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TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
VOL. II. NASHVILLE, TENN., MAY, 1906. NO. 2
Contents
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH John Trotwood Moore
MIKE KELLEY Ben McCulloch Hord
CROP RESIDUE AND ITS BENEFIT TO THE SOIL William Dennison
ALFALFA-GROWING IN THE SOUTH Joseph E. Wing
HOW OLD WASH DIED John Trotwood Moore
THE GHOST, CASSANDRA Madison Sheppard
HISTORY OF THE HALS John Trotwood Moore
WITH TROTWOOD
TROTWOOD’S TRAVELS
FLORENCE, ALABAMA
Copyright 1906 by Trotwood Publishing Co. All rights reserved. Entered as
second class matter Sept. 8, 1905, at the Postoffice at Nashville, Tenn.,
under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
Historic Highways of the South
PAPER V—THE OLD MILITARY ROAD
BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
The verdict of another century is sure to crystallize in the now growing
belief that the two greatest military geniuses of the first century of
the Republic were both named Jackson—Andrew and Stonewall.
The battles of all other commanders—the slow, ponderous, red-tape,
unimaginative stands and retreats of Washington; the stubborn,
mathematical defenses of the perfectly poised Lee; the ponderous
hammerings of the stoical, machine-made Grant—all these were generals
after a rule and a school. But the two Jacksons were a law unto
themselves. They were comets among fixed stars, meteors in a still
heaven. After the frightful holocausts of the Civil War, everything
before it looks small.
But there are tragedies, even in an ant hill, and the life of the
Republic came nearer going out in the wilderness of 1815 than at Bull
Run, Shiloh or Gettysburg, fifty years later.
As the fighting savior of his country, posterity is ultimately bound
to rank Jackson ahead of Washington; for Jackson finished the War of
Independence, begun in 1776, on the eighth day of January, 1815.
And he finished it forever.
England never considered the matter closed at Yorktown, and when she
marched through the North, burning Washington in wantonness and derision,
knocking her generals about as so many dummies and their soldiers as so
many tenpins, she was thinking of King’s Mountain and Yorktown.
Before Jackson’s day nothing was possible for the young Republic. She was
gagged and bound, lying between England’s devil, on the north and west,
and Spain’s deep, blue sea, on the south.
Since Jackson’s day everything has been possible for her; a century of
progress and peace; the great Republic; the Monroe doctrine; the fighting
prestige that could originate the cheek of a Venezuela bluff, and the
remark the British admiral made to the German admiral at Manila.
The Civil War was a Johnstown flood, that made everything before it
look like the breaking of a mill dam on Coon Creek; but the Civil War
established nothing—literally nothing. Two peoples of the same blood and
ideals had merely theorized themselves apart and into a war brought on by
shadows bent on holding office and hence incapable of telling the truth.
The two things they thought they were fighting to decide are just as
strongly fixed to-day as they then were, to wit: that the town clerk is
still the man to attend to the town pump, and that white is not black and
never will be.
The only thing settled was whether there should be one town pump or
forty-five, and whether it were better for the white to work the black
under a life lease or a yearly one. The ideals, aims, purposes and
principles of the Republic are the same to-day as they were before the
big fight, and that it was a family scrap in which both sides would
quickly double on any meddling intruder was demonstrated to the undoing
of the arrogant Spaniard, who first trampled on the Republic’s ideals
until she got to the fighting point and then foolishly brought on the
war, believing, among other things, that the “Southern Confederacy would
rise again” and help her in the fight.
And the Confederacy arose—at Manila and Santiago.
But so much has happened since Jackson and New Orleans, and so few really
knew on what a narrow thread the life of all American ideals hung in
those gloomy January days of 1815, and so long has it been crowded out
for meaner things that it needs telling again, that the children may know
it. For the grown people of to-day, born under lucky stars, made possible
by the genius of Jackson’s work and the glory of his sacrifices, have
been so busy picking up dollars that they have neglected to look up,
even at the stars. This story is to show them the star.
The gamest thing God ever gave to the human race was Andrew Jackson. I
hesitate, in a brief story like this, to attempt to tell the hardships,
sickness, sufferings, mutiny, bickerings, jealousies, insults, lies,
treacheries, butcheries called battles, and starvations that he overcame
to save his people and his country from Indians, Spain and England,
and the Republic from that spirit of disintegration beginning with the
Hartford Convention and ending with nullification. For be it known to all
men and remembered, not in malice, but in forgiveness, that the first
secession convention that ever assembled to dissolve this Union of States
came together at Hartford, Conn., the very day Jackson was fighting to
the death to save the Union at New Orleans.
[Illustration: The beautiful Horse Shoe Bend (Tohopcka), on the
Tallapoosa River, Alabama—the last stand of the Creek Nation, and where,
in a bloody fight, it was destroyed by Jackson.
(Taken April 9, 1906, for Trotwood’s Monthly by C. W. Thomas, Dadeville,
Ala.)]
And I say, not in malice, for there was in this, as there was in the
other attempts of it in 1861, no question either of right or of wrong.
Nation—Country—Republic—Empire—these are all merely abstract things bound
up in the concrete idea of a home. As long as the home maximizes and the
Nation minimizes, the latter is safe. But when it is reversed, when
doubt and uncertainty and discontent come in, the abstract thing is lost
in the struggle for the concrete. And every home idea has the right to
fight for its existence.
