38 BENJAMIN'S CRUEL ORDER.-MURDERS AT GREENVILLE.

a hearing or bail, but was cast into the county prison at Knoxville, from which appeals to the honor and good faith of Crittenden and his superiors

a Nov. 20, 1861.

were made in vain. There, in a room so crowded that not all could lie down, and not a chair, bench, stool, table, or other article of furniture, excepting a wooden bucket and tin cup, was to be seen, he and his associates, some of them among the best men in the land, were kept a long time, subjected to the vile ribaldry of soldiers and guards, and threats of being hung. Nor were these threats idle; for, from time to time, prisoners were taken out and hung-men as innocent of crime as infants. These were citizens, charged

with burning the railway-bridges. The alleged crimes of these men and other Loyalists were set forth by Colonel Wood in a letter to Benjamin," in which he declared that the sentiment of the inhabitants in East Tennessee was "hostile to the Confederate government," and that the people were slaves to Andrew Johnson and Horace Maynard. "To release the prisoners," he said, "is ruinous. To convict them before a court is next to an impossibility. The bridge-burners and spies ought to be tried at once." This letter excited the brutal instincts of Benjamin, and he wrote back

instantly from Richmond, saying, "All such as can be identified Nov. 25. in having been engaged in bridge-burning, are to be tried summarily by drum-head court-martial, and, if found guilty, executed on the spot by hanging. It would be well to leave their bodies hanging in the vicinity of the burned bridges." He ordered the seizure of all arms that were “ concentrated by these traitors," and said, "In no case is one of the men, known to have been up in arms against the government, to be released on any pledge or oath of allegiance. The time for such measures is past. They are all to be held as prisoners of war, and held in jail to the end of the war." Acting upon these suggestions, some of those who were charged with bridge-burning, but not found guilty, were hung under circumstances of great cruelty. In compliance with Benjamin's savage instructions, they were left hanging in public places, to receive the indignities of a brutal mob. Such was the case with the bodies of two victims (Hensie and Fry), who were hanged together upon the limb of an oak tree, near the railway-station, at Greenville, Tennessee, by the hands of Colonel Leadbetter, already mentioned.' He ordered their bodies to hang there four days and nights; and when the trains upon the road passed by, they were detained long enough to allow the passengers to go up and offer insults to the lifeless remains.

1 This picture is from a sketch made by the author in May, 1866, and shows the front of the prison. The window that lighted the room on the lower floor, in which Brownlow was confined, is seen on the right of the door. In the upper story are two immense iron cages, into which the worst criminals are put, and in these some of the most obnoxious Loyalists were confined. Out of this loathsome place several were taken to the gallows.

2 See page 174, volume I. This man, who was guilty of enormous crimes, it is said, during the war, and fled to Upper Canada at its close, died at Clifton, in that province, of apoplexy, on the 25th of September, 1866.

BOLDNESS OF BROWNLOW.-WRITS OF GARNISHMENT.

39

This was done, especially by Confederate soldiers on their way to Virginia, in view of many of the loyal inhabitants of Greenville.

In the midst of these fiery trials, the intrepid Brownlow remained firm, and exercised the greatest boldness of speech. They dared not hang him without legal conviction, and they well knew

that he had done nothing worthy of death.
He was not only bold, but defiant. They
offered him life and liberty if he would take
the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy.
He scorned the proposition, saying: "Rather
than stultify myself, and disgrace my family
by such an oath, I agree to die. I never
could sanction this government, and I trust
no child of mine will ever do it." Whilst
suffering in the Knoxville jail, and almost
daily menaced with death, he wrote to Ben-
jamin a characteristic letter," in
which he said, "You are report-
ed to have said to a gentleman
in Richmond, that I am a bad man, and
dangerous to the Confederacy, and that you
desire me out of it. Just give me my pass-
ports, and I will do for your Confederacy
more than the devil has ever done-I will
quit the country!"

a December 16,
1861.

