Chapter XVII

Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm
by erecting a grammar-school.--KING HENRY VI.

O, 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear, To wake an
earthquake!--TEMPEST.

[Sidenote: REBEL GUERRILLAS OUTWITTED.]

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.

On the 3d of February a journalistic friend telegraphed me from Cairo:

"You can't come too soon: take the first train."

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:

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, and Rebel newspapers grew merry over Grant's bad generalship, expressing the wish that he might long lead the Yankee armies!

----"We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often for our own harms;
so find we profit By losing of our prayers."

[Sidenote: EXPEDITION TO FORT HENRY.]

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.

"Pretty good shot!" said Porter. "Now we will show them ours." And he dropped a nine-inch Dahlgren shell right into the fort.

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

"I can take that fort in about an hour and a half."

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.

[Sidenote: ITS CAPTURE BY COMMODORE FOOTE.]

At mid-day on the 6th, Foote fired his first shot, at the distance of seventeen hundred yards. Then he slowly 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.

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.

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.

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.

Our soldiers ransacked trunks, arrayed themselves in Rebel coats, hats, and shirts, armed themselves with Rebel revolvers, stuffed their pockets with Rebel books and miniatures, and some were soon staggering under heavy loads of Rebel whisky.

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.

[Sidenote: A DELIGHTED NEGRESS.]

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.

"You seem to have had hot work here, aunty."

"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."

"Where are all your soldiers?"

"Lord A'mighty knows. Dey jus' runned away like turkeys--nebber fired a gun."

"How many were there?"

"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."

"Why didn't you run with them?"

"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."

"Where is General Tilghman?"

"You folks has got him--him and de whole garrison inside de fort."

"You don't seem to feel very badly about it."

"Not berry, mass'r!"--with a fresh rub of the hands and a grin all over her sable face.

[Sidenote: SCENES IN THE CAPTURED FORTRESS.]

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.

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:

"How could you fight against the old flag?"

"It was hard," he replied, "but I had to go with my people."

Presently a Chicago reporter inquired of him:

"How do you spell your name, General?"

"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."

"I merely asked it," persisted the journalist, "for the list of prisoners captured."

Tilghman, whose name should have been Turveydrop, replied, with a lofty air and a majestic wave of the hand:

"You will oblige me, sir, by not giving my name in any newspaper connection whatever!"

One of the Rebel officers was reminded of the predominance of Union sentiments among the people about Fort Henry.

"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."

[Sidenote: COMMODORE FOOTE IN THE PULPIT.]

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:

"Let not your hearts be troubled; ye believe in God; believe
also in me,"

he preached an excellent practical discourse, urging that human happiness depends upon integrity, pure living, and conscientious performance of duty.

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.

"You had better wait a day or two," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I am going over to capture Fort Donelson to-morrow."

"How strong is it?"

"We have not been able to ascertain exactly, but I think we can take it. At all events, we can try."

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 night, the sanguine General Pillow telegraphed to Nashville:

"The day is ours. I have repulsed the enemy at all points,
but I want re-enforcements."

[Sidenote: THE CAPTURE OF FORT DONELSON.]

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:

"I have no terms but unconditional surrender. I propose to
move immediately upon your works."

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.

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.

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.

I was in Chicago when these captives, on their way 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.

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.

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--

"With busy hammers closing rivets up, And giving dreadful
notes of preparation."

Commodore Foote, lame from his Donelson wound, hobbled on board upon crutches. A great National flag was taken along.

"Don't forget that," said the commodore. "Fight or no fight, we must raise it over Columbus!"

[Sidenote: ARMY AND NAVY OFFICERS CONTRASTED.]

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 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 _United_ 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.

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.

[Sidenote: The "Gibraltar of the West."]

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.

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.

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.

[Sidenote: SCENES IN COLUMBUS, KENTUCKY.]

Fastened to the bluff, we found one end of a great 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.

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!

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:--

"Let the whole South be made a Moscow; let our enemies find
nothing but blackened ruins to reward their invasion!"

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 _The Avalanche_:

[Sidenote: EXTRACTS FROM REBEL NEWSPAPERS.]

"For the sake of honor and manhood, we trust no young
unmarried 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."

_The Avalanche_ was a great advocate of what is termed the "aggressive policy," declaring that:

"The victorious armies of the South should be precipitated
upon the North. Her 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."

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, _The New Orleans Picayune_. Its transition from the pathetic to the profane is a curious anticlimax.

"My dear wife waits my coming,
My children lisp my name,
And kind friends bid me welcome
To my own home again.
My father's grave lies on the hill,
My boys sleep in the vale;
I love each rock and murmuring rill,
Each mountain, hill, and dale.

I'll suffer hardships, toil, and pain,
For the good time sure to come;
I'll battle long that I may gain
My freedom and my home.
I will return, though foes may stand
Disputing every rod;
My own dear home, my native land,
I'll win you yet, by ---!"

[Sidenote: INMATES OF THE UNION HOSPITALS.]

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.