FLIGHT OF CONFEDERATES FROM NASHVILLE.

233 were erecting on the high bluff at the mouth of the Red River, a small stream that enters the Cumberland just below the town. The garrison, startled by the general panic, fled, and, in defiance of the wishes and remonstrances of the citizens of Clarkesville, set fire to the fine railway bridge that spanned the river at that place. Colonel Webster, Grant's chief of staff, and Lieutenant Phelps, immediately went ashore and hoisted the National flag over the fort. Two-thirds of the terrified citizens of Clarkesville had fled when Foote arrived. At the suggestion of the late venerable Cave Johnson, and one or two others, he proclaimed full protection to all peaceable citizens, at the same time warning them not to display any secession flags or other evidence of rebellious feeling.

1

General Smith, with the advance of the National army, marched up to Clarkesville and took command there; while Foote returned to Cairo for more gun-boats, for the purpose of attacking Nashville. In the mean time General Johnston and his forces from Bowling Green had continued their flight southward as far as Murfreesboro, twenty-five miles on the way toward Chattanooga, leaving General Floyd, the fugitive from Fort Donelson, with a few troops to secure the immense amount of stores and provisions in Nashville. Pillow, the other fugitive from Fort Donelson, and Hardee, who had come down from Bowling Green, were directed to assist Floyd in the business. The assignment to the perilous duty of remaining nearest the dreaded Nationals seemed like punishment inflicted on Floyd and Pillow by Johnston for their cowardice. If so, it was successful; yet it was injurious to the Confederate cause, for these men, unwilling to risk their persons again, suffered terribly from fear, and counseled flight, as before. Floyd, on hearing that Foote's gun-boats were coming, gave orders on Monday" for the Confederate stores to be thrown open to the public; two steam-packets,

which were being changed into gunboats, to be burned; and the two bridges' at Nashville to be destroyed. Against the last act the citizens most vehemently protested, and it was postponed until Tuesday night, when they were both burned by Floyd's order; and he and Pillow literally scampered away southward by

NASHVILLE AND ITS BRIDGES

a Feb. 17,

1862.

1 It was supposed by the Confederates that the Nationals would push on toward East Tennessee, and it was for the purpose of confronting such movement that Johnston took position at Murfreesboro.

2 The wire suspension-bridge was a beautiful structure, and cost about $150,000. A large portion of the stock belonged to the slain General Zollicoffer, and was the chief reliance for support, of his orphaned daughters. But Floyd and Pillow wished to put a gulf between themselves and the Nationals, that they might save their own worthless persons; and so the claims of orphans and the prayers of citizens were of no avail.

234

SURRENDER OF NASHVILLE.

the light of the conflagration.' The troops that remained longest in Nashville were Forest's cavalry, led by that brave captain.

During the remainder of the week, Nashville was the theater of the wildest anarchy, and neither public nor private property was safe for an hour. Happily for the well-disposed inhabitants, Colonel Kenner, of the Fourth Ohio cavalry, of Mitchel's division, entered the city on Sunday evening, the 23d, and endeavored to restore order. He was immediately followed by the remainder of his commander's force, who encamped at Edgefield, opposite Nashville, and there awaited the arrival of General Buell. That officer came on the 25th, and on the same morning the Conestoga arrived from Clarkesville, as a convoy to transports bearing a considerable body of troops, under General Nelson. These had not been opposed in their passage up the river, for the only battery on its banks between the two cities was Fort Zollicoffer, on a bluff, four or five miles below Nashville, which was unfinished, and was then abandoned. The citizens of Nashville, believing General Johnston would make a stand there, had commenced this fort on the south or left bank of the Cumberland, and were much incensed by its sudden abandonment.

Pursuant to previous arrangement, the mayor of Nashville (R. B. Cheatham) and a small delegation of citizens crossed over to Buell's quarters at

a Feb. 26,

1862.

Edgefield, and there made a formal surrender of the city." General Buell at once issued an order congratulating the troops "that it had been their privilege to restore the National banner to the Capitol of Tennessee." He expressed a belief that the hearts of a greater portion of the people of that State would be rejoiced by the fact;

1 A greater portion of the cannon at Nashvillo were spiked, and many of them were placed upon the bridges before they were fired, and when these perished in the flames, the cannon went to the bottom of the Cumberland.

River.

The Capitol of the State of Tennessee is one of the finest of its kind in the United States. It is in the center of four acres of ground in the midst of the city, and crowns a hill that rises 197 feet above the Cumberland It is composed of fossilated limestone, taken from quarries near the city, and its style is of the most beautiful of the Grecian orders, with four porticoes, whose columns are 33 feet in height. It is a parallelogram in form, 140 by 270 feet in size, and is surrounded by a terrace 17 feet in width and six in height. The pinnacle

EXPEDITION AGAINST COLUMBUS.

stored. Railroad connection with Louisville was inhabitants were invited to resume their avocations.

