The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fixed
sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's
watch.--KING HENRY V.
[Sidenote: CAMPAIGNING IN THE KANAWHA VALLEY.]
I spent the last days of July, in Western Virginia, with the command of
General J. D. Cox, which was pursuing Henry A. Wise in hot haste up the
valley of the Kanawha. There had been a few little skirmishes, which,
in those early days, we were wont to call battles.
Like all mountain regions, the Kanawha valley was extremely loyal.
Flags were flying, and the people manifested intense delight at the
approach of our army. We were very close upon the flying enemy; indeed,
more than once our cavalry boys ate hot breakfasts which the Rebels had
cooked for themselves.
At a farm-house, two miles west of Charleston, a dozen natives were
sitting upon the door-step as our column passed. The farmer shook
hands with us very cordially. "I _am_ glad to see the Federal army,"
said he; "I have been hunted like a dog, and compelled to hide in the
mountains, because I loved the Union." His wife exclaimed, "Thank God,
you have come at last, and the day of our deliverance is here. I always
said that the Lord was on our side, and that he would bring us through
safely."
[Sidenote: A BLOODTHIRSTY FEMALE SECESSIONIST.]
Two of the women were ardent Rebels. They did not blame the
native-born Yankees, but wished that every southerner in our ranks
might be killed. Just then one of our soldiers, whose home was in that
county, passed by the door-step, on his way to the well for a canteen
of water. One of the women said to me, with eyes that meant it:
"I hope _he_ will be killed! If I had a pistol I would shoot him. Why!
you have a revolver right here in your belt, haven't you? If I seen it
before, I would have used it upon him!"
Suggesting that I might have interfered with such an attempt, I asked:
"Do you think you could hit him?"
"O, yes! I have been practicing lately for just such a purpose."
Her companion assured me that she prayed every night and morning for
Jefferson Davis. If his armies were driven out of Virginia, she would
go and live in one of the Gulf States. She had a brother and a lover
in General Wise's army, and gave us their names, with a very earnest
request to see them kindly treated, should they be taken prisoners.
When we parted, she shook my hand, with: "Well, I hope no harm will
befall you, if you _are_ an Abolitionist!"
An old citizen, who had been imprisoned for Union sentiments, was
overcome with joy at the sight of our troops. He mounted a great rock
by the roadside, and extemporized a speech, in which thanks to the
Union army and the Lord curiously intermingled.
Women, with tears in their eyes, told us how anxiously they had
waited for the flag; how their houses had been robbed, their husbands
hunted, imprisoned, and impressed. Negroes joined extravagantly in the
huzzaing, swinging flags as a woodman swings his ax, bending themselves
almost double with shouts of laughter, and exclamations of "Hurrah for
Mass'r Lincoln!"
Thirteen miles above Charleston, at the head of navigation, we left
behind what we grandiloquently called "the fleet." It consisted of
exactly four little stern-wheel steamboats.
The people of these mountain regions use the old currency of New
England, and talk of "fourpence ha'pennies" and "ninepences."
Our road continued along the river-bank, where the ranges of
overhanging hills began to break into regular, densely timbered,
pyramidal spurs. The weather was very sultry. How the sun smote us in
that close, narrow valley! The accoutrement's of each soldier weighed
about thirty pounds, and made a day's march of twenty miles an arduous
task.
[Sidenote: A WOMAN IN DISGUISE.]
A private who had served in the First Kentucky Infantry[13] for three
months, proved to be of the wrong sex. She performed camp duties with
great fortitude, and never fell out of the ranks during the severest
marches. She was small in stature, and kept her coat buttoned to her
chin. She first excited suspicion by her feminine method of putting
on her stockings; and when handed over to the surgeon proved to be a
woman, about twenty years old. She was discharged from the regiment,
but sent to Columbus upon suspicion, excited by some of her remarks,
that she was a spy of the Rebels.
[13] So called, though nearly all its members came from Cincinnati.
[Sidenote: EXTRAVAGANT JOY OF THE NEGROES.]
