<h3><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII">CHAPTER XLII.</SPAN></h3>
<div class="chapquot">
<div>
<p>——Weariness<br/>
Can snore upon the flint.</p>
<p class="citation">Cymbeline.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="chapquot">
<div>
<p><i>Montano.</i> But is he often thus</p>
<p><i>Iago.</i> 'Tis evermore the prologue to his sleep.</p>
<p class="citation">Othello.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">Curious Confusion of Names.</div>
<p>It was now five o'clock in the morning of Saturday, December 24th,
the seventh day of our escape. Leaving my companions behind, I tapped
at the door of a log-house.</p>
<p>"Come in," said a voice; and I entered. In its one room the
children and father were still in bed; the wife was already engaged
in her daily duties. I asked:</p>
<p>"Can you direct me to the widow ----?"</p>
<p>"There are two widow ----s, in this neighborhood," she replied.
"What is your name?"</p>
<p>I was seeking information, just then, not giving it; so avoiding
the question, I added:</p>
<p>"The lady I mean, has a son who is an officer in the army."</p>
<p>"They both have sons who are officers in the army. Don't be
afraid; you are among friends."</p>
<p>"Friends" might mean Union or it might mean Rebel; so I accepted
no amendments, but adhered to the main question:</p>
<p>"This officer is a lieutenant, and his name is John."</p>
<p>"Well," said she, "they are both lieutenants, and John is the name
of both!"</p>
<p>I knew my man too well to be baffled. I continued:
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</SPAN></span>
"He is in the second regiment of the Senior Reserves; and is now on
duty at ----."</p>
<p>"Oh," said she, "that is my brother!"</p>
<p>At once I told her what we were. She replied, with a wonderful
light of welcome shining in her eyes:</p>
<p>"If you are Yankees, all I have to say is, that you have come to
exactly the right place!"</p>
<div class="sidenote">Food, Shelter, and Hosts of Friends.</div>
<p>And, in exuberant joy, she bustled about, doing a dozen things
at once, talking incoherently the while, replenishing the fire,
bringing me a seat, offering me food, urging her husband to hurry out
for the rest of the party. At last her excitement culminated in her
darting under the bed, and reappearing on the surface with a great
pint tumbler filled to the brim with apple-brandy. There was enough
to intoxicate our whole party! It was the first form of hospitality
which occurred to her. Afterward, when better acquainted, she
explained:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"You were the first Yankee I ever saw. The moment I
observed your clothing, I knew you must be one, and I
wanted to throw my arms about your neck, and kiss you!"</p>
</div>
<p>We heartily reciprocated the feeling. Just then the only woman who
had any charms for us was the Goddess of Liberty; and this, at least,
was one of her handmaidens.</p>
<p>We were soon by the great log fire of a house where friends
awaited us. Belonging to the secret Union organization, they had
received intelligence that we were on the way. Our feet were
blistered and swollen; mine were frostbitten. We removed our
clothing, and were soon reposing in soft feather beds. At noon,
awakened for breakfast, we found "Junius" had been sleeping like a
child, and was now hungry—a relief to our anxiety. After the
meal was over, we returned to bed.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Loyalty of the Mountaineers.</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Our friends were constantly on the alert; but the house was very
secluded, and they were not compelled to watch outside. There,
two ferocious dogs were on guard, rendering it unsafe for any one
to come within a hundred yards of them. Nearly all the people,
Loyal and Rebel, had similar sentinels. Along the route, we had
been anathematizing the canine race, which often prevented us from
approaching negro-quarters on the plantations; but these were Union
dogs, which made all the difference in the world.</p>
<p>At dark, we were conducted to a barn, where, wrapped in quilts, we
passed a comfortable night.</p>
<p class="quotdate">VIII. <i>Sunday, December 25.</i></p>
<p>Our resting-place was in Wilkes County, North Carolina, among the
outlying spurs of the Alleghanies—a county so strong in its
Union sentiments, that the Rebels called it "the Old United States."
Among the mountains of every Southern State, a vast majority of
the people were loyal. Hilly regions, unadapted to cotton-culture,
contained few negroes; and where there was no Slavery, there was no
Rebellion. Milton's verse—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"The <em>mountain</em> nymph, sweet Liberty,"</span></div>
</div>
<p>contains a great truth, the world over.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A Levee in a Barn.</div>
<p>Our self-sacrificing friends belonged to a multitudinous family,
extending through a settlement many miles in length. They all
seemed to be nephews, cousins, or brothers; and the white-haired
patriarch—at seventy, erect and agile as a boy,—in whose
barn we remained to-day, was father, grandfather, or uncle, to the
whole tribe. His loyalty was very stanch and intense.</p>
<p>"The Home Guards," said he, "are usually pretty civil.
