroes." Turchin's policy is bad enough; it may indeed be the policy of the devil; but Buell's policy is that of the amiable idiot. There is a better policy than either. It will neither steal nor maraud; it will do nothing for the sake of individual gain, and, on the other hand, it will not crouch to rebels; it will not fear to hurt the feelings of traitors; it will not fritter away the army and the revenue of the Government in the insane effort to protect men who have forfeited all right to protection. The policy we need is one that will march boldly, defiantly, through the rebel States, indifferent as to whether this traitor's cotton is safe, or that traitor's negroes run away; calling things by their right names; crushing those who have aided and abetted treason, whether in the army or out. In short, we want an iron policy that will not tolerate treason; that will demand immediate and unconditional obedience as the price of protection.

15. The post at Murfreesboro, occupied by two regiments of infantry and one battery, under Crittenden, of Indiana, has surrendered to the enemy. A bridge and a portion of the railroad track between this place and Pulaski have been destroyed. A large rebel force is said to be north of the Tennessee. It crossed the river at Chattanooga.

18. The star of the Confederacy appears to be rising, and I doubt not it will continue to ascend until the rose-water policy now pursued by the Northern army is superseded by one more determined and vigorous. We should look more to the interests of the North, and less to those of the South. We should visit on the aiders, abettors, and supporters of the Southern army somewhat of the severity which hitherto has been aimed at that army only. Who are most deserving of our leniency, those who take arms and go to the field, or those who remain at home, raising corn, oats, and bacon to subsist them? Plain people, who know little of constitutional hair-splitting, could decide this question only one way; but it seems those who have charge of our armies can not decide it in any sensible way. They say: "You would not disturb peaceable citizens by levying contributions from them?" Why not? If the husbands, brothers, and fathers of these people, their natural leaders and guardians, do not care for them, why should we? If they disregard and trample upon that law which gave all protection, and plunge the country into war, why should we be perpetually hindered and thwarted in our efforts to secure peace by our care for those whom they have abandoned? If we make the country through which we pass furnish supplies to our army, the inhabitants will have less to furnish our enemies. The surplus products of the country should be gathered into the Federal granaries, so that they could not, by possibility, go to feed the rebels. The loyal and innocent might occasionally and for the present suffer, but peace when once established would afford ample opportunity to investigate and repay these sufferers. Shall we continue to protect the property of our enemies, and lose the lives of our friends? It is said that it is hard to deprive men of their horses, cattle, grain, simply because they differ from us in opinion; but is it not harder still to deprive men of their lives for the same reason? The opinions from which we differ in this instance are treasonable. The man who, of his own free will, supplies the wood is no whit better than he who kindles the fire; and the man who supplies the ammunition neither better nor worse than he who does the killing. The severest punishment should be inflicted upon the soldier who appropriates either private or public property to his own use; but the Government should lay its mailed hand upon treasonable communities, and teach them that war is no holiday pastime.

19. Returned to Huntsville this afternoon; General Garfield with me. He will visit our quarters to-morrow and dine with us.

General Rousseau has been assigned to the command of our division. I am glad to hear that he discards the rose-water policy of General Buell under his nose, and is a great deal more thorough and severe in his treatment of rebels than General Mitchell. He sent the Rev. Mr. Ross to jail to-day for preaching a secession sermon last Sunday. He damns the rebel sympathizers, and says if the negro stands in the way of the Union he must get out. Rousseau is a Kentuckian, and it is very encouraging to learn that he talks as he does.

Turchin has been made a brigadier.

21. An order issued late last evening transferring our court from Athens to Huntsville.

Colonel Turchin's case is still before us. No official notice of his promotion has been communicated to the court.