At Cannelton, a hundred slaves were employed in the coal-oil works--two
long, begrimed, dilapidated buildings, with a few wretched houses
hard by. Nobody was visible, except the negroes. When I asked one of
them--"Where are all the white people?" he replied, with a broad grin--
"Done gone, mass'r."
A black woman, whom we encountered on the road, was asked:
"Have you run away from your master?"
"Golly, no!" was the prompt answer, "mass'r run away from _me_!"
The slaves, who always heard the term "runaway" applied only to their
own race, were not aware that it could have any other significance.
After the war opened, its larger meaning suddenly dawned upon them. The
idea of the master running away and the negroes staying, was always to
them ludicrous beyond description. The extravagant lines of "Kingdom
Coming," exactly depicted their feelings:
Say, darkies, hab you seen de mass'r,
Wid de muffstach on his face,
Go 'long de road some time dis mornin',
Like he's gwine to leave de place?
He seen de smoke way up de ribber
Where de Linkum gunboats lay;
He took his hat and left berry sudden,
And I 'spose he runned away.
De mass'r run, ha! ha!
De darkey stay, ho! ho!
It must be now de kingdom comin',
An' de year ob Jubilo.
"Dey tole us," said a group of blacks, "dat if your army cotched us,
you would cut off our right feet. But, Lor! we knowed you wouldn't hurt
_us_!"
At a house where we dined, the planter assuming to be loyal, one of
our officers grew confidential with him, when a negro woman managed to
beckon me into a back room, and seizing my arm, very earnestly said: "I
tell you, mass'r's only just putting on. He hates you all, and wants to
see you killed. Soon as you have passed, he will send right to Wise's
army, and tell him what you mean to do; if any of you'uns remain here
behind the troops, you will be in danger. He's in a heap of trouble,"
she added, "but, Lord, dese times just suits _me_!"
At another house, while the Rebel host had stepped out for a moment, an
intelligent young colored woman, with an infant in her arms, stationed
two negro girls at the door to watch for his return, and interrogated
me about the progress and purposes of the War. "Is it true," she
inquired, very sadly, "that your army has been hunting and returning
runaway slaves?"
Thanks to General Cox, who, like the sentinel in Rolla, "knew his duty
better," I could reply in the negative. But when, with earnestness
gleaming in her eyes, she asked, if, through these convulsions, any
hope glimmered for her race, what could I tell her but to be patient,
and trust in God?
[Sidenote: HOW THE SOLDIERS FORAGED.]
Army rations are not inviting to epicurean tastes; but in the field
all sorts of vegetables and poultry were added to our bill of fare.
Chickens, young pigs, fence-rails, apples, and potatoes, are legitimate
army spoils the world over.
"Where did you get that turkey?" asked a captain of one of his men.
"Bought it, sir," was the prompt answer. "For how much?" "Seventy-five
cents." "Paid for it, did you?" "Well, no, sir; told the man I would
pay _when we came back_!"
"Mass'r," said a little ebony servant to a captain with whom I was
messing, "I sees a mighty fine goose. Wish we had him for supper."
"Ginger," replied the officer, "have I not often told you that it is
very wicked to steal?"
The little negro laughed all over his face, and fell out of the ranks.
By a "coincidence," worthy of Sam Weller, we supped on stewed goose
that very evening.
Seen by night from the adjacent hills, our picturesque encampments
gave to the wild landscape a new beauty. In the deep valleys gleamed
hundreds of snowy tents, lighted by waning camp-fires, round which
grotesque figures flitted. The faint murmur of voices, and the ghostly
sweetness of distant music, filled the summer air.
[Sidenote: THE FALLS OF THE KANAWHA.]
At the Falls of the Kanawha the river is half a mile wide. A natural
dam of rocks, a hundred yards in breadth, and, on its lower side,
thirty feet above the water, extends obliquely across the stream--a
smooth surface of gray rock, spotted with brown moss.
