THE PRIVATIONS OF A CITIZEN.
On reaching home we found change written upon everything. During
our four years and three months’ absence the city government was in
control of aliens or carpetbaggers who ground out checks and bonds
with a lavish hand. After paying my last fifty cents for dinner at the
Commercial Hotel, I borrowed five cents from a friend, and proceeded
across the ferry, which was just above the Louisville and Nashville
Railroad bridge. I trudged along the White’s Creek pike and finally
stopped and tried to locate myself. When I left home, the whole country
around Edgefield was a vast forest of large poplars, sweet-gum,
hackberry, hickory, and walnut. There never was a country that produced
such fine and diversified timber as this. It was all gone, and the
stumps dug up. I looked for the old homestead, and found a dilapidated
house that resembled it; the weatherboarding had been stripped off
for some distance, and not a piece of fence was in sight. The trees
my mother planted in 1845, the year before she died, were all gone. I
walked near the old house, where some mulatto children were playing on
the porch. I stopped to look at them, but could not recognize them.
Presently a white woman came out on the porch, and I said, “Who are
you?” She replied, “I am Jim’s wife.” I saw at once that she was a
Northern woman. The “Jim” she had reference to was one of my former
faithful slaves. As soon as I got one dollar and twenty-five cents, I
went before Mr. R. McPhail Smith and took the amnesty oath, and Jim
and his wife had to vamoose the ranch. I trudged along for four miles
farther to the home of Judge Whitworth, on the Brick Church turnpike,
which I reached early in the evening. The family were all glad to see
me; and after supper, feeling very tired, I went to the office room to
bed, but could not sleep. Man is a creature of habit, and I had been
so used to sleeping on a hard surface that I got up, took a quilt, and
slept well in the front yard under the apple trees. James, George, and
Leonard followed me, and it was nearly a month before I got used to a
bed.
After helping on the farm for a month I came to the city and went
to work for the Express Company. No one who had participated in the
war on the Southern side could vote. In order to vote, a man had to
subscribe to an oath that he had not aided, abetted, or sympathized
with secession. Of course that disfranchised nearly all of the whites,
and no one could vote save carpetbaggers and the colored population.
Those who had real estate at that time, in addition to the city,
county, and state tax, had a special tax to pay on the Edgefield and
Kentucky and the Tennessee and Pacific Railway. So we had taxation
without representation. The city was in the hands of a military post
and metropolitan police; the railroads were United States military
roads, and were managed by superintendents. It took nearly the entire
police force to look after the lawless soldiers, who would rob and in
some instances murder inoffensive citizens. We had no law or order;
everything was in a chaotic state. In the meantime the Kuklux Klan and
Palefaces were a law unto themselves. The object of the Kuklux Klan
was a laudable one. It was to intimidate the evil doer and to protect
the weak against the strong. No one knew who the Grand Cyclops was
unless he recognized his voice in the giving of the oath, as it was
administered in a deep guttural voice, and with hoodwink. The Palefaces
were auxiliaries of the Kuklux, and were composed of young men who
were too young to go in the war of 1861. Any Kuklux could join the
Palefaces. Their mode of initiation was quite tragic. A large tent
was in the hall room, and a sentinel paced to and fro; near by was a
gallows, and before the initiate was to be hanged there was a terrible
scuffling and firing of pistols. This was done to try the mettle of the
young candidate. The Kuklux ceremony was quite tame compared with that
of the Palefaces. The Kuklux Klan were supposed to have been tried by
the fires of battle, and no other kind of firing was required in their
initiation. I recollect five meeting places: in the powder magazine
of Fort Negley; Masonic Temple; under the Olympic Theater; a store
on Market Street; and over Evans, Fite, Porter, and Company’s store.
Those serving as Grand Cyclops were Player Martin, E. R. Richardson,
Frank Anderson, Captain John W. Morton; and Judge J. H. Hales, of the
Palefaces. There were about four thousand of the Kuklux and Palefaces
in the city and county. Each Klan had a Grand Cyclops, but many of
their names I have forgotten. I never heard of a large procession of
Kuklux riding through our city intimidating the metropolitan police.
There were some eighteen in the squad, and they were not trying to
intimidate the police. On the other hand, I have always thought that
the Kuklux Klan were auxiliaries to the police in suppressing crime.
