CHAP. XIV.

PANIC IN NASHVILLE.

1559

River and co-operated with troops marching on that place. These movements created a fearful panic among the Secessionists. The governor of Tennessee (Harris) was made almost crazy by alarm. He rode through the streets of Nashville, with his horse at full speed, crying out that the papers in the Capitol must be removed, for he well knew what evidences of his treason they contained. He and his guilty compeers gathered as many of the archives as possible and fled by railway to Memphis, while officers of the banks in Nashville bore away the specie from the vaults of those institutions. Citizens, with their most valuable possessions that were portable, crowded the stations of railways that extended to Decatur and Chattanooga. Every kind of wheeled vehicle was brought into requisition, and the price of hack hire was raised to twenty-five dollars an hour. The authorities 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 was more intense because of the sudden reaction from joy occasioned by a foolish boast of Pillow, on Saturday, that victory for the Confederates was It was followed by a despatch from him while the armies were yet struggling and the Confederates had gained a slight advantage, in which he said: “Enemy retreating! Glorious result! Our boys following and peppering their rear!! A complete victory!!" The people were comfortably seated in the churches, and the ministers were prepared to preach congratulatory sermons, when the astounding news of the fall of Fort Donelson and the cowardly desertion of the post by Floyd and Pillow reached them. Pillow's act was a crushing commentary on his foolish boast, and the people pronounced his doom of disgrace before the authorities at Richmond had promulgated it.

sure.

Johnston and his troops moved rapidly southward from Nashville, and the city was surrendered to the Nationals by the municipal authorities, on the 26th of February, 1862. These events, following so closely upon the capture of Roanoke Island and the operations in its vicinity, produced great alarm throughout the Confederacy. The loyal people of the land were elated; and the Confederates being virtually expelled from Tennessee, the State government abdicated by its fugitive governor, and much latent loyalty being displayed, the National Government proceeded to re-establish civil government there. Andrew Johnson, of East Tennessee, was appointed provisional governor with the military rank of brigadier-general, and he entered upon his duties, at Nashville, on the 4th of March, 1862.

The Mississippi River now became the theatre of stirring events. Beauregard, as we have observed, had been sent West, and was now in command of troops on the borders of the mighty stream, above Memphis: and,

obedient to orders from Richmond, he directed General Polk to evacuate Columbus, and transfer his troops and as much of the munitions of war as possible to places of greater safety. New Madrid, Madrid Bend, and Island Number Ten were chosen for this purpose. Meanwhile Commodore Foote had put in motion a fleet of gun-boats on the Mississippi, and accompanying transports bore two thousand troops under General W. T. Sherman. When, on the 4th of March, this armament approached Columbus, the Union flag was seen floating there. It had been unfurled the previous evening by a scouting party of Illinois troops from Paducah, who found the fortifications deserted. Sherman left a garrison at Columbus, and Foote returned to Cairo to prepare for a siege of New Madrid and Island Number Ten, which constituted the key to the Lower Mississippi. The Confederates at the former place were commanded by General McCoun, and those on Island Number Ten were under the charge of General Beauregard, in person, who sent forth pompous proclamations to the inhabitants. He called for bells wherewith to make cannon, and there was a liberal response. "In some cities," wrote a Confederate soldier, "every church gave up its bells. Court-houses, public institutions, and plantations sent theirs. And the people furnished large quantities of old brass of every description-andirons, candlesticks, gas-fixtures, and even door-knobs. I have seen wagon-loads of these lying at depots waiting shipment to the foundries." They were all sent to New Orleans. There they were found by General Butler, who sent them to Boston, where they were sold at auction.

General Pope, dispatched from St. Louis by General Halleck, drove the Confederates from New Madrid on the night of the 13th of March. They fled to Island Number Ten, which then became the chief object of attack by the Nationals. Beauregard had thoroughly fortified it, and Foote attacked it with heavy guns and mortars on the morning of the 16th of March. The siege went on with varying fortunes for both parties until early in April. While Foote was pounding and rending the fortifications of Beauregard, Pope at New Madrid was chafing with impatience to participate in the siege. His guns easily blockaded the river (there a mile wide, and then flowing at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour); but he desired to cross it to the peninsula and attack the Island in the rear, and so insure its capture with its dependencies, their garrisons and munitions of war. But the Tennessee shore was lined with batteries garnished with heavy guns; and until these could be silenced, it would be madness to attempt to cross the river with any means at Pope's command. Pope was at his wit's end. when General Schuyler Hamilton made the extraordinary proposition to

CHAP. XIV. SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF ISLAND NUMBER TEN.

1561 cut a canal from the bend of the Mississippi, near Island' Number Eight, across the neck of a swampy peninsula, to the vicinity of New Madrid, of sufficient capacity to allow the passage of gun-boats and transports, and thereby effectually flank Island Number Ten, and insure its capture. Hamilton offered to do the work with his division of soldiers, and to have it completed in the space of a fortnight. Pope sanctioned the measure, and it was performed in nineteen days under the direction of Colonel Bissell of the Engineers. The labor was most fatiguing. The canal was twelve miles long, one-half the distance through a growth of heavy timber, where a way was made, fifty feet wide, by sawing off trees in some places four feet under

water.