But winning is another thing, and if they fail no man has any license to
whisper traitor.
But for Jackson and the peace brought at Ghent by his destruction of the
most formidable savage allies England ever had, and the menace of the
struggling Republic’s existence; by his prompt unmasking of treacherous
Spain at Pensacola and startling the hitherto unbeaten Briton by knocking
his forts down about his ears at Mobile and sinking their ships in the
bay, Gettysburg would doubtless have been fought a half century earlier,
and in Massachusetts.
Let us see: The War of 1812 was forced on the States intentionally and
with all the emphasis of a bully who meets a timid enemy on the highway
and kicks and cuffs him for pure cussedness. New England was for standing
the kicking so long as her ships and schooners might still traffic in
negro slaves, rum, codfish and castor oil. The war tied up her hulls to
rotting at the wharves.
The war, until Jackson was discovered, had been a farce. From the Great
Lakes to the South the bull-dozing, beef-eating, bloody-shirted Briton
simply walked over the Yankee. “You’ll be setting the dogs on us next,”
said a squad of Yankee soldiers, who staggered into a British camp to
surrender and got cursed for coming.
Not one victory had they won. The British had burned the capital and run
the President out of the back door. They had murdered citizens in the
streets, and so empty was the treasury, and so degraded her credit that
the Secretary of War had to pledge his private credit to get money enough
to send Jackson to New Orleans. There was not money or credit enough left
to buy wood to keep the cadets warm at West Point, and the young soldiers
of the Republic’s future wars had to go into the woods and cut it and
bring it in.
And all the time New England, the head and front of the Republic, sat
sullen, secretly aiding the enemy and watching for a chance to secede.
“Is there a Federalist, a patriot in America,” said the Boston Gazette,
“who conceives it his duty to shed his blood for Bonaparte, for Madison
and Jefferson, and that host of ruffians in Congress who have set their
faces against us for years and spirited up the brutal part of the
populace to destroy us? Not one. Shall we then be held in slavery and
driven to desperate poverty by such a graceless faction? No more taxes
for New England until the administration makes peace.” As if the cuffed
and cudgeled administration was not doing its best, even to parting with
the last raiment on the back of its self-respect!
Since the beginning of things there have been two kinds of great
men—talkers and doers. The former are called orators when they talk so
much and so well that their talk becomes natural.
Clay was a talker—Jackson a doer. There was a time when these two men
ran side by side in the minds and memories of the living public. But
that public is dead now, and they are far apart. Only the doer lives,
as only the doer should live. Talk, since the beginning of time, has
been the cheapest commodity of the human race. “And Moses said unto the
Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent.... But I am slow of speech and of
a slow tongue.... And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses,
and he said. Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can
speak well.... And he shall be to thee instead of a mouth.” That is the
Biblical precedent for placing the orator over the doer.
Jackson was a Moses, Clay an Aaron. Clay, oily and brainy, and a man who
“can speak well,” was sent over to make peace, with Bayard, and Gallatin,
and Crawford and Adams—all Aarons and orators, and, praise God, all now
dead and fast being forgotten. And they had been in Europe twelve long
months, cooling their heels at the doors of diplomacy, or begging at the
back door of its kitchen for such crumbs as the children might sweep off
for the dogs. And after a while they got a few crumbs—England might be
induced to quit her laying on of the lash if certain things were done to
salve her wounded honor, including the fact that she could still impress
American seaman wherever she could find them, and certain territory
transferred to England, including what is now Wisconsin and Michigan and
parts of Illinois and Indiana. For England of that day was the England of
this day—a bully and a land-grabber.
And then the climax came—Bonaparte went under. Bonaparte, who had kept
England so busy she hadn’t had time to whip us before, now in his fall
unfettered the one thousand warships of Britain that had kept him out of
the Channel and the Mediterranean and the army that later sent him to his
Waterloo, and all these were free to fight the helpless under-dog across
the waters.
And then the Aarons gave it up. One of them, Gallatin, wrote home from
England: “The war is popular here, and that their national pride,
inflated by their last unexpected success, cannot be satisfied without
what they call the chastisement of America, cannot be doubted. They do
not even suspect that we have any just cause of complaint, and consider
us altogether the aggressor and the allies of Bonaparte.”
[Illustration: Lake Tensaw, Ala. Known as the old Boatyard Lake. It was
here that Aaron Burr was landed as he was being conveyed from Washington
to Fort Stoddard, and near where the horrible massacre of Fort Mims
occurred.]
Here is a sample of their contempt and billingsgate from the London Sun,
one of England’s great papers, of September 3, 1814: “The American army
of copper captains and Falstaff recruits defy the pen of satire to paint
them worse than they are—worthless, lying, treacherous, slanderous,
cowardly and vaporing heroes, with boastings in their loud tongues and
terror in their quaking hearts. Were it not that the course of punishment
they are undergoing is necessary to the ends of moral and religious
justice, we declare before our country that we should feel ashamed of
victory over such ignoble foes. The quarrel resembles one between a
gentleman and a chimney sweeper—the former may beat the low scoundrel to
his heart’s contentment, but there is no honor in the exploit, and he is
sure to be covered with the soil and dirt of his ignominious antagonist.
