<h3><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</SPAN></h3>
<div class="chapquot">
<div>
<p>Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm
by erecting a grammar-school.</p>
<p class="citation">King HenryVI.</p>
<p>O, 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear,<br/>
To wake an earthquake!</p>
<p class="citation">Tempest.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">Rebel Guerrillas Outwitted.</div>
<p>In January, Colonel Lawson, of the Missouri Union forces, was
captured by a dozen Rebels, who, after some threats of hanging,
decided to release him upon parole. Not one of them could read or
write a line. Lawson, requested by them to make out his own parole,
drew up and signed an agreement, pledging himself never to take up
arms against the United States of America, or give aid and comfort to
its enemies! Upon this novel promise he was set at liberty.</p>
<p>On the 3d of February a journalistic friend telegraphed me from Cairo:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"You can't come too soon: take the first train."</p>
</div>
<p>Immediately obeying the summons, I found that Commodore Foote had
gone up the Tennessee River with the new gunboats. The accompanying
land forces were under the command of an Illinois general named
Grant, of whom the country knew only the following:</p>
<p>Making a reconnoissance to Belmont, Missouri, opposite Columbus,
Kentucky, he had ventured too far, when the enemy opened on him.
Yielding to the fighting temptation, he made a lively resistance,
until compelled to retreat, leaving behind his dead and wounded.
Jefferson Davis officially proclaimed it a great Confederate
success,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</SPAN></span>
and Rebel newspapers grew merry over Grant's bad generalship,
expressing the wish that he might long lead the Yankee armies!</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
——"We, ignorant of ourselves,<br/>
Beg often for our own harms; so find we profit<br/>
By losing of our prayers."<br/></div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">Expedition to Fort Henry.</div>
<p>As the gunboats had never been tested, intense interest was felt
in their success. Approaching Fort Henry, three went forward to
reconnoiter. At the distance of two miles and a half, a twenty-four
pounder rifled ball penetrated the state-room of Captain Porter,
commanding the Essex, passing under his table, and cutting off the
feet of a pair of stockings which hung against the ceiling as neatly
as shears would have cut them.</p>
<p>"Pretty good shot!" said Porter. "Now we will show them ours." And he
dropped a nine-inch Dahlgren shell right into the fort.</p>
<p>The next day, a large number of torpedoes, each containing
seventy-five pounds of powder, were fished up from the bottom of the
river. The imprudent tongue of an angry Rebel woman revealed their
whereabouts. Prophesying that the whole fleet would be blown to
atoms, she was compelled to divulge what she knew, or be confined in
the guard-house. In mortal terror she gave the desired information.
The torpedoes were found wet and harmless. Commodore Foote predicted</p>
<p>"I can take that fort in about an hour and a half."</p>
<p>The night was excessively rainy and severe upon our boys in blue in
their forest bivouacs; but in the well-furnished cabin of General
Grant's steamer, we found "going to war" an agreeable novelty.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Its Capture by Commodore Foote.</div>
<p>At mid-day on the 6th, Foote fired his first shot, at the distance
of seventeen hundred yards. Then he slowly
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</SPAN></span>
approached the fort with his entire fleet, until within four hundred
yards. The Rebel fire was very severe; but he determined to vindicate
the iron-clads or to sink them in the Tennessee. The wood-work of
his flag-ship was riddled by thirty-one shots, but her iron plating
turned off the balls like hail. All the boats were more or less
damaged; but they fully established their usefulness, and their
officers and men behaved with the greatest gallantry. One poor fellow
on the Essex, terribly scalded by the bursting of a steam drum,
learning that the fort was captured, sprung from his bunk, ran up the
hatchway, and cheered until he fell senseless upon the deck. He died
the same night.</p>
<p>With several fellow-correspondents, I witnessed the fight from the
top of a high tree, up on the river-bank, between the fortification
and the gun-boats. There was little to be seen but smoke. Foote's
prediction proved correct. After he had fired about six hundred
shots, just one hour and fifteen minutes from the beginning, the
colors of Fort Henry were struck, and the gunboats trembled with the
cheers and huzzas of our men.</p>
<p>The Rebel infantry, numbering four thousand, escaped. Grant's
forces, detained by the mud, came up too late to surround them.
