[Illustration: SMOKING THE PIPE OF PEACE.]
TENTING ON THE PLAINS
OR
GENERAL CUSTER IN KANSAS AND TEXAS
BY
ELIZABETH B. CUSTER
AUTHOR OF "FOLLOWING THE GUIDON"
"BOOTS AND SADDLES" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1895
OTHER WORKS BY MRS. CUSTER.
"BOOTS AND SADDLES"; or, Life in Dakota with General
Custer. Portrait and Map.
FOLLOWING THE GUIDON. Illustrated.
_Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 50 each._
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
[Illustration: Pointing hand]_Either of the above works will be sent by
mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or
Mexico, on receipt of the price._
Copyright, 1887, by CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO.
_All rights reserved._
TO HIM
WHOSE BRAVE AND BLITHE ENDURANCE
MADE THOSE WHO FOLLOWED
HIM FORGET,
IN HIS SUNSHINY PRESENCE,
HALF THE HARDSHIP AND THE DANGER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
GOOD-BY TO THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC 17
CHAPTER II
NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE WAR 41
CHAPTER III
A MILITARY EXECUTION 59
CHAPTER IV
MARCHES THROUGH PINE FORESTS 83
CHAPTER V
OUT OF THE WILDERNESS 95
CHAPTER VI
A TEXAS NORTHER 113
CHAPTER VII
LIFE IN A TEXAS TOWN 132
CHAPTER VIII
LETTERS HOME 150
CHAPTER IX
DISTURBED CONDITION OF TEXAS 165
CHAPTER X
GENERAL CUSTER PARTS WITH HIS STAFF AT CAIRO AND DETROIT 185
CHAPTER XI
ORDERS TO REPORT AT FORT RILEY, KANSAS 205
CHAPTER XII
WESTWARD HO!--FIGHTING DISSIPATION IN THE SEVENTH
CAVALRY--GENERAL CUSTER'S TEMPTATIONS 222
CHAPTER XIII
A MEDLEY OF OFFICERS AND MEN 256
CHAPTER XIV
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 279
CHAPTER XV
A PRAIRIE FIRE 310
CHAPTER XVI
SACRIFICES AND SELF-DENIAL OF PIONEER DUTY--CAPTAIN
ROBBINS AND COLONEL COOK ATTACKED, AND FIGHT
FOR THREE HOURS 327
CHAPTER XVII
A FLOOD AT FORT HAYS 356
CHAPTER XVIII
ORDERED BACK TO FORT HARKER 373
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIRST FIGHT OF THE SEVENTH CAVALRY 387
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Smoking the Pipe of Peace FRONTISPIECE
Texas in 1866 and in 1886 19
Eliza Cooking Under Fire 28
A Mule Lunching from a Pillow 78
General Custer as a Cadet 87
"O Golly! what am dat?" 108
Measuring an Alligator 125
General Custer at the Close of the War--Aged 25 168
"Stand there, cowards, will you, and see an old man
robbed?" 188
General Custer with his Horse Vic, Stag Hounds and
Deer Hounds 212
Kansas in 1866 and Kansas To-day 221
Conestoga Wagon, or Prairie-Schooner 223
The Officer's Dress--A New-comer for a Call 239
A Suspended Equestrienne 246
General Custer at his Desk in his Library 259
Gun-stand in General Custer's Library 287
Trophies of the Chase in General Custer's Library 297
Whipping Horses to Keep them from Freezing 316
A Match Buffalo Hunt 341
Gathering and Counting the Tongues 343
Supper Given by the Vanquished to the Victors of
the Match Buffalo Hunt 345
A Buffalo Undecided as to an Attack on General Custer 368
A Buffalo at Bay 377
The Addled Letter-Carrier 385
Negroes Form their own Picket-line 389
An Attack on a Stage-coach 392
TENTING ON THE PLAINS.
CHAPTER I.
GOOD-BY TO THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.
GENERAL CUSTER was given scant time, after the last gun of the war was
fired, to realize the blessings of peace. While others hastened to
discard the well-worn uniforms, and don again the dress of civilians,
hurrying to the cars, and groaning over the slowness of the fast-flying
trains that bore them to their homes, my husband was almost breathlessly
preparing for a long journey to Texas. He did not even see the last of
that grand review of the 23d and 24th of May, 1865. On the first day he
was permitted to doff his hat and bow low, as he proudly led that superb
body of men, the Third Division of Cavalry, in front of the grand stand,
where sat the "powers that be." Along the line of the division, each
soldier straightened himself in the saddle, and felt the proud blood
fill his veins, as he realized that he was one of those who, in six
months, had taken 111 of the enemy's guns, sixty-five battle-flags, and
upward of 10,000 prisoners of war, while they had never lost a flag, or
failed to capture a gun for which they fought.
