this was the only chance of getting to church, I reluctantly assented.
Accordingly, when the carriage drove down the driveway the next morning,
I flew to my room to dress, while Tom went out to saddle Bob. We were
soon ready, and with Tom’s assistance I mounted behind him. The first
two miles were soon covered, and feeling uncomfortable from the jolting
I was getting, I begged Tom to get off and walk the rest of the way.
All at once Tom uttered a yell like a Comanche Indian, and never in the
history of the world did a mule make better time than Bob did, getting
nearer and nearer to church at each leap.
How I begged Tom to stop him and let me get off. But never a whit did
Bob slacken his speed, and I thought I would faint with horror as the
church appeared through the woods.
Faster and faster we came right up to the church door, and that mule
brayed longer and louder than he ever did before.
Down I slid, and back on the home track I started as hard as I could
run. I had not gone far when a horse and buggy came up behind me and a
moment later I was sobbing on Charley’s breast.
He asked me to be his wife that day, and I have long since forgiven the
mule, as he certainly brayed some courage into my Charles. Can you blame
me for being an ardent admirer now of a mule?
MAMIE TAYLOR GEISSON.
* * * * *
_Some men are natural born pall-bearers._
[Illustration]
Ole Cotton-Tail
De white man bil’d de big rock fence,
He’s boss of all de lan’,
He’s lord of all de fiel’s an’ woods,
He wuck me all he can.
He stays up in de big white house,
Long wid his cake an’ ale,
He nurver kno’s whut joy it am
To hunt ole cotton-tail.
Whut keer I if dat fence am ruint,
Whut keer I fer de cost?
Ef I don’t make a hole down dar
Dat cotton-tail am lost.
Den I go sneakin’ home ter night
An’ ketch it, widout fail:
“Ole man, huccum you sneak in heah
Widout dat cotton-tail?”
So watch dar, boy, upon dat fence,
(You, Juno, watch dat crack!)
An’ ef you see Marse John come out
Jes’ drap down in yo’ track.
I’ll git a stick an’ twist in dar—
You’ll heah dat rabbit’s wail—
Whut’s rock an’ stone—dey can’t be e’t,
Lak good ole cotton-tail.
OLE WASH.
[Illustration]
Historic Highways of the South.
THIRD PAPER—NASHVILLE
BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
No road is so typical of the Middle Basin as that lying between Franklin
and Nashville. For ten miles it winds around in the lowland basins or
over the intervening ridges, amid fields as fertile as ever yielded
their increase to the husbandman’s plow. On each side the low hill
ranges lie, blue or brown, as the sun happens to fall on them. Fertile
to their very tops are these hills, green in grain or grasses, or darker
green in richer foliage. In this the Middle Basin, through which for
nearly a hundred miles from Nashville to Pulaski, this historic road
runs, the country is different from any in the South. Sea shells lie on
the tops of the hills—sea shells rich in lime and phosphorus. Every foot
of this road is rich in history and tradition. Down it rode Jackson,
time and again, from his home at The Hermitage, not many miles away.
Here, also, rode Polk and Grundy and Sam Houston and Crockett. An old
man told me a story about James K. Polk which I have never seen in
print. He said that in the memorable campaign for the governorship of
Tennessee between James K. Polk and Lean Jimmie Jones, in 1840 (in which
campaign it is said that Jones, who was the greatest stump orator of his
day, and the father of that style of oratory, almost drove the statesman
Polk from the hustings), there was a mutual agreement between the
candidates that Polk should speak at Franklin and Jones at Columbia, in
the wind-up, the day before the election. Columbia was Polk’s home, and
not very solid for him at that. The friends of Polk devised a scheme to
give him the advantage by making two speeches in a day. So he made his
speech early in Franklin and had saddled and ready a thoroughbred horse,
which he mounted after his speech, and galloped to Spring Hill. There he
took a fresh horse and rode furiously to Columbia, arriving in time to
reply to Jones’ speech. But my informant, who was an old line Whig,
informed me that though the future President made record-breaking time
in his race down the pike, he lost in votes when it became known that he
had broken his agreement and played a trick on Lean Jimmie. Jones
defeated him for governor.