Occasionally they shoot at some of the boys who
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</SPAN></span>
are hiding; but pretty soon afterward, one of them is found in the
woods some morning with a hole in his head! I suppose there are a
thousand young men lying out in this county. I have always urged them
to fight the Guards, and have helped to supply them with ammunition.
Two or three times, regiments from Lee's army have been sent here
to hunt conscripts and deserters, and then the boys have to run. I
have a son among them; but they never wounded him yet. I asked him
the other day: 'Won't you kill some of them before you are ever
captured?' 'Well, father,' says he, '<em>I'll be found a tryin'!</em>' I
reckon he will, too; for he has never gone without his rifle these
two years, and he can bring down a squirrel every time, from the top
of yon oak you see on the hill."</p>
<p>The barn was beside a public road, and very near the house of
a woman whose Rebel sympathies were strong. There was danger that
any one entering it might be seen by her or her children, who were
running about the yard.</p>
<p>But we held quite a <span lang="fr">levée</span> to-day.
I think we had fifty visitors. We would hear the opening door and
stealthy footsteps upon the barn-floor; then a soft voice would
ask:</p>
<p>"Friends, are you there?"</p>
<p>We would rise from our bed of hay, and come forward to the front
of the loft, to find some member of this great family of friends,
who had brought his wife and children to see the Yankees. We would
converse with them for a few minutes; they would invariably ask if
there was nothing whatever they could do for us, invite us to visit
their house by night, and express the warmest wishes for our success.
They did this with such perfect spontaneity, with such overflowing
hearts, that it touched us
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</SPAN></span>
very nearly. Had we been their own sons or brothers, they could not
have treated us more tenderly. This Christmas may have witnessed more
brilliant gatherings than ours; but none, I am sure, warmed by a more
self-sacrificing friendship.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Visited by an Old Friend.</div>
<p>Among others, we were visited by a conscript, who had been one
of our guards at Salisbury. While at the prison, his great portly
form would come laboring and puffing up the stairs to our quarters;
with flushed face, he would sit down, glance cautiously around to
assure himself that none but friends were present, then question us
eagerly about the North, and breathe out maledictions against all
Confederates.</p>
<p>The Rebels, suspecting him, determined to send him to Lee's army.
But he was just then taken with rheumatism, and kept his quarters for
six weeks! At last, the day before he was to start for Richmond, he
obtained permission of the surgeon to visit the village. He hobbled
up the street, groaning piteously; but, after turning the first
corner, threw away his crutches, plunged into the woods, and made
his way home by night. He now related his experiences with a quiet
chuckle, and was very desirous of serving us.</p>
<p>He was able to give me a pair of large boots in place of my own,
which lacerated my sore and swollen feet. The sharp rocks, hills,
and stumps, compelled me to have the new boots repaired seven times
before reaching our lines. Two nights' traveling would quite wear out
the ill-tanned leather of the stoutest soles.</p>
<p>To-day, our friends brought us twice as much food as we wanted,
and we wanted a great deal. At dark, alarmed by a rumor that the
suspicions of the Guard had been excited, they took us several miles
into a neighboring county, to a very secluded house, occupied by the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</SPAN></span>
wife and daughters of an officer in the Confederate army. Here we
spent the night in inviting beds.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A Day of Alarms.</div>
<p class="quotdate">IX. <i>Monday, December 26.</i></p>
<p>Our hostess, a comely lady of thirty-five, was a second Mrs.
Katie Scudder—the very embodiment of "Faculty." Her plain log
house, with its snowy curtains, cheap prints, and engravings cut
from illustrated newspapers, was tasteful and inviting. Her five
daughters, all clothed in fabric spun and woven at home—for
these people were now entirely self-dependent—looked as pretty
and tidy to uncritical, masculine eyes, as if robed in silk and
cashmere.</p>
<p>Our pursuit of a quiet refuge proved ludicrously unsuccessful. The
day was diversified by</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"More pangs and fears than wars or women have."</p>
</div>
<p>But the lady bore herself with such coolness, and proved so ready
for every emergency, that we enjoyed them rather than otherwise.</p>
<p>Early in the morning, while standing a few yards from the house, I
saw her and her daughter suddenly step into the open doorway, quite
filling it with their persons and skirts, and earnestly beckon me
to go in out of sight. Of course, I obeyed. A woman of questionable
political soundness had called; but they attracted her in another
direction, keeping her face turned away from the door, till I was
lost to sight.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Ready Wit of a Woman.</div>
<p>Several parties of Rebel cavalry passed down the road.