Meanwhile Foote had not been idle, but made preparations for closer assaults than the long reach of great guns and mortars afforded. On the night of the first of April an expedition composed of Illinois troops and seamen, to the number of one hundred, proceeded to take one of the seven formidable redoubts on the Kentucky shore, and were successful. This daring feat was followed on the night of the 3d, by another. Pope had frequently called upon Foote to send gun-boats to his assistance. At length the gallant Captain Walke, of the Carondelet, obtained permission of his commander to attempt to run by the Confederate batteries with his vessel. The feat was successfully performed at midnight while a fearful thunder-storm was raging. The flashes of lightning revealed her passage to the commanders of batteries on the shore, and she was compelled to run the gauntlet of a tremendous cannonade from them all. The Carondelet did not return a shot. Only after she had reached a place of safety below were her guns heard; then three of them announced to anxious Commodore Foote that she had escaped all perils. She was welcomed by the troops at New Madrid with wildest huzzas.

Perceiving the peril that awaited them when the canal should be completed, the Confederates sunk steamboats in the channel of the river to prevent gun-boats descending it, and they unsuccessfully attempted to escape from the Island. After the Carondelet had passed the batteries, Beauregard was satisfied that the siege must speedily end in disaster, and he was not disposed to bear the responsibility; so, after turning over the command on the Island to General McCall, and leaving the troops on the Kentucky and Tennessee shores in charge of General McCoun, he, with a considerable number of the best soldiers, departed for Corinth to check a formidable movement of National troops through middle Tennessee toward northern Alabama and Mississippi. McCall, on assuming the command, issued a flaming proclamation; but within thirty-six hours he and his ^ops

prepared to escape from the Island. They were interrupted in their movements by General Pope's forces under Generals Stanley, Hamilton, and Paine; and Island Number Ten, with the troops, batteries and supports on the main, were surrendered to the Nationals on the 8th of April. Over seven thousand men were surrendered prisoners of war; and the spoils of victory were one hundred and twenty-three cannons and mortars, seven thousand small-arms, many hundred horses and mules, four steamboats afloat, and a very large amount of ammunition.

The fall of Island Number Ten was a calamity to the Confederacy from which it never recovered. It produced widespread alarm in the Southern States; for it appeared probable that Memphis, one of their strongholds on the Mississippi, where they had immense workshops and armories, would soon share the fate of Columbus, and that National war-vessels would speedily patrol the great river from Cairo to New Orleans. Martial-law was proclaimed at Memphis, and the specie in the banks there was taken to places of supposed safety. Troops that guarded the city and panic-stricken residents proposed to lay the town in ashes if it could not be saved from "northern invaders." The zeal of these madmen was cooled by the sensible Mayor Park, who publicly proclaimed that "he who attempts to fire his neighbor's house, or even his own whereby it endangers his neighbor's, regardless of judge, jury, or the benefit of clergy, I will have him hung to the first lamp-post, tree, or awning." At Vicksburg, preparations were made for flight, and the disloyal inhabitants of New Orleans were oppressed with fearful forebodings of impending calamity. The governor of Louisiana, who was a leading Secessionist, issued a despairing appeal to the people. “An insolent and powerful foe is already at the castle gate," he said. "The current of the mighty river speaks to us of his fleets advancing for our destruction, and the telegraph wires tremble with the news of his advancing columns. In the name of all most dear to us, I entreat you to go and meet him." But there was little disposition to comply with the governor's wishes; and when a letter from Beauregard, which he sent by his surgeon-general, making an urgent demand for New Orleans to send five thousand troops to him, at once, "to save the city," was read to the First and Second City Brigades, who were called out, their reply was, “We decline to go." Their city then needed defenders below instead of above it.

It seemed as if the plan devised by Fremont was about to be successfully carried out. Curtis had already broken the military power of the Confederacy west of the Mississippi, at the battle of Pea Ridge; and a heavy force was then making its way up the Tennessee toward Alabama and Mississippi, and had, at the moment of the surrender of the famous Island,

CHAP. XIV.

MOVEMENTS OF THE NATIONALS SOUTHWARD.

1563 achieved a most important victory on the left bank of that stream not a score of miles from Corinth. Curtis, after the battle and the flight of the vanquished Confederates, finding no enemy to fight in that region, gave his army ample time to rest, and then marched in a southeasterly direction toward the Mississippi River and encamped at Batesville, the capital of Independence county, Arkansas, on the White River.

After the capture of Fort Donelson, General Grant had prepared to push toward Corinth, an important position on the line of the Charleston and Memphis Railway. Troops had been sent up the Tennessee River; and finally, at the beginning of April, the main body of Grant's army were encamped between Pittsburgh Landing, on the left bank of that stream, and the Shiloh Meeting-House, the latter in the forest two miles from the river. The grand objective was Corinth. There the Mobile and Ohio Railway intersected the Charleston and Memphis roads. The seizure of that point, as a strategic position of vital importance, was Grant's design. It would give the National forces control of the great railway communication between the Mississippi and the East, and the border slave-labor States and the Gulf of Mexico. It would also facilitate the capture of Memphis, toward the accomplishment of which Foote was now bending his energies, and it would add strength to the movements of Curtis in Arkansas.

In the meantime General Buell's army had slowly made preparations to march southward and join Grant's forces, which were, at first, encamped at Savannah, on the right bank of the Tennessee; but it was not until near the close of March, when Grant's position had become really perilous, that Buell left Nashville. He sent part of his force under General Mitchel in the direction of Huntsville, in northern Alabama, to seize and hold the Charleston and Memphis Railway; while the main body, composed of the divisions of Generals Thomas, McCook, Nelson, Crittenden and T. J. Wood, moved more to the westward by way of Columbia, at which place the troops left the railway and marched slowly toward the Tennessee River.