For several days, in snow and rain, General Schofield's little army had
crouched in its hastily constructed defenses at Columbia, Tennessee. It
had retreated in hot haste from Pulaski, thirty miles to the south,
arriving just in time to foil Hood, who, marching from Florence, Alabama,
by another road, with a force of more than double our strength, had hoped
to intercept us. Had he succeeded, he would indubitably have bagged the
whole bunch of us. As it was, he simply took position in front of us and
gave us plenty of employment, but did not attack; he knew a trick worth
two of that.
Duck River was directly in our rear; I suppose both our flanks rested on
it. The town was between them. One night--that of November 27, 1864--we
pulled up stakes and crossed to the north bank to continue our retreat to
Nashville, where Thomas and safety lay--such safety as is known in war. It
was high time too, for before noon of the next day Forrest's cavalry
forded the river a few miles above us and began pushing back our own horse
toward Spring Hill, ten miles in our rear, on our only road. Why our
infantry was not immediately put in motion toward the threatened point, so
vital to our safety, General Schofield could have told better than I.
Howbeit, we lay there inactive all day.
The next morning--a bright and beautiful one--the brigade of Colonel P.
Sidney Post was thrown out, up the river four or five miles, to see what
it could see. What it saw was Hood's head-of-column coming over on a
pontoon bridge, and a right pretty spectacle it would have been to one
whom it did not concern. It concerned us rather keenly.
As a member of Colonel Post's staff, I was naturally favored with a good
view of the performance. We formed in line of battle at a distance of
perhaps a half-mile from the bridge-head, but that unending column of gray
and steel gave us no more attention than if we had been a crowd of
farmer-folk. Why should it? It had only to face to the left to be itself a
line of battle. Meantime it had more urgent business on hand than brushing
away a small brigade whose only offense was curiosity; it was making for
Spring Hill with all its legs and wheels. Hour after hour we watched that
unceasing flow of infantry and artillery toward the rear of our army. It
was an unnerving spectacle, yet we never for a moment doubted that, acting
on the intelligence supplied by our succession of couriers, our entire
force was moving rapidly to the point of contact. The battle of Spring
Hill was obviously decreed. Obviously, too, our brigade of observation
would be among the last to have a hand in it. The thought annoyed us, made
us restless and resentful. Our mounted men rode forward and back behind
the line, nervous and distressed; the men in the ranks sought relief in
frequent changes of posture, in shifting their weight from one leg to the
other, in needless inspection of their weapons and in that unfailing
resource of the discontented soldier, audible damning of those in the
saddles of authority. But never for more than a moment at a time did any
one remove his eyes from that fascinating and portentous pageant.
Toward evening we were recalled, to learn that of our five divisions of
infantry, with their batteries, numbering twenty-three thousand men, only
one--Stanley's, four thousand weak--had been sent to Spring Hill to meet
that formidable movement of Hood's three veteran corps! Why Stanley was
not immediately effaced is still a matter of controversy. Hood, who was
early on the ground, declared that he gave the needful orders and tried
vainly to enforce them; Cheatham, in command of his leading corps, that he
did not. Doubtless the dispute is still being carried on between these
chieftains from their beds of asphodel and moly in Elysium. So much is
certain: Stanley drove away Forrest and successfully held the junction of
the roads against Cleburne's division, the only infantry that attacked
him.
That night the entire Confederate army lay within a half mile of our road,
while we all sneaked by, infantry, artillery, and trains. The enemy's
camp-fires shone redly--miles of them--seemingly only a stone's throw from
our hurrying column. His men were plainly visible about them, cooking
their suppers--a sight so incredible that many of our own, thinking them
friends, strayed over to them and did not return. At intervals of a few
hundred yards we passed dim figures on horseback by the roadside,
enjoining silence. Needless precaution; we could not have spoken if we had
tried, for our hearts were in our throats. But fools are God's peculiar
care, arid one of his protective methods is the stupidity of other fools.
By daybreak our last man and last wagon had passed the fateful spot
unchallenged, and our first were entering Franklin, ten miles away.