But the greatest of all the history made on this pike was made by the
two armies of Hood and Schofield, as they swept over it in the early
days of December, 1864, and then swept back again. The situations were
exactly reversed, making a wave of war which ebbed and flowed, carrying
on its crest the foam of wounds and death and woe. Continuing the story
from Hood’s invasion from our last issue, Schofield’s army reached
Nashville after the battle of Franklin, early in the morning of December
1, 1864, and there united with Thomas. Other detachments had been called
in, including Gen. A. J. Smith, aggregating nearly 12,000 men, and later
Steedman, with 5,200 more. Milroy and Granger, with 8,000 troops, were
ordered to Murfreesboro, and placed under the command of General
Rousseau. According to General Cox (The March to the Sea—Franklin and
Nashville. Jacob D. Cox, page 100), General Thomas had in Nashville on
the morning of November 30, 26,200 men. To these add Schofield’s army of
34,000 men, and it will be seen at a glance what Hood’s disheartened and
stricken army had to fight, and Thomas, a Virginian, in command, with
the bulldog tenacity of Grant and the courage of Hood.
If Franklin had been desperate, what could Hood do now, with the heart
of them dead in his brave men, with sorrow in their hearts for comrades
who slept in trenches under the sod of Franklin, and beloved commanders
who, now being dust, were but a week before pictured forever between the
sky and the bastions of steel as they rode over the breastworks to
death? Even in the heart of the starved and the hardened lives
memory—and what memory must have been theirs in the sleet and cold of
those bitter December nights, while waiting for Thomas to come forth
from his warmth and food to give battle. If Franklin had been a
desperate case, was not this worse—the combined forces of Thomas and
Schofield, Smith and Steedman? Anyone but Hood would have stopped and
thought, but Hood never thought.
“In truth,” says Cox, in the history already quoted, “Hood’s situation
was a very difficult one, and to go forward or to go back was almost
equally unpromising. He followed his natural bent, therefore, which
always favored the appearance, at least, of aggression, and he marched
after Schofield to Nashville.” Hood put Lee’s corps in the center across
the Franklin turnpike; Cheatham took the right, and Stewart the left of
the line, while Forrest, with his cavalry, occupied the country between
Stewart and the river below Nashville.”
[Illustration:
General Van Dorn’s headquarters, near Spring Hill, where General Van
Dorn was shot to death by one Dr. Peters for an alleged familiarity
with the latter’s wife. Peters walked friendly into Van Dorn’s
office, obtained a pass from the General to go through the line,
shot him, jumped on a horse and escaped to the Federal line.
]
Here, from the first days of December until the 15th, much of the time
in sleet and rain, Hood’s half starved veterans awaited the oncoming of
Thomas’ well fed and well seasoned troops. Such a meeting could scarcely
be termed a battle, however bravely the long, thin lines might hold out,
and however desperately they might fight. Hood grimly made two stands,
but his gray lines, outflanked and outfought, melted away into a
disorganized rush, back through mud and slush and freezing rain to the
Tennessee. And now, back again, over the same highway, rush the two
armies. Truly this historic highway was baptized in blood. The weather
was cold now, sleeting. When it thawed there was slush, and when it
froze, needles of ice for bare and bloody feet. No army since Valley
Forge suffered as did Hood’s brave men. Truly, the men who could follow
Hood back to the Tennessee, in the biting cold and hunger of those days,
in the numbness which knows that all was lost, and the sorrow for those
who marched no more, truly, the stock of that kind who fought it to a
finish, might well survive that their heroic tribe might be given as a
future pledge for the perpetuity of the Republic.
Two things alone saved Hood from annihilation: The lack of real
generalship in his pursuers, who failed to push their advantage to a
finish, and the intrepid genius of Forrest, who covered Hood’s retreat.
Had Johnston got Sherman, had Lee got McClellan in the fix Hood was now
in, the map of the Union would be painted to-day in two colors.
Of Forrest’s skill in saving Hood’s army, General Cox pays tribute in
the following paragraph, when he says: “At Columbia, Forrest rejoined
Hood, and his cavalry, with an infantry rear guard, under command of
General Walthall, covered the retreat to the Tennessee.... This force
was able to present so strong a front that ... our advance guard was not
able to break through.” But the freezing, pitiless retreat of a brave,
broken army, who had gone into this Pike of Battles fit to fight for a
kingdom, who had done more than any similar body of men had ever done
before, in facing snow and sleet and hunger and bastions of steel and
the entrenched thousands of a well-fed city’s troops, and now went out
under the fatal inefficiency of him who led them, is one of the great
tragic stories of the Lost Cause.