23. Garfield and Ammen are our guests. They are sitting with Colonel Keifer, in the open air, in front of our tent. We have eaten supper, and Colonel Ammen has the floor; he always has it. He is somewhat superstitious. He never likes to see the moon through brush. He is to some extent a believer in dreams. On one occasion he dreamed that his father, who was drowned, came up from the muddy water, looked angrily at him, and endeavored to stab him with a rusty knife. In his effort to escape he awoke. Falling to sleep again, his father reappeared and made a second attempt to stab him. This so thoroughly aroused and troubled him that he could not sleep. In the morning he told this dream to a friend, and was informed that two members of his family would soon die. Soon after he was summoned home, when he found his mother dead and his sister dying of cholera. At another time he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and was impressed with the idea that he had been shot. Soon afterward he learned that his brother in the South had been shot in the back of the neck and killed. He believes that his own sensation of pain was experienced at the very instant when his brother received the fatal wound; but as he could not remember the precise hour when he was startled by the disagreeable impression, he could not be positive that the occurrences were simultaneous. When going into battle at Greenbrier and at Shiloh, the belief that his time to die had not come rendered him cool and fearless. He never felt more at ease or more secure. So when, at two different times, he was very ill, and informed that he could not live through the night, he felt absolutely sure that he would recover.

Garfield had a very impressionable relative. The night before his fight with Humphrey Marshall, she wrote a very accurate general description of the battle, giving the position of the troops; referring to the reinforcements which came up, and the great shout with which they were welcomed.

These mysterious impressions suggested the existence of an undiscovered, or possibly an undeveloped principle in nature, which time and investigation would ultimately make familiar.

Colonel Ammen says, "If superstition, or a belief in the supernatural, is an indication of weakness, Napoleon and Sir Walter Scott were the weakest of men."

With General Garfield I called on General Rousseau this morning. He is a larger and handsomer man than Mitchell, but I think lacks the latter's energy, culture, system, and industry.

24. We can not boast of what is occurring in this department. The tide seems to have set against us every-where. The week of battles before Richmond was a week of defeats. I trust the new policy indicated by the confiscation act, just passed by Congress, will have good effect. It will, at least, enable us to weaken the enemy, as we have not thus far done, and strengthen ourselves, as we have hitherto not been able to do. Slavery is the enemy's weak point, the key to his position. If we can tear down this institution, the rebels will lose all interest in the Confederacy, and be too glad to escape with their lives, to be very particular about what they call their rights.

Colonel Ammen has just received notice of his confirmation as brigadier. He is a strange combination of simplicity and wisdom, full of good stories, and tells those against himself with a great deal more pleasure than any others.

Colonels Turchin, Mihalotzy, Gazley, and Captain Edgerton form a group by the window; all are smoking vigorously, and speculating probably on the result of the present and prospective trials. Mihalotzy is what is commonly termed "Dutch;" but whether he is from the German States, Russia, Prussia, or Poland, I know not.

Ammen left camp early this morning, saying he would go to town and see if he could find an idea, he was pretty nearly run out. He talks incessantly; his narratives abound in episode, parenthesis, switches, side-cuts, and before he gets through, one will conclude a dozen times that he has forgotten the tale he entered upon, but he never does.

Colonel Stanley, Eighteenth Ohio, has just come in. He has in his time been a grave and reverend senator of Ohio; he never loses sight of this fact, and never fails to impress it upon those with whom he comes in contact.

An order has just been issued, and is now being circulated among the members of the court, purporting to come from General Ammen, and signed with his name. It recites the fact of his promotion, and forbids any one hereafter to call him Uncle Jacob, that title being entirely too familiar and undignified for one of his rank. All who violate the order are threatened with the direst punishment.

The General says if such orders please the court, he will not object to their being issued; it certainly requires but very little ability to get them up.

The General prides himself on what he calls delicate irony. He says, in the town of Ripley, men who can not manage a dray successfully criticise the conduct of this and that general with great severity; when they appeal to him, he tells them quietly he has not the capacity to judge of such matters; it requires a great mind and a thorough understanding of all the circumstances.

After all I have said about General Ammen, it is hardly necessary to remark that he does most of the talking.