Chapter X

Only we want a little personal strength, And pause until
these Rebels, now afoot, Come underneath the yoke of
Government.--KING HENRY IV.

Cairo, as the key to the lower Mississippi valley, is the most important strategic point in the West. Immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, it was occupied by our troops.

As a place of residence it was never inviting. To-day its offenses smell to heaven as rankly as when Dickens evoked it, from horrible obscurity, as the "Eden" of Martin Chuzzlewit. The low, marshy, boot-shaped site is protected from the overflow of the Mississippi and Ohio by levees. Its jet-black soil generates every species of insect and reptile known to science or imagination. Its atmosphere is never sweet or pure.

[Sidenote: GENERAL MCCLELLAN AT CAIRO.]

On the 13th of June, Major-General George B. McClellan, commander of all the forces west of the Alleghanies, reached Cairo on a visit of inspection. His late victories in Western Virginia had established his reputation for the time, as an officer of great capacity and promise, notwithstanding the high heroics of his ambitious proclamations. This was before Bull Run, and before the New York journals, by absurdly pronouncing him "the Young Napoleon," raised public expectation to an embarrassing and unreasonable hight.

In those days, every eye was looking for the Coming Man, every ear listening for his approaching footsteps, which were to make the earth tremble. Men judged, by old standards, that the Hour must have its Hero. They had not learned that, in a country like ours, whatever is accomplished must be the work of the loyal millions, not of any one, or two, or twenty generals and statesmen.

[Sidenote: A LITTLE SPEECH-MAKING.]

McClellan was enthusiastically received, and, to the strains of the "Star Spangled Banner," escorted to head-quarters. There, General Prentiss, who had so decided a _penchant_ for speech-making, that cynics declared he always kept a particular stump in front of his office for a rostrum, welcomed him with some rhetorical remarks:

* * * * "My command are all anxious to taste those dangers
which war ushers in--not that they court danger, but that
they love their country. We have toiled in the mud, we have
drilled in the burning sun. Many of us are ragged--all of
us are poor. But we look anxiously for the order to move,
trusting that we may be allowed to lead the division."

The soldiers applauded enthusiastically--for in those days the anxiety to be in the earliest battles was intense. The impression was almost universal throughout the North that the war was to be very brief. Officers and men in the army feared they would have no opportunity to participate in any fighting!

McClellan responded to Prentiss and his officers in the same strain:

* * * "We shall meet again upon the tented field; and
Illinois, which sent forth a Hardin and a Bissell, will,
I doubt not, give a good account of herself to her sister
States. Her fame is world-wide: in your hands, gentlemen, I
am sure it will not suffer. The advance is due to you."

Then there was more applause, and afterward a review of the brigade.

[Sidenote: PENALTY OF WRITING FOR THE TRIBUNE.]

General McClellan is stoutly built, short, with light hair, blue eyes, full, fresh, almost boyish face, and lip tufted with a brown mustache. His urbane manner truly indicates the peculiar amiability of character and yielding disposition which have hurt him more than all other causes. An officer once assured me that McClellan had said to him: "My friends have injured me a thousand times more than my enemies." It was certainly true.

Now, seeing his features the first time, I scanned them anxiously for lineaments of greatness. I saw a pleasant, mild, moony face, with one cheek distended by tobacco; but nothing which appeared strong or striking. Tinctured largely with the general belief in his military genius, I imputed the failure only to my own incapacity for reading "Nature's infinite book of secrecy."

One evening, at Cairo, a man, whose worn face, shaggy beard, matted locks, and tattered clothing marked him as one of the constantly arriving refugees, sought me and asked:

"Can you tell me the name of _The Tribune_ correspondent who passed through Memphis last February?"

He was informed that that pleasure had been mine.

[Sidenote: A LOYAL GIRL'S ASSISTANCE.]

"Then," said he, "I have been lying in jail at Memphis about fifty days chiefly on your account! The three or four letters which you wrote from there were peculiarly bitter. Of course, I was not aware of your presence, and I sent one to _The Tribune_, which was also very emphatic. The Secessionists suspected me not only of the one which I did write, but also of yours. They pounced on me and put me in jail. After the disbanding of the Committee of Safety I was brought before the City Recorder, who assured me from the bench of his profound regrets that he could find no law for hanging me! I would have been there until this time, but for the assistance of a young lady, through whom I succeeded in bribing an officer of the jail, and making my escape. I was hidden in Memphis for several days, then left the city in disguise, and have worked my way, chiefly on foot, aided by negroes and Union families, through the woods of Tennessee and the swamps of Missouri up to God's country."

The refugee seemed to be not only in good health, but also in excellent spirits, and I replied:

"I am very sorry for your misfortunes; but if the Rebels must have one of us, I am very glad that it was not I."

Nearly four years later, this gentleman turned the tables on me very handsomely. After my twenty months imprisonment in Rebel hands, among a crowd of visitors he walked into my room at Cincinnati one morning, and greeted me warmly.