Brigadier-General Lloyd Tilghman, commanding, and the immediate
garrison, were captured.</p>
<p>In the barracks we found camp-fires blazing, dinners boiling, and
half-made biscuits still in the pans. Pistols, muskets, bowie-knives,
books, tables partially set for dinner, half-written letters,
playing-cards, blankets, and carpet-sacks were scattered about.</p>
<p>Our soldiers ransacked trunks, arrayed themselves in Rebel coats,
hats, and shirts, armed themselves with Rebel revolvers, stuffed
their pockets with Rebel books
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</SPAN></span>
and miniatures, and some were soon staggering under heavy loads of
Rebel whisky.</p>
<p>From the quarters of one officer, I abstracted a small Confederate
flag; the daguerreotype of a female face so regular and classic that,
without close inspection, it was difficult to believe it taken from
life; a long tress of brown hair, and a package of elegantly written
letters, full of a sister's affection. A year afterward I was able to
return these family mementoes to their owner in Jackson, Mississippi.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A Delighted Negress.</div>
<p>Our shots had made great havoc. Carpet-sacks, trunks, and tables were
torn in pieces, walls and roofs were pierced with holes large enough
for a man to creep through, and cavities plowed in the ground which
would conceal a flour-barrel. A female Marius among the ruins, in the
form of an old negress, stood rubbing her hands with glee.</p>
<p>"You seem to have had hot work here, aunty."</p>
<p>"Lord, yes, mass'r, we did just dat! De big balls, dey come whizzing
and tearing 'bout, and I thought de las' judgment was cum, sure."</p>
<p>"Where are all your soldiers?"</p>
<p>"Lord A'mighty knows. Dey jus' runned away like turkeys—nebber fired
a gun."</p>
<p>"How many were there?"</p>
<p>"Dere was one Arkansas regiment over dere where you see de tents,
a Mississippi regiment dere, another dere, two Tennessee regiments
here, and lots more over de river."</p>
<p>"Why didn't you run with them?"</p>
<p>"I was sick, you see" (she could only speak in a whisper); "besides,
I wasn't afraid—only ob de shots. I just thought if dey didn't kill
me I was all right." </p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Where is General Tilghman?"</p>
<p>"You folks has got him—him and de whole garrison inside de fort."</p>
<p>"You don't seem to feel very badly about it."</p>
<p>"Not berry, mass'r!"—with a fresh rub of the hands and a grin all
over her sable face.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Scenes in the Captured Fortress.</div>
<p>In the fort, the magazine was torn open, the guns completely
shattered, and the ground stained with blood, brains, and fragments
of flesh. Under gray blankets were six corpses, one with the head
torn off and the trunk completely blackened with powder; others with
legs severed and breasts opened in ghastly wounds. The survivors,
stretched upon cots, rent the air with groans.</p>
<p>The captured Rebel officers, in a profusion of gold lace, were
taken to Grant's head-quarters. Tilghman was good-looking,
broad-shouldered, with the pompous manner of the South. Commodore
Foote asked him:</p>
<p>"How could you fight against the old flag?"</p>
<p>"It was hard," he replied, "but I had to go with my people."</p>
<p>Presently a Chicago reporter inquired of him:</p>
<p>"How do you spell your name, General?"</p>
<p>"Sir," replied Tilghman, with indescribable pomposity, "if General
Grant wishes to use my name in his official dispatches, I have no
objection; but, sir, I do not wish to appear at all in this matter in
any newspaper report."</p>
<p>"I merely asked it," persisted the journalist, "for the list of
prisoners captured."</p>
<p>Tilghman, whose name should have been Turveydrop, replied, with a
lofty air and a majestic wave of the hand:</p>
<p>"You will oblige me, sir, by not giving my name in any newspaper
connection whatever!" </p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>One of the Rebel officers was reminded of the predominance of Union
sentiments among the people about Fort Henry.</p>
<p>"True, sir," was his reply. "It is always so in these hilly
countries. You see, these d-----d Hoosiers don't know any better.