Forever will this historic highway run between sloping hills and sinking
valleys, from the Basin’s Rim to the Tennessee; forever will it girdle
with protecting arms the swelling glories of its maiden hills. The
sentinel rows of corn land, the massed squadrons of wheat, forever will
follow the line of its march, helmeted in tassle-caps, sheathed in
scabbard sheafs, with meshes of gold and gilt, while from the forts of
its over-towering hills orchards of apples will drop their balls of gold
where once contending cannon hurled theirs of steel. Forever and
forever, a tribute and a lesson to all time that brother no more shall
kill brother in the dawning glory of a new age and a new Union. But
never again will it see the equal of that desperate courage, that
sacrifice for conscience, that valor for home and country as each saw
it, as shown by these two armies which swept north and south in glory
and in gloom.
Trotwood does not like to end anything in gloom and sorrow, and so will
end this sketch of this historical highway with some cavalry yarns he
has picked up from the old survivors of this and other battles.
Several years ago, at a Confederate reunion, he found himself among a
group of interesting talkers—men who had been makers of history in this
great struggle. All of them have now joined their comrades who had gone
before—and right worthily they went, as their life’s record will show.
Among that number was Gen. W. H. Jackson, the owner of Belle Meade, then
the most famous thoroughbred nursery in America. [Sidenote: Some Cavalry
Yarns.] On his left was the State’s chief executive, Governor Turney, or
“Old Pete,” as the big brained and big framed fellow under the slouch
hat was familiarly called by every schoolboy in the State. Other
congenial spirits were around, high in social and political circles,
drawn by the annual reunion of Confederate veterans. Some war yarns had
passed around and General Jackson, who was a brilliant cavalry leader
himself, was explaining how efficient the cavalry service was. The
General himself fought through the war and thought that the best horses
in the world for cavalry purposes were those with a good dash of
thoroughbred in them. Jackson himself rode thoroughbreds all through the
war. So did Fitz-Hugh Lee, of Virginia; John H. Morgan, the famous
raider, and many others.
“I remember the time I longed for one mighty bad,” quietly remarked an
Alabama colonel present, as he knocked the ashes off his cigar and
smiled at the turn the story was taking. “It was around Vicksburg, in
the trenches, and Grant was crowding us day and night. We lived on raw
beef and such dogs as happened to stray out of the city, and were
begrimed, dirty, half starved and homesick. Right next to us in the
trenches was a Tennessee company, whose captain always managed to ride
around on a black thoroughbred horse, as handsome a creature as you ever
saw, and which he kept slick and fat and curried always—though the Lord
only knows where he got his rations from. I watched that fellow and soon
caught onto his game. Every time the Yankees would crowd us pretty
close, and it looked as if we would have to surrender anyhow in the
teeth of such overwhelming numbers, this fellow’s horse would get
frightened and, in spite of all his owner’s endeavors, would break away
with him to the rear. One day the fight got terribly hot, our lines were
cut nearly in two, they swarmed over the breastworks, it was a
hand-to-hand fight. To add to the demoralization, here came this captain
on his black horse, going to the rear by the lines like wild, pulling
like Hercules on his horse’s mouth to stop him, and shouting back as he
flew along:
“‘Gentlemen, I can’t stop him—he is running away!’
“‘Hould on, Captain,’ shouted an Irishman in our line, as he jumped up
and waved his cap at the horse and rider, ‘Hould on! I’ll give you a
thousan’ dollars to tell me where I can get another one of that breed of
horses that you can’t hould when he starts to the rear.’
“The Yankees took the shout of laughter that followed Pat’s exclamation
for the Rebel yell and we got a breathing spell at our end of the line
for a couple of hours.”
[Illustration:
Nashville and Columbia pike in front of the Cheairs’ place, near
Spring Hill, where the battle would have been fought had not Hood’s
plans miscarried.
