FAREWELL to Jackson, sunny Jackson—that is it was sunny when the sun
shone, but as dark and dreary as can be imagined when it rained—the very
name is dear to me yet, and the memories that cluster around it are
dearer still. When I review my four months’ experience in the Sunny
South I feel that the memory of it is something to be proud of. I saw no
fighting, but there were skirmishes all around us, and many prisoners
were brought in. Some of the saddest sights I saw were prisoners being
marched through the streets in the rain, wading through the mud, the
water dripping from their faded butternut suits. Many days we heard
heavy cannonading which indicated that battles were being fought in
close proximity.
The time came when we must return to our home in the North. My father
having recovered sufficiently to rejoin his regiment at Bolivar, left
some days before we did. On the last Sunday of our stay a young soldier
by the name of Frank Moss, whose home was in Aberdeen, Ohio, whither we
were going, called on my mother and sent messages of love by her to his
mother.
One morning in February we bade farewell to the scenes that had become
so dear to us, and turned our faces homeward. On the train with us was a
wounded officer. His hurt was in the leg, and he was on a cot in one
corner of the car. His wound was very painful, and as the train jolted
he seemed to suffer much and was very cross and irritable. His wife was
with him. When we reached the bridge which had been burned a few weeks
before, we had to stop and transfer mail and passengers. We crossed the
Obion on the ties of the new and unfinished bridge. A soldier carried
me, another carried “Little Rosebud,” while still another led my mother.
The bridge was very high, and they told us the water was many feet deep
at this point. A few days previous the man who led my mother had told a
lady while crossing, just how deep it was (eighty feet) and she became
so faint and frightened at the knowledge, that he found it almost
impossible to convey her safely over. While crossing I asked the man who
carried me, in a whisper, how much he thought I weighed. “Oh, about a
ton,” was his laughing reply, and the next time I spoke after clearing
the bridge, my voice had returned and I spoke aloud for the first time
since my recovery from the measles.
When we arrived at Columbus we found there would be no boat until the
next day. We remained all night at the hotel, trying in vain to sleep on
a hard, relentless bed. The boat came in next day, but the wind was
blowing a gale, and the Captain refused to go further. The boat was a
small, box-like affair, called the Rob Roy, top-heavy and in danger of
capsizing in a high wind. All day we remained at the hotel, and all day
the boat remained tied up at the landing. I read Ruth Hall within while
the wind raged without, and the huge waves washed the shore. At
nightfall the captain sent word to the hotel for the passengers to come
on board, and should the wind lull through the night, he would start.
But the wind didn’t lull, and we remained tied up all night.
I lay on a narrow wooden bench with our carpet bag for a pillow, while
my poor, tired mother passed another sleepless night sitting on a hard,
uncomfortable chair, with the baby in her arms. All the large boats had
gone north, and the Rob Roy was the only one plying between Columbus and
Cairo. It had no conveniences whatever, neither ladies’ cabin nor
staterooms, and no facilities for cooking and eating. How well I
remember that comfortless night, how one of the boat’s crew dropped a
heavy wooden bucket of water on the bare floor, making a terrific crash.
I thought the boiler had burst, and we were on our way to the bottom.
Then anon, the blaze of the lamp, hung high on the side of the little
square cabin, shot out at the top of the dingy chimney, and I sat up on
my bench bed and screamed out, “Take it down, take it down.”
Morning dawned at last, calm and clear, and we were soon plowing the
yellow Mississippi, with the dark Missouri forests on our right. As we
neared Cairo my mother called me on deck to view the “meeting of the
waters.” To me, as I recall it now, it resembled a bias seam running
across from shore to shore. At Cairo my mother debated long whether to
continue the homeward journey by river or rail, having a presentiment of
an accident in either case, but finally decided in favor of the latter.
We had nothing to eat since our lunch on the Rob Roy, brought from the
hotel, until we reached Centralia, Ill. Just after nightfall the train
stopped in front of an eating house, my mother called for coffee and
lunch, which were handed through the car window. We ate and drank
hurriedly, and even then the train was moving as the empty dishes were
handed back to the waiter, and we settled down for a night’s steady
traveling.
Throughout this journey there had always been some one to arrange a seat
for my comfort, and this part of it was no exception to the rule. I was
soon sound asleep and knew no more until rudely awakened by a loud
crash, and by being thrown violently to the floor. My mother was thrown
forward on her knees, while the baby struck the seat in front. The
accident had happened. Consternation and excitement prevailed, but it
was soon learned that the track had been torn up and our train wrecked.
It was 4 o’clock in the morning, but was yet quite dark. Examination by
the light of lanterns showed that the engine, baggage, mail and express
cars had plunged down an embankment 40 feet deep. Our car became
uncoupled from the one in front, which was all that saved it from a like
fate. Even then it was so tilted toward the edge of the precipice that
it was with difficulty we could get out.
We sat on a log and waited for dawn and the righting up of our car. The
engine caught fire and burned up. The engineer was killed outright, and
the fireman so badly hurt that he died a few days later. “Little
Rosebud” came home with blood on her dress that dripped from his wounds
as he was carried through our car. We were in Indiana when the accident
happened, and it was supposed to have been the work of “copperheads” or
rebel sympathizers. We were about seventy-five miles from Cincinnati,
and four miles from the nearest station, to which the conductor walked
and telegraphed to the city for help. We sat for hours in the coach with
nothing to eat. The train men, with bandaged heads, and arms in slings,
passed in and out rehearsing the accident and trying to cheer us as best
they could. Late in the afternoon an engine came out from the city, and
we were soon speeding along, getting hungrier each mile.
There was a gentleman on the train who was very kind to us. He, too, had
been south, speculating in cotton and was now returning to his family in
Cincinnati. He tried at every station where we stopped to get something
for us to eat, but strangely enough, nothing could be obtained, not even
a cup of coffee, which my mother so much needed, she being nearly
exhausted from loss of sleep and lack of food. The gentleman at last
secured some small cakes of maple sugar, some of which he gave to me,
keeping the others for his two little girls, whose home, he said, was at
the Burnett House, and who had never even heard of maple sugar. He
laughingly told me to read the signs on the restaurants as we passed,
and try to think I was having something good to eat.
As we rolled into the great city, the lights were gleaming everywhere,
and the newsboys were crying the accident on the streets. We went
immediately to the Henrie House. It was Saturday evening, and we feared
we would have to stay until Monday, but were informed by the clerk that
the steamer Marmora would start in a very few moments. There was no time
for supper, and we hurried down to the boat. A lunch was hastily
prepared for us, of which we partook sparingly, and at the regular
supper we did ample justice to the meal. We traveled all night without
knowing it, so soundly did we sleep, and on Sunday morning, February 22,
1863, we walked up the snow-clad banks of the Ohio, shivering with the
cold, and wishing ourselves back in the sunny clime of the beautiful
Southland.