at the intrenched camp at Randolph’s Point, sixty miles above Memphis,
by which it is intended to destroy any flotilla coming down the river
from Cairo, and to oppose any force coming by land to cover its flank,
and clear the left bank of the Mississippi. The Ingomar is lying under
the rugged bank, or bluff, about 150 feet high, which recedes in rugged
tumuli and watercourses filled with brushwood from the margin of the
river, some half mile up and down the stream at this point, and
Brigadier-General Pillow is still riding round his well-beloved
earthworks and his quaint battalions, while I, anxious to make the most
of my time now that I am fairly on the run for my base of operations,
have come on board, and am now writing in the cabin, a long-roofed room,
with berths on each side, which runs from stem to stern of the American
boats over the main deck. This saloon presents a curious scene. Over the
bow, at one side, there is an office for the sale of tickets, now
destitute of business, for the Ingomar belongs to the State of
Tennessee; at the other side is a bar, where thirsty souls, who have
hastened on board from the camp for a julep, a smash, or a cocktail,
learn with disgust that the only article to be had is fine Mississippi
water with ice in it. Lying on the deck in all attitudes are numbers of
men asleep, whose plumed felt hats are the only indications that they
are soldiers, except in the rare case of those who have rude uniforms,
and buttons and stripes of colored cloth on the legs of their
pantaloons. A sentry is sitting on a chair smoking a cigar. He is on
guard over the after part of the deck, called the ladies’ saloon, and
sacred to the General and his staff and attendants. He is a tall,
good-looking young fellow, in a gray flannel shirt, a black wide-awake,
gray trowsers, fastened by a belt, on which is a brass buckle inscribed
“U. S.” His rifle is an Enfield, and the bayonet-sheath is fastened to
the belt by a thong of leather. That youthful patriot is intent on the
ups and downs of fortune as exemplified in the pleasing game of euchre,
or euker, which is exercising the faculties of several of his comrades,
who, in their shirt-sleeves, are employing the finest faculties of their
nature in that national institution; but he is not indifferent to his
duties, and he forbids your correspondent’s entrance until he has
explained what he wants, and who he is, and the second is more easy to
do than the first. The sentry tells his captain, who is an euchreist,
that “It’s all right,” and resumes his seat and his cigar, and the work
goes bravely on. Indeed, it went on last night at the same table, which
is within a few yards of the General’s chair; and now that I have got a
scrap of paper and a moment of quiet, let me say what I have to say of
this position, and of what I saw--pleasant things they would be to the
Federalist General up at Cairo, if he could hear them in time, unless he
is as little prepared as his antagonist. On looking out of my cabin this
morning, I saw the high and rugged bluff of which I have spoken on the
left bank of the river. A few ridge-poled tents, pitched under the shade
of some trees, on a small spur of the slope, was the only indication
immediately visible of a martial character. But a close inspection in
front enabled me to detect two earthworks mounted with guns, on the side
of the bank, considerably higher than the river, and three heavy guns,
possibly 42-pounders, lay in the dust close to the landing-place, with
very rude carriages and bullock-poles to carry them to the batteries. A
few men, ten or twelve in number, were digging at an encampment on the
face of the slope. Others were lounging about the beach, and others,
under the same infatuation as that which makes little boys disport in
the Thames under the notion that they are washing themselves, were
bathing in the Mississippi. A dusty cart track wound up to the brow of
the bluff, and there disappeared. Some carts toiled up and down between
the boat and the crest of the hill. We went on shore. There was no
ostentation of any kind about the reception of the General and his
staff. A few horses were waiting impatiently in the sun, for the flies
will have their way, and heavy men are not so unbearable as small
mosquitoes. With a cloud of colonels--one late United Statesman, who was
readily distinguishable by his air from the volunteers--the General
proceded to visit his batteries and his men. The first work inspected
was a plain parapet of earth, placed some fifty feet above the river,
and protected very slightly by two small flanking parapets. Six guns,
32-pounders, and howitzers of an old pattern were mounted _en barbette_,
without any traverses whatever. The carriages rested on rough platforms,
and the wheels ran on a traversing semicircle of plank, as the iron
rails were not yet ready. The gunners, a plain looking body of men, very
like railway laborers and mechanics without uniform, were engaged at
drill. It was neither quick nor good work--about equal to the average of
a squad after a couple of days’ exercise; but the men worked earnestly,
and I have no doubt, if the Federalists give them time, they will prove
artillerymen in the end. The General ordered practice to be made with
round shot. After some delay, a kind of hybrid ship’s carronade was
loaded. The target was a tree, about two thousand five hundred yards
distant, I was told. It appeared to me about one thousand seven hundred
yards off. Every one was desirous of seeing the shot; but we were at the
wrong side for the wind, and I ventured to say so. However, the General
thought and said otherwise. The word “Fire!” was given. Alas? the
friction-tube would not explode. It was one of a new sort, which the
Tennesseeans are trying their ’prentice hand at. A second ball answered
better. The gun went off, but where the ball went to no one could say,
as the smoke came into our eyes. The party moved to windward, and, after
another fuse had missed, the gun was again discharged at some five