Breckinridge's army, in the mountains above, had recently dissolved
in a great thaw and break-up, and these were the small fragments of
ice floating down toward Virginia. A squad of a dozen stopped and
entered the house, which was of one story, the length of three large
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</SPAN></span>
rooms. But the lady kept them in the kitchen, while we were shut in
the other end of the building.</p>
<p>Next, the barking dog warned us of approaching footsteps. At her
suggestion, we went up into the corn-loft, above our apartment. The
new visitor was a neighbor, to whom she owed a bushel of corn, and
who, with his ox-cart, had come to collect it. With ready woman's
wit, she said to him:</p>
<p>"You know my husband is away. I have no fuel. Won't you go and
haul me a load of wood, as a Christmas present?"</p>
<p>Who could resist such a feminine appeal? The neighbor went for
the wood, while she came laughing in, to tell us her stratagem.
We descended from the corn-loft, and went into a back room, where
there were two beds, one large and the other small, with an open
door between them. Four of us crept under the large bed, one under
the small one; and here we had an experience, ludicrous enough to
remember, but not so pleasant to undergo.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Danger of Detection from Snoring.</div>
<p>One of our party was an inveterate snorer. Whenever he took a
recumbent position, with his head upon the ground or the floor, he
would begin snoring like a steam-engine. Like all persons of that
class, when reminded of it, he steadfastly vowed that he never snored
in all his life! For a time, he regarded our awakening him, with
rebuke and caution, as a sorry practical joke.</p>
<p>Thus far, I believe our danger of detection had been greater from
this source than from any other. We had always traveled in single
file, almost like specters, with our leader thrown out as far ahead
as we could keep him in view. Whenever he thought he saw danger, he
raised a warning hand; every man passed the sign back to those in his
rear, and dropped
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</SPAN></span>
quietly behind a log, or stepped into the bushes, until the person
had passed or the alarm was explained. We walked with softest
footsteps, no man coughing, or speaking above his breath. During the
day we were often concealed in very public places, only a few feet
from the road, where, the ground being covered with snow, we could
not hear approaching footsteps.</p>
<p>Now, our musical companion chanced to go under the small bed, and
in three minutes we heard his trumpet-tongued snore. At first, we
whispered to him; but we might as well have talked to Niagara. If one
of us went to him, there was danger that the neighbor, who stood upon
the front porch, would see us through the open door; but if we did
not, that fatal snore was certain to be heard. So I darted across the
room, crept in beside my friend, and kept him well shaken until the
danger was over.</p>
<p>At night, the lady told us that more people had come to her
house during the day than ever visited it in a month before; and
we were marched back through the darkness, to our first place of
concealment.</p>
<p class="quotdate">X. <i>Tuesday, December 27.</i></p>
<p>In the barn through the whole day. A messenger brought us a
note from two late fellow-prisoners, Captain William Boothby, a
Philadelphia mariner, and Mr. John Mercer, a Unionist, of Newbern,
North Carolina, who had been in duress almost three years. They were
now hiding in a barn two miles from us. They escaped from Salisbury
two nights later than we, paying the guards eight hundred dollars in
Confederate money to let them out.</p>
<p>Thurston at once joined them. During the rest of the journey, we
sometimes traveled and hid together for several days and nights;
but, when there was special danger, divided into two companies, one
keeping twenty-four
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</SPAN></span>
hours in advance—the smaller the party, the less peril being
involved.</p>
<p>Now, for the first time, we began to have some hope of reaching
our lines. But the road was still very long, and fraught with many
dangers. We examined the appalling list of dead, which I had brought
from Salisbury, and talked much of our companions left behind in that
living entombment. Remembering how earnestly they longed and prayed
for some intelligent, trustworthy voice to bear to the Government
and the people tidings of their terrible condition, we pledged each
other very solemnly, that if any one of us lived to regain home
and freedom, he should use earnest, unremitting efforts to excite
sympathy and secure relief for them.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Promises to aid Suffering Comrades.</div>
<p>It may not be out of place here to say, that upon reaching
the North, before visiting our families, or performing any other
duties, we hastened to Washington, and used every endeavor to call
the attention of the authorities and the country to the Salisbury
prisoners. Before many weeks, all who survived were exchanged; but
more than five thousand—upwards of half the number who were