Near the south bank is the main fall, in the form of a half circle,
three or four hundred yards long, with a broken descent of thirty feet.
Above the brink, the water is dark, green, and glassy, but at the verge
it looks half transparent, as it tumbles and foams down the rocks,
lashed into a passion of snowy whiteness. Plunging into the seething
caldron, it throws up great jets and sheets of foam. Above, the calm,
shining water extends for a mile, until hidden by a sudden bend in the
channel. The view is bounded by a tall spur, wrapped in the sober green
of the forest, with an adventurous corn-field climbing far up its steep
side. At the narrow base of the spur, a straw-colored lawn surrounds a
white farm-house, with low, sloping roof and antique chimneys. It is
half hidden among the maples, and sentineled by a tall Lombardy poplar.
Two miles above the fall, the stream breaks into its two chief
confluents--the New River and the Gauley. Hawk's Nest, near their
junction, is a peculiarly romantic spot. In its vicinity our command
halted. It was far from its base, and Wise ran too fast for capture. We
had five thousand troops, who were ill-disciplined and discontented.
General Cox was then fresh from the Ohio Senate. After more field
experience, he became an excellent officer.
[Sidenote: A TRAGEDY OF SLAVERY.]
When I returned through the valley, I found Charleston greatly excited.
A docile and intelligent mulatto slave, of thirty years, had never been
struck in his life. But, on the way to a hayfield, his new overseer
began to crack his whip over the shoulders of the gang, to hurry them
forward. The mulatto shook his head a little defiantly, when the whip
was laid heavily across his back. Turning instantly upon the driver,
he smote him with his hayfork, knocking him from his horse, and laying
the skull bare. The overseer, a large, athletic man, drew his revolver;
but, before he could use it, the agile mulatto wrenched it away, and
fired two shots at his head, which instantly killed him. Taking the
weapon, the slave fled to the mountains, whence he escaped to the Ohio
line.
ST. LOUIS, _August 19, 1861_.
In the days of stage-coaches, the trip from Cincinnati to St. Louis
was a very melancholy experience; in the days of steamboats, a very
tedious one. Now, you leave Cincinnati on a summer evening; and the
placid valley of the Ohio--the almost countless cornfields of the
Great Miami (one of them containing fifteen hundred acres), where
the exhaustless soil has produced that staple abundantly for fifty
years--the grave and old home of General Harrison, at North Bend--the
dense forests of Indiana--the Wabash Valley, that elysium of chills
and fever, where pumpkins are "fruit," and hoop-poles "timber"--the
dead-level prairies of Illinois, with their oceans of corn, tufts
of wood, and painfully white villages--the muddy Mississippi,
"All-the-Waters," as one Indian tribe used to call it--are unrolled in
panorama, till, at early morning, St. Louis, hot and parched with the
journey, holds out her dusty hands to greet you.
[Sidenote: THE FUTURE OF ST. LOUIS.]
No inland city ever held such a position as this. Here is the heart
of the unequaled valley, which extends from the Rocky Mountains to
the Alleghanies, and from the great lakes to the Gulf. Here is the
mighty river, which drains a region six times greater than the empire
of France, and bears on its bosom the waters of fifty-seven navigable
streams. Even the rude savage called it the "Father of Waters," and
early Spanish explorers reverentially named it the "River of the Holy
Ghost."
St. Louis, "with its thriving young heart, and its old French limbs,"
is to be the New York of the interior. The child is living who will see
it the second city on the American continent.
Three Rebel newspapers have recently been suppressed. The editor of one
applied to the provost-marshal for permission to resume, but declined
to give a pledge that no disloyal sentiment should appear in its
columns. He was very tender of the Constitution, and solicitous about
"the rights of the citizen." The marshal replied:
"I cannot discuss these matters with you. I am a soldier, and obey
orders."
"But," remonstrated the editor, "you might be ordered to hang me."
"Very possibly," replied the major, dryly.
"And you would obey orders, then?"
"Most assuredly I would, sir."
The Secession journalist left, in profound disgust.