LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN.
The next morning General Gillem, in command at Chattanooga, supplied me
with a horse, and gave me his orderly for an attendant, and I set out to
make the ascent of Lookout Mountain.
Riding out southward on one of the valley roads, we had hardly crossed
Chattanooga Creek before we missed our way. Fortunately we overtook a
farmer and his son, who set us right. They were laboring over the base
of the mountain with a wagon drawn by a pair of animals that appeared to
have been mated by some whimsical caprice. A tall, bony horse was
harnessed in with the smallest mule I ever saw. Imagine a lank starved
dog beside a rat, and you have an idea of the ludicrous incongruity of
the match.
The man had in his wagon a single bag of grist, which he had to help
over the rough mountain-roads by lifting at the wheels. He had been
twelve miles to mill: “away beyant Missionary Ridge.” I asked him if
there was no mill nearer home. “Thar’s a mill on Wahatchie Crick, but
it’s mighty hard to pull thar. Wahatchie Hill is a powerful bad hill to
pull up.” He did not seem to think twelve miles to mill anything, and we
left him lifting cheerfully at the wheels, while his son shouted and
licked the team. I trust his wife appreciated that bag of grist.
Riding southward along the eastern side of the mountain, we commenced
the ascent of it by a steep, rough road, winding among forest-trees, and
huge limestone rocks colored with exquisite tints of brown and gray and
green, by the moss and lichens that covered them. A range of precipitous
crags rose before us, and soon hung toppling over us as we continued to
climb. A heavy cloud was on the mountain, combed by the pine-tops a
thousand feet above our heads.
As we proceeded, I conversed with the General’s orderly. He was a
good-looking young fellow with short curly hair and a sallow complexion.
I inquired to what regiment he belonged.
“The Sixth Ohio, colored.” I looked at him with surprise. “You didn’t
take me for a colored man, I reckon,” he said laughingly.
I thought he must be jesting, but he assured me that he was not.
“I was born in bondage,” he said, “near Memphis. My master was my
father, and my mother’s owner. He made a will that she was to be free,
and that I was to learn a trade, and have my freedom when I was
twenty-one. He died when I was seven years old, and the estate was
divided between his mother and two sisters. I don’t know what became of
the will. I was run off into Middle Tennessee and sold for three hundred
dollars. I was sold again when I was fourteen for sixteen hundred
dollars. I was a carpenter; and carpenters was high. When I saw other
men no whiter than me working for themselves and enjoying their freedom,
I got discontented, and made up my mind to put out. The year Buchanan
run for President I run for freedom. I got safe over into Ohio, and
there I worked at my trade till the war broke out. I went out as an
officer’s servant.”
He met with various adventures, and at length became General Grant’s
body-servant. He described the General as “a short, chunked man, like a
Dutchman;” quiet, kind, a great smoker, a heavy drinker, very silent,
and seldom excited. “There was only one time when he appeared troubled
in his mind. That was on the road to Corinth, after the battle of
Shiloh. He used to walk his room all night.”
After the government began to make use of colored troops he went back to
Ohio and enlisted. Since the war closed, he had obtained a furlough,
returned to his native place, and found his mother, who in the mean time
had been held as a slave.
The clouds lifted as we reached the summit of the mountain, fifteen
hundred feet above the river. We passed through Summer Town, a deserted
village, formerly a place of resort for families from Tennessee,
Georgia, and Alabama, during the hot season. A rough road over the rocks
and through the woods took us to Point Lookout, a mile farther north.
A _lookout_ indeed! What cloud shadows were sweeping the mountains and
valleys! We left our horses tied to some trees, and clambered down over
the ledges to the brink of the precipice. Away on the northeast was
Chattanooga, with its clusters of roofs resembling saw-teeth. Below us
was the crooked Tennessee, sweeping up to the base of the mountain, in a
coil enclosing on the opposite side a foot-shaped peninsula, to which
the Indians gave the appropriate name of Moccasin Point.
Immediately beneath us, on a shelf of the mountain, between its
river-washed base and the precipice on which we stood, was the scene of
Hooker’s famous “battle in the clouds.” The Rebels occupied a cleared
space on that tremendous elevation. Behind them rose the crags; before
them gloomed the woods, covering the lower part of the mountain. Along
the cleared space, between the woods and the crags, ran their line of
stone breastworks, which still remained, looking like a common
farm-wall. The enemy had heavy guns on the summit of the mountain, but
they could not be got into position, or sufficiently depressed, to be of
service. Beside, the summit, on the morning of the attack, was immersed
in mist, which concealed everything. The mist did not envelop the scene
of the fight, however, but hung over it; so that the “battle in the
clouds” was in reality a battle under the clouds.
The Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad runs around the curve of the
river, under the mountain. As we sat looking down from the Point, a
coal-train appeared, crawling along the track like a black snake.
Returning over the crest to the summit of the road, we paid a visit to
Mr. Foster, known as the “Old Man of the Mountain.” He was living in a
plain country-house on the eastern brow, with the immense panorama of
hills and vales and forests daily before his eyes. He was one of the
valiant, unflinching Union men of the South. In its wild nest on that
crag his liberty-loving soul had lived, untamed as an eagle, through the
perils and persecutions of the war. He was sixty-nine years old; which
fact he expressed in characteristically quaint style: “Tennessee came,
into the Union the sixth day of June, 1796; and on the twenty-second day
of June I came into the world to see about it.”
His father was a Revolutionary soldier. “He was shot to pieces, in a
manner. It took a heap of his blood to nourish Uncle Sam when he was a
little feller. I recollect his saying to me, ‘There’s going to be wars;
and when they come, I want you to remember what the Stars and Stripes
cost your old father.’ I did not forget the lesson when this cursed
secession war begun.”
He was by trade a carpenter. He came up on the mountain to live twenty
years before, on account of his health, which was so poor in the valley
that people said he was going to die, but which had been robust ever
since. Twice during the war he was condemned by the Vigilance Committee
to be hung for his Union sentiments and uncompromising freedom of
speech. Twice the assassins came to his house to take him.
“The first time they came, it was Sunday. My wife had gone over the
mountain to preaching, and I was alone. I loaded up my horse-pistol for
’em,—sixteen buck-shot: I put in a buck load, I tell ye. There was only
two of ’em; and I thought I was good for three or four. They’d hardly
got inside the gate when I went out to ’em, and asked what they wanted.
One said, ‘We’ve come for Old Foster!’ I just took the rascal by the
arm, and gave him a monstrous clamp,—I thought I felt the bone,—and
shoved him head-over-heels out of that gate. I was going to shoot
t’other feller, but they rode off so fast down the mountain I had no
chance.”
The next attempt on his life resulted similarly. After that, the
Committee did not persist in getting him executed. “I was so old, I
suppose they thought I was of no account.” He told of several other
Union men, however, whom they had caused to be hung. “After the Rebels
got brushed out, Sherman and Hooker came to pay me a visit, and
denominated me the ‘Old Man of the Mountain.’”