In the afternoon of that memorable day General Custer and his staff rode
to the outskirts of Washington, where his beloved Third Cavalry Division
had encamped after returning from taking part in the review. The trumpet
was sounded, and the call brought these war-worn veterans out once
more, not for a charge, not for duty, but to say that word which we,
who have been compelled to live in its mournful sound so many years,
dread even to write. Down the line rode their yellow-haired "boy
general," waving his hat, but setting his teeth and trying to hold with
iron nerve the quivering muscles of his speaking face; keeping his eyes
wide open, that the moisture dimming their vision might not gather and
fall. Cheer after cheer rose on that soft spring air. Some enthusiastic
voice started up afresh, before the hurrahs were done, "A tiger for old
Curley!" Off came the hats again, and up went hundreds of arms, waving
the good-by and wafting innumerable blessings after the man who was
sending them home in a blaze of glory, with a record of which they might
boast around their firesides. I began to realize, as I watched this sad
parting, the truth of what the General had been telling me; he held that
no friendship was like that cemented by mutual danger on the
battle-field.
The soldiers, accustomed to suppression through strict military
discipline, now vehemently expressed their feelings; and though it
gladdened the General's heart, it was still the hardest sort of work to
endure it all without show of emotion. As he rode up to where I was
waiting, he could not, dared not, trust himself to speak to me. To those
intrepid men he was indebted for his success. Their unfailing trust in
his judgment, their willingness to follow where he led--ah! he knew well
that one looks upon such men but once in a lifetime. Some of the
soldiers called out for the General's wife. The staff urged me to ride
forward to the troops, as it was but a little thing thus to respond to
their good-by. I tried to do so, but after a few steps, I begged those
beside whom I rode to take me back to where we had been standing. I was
too overcome, from having seen the suffering on my husband's face, to
endure any more sorrow.
[Illustration: TEXAS IN 1866 AND IN 1886.]
As the officers gathered about the General and wrung his hand in
parting, to my surprise the soldiers gave me a cheer. Though very
grateful for the tribute to me as their acknowledged comrade, I did not
feel that I deserved it. Hardships such as they had suffered for a
principle require a far higher order of character than the same
hardships endured when the motive is devotion individualized.
Once more the General leaped into the saddle, and we rode rapidly out of
sight. How glad I was, as I watched the set features of my husband's
face, saw his eyes fixed immovably in front of him, listened in vain for
one word from his overburdened heart, that I, being a woman, need not
tax every nerve to suppress emotion, but could let the tears stream down
my face, on all our silent way back to the city.
Then began the gathering of our "traps," a hasty collection of a few
suitable things for a Southern climate, orders about shipping the
horses, a wild tearing around of the improvident, thoughtless
staff--good fighters, but poor providers for themselves. Most of them
were young men, for whom my husband had applied when he was made a
brigadier. His first step after his promotion was to write home for his
schoolmates, or select aides from his early friends then in service. It
was a comfort, when I found myself grieving over the parting with my
husband's Division, that our military family were to go with us. At dark
we were on the cars, with our faces turned southward. To General Custer
this move had been unexpected. General Sheridan knew that he needed
little time to decide, so he sent for him as soon as we encamped at
Arlington, after our march up from Richmond, and asked if he would like
to take command of a division of cavalry on the Red River in Louisiana,
and march throughout Texas, with the possibility of eventually entering
Mexico. Our Government was just then thinking it was high time the
French knew that if there was any invasion of Mexico, with an idea of a
complete "gobbling up" of that country, the one to do the seizure and
gather in the spoils was Brother Jonathan. Very wisely, General Custer
kept this latter part of the understanding why he was sent South from
the "weepy" part of his family. He preferred transportation by steamer,
rather than to be floated southward by floods of feminine tears. All I
knew was, that Texas, having been so outside of the limit where the
armies marched and fought, was unhappily unaware that the war was over,
and continued a career of bushwhacking and lawlessness that was only
tolerated from necessity before the surrender, and must now cease. It
was considered expedient to fit out two detachments of cavalry, and
start them on a march through the northern and southern portions of
Texas, as a means of informing that isolated State that depredations and
raids might come to an end. In my mind, Texas then seemed the
stepping-off place; but I was indifferent to the points of the compass,
so long as I was not left behind.
The train in which we set out was crowded with a joyous, rollicking,
irrepressible throng of discharged officers and soldiers, going home to
make their swords into ploughshares. Everybody talked with everybody,
and all spoke at once. The Babel was unceasing night and day; there was
not a vein that was not bursting with joy. The swift blood rushed into
the heart and out again, laden with one glad thought, "The war is over!"
At the stations, soldiers tumbled out and rushed into some woman's
waiting arms, while bands tooted excited welcomes, no one instrument
according with another, because of throats overcharged already with
bursting notes of patriotism that would not be set music. The customary
train of street gamins, who imitate all parades and promptly copy the
pomp of the circus and other processions, stepped off in a mimic march,
following the conquering heroes as they were lost to our sight down the
street, going home.