6 December 22.

This letter, and a visit from General Crittenden (who felt sensitive on this point), brought one from Benjamin' to the authorities at Knoxville, indicating his wish that Brownlow should be sent out of the Confederacy, and regretting the circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment; "only," as he said, because "color is given to the suspicion that he has been entrapped." He was finally released and sent to Nashville (then in possession of National troops) early in March. Dr. Brownlow was a type of the Loyalists of the mountain regions of that State, who suffered terribly during a great portion of the war. A minute record of the faithful and fearless patriotism of the people of East Tennessee during the struggle, and the cruel wrongs and sufferings which they endured a greater portion of that time, would make one of the most glorious and yet revolting chapters in the history of the late fierce conflict. Incidents of that patriotism and suffering will be observed, as we proceed in our narrative.

Let us return a moment to the consideration of the other measure of the Confederate Congress, designed to force loyal men into a support of the rebellion, namely, the Confiscation Act. From the "Department of Justice," at the head of which was Judah P. Benjamin, went out instructions that all

1 This is from a sketch made by the author, in May, 1866. The tree was a vigorous red oak, standing on a slope overlooking the town, a few rods northeastward of the Greenville Station. Some person commenced cutting it down a while after the execution, but was restrained by the consideration offered, that it might serve the purpose of a gallows for the punishment of some of those who were engaged in the murder of the men who were hanged there. Near the root of the gallows limb (from which a rope is seen suspended) we observed a scar made by the passage of a Confederate cannon-ball through the tree. Its place is marked by a black spot, in the picture. * See page 545, volume I., and page 33, volume II.

40

PETTIGRU'S DENUNCIATIONS.

persons, Americans or Europeans, having a domicile in the "Confederate States, and carrying on business or traffic within the States at war with the Confederacy," were alien enemies; that the property, of every kind, of these persons should be seized and held, and that the receivers of the same should apply to the clerk of courts for writs of garnishment,' commanding persons suspected of holding in trust the property of an alien enemy to appear and answer such questions, under oath, touching such custody, as might be propounded. The authorized persons making the seizures were furnished with a formula of questions for the garnishees, which implied the establishment of a court of inquisition of the most despotic kind.

The citizen was asked, first, whether he held in trust any property belonging to an alien enemy; secondly, what was the character of such property, and what disposition had been made of any profit, interest, or rent accruing from the use thereof; thirdly, whether the citizen so questioned had, since the 21st day of May, 1861, been indebted to such alien enemy or enemies, and if so to what amount, and to what extent the debts had been discharged, and also to give the names of the creditors; fourthly, whether he knew of any property or interest belonging to such alien enemies, and if so to tell where it might be found. The citizen was warned that it was his duty, according to the law, to answer all of these questions, under penalty of indictment for a high misdemeanor, punishable by heavy fines and imprisonment.

Under this searching sequestration act a vast amount of property belonging to owners in the loyal States was seized, swelling the entire loss to the inhabitants of those States by the repudiation of, or inability to pay, honest debts by the business men of the South, to about three hundred millions of dollars. It was one of the strong arms of the despotism established by the conspirators, and few men had the boldness to oppose its operations. Yet the constitutionality of the act was questioned in the Confederate courts; and in that of the district of Charleston, over which Judge Magrath' presided,

JAMES LOUIS PETTIGRU.

it was opposed in open court by that stanch loyalist J. L. Pettigru, who, from the beginning of the rebellion until his death, defied the conspirators and their instruments. He was served with a writ of garnishment, and refused to obey it, telling the court plainly that such proceedings were no better than those which made the English Star Chamber and the Spanish Inquisition odious to every lover of liberty. "Was there ever a law like this endured, practiced, or heard of?" he asked. "It certainly is not found among the people from whom we derive the common law. No English monarch or Parliament has ever sanc

1 A writ of garnishment in English law is a warning or notice for a person to appear in court, or give information of any kind required. The person named was called a garnishee.

THE POWER OF COURAGE AND PRINCIPLE.

41

tioned or undertaken such a thing. It is no more a part of the law of war than it is a part of the law of peace." The inquisitors quailed in the presence of the honest old patriot, and his example and his words blunted the keen edge of the law.' Its enforcement gradually declined, and it became almost a dead letter during the later period of the war.

At the close of August, Congress and the chief council of the conspirators at Richmond had each finished its session, and both parties to the contest were preparing to put forth their utmost strength. Let us leave the consideration of these preparations, and whilst General McClellan is preparing the grand Army of the Potomac for a campaign, let us return to the observation of the performances on the theater of war westward of the Alleghany Mountains.