Despite spirited cavalry attacks on trains and rear-guard, all were in
Franklin by noon and such of the men as could be kept awake were throwing
up a slight line of defense, inclosing the town.
Franklin lies--or at that time did lie; I know not what exploration might
now disclose--on the south bank of a small river, the Harpeth by name. For
two miles southward was a nearly flat, open plain, extending to a range of
low hills through which passed the turnpike by which we had come. From
some bluffs on the precipitous north bank of the river was a commanding
overlook of all this open ground, which, although more than a mile away,
seemed almost at one's feet. On this elevated ground the wagon-train had
been parked and General Schofield had stationed himself--the former for
security, the latter for outlook. Both were guarded by General Wood's
infantry division, of which my brigade was a part. "We are in beautiful
luck," said a member of the division staff. With some prevision of what
was to come and a lively recollection of the nervous strain of helpless
observation, I did not think it luck. In the activity of battle one does
not feel one's hair going gray with vicissitudes of emotion.
For some reason to the writer unknown General Schofield had brought along
with him General D.S. Stanley, who commanded two of his divisions--ours
and another, which was not "in luck." In the ensuing battle, when this
excellent officer could stand the strain no longer, he bolted across the
bridge like a shot and found relief in the hell below, where he was
promptly tumbled out of the saddle by a bullet.
Our line, with its reserve brigades, was about a mile and a half long,
both flanks on the river, above and below the town--a mere bridge-head. It
did not look a very formidable obstacle to the march of an army of more
than forty thousand men. In a more tranquil temper than his failure at
Spring Hill had put him into Hood would probably have passed around our
left and turned us out with ease--which would justly have entitled him to
the Humane Society's great gold medal. Apparently that was not his day for
saving life.
About the middle of the afternoon our field-glasses picked up the
Confederate head-of-column emerging from the range of hills previously
mentioned, where it is cut by the Columbia road. But--ominous
circumstance!--it did not come on. It turned to its left, at a right
angle, moving along the base of the hills, parallel to our line. Other
heads-of-column came through other gaps and over the crests farther along,
impudently deploying on the level ground with a spectacular display of
flags and glitter of arms. I do not remember that they were molested, even
by the guns of General Wagner, who had been foolishly posted with two
small brigades across the turnpike, a half-mile in our front, where he was
needless for apprisal and powerless for resistance. My recollection is
that our fellows down there in their shallow trenches noted these
portentous dispositions without the least manifestation of incivility. As
a matter of fact, many of them were permitted by their compassionate
officers to sleep. And truly it was good weather for that: sleep was in
the very atmosphere. The sun burned crimson in a gray-blue sky through a
delicate Indian-summer haze, as beautiful as a day-dream in paradise. If
one had been given to moralizing one might have found material a-plenty
for homilies in the contrast between that peaceful autumn afternoon and
the bloody business that it had in hand. If any good chaplain failed to
"improve the occasion" let us hope that he lived to lament in
sack-cloth-of-gold and ashes-of-roses his intellectual unthrift.
The putting of that army into battle shape--its change from columns into
lines--could not have occupied more than an hour or two, yet it seemed an
eternity. Its leisurely evolutions were irritating, but at last it moved
forward with atoning rapidity and the fight was on. First, the storm
struck Wagner's isolated brigades, which, vanishing in fire and smoke,
instantly reappeared as a confused mass of fugitives inextricably
intermingled with their pursuers. They had not stayed the advance a
moment, and as might have been foreseen were now a peril to the main line,
which could protect itself only by the slaughter of its friends. To the
right and left, however, our guns got into play, and simultaneously a
furious infantry fire broke out along the entire front, the paralyzed
center excepted. But nothing could stay those gallant rebels from a
hand-to-hand encounter with bayonet and butt, and it was accorded to them
with hearty good-will.