235

soon opened, and the

The capture of Nashville, the flight of the Governor and Legislature of Tennessee from the State capital, and the virtual dissolution of civil government in that Commonwealth, imposed upon the National authorities the duty of providing a substitute for the people. It was resolved to appoint a military governor to administer the public affairs of the State under martial law; and Andrew Johnson, formerly a chief magistrate of that Commonwealth, and then one of its representatives in the United States Senate, was appointed to that responsible position, with the military rank of Brigadier-General.' He reached Nashville on the 12th of March, and, in a speech to the citizens assembled that evening, he promised friendship and protection to the loyal, and gave them to understand that "intelligent and conscious treason in high places" would be punished.

a March 4, 1862.

Another bloodless victory soon followed the capture of Nashville. Six days after the formal surrender of that city, General Halleck telegraphed to General McClellan from St. Louis, "Columbus, the Gibraltar of 6 March 4. the West, is ours, and Kentucky is free, thanks to the brilliant

strategy of the campaign by which the enemy's center was pierced at Forts Henry and Donelson, his wings isolated from each other and turned, compelling thus the evacuation of his stronghold of Bowling Green first, and now Columbus."

The history of the latter event may be told in few words. When it was evident to the conspirators at Richmond that the "Gibraltar" was untenable, the so-called Secretary of War instructed Polk, through Beauregard, "to evacuate Columbus, and select a defensive position below." Polk chose that section of the Mississippi and its shores which embraces Island Number Ten, the main land in Madrid Bend on the Kentucky shore, and New Madrid. Defensive works had been thrown up at the two latter places during the preceding autumn, and now measures were immediately taken for strongly fortifying Island Number Ten.

So early as the 25th of February, Polk ordered the removal of the sick from Columbus, as a preparatory step toward the evacuation of that post, and assigned the command of the river defenses at the position chosen to General I. P. McCown, whose division was ordered thither on the 27th. The remainder of the troops, excepting the cavalry, left Columbus on the 1st of March. General Stuart's brigade went by steamer to New Madrid, and the remainder marched by land to Union City, in Tennessee, under General Cheatham. The removal of special articles of value to Jackson, Tennessee,

of its cupola is 200 feet from the ground. In compliance with the request of Mr. Strickland, its architect, his remains are inclosed in its walls, with a proper inscription on the outside; and so that imposing pile has become his monument. The cost of the building was over $1,000,000. The population of Nashville, at the time we are considering, was about 24,000 souls.

In our little sketch is seen a cabin in front of the Capitol. It was used by the architects during the erection of the great; building and in it Governor Harris was living, it is said, in a very frugal manner, when he was summoned to fly from Nashville.

1 See page 226, volume I.

2 This is at the intersection of the Nashville and Northwestern and the Mobile and Ohio Railways; the former leading directly to Hickman, on the Mississippi River.

236

CAPTURE OF COLUMBUS.

had been accomplished at that time. Then the cavalry set fire to the military buildings of the post, and, accompanied by Polk and his staff followed the retiring columns, at three o'clock in the afternoon of the 2d."1

a March, 1862.

al

In the mean time preparations had been made to capture Columbus, with its troops and munitions of war. When Foote returned to Cairo from Clarkesville, he collected a flotilla of six gun-boats, commanded respectively by Captains Davis, Walke, and Stembel, and Lieutenants-commanding Paulding, Thompson, and Shirk; four mortar-boats, under the general command of Lieutenant-commanding Phelps, assisted by Lieutenant Ford, of the Ordnance Corps, and Captain George Johnson, of Cincinnati; and three transports. The latter bore a small land force of little more than two thousand men, commanded by Brigadier-General W. T. Sherman (who was in command at Paducah), accompanied by General Cullum, of Halleck's staff. The flotilla left Cairo before daylight on the morning of the 4th,' and ¿ March. at sunrise was in sight of the fortified bluffs at Columbus. Prepa

2

rations were made for attack. Rumor had declared that the fort had been evacuated. It was cautiously approached, even after a farmer, a professedly Union man, had assured the commodore that the troops had fled. At length the National flag was dimly seen waving over the Confederate works. It might be a trick. Colonel Buford and a detachment of the Twenty-seventh Illinois were landed to reconnoiter. They were soon clambering up the steep bluffs with shouts of triumph. Troops were in the fortifications, but they were friends. A detachment of the Second Illinois cavalry, under Lieutenant Hogg, two hundred and fifty strong, who had been sent out as scouts from Paducah, had entered the place at five o'clock the day before, and hoisted the Stars and Stripes over the main work of that stronghold. They found the town deserted by nearly all of its disloyal inhabitants. There was evidence of great haste in the evacuation, "considering," says General Cullum, "the quantities of ordnance and ordnance stores, and number of anchors, and the remnant of the chain which was once stretched over the river," and a large