Sometimes the voices of the hilarious crowd at the station were stilled,
and a hush of reverent silence preceded the careful lifting from the car
of a stretcher bearing a form broken and bleeding from wounds, willingly
borne, that the home to which he was coming might be unharmed. Tender
women received and hovered lovingly over the precious freight, strong
arms carried him away; and we contrasted the devoted care, the love that
would teach new ways to heal, with the condition of the poor fellows we
had left in the crowded Washington hospitals, attended only by
strangers. Some of the broken-to-pieces soldiers were on our train, so
deftly mended that they stumped their way down the platform, and began
their one-legged tramp through life, amidst the loud huzzas that a
maimed hero then received. They even joked about their misfortunes. I
remember one undaunted fellow, with the fresh color of buoyant youth
beginning again to dye his cheek, even after the amputation of a leg,
which so depletes the system. He said some grave words of wisdom to me
in such a roguish way, and followed up his counsel by adding, "You ought
to heed such advice from a man with one foot in the grave."
We missed all the home-coming, all the glorification awarded to the
hero. General Custer said no word of regret. He had accepted the offer
for further active service, and gratefully thanked his chief for giving
him the opportunity. I, however, should have liked to have him get some
of the celebrations that our country was then showering on its
defenders. I missed the bonfires, the processions, the public meeting of
distinguished citizens, who eloquently thanked the veterans, the
editorials that lauded each townsman's deed, the poetry in the corner of
the newspaper that was dedicated to a hero, the overflow of a woman's
heart singing praise to her military idol. But the cannon were fired,
the drums beat, the music sounded for all but us. Offices of trust were
offered at once to men coming home to private life, and towns and cities
felt themselves honored because some one of their number had gone out
and made himself so glorious a name that his very home became
celebrated. He was made the mayor, or the Congressman, and given a home
which it would have taken him many years of hard work to earn. Song,
story and history have long recounted what a hero is to a woman.
Imagination pictured to my eye troops of beautiful women gathering
around each gallant soldier on his return. The adoring eyes spoke
admiration, while the tongue subtly wove, in many a sentence, its meed
of praise. The General and his staff of boys, loving and reverencing
women, missed what men wisely count the sweetest of adulation. One
weather-beaten slip of a girl had to do all their banqueting,
cannonading, bonfiring, brass-banding, and general hallelujahs all the
way to Texas, and--yes, even after we got there; for the Southern women,
true to their idea of patriotism, turned their pretty faces away from
our handsome fellows, and resisted, for a long time, even the mildest
flirtation.
The drawing-room car was then unthought of in the minds of those who
plan new luxuries as our race demand more ease and elegance. There was a
ladies' car, to which no men unaccompanied by women were admitted. It
was never so full as the other coaches, and was much cleaner and better
ventilated.
This was at first a damper to the enjoyment of a military family, who
lost no opportunity of being together, for it compelled the men to
remain in the other cars. The scamp among us devised a plan to outwit
the brakemen; he borrowed my bag just before we were obliged to change
cars, and after waiting till the General and I were safely seated,
boldly walked up and demanded entrance, on the plea that he had a lady
inside. This scheme worked so well that the others took up the cue, and
my cloak, bag, umbrella, lunch-basket, and parcel of books and papers
were distributed among the rest before we stopped, and were used to
obtain entrance into the better car. Even our faithful servant, Eliza,
was unexpectedly overwhelmed with urgent offers of assistance; for she
always went with us, and sat by the door. This plan was a great success,
in so far as it kept our party together, but it proved disastrous to me,
as the scamp forgot my bag at some station, and I was minus all those
hundred-and-one articles that seem indispensable to a traveler's
comfort. In that plight I had to journey until, in some merciful
detention, we had an hour in which to seek out a shop, and hastily make
the necessary purchases.
At one of our stops for dinner we all made the usual rush for the
dining-hall, as in the confusion of over-laden trains at that excited
time it was necessary to hurry, and, besides, as there were delays and
irregularities in traveling, on account of the home-coming of the
troops, we never knew how long it might be before the next eating-house
was reached. The General insisted upon Eliza's going right with us, as
no other table was provided. The proprietor, already rendered
indifferent to people's comfort by his extraordinary gains, said there
was no table for servants. Eliza, the best-bred of maids, begged to go
back dinnerless into the car, but the General insisted on her sitting
down between us at the crowded table. A position so unusual, and to her
so totally out of place, made her appetite waver, and it vanished
entirely when the proprietor came, and told the General that no colored
folks could be allowed at his table. My husband quietly replied that he
had been obliged to give the woman that place, as the house had provided
no other. The determined man still stood threateningly over us,
demanding her removal, and Eliza uneasily and nervously tried to go. I
trembled, and the fork failed to carry the food, owing to a very wobbly
arm. The General firmly refused, the staff rose about us, and all along
the table up sprang men we had supposed to be citizens, as they were in
the dress of civilians. "General, stand your ground; we'll back you; the
woman shall have food." How little we realize in these piping times of
peace, how great a flame a little fire kindled in those agitating days.
The proprietor slunk back to his desk; the General and his hungry staff
went on eating as calmly as ever; Eliza hung her embarrassed head, and
her mistress idly twirled her useless fork--while the proprietor made
$1.50 clear gain on two women that were too frightened to swallow a
mouthful. I spread a sandwich for Eliza, while the General, mindful of
the returning hunger of the terrified woman, and perfectly indifferent
as to making himself ridiculous with parcels, marched by the infuriated
but subdued bully, with either a whole pie or some such modest capture
in his hand. We had put some hours of travel between ourselves and the
"twenty-minutes-for-dinner" place which came so near being a
battle-ground, before Eliza could eat what we had brought for her.