For the genuine southern feeling, sir, you must go among the
gentlemen—the rich people. You won't find any Tories there."</p>
<div class="sidenote">Commodore Foote in the Pulpit.</div>
<p>The gunboats returned to Cairo for repairs. On the next Sunday
morning, the pastor of the Cairo Presbyterian Church failing to
arrive, Commodore Foote was induced to conduct the services. From the
text:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"Let not your hearts be troubled; ye believe in God;
believe also in me,"</p>
</div>
<p>he preached an excellent practical discourse, urging that human
happiness depends upon integrity, pure living, and conscientious
performance of duty.</p>
<p>The land forces remained near Fort Henry. A few days after the
battle, I stepped into General Grant's head-quarters to bid him
good-by, as I was about starting for New York.</p>
<p>"You had better wait a day or two," he said.</p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"Because I am going over to capture Fort Donelson to-morrow."</p>
<p>"How strong is it?"</p>
<p>"We have not been able to ascertain exactly, but I think we can take
it. At all events, we can try."</p>
<p>The hopelessly muddy roads and the falling snow were terrible to our
troops, who had no tents; but Grant marched to the fort. On Wednesday
he skirmished and placed his men in position; on Thursday, Friday,
and Saturday, he fought from daylight until dark. On Saturday
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</SPAN></span>
night, the sanguine General Pillow telegraphed to Nashville:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"The day is ours. I have repulsed the enemy at all points,
but I want re-enforcements."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">The Capture of Fort Donelson.</div>
<p>Before dawn on Sunday, the negro servant of a Confederate staff
officer escaped into our lines, and was taken to General Grant. He
insisted that the Rebel commanders were consulting about surrender,
and that Floyd's men were already deserting the fort. A few hours
later came a letter from Buckner, suggesting the appointment of
commissioners to adjust terms of capitulation. Grant wrote in
answer:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"I have no terms but unconditional surrender. I propose to
move immediately upon your works."</p>
</div>
<p>Buckner's response, exquisitely characteristic of the Rebels,
regretfully accepted what he described as Grant's "ungenerous and
unchivalrous terms!" So the North was electrified by a success which
recalled the great battles of Napoleon.</p>
<p>Grant first invested the garrison with thirteen thousand men. The
enemy's force was twenty-two thousand. For two days, Grant's little
command laid siege to this much larger army, which was protected by
ample fortifications. At the end of the second day, Grant received
re-enforcements, swelling his forces to twenty-six thousand.</p>
<p>From three to four thousand Rebels, of Floyd's command, escaped from
the fort; others escaped on the way to Cairo, and several thousand
were killed or wounded; but Grant delivered, at Cairo, upward of
fifteen thousand eight hundred prisoners.</p>
<p>I was in Chicago when these captives, on their way
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</SPAN></span>
to Camp Douglas, passed through the streets in sad procession. Motley
was the only wear. A few privates had a stripe on the pantaloons and
wore gray military caps; but most, in slouched hats and garments
of gray or butternut, made no attempt at uniform. Some had the
long hair and cadaverous faces of the extreme South; but under
the broad-brimmed hats of the majority, appeared the full, coarse
features of the working classes of Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
The Chicago citizens, who crowded the streets, were guilty of no
taunts or rude words toward the prisoners.</p>
<p>Columbus, Kentucky, twenty miles below Cairo, on the highest bluffs
of the Mississippi, was called the Gibraltar of the West, and
expected to be the scene of a great battle.</p>
<p>On the 4th of March, a naval and land expedition was ready to attack
it. Before leaving Cairo, hundreds of workmen crowded the gunboats,
repairing damages received on the Tennessee River—</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"With busy hammers closing rivets up, And giving dreadful