degrees elevation, and the shot fell in good line, two hundred yards
short of the target, and did not ricochet. Gun No. 2 was then
discharged, and off went the ball, at no particular mark, down the
river; but if it did go off, so did the gun also, for it gave a frantic
leap and jumped with the carriage off the platform; nor was this
wonderful, for it was an old-fashioned chamber carronade or howitzer,
which had been loaded with a full charge, and solid shot enough to make
it burst with indignation. Turning from this battery, we visited another
nearer the water, with four guns (32-pounders), which were well placed
to sweep the channel with greater chance of ricochet; and higher on the
bank, toward a high peak commanding the Mississippi, here about seven
hundred yards broad, and a small confluent which runs into it, was
another battery of two guns, with a very great command, but only fit for
shell, as the fire must be plunging. All these batteries were very ill
constructed, and in only one was the magazine under decent cover. In the
first it was in rear of the battery, up the hill behind it. The parapets
were of sand or soft earth, unprovided with merlons. The last had a few
sand-bags between the guns. Riding up a steep road, we came to the camps
of the men on the wooded and undulating plateau over the river, which is
broken by water-courses into ravines covered with brushwood and forest
trees. For five weeks the Tennessee troops under General Pillow, who is
at the head of the forces of the State, have been working at a series of
curious intrenchments which are supposed to represent an intrenched
camp, and which look like an assemblage of mud beaver dams. In a word,
they are so complicated that they would prove exceedingly troublesome to
the troops engaged in their defence, and it would require very steady,
experienced regulars to man them so as to give proper support to each
other. The maze of breastworks, of flanking parapets, of parapets for
field-pieces, is overdone. Several of them might prove useful to an
attacking force. In some places the wood was cut down in front, so as to
form a formidable natural abattis; but generally here, as in the
batteries below, timber and brushwood were left uncut up to easy musket
shot of the works, so as to screen an advance of riflemen, and to expose
the defending force to considerable annoyance. In small camps of fifteen
or twenty tents each the Tennessee troops were scattered, for health
sake, over the plateau, and on the level ground a few companies were
engaged at drill. The men were dressed and looked like laboring
people--small farmers, mechanics, with some small, undersized lads. The
majority were in their shirt sleeves, and the awkwardness with which
they handled their arms showed that, however good they might be as
shots, they were by no means proficients in manual exercise. Indeed,
they could not be, as they have been only five weeks in the service of
the State called out in anticipation of the Secession vote, and since
then they have been employed by General Pillow on his fortifications.
They have complained more than once of their hard work, particularly
when it was accompanied by hard fare, and one end of General Pillow’s
visit, was to inform them that they would soon be relieved from their
labors by negroes and hired laborers. Their tents, small ridge-poles,
are very bad, but suited, perhaps, to the transport. Each contains six
men. I could get no accurate account of their rations even from the
Quartermaster-General, and Commissary-General there was none present;
but I was told that they had “a sufficiency--from ¾ lb. to 1¼ lb. of
meat, of bread, of sugar, coffee, and rice, daily.” Neither spirits nor
tobacco is served out to these terrible chewers and not unaccomplished
drinkers. Their pay “will be” the same as in the United States Army or
the Confederate States Army--probably paid in the circulating medium of
the latter. Seven or eight hundred men were formed in line for
inspection. There were few of the soldiers in any kind of uniform, and
such uniforms as I saw were in very bad taste, and consisted of gaudy
facings and stripes on very strange garments. They were armed with
old-pattern percussion muskets, and their ammunition pouches were of
diverse sorts. Shoes often bad, knapsacks scarce, head-pieces of every
kind of shape--badges worked on the front or sides, tinsel in much
request. Every man had a tin water-flask and a blanket. The General
addressed the men, who were in line two deep (many of them unmistakably
Irishmen), and said what Generals usually say on such
occasions--compliments for the past, encouragement for the future. “When
the hour of danger comes I will be with you.” They did not seem to care
much whether he was or not; and, indeed, General Pillow, in a round hat,
dusty black frock coat, and ordinary “unstriped” trowsers, did not look
like one who could give any great material accession to the physical
means of resistance, although he is a very energetic man. The
Major-General, in fact, is an attorney-at-law, or has been so, and was
partner with Mr. Polk, who, probably from some of the reasons which
determine the actions of partners to each other, sent Mr. Pillow to the
Mexican war, where he nearly lost him, owing to severe wounds received
in action. The General has made his entrenchments as if he were framing
an indictment. There is not a flaw for an enemy to get through, but he
has bound up his own men in inexorable lines also. At one of the works a
proof of the freedom of “citizen soldiery” was afforded in a little
hilarity on the part of one of the privates. The men had lined the
parapet, and had listened to the pleasant assurances of their commander,
that they would knock off the shovel and the hoe very soon, and be
replaced by the eternal gentlemen of color. “Three cheers for General
Pillow” were called for, and were responded to by the whooping and
screeching sounds that pass muster in this part of the world for cheers.