1 Mr. Pettigru's boldness, and fidelity to principle while the terrible insanity of rebellion afflicted the people of his State, was most remarkable. He never deviated a line, in word or act, from the high stand of opposition to the madmen, which he had taken at the beginning of the raving mania, And the respect which his courage and honesty wrung from those whose course he so pointedly condemned was quite as remarkable. The Legislature of South Carolina, during that period of wild tumult, elected him to the most important trust and the largest salary in their gift, namely, to codify the State laws.

William J. Grayson, a life-long friend of Pettigru, and who died during the siege of Charleston, at the age of seventy-five years, left, in manuscript, an interesting biographical study of his friend. Concerning Mr. Pettigru's action at the period we are considering, he wrote:

"To induce the simple people to plunge into the volcanic fires of the revolution and war, they were told that the act of dissolution would produce no opposition of a serious nature; that not a drop of blood would be spilled; that no man's flocks, or herds, or negroes, or houses, or lands would be plundered or destroyed; that unbroken prosperity would follow the Ordinance of Secession; that cotton would control all Europe, and secure open ports and boundless commerce with the whole world for the Southern States. To such views Mr. Pettigru was unalterably opposed. He was convinced that war, anarchy, military despotism would inevitably follow a dissolution of the Union; that secession would impart to the abolition party a power over slavery that nothing else could give them-a power to make war on Southern institutions, to proclaim freedom to the negroes, to invoke and command the sympathy and aid of the whole world in carrying on a crusade on the Southern States."

"Mr. Pettigru saw that bankruptcy would follow war; that public fraud would find advocates in Richmond as well as in Washington. He opposed these schemes of disorder which have desolated the South. Their projectors professed to protect her from possible evils, and involved her in present and terrible disasters. The people were discontented at seeing rats infesting the granaries of Southern industry, and were urged to set fire to the four corners of every Southern barn to get rid of the vermin. They were alarmed at attacks on slavery by such men as John Brown and his banditti, and proposed as a remedy to rush into war with the armed hordes of the whole world. For a bare future contingency, they proposed to encounter an enormous immediate evil."

42

POSITION OF NATIONAL TROOPS IN MISSOURI.

CHAPTER II.

CIVIL AND MILITARY OPERATIONS IN MISSOURI

a 1861.

E left General Lyon in possession of Booneville, Missouri, from which he had driven the Confederates under Price and Jackson, on the 18th of June." These leaders, as we have observed, were satisfied that the northern part of the State was lost to the cause of Secession, for the time, and they endeavored to concentrate their troops with Ben McCulloch's more southern men, in the southwestern part of the Commonwealth. We also left Colonel Franz Sigel in the vicinity of Rolla, pushing with eager Missouri loyalists toward the Confederate camps, on the borders of Kansas and Arkansas.

Colonel Sigel arrived at Springfield on the 23d of June, where he was informed that the Confederates, under Governor Jackson, were making their way from the Osage River in a southwesterly direction. He pushed on to Sarcoxie, a post-village in Jackson County, where he arrived toward the evening of the 28th, and learned that General Price, with about nine hundred troops, was encamped at Pool's Prairie, a few miles north of Neosho, the capital of Newton County, and that other State troops, under Jackson and Rains, were making their way in the same direction. It was important to prevent their junction. Sigel resolved to march first on Price, and capture or disperse his force, and then, turning northward, attack the other troops, and so open a communication with General Lyon, who, he had been informed (but incorrectly), had been fighting with the Confederates on the banks of the Little Osage.

Sigel's march from Sarcoxie had just commenced, when a scout brought him word that Price had fled from Pool's Prairie to Elk Mills, thirty miles south of Neosho. He at once turned his attention to the troops north of him, who he supposed were endeavoring to make their way into Arkansas. He sent forward a detachment of two companies, under Captain Grone, with two field-pieces, toward Cedar Creek and Grand Falls, on the Neosho, to occupy a road in this supposed route of the Confederates, and to gain information, while he pushed on with the remainder of his command to Neosho, receiving greetings of welcome from the inhabitants on the way, who had been pillaged by the insurgents. He had already summoned Colonel Salomon, with his Missouri battalion, to join him at Neosho, and with this addi