Meantime Wagner's conquerors were pouring across the breastwork like water
over a dam. The guns that had spared the fugitives had now no time to
fire; their infantry supports gave way and for a space of more than two
hundred yards in the very center of our line the assailants, mad with
exultation, had everything their own way. From the right and the left
their gray masses converged into the gap, pushed through, and then,
spreading, turned our men out of the works so hardly held against the
attack in their front. From our viewpoint on the bluff we could mark the
constant widening of the gap, the steady encroachment of that blazing and
smoking mass against its disordered opposition.
"It is all up with us," said Captain Dawson, of Wood's staff; "I am going
to have a quiet smoke."
I do not doubt that he supposed himself to have borne the heat and burden
of the strife. In the midst of his preparations for a smoke he paused and
looked again--a new tumult of musketry had broken loose. Colonel Emerson
Opdycke had rushed his reserve brigade into the _mêlée_ and was bitterly
disputing the Confederate advantage. Other fresh regiments joined in the
countercharge, commanderless groups of retreating men returned to their
work, and there ensued a hand-to-hand contest of incredible fury. Two
long, irregular, mutable, and tumultuous blurs of color were consuming
each other's edge along the line of contact. Such devil's work does not
last long, and we had the great joy to see it ending, not as it began, but
"more nearly to the heart's desire." Slowly the mobile blur moved away
from the town, and presently the gray half of it dissolved into its
elemental units, all in slow recession. The retaken guns in the embrasures
pushed up towering clouds of white smoke; to east and to west along the
reoccupied parapet ran a line of misty red till the spitfire crest was
without a break from flank to flank. Probably there was some Yankee
cheering, as doubtless there had been the "rebel yell," but my memory
recalls neither. There are many battles in a war, and many incidents in a
battle: one does not recollect everything. Possibly I have not a retentive
ear.
While this lively work had been doing in the center, there had been no
lack of diligence elsewhere, and now all were as busy as bees. I have read
of many "successive attacks"--"charge after charge"--but I think the only
assaults after the first were those of the second Confederate lines and
possibly some of the reserves; certainly there were no visible abatement
and renewal of effort anywhere except where the men who had been pushed
out of the works backward tried to reenter. And all the time there was
fighting.
After resetting their line the victors could not clear their front, for
the baffled assailants would not desist. All over the open country in
their rear, clear back to the base of the hills, drifted the wreck of
battle, the wounded that were able to walk; and through the receding
throng pushed forward, here and there, horsemen with orders and footmen
whom we knew to be bearing ammunition. There were no wagons, no caissons:
the enemy was not using, and could not use, his artillery. Along the line
of fire we could see, dimly in the smoke, mounted officers, singly and in
small groups, attempting to force their horses across the slight parapet,
but all went down. Of this devoted band was the gallant General Adams,
whose body was found upon the slope, and whose animal's forefeet were
actually inside the crest. General Cleburne lay a few paces farther out,
and five or six other general officers sprawled elsewhere. It was a great
day for Confederates in the line of promotion.
For many minutes at a time broad spaces of battle were veiled in smoke. Of
what might be occurring there conjecture gave a terrifying report. In a
visible peril observation is a kind of defense; against the unseen we lift
a trembling hand. Always from these regions of obscurity we expected the
worst, but always the lifted cloud revealed an unaltered situation.
The assailants began to give way. There was no general retreat; at many
points the fight continued, with lessening ferocity and lengthening range,
well into the night. It became an affair of twinkling musketry and broad
flares of artillery; then it sank to silence in the dark.
Under orders to continue his retreat, Schofield could now do so
unmolested: Hood had suffered so terrible a loss in life and _morale_ that
he was in no condition for effective pursuit. As at Spring Hill, daybreak
found us on the road with all our impedimenta except some of our wounded,
and that night we encamped under the protecting guns of Thomas, at
Nashville. Our gallant enemy audaciously followed, and fortified himself
within rifle-reach, where he remained for two weeks without firing a gun
and was then destroyed.
