CROXTON'S DESTRUCTIVE RAID.

521

La Grange rejoined the main column soon after its arrival at Macon, but Croxton's brigade was still absent, and Wilson felt some uneasiness concerning its safety. All apprehensions were ended by its arrival

April, 1865.

April 5.

We left Croxton not far from Tuscaloosa, in Alabama, on the 2d of April, outnumbered by Jackson, of Forrest's command.' From that point he moved rapidly to Johnson's Ferry, on the Black Warrior, fourteen miles above Tuscaloosa, where he crossed that stream, and sweeping down its western bank, surprised and captured the place he had been sent against from Elyton, together with three guns and about fifty prisoners. Then he destroyed the military school and other public property there, and leaving Tuscaloosa, burned the bridges over the Black Warrior, and pushed on southwesterly, to Eutaw, in Greene County. There he was told that Wirt Adams was after him, with two thousand cavalry. He was not strong enough to fight them, so he turned back nearly to Tuscaloosa, and pushing northeastward, captured Talladega. Near there he encountered and dispersed a small Confederate force. He kept on his course to Carrollton, in Georgia, destroying iron-works and factories in the region over which he raided, and then turned southeastward, and made his way to Macon. With his little force he had marched, skirmished, and destroyed, over a line six hundred and fifty miles in extent, in the space of thirty days, not once hearing of Wilson and the main body during that time. He found no powerful opposition in soldiery or citizens, anywhere, excepting at a place called Pleasant Ridge, when on his way toward Eutaw, where he had a sharp skirmish with some of Adams's men, then on their way to join ForThe attack was made by Adams, first upon the Sixth Kentucky Cavalry. The Second Michigan gave assistance, and finally bore the brunt of the attack, and repulsed the assailants with considerable loss to the Confederates.

rest.

Wilson's expedition through Alabama and into Georgia, was not only useful in keeping Forrest from assisting the defenders of Mobile, but was destructive to the Confederates, and advantageous to the Nationals in its actual performances. During that raid he captured five fortified cities, two hundred and eighty-eight pieces of artillery, twenty-three stand of colors, and six thousand eight hundred and twenty prisoners; and he destroyed a vast amount of property of every kind. He lost seven hundred and twenty-five men, of whom ninety-nine were killed.

2

The writer visited the theater of events described in this chapter in the spring of 1866. He arrived at Savannah from Hilton Head the first week in April, and after visiting places of historic interest there, left that city on an evening train for Augusta and farther west.

April 5.

Travel had not yet been resumed, to a great extent. The roads were in a rough condition, the cars were wretched in accommodations, and the passengers were few. The latter were chiefly Northern business men. We arrived at Augusta early in the morning, and after breakfast took seats in a very comfortable car for Atlanta. It was a warm, pleasant day, and the passengers were many. Among them the writer had the pleasure of

1 See page 516.

2 See page 483.

-522

JOURNEY FROM SAVANNAH TO MONTGOMERY.

discovering two highly-esteemed friends,' traveling for the purpose of seeing the country; and he enjoyed their most agreeable companionship many days, until parting at New Orleans. We had just reached the beginning of the more picturesque hill-country of Georgia, which seemed to be peculiarly charming in the region of Crawfordsville, the home of Stephens, the "VicePresident" of the Confederacy, whose house we saw on an eminence to the right. As we approached Atlanta, we noticed many evidences of the devastating hand of Sherman, when he began his march to the sea, in the ruins of railway stations, twisted iron rails, and charred ties, along the roadside. Toward evening the grand dome of Stone Mountain, a heap of granite fifteen hundred feet in height, loomed up a mile or so north of us. From Decatur onward, the earth-works of both parties were seen in thickening lines, and at twilight we were in the midst of the ruined city of Atlanta, then showing some hopeful signs of resurrection from its ashes.

April, 1866.

