WILSON’S RAID.
We had lovely weather, sailing up the Alabama River. The shores were
low, and covered with cane-brakes, or with growths of water-oak, gum,
sycamore, and cotton-wood trees, with here and there dark and shaggy
swamps. Then plantations began to appear, each with its gin-house and
cotton-press, planter’s house, corn-crib, and negro-quarters, on the
river’s bank.
The sycamores, with their white trunks covered all over with small black
spots, and heavily draped with long moss, presented a peculiar
appearance. Green tufts of the mistletoe grew upon the leafless
tree-tops. Clouds of blackbirds sometimes covered the shore, casting a
shadow as they flew. The second day, the low shores disappeared,
replaced by pleasantly wooded bluffs and elevated plantations.
Nearly all the planters I met had been down to Mobile to purchase their
supplies for the season. Freight went ashore at every landing. Recent
rains had made the steep clayey banks as slippery as if they had been
greased; and it was quite exciting to see the deck-hands carry up the
freight,—many a poor fellow getting a perilous fall. The wood for the
steamboat was sometimes shot from the summit of the bluff down a long
wooden spout which dropped it at the landing.
Seeing some heavy bars of iron going ashore at one place, I asked an old
gentleman to what use they were put on the plantation.
“They are to make ploughs of, sir.”
“Does every plantation make its own ploughs?”
[Illustration]
“Do we make our own ploughs?” he repeated, regarding me with
astonishment and indignation. “Why, sir, it wouldn’t be a civilized
country, if we didn’t. How do you think, sir, we should get our
ploughs?”
“Buy them, or have them made for you.”
“Buy our ploughs! It would impoverish us, sir, if we had to buy our
ploughs.”
“On the contrary, I should think a plough-factory could furnish them for
less than they now cost you,—that, like boots and shoes, it would be
cheaper to buy them than to make them.”
“No, sir! I’ve a black man on my plantation who can make as good a
plough, at as little cost, as can be made anywhere in the world.”
After that I had nothing to say, having already sufficiently exposed my
ignorance.
On the third day (it was the slowest trip, our captain said, which he
had made in twenty years) we reached Selma, three hundred miles above
Mobile,—a pleasantly situated town, looking down from the level summit
of a bluff that rises almost precipitously from the river. Before the
war it had three thousand inhabitants, and exported annually near a
hundred thousand bales of cotton. It is connected by railroads with the
North and West, and by railroad and river with Montgomery and the East.
It was a point of very great importance to the Confederacy.
I found it a scene of “Yankee vandalism” and ruin. The Confederate
arsenal, founderies, and rolling-mills,—the most important works of the
kind in the South, covering many acres of ground, furnished with coal
and iron by the surrounding country,—together with extensive warehouses
containing ammunition and military stores, were burned when Wilson
captured the place. A number of private stores and dwellings were
likewise destroyed; and the work of rebuilding them was not yet half
completed.
Climbing the steps from the landing to the level of the town, the first
object which attracted my attention was a chain-gang of negroes at work
on the street; while a number of white persons stood looking on,
evidently enjoying the sight, and saying to one another, “That’s the
beauty of freedom! that’s what free niggers come to!”
On inquiring what the members of the chain-gang had done to be punished
in this ignominious manner, I got a list of their misdemeanors, one of
the gravest of which was “using abusive language towards a white man.”
Some had transgressed certain municipal regulations, of which, coming in
from the country, they were very likely ignorant. One had sold farm
produce within the town limits, contrary to an ordinance which prohibits
market-men from selling so much as an egg before they have reached the
market and the market-bell has rung. For this offence he had been fined
twenty dollars, which being unable to pay, he had been put upon the
chain. Others had been guilty of disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and petty
theft, which it was of course necessary to punish. But it was a singular
fact that no white men were ever sentenced to the chain-gang,—being, I
suppose, all virtuous.
The battle of Selma was not a favorite topic with the citizens, most of
whom were within the stockade, or behind the breastworks, captured by an
inferior force of the Yankee invaders. But on the subject of the burning
and pillaging that ensued they were eloquent.
A gray-haired old gentleman said to me: “I was in the trenches when
Wilson came. Everybody was. I just watched both ways, and when I saw how
the cat was jumping, I threw my musket as far as I could, dropped down
as if I was killed, and walked into town atter the Yankees. I stood by
my own gate, when four drunken fellows came up, slapped me on the
shoulder, and said, ‘This old man was in the stockade,—he’s a Rebel!’
‘Of course I’m a Rebel,’ I said, ‘if I’m ketched in a Rebel trap.’
“They was taking me away when an officer rode up. ‘Old man,’ says he,
‘can you show me where the corn depot is?’ ‘I reckon I kin, if these
gentlemen will let me,’ I says. So I got off; and when I had showed him
the corn he let me go.
“The fire was first set by our own men: that was in the cotton yards.
They blazed up so quick, the Yankees couldn’t have got thar without they
went on wires. The next was the post-office; that they burned. The next
was a drug store; the other drug store they didn’t burn, but they
smashed everything in it. The Arsenal was owing me and my family fifteen
hundred dollars, when they destroyed it.
“They just ruined me. They took from me six cows, four mules, fifteen
hogs, fifteen hundred pounds of bacon, eight barrels of flour, and
fifty-five sacks of corn. They took my wife’s and daughters’ clothing to
carry away flour in. I saw a man take my wife’s best dress, empty into
it all the flour he could tote, tie it up, clap it on his shoulder, and
march off. Another went off with an elegantly embroidered petticoat full
of flour swung on his arm. Another would take a pair of ladies’ drawers,
fill the legs with flour, and trot off with ’em riding straddle of his
neck. It made me feel curi’s! It made me feel like if I had ’em down in
the squirrel woods, I could shoot a right smart passel of ’em with a
will!”