'WAY DOWN IN ALABAM'
At the break-up of the great Rebellion I found myself at Selma, Alabama,
still in the service of the United States, and although my duties were now
purely civil my treatment was not uniformly so, and I am not surprised
that it was not. I was a minor official in the Treasury Department,
engaged in performance of duties exceedingly disagreeable not only to the
people of the vicinity, but to myself as well. They consisted in the
collection and custody of "captured and abandoned property." The Treasury
had covered pretty nearly the entire area of "the States lately in
rebellion" with a hierarchy of officials, consisting, as nearly as memory
serves, of one supervising agent and a multitude of special agents. Each
special agent held dominion over a collection district and was allowed an
"agency aide" to assist him in his purposeful activity, besides such
clerks, laborers and so forth as he could persuade himself to need. My
humble position was that of agency aide. When the special agent was
present for duty I was his chief executive officer; in his absence I
represented him (with greater or less fidelity to the original and to my
conscience) and was invested with his powers. In the Selma agency the
property that we were expected to seize and defend as best we might was
mostly plantations (whose owners had disappeared; some were dead, others
in hiding) and cotton. The country was full of cotton which had been sold
to the Confederate Government, but not removed from the plantations to
take its chance of export through the blockade. It had been decided that
it now belonged to the United States. It was worth about five hundred
dollars a bale--say one dollar a pound. The world agreed that that was a
pretty good price for cotton.
Naturally the original owners, having received nothing for their product
but Confederate money which the result of the war had made worthless,
manifested an unamiable reluctance to give it up, for if they could market
it for themselves it would more than recoup them for all their losses in
the war. They had therefore exercised a considerable ingenuity in effacing
all record of its transfer to the Confederate Government, obliterating the
marks on the bales, and hiding these away in swamps and other
inconspicuous places, fortifying their claims to private ownership with
appalling affidavits and "covering their tracks" in an infinite variety of
ways generally.
In effecting their purpose they encountered many difficulties. Cotton in
bales is not very portable property; it requires for movement and
concealment a good deal of coöperation by persons having no interest in
keeping the secret and easily accessible to the blandishments of those
interested in tracing it. The negroes, by whom the work was necessarily
done, were zealous to pay for emancipation by fidelity to the new
_régime_, and many poor devils among them forfeited their lives by
services performed with more loyalty than discretion. Railways--even those
having a more than nominal equipment of rails and rolling stock--were
unavailable for secret conveyance of the cotton. Navigating the Alabama
and Tombigbee rivers were a few small steamboats, the half-dozen pilots
familiar with these streams exacting one hundred dollars a day for their
services; but our agents, backed by military authority, were at all the
principal shipping points and no boat could leave without their consent.
The port of Mobile was in our hands and the lower waters were patrolled by
gunboats. Cotton might, indeed, be dumped down a "slide" by night at some
private landing and fall upon the deck of a steamer idling innocently
below. It might even arrive at Mobile, but secretly to transfer it to a
deep-water vessel and get it out of the country--that was a dream.
On the movement of private cotton we put no restrictions; and such were
the freight rates that it was possible to purchase a steamboat at Mobile,
go up the river in ballast, bring down a cargo of cotton and make a
handsome profit, after deducting the cost of the boat and all expenses of
the venture, including the wage of the pilot. With no great knowledge of
"business" I venture to think that in Alabama in the latter part of the
year of grace 1865 commercial conditions were hardly normal.
Nor were social conditions what I trust they have now become. There was no
law in the country except of the unsatisfactory sort known as "martial,"
and that was effective only within areas covered by the guns of isolated
forts and the physical activities of their small garrisons. True, there
were the immemorial laws of self-preservation and retaliation, both of
which were liberally interpreted. The latter was faithfully administered,
mostly against straggling Federal soldiers and too zealous government
officials. When my chief had been ordered to Selma he had arrived just in
time to act as sole mourner at the funeral of his predecessor--who had had
the bad luck to interpret his instructions in a sense that was
disagreeable to a gentleman whose interests were affected by the
interpretation. Early one pleasant morning shortly afterward two United
States marshals were observed by the roadside in a suburb of the town.