]
“That reminds me of Sam Watkins,” said a gentleman present. “The same
Sam that wrote that inimitable book on the war called “Company H”—the
best book I ever read on the war, for it came nearer to painting it in
its true, horrible colors than any of them. Sam tells the story as he
went through it, from the standpoint of a common soldier, and the motto
of his volume seems to have been General Sherman’s laconic remark that
“War is hell.” If the young idiots ever get up a notion to fight again,
Sam Watkins’ ‘Company H’ will do more to stop them than anything I know
of. Anyway, just before the Battle of Shiloh Sam found himself mounted
on the stubbornest mule that ever went to war. He would charge Grant’s
whole army when the bugle sounded retreat, and would proceed to fall
precipitately back when there wasn’t an enemy in a hundred miles. On the
first day at Shiloh, when Johnston’s army was rushing over everything
before night, and Buell came, Sam’s mule suddenly decided to retreat—and
retreat he did, much to Sam’s mortification and disgust. As he went back
full tilt he ran over a gun with four horses attached and before he
recovered from the shock of the collision to know which way his rear end
was, Sam tied a rope to his neck and the other end of the rope to the
caisson’s axle, and having mounted again he got the artilleryman to
literally haul his muleship into battle. The fight was nearly over when
they finally got to the front, and, General Johnston being killed,
Beauregard had ordered a cessation of hostilities till morning. But it
suddenly dawned on Sam’s mule that he was expected to charge, and no
sooner was he released than he straightened his neck, and before his
rider could dismount, straightened his tail, brayed once and charged
Grant’s whole army, penned up on the banks of the Tennessee River, and
madder than a gored bull in a fence corner. Sam’s captain didn’t
understand the mule’s maneuvers, and as he went by shouted to his men:
“‘Look at brave Sam Watkins, boys, charging right in the cannon’s
mouth.’
[Illustration:
The Martin Place, near Spring Hill, Tennessee, one of the finest farms
in the State, formerly the Gibson Farm, and the first home of Tom
Hal in Maury County; also historically associated with Hood’s raid.
]
“‘It ain’t me chargin’, Captain,’ shouted poor Sam, as he pulled away
with all his might to keep out of certain death—‘it ain’t me. I ain’t
such a fool as that. It’s this damned old mule! Whoa, Baalam, whoa!’
“I don’t know how that is,” remarked a colonel who had seen hard service
on foot, “but I do know that we infantry fellows had a holy contempt of
all cavalrymen. At the Battle of Murfreesboro I was badly wounded in the
leg and arm, and for days I could scarcely walk. As I was hobbling back
to the rear on the third day after the fight, I met my brother mounted.
As soon as he saw my condition he got down, helped me up on his horse
and told me how to ride out to find the hospital surgeon. Now, in our
brigade, we had a standing reward of a thousand dollars for anybody who
would show us a dead cavalryman. I had forgotten all about this when all
at once I rode into a Texas regiment camping and fixing for supper. My
arm was in a sling, and from my drooping position it was plain I was
wounded. As soon as they saw me one of them yelled out:
“‘Run here, boys, run quick, and see the curiosity of the century. Here
is a wounded cavalryman!’
[Illustration:
The Lane of the Lost Opportunity, near Spring Hill, Tennessee, where
Hood came so near cutting off Schofield.
]
“And before I could get on they had surrounded me and proceeded to make
life a greater burden. In vain I tried to explain; as far as I went I
heard only one yell:
“‘Look at the wonder of the century! Here is a real wounded cavalryman.
Sonny, how in the world did you ever get that close to a bullet?’ and so
on. I got off of that horse as soon as I could and never tried to play
cavalry again during the war.”
“I think it pretty well established,” remarked General Jackson, “that
the greatest cavalry leader of the Confederacy was Gen. N. B. Forrest.
His career was a curious one, as illustrating the heights to which a
natural genius, uneducated though it may be, can go in its chosen path.
He had twenty-nine horses, in all, killed under him during the war, and
yet came out unhurt save when a minie ball one day ploughed through his
stirrup and the sole of his boot. After the war, in which he rose to be
a lieutenant-general, his fame as a cavalry leader had spread so far
that during the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III sent a distinguished
military tribunal over here to get General Forrest’s mode of fighting
cavalry. On their way to Memphis they stopped over at Belle Meade to
inspect my stud, and as I had seen a good deal of service with Forrest I
was telling them of some of his ways of fighting cavalry. Only one of
them could speak English, and I remember how the other two laughed as I
told their interpreter how Forrest escaped annihilation by pure
audacity, on Hood’s retreat out of Tennessee, of whose army his cavalry
covered the retreat. Forrest’s cavalry was really mounted infantry, and
he had in it also two of the deadliest batteries in the Civil War. On
Hood’s retreat he saved the army by planting his batteries and checking
the Federal advance—then, when they came in overpowering numbers he
would fall back to another natural hill breastwork and check them again,
while Hood was trying to get over Duck River. But one time he came near
being annihilated. He held his ground too long when suddenly an officer
dashed up and shouted:
“‘General! General, we are ruined! The enemy is in our rear. We will
have to surrender! What shall we do?’