Columbia and Pulaski would sometimes have a horseback procession of one
hundred and fifty or two hundred horsemen, the men all heavily gowned
and the horses’ hoofs muffled; and they presented quite a weird troop
as they noiselessly marched through the towns, which would strike awe
to the evil doers. It was not done especially to intimidate the blacks,
but whites as well, if guilty of wrongdoing. The blacks who behaved
themselves had the best of friends in the Kuklux Klan. I never heard
of but two deeds of violence in our community during the existence of
the Klan. One was that of a white man who was mistreating his wife. The
Klan to which Captain P. M. Griffin belonged took the man out, gave him
a good whipping, and sent him home. The man afterwards always behaved
himself, and I think he died a good citizen. The Klans were located in
all parts of the city and country, and kept up with their neighbors’
doings. When a man was doing wrong a note saying “Beware,” and signed
“Kuklux Klan,” was enough. The fellow’s guilty conscience would say, “I
am the man,” and thus a reformation in his conduct would take place.
So I have always maintained that the Klans were great conservators of
law and order. The next deed of violence was the case of Mr. Barmore,
of Indianapolis. It was said that Governor Brownlow had offered a large
reward to any one who would ferret out the Klan, and Mr. Barmore came
to Nashville. He soon called at the Express office for a package, and
I asked for identification, and he brought in Mr. Sparling, who was
at that time agent for the Knickerbocker Life Insurance Company. Mr.
Barmore would have attracted attention anywhere. He was a man of fine
physique, and dressed very conspicuously for a detective. He wore a
fur cap, velvet jacket and trousers, high-top patent leather boots
with trousers stuffed in boot-legs, and carried under his arm a large
silver-mounted cane. After his first introduction he frequently called
at the office for packages, and talked with me, but never mentioned the
Kuklux Klan, although he knew that I had been in the Confederate army.
One day he went to Columbia, and the Klan gave him a mock and asked
him not to come to that section any more. A few weeks later he was in
Pulaski, but did not get any information, and left on the train for
Nashville. The Pulaski Klan wired Columbia: “Barmore is on the train.”
Four men in Columbia bought tickets to Godwin, and took seats near
Barmore. I think Pitts Brown was the conductor. Just before Duck River
bridge was reached one of the men pulled the bell cord and said to
Barmore: “We want you.” They carried him below the turnpike bridge, put
a rope around his neck, and, notwithstanding his plea for mercy, they
deposited his body in Duck River.
In 1870 our franchise was restored while D. W. C. Senter was Governor,
and the Kuklux Klan was disbanded forever.
Another great privation, and I shall have finished. On December 4,
1868, I was returning home from Cincinnati on the steamer _United
States_. It was a cold, stormy night, and there were thirty barrels of
coal oil on the bow. At 11:20 the _America_ collided with our steamer,
knocking a large hole in the bow, igniting the coal oil, and the vessel
commenced to burn and sink at the same time. We had a large passenger
list, one hundred and thirty of whom were lost. As soon as I felt the
shock of the collision I rushed up to the hurricane roof to see what
had struck our boat. I saw the _America_ standing out between us and
the shore, and there was no sign of fire about her except the lights
from the cabin. From the light of our fire I read her name distinctly.
I ran at once to the ladies’ cabin and said to James W. McFerrin and
wife: “Get out on the guards quick; the _America_ will save us.” I then
hurried back to my stateroom, which was near the office, to get my
watch and money. When I came out of my room, the vessel was afire from
stem to stern, and on account of the dense coal oil smoke I came near
suffocating, and had to crawl some one hundred and fifty feet to the
ladies’ cabin, where all was in great confusion. Mothers were calling
for husbands and children, husbands shrieking for wives and children.
In all my privations in life I have never witnessed such a heartrending
scene, and I was powerless to aid any one. When I reached the outer
guard, aft of the wheel-house and near where I left Mr. McFerrin and
wife, the bow of the _America_ was passing by, and the fire was nearly
to the top of her chimneys. I started to jump on the stageplank space,
but all around were burning piles of baled hay. As soon as her bow
passed I took a plunge, and went down, I suppose, about twelve feet;
and when I struck the bottom, I shot up like a rocket, and struck out
for the shore, which I soon reached. But I got very cold when a few
feet up the bank, and could go no farther. I had on nothing but my
underclothes, and but for a flatboatman who carried me on his back
about two hundred yards to the burning _America_, I believe I would
have succumbed to the cold. On my berth that night was my Baltimore
overcoat, which I had worn in General Lee’s army and had sent to
relatives in Virginia before the Wilderness campaign. My relatives had
forwarded it to me at Nashville in the fall of 1865, and it was lost in
that terrible holocaust; but I was glad to get out.
I was sick for quite a while after the wreck, and the doctor said that
one of my lungs was involved; but I said, “Doctor, I am too young a man
to give up so early;” and I have been leading an active life to this
date (December 3, 1906).