But necessity will sometimes compel us to descend from our station to
chastise a vagabond, and endure the disgrace of a contest in order
to repress, by wholesome correction, the presumptuous insolence and
mischievous designs of the basest assailant.”
And the Times—the so-called thunderer—speaking of President Madison:
“This fellow, notorious for lying, for imposture of all kind, for his
barbarous warfare both in Canada and against the Creek Indians, for
everything, in short, that can debase and degrade a government.”
When word came to Lord Castlereagh of the capture of Washington and the
King of France said he doubted the truth of it, Castlereagh said: “It
is true beyond all question, and I expect that by now most of the large
seaport towns of America are laid in ashes, that we are in possession of
New Orleans and have command of all the waters of the Mississippi and
lakes. So that the Americans are now but little better than prisoners at
large in their own country.”
And that is exactly what might have happened but for one backwoods Moses.
And this Moses—it is ludicrous, even in its tragedy, to think what he was
doing when the event happened that first started him in his fame-crowned
career.
A lank, fiery, swearing, drinking frontier lawyer, and general of
coon-skin militia, sharp and sallow of face, blue of eye, peaked of head,
his hair grizzled and tied with eel-skin, anointed with bear’s oil.
Fighting chickens or duels, running horse races or hounds, buying land
and negroes, standing stallions and for every office worth while, from
Major General to Supreme Judge, and in all of it and every thing, getting
there.
“Getting there” more nearly fitted him in every thing he ever attempted
than any man of his day and generation. No American save Grant, Forrest,
Stonewall Jackson and Roosevelt has ever come anywhere near his record of
accomplishing things, and the latter has never yet had half a chance for
showing what he might do in a pinch.
“Jim,” said one of Old Hickory’s negroes to another, the day after the
old warrior died, “does yo’ think ole Marster has gone to heab’n?”
“Nigger,” said the other one, with becoming scorn, “does you think ole
Marster has gone to de other place?”
“No, no! I don’t think dat—in course ole Marster couldn’t go to hell—he
wus too good an’ kind a man fur dat, an’ too nice a gemman; but I jes’
can’t xackly see how he cu’d go to heab’n. De good Book say you mustn’t
kill an’ you mustn’t cuss, an’ you know ole Marster wus right peart at
both.”
“Nigger,” said the other, with emphasis, “if ole Marster tuk a noshun to
go into heab’n jes’ tell me who gwine ter keep him out—jes tell me!”
Great men are teeth in the cog-wheels of things, and sooner or later the
grooves they were made to fit will come to them.
The opportunity that knocked at Jackson’s door came from the arm of as
gallant an Indian as ever made his word his bond—William Weatherford, the
Red Eagle, war chief of the fighting Creeks.
Years before, a Scotch boy, Lachlan McGillivray, sixteen years old, ran
away from home in a ship bound for Charleston, S. C. He reached there
penniless, joined some Indian traders, and drove their pack horses into
the Creek nation—for a jack knife! He traded this to the Indians for
some deerskins and laid the foundation of a fortune that made him the
greatest man in the Creek Nation and a power that three nations—Spain,
England and America—courted till his death. He married Sehoy Marchand,
a half-breed, sixteen-year-old Indian girl, with the sprightliness of
her French father and the black eyes of her princess mother, Sehoy,
a full-blooded Creek of the tribe of the Wind. Their son, Alexander
McGillivray, though three-quarters white, became the most powerful
and influential Indian of his day. He held his own in diplomacy and
statesmanship with England, France and Spain. He was more than a match
for the feeble government at Washington. His sister, Sehoy McGillivray,
married a Georgian, Charles Weatherford, who lived with the Indians,
owned land by counties, upon it the first race track in Alabama, owned
negroes, thoroughbred horses, sheep and kine, ran the first cotton gin
and held the first place of power among his people.
Weatherford, the Red Eagle, seven-eighths white, was his son, and Sehoy
McGillivray was his mother. In his veins was Scotch, English, French and
she whose family was of the Wind. He was an extraordinary man.
“His bearing,” said Pickett, who knew him well, “was gentlemanly and
dignified. His eyes were large, dark, brilliant and flashing. He was one
of nature’s noblemen—a man of strict honor and unsurpassed courage.”
Tecumseh, the greatest of all Indians, and a general in the English army,
stirred up the Creeks as they were never aroused before. Acting for
England with Spain, holding Florida as a secret and treacherous ally,
he induced Weatherford to lead his Indians against Ft. Mims, in South
Alabama, filled with men, women and children who had fled there for
safety and were guarded by a lot of drunken, bragging American troops.
The tragedy was inevitable, for both Spain and England were behind
the Indians, England offering a reward for every American scalp—man’s
or woman’s or child’s. And when the sun went down on the 30th day of
August, 1813, unless she lied to the Indians, as is likely, she paid for
five hundred and thirty of them.
Money payment for the scalps of helpless women and children! Grand old
England of Shakespeare, Drake and Wellington! Glorious vandals of Ft.
Mims and Washington and New Orleans! When I think of her in those days I
remember only Davy Crockett’s famous toast to her: “The British,” said
old Davy, holding up a horn full of whiskey, “an’ may their ribs make the
gridirons of hell!”
[Illustration: The road to old Fort Mims, as it is to-day.]