I wonder if any one is waiting for me to say that this incident happened
south of the Mason and Dixon line. It did not. It was in Ohio--I don't
remember the place. After all, the memory over which one complains, when
he finds how little he can recall, has its advantages. It hopelessly
buries the names of persons and places, when one starts to tell tales
out of school. It is like extracting the fangs from a rattlesnake; the
reptile, like the story, may be very disagreeable, but I can only hope
that a tale unadorned with names or places is as harmless as a snake
with its poison withdrawn.
I must stop a moment and give our Eliza, on whom this battle was waged,
a little space in this story, for she occupied no small part in the
events of the six years after; and when she left us and took an upward
step in life by marrying a colored lawyer, I could not reconcile myself
to the loss; and though she has lived through all the grandeur of a
union with a man "who gets a heap of money for his speeches in politics,
and brass bands to meet him at the stations, Miss Libbie," she came to
my little home not long since with tears of joy illuminating the bright
bronze of her expressive face. It reminded me so of the first time I
knew that the negro race regarded shades of color as a distinctive
feature, a beauty or a blemish, as it might be. Eliza stood in front of
a bronze medallion of my husband when it was first sent from the
artist's in 1865, and amused him hugely, by saying, in that partnership
manner she had in our affairs, "Why, Ginnel, it's jest my color." After
that, I noticed that she referred to her race according to the deepness
of tint, telling me, with scorn, of one of her numerous suitors: "Why,
Miss Libbie, he needent think to shine up to me; he's nothing but a
black African." I am thus introducing Eliza, color and all, that she may
not seem the vague character of other days; and whoever chances to meet
her will find in her a good war historian, a modest chronicler of a
really self-dying and courageous life. It was rather a surprise to me
that she was not an old woman when I saw her again this autumn, after so
many years, but she is not yet fifty. I imagine she did so much
mothering in those days when she comforted me in my loneliness, and
quieted me in my frights, that I counted her old even then.
Eliza requests that she be permitted to make her little bow to the
reader, and repeat a wish of hers that I take great pains in quoting
her, and not represent her as saying, "like field-hands, _whar_ and
_thar_." She says her people in Virginia, whom she reverences and loves,
always taught her not to say "them words; and if they should see what I
have told you they'd feel bad to think I forgot." If _whar_ and _thar_
appear occasionally in my efforts to transfer her literally to these
pages, it is only a _lapsus linguæ_ on her part. Besides, she has lived
North so long now, there is not that distinctive dialect peculiar to the
Southern servant. In her excitement, narrating our scenes of danger or
pleasure or merriment, she occasionally drops into expressions that
belonged to her early life. It is the fault of her historian if these
phrases get into print. To me they are charming, for they are Eliza in
undress uniform--Eliza without her company manners.
She describes her leaving the old plantation during war times: "I jined
the Ginnel at Amosville, Rappahannock County, in August, 1863. Everybody
was excited over freedom, and I wanted to see how it was. Everybody
keeps asking me why I left. I can't see why they can't recollect what
war was for, and that we was all bound to try and see for ourselves how
it was. After the 'Mancipation, everybody was a-standin' up for liberty,
and I wasent goin' to stay home when everybody else was a-goin'. The day
I came into camp, there was a good many other darkeys from all about our
place. We was a-standin' round waitin' when I first seed the Ginnel.
"He and Captain Lyon cum up to me, and the Ginnel says, 'Well, what's
_your_ name!' I told him Eliza; and he says, looking me all over fust,
'Well, Eliza, would you like to cum and live with me?' I waited a
minute, Miss Libbie. I looked _him_ all over, too, and finally I sez, 'I
reckon I would.' So the bargain was fixed up. But, oh, how awful
lonesome I was at fust, and I was afraid of everything in the shape of
war. I used to wish myself back on the old plantation with my mother. I
was mighty glad when you cum, Miss Libbie. Why, sometimes I never sot
eyes on a woman for weeks at a time."
Eliza's story of her war life is too long for these pages; but in spite
of her confession of being so "'fraid," she was a marvel of courage. She
was captured by the enemy, escaped, and found her way back after sunset
to the General's camp. She had strange and narrow escapes. She says,
quaintly: "Well, Miss Libbie, I set in to see the war, beginning and
end. There was many niggers that cut into cities and huddled up thar,
and laid around and saw hard times; but I went to see the end, and I
stuck it out. I allus thought this, that I didn't set down to wait to
have 'em all free _me_. I helped to free myself. I was all ready to step
to the front whenever I was called upon, even if I didn't shoulder the
musket. Well, I went to the end, and there's many folks says that a
woman can't follow the army without throwing themselves away, but I know
better. I went in, and I cum out with the respect of the men and the
officers."
[Illustration: ELIZA COOKING UNDER FIRE.]
