FROM CHATTANOOGA TO MURFREESBORO’.
The military operations, of which Chattanooga was so long the centre,
have left their mark upon all the surrounding country. Travel which way
you will, you are sure to follow in their track. There are
fortifications at every commanding point. Every railroad bridge is
defended by redoubts and block-houses; and many important bridges have
been burned. The entire route to Atlanta is a scene of conflict and
desolation: earthworks, like the foot-prints of a Titan on the march;
rifle-pits extending for miles along the railroad track; hills all dug
up into forts and entrenchments; the town of Marietta in ruins; farms
swept clean of their fences and buildings; everywhere, along the
blackened war-path, solitary standing chimneys left, “like exclamation
points,” to emphasize the silent story of destruction.
I saw a few “Union men” at Chattanooga. But their loyalty was generally
of a qualified sort. One, who was well known for his daring opposition
to the secession leaders, and for his many narrow escapes from death,
told me how he lived during the war. Once when the Rebels came to kill
him, they took his brother instead. His residence was on a hill, and
three times subsequently he saved his life by taking a canoe and
crossing the river in it when he saw his assassins coming. Yet this man
hated the free negro worse than he hated the Rebels; and he said to me,
“If the government attempts now to force negro-suffrage upon the South,
it will have to wade through a sea of blood to which all that has been
shed was only a drop!” Another, who claimed also to be a Union man,
said, “Before the South will ever consent to help pay the National debt,
there will be another rebellion bigger than the last. You would make her
repudiate her own war-debt, and then pay the expenses of her own
whipping. I tell you, this can’t be done.” The threats of another
rebellion, and of an extraordinarily large sea of blood, were not, I
suppose, to be understood literally. This is the fiery Southron’s
metaphorical manner of expressing himself. Yet these men were perfectly
sincere in their profession of sentiments which one would have expected
to hear only from the lips of Rebels.
On the morning of Thursday, December 14th, I bid a joyful farewell to
Chattanooga, which is by no means a delightful place to sojourn in, and
took the train for Murfreesboro’. The weather was cold, and growing
colder. Winter had come suddenly, and very much in earnest. Huge icicles
hung from the water-tanks by the railroad. The frost, pushing its
crystal shoots up out of the porous ground, looked like thick growths of
fungus stalks. The rain and mist of the previous night were congealed
upon the trees; and the Cumberland Mountains, as we passed them,
appeared covered with forests of silver.
The country was uninteresting. Well-built farm-houses were not common;
but log-huts, many of them without windows, predominated. These were
inhabited by negroes and poor whites. I remember one family living in a
box-car that had been run off the track. Another occupied a grotesque
cabin having for a door the door of a car, set up endwise, marked
conspicuously in letters reading from the zenith to the nadir, “U. S.
MILITARY R. R.” We passed occasionally cotton-fields, resembling at that
season and in that climate fields of low black weeds, with here and
there a bunch of cotton sticking to the dry leafy stalks.
Next me sat a gentleman from Iowa, whose history was a striking
illustration of the difference between a slave State and a free State.
He had just been to visit a brother living in Georgia. They were natives
of North Carolina, from which State they emigrated in early manhood. He
chose the Northwest; his brother chose the South; and they had now met
for the first time since their separation.
“To me,” said he, “it was a very sad meeting. Georgia is a hundred years
behind Iowa. My brother has always been poor, and always will be poor.
If I had to live as he does, I should think I had not the bare
necessaries of life, not to speak of comforts. His children are growing
up in ignorance. When I looked at them, and thought of my own
children,—intelligent, cultivated, with their schools, their books, and
magazines, and piano,—I was so much affected I couldn’t speak, and for a
minute I’d have given anything if I hadn’t seen how he was situated. It
isn’t my merit, nor his fault, that there is so great a difference now,
between us, who were so much alike when boys. If he had gone to Iowa, he
would have done as well as I have. If I had gone to Georgia, I should
have done as poorly as he has.”
He was the only Northern man in the car besides myself,—as was to be
seen not only by the countenances of the other passengers, but also by
the spirit of their conversation. Behind us sat an ignorant brute, with
his shirt bosom streaked with tobacco drizzle, who was saying in a loud,
fierce tone, that “we’d better kill off the balance of the niggers,” for
he had “no use for ’em now they were free.” Others were talking about
Congress and the President. One little boy four years old amused us all.
He enjoyed the range of the car, and had made several acquaintances,
some of whom, to plague him, called him Billy Yank. Great was the little
fellow’s indignation at this insult. “I a’n’t Billy Yank! I’m Johnny
Reb!” he insisted. As the teasing continued, he flew to his mother, who
received him in her arms. “Yes, he _is_ Johnny Reb! _so he is!_” And his
little heart was comforted.
At half-past three we reached Murfreesboro’, having been nine hours
travelling one hundred and nine miles. This I found about the average
rate of speed on Southern roads. The trains run slow, and a great deal
of time is lost at stopping-places. Once, when we were wooding up, I
went out to learn what was keeping us so long, and saw two of the hands
engaged in a scuffle, which the rest were watching with human interest.
On another occasion the men had to bring wood out of the forest, none
having been provided for the engine near the track.
Murfreesboro’ is situated very near the centre of the State. It had in
1860 three thousand inhabitants. It has six churches, and not a decent
hotel. Before the war it enjoyed the blessing of a University, a
military institute, two female colleges, and two high-schools; all of
which had been discontinued. It was also described to me as “a pretty,
shady village, before the war.” But the trees had been cut away, leaving
ugly stump-lots; and the country all around was laid desolate.
Knowing how wretched must be my accommodations at the only tavern then
open to the public, General Hazen hospitably insisted on my removal to
his head-quarters on the evening of my arrival. I found him occupying a
first-class Tennessee mansion on a hill just outside the town. The house
was cruciform, with a spacious hall and staircase in the centre, opening
into lofty wainscoted rooms above and below. The richness of the dark
panels, and the structural elegance of the apartments, were
unexceptionable. But the occupants of these could never have known
comfort in wintry weather. The house was built, like all southern
houses, for a climate reputed mild, but liable to surprises of cruel and
treacherous cold, against which the inhabitants make no provision. The
General and I sat that evening talking over war times, with a huge fire
roaring before us in the chimney, and roasting our faces, while the
freezing blast blew upon our backs from irremediable crevices in the
ill-jointed wainscots and casements. I slept that night in a
particularly airy chamber, with a good fire striving faithfully to
master the enemy, and found in the morning the contents of the
water-pitcher, that stood in the room, fast frozen.
I was amused by the grimaces of the negro servant who came in to
replenish the fire before I was up. He inquired if we had any colder
weather than that in the North, and when I told him how I had seen iron
pump-handles stick to a wet hand on a fine wintry morning, involving
sometimes the sacrifice of epidermis before the teeth of the frost could
be made to let go, he remarked excitedly,—
“I wouldn’t let de iron git holt o’ my hand! I hain’t no skin to spar’,
mornin’ like dis sher!”
As I sat at breakfast with the General, he told me of his official
intercourse with the inhabitants, since he had been in command of the
post. “The most I have to do,” said he, “is to adjust difficulties
between Union men and Rebels. There are many men living in this country
who acted as scouts for our army, and who, when they wanted a horse to
use in the service of the government, took it without much ceremony
where they could find it. For acts of this kind the law-loving Rebels
are now suing them for damages before the civil courts, and persecuting
them in various ways, so that the military power has to interfere to
protect them.”