But it was not all a one-sided fight—they died game, even the little
children—and the Indians buried six hundred of their warriors among the
potato vines outside the stockade.
Weatherford and Tecumseh sowed the wind. In vain the Red Eagle pleaded
for the lives of the women and children of the fort. For them he almost
lost his own life and with clubs and guns drawn on him was forced to flee
to save his life.
Not knowing this, the Americans marked him for death first and branded
him “the butcher of Ft. Mims.”
Five days after this massacre, which changed the boundaries of the
continent and threw Jackson into an arena calling for every quality of
his grit and brain for years afterwards, Jackson, all unconscious of
this opportunity of his life—for the sweat-covered courier did not reach
Nashville with the news until September 19th—was engaged in a street
fight to a finish with Thomas H. and Jesse Benton—two men who were
afterwards his political champions.
It was a foolish, silly quarrel, more like that of boys than men. Jackson
was drawn into it through the eternal fiber in him that forced him to
make his friend’s quarrel his own. This friend was William Carroll,
afterwards the gallant general who stood by him to a finish at New
Orleans. Both Thomas H. and Jesse Benton were young lawyers living in
Nashville. They were friends of Jackson. Thomas H. at the time was
away in Philadelphia on business of great importance to Jackson. Jesse
possessed much of his brother’s fluency with none of his brains. He was
eccentric and excitable. In a dispute he challenged Captain Carroll. It
was all because some younger officers were jealous of Carroll and wanted
to break his influence with Jackson.
In the duel with Carroll (which was harmless) he involved Jackson, and
it ended in Jackson and the two Bentons fighting, in the streets of
Nashville, a bloody duel, in which Jackson was shot, his arm and shoulder
shattered, and the two Bentons found themselves, one in the bottom of a
cellar, and the other’s life saved by the luckiest chance. Jackson almost
bled to death. It was three weeks before he could leave his bed.
That was September 4, 1813. Even then a horseman was riding day and night
through the wilderness of Alabama with news of the Indian butchery. Even
then the Creeks, victorious and bloodthirsty, had collected an army
greater than any which confronted for years and baffled Miles, Crook,
Custer and Canby, and were marching toward the Tennessee and Georgia
frontiers, with Weatherford, the Invincible, at their head. And Jackson,
the man who was to save them and fight the most brilliant Indian war ever
fought on American soil, maimed, half-dead and soaking mattresses with
his blood.
The news made him forget his wounds and his feuds. Tennessee acted and
placed her treasury and her sons at the service of the man who would
lead them against the Indians. Jackson was in command, but Jackson was
dead—so they said. But when a member of the committee of the Legislature
came to his room and propped him up long enough to hear the committee’s
report, and regrets that he was not able to take the field—“The devil in
hell I can’t!” he shouted, as he got out of bed and began then and there
his campaign against the Creeks. His proclamation followed. Propped up
in bed, he wrote: “The horrid butcheries perpetrated on our defenseless
fellow-citizens near Ft. Stoddard cannot fail to excite in every bosom
a spirit of revenge.... It surely never would be said that the brave
Tennesseeans wanted other inducements than patriotism and humanity to
rush to the aid of our bleeding neighbors and friends and relatives.”
October 4 was the day he designated for the troops to meet at
Fayetteville, Tenn., and on October 4 Jackson was there.
A book might be written on Jackson’s Creek war. The Duke of Wellington
said that if Jackson had done nothing else this war would have ranked him
among the greatest generals.
I cannot accept this as meant literally. But what a record of hardships,
grit, perseverance, gameness, generalship, resourcefulness, agony of
overcoming it is! Just one month from the day of his street duel in
Nashville he rendezvoused his troops at Fayetteville. He could not mount
his horse without help. He could not bear for a coat collar to touch his
shattered shoulder. The least unguarded movement, and a thrill of agony
went through his bloodless frame.
We all remember the lives and years and treasure it took to subdue
even the Sioux of the Northwest. Ask Crook and Miles and also poor
Custer—soldiers all, equipped to a king’s taste and backed by the best
army of Indian fighters the world ever saw—except one, and that one the
smaller army that Jackson had to subdue in a twelve months the most
powerful federation of the most intelligent Indians living.
Jackson marched into their territory October, 1813. By April, 1814, they
were killed or conquered, and those who remained, even their greatest
chief, William Weatherford, were his friends and allies.
[Illustration: Old oak near Fort Mims.]
The infallible proof of a great general is his ability to turn his
conquered foes into friends. This was Alexander’s, Caesar’s, Jackson’s,
and Grant’s decoration. It was lacking in William the Conqueror, in
Wellington, Sherman and Sheridan. From Nashville to Fayetteville is
eighty miles along the old military road, now as prosperous a farming
country as ever an army tramped across. At one o’clock, October 11, a
courier dashed into camp from John Coffee, guarding the frontier at the
Tennessee river, crying that the Creeks were coming. He started back
in five minutes, saying that Jackson was coming instantly. Instantly
was always the better part of his religion. He acted instantly at New
Orleans, and it was all that saved him. And no general, by the record,
who ever lived before or since, save perhaps Stonewall Jackson, would
have done it. Incredulous as it seems, by eight o’clock that same night
these 2,500 Tennesseeans, with their sick and wounded general, had
marched, footing it, thirty-two miles to Huntsville. Thirty-two miles in
less than seven hours!