Eliza often cooked under fire, and only lately one of the General's
staff, recounting war days, described her as she was preparing the
General's dinner in the field. A shell would burst near her; she would
turn her head in anger at being disturbed, unconscious that she was
observed, begin to growl to herself about being obliged to move, but
take up her kettle and frying-pan, march farther away, make a new fire,
and begin cooking as unperturbed as if it were an ordinary disturbance
instead of a sky filled with bits of falling shell. I do not repeat that
polite fiction of having been on the spot, as neither the artist nor I
had Eliza's grit or pluck; but we arranged the camp-kettle, and Eliza
fell into the exact expression, as she volubly began telling the tale of
"how mad those busting shells used to make her." It is an excellent
likeness, even though Eliza objects to the bandana, which she has
abandoned in her new position; and I must not forget that I found her
one day turning her head critically from side to side looking at her
picture; and, out of regard to her, will mention that her nose, of which
she is very proud, is, she fears, a touch too flat in the sketch. She
speaks of her dress as "completely whittled out with bullets," but she
would like me to mention that "she don't wear them rags now."
When Eliza reached New York this past autumn, she told me, when I asked
her to choose where she would go, as my time was to be entirely given to
her, that she wanted first to go to the Fifth Avenue Hotel and see if it
looked just the same as it did "when you was a bride, Miss Libbie, and
the Ginnel took you and me there on leave of absence." We went through
the halls and drawing-rooms, narrowly watched by the major-domo, who
stands guard over tramps, but fortified by my voice, she "oh'd" and
"ah'd" over its grandeur to her heart's content. One day I left her in
Madison Square, to go on a business errand, and cautioned her not to
stray away. When I returned I asked anxiously, "Did any one speak to
you, Eliza?" "_Every_body, Miss Libbie," as nonchalant and as complacent
as if it were her idea of New York hospitality. Then she begged me to go
round the Square, "to hunt a lady from Avenue A, who see'd you pass with
me, Miss Libbie, and said she knowed you was a lady, though I reckon she
couldn't 'count for me and you bein' together." We found the Avenue A
lady, and I was presented, and, to her satisfaction, admired the baby
that had been brought over to that blessed breathing-place of our city.
The Elevated railroad was a surprise to Eliza. She "didn't believe it
would be so high." At that celebrated curve on the Sixth Avenue line,
where Monsieur de Lesseps, even, exclaimed, "Mon Dieu! but the Americans
are a brave people," the poor, frightened woman clung to me and
whispered, "Miss Libbie, couldn't we get down anyway? Miss Libbie, I'se
seed enough. I can tell the folks at home all about it _now_. Oh, I
never did 'spect to be so near heaven till I went up for good."
At the Brooklyn Bridge she demurred. She is so intelligent that I
wanted to have her see the shipping, the wharves, the harbor, and the
statue of Liberty; but nothing kept her from flight save her desire to
tell her townspeople that she had seen the place where the crank jumped
off. The police-man, in answer to my inquiry, commanded us in martial
tones to stay still till he said the word; and when the wagon crossing
passed the spot, and the maintainer of the peace said "Now!" Eliza
shivered and whispered, "_Now_, let's go home, Miss Libbie. I dun took
the cullud part of the town fo' I come; the white folks hain't seen what
I has, and they'll be took when I tell 'em;" and off she toddled, for
Eliza is not the slender woman I once knew her.
Her description of the Wild West exhibition was most droll. I sent her
down because we had lived through so many of the scenes depicted, and I
felt sure that nothing would recall so vividly the life on the frontier
as that most realistic and faithful representation of a Western life
that has ceased to be, with advancing civilization. She went to Mr.
Cody's tent after the exhibition, to present my card of introduction,
for he had served as General Custer's scout after Eliza left us, and she
was, therefore, unknown to him except by hearsay. They had twenty
subjects in common; for Eliza, in her way, was as deserving of praise as
was the courageous Cody. She was delighted with all she saw, and on her
return her description of it, mingled with imitations of the voices of
the hawkers and the performers, was so incoherent that it presented only
a confused jumble to my ears. The buffalo were a surprise, a wonderful
revival to her of those hunting-days when our plains were darkened by
the herds. "When the buffalo cum in, I was ready to leap up and holler,
Miss Libbie; it 'minded me of ole times. They made me think of the
fifteen the Ginnel fust struck in Kansas. He jest pushed down his ole
hat, and went after 'em linkety-clink. Well, Miss Libbie, when Mr. Cody
come up, I see at once his back and hips was built precisely like the
Ginnel, and when I come on to his tent, I jest said to him: 'Mr. Buffalo
Bill, when you cum up to the stand and wheeled round, I said to myself,
"_Well_, if he ain't the 'spress image of Ginnel Custer in battle I
never seed any one that was!"' I jest wish he'd come to my town and give
a show! He could have the hull fairground there. My! he could raise
money so fast 'twouldn't take him long to _pay_ for a church. And the
shootin' and ridin'! why, Miss Libbie, when I seed one of them ponies
brought out, I know'd he was one of the hatefulest, sulkiest ponies that
ever lived. He was a-prancin' and curvin', and he jest stretched his ole
neck and throwed the men as fast as ever they got on."