1 Report of Major-General Leonidas Polk to Colonel Thomas Jordan, March 18th, 1862. "In five days," said Polk, in his report, "we removed the accumulation of six months, taking with us all our commissary and quartermaster stores-an amount sufficient to supply my whole command for eight months; all our powder and other ammunition and ordnance stores (excepting a few shot, and gun-carriages), and every heavy gun in the fort. Two 32-pounders in a remote outwork were the only valuable guns left." These, with some smaller ones, were spiked. "The whole number of pieces of artillery comprising our armament," he continued, "was one hundred and fifty." General Cullum's report contradicts that of Polk concerning the removal of nearly all that was valuable, for a large quantity of ordnance and ordnance stores, he says, was found there,

2 These were composed of Colonel Buford's Twenty-seventh Illinois, and a battalion each of the Fifty-fourth and Seventy-fourth Ohio, and Fifty-fifth Illinois regiments, commanded by Majors Andrews and Sawyer.

3 Report of Commodore Foote to the Secretary of the Navy, March 4, 1862; also of General Cullum to General McClellan, on the same day.

General Polk, in his report, says, "The enemy's cavalry, the first of his forces to arrive after the evacuation, reached Columbus in the afternoon of the next day [March 3], twenty-four hours after the last of our troops had

left."

4 A correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette, who accompanied Commodore Foote, mentioned "Mrs. Sharpe, wife of the ex-mayor of Columbus," as the only woman he met with in his rambles through the town. She said she had stuck up for the Union cause while the secessionists threatened to pull her house down. Her husband, she said, had been "forcibly carried off by the rebels."-Sce notice of Sharpe's letter to General Pillow, note 1, page 72.

This was a contrivance of General Pillow, and, like most of his military operations, was a failure. It was a huge affair, stretching down from the bluffs into the Mississippi, with its Missouri shore end loose, and the most of it lying at the bottom of the river.

MINES AND TORPEDOES AT COLUMBUS.

237

supply of torpedoes remaining.' Desolation was visible everywhere-huts, tents, and barricades presenting but their blackened remains." A number of heavy cannon had been spiked and rolled off the bluff into the river. A train on fire, connected with both ends of a magazine, was cut, and safety was soon secured. A garrison of a little over two thousand men, including four hundred cavalry, was left to hold the post.

We have observed that Polk and his confederates, on retiring from Columbus, took position on the Mississippi shores and Island Number Ten

4

below. New Madrid, on the Missouri side of the river, to which many of the troops went, had been much strengthened by Jeff. Thompson, who had occupied it for some time, and had strong military works there, one of which was

These torpedoes were numerous and formidable, and, had men been there to fire those in the river, by the electrical batteries on the shore, there might have been much damage done to Foote's flotilla, had it gone near.

TORPEDOES.

These, and "infernal machines," found in mines in the bluff, attested the great danger to which the National forces would have been exposed in an assault upon the Confederate works, which were of immense strength from the water to the table-land above. In the bluff near the grand battery above Columbus a cavern was discovered, in which were found electrical machines, having a connection by wires with portable mines in several directions, so arranged as to destroy troops that

night be gathered above them. These mines were iron casks, something of a pear shape, about three feet in height, with an iron cap, fastened with eight screws. In cach

INFERNAL MACHINE.

was a 4-pound shell, with grape and canister shot, "surrounded by about two bushels of coarse powder," wrote an eye-witness. On the bottom of each cask was a wooden box, to which, and entering the powder, were fastened insulated wires, connecting with the electrical machines in the cavern. Several other caverns were found with these machines connecting with mines, to the number, it was supposed, of nearly one hundred. The torpedoes found in the river and on the shore were pointed cylinders, about three feet in length, containing filty or sixty pounds of powder, which was to be ignited by electricity. The electrical inachines were very much like those used in telegraph offices.

2 This was the appearance of Island Number Ten, to the eye of the author, from a Mississippi steamer in April, 1866. It lies in a sharp bend of the Mississippi, about 40 miles below Columbus, and within the limits of Kentucky.

New Madrid is the capital of New Madrid County, Missouri, 79 miles below Cairo, and 947 miles above New Orleans, by the winding river. Island Number Ten is about ten miles above it. The islands in the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Ohio River downward, are distinguished by numbers, this, as its name implies, being the tenth. 4 See page 58.