"You do not remember me, do you?" he asked.

"I recognize your face, but cannot recall your name."

"Well, my name is Collins. Once, when I escaped from the South, you congratulated me at Cairo. Now, I congratulate you, and I can do it with all my heart, in exactly the same words. I am very sorry for your misfortunes; but if the Rebels must have one of us, I am very glad that it was not I!"

After our troops captured Memphis, I encountered the young lady who aided Mr. Collins in escaping. She was enthusiastically loyal, but her feeling had been repressed for nearly two years, when the arrival of our forces loosened her tongue. She began to utter her long-stifled Union views, and it is my deliberate opinion that she has not stopped yet. She is now the wife of an officer in the United States service.

[Sidenote: THE FASCINATIONS OF CAIRO.]

CAIRO, _May 29_.

A drizzly, muddy, melancholy day. Never otherwise than forlorn, Cairo is pre-eminently lugubrious during a mild rain. In dry weather, even when glowing like a furnace, you may find amusement in the contemplation of the high-water mark upon trees and houses, the stilted-plank sidewalks, the half-submerged swamps, and other diluvian features of this nondescript, saucer-like, terraqueous town. You may speculate upon the exact amount of fever and ague generated to the acre, or inquire whether the whisky saloons, which spring up like mushrooms, are indigenous or exotic.

In downright wet weather you may calculate how soon the streets will be navigable, and the effect upon the amphibious natives. It is difficult to realize that anybody was ever born here, or looks upon Cairo as home. Washington Irving records that the old Dutch housewives of New York scrubbed their floors until many "grew to have webbed fingers, like unto a duck." I suspect the Cairo babies must have fins.

Long-suffering, much-abused Cairo! What wounds hast thou not received from the Parthian arrows of tourists! "The season here," wrote poor John Phenix, bitterest of all, "is usually opened with great _éclat_ by small-pox, continued spiritedly by cholera, and closed up brilliantly with yellow fever. Sweet spot!"

Theorists long predicted that the great metropolis of the Mississippi valley--the granary of the world--must ultimately rise here. Many proved their faith by pecuniary investments, which are likely to be permanent.

Possessed by a similar delusion, Illinois, for years, strove to legislate Alton into a vast commercial mart. But, in spite of their unequaled geographical positions, Cairo and Alton still languish in obscurity, while St. Louis and Cincinnati, twin queens of this imperial valley, succeed to their grand heritage.

Nature settles these matters by laws which, though hidden, are inexorable. Even that mysterious, semi-civilized race, which swarmed in this valley centuries before the American Indian, established their great centers of population where ours are to-day.

[Sidenote: THE DEATH OF DOUGLAS.]

_June 4._

Intelligence of the death of Senator Douglas, received last evening, excites profound and universal regret. Though totally unfamiliar with books, Mr. Douglas thoroughly knew the masses of the Northwest, down to their minutest sympathies and prejudices. Beyond any of his cotemporaries, he was a man of the people, and the people loved him. Never before could he have died so opportunely for his posthumous fame. Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it. His last speech, in Chicago, was a fervid, stirring appeal for the Union and the Government, and for crushing out treason with an iron hand. His emphatic loyalty exerted great influence in Illinois. His life-long opponents forget the asperities of the past, in the halo of patriotism around his setting sun, and unite, with those who always idolized him, in common tribute to his memory.

We have very direct intelligence from Tennessee. The western districts are all Secession. Middle Tennessee is about equally divided. East Tennessee, a mountain region, containing few slaves, is inhabited by a hardy, primitive, industrious race. They are thoroughly, enthusiastically loyal.[11]

[11] Through severest trials, and cruel neglect from our Government, they never swerved a hair's-breadth. Before our troops opened East Tennessee, enough left their homes, coming stealthily through the mountains and enlisting in the Union army, to make sixteen regiments.

[Sidenote: A CLEAR-HEADED NEGRO.]

The felicitous decision of Major-General Butler, that slaves of the enemy are "contraband of war," disturbs the Rebels not a little, even in the West. A friend just from Louisiana, relates an amusing conversation between a planter and an old, trusted slave.

"Sam," said his master, "I must furnish some niggers to go down and work on the fortifications at the Balize. Which of the boys had I better send?"

"Well, massa," replied the old servant, shaking his head oracularly, "I doesn't know about dat. War's comin' on, and dey might be killed. Ought to get Irishmen to do dat work, anyhow. I reckon you'd better not send any ob de boys--tell you what, massa, nigger property's mighty onsartin dese times!"

Scores of fugitives from the South arrive here daily, with the old stories of insult, indignity, and outrage. Several have come in with their heads shaved. To you, my reader, who have never seen a case of the kind, it may seem a trivial matter for a person merely to have one side of his head laid bare, but it is a peculiarly repulsive spectacle. The first time you look upon it, or on those worse cases, where free-born men of Saxon blood bear fresh marks of the lash, you will involuntarily clinch your teeth, and thank God that the system which bears such infernal fruits is rushing upon its own destruction.