After we had strolled through the streets for many days, Eliza always
amusing me by her droll comments, she said to me one day: "Miss Libbie,
you don't take notice, when me and you's walking on, a-lookin' into
shop-windows and a-gazin' at the new things I never see before, how the
folks does stare at us. But I see 'em a-gazin', and I can see 'em
a-ponderin' and sayin' to theirsel's, 'Well, I do declar'! that's a
lady, there ain't no manner of doubt. She's one of the bong tong; but
whatever she's a-doin' with that old scrub nigger, I can't make out.'" I
can hardly express what a recreation and delight it was to go about with
this humorous woman and listen to her comments, her unique criticisms,
her grateful delight, when she turned on the street to say: "Oh, _what_
a good time me and you is having, Miss Libbie, and _how_ I will 'stonish
them people at home!" The best of it all was the manner in which she
brought back our past, and the hundred small events we recalled, which
were made more vivid by the imitation of voice, walk, gesture she gave
in speaking of those we followed in the old marching days.
On this journey to Texas some accident happened to our engine, and
detained us all night. We campaigners, accustomed to all sorts of
unexpected inconveniences, had learned not to mind discomforts. Each
officer sank out of sight into his great-coat collar, and slept on by
the hour, while I slumbered till morning, curled up in a heap, thankful
to have the luxury of one seat to myself. We rather gloried over the
citizens who tramped up and down the aisle, groaning and becoming more
emphatic in their language as the night advanced, indulging in the
belief that the women were too sound asleep to hear them. I wakened
enough to hear one old man say, fretfully, and with many adjectives:
"Just see how those army folks sleep; they can tumble down anywhere,
while I am so lame and sore, from the cramped-up place I am in, I can't
even doze." As morning came we noticed our scamp at the other end of the
car, with his legs stretched comfortably on the seat turned over in
front of him. All this unusual luxury he accounted for afterward, by
telling us the trick that his ingenuity had suggested to obtain more
room. "You see," the wag said, "two old codgers sat down in front of my
pal and me, late last night, and went on counting up their gains in the
rise of corn, owing to the war, which, to say the least, was harrowing
to us poor devils who had fought the battles that had made them rich and
left us without a 'red.' I concluded, if that was all they had done for
their country, two of its brave defenders had more of a right to the
seat than they had. I just turned to H---- and began solemnly to talk
about what store I set by my old army coat, then on the seat they
occupied; said I couldn't give it up, though I had been obliged to cover
a comrade who had died of small-pox, I not being afraid of contagion,
having had varioloid. Well, I got that far when the eyes of the old
galoots started out of their heads, and they vamoosed the ranche, I can
tell you, and I saw them peering through the window at the end of the
next car, the horror still in their faces." The General exploded with
merriment. How strange it seems, to contrast those noisy, boisterous
times, when everybody shouted with laughter, called loudly from one end
of the car to the other, told stories for the whole public to hear, and
sang war-songs, with the quiet, orderly travelers of nowadays, who, even
in the tremor of meeting or parting, speak below their breath, and,
ashamed of emotion, quickly wink back to its source the prehistoric
tear.
We bade good-by to railroads at Louisville, and the journeying south was
then made by steamer. How peculiar it seemed to us, accustomed as we
were to lake craft with deep hulls, to see for the first time those
flat-bottomed boats drawing so little water, with several stories, and
upper decks loaded with freight. I could hardly rid myself of the fear
that, being so top-heavy, we would blow over. The tempests of our
western lakes were then my only idea of sailing weather. Then the long,
sloping levees, the preparations for the rise of water, the strange
sensation, when the river was high, of looking over the embankment, down
upon the earth! It is a novel feeling to be for the first time on a
great river, with such a current as the Mississippi flowing on above the
level of the plantations, hemmed in by an embankment on either side.
Though we saw the manner of its construction at one point where the
levee was being repaired, and found how firmly and substantially the
earth was fortified with stone and logs against the river, it still
seemed to me an unnatural sort of voyaging to be above the level of the
ground; and my tremors on the subject, and other novel experiences, were
instantly made use of as a new and fruitful source of practical jokes.
For instance, the steamer bumped into the shore anywhere it happened to
be wooded, and an army of negroes appeared, running over the gang-plank
like ants. Sometimes at night the pine torches, and the resinous knots
burning in iron baskets slung over the side of the boat, made a weird
and gruesome sight, the shadows were so black, the streams of light so
intense, while the hurrying negroes loaded on the wood, under the brutal
voice of a steamer's mate. Once a negro fell in. They made a pretense of
rescuing him, gave it up soon, and up hurried our scamp to the upper
deck to tell me the horrible tale. He had good command of language, and
allowed no scruples to spoil a story. After that I imagined, at every
night wood-lading, some poor soul was swept down under the boat and off
into eternity. The General was sorry for me, and sometimes, when I
imagined the calls of the crew to be the despairing wail of a dying man,
he made pilgrimages, for my sake, to the lower deck to make sure that no
one was drowned. My imaginings were not always so respected, for the
occasion gave too good an opportunity for a joke, to be passed quietly
by. The scamp and my husband put their heads together soon after this,
and prepared a tale for the "old lady," as they called me. As we were
about to make a landing, they ran to me and said, "Come, Libbie, hurry
up! hurry up! You'll miss the fun if you don't scrabble." "Miss what?"