They looked comfortable enough there in the sunshine, but each
had that across his throat
Which you had hardly cared to see.
When dispatched on business of a delicate nature men in the service of the
agency had a significant trick of disappearing--they were of "the
unreturning brave." Really the mortality among the unacclimated in the
Selma district at that time was excessive. When my chief and I parted at
dinner time (our palates were not in harmony) we commonly shook hands and
tried to say something memorable that was worthy to serve as "last words."
We had been in the army together and had many a time gone into battle
without having taken that precaution in the interest of history.
Of course the better class of the people were not accountable for this
state of affairs, and I do not remember that I greatly blamed the others.
The country was full of the "elements of combustion." The people were
impoverished and smarting with a sense of defeat. Organized resistance was
no longer possible, but many men trained to the use of arms did not
consider themselves included in the surrender and conscientiously believed
it both right and expedient to prolong the struggle by private enterprise.
Many, no doubt, made the easy and natural transition from soldiering to
assassination by insensible degrees, unconscious of the moral difference,
such as it is. Selma was little better than a ruin; in the concluding
period of the war General Wilson's cavalry had raided it and nearly
destroyed it, and the work begun by the battery had been completed by the
torch. The conflagration was generally attributed to the negroes, who
certainly augmented it, for a number of those suspected of the crime were
flung into the flames by the maddened populace. None the less were the
Yankee invaders held responsible.
Every Northern man represented some form or phase of an authority which
these luckless people horribly hated, and to which they submitted only
because, and in so far as, they had to. Fancy such a community, utterly
without the restraints of law and with no means of ascertaining public
opinion--for newspapers were not--denied even the moral advantage of the
pulpit! Considering what human nature has the misfortune to be, it is
wonderful that there was so little of violence and crime.
As the carcass invites the vulture, this prostrate land drew adventurers
from all points of the compass. Many, I am sorry to say, were in the
service of the United States Government. Truth to tell, the special agents
of the Treasury were themselves, as a body, not altogether spotless. I
could name some of them, and some of their assistants, who made large
fortunes by their opportunities. The special agents were allowed
one-fourth of the value of the confiscated cotton for expenses of
collection--none too much, considering the arduous and perilous character
of the service; but the plan opened up such possibilities of fraud as have
seldom been accorded by any system of conducting the public business, and
never without disastrous results to official morality. Against bribery no
provision could have provided an adequate safeguard; the magnitude of the
interests involved was too great, the administration of the trust too
loose and irresponsible. The system as it was, hastily devised in the
storm and stress of a closing war, broke down in the end, and it is
doubtful if the Government might not more profitably have let the
"captured and abandoned property" alone.
As an instance of the temptations to which we were exposed, and of our
tactical dispositions in resistance, I venture to relate a single
experience of my own. During an absence of my chief I got upon the trail
of a lot of cotton--seven hundred bales, as nearly as I now
recollect--which had been hidden with so exceptional ingenuity that I was
unable to trace it. One day there came to my office two well-dressed and
mannerly fellows who suffered me to infer that they knew all about this
cotton and controlled it. When our conference on the subject ended it was
past dinner time and they civilly invited me to dine with them, which, in
hope of eliciting information over the wine, I did. I knew well enough
that they indulged a similar selfish hope, so I had no scruples about
using their hospitality to their disadvantage if I could. The subject,
however, was not mentioned at table, and we were all singularly abstemious
in the matter of champagne--so much so that as we rose from a rather long
session at the board we disclosed our sense of the ludicrousness of the
situation by laughing outright. Nevertheless, neither party would accept
defeat, and for the next few weeks the war of hospitality was fast and
furious. We dined together nearly every day, sometimes at my expense,
sometimes at theirs. We drove, rode, walked, played at billiards and made
many a night of it; but youth and temperance (in drink) pulled me through
without serious inroads on my health. We had early come to an
understanding and a deadlock. Failing to get the slenderest clew to the
location of the cotton I offered them one-fourth if they would surrender
it or disclose its hiding-place; they offered me one-fourth if I would
sign a permit for its shipment as private property.