We passed a rainy day in Atlanta, the writer leaving the examination of the intrenchments and the battle-fields around it until a second visit, which he intended to make a few weeks later, and on the morning of the 8th," in chilling, cheerless air, we departed on a journey by railway, to Montgomery, on the Alabama River. We passed through the lines of heavy works in that direction, a great portion of the way to East Point, and from there onward, nearly every mile of the road was marked by the ravages of camping armies, or active and destructive raiders. The country between Fairborn and La Grange was a special sufferer by raids. In the vicinity of Newham the gallant Colonel James Brownlow was particularly active with his Tennessee troopers, and swam the Chattahoochee, near Moore's Bridge, when hard pressed. We crossed the Chattahoochee at West Point, where we dined, and had time to visit and sketch Fort Tyler, the scene of Colonel La Grange's achievements a year before. That gallant Michigan officer was kindly spoken of by the inhabitants of West Point, who remembered his courtesy toward all non-combatants.

Between West Point and Montgomery we saw several fortifications, covering the passage of streams by the railway; and ruins of station-houses everywhere attested the work of raiders. At Chiett's Station, near a great bend of the Tallapoosa River, whose water flowed full thirty feet below us, we saw many solitary chimneys, monuments of Wilson's destructive marches. His sweep through that region was almost as desolating as were the marches of Sherman, but in a narrower track. But among all these scathings of the hand of man, the beneficent powers of Nature were at work, covering them from human view. Already rank vines were creeping over heaps of brick and stone, or climbing blackened chimneys; and all around were the white blossoms of the dogwood, the crimson blooms of the buckeye, the modest, blushing honeysuckle, and the delicate pink of the the red-bud and peach blossom.

It was eight o'clock in the evening before we arrived at Montgomery, and found lodgings at the Exchange Hotel, from whose balcony, the reader may remember, Jefferson Davis harangued the populace early in 1861, after

1 Mr. and Mrs. I. B. Hart, of Troy, New York, who were then members of General Wool's family. 2 See page 404. 3 See page 521.

STATE-HOUSE AT MONTGOMERY.

523

a speech at the railway station, in which he said, concerning himself and fellow-conspirators:-"We are determined to maintain our position, and make all who oppose us smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel.”1 In the harangue from that balcony in the evening, with a negro slave standing each side of him, each holding a candle that the people might distinctly see his face, the arch-conspirator addressed them as "Brethren of the Confederate States of America," and assured them that all was well, and they had nothing to fear at home or abroad."

4

On the following morning we visited the State capitol,' on the second. bluff from the river, that fronted a fine broad avenue extending to the water's edge. There we were taken to the Senate Chamber, or "Legislative Hall" in which the Conspirators organized the hideous Confederacy that so long warred against the Government. It remained unchanged in feature and furniture, excepting in the absence of the portraits mentioned on page 249, volume I., which our negro attendant, who had been seven years about the building, said the soldiers of Wilson's command carried away. Yankees," he said, “bust in and smash up ebery ting, when dey come, and tear 'um out and carry away a mighty heap. Dey terrible fellers!" But Adams had been more terrible, for he destroyed ninety thousand bales of cotton belonging to his friends, and nothing was left where they lay, but the broken walls of the warehouses along the brow of the river bluff.

"De

From the cupola of that Capitol, we had a very extensive view of the country around, the winding Alabama River, and the city at our feet; and from the portico, where Jefferson Davis was inaugurated "Provisional President of the Confederate States of America," we could look over nearly the whole of the town. Montgomery must have been a very beautiful city, and desirable place of residence, before the war.

We spent a greater part of the day in visiting places of interest about Montgomery, and toward evening, we embarked in the steamer John Briggs, for Mobile. The passengers were few. Among them were three or four young women, who, at the beginning of the voyage, uttered many bitter words, in a high key, about the "Yankees" (as all inhabitants of the freelabor States were called), intended for our special hearing. Their ill-breeding was rebuked by kindness and courtesy, and we found them to be far from disagreeable fellow-travelers after an acquaintance of a few hours, which changed the estimate each had set upon the other. The voyage was, otherwise, a most delightful one, on that soft April evening, while the sun was shining. The Alabama is a very crooked stream, everywhere fringed with trees. Bluffs were frequent, with corresponding lowlands and swamps, -opposite. It is a classic region to the student of American history, for its banks and its bosom, from Montgomery to Mobile, are clustered with the most stirring associations of the Creek War, in which General Jackson and his Tennesseeans, and Claiborne, Flournoy, and others, appear conspicuous, with Weatherford as the central figure in the group of Creek chieftains. We were moored at Selma, on the right bank of the stream, at about

2 See page 257, volume I.

3 See page 248, volume 1.

1 See page 257, volume I. 4 Montgomery stood upon a bluff on the river, which rises 50 or 60 feet from the water. A short distance back was another bluff, on which was the Capitol and the finer residences of the city.

