IN AND ABOUT CHATTANOOGA.
Two hundred and fifty miles from Knoxville, lying within a coil of the
serpentine Tennessee, on its south bank, surrounded by mountains, is the
town of Chattanooga. Here the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad
connects with the Nashville and Chattanooga, and with the Western and
Atlantic, making the place an important centre of railroad
communications. The river is navigable for steamboats during eight
months of the year. Here are shipped the principal exports of East
Tennessee and of Southern Middle Tennessee. Hence the military
importance of the place, and its historical interest.
Although embosomed amid strikingly bold and grand scenery, Chattanooga
is anything but a lovely town. On the east, but a few miles distant, is
Missionary Ridge,[10] a range of forest-covered mountains rising from
the river and sweeping away southward into Georgia. On the southwest is
Lookout Mountain, with rugged, precipitous front overlooking the river
and the town. Between this mountain and Missionary Ridge lies
Chattanooga Valley. Rising steeply from the edge of the town, within the
curve of the river which encloses it on the north and west, is Cameron
Hill, a sort of miniature copy of Lookout. A miniature only by
comparison; for it is a little mountain by itself: a peaked bluff, its
summit flanked by forts, and crowned by a battery of a single huge gun.
[Illustration]
If you visit Chattanooga, climb, as I did, this hill the first fair
morning after your arrival. Away on the south are the mountains of
Georgia; on the north, those of Tennessee. Dividing these peaks and
ranges with its shining cimeter, curves the river, overhung by
precipitous crags. Far beneath you, as you look from the northern brow
of the hill, ply the steamboats, breaking the surface into streaks of
foam, and puffing white wreaths up into the clear, still air. Opposite,
across the river, are clusters of high, wooded hills, with
signal-stations on their peaks.
In the valley at the foot of Cameron, is Chattanooga, with its multitude
of long, low, whitewashed wooden buildings, government storehouses,
barracks, shops, rows of huts, and corrals, such as make haste always to
spring up around an army’s base of supplies. Surrounding the town are
red earthworks, and hills of red earth with devious roads and paths
winding over them.
I found a strangely mixed population in Chattanooga,—traders,
adventurers, soldiers, poor whites, refugees, and negroes. There were
many Union men from the Cotton States, who had escaped into our lines
during the war, and either could not or dared not return. Here is a
sample of them,—a lank, sallow, ragged individual with long black hair
and wild beard, whose acquaintance I made in the streets. He was a
shoemaker from Georgia. His Rebel neighbors had burned his house and
shop, destroyed his tools, and forced him to flee for his life. He
enlisted in our army, and had been fighting his daddy and two brothers.
“My daddy,” said he, “is as good a Rebel as you’ll find. He has grieved
himself nigh-about to death because he didn’t gain his independence.”
I asked him how his father would receive him if he should go back.
“I allow we shouldn’t git along together no hack! The first question I’d
ask him would be if he’d tuck the oath of allegiance. That would devil
him to death. Then I’d ask him if he knowed whar his President Jeff was.
Then he’d jest let in to cussin’ me. But I can’t go back. The men that
robbed me are jest as bad Rebels as ever, and they’d burn my house
again, or give me a bullet from behind some bush.”
There was in Chattanooga a post-school for the children of poor whites
and refugees. It numbered one hundred and fifty pupils of various
ages,—young children, girls of fifteen and sixteen, one married woman,
and boys that were almost men, all wofully ignorant. Scarcely any of
them knew their letters when they entered the school. The big boys
chewed tobacco, and the big girls “dipped.” The mothers, when they came
to talk with the teacher about their children, appeared with their
nasty, snuffy sticks in their mouths: some chewed and spat like men. One
complained that she was too poor to send her children to school; at the
same time she was chewing up and spitting away more than the means
needful for the purpose. Tobacco was a necessity of life; education
wasn’t. The tax upon pupils was very small, the school being mainly
supported by what is called the “post-fund,” accruing from taxes on
sutlers, rents of buildings, and military fines. The post-school is
usually designed for the children of soldiers; but Chattanooga being
garrisoned by colored troops, their children attended the freedmen’s
schools.
The freedmen’s schools were not in session at the time of my visit,
owing to the small-pox then raging among the negro population; but I
heard an excellent account of them. They numbered six hundred pupils.
The teachers were furnished by the Western Freedmen’s Aid Society and
paid by the freedmen themselves. One dollar a month was charged for each
scholar. “The colored people,” said the school-superintendent, “are far
more zealous in the cause of education than the whites. They will starve
themselves, and go without clothes, in order to send their children to
school.”