All things have an end, and this amusing contest finally closed. Over the
remains of a farewell dinner, unusually luxurious, as befitted the
occasion, we parted with expressions of mutual esteem--not, I hope,
altogether insincere, and the ultimate fate of the cotton is to me
unknown. Up to the date of my departure from the agency not a bale of it
had either come into possession of the Government or found an outlet. I am
sometimes disloyal enough to indulge myself in the hope that they baffled
my successors as skilfully as they did me. One cannot help feeling a
certain tenderness for men who know and value a good dinner.
Another corrupt proposal that I had the good fortune to be afraid to
entertain came, as it were, from within. There was a dare-devil fellow
whom, as I know him to be dead, I feel justified in naming Jack Harris. He
was engaged in all manner of speculative ventures on his own account, but
the special agent had so frequently employed him in "enterprises of great
pith and moment" that he was in a certain sense and to a certain extent
one of us. He seemed to me at the time unique, but shortly afterward I had
learned to classify him as a type of the Californian adventurer with whose
peculiarities of manner, speech and disposition most of us are to-day
familiar enough. He never spoke of his past, having doubtless good reasons
for reticence, but any one learned in Western slang--a knowledge then
denied me--would have catalogued him with infallible accuracy. He was a
rather large, strong fellow, swarthy, black-bearded, black-eyed,
black-hearted and entertaining, no end; ignorant with an ignorance whose
frankness redeemed it from offensiveness, vulgar with a vulgarity that
expressed itself in such metaphors and similes as would have made its
peace with the most implacable refinement. He drank hard, gambled high,
swore like a parrot, scoffed at everything, was openly and proudly a
rascal, did not know the meaning of fear, borrowed money abundantly, and
squandered it with royal disregard. Desiring one day to go to Mobile, but
reluctant to leave Montgomery and its pleasures--unwilling to quit
certainty for hope--he persuaded the captain of a loaded steamboat to wait
four days for him at an expense of $400 a day; and lest time should hang
too heavy on the obliging skipper's hands, Jack permitted him to share the
orgies gratis. But that is not my story.
One day Jack came to me with a rather more sinful proposal than he had
heretofore done me the honor to submit. He knew of about a thousand bales
of cotton, some of it private property, some of it confiscable, stored at
various points on the banks of the Alabama. He had a steamboat in
readiness, "with a gallant, gallant crew," and he proposed to drop quietly
down to the various landings by night, seize the cotton, load it on his
boat and make off down the river. What he wanted from me, and was willing
to pay for, was only my official signature to some blank shipping permits;
or if I would accompany the expedition and share its fortunes no papers
would be necessary. In declining this truly generous offer I felt that I
owed it to Jack to give him a reason that he was capable of understanding,
so I explained to him the arrangements at Mobile, which would prevent him
from transferring his cargo to a ship and getting the necessary papers
permitting her to sail. He was astonished and, I think, pained by my
simplicity. Did I think him a fool? He did not purpose--not he--to
tranship at all: the perfected plan was to dispense with all hampering
formality by slipping through Mobile Bay in the black of the night and
navigating his laden river craft across the Gulf to Havana! The rascal was
in dead earnest, and that natural timidity of disposition which compelled
me to withhold my coöperation greatly lowered me in his esteem, I fear.
It was in Cuba, by the way, that Jack came to grief some years later. He
was one of the crew of the filibustering vessel _Virginius_, and was
captured and shot along with the others. Something in his demeanor as he
knelt in the line to receive the fatal fusillade prompted a priest to
inquire his religion. "I am an atheist, by God!" said Jack, and with this
quiet profession of faith that gentle spirit winged its way to other
tropics.
