Chapter XXVII: Appendix: NOTE E: Page 95

The young New-Yorker soon went on his way homewards. At Washington City he was forced to tarry, and from there he wrote to his friend at Knoxville as follows:

April 23, P. M., 1861.

“I have succeeded in effecting a junction with my other
forces--my brother and brother-in-law--but we are all now
prisoners of war! Not that I would give you to understand that we
are in the power of either of the belligerents, but because of
the war we are most decidedly prisoners in this place.

I found the whole line of the road in a blaze of enthusiasm and
excitement from Knoxville to Lynchburg, which place I reached the
next morning. Having occasion for a business purpose to introduce
myself to ----, Warden of the Church there, (the Clergyman
being absent), he very kindly asked me to stay at his house,
which I did until Monday morning, when I came on here without
interference.

The people of Virginia display a noble spirit of patriotism if
it were only in a right cause, which I cannot feel to be the
case. The very soil seems to teem with armed men. Even the boys
and the old men are enlisting, and the cry is ‘To Washington!’
Senator Mason addressed them on the route and said, ‘War has
begun,’ and Jeff. Davis with two thousand Carolinians is already
at Richmond. I regret the policy of the Government and think it
is a grand mistake; but it is the most absurd dream in the world
that Lincoln wishes to lead an army against the South. The truth
is, Virginia’s sympathies are so much more with the South than
with the Government, that although denouncing utterly both South
Carolina and Secession, she preferred uniting her fortunes with
them, to sustaining a policy which involved force against them to
any degree at all.

I am struck with the fact that at the South the loyal feeling
goes to the State, while at the North it goes to the General
Government. The radical difference of belief concerning the
relations of the separate States to the Nation, is a principal
cause in the whole trouble. The very same act which crazes
Virginia, crazes the whole North in an opposite direction, and
brings Pierce, Buchanan and Fillmore out in support of the
Government.

My friends (at Lynchburg) did not dare invite me to take part
in the services, and the most atrocious sentiments were uttered
in my hearing against Lincoln and the Yankees. Here all seems
quiet--no cannon in the streets and few soldiers to be seen.
Martial law is not proclaimed and there is a wonderful contrast
to the feverish atmosphere of Virginia. Still I believe the
Government is wide awake and more ready than people dream of.
Communications have been open to Baltimore but broken up beyond.
To-day Rev. Mr. P---- and I concluded to go there and try to make
our way around through Harper’s Ferry and Hagerstown, but we
found that since morning the Government had seized the depot and
would allow no train to leave. So here we are.

I despond very much about peace. Perhaps I am superstitious,
but the two singular portents (which have so many parallels in
history) of the first lesson last Sunday from Joel, and the
co-incidence of the Baltimore fight with the anniversary of the
battle of Lexington, dishearten me.

The Potomac is now fortified and the Government must march its
troops through Maryland or give up its Capital. Unless this
should be seized soon, it will not be done; and if Maryland
refuses passage through her borders to men and provisions,
Maryland must be put down, if it burns her every town and makes
the State a desert. Self preservation will extort that.

But in these exciting times we must do what we can to check the
madness of the people. Do not let yourself suppose, as so many
seem to do, that all this excitement at the North is hatred of
the South. No such thing. The very same feeling of patriotism
which in Lynchburg called six hundred men to arms and equipped
them with eighteen thousand dollars, is at the North rallying all
to the support of the old and loved Government--no conglomeration
of States but the Federal Union. That hates will arise on both
sides now, we must expect. War lets loose fearful passions, and I
know human nature is alike every where; and judging from what I
saw in Virginia, I can readily believe the North will be about as
bad.”

APPENDIX: NOTE F: Page 101.

Colonel David Cummings, of Anderson county, an officer of the Tennessee (Confederate) troops, was conspicuous in preserving peace at the time of the imminent deadly collision between Union men and Secessionists on the principal street of Knoxville. It was he, who with two Union citizens,--Abner Jackson and John Williams--afterwards succeeded by persuasion in halting hundreds of State soldiers on their way from camp to the town with a destructive purpose against Charles Douglass, and so, in preventing a bloody encounter between the soldiers, and Douglass with his friends. It was also Col. Cummings, who on a subsequent day, as the body of the murdered Douglass was borne along the street to its grave, relieved the occasion of its reproach in the eyes of unfriendly observers, by magnanimously joining on horseback the officiating minister in leading the sad procession.