Notwithstanding there were three thousand negroes in and around
Chattanooga, Captain Lucas, of the Freedmen’s Bureau, informed me that
he was issuing no rations to them. All were finding some work to do, and
supporting themselves. To those who applied for aid he gave
certificates, requesting the Commissary to sell them rations at
Government rates. He was helping them to make contracts, and sending
them away to plantations at the rate of fifty or one hundred a week.
“These people,” said he, “have been terribly slandered and abused. They
are willing to go anywhere, if they are sure of work and kind treatment.
Northern men have no difficulty in hiring them, but they have no
confidence in their old masters.” It was mostly to Northern men, leasing
plantations in the Mississippi Valley, that the freedmen were hiring
themselves. The usual rate of wages was not less than twelve nor more
than sixteen dollars a month, for full hands.
The principal negro settlement was at Contraband, a village of huts on
the north side of the river. Its affairs were administered by a colored
president and council chosen from among the citizens. These were
generally persons of dignity and shrewd sense. They constituted a court
for the trial of minor offences, under the supervision of the Bureau.
Their decisions, Captain Lucas informed me, were nearly always wise and
just. “I have to interfere, sometimes, however, to mitigate the severity
of the sentences.” These men showed no prejudice in favor of their own
color, but meted out a rugged and austere justice to all.
One afternoon I crossed the river to pay a visit to this little village.
The huts, built by the negroes themselves, were of a similar character
to those I had seen at Hampton, but they lacked the big wood-piles and
stacks of corn, and the general air of thrift. Excepting the ravages of
the small-pox, the community was in a good state of health. I found but
one case of sickness,—that of an old negro suffering from a cold on his
lungs, who told me there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t give to
“git shet of dis sher misery.”
I entered several of these houses; in one of which I surprised a young
couple courting by the fire, and withdrew precipitately, quite as much
embarrassed as they were. In another I found a middle-aged woman
patching clothes for her little boy, who was at play before the open
door. Although it was a summer-like December day, there was a good fire
in the fireplace. The hut was built of rails and mud; the chimney of
sticks and sun-dried bricks, surmounted by a barrel. The roof was of
split slabs. There was a slab mantel-piece crowded with bottles and
cans; a shelf in one corner loaded with buckets and pans; and another in
the opposite corner devoted to plates, cups, and mugs. I noticed also in
the room a table, a bed, a bunk, a cupboard, a broom without a handle,
two stools, and a number of pegs on which clothing was hung. All this
within a space not much more than a dozen feet square.
I asked the woman how her people were getting along.
“Some are makin’ it right shacklin’,” she replied, “there’s so many of
us here. A heap is workin’, and a heap is lazin’ around.” Her husband
was employed whenever he could get a job. “Sometimes he talks like he’d
hire out, then like he’d sooner take land,—any way to git into work. All
have to support themselves somehow.”
She knew me for a Northern man. “I’m proud of Northern men! They’ve
caused me to see a heap mo’e pleasure ’n I ever see befo’e.” Her husband
was a good man, but she was not at all enthusiastic about him. “I had
one husband; I loved him! He belonged to a man that owned a power o’
darkeys. He sold him away. It just broke my heart. But I couldn’t live
without some man, no how; so I thought I might as well marry again.” She
regretted the closing of the schools. “My chap went a little, but not
much.”
“Are these your chickens?”
“No, I can’t raise chickens.” It was the fault of her neighbors. “They
just pick ’em up and steal ’em in a minute! Heap of our people will pick
up, but they’re sly. That comes from the way they was raised. I never
stole in my life but from them that owned me. They’d work me all day,
and never give me enough to eat, and I’d take what I could from ’em, and
believe it was right.”
Hearing martial music as I returned across the river, I went up on a
hill east of the town and witnessed the dress-parade of the sixteenth
colored regiment (Tennessee). I never saw a finer military display on a
small scale. The drill was perfect. At the order, a thousand muskets
came to a thousand shoulders with a single movement, or the butts struck
the ground with one sound along the whole line. The contrast of colors
was superb,—the black faces, the white gloves, the blue uniforms, the
bright steel. The music by the colored band was mellow and inspiring;
and as a background to the picture we had a golden sunset behind the
mountains.
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Footnote 10:
Or Mission Ridge; named from an Indian mission formerly located in
this vicinity.