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Secret Service

<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3> <div class="chapquot"> <div> The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fixed sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch. King Henry V. </div> </div> <div class="sidenote">Campaigning in the Kanawha Valley.</div> I spent the last days of July, in Western Virginia, with the command of General J. D. Cox, which was pursuing Henry A. Wise in hot haste up the valley of the Kanawha. There had been a few little skirmishes, which, in those early days, we were wont to call battles. Like all mountain regions, the Kanawha valley was extremely loyal. Flags were flying, and the people manifested intense delight at the approach of our army. We were very close upon the flying enemy; indeed, more than once our cavalry boys ate hot breakfasts which the Rebels had cooked for themselves. At a farm-house, two miles west of Charleston, a dozen natives were sitting upon the door-step as our column passed. The farmer shook hands with us very cordially. "I am glad to see the Federal army," said he; "I have been hunted like a dog, and compelled to hide in the mountains, because I loved the Union." His wife exclaimed, "Thank God, you have come at last, and the day of our deliverance is here. I always said that the Lord was on our side, and that he would bring us through safely." <div class="sidenote">A Bloodthirsty Female Secessionist.</div> Two of the women were ardent Rebels. They did not blame the native-born Yankees, but wished that every southerner in our ranks might be killed. Just then one of our soldiers, whose home was in that county, passed by the door-step, on his way to the well [Pg 174] for a canteen of water. One of the women said to me, with eyes that meant it: "I hope he will be killed! If I had a pistol I would shoot him. Why! you have a revolver right here in your belt, haven't you? If I seen it before, I would have used it upon him!" Suggesting that I might have interfered with such an attempt, I asked: "Do you think you could hit him?" "O, yes! I have been practicing lately for just such a purpose." Her companion assured me that she prayed every night and morning for Jefferson Davis. If his armies were driven out of Virginia, she would go and live in one of the Gulf States. She had a brother and a lover in General Wise's army, and gave us their names, with a very earnest request to see them kindly treated, should they be taken prisoners. When we parted, she shook my hand, with: "Well, I hope no harm will befall you, if you are an Abolitionist!" An old citizen, who had been imprisoned for Union sentiments, was overcome with joy at the sight of our troops. He mounted a great rock by the roadside, and extemporized a speech, in which thanks to the Union army and the Lord curiously intermingled. Women, with tears in their eyes, told us how anxiously they had waited for the flag; how their houses had been robbed, their husbands hunted, imprisoned, and impressed. Negroes joined extravagantly in the huzzaing, swinging flags as a woodman swings his ax, bending themselves almost double with shouts of laughter, and exclamations of "Hurrah for Mass'r Lincoln!" Thirteen miles above Charleston, at the head of navigation, [Pg 175] we left behind what we grandiloquently called "the fleet." It consisted of exactly four little stern-wheel steamboats. The people of these mountain regions use the old currency of New England, and talk of "fourpence ha'pennies" and "ninepences." Our road continued along the river-bank, where the ranges of overhanging hills began to break into regular, densely timbered, pyramidal spurs. The weather was very sultry. How the sun smote us in that close, narrow valley! The accoutrement's of each soldier weighed about thirty pounds, and made a day's march of twenty miles an arduous task. <div class="sidenote">A Woman in Disguise.</div> A private who had served in the First Kentucky Infantry13 for three months, proved to be of the wrong sex. She performed camp duties with great fortitude, and never fell out of the ranks during the severest marches. She was small in stature, and kept her coat buttoned to her chin. She first excited suspicion by her feminine method of putting on her stockings; and when handed over to the surgeon proved to be a woman, about twenty years old. She was discharged from the regiment, but sent to Columbus upon suspicion, excited by some of her remarks, that she was a spy of the Rebels. <div class="sidenote">Extravagant Joy of the Negroes.</div> At Cannelton, a hundred slaves were employed in the coal-oil works—two long, begrimed, dilapidated buildings, with a few wretched houses hard by. Nobody was visible, except the negroes. When I asked one of them—"Where are all the white people?" he replied, with a broad grin— "Done gone, mass'r." [Pg 176] A black woman, whom we encountered on the road, was asked: "Have you run away from your master?" "Golly, no!" was the prompt answer, "mass'r run away from me!" The slaves, who always heard the term "runaway" applied only to their own race, were not aware that it could have any other significance. After the war opened, its larger meaning suddenly dawned upon them. The idea of the master running away and the negroes staying, was always to them ludicrous beyond description. The extravagant lines of "Kingdom Coming," exactly depicted their feelings: <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> Say, darkies, hab you seen de mass'r, Wid de muffstach on his face, Go 'long de road some time dis mornin', Like he's gwine to leave de place? He seen de smoke way up de ribber Where de Linkum gunboats lay; He took his hat and left berry sudden, And I 'spose he runned away. De mass'r run, ha! ha! De darkey stay, ho! ho! It must be now de kingdom comin', An' de year ob Jubilo. </div> </div> "Dey tole us," said a group of blacks, "dat if your army cotched us, you would cut off our right feet. But, Lor! we knowed you wouldn't hurt us!" At a house where we dined, the planter assuming to be loyal, one of our officers grew confidential with him, when a negro woman managed to beckon me into a back room, and seizing my arm, very earnestly said: "I tell you, mass'r's only just putting on. He hates you all, and wants to see you killed. Soon as you [Pg 177] have passed, he will send right to Wise's army, and tell him what you mean to do; if any of you'uns remain here behind the troops, you will be in danger. He's in a heap of trouble," she added, "but, Lord, dese times just suits me!" At another house, while the Rebel host had stepped out for a moment, an intelligent young colored woman, with an infant in her arms, stationed two negro girls at the door to watch for his return, and interrogated me about the progress and purposes of the War. "Is it true," she inquired, very sadly, "that your army has been hunting and returning runaway slaves?" Thanks to General Cox, who, like the sentinel in Rolla, "knew his duty better," I could reply in the negative. But when, with earnestness gleaming in her eyes, she asked, if, through these convulsions, any hope glimmered for her race, what could I tell her but to be patient, and trust in God? <div class="sidenote">How the Soldiers Foraged.