taken to Salisbury five months before—were already buried just
outside the garrison.</p>
<p>Those five thousand loyal graves will ever remain fitting
monuments of Rebel cruelty, and of the atrocious inhumanity of Edwin
M. Stanton, Secretary of War, who steadfastly refused to exchange
these prisoners, on the ground that we could not afford to give
the enemy robust, vigorous men for invalids and skeletons, and yet
refrained from compelling them to treat prisoners with humanity, by
just and discriminating retaliation upon an equal number of Rebel
officers, taken from the great excess held by our Government.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Blind and Unquestioning Loyalty.</div>
<p>To-day, as usual, we saw a large number of the Union
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</SPAN></span>
mountaineers. Theirs was a very blind and unreasoning loyalty, much
like the disloyalty of some enthusiastic Rebels. They did not say
"Unionist," or "Secessionist," but always designated a political
friend thus: "He is one of the right sort of people"—strong in
the faith that there could, by no possibility, be more than one side
to the question. They had little education; but when they began to
talk about the Union, their eyes lighted wonderfully, and sometimes
they grew really eloquent. They did not believe one word in a Rebel
newspaper, except extracts from the Northern journals, and reports
favorable to our Cause. They thought the Union army had never been
defeated in a single battle. I heard them say repeatedly:</p>
<p>"The United States can take Richmond any day when it wants to.
That it has not, thus far, is owing to no lack of power, but because
it was not thought best."</p>
<p>They regarded every Rebel as necessarily an unmitigated scoundrel,
and every Loyalist, particularly every native-born Yankee, almost as
an angel from heaven.</p>
<p>How earnestly they questioned us about the North! How they longed
to escape thither! To them, indeed, it was the Promised Land. They
were very bitter in their denunciations of the heavy slaveholders,
who had done so much to degrade white labor, and finally brought on
this terrible war.</p>
<p>They had an abundance of the two great Southern
staples—corn-bread and pork. They felt severely the absence of
their favorite beverage, and would ask us, with amusing earnestness,
if they could get coffee when our armies came. The Confederate
substitutes—burnt corn and rye—they regarded with earnest
and well-founded aversion.</p>
<p>They were compelled to use thorns for fastening the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</SPAN></span>
clothing of the women and children. We distributed among them our
small supply of pins, to their infinite delectation. Davis also
gladdened the hearts of all the womankind by disbursing a needle to
each. A needle nominally represented five dollars in Confederate
currency, but actually could not be purchased at any price.</p>
<p>A number of the young men "lying out" desired to accompany us to
the North. Some were deserters from the Rebel army; others, more
fortunate, had evaded conscription from the beginning of the war.
But their lives had been passed in that remote county of North
Carolina, and the two hundred and ninety miles yet to be accomplished
stretched out in appalling prospective. They saw many lions in the
way, and, Festus-like, at the last moment, decided to wait for a more
convenient season. It was not from lack of nerve; for some of them
had fought Rebel guards with great coolness and bravery.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A Repentant Rebel.</div>
<p>Our friends feared that one slaveholding Secessionist in the
neighborhood might learn of our presence, and betray us. He did
ascertain our whereabouts, but sent us an invitation to visit his
house, offering to supply all needed food, clothing, and shelter. He
said he foolishly acquiesced in the Revolution because at first it
seemed certain to succeed, and he wished to save his property; but
that now he heartily repented.</p>
<p>Possibly his conversion was partially owing to remorse for having
persuaded his two sons to enter the Rebel army. One, after much
suffering, had deserted, and was now "lying out" near home. The
other, wounded and captured in a "Virginia battle, was still in a
Northern prison, where he had been confined for many months. The
father was very desirous of sending to him a message of sympathy and
affection.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Sanguine Hopes of Loyal Mountaineers.</div>
<p>But he was an index of the change which had
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</SPAN></span>
recently come over Rebel sympathizers in that whole region. The
condition of our armies then was not peculiarly promising. We were by
no means sanguine that the war would soon terminate. But the loyal
mountaineers, with unerring instinct, were all confident that we
were near its close, and constantly surprised us by speaking of the
Rebellion as a thing of the past. We fancied their wish was father to
the thought; but they proved truer prophets than we. </p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</SPAN></span></p>
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