Having expounded with some particularity the precarious tenure by which I
held my office and my life in those "thrilling regions" where my duties
lay, I ought to explain by what unhappy chance I am still able to afflict
the reader. There lived in Selma a certain once wealthy and still
influential citizen, whose two sons, of about my own age, had served as
officers in the Confederate Army. I will designate them simply as Charles
and Frank. They were types of a class now, I fear, almost extinct. Born
and bred in luxury and knowing nothing of the seamy side of life--except,
indeed, what they had learned in the war--well educated, brave, generous,
sensitive to points of honor, and of engaging manners, these brothers were
by all respected, by many loved and by some feared. For they had quick
fingers upon the pistol-trigger withal, and would rather fight a duel than
eat--nay, drink. Nor were they over-particular about the combat taking the
form of a duel--almost any form was good enough. I made their acquaintance
by chance and cultivated it for the pleasure it gave me. It was long
afterward that I gave a thought to its advantages; but from the time that
I became generally known as their friend my safety was assured through all
that region; an army with banners could not have given me the same
immunity from danger, obstruction or even insult in the performance of my
disagreeable duties. What glorious fellows they were, to be sure--these my
late antagonists of the dark days when, God forgive us, we were trying to
cut one another's throat. To this day I feel a sense of regret when I
think of my instrumentality, however small, in depriving the world of many
such men in the criminal insanity that we call battle.
Life in Selma became worth living even as the chance of living it
augmented. With my new friends and a friend of theirs, whose name--the
more shame to me--I cannot now recall, but should not write here if I
could, I passed most of my leisure hours. At the houses of themselves and
their friends I did most of my dining; and, heaven be praised! there was
no necessity for moderation in wine. In their society I committed my sins,
and together beneath that noble orb unknown to colder skies, the Southern
moon, we atoned for them by acts of devotion performed with song and lute
beneath the shrine window of many a local divinity.
One night we had an adventure. We were out late--so late that it was night
only astronomically. The streets were "deserted and drear," and, of
course, unlighted--the late Confederacy had no gas and no oil.
Nevertheless, we saw that we were followed. A man keeping at a fixed
distance behind turned as we turned, paused as we paused, and pursued as
we moved on. We stopped, went back and remonstrated; asked his intentions
in, I dare say, no gentle words. He gave us no reply, but as we left him
he followed. Again we stopped, and I felt my pistol plucked out of my
pocket. Frank had unceremoniously possessed himself of it and was
advancing on the enemy. I do not remember if I had any wish to interpose a
protest--anyhow there was no time. Frank fired and the man fell. In a
moment all the chamber-windows in the street were thrown open with a head
visible (and audible) in each. We told Frank to go home, which to our
surprise he did; the rest of us, assisted by somebody's private
policeman--who afterward apprised us that we were in arrest--carried the
man to a hotel. It was found that his leg was broken above the knee, and
the next day it was amputated. We paid his surgeon and his hotel bill, and
when he had sufficiently recovered sent him to an address which he gave us
in Mobile; but not a word could anybody get out of him as to who he had
the misfortune to be, or why he had persisted, against the light, in
following a quartet of stray revelers.
On the morning of the shooting, when everything possible had been done for
the comfort of the victim, we three accomplices were released on our own
recognizance by an old gentleman of severe aspect, who had resumed his
function of justice of the peace where he had laid it down during the war.
I did not then know that he had no more legal authority than I had myself,
and I was somewhat disturbed in mind as I reflected on the possibilities
of the situation. The opportunity to get rid of an offensive Federal
official must of course be very tempting, and after all the shooting was a
trifle hasty and not altogether justifiable.
On the day appointed for our preliminary examination, all of us except
Frank were released and put on the witness-stand. We gave a true and
congruent history of the affair. The holdover justice listened to it all
very patiently and then, with commendable brevity and directness of
action, fined Frank five dollars and costs for disorderly conduct. There
was no appeal.
There were queer characters in Alabama in those days, as you shall see.
