EFFECT OF THE PRESIDENT'S CALL FOR TROOPS. 347 was everywhere seen, but nowhere the flag of the Union. The latter would not be tolerated. The reign of terror had commenced in earnest. The voices of Union men were silenced; and the fact of a revolution accomplished seemed painfully apparent when we saw these strange banners, and heard, in a Protestant Episcopal Church, a prayer for "the President of the Confederate States of America." On Monday, the President's call for seventyfive thousand men was placarded on the bulletinboards. That proclamation was unexpected. It exhibited an unsuspected resoluteness in the Government that threatened trouble for the insurgents. The effect was marked. The groups around the placards were no longer jubilant. There was visible uneasiness in the mind of every looker-on, and all turned away thoughtful. There was a menace of war, and war would ruin the business of New Orleans. Even the marching of troops through the streets when they departed for Pensacola failed to excite much enthusiasm; and when, on the 17th, the subscription-books for the fifteen millions of dollars loan, authorized by the Convention of conspirators at Montgomery,' were opened, there were very few bona-fide bids for large amounts. But that proclamation gave The SECESSION ROSETTE AND a December 7, 1860. heart-felt satisfaction to the Union men of New Orleans, and they were counted by thousands among the best citizens. These were silent then. editor of the True Delta, a Union journal, had been compelled to fling out the secession flag, to prevent the demolition of his office by a mob. "No one dares to speak out now," said the venerable Jacob Barker, the banker, as he stealthily placed in the writer's hand a broadside, which he had had printed on his eighty-first birthday," as a gift of good for his countrymen, containing a series of argumentative letters against secession, first published in a Natchez newspaper. "If," said another, one of the oldest citizens of New Orleans, "the Northern people shall respond to that call, and the United States shall repossess and hold' the forts and other public property-if the power of the Government shall pull down the detested secession flags now flaunting in our faces over our Mint and Custom House, and show that it has power to maintain the old banner in their places, the Union men in the South will take Kentucky hemp, and hang every traitor between the Gulf and the Ohio and Potomac !" 3 1 See page 263. 6 2 The rosette was made of blue satin ribbon, surrounding a disk, containing two circles. On one were the words, "OUR FIRST PRESIDENT. THE RIGHT MAN IN THE RIGHT PLACE." On the other, seven stars and the words "JEFF. DAVIS." On the badge of white satin was printed, in proper colors, the "Confederate" flag. Over it were the words, "THE SOUTH FOREVER. SOUTHERN CONFEDERATION." Below it, "JEFF. DAVIS, PRESI DENT. A. H. STEPHENS, VICE-PRESIDENT." 3 The last time the National Flag had been publicly displayed in New Orleans was on Washington's Birthday, the 22d of February. A citizen flung out one on Front Levee Street, on which were two clasped hands and the words, "United we stand; divided we fall." The enraged secessionists went to pull it down, but found armed men there to defend it, and it was kept flying until evening, when it was taken down voluntarily. 348 EXPERIENCE IN MISSISSIPPI AND TENNESSEE. We left New Orleans for the North on the morning of Wednesday, the 17th, and spent that night at the little village of Cantou, in Mississippi. We went out in search of a resident of the place, whom we had met at Niagara Falls the previous summer. « April, 1861. He was absent. A war-meeting was gathering in the Court House, on the village green, when we passed, and a bugle was there pouring forth upon the evening air the tune of the Marseillaise Hymn of the French Revolution.' We had observed that every National air which hitherto had stirred the blood of all Americans was discarded throughout the "Confederacy," and that the performance of any of them was presumptive evidence of treason to the traitors. We felt great desire to respond to the bugle with Yankee Doodle or Star-spangled Banner,' but prudence counseled silence. We went on to Grand Junction the next morning, where we were detained thirty-six hours, in consequence of our luggage having been carried to Jackson, in Tennessee. All along the road, we had seen recruiting-officers gathering up men here and there from the sparse population, to swell the ranks of the insurgents assembling at Pensacola under General Bragg, who had abandoned the old flag. The negroes were quietly at work in the fields, planting cotton, little dreaming of their redemption from Slavery being so nigh. The landlord of the "Percey House" at Grand Junction was kind and obliging, and made our involuntary sojourn there as agreeable as possible. We were impatient to go forward, for exasperation against Northern men was waxing hot. We amused ourselves nearly half a day, "assisting," as the French say, at the raising of a secession flag upon a high pole. It was our first and last experience of that kind. After almost five hours of alternate labor, rest, and consultation, during which time the pole was dug up, prostrated, and re-erected, because of defective halliards, the flag was "flung to the breeze," and was saluted by the discharge of a pocket-pistol in the hands of a small boy. This was followed by another significant amusement at which we "assisted." At Grand Junction, four railway trains, traveling respectively on the New Orleans and Jackson and the Charleston and Memphis roads, which here intersect, met twice a day, and the aggregation of passengers usually formed a considerable crowd. On one of these occasions we heard two or three huzzas, and went out to ascertain the cause. A man of 1 This stirring hymn was parodied, and sung at social gatherings, at places of amusement, and in the camps throughout the "Confederacy." The following is the closing stanza of the parody: "With needy, starving mobs surrounded, The zealous, blind fanatics dare Our happy slaves their tender care. The South, though deepest wrongs bewailing, But INDEPENDENCE now we claim, On Victory or Death!" 