notes of preparation."</p>
</div>
<p>Commodore Foote, lame from his Donelson wound, hobbled on board upon
crutches. A great National flag was taken along.</p>
<p>"Don't forget that," said the commodore. "Fight or no fight, we must
raise it over Columbus!"</p>
<div class="sidenote">Army and Navy Officers Contrasted.</div>
<p>The leading commanders of the flotilla were from the regular
navy—quiet and unassuming, with no nonsense about them. They were
far freer from envy and jealousy than army officers. Before the war,
the latter had been stationed for years at frontier posts, hundreds
of miles beyond civilization, with no resources except
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</SPAN></span>
drinking and gambling, nothing to excite National feeling or prick
the bubble of their State pride. Naval officers, going all over
the world, had acquired the liberality which only travel imparts,
and learned that, abroad, their country was not known as Virginia
or Mississippi, but the <em>United</em> States of America. With them, it
was the Nation first, and the State afterward. Hence, while nearly
all southerners holding commissions in the regular army joined the
Rebellion, the navy almost unanimously remained loyal.</p>
<p>The low, flat, black iron-clads crept down the river like enormous
turtles. Each had attending it a little pocket edition of a
steamboat, in the shape of a tug, capable of carrying fifty or sixty
men, and moving up the strong current twelve miles an hour. They were
constantly puffing about among the unwieldy vessels like a breathless
little errand-boy.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The "Gibraltar of the West."</div>
<p>Nearing Columbus, we found that the Rebels had evacuated it twelve
hours before. The town was already held by an enterprising scouting
party of the Second Illinois Cavalry, who had unearthed and raised an
old National flag. Our colors waved from the Rebel Gibraltar, and the
last Confederate soldier had abandoned Kentucky.</p>
<p>The enemy left in hot haste. Half-burned barracks, chairs, beds,
tables, cooking-stoves, letters, charred gun-carriages, bent
musket-barrels, bayonets, and provisions were promiscuously lying
about.</p>
<p>The main fortifications, on a plateau one hundred and fifty feet
high, mounted eighty-three guns, commanding the river for nearly
three miles. Here, and in the auxiliary works, we captured one
hundred and fifty pieces of artillery.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Scenes in Columbus, Kentucky.</div>
<p>Fastened to the bluff, we found one end of a great
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</SPAN></span>
chain cable, composed of seven-eighths inch iron, which the brilliant
Gideon J. Pillow had stretched across the river, to prevent the
passage of our gunboats! It was worthy of the man who, in Mexico,
dug his ditch on the wrong side of the parapet. The momentum of an
iron-clad would have snapped it like a pipe-stem, had not the current
of the river broken it long before.</p>
<p>We found, also, enormous piles of torpedoes, which the Rebels had
declared would annihilate the Yankee fleet. They became a standing
jest among our officers, who termed them original members of the
Peace Society, and averred that the rates of marine insurance
immediately declined whenever the companies learned that torpedoes
had been planted in the waters where the boats were to run!</p>
<p>In the abandoned post-office I collected a bushel of Rebel
newspapers, dating back for several weeks. At first the Memphis
journals extravagantly commended the South Carolina planters for
burning their cotton, after the capture of Port Royal, and urged
universal imitation of their example. They said:—</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"Let the whole South be made a Moscow; let our enemies find
nothing but blackened ruins to reward their invasion!"</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">Extracts from Rebel Newspapers.</div>
<p>But when the capture of Donelson rendered the early fall of Memphis
probable, the same journals suddenly changed their tone. They
argued that Moscow was not a parallel case; that it would be highly
injudicious to fire their city, as the Yankees, if they did take it,
would hold it only for a short time; that those who urged applying
the torch should be punished as demagogues and public enemies!