“‘Do? Do?’ shouted Forrest, as he cursed the officer for a
chicken-hearted coward. ‘Is that all you know about war? What will I do?
In my rear, are they? Well, I’ll just about face and then I’ll be in
them, won’t I?’ And he did, capturing more prisoners than he could take
into the Tennessee River with him. The French committee were highly
amused, and said such a course would never have been thought of in
European warfare. I afterwards learned that the only information they
got from Forrest on their visit was his now historic answer to their
question as to what was his rule of warfare, to which he answered,
‘There ain’t but one rule—I always tried to git thar fust with the most
men.’ Now, the thoroughbred horse is the best horse in Tennessee to ’git
thar fust’ on,’” laughed the general, “unless it is one of Trotwood’s
pacers,” he said, as he winked my way, “and the only reason they are fit
for anything is because they are built on the best kind of thoroughbred
lines, as he has admitted time and again.”
“I remember a laughable incident on Hood’s retreat at a small creek
between Nashville and Columbia,” said another old soldier present. “It
was early morning, cold and sleety. We had waded the creek, but had to
go back to help pull the artillery over. As we came out of the mud and
water, a long line of us tugging at a gun, a lank, solemn soldier walked
up on the bank, drew himself up with great dignity, and in a sepulchral
voice said: “Fellow citizens!”
Instantly every man stopped and listened for some important
announcement.
“Fellow citizens,” went on the man, in a deep, earnest tone, “aftah much
reflection an’ mature deliberation, I have decided that South Carolina
was a little too hasty.”
He was so solemn and earnest that he was greeted with a big laugh and
shout.
* * * * *
[Note—Under this heading, in a near issue, will be the illustrated
story of the Old Nachez Trace and the story of the death of
Meriwether Lewis.—Ed.]
A Famous Horse Race
BY BEN MCCULLOCH HORD
[The incidents in connection with this great race, so graphically
described by the writer, were given him by an old turfman who at
that time was a young jockey and witnessed the race.—Ed.]
At the time of which I speak, there were a number of famous horses on
the turf, necessarily producing much rivalry between their various
owners and friends. The most prominent that I can call to memory now
were Boston, Duane, Decatur, Vashti, Balie Peyton, Fannie Wyatt, Charles
Carter, Lady Clifton, Clarion, etc. Boston was just beginning to win the
fame that afterward made his name a household word throughout the racing
world, and nearly all of the best horses of the day sought to measure
strides with this distinguished son of Timoleon. In the language of an
old turfman, they were laying for him. At this time Boston belonged to
Mr. Nat Reeves, of Richmond, Va., and after Decatur had defeated Fannie
Wyatt in a four-mile heat race at Washington, D. C., Mr. James Long, a
great admirer of Boston, and a close friend of Mr. Reeves, proposed to
Captain Heath, the owner of Decatur, to match Boston against him,
four-mile heats, for a purse of $10,000, to be run at Camden, N. J.,
provided that he could get the use of Boston for the race. The match was
accepted and $1,000 forfeit put up. Mr. Long went over to Long Island,
where Mr. Reeves had Boston attending the spring meeting, and made known
his match, which was agreed to. Decatur was at Washington, while Duane
and Charles Carter, both in the same stable, were gathering turf laurels
at other places. Boston had never gone four miles up to this time, and
there were many prominent turfmen who doubted his ability and courage to
negotiate this distance in good company, consequently as soon as the
match between him and Decatur became known it made the latter largely
the choice in the betting, he having recently defeated that good mare,
Fannie Wyatt, in the four-mile race above referred to.
Messrs. Reeves and Long, however, were not slow in finding out Boston’s
courage—they were already satisfied as to his speed—so they gave him a
trial, which was entirely satisfactory, he having defeated in this trial
his stable companion, the celebrated Atlanta, 108 times the length of
Mr. Long’s walking stick, a novel way, certainly, to measure distance,
but it was certainly done in this case, and in those days horses were
tried with horses, and not by the watch, as now.