As they ended, a stentorian voice shouted out, “Who cares for General
Pillow?” and, as no one answered, it might be unfairly inferred that
gallant officer was not the object of the favor or solicitude of his
troops; probably a temporary unpopularity connected with the hard work,
found expression in the daring question.
Randolph’s Point is, no doubt, a very strong position. The edges of the
plateau command the rear of the batteries below; the ravines in the
bluff would give cover to a large force of riflemen, who could render
the batteries untenable if taken from the river face, unless the camp in
their rear on the top of the plateau was carried. Great loss of life,
and probable failure, would result from any attack on the works from the
river merely. But a flotilla might get past the guns without any serious
loss in the present state of their service and equipment; and there is
nothing I saw to prevent the landing of a force on the banks of the
river, which, with a combined action on the part of an adequate force of
gunboats, could carry the position. As the river falls the round-shot
fire from the guns will be even less effective. The General is providing
water for the camps by means of large cisterns dug in the ground, which
will be filled with water from the river by steam power. The officers of
the army of Tennessee with whom I spoke were plain, farmerly planters,
merchants, and lawyers; and the heads of the department were in no
respect better than their inferiors by reason of any military
acquirements, but were shrewd, energetic, common-sense men. The officer
in command of the works, however, understood his business, apparently,
and was well supported by the artillery officer. There were, I was told,
eight pieces of field artillery disposable for the defence of the camp.
Having returned to the steamer, the party proceeded up the river to
another small camp in defence of a battery of four guns, or rather of a
small parallelogram of soft sand covering a man a little higher than the
knee, with four guns mounted in it on the river face. No communication
exists through the woods between the two camps, which must be six or
seven miles apart. The force stationed here was composed principally of
gentlemen. They were all in uniform. A detachment worked one of the
guns, which the General wished to see fired with round shot. In five or
six minutes after the order was given the gun was loaded, and the word
given, “Fire.” The gunner pulled the lanyard hard, but the tube did not
explode. Another was tried. A strong jerk pulled it out bent and
incombustible. A third was inserted, which came out broken. The fourth
time was the charm, and the ball was projected about 60 yards to the
right, and 100 yards short of the mark--a stump, some 1,200 yards
distant, in the river. It must be remembered that there are no disparts,
tangents, or elevating screws to the guns; the officer was obliged to
lay it by the eye with a plain chock of wood. The General explained that
the friction tubes were the results of an experiment he was making to
manufacture them; but I agreed with one of the officers, who muttered in
my ear, “The old linstock and portfire are a darned deal better.” There
were no shells, I could see, in the battery, and, on inquiry, I learned
the fuses were made of wood at Memphis, and were not considered by the
officers at all trustworthy. Powder is so scarce that all salutes are
inderdicted, except to the Governor of the State. In the two camps there
were, I was informed, about 4,000 men. My eyesight, so far as I went,
confirmed me of the existence of some 1,800, but I did not visit all the
outlying tents. On landing the band had played “God Save the Queen” and
“Dixie’s Land;" on returning we had the “Marseillaise” and the national
anthem of the Southern Confederation; and, by way of parenthesis, it may
be added, if you do not already know the fact, that “Dixie’s Land” is a
synonym for Heaven. It appears that there was once a good planter, named
“Dixie,” who died at some period unknown, to the intense grief of his
animated property. They found expression for their sorrow in song, and
consoled themselves by clamoring in verse for their removal to the land
to which Dixie had departed, and where probably the revered spirit would
be greatly surprised to find himself in their company. Whether they were
ill-treated after he died, and thus had reason to deplore his removal,
or merely desired Heaven in the abstract, nothing known enables me to
assert. But Dixie’s Land is now generally taken to mean the Seceded
States, where Mr. Dixie certainly is not at this present writing. The
song and air are the composition of the organized African Association
for the advancement of music and their own profit, which sings in New
York, and it may be as well to add, that in all my tour in the South I
heard little melody from lips black or white, and only once heard
negroes singing in the fields.