was my very natural question, and exactly the reply they wanted me to
make. "Why, they're going to bury a dead man when we land." I exclaimed
in horror, "Another man drowned? how can you speak so irreverently of
death?" With a "do you suppose the mate cares for one darkey more or
less?" they dragged me to the deck. There I saw the great cable which
was used to tie us up, fastened to a strong spar, the two ends of which
were buried in the bank. The ground was hollowed out underneath the
centre, and the rope slipped under to fasten it around the log. After I
had watched this process of securing our boat to the shore, these
irrepressibles said, solemnly, "The sad ceremony is now ended, and no
other will take place till we tie up at the next stop." When it dawned
upon me that "tying up" was called, in steamer vernacular, "burying a
dead man," my eyes returned to their proper place in the sockets, breath
came back, and indignation filled my soul. Language deserts us at such
moments, and I resorted to force.
The _Ruth_ was accounted one of the largest and most beautiful steamers
that had ever been on the Mississippi River, her expenses being $1,000 a
day. The decorations were sumptuous, and we enjoyed every luxury. We ate
our dinners to very good music, which the boat furnished. We had been on
plain fare too long not to watch with eagerness the arrival of the
procession of white-coated negro waiters, who each day came in from the
pastry-cook with some new device in cake, ices, or confectionery. There
was a beautiful Ruth gleaning in a field, in a painting that filled the
semicircle over the entrance of the cabin. Ruths with sheaves held up
the branches of the chandeliers, while the pretty gleaner looked out
from the glass of the stateroom doors. The captain being very patient as
well as polite, we pervaded every corner of the great boat. The General
and his boy-soldiers were too accustomed to activity to be quiet in the
cabin. Even that unapproachable man at the wheel yielded to our longing
eyes, and let us into his round tower. Oh, how good he was to me! The
General took me up there, and the pilot made a place for us, where, with
my bit of work, I listened for hours to his stories. My husband made
fifty trips up and down, sometimes detained when we were nearing an
interesting point, to hear the story of the crevasse. Such tales were
thrilling enough even for him, accustomed as he then was to the most
exciting scenes. The pilot pointed out places where the river, wild with
the rush and fury of spring freshets, had burst its way through the
levees, and, sweeping over a peninsula, returned to the channel beyond,
utterly annihilating and sinking out of sight forever the ground where
happy people had lived on their plantations. It was a sad time to take
that journey, and even in the midst of our intense enjoyment of the
novelty of the trip, the freedom from anxiety, and the absence of
responsibility of any kind, I recall how the General grieved over the
destruction of plantations by the breaks in the levee. The work on these
embankments was done by assessment, I think. They were cared for as our
roads and bridges are kept in order, and when men were absent in the
war, only the negroes were left to attend to the repairing. But the
inundations then were slight, compared with many from which the State
has since suffered. In 1874 thirty parishes were either wholly or partly
overflowed by an extraordinary rise in the river. On our trip we saw one
plantation after another submerged, the grand old houses abandoned, and
standing in lakes of water, while the negro quarters and barns were
almost out of sight. Sometimes the cattle huddled on a little rise of
ground, helpless and pitiful. We wished, as we used to do in that
beautiful Shenandoah Valley, that if wars must come, the devastation of
homes might be avoided; and I usually added, with one of the totally
impracticable suggestions conjured up by a woman, that battles might be
fought in desert places.
A Southern woman, who afterward entertained us, described, in the
graphic and varied language which is their gift, the breaking of the
levee on their own plantation. How stealthily the small stream of water
crept on and on, until their first warning was its serpent-like progress
past their house. Then the excitement and rush of all the household to
the crevasse, the hasty gathering in of the field-hands, and the homely
devices for stopping the break until more substantial materials could be
gathered. It was a race for life on all sides. Each one, old or young,
knew that his safety depended on the superhuman effort of the first hour
of danger. In our safe homes we scarcely realize what it would be to
look out from our windows upon, what seemed to me, a small and
insufficient mound of earth stretching along the frontage of an estate,
and know that it was our only rampart against a rushing flood, which
seemed human in its revengeful desire to engulf us.
The General was intensely interested in those portions of the country
where both naval and land warfare had been carried on. At Island No. 10,
and Fort Pillow especially, there seemed, even then, no evidence that
fighting had gone on so lately. The luxuriant vegetation of the South
had covered the fortifications; nature seemed hastening to throw a
mantle over soil that had so lately been reddened with such a precious
dye. The fighting had been so desperate at the latter point, it is
reported the Confederate General Forrest said: "The river was dyed with
the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards."
At one of our stops on the route, the Confederate General Hood came on
board, to go to a town a short distance below, and my husband, hearing
he was on the boat, hastened to seek him out and introduce himself. Such
reunions have now become common, I am thankful to say, but I confess to
watching curiously every expression of those men, as it seemed very
early, in those times of excited and vehement conduct, to begin such
overtures. And yet I did not forget that my husband sent messages of
friendship to his classmates on the other side throughout the war. As I
watched this meeting, they looked, while they grasped each other's hand,
as if they were old-time friends happily united. After they had carried
on an animated conversation for awhile, my husband, always thinking how
to share his enjoyment, hurried to bring me into the group. General
Custer had already taught me, even in those bitter times, that he knew
his classmates fought from their convictions of right, and that, now the
war was over, I must not be adding fuel to a fire that both sides should
strive to smother.