</div> Army rations are not inviting to epicurean tastes; but in the field all sorts of vegetables and poultry were added to our bill of fare. Chickens, young pigs, fence-rails, apples, and potatoes, are legitimate army spoils the world over. "Where did you get that turkey?" asked a captain of one of his men. "Bought it, sir," was the prompt answer. "For how much?" "Seventy-five cents." "Paid for it, did you?" "Well, no, sir; told the man I would pay when we came back!" "Mass'r," said a little ebony servant to a captain with whom I was messing, "I sees a mighty fine goose. Wish we had him for supper." "Ginger," replied the officer, "have I not often told you that it is very wicked to steal?" The little negro laughed all over his face, and fell out [Pg 178] of the ranks. By a "coincidence," worthy of Sam Weller, we supped on stewed goose that very evening. Seen by night from the adjacent hills, our picturesque encampments gave to the wild landscape a new beauty. In the deep valleys gleamed hundreds of snowy tents, lighted by waning camp-fires, round which grotesque figures flitted. The faint murmur of voices, and the ghostly sweetness of distant music, filled the summer air. <div class="sidenote">The Falls of the Kanawha.</div> At the Falls of the Kanawha the river is half a mile wide. A natural dam of rocks, a hundred yards in breadth, and, on its lower side, thirty feet above the water, extends obliquely across the stream—a smooth surface of gray rock, spotted with brown moss. Near the south bank is the main fall, in the form of a half circle, three or four hundred yards long, with a broken descent of thirty feet. Above the brink, the water is dark, green, and glassy, but at the verge it looks half transparent, as it tumbles and foams down the rocks, lashed into a passion of snowy whiteness. Plunging into the seething caldron, it throws up great jets and sheets of foam. Above, the calm, shining water extends for a mile, until hidden by a sudden bend in the channel. The view is bounded by a tall spur, wrapped in the sober green of the forest, with an adventurous corn-field climbing far up its steep side. At the narrow base of the spur, a straw-colored lawn surrounds a white farm-house, with low, sloping roof and antique chimneys. It is half hidden among the maples, and sentineled by a tall Lombardy poplar. Two miles above the fall, the stream breaks into its two chief confluents—the New River and the Gauley. Hawk's Nest, near their junction, is a peculiarly romantic spot. In its vicinity our command halted. It was [Pg 179] far from its base, and Wise ran too fast for capture. We had five thousand troops, who were ill-disciplined and discontented. General Cox was then fresh from the Ohio Senate. After more field experience, he became an excellent officer. <div class="sidenote">A Tragedy of Slavery.</div> When I returned through the valley, I found Charleston greatly excited. A docile and intelligent mulatto slave, of thirty years, had never been struck in his life. But, on the way to a hayfield, his new overseer began to crack his whip over the shoulders of the gang, to hurry them forward. The mulatto shook his head a little defiantly, when the whip was laid heavily across his back. Turning instantly upon the driver, he smote him with his hayfork, knocking him from his horse, and laying the skull bare. The overseer, a large, athletic man, drew his revolver; but, before he could use it, the agile mulatto wrenched it away, and fired two shots at his head, which instantly killed him. Taking the weapon, the slave fled to the mountains, whence he escaped to the Ohio line. St. Louis, August 19, 1861. In the days of stage-coaches, the trip from Cincinnati to St. Louis was a very melancholy experience; in the days of steamboats, a very tedious one. Now, you leave Cincinnati on a summer evening; and the placid valley of the Ohio—the almost countless cornfields of the Great Miami (one of them containing fifteen hundred acres), where the exhaustless soil has produced that staple abundantly for fifty years—the grave and old home of General Harrison, at North Bend—the dense forests of Indiana—the Wabash Valley, that elysium of chills and fever, where pumpkins are "fruit," and hoop-poles "timber"—the dead-level prairies of Illinois, with their [Pg 180] oceans of corn, tufts of wood, and painfully white villages—the muddy Mississippi, "All-the-Waters," as one Indian tribe used to call it—are unrolled in panorama, till, at early morning, St. Louis, hot and parched with the journey, holds out her dusty hands to greet you. <div class="sidenote">The Future of St. Louis.</div> No inland city ever held such a position as this. Here is the heart of the unequaled valley, which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleghanies, and from the great lakes to the Gulf. Here is the mighty river, which drains a region six times greater than the empire of France, and bears on its bosom the waters of fifty-seven navigable streams. Even the rude savage called it the "Father of Waters," and early Spanish explorers reverentially named it the "River of the Holy Ghost." St. Louis, "with its thriving young heart, and its old French limbs," is to be the New York of the interior. The child is living who will see it the second city on the American continent. Three Rebel newspapers have recently been suppressed. The editor of one applied to the provost-marshal for permission to resume, but declined to give a pledge that no disloyal sentiment should appear in its columns. He was very tender of the Constitution, and solicitous about "the rights of the citizen." The marshal replied: "I cannot discuss these matters with you. I am a soldier, and obey orders." "But," remonstrated the editor, "you might be ordered to hang me." "Very possibly," replied the major, dryly. "And you would obey orders, then?" "Most assuredly I would, sir." The Secession journalist left, in profound disgust. <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 181] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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