They crossed the river at Ditto’s Landing, and then began that remarkable
war of the civilized against the barbarian, equaled only when Caesar
marched into the woods of Germany and fought their great Teutonic hordes
from daylight till death.
And the Nervit were not braver than the Creeks under Weatherford, the
Red Eagle. Canby was an Indian fighter, tried and resourceful. He fought
through the Mexican War, on the plains with Albert Sidney Johnston,
through the Civil War, capturing Mobile, and proved to be a hard-fighting
and an iron soldier. But the Modocs butchered him.
Custer—his fate is yet fresh in the minds of the living. In the war
between whites he was the equal of Wheeler. With as many men and far
better equipped than Jackson ever dreamed that men could be, he attacked
a mere handful of Indians compared to the great wilderness of them.
Jackson marched into and conquered, and yet they killed Custer, and every
man of his brave but unthinking force. “Twenty-five hundred men and
thirteen hundred horses on the bluffs of the Tennessee,” writes Parton,
“on the borders of the civilization, about to plunge into pathless
woods and march, no one knew how far, into the fastnesses and secret
retreats of a savage enemy! Such a body will consume ten wagon loads of
provisions every day. For a week’s subsistence they require a thousand
bushels of grain, twenty tons of flesh, a thousand gallons of whisky,
and many hundredweight of miscellaneous stores.” Yet Jackson fed them,
with little aid from any outside source, often eating nothing but parched
acorns himself. His pathetic letters begging, commanding, beseeching
the governors of Tennessee and Georgia for food for his troops are
written with an ink of fire. “There is an enemy I dread more than I do
the hostile Creeks,” he wrote, “and whose power, I am fearful I shall
first be made to feel. I mean that meager monster, famine. I shall leave
this encampment in the morning direct for Ten Islands, and hence with as
little delay as possible to the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa, and
yet I have not on hand two days’ supply of breadstuffs.”
Hunger and mutiny—what would Custer and Crook and Canby and Miles have
done had these been added to the Indians? He ate acorns, and with a
single rifle barring the path of his starved and mutining troops, he
literally bluffed and drove them on. Seeing it all clearly now, his
victory over the Indians was the lesser one.
Fighting Indians, fighting mutiny, fighting famine, fighting the terrible
enervating, blood-sucking disease that preyed on his very vitals—this was
the Andrew Jackson in the pitiless forests of that pitiless age, with one
arm in a sling, sallow, bloodless and emaciated, resting his rifle across
his horse’s neck in front of the column of starved and mutinous troops
homeward bound and with eyes blazing, his grizzled hair bristling with
fury, exclaiming: “By the Eternal, I will blow the first damned villain
into eternity that advances another step! I will hold this fort if only
two men will stay with me!”
Here are two pictures of him, then that go into you and stay—one of
his innate tenderness, the other his undying grit. At the battle of
Tallushatchee an Indian mother was found dead with a half-starved babe
at her breast. “Let it die,” said the other squaws; “all its people are
dead. It is the law of our race.” Jackson had it taken to his own tent
and found a little brown sugar to make it a tea. He had it cared for,
took it home, adopted it, raised and educated it. It knew no father or
mother save the conquering Jackson and the good Aunt Rachel.
Imagine Caesar coming out of Gaul with a fair-haired white child in his
tent! This man was greater than Caesar, ay, than ten Caesars.
The other was his grit. Unable to eat what little he had, unable to
sleep, there were times even when he could not sit his horse for the
griping pains of an outraged stomach. Only one thing gave him relief,
and how he discovered it no one ever knew. Down from his horse he would
slide, have a young sapling bent down, and hang over it, head down, till
he deadened the terrible pain. Imagine Alexander’s Greeks marching across
Asia and beholding their god hanging over a young tree, head down, racked
with the pain of a woman.
[Illustration: On Lake Tensaw, near Fort Mims. It was here Jackson camped
on his way to Fort Mims, after the massacre.]
The finish came at Tohopeka (the Horse Shoe) on the banks of the
sweet-running Tallapoosa, as beautiful to-day as then. Never had Indians
fortified before—breastworks invulnerable, with portholes. Behind that,
logs and brushwood, from behind which Indians love to fight, and all
unseen. And the Creek Nation died there almost to a man and a woman.
The scene of the Red Eagle’s surrender is worthy a great artist. In the
forests of Alabama. Sentinels—soldiers. The marquee of General Jackson.
Big Warrior, a scalawag Creek, sunning himself by the door. Riding
through the forest on the same gray, half-thoroughbred horse that leaped
the bluff with him at the Holy Ground the Red Eagle comes to give himself
up, that his starving people might live. Tell me not this was martyrdom
and patriotism of the highest, for well did he know what they thought of
him, “the butcher of Ft. Mims,” and easily could he have escaped and gone
in to the British in Florida, as many of his comrades had done.
But if he had gone who would protect and plead for the starving women and
children? Besides, he had found out the British and the Spaniards, and
he hated their ways. He knew that his life alone would atone for it all,
and so he rode up to surrender and be shot for his people. A deer crosses
his path. He kills it with his rifle and flings it over the pommel of the
saddle. Some sentinels stop him. One points out the General’s tent, but
none suspects it is he, else he had not lived to reach the door.