General Hood was tall, fair, dignified and soldierly. He used his crutch
with difficulty, and it was an effort for him to rise when I was
presented. We three instantly resumed the war talk that my coming had
interrupted. The men plied each other with questions as to the situation
of troops at certain engagements, and the General fairly bombarded
General Hood with inquiries about the action on their side in different
campaigns. At that time nothing had been written for Northern papers and
magazines by the South. All we knew was from the brief accounts in the
Southern newspapers that our pickets exchanged, and from papers captured
or received from Europe by way of blockade-runners. We were greatly
amused by the comical manner in which General Hood described his efforts
to suit himself to an artificial leg, after he had contributed his own
to his beloved cause. In his campaigns he was obliged to carry an extra
one, in case of accident to the one he wore, which was strapped to his
led horse. He asked me to picture the surprise of the troops who
captured all the reserve horses at one time, and found this false leg of
his suspended from the saddle. He said he had tried five, at different
times, to see which of the inventions was lightest and easiest to wear;
"and I am obliged to confess, Mrs. Custer, much as you may imagine it
goes against me to do so, that of the five--English, German, French,
Yankee and Confederate--the Yankee leg was the best of all." When
General Custer carefully helped the maimed hero down the cabin stairs
and over the gangway, we bade him good-by with real regret--so quickly
do soldiers make and cement a friendship when both find the same
qualities to admire in each other.
The novelty of Mississippi travel kept even our active, restless party
interested. One of our number played guitar accompaniments, and we sang
choruses on deck at night, forgetting that the war-songs might grate on
the ears of some of the people about us. The captain and steamer's crew
allowed us to roam up and down the boat at will, and when we found, by
the map or crew, that we were about to touch the bank in a hitherto
unvisited State, we were the first to run over the gang-plank and caper
up and down the soil, to add a new State to our fast-swelling list of
those in which we had been. We rather wondered, though, what we would do
if asked questions by our elders at home as to what we thought of
Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, as we had only scampered on and off
the river bank of those States while the wooding went on. We were like
children let out of school, and everything interested us. Even the low
water was an event. The sudden stop of our great steamer, which, large
as it was, drew but a few feet of water, made the timbers groan and the
machinery creak. Then we took ourselves to the bow, where the captain,
mate and deck-hands were preparing for a siege, as the force of the
engines had ploughed us deep into a sand-bar. There was wrenching,
veering and struggling of the huge boat; and at last a resort to those
two spars which seem to be so uselessly attached to each side of the
forward deck of the river steamers. These were swung out and plunged
into the bank, the rope and tackle put into use, and with the aid of
these stilts we were skipped over the sand-bar into the deeper water. It
was on that journey that I first heard the name Mr. Clemens took as his
_nom de plume_. The droning voice of the sailor taking soundings, as we
slowly crept through low water, called out, "Mark twain!" and the pilot
answered by steering the boat according to the story of the plumb-line.
The trip on a Mississippi steamer, as we knew it, is now one of the
things of the past. It was accounted then, and before the war, our most
luxurious mode of travel. Every one was sociable, and in the constant
association of the long trip some warm friendships sprung up. We had
then our first acquaintance with Bostonians as well as with Southerners.
Of course, it was too soon for Southern women, robbed of home, and even
the necessities of life, by the cruelty of war, to be wholly cordial. We
were more and more amazed at the ignorance in the South concerning the
North. A young girl, otherwise intelligent, thawed out enough to confess
to me that she had really no idea that Yankee soldiers were like their
own physically. She imagined they would be as widely different as black
from white, and a sort of combination of gorilla and chimpanzee.
Gunboats had but a short time before moored at the levee that bounded
her grandmother's plantation, and the negroes ran into the house crying
the terrible news of the approach of the enemy. The very thought of a
Yankee was abhorrent; but the girl, more absorbed with curiosity than
fear, slipped out of the house to where a view of the walk from the
landing was to be had, and, seeing a naval officer approaching, raced
back to her grandmother, crying out in surprise at finding a being like
unto her own people, "Why, it's a man!"
As we approached New Orleans the plantations grew richer. The palmetto
and the orange, by which we are "twice blessed" in its simultaneous
blossom and fruit; the oleander, treasured in conservatories at home,
here growing to tree size along the country roads, all charmed us. The
wide galleries around the two stories of the houses were a delight. The
course of our boat was often near enough the shore for us to see the
family gathered around the supper-table spread on the upper gallery,
which was protected from the sun by blinds or shades of matting.
We left the steamer at New Orleans with regret. It seems, even now,
that it is rather too bad we have grown into so hurried a race that we
cannot spare the time to travel as leisurely or luxuriously as we did
then. Even pleasure-seekers going off for a tour, when they are not
restricted by time nor mode of journeying, study the time-tables
closely, to see by which route the quickest passage can be made.