But they abounded in frantic appeals like the following from <cite>The
Avalanche</cite>:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"For the sake of honor and manhood, we trust no young
unmarried
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</SPAN></span>
man will suffer himself to be drafted. He would become a by-word,
a scoff, a burning shame to his sex and his State. If young men in
pantaloons will sit behind desks, counters, and molasses-barrels, let
the girls present them with the garment proper to their peaceable
spirits. He that would go to the field, but cannot, should be
aided to do so; he that can go, but will not, should be made to do
so."</p>
</div>
<p><cite>The Avalanche</cite> was a great advocate of what is termed the
"aggressive policy," declaring that:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"The victorious armies of the South should be precipitated
upon the North. <del>IIer</del><ins>Her</ins> chief cities should
be seized or reduced to ashes; her armies scattered, her States
subjugated, and her people compelled to defray the expenses of a
war which they have wickedly commenced and obstinately continued.
* * * Fearless and invincible, a race of warriors rivaling
any that ever followed the standard of an Alexander, a Cæsar,
or a Napoleon, the southerners have the power and the will to carry
this war into the enemy's country. Let, then, the lightnings of a
nation's wrath scathe our foul oppressors! Let the thunder-bolts of
war be hurled back upon our dastardly invaders, from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, until the recognition of southern independence shall be
extorted from the reluctant North, and terms of peace be dictated by
a victorious southern army at New York or Chicago."</p>
</div>
<p>General Jeff. Thompson, a literary Missouri bushwhacker, was
termed the "Swamp Fox" and the "Marion of the Southern Revolution."
I found one of his effusions, entitled "Home Again," in that
once decorous journal, <cite>The New Orleans Picayune</cite>.
Its transition from the pathetic to the profane is a curious
anticlimax.</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"My dear wife waits my coming,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">My children lisp my name,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">And kind friends bid me welcome<br/></span>
<span class="i2">To my own home again.<br/></span>
<span class="i0">My father's grave lies on the hill,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">My boys sleep in the vale;<br/></span>
<span class="i0">I love each rock and murmuring rill,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Each mountain, hill, and dale.<br/></span></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">I'll suffer hardships, toil, and pain, <br/></span>
<span class="i2">For the good time sure to come; <br/></span>
<span class="i0">I'll battle long that I may gain <br/></span>
<span class="i2">My freedom and my home. <br/></span>
<span class="i0">I will return, though foes may stand <br/></span>
<span class="i2">Disputing every rod; <br/></span>
<span class="i0">My own dear home, my native land, <br/></span>
<span class="i2">I'll win you yet, by ---!"<br/></span></div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">Inmates of the Union Hospitals.</div>
<p>Our hospitals at Mound City, Illinois, contained fourteen hundred
inmates. A walk along the double rows of cots in the long wards
revealed the sadder phase of war. Here was a typhoid-fever patient,
motionless and unconscious, the light forever gone out from his
glazed eyes; here a lad, pale and attenuated, who, with a shattered
leg, had lain upon this weary couch for four months. There was a
Tennessean, who, abandoning his family, came stealthily hundreds
of miles to enlist under the Stars and Stripes, with perfect faith
in their triumph, and had lost a leg at Donelson; an Illinoisan,
from the same battle, with a ghastly aperture in the face, still
blackened with powder from his enemy's rifle; a young officer in neat
dressing-gown, furnished by the United States Sanitary Commission,
sitting up reading a newspaper, but with the sleeve of his left arm
limp and empty; marines terribly scalded by the bursting boiler
of the Essex at Fort Henry, some of whose whole bodies were one
continuous scar. Sick, wounded, and convalescent were alike cheerful;
and twenty-five Sisters of Mercy, worthy of their name, moved
noiselessly among them, ministering to their wants. </p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</SPAN></span></p>
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