Astonished, dumbfounded, Big Warrior rubs his eyes and looks. Is he
asleep? Can it be—can it be—
“Ha, Bill Weatherford! Have we got you at last?”
Weatherford looked at him. “You traitor, speak not to me, or I will put a
ball through your heart.”
General Jackson heard, and, furious, stalked out with Hawkins at his
heels. “How dare you, sir, ride up to my tent, having murdered the women
and children of Ft. Mims?”
Soldiers near by sprang up with bitter oaths. Not one but would have
given an arm for the honor of killing him. A dozen guns leap up in
the wild shout and babble for precedence, but Weatherford sits and
calmly looks into their muzzles, while Jackson waves his hand and says:
“Silence, and let him speak!”
“I am not afraid of you, General Jackson—I fear no man, for I am a Creek
warrior. I have nothing to ask for myself. Kill me if you wish. I come
to plead for the women and children starving in the woods. Their fields
are destroyed, their homes gone, their cribs empty. They have nothing to
eat. Send out your men and bring them in. I did all I could to stop the
massacre at Ft. Mims. I am done fighting. My warriors all are killed.
Kill me now, if you wish, but save the remnant of our noble race.”
“Kill him! Kill him!” shouted the soldiers, as their guns came up again.
But as he spoke Jackson had seen and understood. Over the head of the
chief he saw, over the clamoring, cursing troops who begged for his
blood, over the past, over Ft. Mims, over all—to Pensacola—to the British
sheltered there, waiting to march into his land to plunder and burn; to
the Spanish, two-faced and deceitful, urging them on.
Instantly he acted. Instantly his great heart, as true for the truth as
a hound for the trail, saw the nobility of the savage towering above the
littleness and ignominy of the greater race. And there flashed in his
broader vision Pensacola and New Orleans. He turned to his troops: “Who’d
kill so brave a man as this would rob the dead.”
Weatherford then threw his game at his feet. “Take it, my General, for
Weatherford is starving.”
Jackson seized his hand: “No, by God, you come in and eat with me.”
(The next paper will be “The Road to New Orleans.”)
Mike Kelley
BY BEN MCCULLOCH HORD
NOTE—If anything better than this has ever been written about
the war I have never seen it. It is worthy of the great
masters—of Sterne, of Thackery and Dickens. So pleased is
Trotwood’s with this sketch that we have secured the picture
of its author, Major Ben M. Hord, one of the best and truest
of men and beloved by all who know him. Major Hord has held
many positions of trust and confidence, was a gallant soldier
in the big unpleasantness and was for a term Commissioner of
Agriculture for Tennessee. He is still young, and this sketch
shows he is gifted as a writer. We will publish another story
from him soon.—Editor.
He was an Irishman by birth, and a blacksmith by trade, but gave up his
bellows and tongs to “follow the feather” of his gallant countryman, Gen.
Pat Cleburne, in the Confederate Army, and became a gunner in a battery.
In many of his characteristics Mike was strikingly like his great
captain. Though possessed of a rich vein of Irish wit and humor he did
not have that volatile, bubbling over-flow of spirits so natural to his
people; on the contrary, he was quiet and retiring in his disposition,
even to apparent timidity. His only form of dissipation was tobacco. I
well remember his dirty little cob pipe, black with age and tobacco, with
a stem not three inches long, of the same color, and from the same causes.
Every old soldier who saw much active service in the field, in thinking
of the close places he has passed through, will recall vividly the
sunburnt face and form of some comrade, friend or acquaintance,
conspicuous for his courage, brave where all were brave, but he the
bravest of them all. In this light dear old lion-hearted Mike always
appears to me, when memory harks back to the stirring scenes of forty odd
years ago. With the courage of a game-cock, the modesty of a woman, and
a sunny temperament, he was indeed a lovable companion, and when by your
side in action, made you feel as if you had two right arms and a double
pair of eyes. It is not, however, to speak of his courage that I write,
but of some ludicrous incidents that happened to him after he “jined the
cavalry.”
[Illustration: BEN M. HORD.]
Mike was torn nearly in two by a canister shot the second day at Shiloh,
while his battery was engaged with one of the enemy’s, and as soon as
he was able to stand the journey, his surgeon sent him to his home in
Helena, Ark., to die, as he thought, but which Mike, with an Irishman’s
perversity, refused to do, and which he explained to me afterwards,
in a half apologetic tone for not doing, that the shot really didn’t
damage his “in’ards.” It, however, incapacitated him for service in the
infantry, and as the Federal forces by that time had the river as far
down as Vicksburg, he could not well get back to his old battery, so he
reluctantly joined the cavalry. I say reluctantly, because while he
knew every bone and nerve in a horse’s foot, and was perfectly at home
when he had that article between his knees tacking on a shoe, put him on
a horse’s back and he was as helpless as a new born babe. I doubt if he
was ever on a horse half a dozen times in his life, until he joined Capt.
Rufe Anderson’s company of scouts of Colonel Dobbins’ regiment, Walker’s
Brigade of Arkansas Cavalry, of which I was also a member at that time.
Seeing him one day, shortly after he had joined, hesitate on the bank
of a little stream, as if debating with himself which would be wiser,
to attempt to ride across or to get down and wade and lead his horse, I
called out to him: “Grip him with your knees, Mike, and your back will
keep dry.”