Several sick men were put on board the steamer, and were laid on
mattresses on deck. I spoke to them, and found they were nearly all
suffering from diarrhœa, and that they had no medical attendance in
camp. All the doctors went to fight, and the Medical Service of the
Tennessee troops is very defective. As I was going down the river I had
some interesting conversation with General Clark, who commands about
5,000 troops of the Confederate States, at present quartered in two
camps at Tennessee on these points. He told me the Commissariat and the
Medical Service had given him great annoyance, and confesses some
desertions and courts-martial had occurred. Guard-mounting and its
accessory duties were performed in a most slovenly manner, and the
German troops from the Southern parts were particularly disorderly. It
was late in the afternoon when I reached Memphis. I may mention,
_obiter_, that the captain of the steamer, talking of arms, gave me a
notion of the sense of security he felt on board his vessel. From under
his pillow he pulled one of his two Derringer pistols, and out of his
clothes-press he produced a long heavy rifle and a double gun, which
was, he said, capital with ball and buckshot.
* * * * *
JUNE 19.--Up at 3 o’clock, A. M., to get ready for the train at 5, which
will take me out of Dixie’s Land to Cairo. If the owners of the old
hostelries in the Egyptian city were at all like their Tennesseean
fellow craftsmen in the upstart institution which takes its name, I
wonder how Herodotus managed to pay his way. My sable attendant quite
entered into our feelings, and was rewarded accordingly. At 5 A. M.,
covered with dust, contracted in a drive through the streets which seem
“paved with waves of mud,” to use the phrase of a Hibernian gentlemen
connected with the baggage department of the omnibus, “only the mud was
all dust,” to use my own, I started in the cars along with some
Confederate officers and several bottles of whiskey, which at that early
hour was considered by my unknown companions as a highly efficient
prophylactic against the morning dews; but it appeared that these dews
are of such a deadly character that, in order to guard against their
effects, one must become dead drunk. The same remedy, I am assured, is
sovereign against rattlesnake bites. I can assure the friends of these
gentlemen that they were amply fortified against any amount of dew or of
rattlesnake poison before they got to the end of their whiskey, so great
was the supply. By the Memphis papers it seems as if the institution of
blood prevailed there as in New Orleans, for I read in my paper as I
went along of two murders and one shooting as the incidents of the
previous day, contributed by “the local.” To contrast with this low
state of social existence, there must be a high condition of moral
feeling, for the journal I was reading contained a very elaborate
article to show the wickedness of any one paying his debts, and of any
State acknowledging its liabilities, which would constitute an
invaluable _vade mecum_ for Basinghall Street. At Humboldt, there was
what was called a change of cars--a process that all the philosophy of
the Baron could not have enabled him to endure without some loss of
temper, for there was a whole Kosmos of Southern patriotism assembled at
the station, burning with the fires of Liberty, and bent on going to the
camp at Union City, forty-six miles away, where the Confederate forces
of Tennessee, aided by Mississippi regiments, are out under the
greenwood tree. Their force was irresistible, particularly as there were
numbers of relentless citizenesses--what the American papers call “quite
a crowd”--as the advanced guard of the invading army. While the original
occupants were being compressed or expelled by crinoline--that
all-absorbing, defensive, and aggressive article of feminine war reigns
here in wide-spread, iron-bound circles--I took refuge on the platform,
where I made, in an involuntary way, a good many acquaintances in this
sort: “Sir, my name is Jones--Judge Jones of Pumpkin County. I am happy
to know you, Sir.” We shake hands affectionately. “Colonel,” (Jones
_loquitur_) “allow me to introduce you to my friend Mr. Scribble!
Colonel Maggs, Mr. Scribble.” The Colonel shakes hands, and immediately
darts off to a circle of his friends, whom he introduces, and they each
introduce some one else to me, and, finally, I am introduced to the
engine-driver, who is really an acquaintance of value, for he is good
enough to give me a seat on his engine, and the bell tolls, the
steam-trumpet bellows, and we move from the station an hour behind time,
and with twice the number of passengers the cars were meant to contain.
