340

A FORWARD MOVEMENT.

"forward movement" of some kind was resolved on. We were not left to conjecture what it might be.

We were told frankly, by one of the officers, of the new line of operations marked out by General Grant. Vicksburg was to be assailed from the east; and the ironclads and gunboats, with the transports, were to run the batteries, and convey the army across the river at a point farther down. The Thirteenth Corps had already left Milliken's Bend, and marched down the west bank of the Mississippi. They were to be ready to cross in the transports when they should have run the gauntlet of the terrible batteries, and got safely below the defiant stronghold. So we now took passage in the Maria Denning, and prepared for our slow trip up the river.

While our boat was taking its heterogeneous freight on board, the last gunboat of the expedition returned, which had been seeking a way to the rear of the defences of Vicksburg via Yazoo Pass, on the east side of the Mississippi. Busy as everybody was, on land and on river, and blasé as the soldiers had become with continued excitement and adventure, the return of this gunboat created a decided sensation. It had been navigating narrow, tortuous streams, which, at that stage of high water, had a headlong current, bearing them through gigantic forests, which overarched and interlaced, sweeping away smokestacks, and scraping the deck clean of pilot-house and every other standing fixture.

Abrupt turns at almost every boat's length of the way down the Coldwater and Tallahatchie Rivers had broken her bow and damaged her sides, while snags and fallen trees, and now and then getting aground, had injured the rudder and wheels. They had been

THE MARIA DENNING.

341

halted at Greenwood, on the Tallahatchie, where the rebels had erected defences, and, with the aid of rifled Whitworth guns, had compelled the expedition to return to the Mississippi by the same way it had come. Some of the men had been killed; several were badly wounded, and were brought on board our boat to be taken to the Memphis hospitals. All were exhausted by the protracted and excessive work, performed on half and quarter rations. And yet all wanted to go forward with the new movement of the forces to the east of Vicksburg. The wounded brought on board the Maria Denning loudly lamented their hard fate in being sent to the hospitals "just when something was going to be done."

The Maria Denning was an uncouth and lumbering three-decker, if so definite and dignified a name may be applied to a nondescript river-boat. It was three stories high, each of the upper two stories being more contracted in dimensions than the one immediately beneath it. The lowest deck, or story, was open, not enclosed, and was devoted to the transportation of condemned government mules and horses, sent to St. Louis for sale. The second story was occupied by contrabands who had come from the plantations within the lines of our army, and who, like the mules and horses, were bound for St. Louis. Here, also, were sick and wounded soldiers, going home on furlough or discharge. The third story was for the accommodation of the officers of the boat and pas

sengers.

The dumb animals were driven from their corral, some three or four hundred of them, with a vast deal of whooping, shouting, and wild driving. They ran in every direction but the one in which they ought,

342

ILL-USED MULES AND NEGROES.

and at every turn were met by fresh outbursts of shouts and yells and frantic gesticulations. For soldiers seemed to spring out of the ground, who joined in the unfeeling sport, until the poor, jaded, worn-out beasts were mad with fright. It was half a day before any of them were got on board. And several of them, in their terror, ran into an immense slough, sank slowly in the mire with but feeble struggle, and died before our eyes.

"When this war is over," said Mrs. Governor Harvey, of Wisconsin, who passed three years of the war in the hospitals, and at the front, in devoted labor for the soldiers, "I never want to see again a negro or a mule. Both of them are so abused in the army, and both are so dumbly patient, and uncomplaining, and receive so little sympathy, that I suffer a perpetual heartache on their account." To express pity for, or interest in, a suffering mule, or to interpose entreaties on its behalf, was to run the gauntlet of the most stinging ridicule. Everybody beat and neglected the unhandsome brutes; and when they fell into the hands of the ill-treated negroes, they fared worse than ever. From their own persecution and abuse, they seemed to have learned only lessons of brutality and tyranny, when they became muledrivers.

As the half-imbruted contrabands came on board, under military surveillance, clad in the tattered gray and black "nigger cloth," and shod with the clouted brogans of the plantation, my heart went out to them. Subdued, impassive, solemn, hope and courage now and then lighting up their sable faces, they were a most interesting study. Mothers carried their piquant-faced babies on one arm, and led little

THE IMPASSIVE, SOLEMN CONTRABANDS.

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woolly-headed toddlers by the other. Old men and women, gray, nearly blind, some of them bent almost double, bore on their heads and backs the small "plunder" they had "toted" from their homes, on the plantation, or the "bread and meat" furnished them by some friendly authorities. They were all going forth, like the Israelites, "from the land of bondage to a land they knew not."

Like the Hebrews, they trusted implicitly in God to guide them, and their common speech, as we spoke with them, had an Old Testament flavor. Never before had I witnessed so impressive a spectacle. There were between three and four hundred of them. Half of the middle deck of the huge boat was assigned them, into which they filed, and began to arrange themselves in families and neighborhood groups.

The other half of this deck was used by sick and wounded soldiers, who were brought on board in great numbers. They were either furloughed or discharged. Some of them were brought on stretchers, and a comrade was detailed to accompany them, and assist them in their long journey. Others swung

themselves painfully on crutches, or were led between their comrades, frequently falling from weakness; or they crept feebly and haltingly on board, without assistance.

We stationed ourselves - the women of the company in this compartment of the boat, which we saw was going to be packed with misery and suffering. As the soldiers were brought in, we fell into maternal relations with them, as women instinctively do when brought into juxtaposition with weakness, and were soon addressing them individually as "my

346

BEGIN WORK AMONG THE SICK.

son," "my boy," or "my child." They were all greatly comforted to learn that we were going up the river with them. Those who had had fears of dying before they reached their homes, grew courageous and hopeful, as we assured them that we were going to take care of them. Before the boat started we were at work, making tea for one, filling a canteen with fresh water for a second, bathing the soiled face and hands of a third, sewing up rents in the garments of a fourth, preparing hot applications for the cure of earache for a fifth, and beseeching our one physician on board to prepare immediately a cough mixture for the whole company, who were coughing in deafening chorus, but in the most inconceivable dissonance. The contrabands were also coughing with might and main, and there were times when this violent and irritating lung exercise was so general, that conversation was as impossible as in the midst of a brisk artillery fire.

Among the soldiers was one delicate boy of fifteen

tall, slender, and frail. A chaplain accompanied him, and gave me his history. He was the only child of a wealthy Virginian, living near Petersburg, who remained loyal to the old flag, and voted against secession. When Virginia went out of the Union, he was so fierce in his denunciation of its treason, so active in his hostility to the new-fangled Confederacy, that he was arrested and sent to Libby Prison. "Johnny," the son, sympathized with his father, and after his arrest was more passionate and terrible in his outspoken scorn and hate of the treachery of his native state, than his father had dared to be.

Only the fact of his being a mere boy saved him from his father's fate, or perhaps from assassination.