228

VIEW AT FORT DONELSON.

compliments to the General, and then, at almost sunset, we bade her farewel. and galloped back toward Dover, diverging to the left to visit Fort Donelson, and sketch the scene of the battle on the river between the armed vessels and the water-batteries. The sun was just setting behind some thin clouds when we arrived there, and it was soon too dark to allow the use of the pencil. So we rode to Dover, supped with Mr. Stewart, and lodged at Cooley's.

Wishing to take passage on the first steamer that should pass up the Cumberland the next morning, the writer arose at dawn, and found Mr. Stewart, as previously arranged, ready, with two saddle-horses, to visit the fort. We breakfasted before sunrise, and then rode over the lines of the famous stronghold on which the Confederates had spent so much labor, and placed so much dependence. These, too, were half hidden by shrubbery and vines, and in the course of a very few years it will be difficult to trace the

outlines of these fortifications. Between these and Dover, we visited a strong work on a commanding eminence, built by the National troops under the direction of Captain Flood and others, but which was never made use of. From the hill overlooking the water batteries I made the accompanying sketch, and had just finished it when a steamer came in sight below, at the point where Foote's armored vessels, ranged in a line, assailed the Confederate works. Remounting our horses, we hurried back to Dover, reaching

This is a view looking down the river, in which the remains of the upper water battery are seen in the foreground. In the distance, on the left, near which is seen a steamboat, is the promontory behind which the Carondelet lay while bombarding the Confederate works on the 13th. The fort lay on the top of the hill on the extreme left. Across the river is seen the shore to which Pillow escaped when he stole out of the fort.

RETURN TO NASHVILLE.

229

there just as the steamer was moored at the gravelly bank. It was the Emma Floyd, one of the most agreeable boats on the Cumberland, and with its intelligent pilots, John and Oliver Kirkpatrick, and their wives and chil dren, the writer spent most of the day in the pilot-house, listening to the stories of the adventures of these men while they were acting as pilots in the fleets of Farragut and Porter, during those marvelous expeditions on the Mississippi, its tributaries, and its mysterious bayous, carried on in connection with the armies of Grant and Banks. After a delightful voyage of twenty-four hours, we arrived at Nashville, where the writer was joined by his former traveling companions, Messrs. Dreer and Greble, of Philadelphia, with whom he afterward journeyed for six weeks upon the pathways and battle-fields of the great armies in Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.

The aspect of Nashville, and especially its surroundings, had materially changed since the author was there in 1861. The storm of war had swept over the country in its vicinity with fearful effect. The city itself had not suffered bombardment, yet at times it had been in imminent danger of such calamity; first on the approach of the forces of Grant and Buell, and afterward when it was held by the National troops and was threatened by the Confederates. The hills had been stripped of their forests, pleasure-grounds had been robbed of their shade-trees, and places of pleasant resort had been scarred by trenches or disfigured by breast works. Buildings had been shattered by shot and shell or laid in ruins by fire; and at every approach to the city were populous cemeteries of soldiers who had fallen in defense of their country.

In the Capitol were stores of correspondence and other papers captured from Pillow and his fellow-traitors, and these were placed at the disposal of the author, who also had the good fortune to meet in Nashville General Ewell, one of the most estimable of the Confederates who took up arms against the Government, as a man and as a military leader. He kindly allowed him to make abstracts of his later reports, in manuscript, concerning operations in the Shenandoah Valley, in which he and "Stonewall Jackwere associated, and also furnished him with information relative to the evacuation of Richmond, and the destruction of a great portion of it by fire immediately succeeding that event, when Ewell was in command of the post. That subject will be considered hereafter.

son'

230

ADVANCE ON BOWLING GREEN.

CHAPTER IX.

EVENTS AT NASHVILLE, COLUMBUS, NEW MADRID, ISLAND NUMBER TEN, AND PEA RIDGE.

a Feb. 11,

HEN Fort Donelson fell, Kentucky and Missouri, and al of northern and middle Tennessee were lost to the Confederates, and the more Southern States, whose inhabitants expected to have the battles for their defense fought in the border Slave-labor States, were exposed to the inroads of the National armies.

a

The terror inspired all along the Confederate line POPULI REGNANT by the fall of Fort Henry, and the forward movement of General Mitchel, of Buell's army, from his camp at Bacon's Creek, across the Green River at Mumfordsville, toward Bowling Green, simultaneously with Grant's investment of Fort Donelson, caused that line, which seemed so strong almost to invincibility a few weeks before, to crumble into fragments and suddenly disappear as a mist. General Johnston clearly perceived that both Bowling Green and Columbus were now untenable, and that the salvation of his troops at each required the immediate evacuation of these posts. He issued orders accordingly, and when Mitchel, having marched forty-two miles in thirty-two hours, reached the northern bank of the Barren River, on whose southern border Bowling Green' stood, the main

1862.

flames of the burning railway station-house, and Confederate stores in the

1 Bowling Green is about 74 miles from Nashville, and contained a little less than 3,000 inhabitants when the war broke out. Around it are numerous little hills or "knobs," on which the insurgents planted batteries and made the post very strong. Our litle picture shows the appearance of Bowling Green, in the vicinity of the railway station, on the day after the evacuation.

PANIC IN NASHVILLE.

231

center of the town. These had been fired by Texas Rangers, left behind for the purpose, and who were then just moving off on a railway train. Mitchel's troops were exhausted by their forced march in the keen frosty air, and the labor of removing trees from the roads which the Confederates had cut down; and the water in the stream being too high to ford, his army did not cross until the next day, when they found Bowling Green to be almost barren of spoils. Half a million dollars' worth of property had been destroyed, and only a brass 6-pounder, and commissary stores valued at five thousand dollars, remained. The Confederates had also removed, during the preceding four days, a large quantity of provisions and stores to Nashville.