“Grip him with me knase, is it?” he replied. “Then, be jimminy, I’ll git
down and wade, for it’s myself that’s as bow-legged as a barrel hoop, and
it’s me grub, not me back, I’m afther kaping thry.”
Several months had passed since Mike had joined us and he had improved in
his horsemanship to such an extent that he would even venture sometimes,
when very much aggravated, to punish the “brute of a baste” he was riding
with the spur, instead of dismounting and larruping the horse with a
sprout, as he did at first. But notwithstanding his poor skill as a
rider, Mike’s love of anything that might lead up to a brush with “our
friends, the enemy,” was so strong he was always ready and anxious to go
on our scouting expeditions.
Anderson, the captain of our company, was a superb rider. Having spent
many years of his life on the Texas frontier, he could perform all the
tricks in the saddle so common to the cowboys of the present day, but
rarely ever seen then, such as scooping down and picking up his glove,
hat, or pistol from the ground, with his horse at full speed. The
frequent encounters his company had with the cavalry of the enemy made
him pretty well known and much sought after by them, and through the
citizens they had obtained, not only a good description of him, but also
a thorough knowledge of his dexterity as a rider.
On one occasion our scouts reported a foraging train of the enemy coming
out from Helena escorted by a squadron of cavalry. Weatherly, our first
lieutenant, was in command of our troop that day, Anderson being absent,
and as the old man was of a naturally quarrelsome disposition and never
lost an opportunity to pick a fuss or make a fight, either in or out
of the army, we were soon in the saddle and on our way to strike the
escort of the foragers. We were considerably outnumbered, but Weatherly
thought that if he would dismount part of his men, place them in ambush,
and when they opened fire on the blue-coats, charge with his mounted
men on their rear, the advantage of the surprise would about even the
thing up. So part of us were dismounted, Mike and I of the number, and
placed in a dense thicket not more than twenty paces from the road. The
Federal column soon rode in, and at the word “Fire” the thicket blazed,
and at the same time Weatherly charged, as he thought, on their rear
with his mounted men. A number of men and horses went down under our
fire and the head of the Federal column was thrown into confusion, but
only for a moment, for we had struck the Fifth Kansas, commanded by Maj.
Sam Walker, as good a body of cavalry and as brave an officer as there
was in either army. At command they wheeled and formed, fronting the
thicket, and charged in the face of our second volley. At the same time
a yell, distinctly “Yankee,” and a heavy discharge of carbines farther
down the road to our right, told us as plainly as if we had seen it, that
Weatherly had wedged himself in between the advance guard and main column
of the enemy. At this unexpected turn of affairs, with nothing but our
six-shooters to hold back such odds (we did not have time to reload our
guns), it did not take long to determine what to do. “Fall back to your
horses,” was the order, and we fell.
Mike and I were together. Partly on account of his old wound, but
mostly, I think, on account of his contentious disposition under such
circumstances, he was the poorest runner I ever saw—at least it impressed
me so at the time—and when we reached our horse-holder he was mounted,
the others all gone, and throwing the reins to us he followed in hot
haste. I was in my saddle instantly; Mike was not so fortunate. His
horse, a long, lank old bay, as thin as a fence rail, excited by the
shooting, shouting, and running, was plunging viciously around in the
brush dragging Mike, who was pawing the air with first one foot and then
the other in fruitless efforts to catch the stirrup, at the same time
keeping up a continuous string of comments upon the situation generally,
interspersed with bits of advice to me and curses at his horse, such
as: “Give’m a taste of your shooting, boy,” “Whoa, you d—d old brute of
a baste,” “Look at the blue divils how they swarm,” “What a d—d fool
old Weatherly was,” “Struck’m in the middle,” “Divil take the cavalry
service,” “Whoa, you—”
In the meantime the Federals, finding nothing in front of them, were
coming on as fast as the nature of the ground would admit, firing at
random, for the bushes were so thick they could not see ten feet ahead of
them.
Although expecting to show a clean pair of heels to the enemy, I had
instinctively drawn a fresh pistol from my holster when I mounted, and
according to Mike’s advice was using it to the best advantage I could,
at the same time anxiously watching his circus performance with the
old bay, and inwardly praying that it would come to a speedy close, or
both of us would be either killed or captured, in a half minute more. I
couldn’t leave him under the circumstances, for he had more than once
stood between me and “the other shore,” in places equally as close, and
to desert him now, would look like rank ingratitude and cowardice.
“Turn him loose, Mike, and jump up behind me, it’s our last chance,” I
yelled, and at that instant the front line of the enemy burst through the
thicket into the open woods within thirty steps of us. Bang! bang! bang!
went the carbines. “Halt! halt! surrender! surrender!” they called out. I
wheeled, to pick up Mike, if possible, and take my chances running, just
in time to see his horse lunge forward and he lying like a sack of meal
crosswise in the saddle, with one hand clutching the mane about midway
his horse’s neck. My first impression was that he had been shot, and I
was relieved to see him wiggle his leg over the blanket strapped behind
his saddle, and straighten up. Our horses were going at racing speed and
Mike was doing some wonderful riding. He was bouncing about like a ball,
neither foot in a stirrup, and he showed no partiality for any particular
place to sit. Every time his old horse would make a jump, Mike would
come down on him in a different place—behind the cantle, in the saddle,
over the pommel on his neck, then back again, up one side and down the
other—he literally rode the old bay from his ears to his tail. A fallen
tree was in front of us, both horses took the leap at the same time, and
Mike disappeared on the far side of his old “brute of a baste”—gone this
time, sure, I thought, but the next instant, bare-headed he bounced back
on top again. Our pursuers, not liking to follow us too far in the woods,
fired a parting volley of lead and curses at us and pulled up. A few
hundred yards farther on we run into our scattered squad, that had halted
and reformed.