There were one hundred and fifty dwellings burned; some caught from the
shops and warehouses, and others were said to have been set by
marauders. These robbed everybody, even the negroes in the streets and
the negro-women in their houses. Charles Mencer, a well-known and
respectable colored man, related to me the following:—
“I worked here in a saddle-shop, at the time of Wilson’s raid. I hired
my time of my master, and had laid up two hundred dollars in gold and
silver: I had invested my earnings in specie, and in two watches,
because I knew the Confederacy couldn’t last. The Yankees came in on
Sunday evening; they robbed my house and stole my gold and silver, and
one of my watches. Four of them stopped me in the street, and took my
other watch, and my pocket-book, with all my Confederate money in it.”
The rest of this man’s story possesses a semi-historical interest.
“The next Tuesday General Wilson sent for me; he wanted somebody that he
could trust to carry despatches for him down the river to General Canby,
and I had been recommended to him by some colored people. I said I would
take them; and I sewed them up in my vest collar. Then I went to my
master, and told him there was no chance for work since the Yankees had
come in, and got a pass from him to go down to Mobile and find work.
Tuesday night I started in a canoe, and paddled down the river. I dodged
the Rebel guard when I could, but I was taken and searched twice, and
got off by showing my master’s pass. I paddled night and day, and got to
Montgomery Hill on Sunday. There I saw Federal troops, and went ashore,
and delivered myself up to the captain. He took me to General Lucas, who
sent me with a cavalry escort to General Canby at Blakely.”
For this service Mencer was paid three hundred dollars in greenbacks,
which he had recently invested in a freedmen’s newspaper, “The
Constitutionalist,” just started in Mobile.
The negroes everywhere sympathized with the Federal cause, and served it
when they could; but they would seldom betray a master who had been kind
to them. Many stories were told me by the planters, illustrating this
fidelity. Here is one, related by a gentleman of Lowndes County:—
“The Yankees, when they left Selma, passed through this side of the
river, on their way to Montgomery. The streams were high; that hindered
them, and did us a sight of damage. I got the start of ’em, and run off
my horses and mules. I gave a valise full of valuable papers to my negro
boy Arthur, and told him to hide it. He took it, and put it in his
trunk,—threw out his own clothes to hide my property; for he didn’t
suppose the Yankees would be mean enough to rob niggers. But they did:
after they robbed my house, they went to the negro-quarters, and
pilfered them. They found my valise, took out my old love-letters, and
had a good time reading ’em for about an hour. Then they said to
Arthur,—
“’You are your master’s confidential servant, a’n’t you?’
“’Yes, sir,’ says Arthur, proud of the distinction.
“’You know where he has gone with his mules and horses?’
“’Yes, sir, I know all about it.’
“’Jump on to this horse, and go and show us where he is, and we’ll give
you five dollars.’
“’I don’t betray my master for no five dollars,’ says Arthur.
“’Then,’ says they, ‘we’ll shoot you if you won’t show us!’ And they put
their carbines to his head.
“He never flinched. ‘You can shoot me if you like,’ he says, ‘but I
sha’n’t betray my master!’
“They were so struck with his courage and fidelity that they just let
him go. So I saved my horses. He don’t know it, but I’m going to give
that boy a little farm and stock it for him.”
Another planter in Lowndes County, an old man, told me his story, which
will pass as a sample of a hundred others.
“The Yankees burnt my gin-house and screw. They didn’t burn my house,
for they made it a rule to destroy none but unoccupied dwellings. But
they took everything from my house they wanted, and ruined about
everything they didn’t want. They mixed salt with the sugar, emptied it
on the floor, and poured vinegar on it. They took a great fancy to a
little grandson of mine. They gave him a watch, and told him they’d give
him a little pony to ride if he would go to camp with them. ‘I won’t go
with you,’ says he, ‘for you’re taking away all the flour that we make
biscuit of.’ They carried him a little ways, when they stopped to burn a
school-house. ‘Here! You mustn’t burn that!’ he says; ‘for that’s our
school-house.’ And they didn’t burn it.”
“The Confederates used me as bad as the Yankees,” said Mr. M——, a
planter whom I saw in Macon County. “They had taken twenty-six horses
from me, when Wilson came and took thirty more. I ran off six of my best
horses to a piny hill; and there I got on a high stump, and looked over
the bushes, to see if the Yankees were coming. I wasn’t near as happy as
I’d been some days in my life! All I thought of was to get my horses off
down one side of the hill, if I saw the raiders coming up the other.”
This gentleman had been extensively engaged in the culture of the
grape,—to which, by the way, the soil and climate of Alabama are
admirably adapted. He had in his cellar twenty thousand dollars’ worth
of wine, when Wilson came. His wife caused it all to be destroyed, to
prevent it from falling into the hands of the soldiers. The last cask
was scarcely emptied when they arrived. “She thought she’d sooner deal
with men sober than drunk,” said M——. “They treated her very well and
took nothing from the house they didn’t need.”
The route of Wilson’s cavalry can be traced all the way, by the burnt
gin-houses with which they dotted the country. At Montgomery they
destroyed valuable founderies and machine-shops, after causing the
fugitive Rebels to burn a hundred thousand bales of cotton, with the
warehouses which contained it. I followed their track through the
eastern counties of Alabama, and afterwards recrossed it in Georgia,
where the close of hostilities terminated this, the most extensive and
destructive raid of the war.