2 A Charleston correspondent of the Richmond Examiner said, just before the attack on Fort Sumter, "Let us never surrender to the North the noble song, the 'Star-spangled Banner.' It is Southern in its origin; in its association with chivalrous deeds, it is ours." See Frank Moore's Rebellion Record, i. 20. TREASON OF GENERAL PILLOW. 349 middling stature, with dark hair, and whiskers slightly sprinkled with white, apparently fifty years of age, was standing on a bale of cotton, haranguing the listeners:-"Every thing dear to you, fellow-citizens," he exclaimed, "is in peril, and it is your duty to arm immediately in aid of the holy Southern . cause. The Northern Goths and Vandals-offscourings of the Yankee cities -two hundred thousand strong, are gathering north of the Ohio to invade your State, to liberate your slaves or incite them to insurrection, to ravish your daughters, to sack your cities and villages, to lay waste your plantations, to plunder and burn your dwellings, and to make you slaves to the vilest people on the face of the earth." He had spoken in this strain about three minutes, when the conductor's summons, "All aboard!" dispersed the audience, and the speaker entered a car going westward to Memphis. The orator was General Gideon J. Pillow, who played an inglorious part in the war that ensued. He had just come from the presence of Jefferson Davis at Montgomery. Although his State (Tennessee) had lately, by an overwhelming vote, pronounced for Union, this weak but mischievous man, the owner of hundreds of acres of cotton lands in the Gulf and Trans-Mississippi States, and scores of slaves, was working with all his might, with the traitorous Governor of the Commonwealth (Harris), to excite the people to revolt, by such false utterances as we have just noticed.' He was ambitious of military fame, and had already, as we have observed, offered to Jefferson Davis the services of ten thousand Tennessee soldiers, without the least shadow of GIDEON J. PILLOW. 1 On the day after his harangue at Grand Junction, Pillow was in Memphis, where he assumed the character of a military chief, and issued a sort of proclamation, dated April 20, in which he said: "All organized military companies of foot, cavalry, and artillery will be needed for the defense of the Southern States against invasion by the tyrant who has established a military despotism in the city of Washington. These forces will be received in companies, battalions, or regiments, as they may themselves organize, and will be received into the service of the Confederate States (for Tennessee has no other place of shelter in this hour of peril), and the officers commissioned with the rank of command with which they are tendered for the field. "They will not be required for the defense of the Southern coast. Kentucky and Virginia will be the fields of conflict for the future. The city of Memphis is safe against the possibility of approach from the Gulf, and will be equally so by the construction of a battery of 24 and 32 pounders at Randolph, and the point indicatel to the Committee of Safety, above the city. Such batteries, with the plunging fire, could sink any sized fleets of steamboats laden with Northern, troops. If such batteries are promptly constructed, Memphis will never even be threatened. "The object of seizing Cairo by the Lincoln Government (if it should be done, as I take it for granted it will) will be to cut off supplies of subsistence from the Northwest, to prevent the approach through the Ohio of Southern troops, and to cut off Missouri from Southern support; and when she is thus isolated, to invade and crush her. The safety of Missouri requires that she should seize and hold that position at whatever cost. Without it, she will soon cease to breathe the air of freedom. "All the forces tendered from Tennessee, to the amount of fifty thousand men, will be received as they are fitted by their state of drill for the field. Sooner, they would not be efficient, and they will not be called into the service without proper provision for subsistence and the best arms within the resources of the government. The entire South must now unite and make common cause for its safety-no matter about the political relations of the States at present-else all will be crushed by the legion of Northern Goths and Vandals with which they are threatened. "The revolution which is on us, and invasion which is at our doors, will unite the Southern States with or without formal ordinances of separation. I speak not without authority. "I desire to receive official reports from all organized corps of the State-giving me the strength of the rank and file of each separate organization. These reports will reach me at Nashville" authority.' Inquiring of a leading Nashville secessionist, on the evening after hearing Pillow's harangue, what authority the General had for his magnificent offer, he smiled and said, in a manner indicative of the disesteem in which the conspirator was held in his own State, "The authority of Gid. Pillow." In the course of the war that ensued, which this disloyal Tennessean strove so hard to kindle, the hand of retributive justice fell upon him, as upon all of his co-workers in iniquity, with crushing force. Our detention at Grand Junction was fortunate for us. We intended to travel eastward through East Tennessee and Virginia to Richmond, and homeward by way of Washington and Baltimore. The car in which we left our place of detention was full of passengers, many of them from the North, and all of them excited by the news in the Memphis papers of that morning. • April 19, The telegraphic dispatches from the East were alarming and distressing, and the tone of the papers containing them was exultant and defiant. It was asserted that on the day before," eight hundred Massachusetts troops had been captured, and more than one hundred killed, while trying to pass through Baltimore. The annunciation was accompanied by a rude wood-cut, made for the occasion, representing the National flag tattered and humbled beneath the secession banner, that was waving over a cannon discharging. It was also announced that Harper's Ferry had been seized and was occupied by the insurgents; that the New York Seventh Regiment, in a fight with Marylanders, had been defeated with great loss; that Norfolk and Washington would doubtless be in the hands of the insurgents in a day or two; that General Scott had certainly resigned his commission and offered his services to Virginia; and that President Lincoln was about to follow his WOOD-CUT FROM A MEMPHIS NEWSPAPER. 