An hour later, Weatherly having gotten the company together, we were
pegging away at the rear guard of the enemy as they leisurely fell back
into Helena, having sent their well-loaded wagons on in front. I stopped
a moment to get a drink of water at a farm house the enemy had just left.
The old man had a son in our company, and was anxious to hear from him,
and learn something of the skirmish.
“I tell you they came very near getting Captain Anderson,” he said, after
learning that his boy was all right.
“How’s that?” I asked, “Captain Anderson wasn’t in the skirmish at all.”
“Oh, yes he was,” he replied. “That Yankee captain that just left here
told me he rode right up on Anderson. Knew it was him from his riding;
never saw such devilish fine riding in all his life; said Anderson just
played along in front of him, cutting up all kinds of antics on his
horse, and he could have caught him had he not been afraid Anderson was
just trying to decoy him into another ambush.”
I knew at once that Mike’s remarkable performance had been taken for
Anderson’s skill. The story was too good to keep, and no one enjoyed it
more than Captain Anderson. When the boys run it on Mike, however, he
replied:
“It’s all right, me lads, but there’s no danger of any of you blackguards
ever being misthaken for your betthers.”
It was not long after the above episode before Mike had another
opportunity, of which he took advantage, to masquerade as his captain
on horseback. One morning a scout came in and reported a strong body of
Federal cavalry coming out from Helena, on what was known as the “middle
road” to Little Rock, on a scouting expedition; which for the benefit of
the younger generation I will say simply meant they were hunting for a
fight. I remember very distinctly I thought those Western fellows were
exceedingly quarrelsome, and as Mike said, “a meddlesome set of divils,”
in those days, and uncommonly handy with a sabre or six-shooter; but I
have met many of them since then, and together we have imbibed the juices
of the corn and rye, and even of the grape, while talking over old times,
and I have found it simply astonishing how erroneous early impressions
sometimes are.
There were two or three public roads that branched off from this “middle
road” at different points between our camp and where the Federal column
was last seen, and after sending couriers to draw in all of our pickets
and assemble the regiment for action, the Colonel ordered me to take four
or five men, go down and observe the enemy, get their strength, report
from time to time which road they were advancing on, so that he could
place his command and strike them on ground of his own choosing. Mike
went with me; he always did when there were any prospects of fun or a
fight, and while the probabilities were rather slim for either in this
case, for I was instructed to keep myself concealed and after getting the
desired information rejoin the regiment as quickly as possible, Mike took
the chances of something turning up that would give him an opportunity
to “bust a cap at the meddlesome divils,” and asked to be one of the men
to accompany me.
I was perfectly familiar with the country, and taking the little squad
started on an air line through the forest for the point where the first
road branched off, which I hoped to reach before the Federals came up, so
that I could take a position suitable for my purpose and send a man back
with the required information without being seen by them.
A half-hour’s rapid riding through the timber brought us close to the
place where the roads forked and where I intended to take my first look
at the blue-coats. The road here ran through thick woods. I knew I was
close to it, but the undergrowth, through which we were riding, was so
dense I could not see it. I also knew that if the enemy had not already
passed this point, allowing them ordinary marching time, they could not
be far off. Placing the men in line, some ten or fifteen steps apart,
so they would be less likely to attract attention, we rode slowly and
cautiously forward, feeling for the road. I took the place of lookout,
and the men were to stop or move forward according to the motion of
my hand. Mike was next to me on my right, some ten or fifteen steps
away, and while I watched for the enemy, he was to watch me, and when I
signaled him, he was to signal the next man, he the next, etc.
We had gone perhaps fifty or seventy-five yards in this way, when I heard
that dull, rumbling sound familiar to every old cavalryman, that told
me we were in close vicinity of a large body of moving horses. Peering
through the bushes in the direction of the sound, and without turning my
head towards my men, I motioned them to stop. The rumbling noise grew
louder and nearer. For a few seconds my little party were perfectly
quiet, then Mike’s horse grew restless and began to move about. Watching
intently in the direction of the approaching noise and without looking
around, I again motioned Mike to keep quiet, but it did no good. I could
hear him swearing vigorously in a low tone at the old “baste of a brute,”
but it only seemed to make the horse worse; he not only continued to
twist and turn about, but began to sneeze and stamp the ground. At that
instant I saw the advance guard of the Federal column file around a
bend in the road not two hundred yards below us. I could tell from the
direction they were coming, that we were much nearer the road than I had
supposed, and that they would pass dangerously close to where we were
standing; at the same time Mike’s horse began to lunge around, snorting,
sneezing, kicking and keeping up as much racket in the brush as a train
of army wagons, while Mike himself was swearing by note and loud enough
to be heard above it all.