Once upon a time the special agent and I started down the Tombigbee River
with a steamboat load of government cotton--some six hundred bales. At one
of the military stations we took on a guard of a dozen or fifteen soldiers
under command of a non-commissioned officer. One evening, just before
dusk, as we were rounding a bend where the current set strongly against
the left bank of the stream and the channel lay close to that shore, we
were suddenly saluted with a volley of bullets and buckshot from that
direction. The din of the firing, the rattle and crash of the missiles
splintering the woodwork and the jingle of broken glass made a very rude
arousing from the tranquil indolence of a warm afternoon on the sluggish
Tombigbee. The left bank, which at this point was a trifle higher than the
hurricane deck of a steamer, was now swarming with men who, almost near
enough to jump aboard, looked unreasonably large and active as they sprang
about from cover to cover, pouring in their fire. At the first volley the
pilot had deserted his wheel, as well he might, and the boat, drifting in
to the bank under the boughs of a tree, was helpless. Her jackstaff and
yawl were carried away, her guards broken in, and her deck-load of cotton
was tumbling into the stream a dozen bales at once. The captain was
nowhere to be seen, the engineer had evidently abandoned his post and the
special agent had gone to hunt up the soldiers. I happened to be on the
hurricane deck, armed with a revolver, which I fired as rapidly as I
could, listening all the time for the fire of the soldiers--and listening
in vain. It transpired later that they had not a cartridge among them; and
of all helpless mortals a soldier without a cartridge is the most
imbecile. But all this time the continuous rattle of the enemy's guns and
the petulant pop of my own pocket firearm were punctuated, as it were, by
pretty regularly recurring loud explosions, as of a small cannon. They
came from somewhere forward--I supposed from the opposition, as I knew we
had no artillery on board.
The failure of our military guard made the situation somewhat grave. For
two of us, at least, capture meant hanging out of hand. I had never been
hanged in all my life and was not enamored of the prospect. Fortunately
for us the bandits had selected their point of attack without military
foresight. Immediately below them a bayou, impassable to them, let into
the river. The moment we had drifted below it we were safe from boarding
and capture. The captain was found in hiding and an empty pistol at his
ear persuaded him to resume command of his vessel; the engineer and pilot
were encouraged to go back to their posts and after some remarkably long
minutes, during which we were under an increasingly long-range fire, we
got under way. A few cotton bales piled about the pilot-house made us
tolerably safe from that sort of thing in the future and then we took
account of our damages. Nobody had been killed and only a few were
wounded. This gratifying result was attributable to the fact that, being
unarmed, nearly everybody had dived below at the first fire and taken
cover among the cotton bales. While issuing a multitude of needless
commands from the front of the hurricane-deck I looked below, and there,
stretched out at full length on his stomach, lay a long, ungainly person,
clad in faded butternut, bare-headed, his long, lank hair falling down
each side of his neck, his coat-tails similarly parted, and his enormous
feet spreading their soles to the blue sky. He had an old-fashioned
horse-pistol, some two feet long, which he was in the act of sighting
across his left palm for a parting shot at the now distant assailants. A
more ludicrous figure I never saw; I laughed outright; but when his weapon
went off it was matter for gratitude to be above it instead of before it.
It was the "cannon" whose note I had marked all through the unequal fray.
The fellow was a returned Confederate whom we had taken on at one of the
upper landings as our only passenger; we were dead-heading him to Mobile.
He was undoubtedly in hearty sympathy with the enemy, and I at first
suspected him of collusion, but circumstances not necessary to detail here
rendered this impossible. Moreover, I had distinctly seen one of the
"guerrillas" fall and remain down after my own weapon was empty, and no
man else on board except the passenger had fired a shot or had a shot to
fire. When everything had been made snug again, and we were gliding along
under the stars, without apprehension; when I had counted fifty-odd bullet
holes through the pilot-house (which had not received the attention that
by its prominence and importance it was justly entitled to) and everybody
was variously boasting his prowess, I approached my butternut
comrade-in-arms and thanked him for his kindly aid. "But," said I, "how
the devil does it happen that _you_ fight _that_ crowd?"
"Wal, Cap," he drawled, as he rubbed the powder grime from his antique
artillery, "I allowed it was mouty clever in you-all to take me on, seein'
I hadn't ary cent, so I thought I'd jist kinder work my passage."