See page 340, volume I.

See picture of this hall, on page 82, volume II.

524

SELMA, MOBILE, AND NEW ORLEANS.

midnight, at the foot of the bluff on which the town stands, and whehi was then crowned with the ruins of the cotton warehouses and other buildings, fired by Forrest.' We spent a greater part of the next day there. It, too, must have been a beautiful city in its best estate before the war. It was growing rapidly, being the great coal and cotton depot of that region. Its streets were broad, and many of them shaded; and, in all parts of the town, we noticed ever and full-flowing fountains of water, rising from artesian wells, one of which forms the tail-piece of this chapter. It received its title from Senator King of Alabama, the Vice-President elected with President Pierce. The name may be found in the poems of Ossian.

We left Selma toward evening, and at sunset our vessel was moored a

few minutes at Cahawba, to land a passenger whose name has been mentioned, as the entertainer of Wilson and Forrest. Our voyage to Mobile did not end until the morning of the third day, when we had traveled, from Montgomery, nearly four hundred miles. In that fine City of the Gulf we spent sufficient time to make brief visits to places of most historic interest, within and around it. Its suburbs were very beautiful before they were scarred by the implements of war; but the hand of nature was rapidly covering up the foot-prints of the destroyer. Although it had been only a year since the lines of fortifications were occupied by troops, the embankments were covered with verdure, and the fort or redoubt, delineated on page 507, was white with the blossoms of the blackberry shrub, when the writer sketched it.

It was at a little past noon, on a warm April day, when we left Mobile for New Orleans, in the fine new steamer, Frances. We passed the various

FLOATING BATTERY.

batteries indicated on the map on page 507, as we went out of the harbor into the open waters of the bay. A little below Choctaw Point, and between it and Battery Gladden, lay a half-sunken iron-clad floating battery, with a cannon on its top. The voyage down the bay was very delightful. We saw the battered light-house at Fort Morgan, in the far distance, to the left, as we turned into Grant's Pass, and took the inner passage. The waters of the Gulf were smooth; and at dawn the next morning, we were moored at the railway wharf on the western side of Lake Pontchartrain. We were at the St. Charles Hotel, in New Orleans, in time for an early break

STATUES AND SIGNIFICANT INSCRIPTIONS.

525 fast; and in that city, during his stay, the writer experienced the kindest courtesy and valuable assistance in the prosecution of his researches, from Generals Sheridan and Hartsuff. Having accomplished the object of his errand in that great metropolis of the Gulf region, he reluctantly bade adieu to his traveling companions for ten days (Mr. and Mrs. Hart), and embarked on the Mississippi River for Port Hudson and Vicksburg, in the steamer Indiana. That voyage has already been considered.'

1 Two works of art, then in New Orleans, were objects of special interest, when considering the inscriptions upon each, in their relation to the rebellion. One was the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, in Jackson Square, the principal place of public resort on fine days and evenings, where the citizens may enjoy the fresh air and perfumes of flowers. On the pedestal of that statue, in letters of almost imperishable granite, might have been read, while the friends of the Conspirators had possession of the city, and were trying to destroy the Republic, the memorable words of Jackson's toast at a gathering in Washington City, at the instance of Calhoun, to inaugurate a secession movement:-"THE UNION-IT MUST, AND SHALL BE PRESERVED." The other was a statue of Henry Clay, in the middle of Canal Street, on which, during all the period of the preparation of the slaveholders for actual rebellion, and whilst it was rampant in New Orleans, might have been read these words of that great statesman:-"IF I COULD BE INSTRUMENTAL IN ERADICATING THIS DEEP STAIN, SLAVERY, FROM THE CHARACTER OF MY COUNTRY, I WOULD NOT EXCHANGE THE PROUD SATISFACTION I SHOULD ENJOY, FOR THE HONOR OF ALL THE TRIUMPHS EVER DECREED TO THE MOST SUCCESSFUL CONQUEROR." While no living lips dared, for many months, to utter a word of reproof to those who, in New Orleans, were trying to destroy the Union and establish an empire founded upon slavery, these mute but terrible accusers, rebuked the criminals unmolested.