Our engineer did his best to overcome his difficulties, and we rushed
rapidly, if not steadily, through a wilderness of forest and tangled
brakes, through which the rail, without the smallest justification,
performed curves and twists, indicative of a desire on the part of the
engineer to consume the greatest amount of rail on the shortest extent
of line. My companion was a very intelligent Southern gentlemen,
formerly editor of a newspaper. We talked of the crime of the country,
of the brutal shootings and stabbings which disgraced it. He admitted
their existence with regret, but he could advise and suggest no remedy.
“The rowdies have rushed in upon us, so that we can’t master them.” “Is
the law powerless?” “Well, Sir, you see these men got hold of those who
should administer the law, or they are too powerful or too reckless to
be kept down.” “That is a reign of terror--of mob-ruffianism!” “It don’t
hurt respectable people much, but I agree with you it must be put down.?”
“When--how?” “Well, Sir, when things are settled we’ll just take the law
into our own hands. Not a man shall have a vote unless he’s American
born, and by degrees we’ll get rid of these men who disgrace us.?” “Are
not many of your regiments composed of Germans and Irish--of foreigners,
in fact?” “Yes, Sir.?” I did not suggest to him the thought which rose in
my mind, that these gentlemen, if successful, would be very little
inclined to abandon their rights while they had arms in their hands, but
it occurred to me as well that this would be rather a poor reward for
the men who were engaged in establishing the Southern Confederacy. The
attempt may fail, but assuredly I have heard it expressed too often to
doubt that there is a determination on the part of the leaders in the
movement to take away the suffrage from the men whom they do not scruple
to employ in fighting their battles. If they cut the throats of the
enemy they will stifle their own sweet voices at the same time, or soon
afterward--a capital recompense to their emigrant soldiers!
The portion of Tennessee traversed by the railroad is not very
attractive, for it is nearly uncleared. In the sparse clearings were
fields of Indian corn, growing amid blackened stumps of trees and rude
log shanties, and the white population which looked out on us was poorly
housed, at least, if not badly clad. At last we reached Corinth. It
would have been scarcely recognizable by Mummius--even if he had ruined
his old handiwork over again. This proudly-named spot consisted
apparently of a grog-shop in wood, and three shanties of a similar
material, with out-offices to match, and the Acro-Corinth was a grocery
store, of which the proprietors had no doubt gone to the wars, as it was
shut up, and their names were suspiciously Milesian. But, if Corinth was
not imposing, Troy, which we reached after a long run through a forest
of virgin timber, was still simpler in architecture and general design.
It was too new for “_Troja fuit_,” and the general “fixins” would
scarcely authorize one to say to hope _Troja fuerit_.
The Dardanian Towers were represented by a timber-house, and Helen the
Second--whom we may take on this occasion to have been simulated by an
old lady smoking a pipe, whom I saw in the verandah--could have set them
on fire much more readily than did her interesting prototype ignite the
City of Priam. The rest of the place and of the inhabitants, as I saw it
and them, might be considered as an agglomerate of three or four sheds,
a few log huts, a saw-mill, and some twenty negroes sitting on a log and
looking at the train. From Troy the road led to a cypress swamp, over
which the engines bustled, rattled, tumbled, and hopped at a perilous
rate along a high trestlework, and at last we came to “Union City,”
which seemed to be formed by great aggregate meetings of discontented
shavings which had been whiled into heaps out of the forest hard by. But
here was the camp of the Confederates, which so many of our
fellow-passengers were coming out into the wilderness to see. Their
white tents and plank huts gleamed through the green of oak and elm, and
hundreds of men came out to the platform to greet their friends, and to
inquire for baskets, boxes, and hampers, which put me in mind of the
Quartermaster’s store at Balaklava. We have all heard of the unhappy
medical officer who exhausted his resources to get up a large chest from
that store to the camp, and who on opening it, in the hope of finding
inside the articles he was most in need of, discovered that it contained
an elegant assortment of wooden legs; but he could not have been so much
disgusted as a youthful warrior here who was handed a wicker-covered jar
from the luggage van, which he “tapped” on the spot, expecting to find
it full of Bourbon whiskey, or something equally good. He raised the
ponderous vessel aloft, and took a long pull, to the envy of his
comrades, and then spirting out the fluid, with a hideous face,
exclaimed, “D----, &c. Why, if the old woman has not sent me sirup!”
Evidently no joke, for the crowd around him never laughed and gravely
dispersed.