I had been an undoubting Union boy. Neither then nor afterward could I
be fairly classified as a Secessionist. Circumstance rather than
conviction or predilection threw me into the Confederate service, and,
being in, I went through with it.
The secession leaders I held in distrust; especially Yancey, Mason,
Slidell, Benjamin and Iverson, Jefferson Davis and Isham G. Harris were
not favorites of mine. Later along I came into familiar association
with most of them, and relations were established which may be
described as confidential and affectionate. Lamar and I were brought
together oddly enough in 1869 by Carl Schurz, and thenceforward we were
the most devoted friends. Harris and I fell together in 1862 in the
field, first with Forrest and later with Johnston and Hood, and we
remained as brothers to the end, when he closed a great career in the
upper house of Congress, and by Republican votes, though he was a
Democrat, as president of the Senate.
He continued in the Governorship of Tennessee through the war. He at no
time lost touch with the Tennessee troops, and though not always in the
field, never missed a forward movement. In the early spring of 1864,
just before the famous Johnston-Sherman campaign opened, General
Johnston asked him to go around among the boys and “stir ’em up a bit.”
The Governor invited me to ride with him. Together we visited every
sector in the army. Threading the woods of North Georgia on this round,
if I heard it once I heard it fifty times shouted from a distant
clearing: “Here comes Gov-ner Harris, fellows; g’wine to be a fight.”
His appearance at the front had always preceded and been long ago taken
as a signal for battle.
[Illustration: John Bell of Tennessee—In 1860 Presidential Candidate
“Union Party”—“Bell and Everett” Ticket]
My being a Washington correspondent of the Philadelphia Press and
having lived since childhood at Willard’s Hotel, where the Camerons
also lived, will furnish the key to my becoming an actual and active
rebel. A few days after the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, Colonel Forney
came to my quarters and, having passed the time of day, said: “The
Secretary of War wishes you to be at the department to-morrow morning
as near nine o’clock as you can make it.”
“What does he want, Colonel Forney?” I asked.
“He is going to offer you the position of private secretary to the
Secretary of War, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and I am very
desirous that you accept it.”
He went away leaving me rather upset. I did not sleep very soundly that
night. “So,” I argued to myself, “it has come to this, that Forney and
Cameron, lifelong enemies, have made friends and are going to rob the
Government—one clerk of the House, the other Secretary of War—and I, a
mutual choice, am to be the confidential middle man.” I still had a
home in Tennessee and I rose from my bed, resolved to go there.
I did not keep the proposed appointment for next day. As soon as I
could make arrangements I quitted Washington and went to Tennessee,
still unchanged in my preconceptions. I may add, since they were
verified by events, that I have not modified them from that day to
this.
I could not wholly believe with either extreme. I had perpetrated no
wrong, but in my small way had done my best for the Union and against
secession. I would go back to my books and my literary ambitions and
let the storm blow over. It could not last very long; the odds against
the South were too great. Vain hope! As well expect a chip on the
surface of the ocean to lie quiet as a lad of twenty-one in those days
to keep out of one or the other camp. On reaching home I found myself
alone. The boys were all gone to the front. The girls were—well, they
were all crazy. My native country was about to be invaded. Propinquity.
Sympathy. So, casting opinions to the winds in I went on feeling. And
that is how I became a rebel, a case of “first endure and then
embrace,” because I soon got to be a pretty good rebel and went the
limit, changing my coat as it were, though not my better judgment, for
with a gray jacket on my back and ready to do or die, I retained my
belief that secession was treason, that disunion was the height of
folly and that the South was bound to go down in the unequal strife.
I think now, as an academic proposition, that, in the doctrine of
secession, the secession leaders had a debatable, if not a logical
case; but I also think that if the Gulf States had been allowed to go
out by tacit consent they would very soon have been back again seeking
readmission to the Union.
Man proposes and God disposes. The ways of Deity to man are indeed past
finding out. Why, the long and dreadful struggle of a kindred people,
the awful bloodshed and havoc of four weary years, leaving us at the
close measurably where we were at the beginning, is one of the
mysteries which should prove to us that there is a world hereafter,
since no great creative principle could produce one with so dire, with
so short a span and nothing beyond.