Imminent danger now impended over Nashville. Johnston, as we have seen, had declared that he fought for that city at Fort Donelson. When the latter fell, Nashville was doomed, and its disloyal inhabitants were pale with

terror.

3

On the day of the surrender, the intelligence of the sad event reached the city just as the people were comfortably seated in the churches, for it was the Christian Sabbath. Pillow's foolish boast' and dispatch founded upon it' had allayed all fears; now these were awakened with ten-fold intensity. The churches were instantly emptied, and each citizen seemed to have no other thought but for personal safety. That the town would be speedily occupied by the Government troops, no one doubted. Grant's vigor had been tested. It had been observed that he did not stop when a victory was gained, but pushed forward to reap in full all of its advantages. So they gave up all as lost. The public stores were thrown wide open, and everybody was allowed to carry off provisions and clothing without hindrance. The panic among the Secessionists was fearful. Governor Harris, the worst criminal of them all, was crazy with alarm. He rode through the streets with his horse at full speed, crying out that the papers in the capital must be removed. He well knew what evidence of his treason was among them. He and his guilty legislature gathered as many of the archives as possible, and fled by railway to Memphis," while the officers of banks, bear

1 See page 216. This boast had so assured the citizens that all was safe, that they felt no apprehensions of evil. Indeed, they had indulged in rejoicings over the victory of the Confederates at Fort Donelson. For this reason, the astounding news that now reached them was more appalling.

2 The dispatch was headed in large letters-ENEMY RETREATING!-GLORIOUS RESULT!!--OUR BOYS FOLLOWING AND PEPPERING THEIR REAR!!-A COMPLETE VICTORY!!

3 "An earthquake," says Pollard (i. 247), "could not have shocked the city more. The congregations at the churches were broken up in confusion and dismay; women and children rushed into the streets, wailing with terror; trunks were thrown from three-story windows in the haste of the fugitives, and thousands hastened to leave their beautiful city in the midst of the most distressing scenes of terror, confusion, and plundering by the mob."

The panic of the people was natural. They had been deceived and misled, by false teachers in their midst, into the belief that the people of the North were half savages. Among these teachers, who should be held responsible for much of the sufferings inflicted by the war, was W. E. Ward, a clergyman who, in his paper, called The Banner of Peace, published at Nashville, had just said: "We have felt too secure, we have been too blind to the consequence of Federal success. If they succeed, we shall see plunder, insult to old and young, male and female, murder of innocents, release of slaves, and causing them to drive and insult their masters and mistresses in the most menial services, the land laid waste, houses burned, banks and private coffers robbed, cotton and every valuable taken away before our eyes, and a brutal, drunken soldiery turned loose upon Who wants to see this? If you do not believe, you will see it; look at Missouri."

us.

4 Nashville correspondent of the Richmond Dispatch, Feb. 17, 1862.

5 At Memphis, on the 19th, Governor Harris issued a proclamation, in which he deplored the loss of Fort Donelson, and the danger that threatened the capital, and told the people that henceforth Tennessee was to become the battle-field in which her inhabitants would show to the world that they were worthy to be-weat they had solemnly declared themselves to be-"freemen." He encouraged, or discouraged them by the announcement that he would take the field at their head; and then in turgid phrases he tried to arouse them

232

DESTRUCTION OF THE TENNESSEE IRON WORKS.

ing away specie from the vaults, and citizens encumbered with their most valuable effects that were portable, crowded the stations of the railways leading to Decatur and to Chattanooga. Every vehicle was brought into requisition, and hack-hire was raised to twenty-five dollars an hour. This fearful panic was increased when a portion of the troops, flying from Bowling Green, came rushing into the city across the railway and the Suspension bridges, and a rumor spread over the town that the victors at Fort Donelson were making their way rapidly up the Cumberland.

a Feb. 16, 1862.

The rumor was true. On the evening of the day after the surrender of Fort Donelson, Commodore Foote sent the St. Louis up the Cumberland to the Tennessee Iron Works, six or seven miles above Dover. These belonged, in part, to John Bell, the candidate of the "Constitutional Union Party" for President, in 1860,' who, as we have observed, had early espoused the cause of the conspirators. There appeared to be sufficient evidence of these works having been employed in the interest of the rebellion to warrant their destruction, and they were laid in ashes. Nothing remained of them, when the writer passed by the spot in the spring of 1866, but three tall chimneys, ruined machinery, and heaps of brick.

On the 19th, the commodore, with the gun-boats Cairo, Lieutenant-commanding Bryant, and Conestoga, Lieutenant-commanding Phelps, ascended

the river to Clarkesville (a city on its right bank, of about two thousand inhabitants before the war, and the capital of Montgomery County), with the intention of attacking an unfinished fort there, which the Confederates

to resist the Union armies. He had, he said, in a message to the Legislature on the 20th, organized and put into the field since May, 1861, "for the Confederate service, fifty-nine regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, eleven cavalry battalions, and over twenty independent companies, mostly of artillery." Fifteen thousand of these troops, he said, had been armed by the "Confederate Government," and to arm the remainder he called for "the sporting guns" of the citizens.

1 See page 30, volume I.

2 See page 874, volume I.

The National troops completed the work and named it Fort Bruce, in honor of the loyal Colonel Bruce, of Nashville. The engraving shows its situation at the bend of the Cumberland, about half a mile below Clarksville. It commanded the river up and down. The mouth of the Red River is seen at the center of the picture, near a storehouse. On the Clarksville side of that stream was a small redoubt, called the Mud Fort, it being overflowed and covered with sediment at high water. This sketch was made by the writer from the deck of the Emma Floyd, while lying at Clarksville, looking down the river.