_June 8._

The heated term is upon us. We are amid upper, nether, and surrounding fires. At eight, this morning, the mercury indicated eighty degrees in the shade. How high it has gone since, I dare not conjecture; but a friend insists that the sun will roast eggs to-day upon any doorstep in town. I am a little incredulous as to that, though a pair of smarting, half-blistered hands--the result of a ten minutes' walk in its devouring breath--protest against absolute unbelief. Officers who served in the War with Mexico declare they never found the heat so oppressive in that climate as it is here. The raw troops on duty, who are sweltering in woolen shirts and cloth caps, bear it wonderfully well.

A number of Chicago ladies are already here, acting as nurses in the hospital. The dull eyes of the invalids brighten at their approach, and voices grow husky in attempting to express their gratitude. According to Carlyle, "in a revolution we are all savages still; civilization has only sharpened our claws;" but this tender care for the soldier is the one redeeming feature of modern war.

[Sidenote: A REVIEW OF THE TROOPS.]

_June 12._

A review of all the troops. The double ranks of well-knit men, with shining muskets and bayonets, stretch off in perspective for more than a mile. After preliminary evolutions, at the word of command, the lines suddenly break and wheel into column by companies, and marching commences. You see two long parallel columns of men moving in opposite directions, with an open space between. Their legs, in motion, look for all the world like the shuttles in some great Lowell factory.

The artillerists fire each of their six-pounders three times a minute. They discharge one, dismount it, lay it upon the ground, remove the wheels from the carriage, drop flat upon their faces, then spring up, remount the gun, ready for reloading or removing, all in forty-five seconds.

Standing three hundred yards from the cannon, the column of smoke, white at first, but rapidly changing to blue, shoots out twenty-five or thirty feet from the muzzle before you hear the report.

The flying flags, playing bands, galloping officers, long lines of our boys in blue, and sharp metallic reports, impress you with something of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war.

But Captain Jenny, a young engineer officer, quietly remarks, that he once witnessed a review of seventy thousand French troops in the Champ de Mars, and in 1859 saw the army of seventy-five thousand men enter Paris, returning from the Italian wars. Colonel Wagner, an old Hungarian officer, who has participated in twenty-three engagements, assures you that he has looked upon a parade of one hundred and forty thousand men, whereupon our little force of five thousand appears insignificant. Nevertheless, it exceeds Jackson's recruits at New Orleans, and is larger than the effective force of Scott during the Mexican war.

[Sidenote: A "RUNNIN' NIGGER!"]

Our first contraband arrived here in a skiff last night, bearing unmistakable evidences of long travel. He says he came from Mississippi, and the cotton-seed in his woolly head corroborates the statement. I first saw him beside the guard-house, surrounded by a party of soldiers. He answered my salutation with "Good evenin', Mass'r," removing his old wool hat from his grizzly head. He smiled all over his face, and bowed all through his body, as he depressed his head, slightly lifting his left foot, with the gesture which only the unmistakable darkey can give.

"Well, uncle, have you joined the army?"

"Yes, mass'r" (with another African salaam).

"Are you going to fight?"

"No, mass'r, I'se not a fightin' nigger, I'se a runnin' nigger!"

"Are you not afraid of starving, up here among the Abolitionists?"

[Sidenote: CAPTURING A REBEL FLAG.]

"Reckon not, mass'r--not much."

And Sambo gave a concluding bow, indescribable drollery shining through his sooty face, bisected by two rows of glittering ivory.

_June 13._

A reconnoitering party went down the Mississippi yesterday upon a Government steamer, under command of Colonel Richard J. Oglesby, colloquially known among the Illinois sovereigns of the prairie as "Dick Oglesby."

Twenty miles below Cairo, we slowly passed the town of Columbus, Ky., on the highest bluffs of the Mississippi. The village is a straggling collection of brick blocks, frame houses, and whisky saloons. It contains no Rebel forces, though seven thousand are at Union City, Tenn., twenty-five miles distant.

On a tall staff, a few yards from the river, a great Secession flag, with its eight stars and three stripes, was triumphantly flying.

Turning back, after steaming two miles below, the boat was stopped at the landing; the captain went on shore, cut down the flag, and brought it on board, amid cheers from our troops. The Columbians looked on in grim silence--all save four Union ladies, who,

"Faithful among the faithless only they,"

waved handkerchiefs joyfully from a neighboring bluff.

Each star of the flag bore the name in pencil of the young lady who sewed it on. The Maggies, and Julias, and Sues, and Kates, and Sallies, who thus left their autographs upon their handiwork, did not anticipate that it would so soon be scrutinized by Yankee soldiers. And, doubtless, "Julia K----," the damsel whose star I pilfered, scarcely aspired to the honor of furnishing a relic for _The Tribune_ cabinet.