1 See page 840. 2 At about the same time, according to an informant of the Philadelphia North American (May 9, 1861), the National flag was more flagrantly dishonored in Memphis. A pit was dug by the side of the statue of General Jackson, in the public square at Memphis. Then a procession, composed of about five hundred citizens, approached the spot slowly, headed by a band of music playing the "Dead March." Eight men, bearing a coffin, placed it in the pit or grave, when the words, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," were pronounced, and the grave filled up. The coffin contained nothing but the American flag! It was an act significant of an eternal separation from the Union. This story was so persistently iterated and reiterated, that it was believed. Scott was eulogized by the press in the interest of the conspirators. "And now," said the New Orleans Picayune, "how many of those gallant men who, in various positions, have for years gloried in Winfield Scott, will linger in the ranks of the army which, in losing him, has lost its ablest and most signal ornament?" The slander was soon set at rest by the old hero himself. Senator Crittenden, at his home in Kentucky, anxiously inquired of him whether there was any truth in the story, and instantly received the following dispatch: "WASHINGTON, April 20, 1861. "Hon. J. J. CRITTENDEN:-I have not resigned. I have not thought of resigning. Always a Union man. "WINFIELD SCOTT." Commenting on this answer, a Virginia newspaper, differing from its confrère. the Picayune, in its esti example.' CONSPIRATORS IN COUNCIL. 351 * April 23, 1861. At Decatur we were met by still more alarming rumors, underlying which there was evidently some truth, and we thought it prudent to turn our faces northward. Had we not been detained at Grand Junction, we should then have been in Virginia, possibly in Washington or Baltimore, subjected to the annoyances of that distressing week when the National Capital was cut off from all communication with the States north and east of it. We spent Sunday in Columbia, Tennessee; Monday, at Nashville; and at four o'clock on Tuesday morning," departed for Louisville. At Columbia we received the first glad tidings since we left New Orleans. There we met a bulletin from the Nashville Union and American, containing news of the great uprising in the Free-labor States-the rush of men to arms, and the munificent offers of money from city corporations, banking institutions, and private citizens, all over the country. Our faith in the patriotism of the people was amazingly strengthened; and when, on the following day, at Franklin and one or two other places, Pillow, who was our fellow-passenger, repeated his disreputable harangue at Grand Junction, and talked of the poverty, the perfidy, the acquisitiveness, and the cowardice of the "Northern hordes of Goths and Vandals," he seemed like a mere harlequin, with cap and bells, trying to amuse the people with cunning antics. And so the people seemed to think, for at Franklin, where there was quite a large gathering, there was not a single response to his foolish speech. Nobody seemed to be deceived by it. Pillow was again our fellow-passenger on Tuesday morning, when we left Nashville. We had been introduced to him the day before, and he was our traveling-companion, courteous and polite, all the way to Louisville. When we crossed the magnificent railway bridge that then spanned the Green River at Mumfordsville, in Kentucky, he leaned out of the car window and viewed it with great earnestness. I spoke of the beauty and strength of the structure, when he replied: "I am looking at it with a military eye, to see how we may destroy it, to prevent Northern troops from invading Tennessee." He seemed to be persuaded that a vast host were mustering on the Ohio border. He was evidently on his way to Louisville to confer, doubtless by appointment, with leading secessionists of Kentucky, on the subject of armed rebellion. The register of the "Galt House" in that city showed that Pillow, Governor Magoffin, Simon B. Buckner, and other secessionists were at that house on that evening.' * April 23. We did not stop at Louisville, but immediately crossed the Ohio River to Jeffersonville, and took passage in a car for Cincinnati. The change was wonderful. For nearly three weeks we had not seen a National flag, nor heard a National air, nor scarcely felt a thrill produced by a loyal sentiment audibly uttered; now the Stars and Stripes were seen everywhere, National melodies were heard on every hand, and the air was resonant with the shouts mate of Scott's character, said, after calling him "a driveling old fop," "With the red-hot pencil of infamy, he has written on his wrinkled brow the terrible, damning words, Traitor to his native State!"-Abingdon Democrat. 1 These dispatches produced the greatest exultation throughout the South and Southwest. Salvos of cannon and the ringing of bells attested the general joy. The editor of the Natchez Free Trader said, after describing the rejoicings there, "The pen fails to make the record a just one. We are hoarse with shouting and exalted with jubilancy." Letter of General Leslie Coombs to the author. |