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226

A VOYAGE ON THE CUMBERLAND RIVER.

first vessel to reach King's Bridge, on the Ogeechee River, was the mail steamer. Subsequently, when Sherman marched through the Carolinas, and after the hard-fought battle of Bentonville, he met the mail for his army on the evening of the day of that battle.'

That army mail-service presents to the contemplation of those who comprehend its extent and usefulness, one of the moral wonders of the great conflict; and in its salutary influence and value seems second only to the Sanitary Commission or the Christian Commission. It kept entire armies in continual communion, as far as possible, with home and kindred-a circumstance of incalculable benefit to the soldier and the service. It prevented that terrible home-sickness with which raw troops are often prostrated. It also exercised the affections, and, in a remarkable degree, brought the sweet influences of the domestic circle to bear most powerfully in strengthening the men against the multiform temptations of the camp, and the yearnings for family joys which so often seduce the less favored soldier to desert; while courage and patriotism were continually stimulated by heroic words from patient and loving ones at home.

The writer visited the theater of events recorded in this chapter, early in May, 1866. He left Nashville in the steamer Tyrone, toward the evening of the 5th. Most of his fellow-passengers, as far as Clarksville, sixty miles down the Cumberland River, consisted of about two hundred colored soldiers, who had just been paid off and discharged from the service. The few white passengers on board, and the officers and crew of the Tyrone, who were mostly secessionists, were greatly relieved when these soldiers debarked at midnight, for the fearful massacre of negroes at Memphis had just occurred, and they did not know what might be the temper of these troops on that account. They were in dread of personal danger. But there was no occasion for alarm. The preparations made for surrendering the steamer to the soldiers, on demand, and taking the women and children ashore in the yawl-boat, as well as the more belligerent one for giving the negroes a shower of hot water from the boiler, in the event of an uprising, were quite unnecessary. The writer, who mingled among and conversed with many of the soldiers, never saw a more orderly and well-disposed company of men, just loosed from military discipline, than they. There was only one intoxicated man among them. They were too full of joy to think of mischief. The shores of the Cumberland resounded with their songs and laughter, for

1 Letter to the author by General Markland, August 20, 1866. In a letter to Colonel Markland, written in May, 1865, General O. O. Howard says: "For more than a year the Army of the Tennessee has been campaigning in the interior of the Southern States, a great portion of the time far separated from depots of supplies, and connected with home and friends only by a long and uncertain line of railroad, that was, for the most part, overworked to supply provisions, or, moving off without base or lines of communication, the army only touched at points not always previously designated. During all this time, from Chattanooga to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Savannah, and in the homeward campaign across the Carolinas, you, my dear Colonel, have received the warmest thanks from officers and men for your interest, energy, and uniform success in bringing to them the mail, often immense from accumulation, forwarding it promptly, by sea or by land, for distribution. During the campaign of four months against Atlanta, the mail was received with great regularity. On the 13th December, the very day our communication was opened on the Ogeechee River with Admiral Dahlgren's fleet, the mail-boat, with your personal charge, was the first to pass the obstructions and greet the Army of the Tennessee. When our army arrived at Goldsborough, having be n marching 500 miles without communication, it found letters from home in waiting, and you were there to welcome us again. From this time till we left Raleigh, en route for Washington, all mail matter was regularly received, and you still provided for us while the army was encamped in sight of the capital."

General Sherman, in a letter to General Markland, bore similar testimony.

VISIT TO FORT DONELSON.

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they were all happy in the thought of money in their pockets, and the greetings of friends at home.

The Tyrone lay at Clarksville until daylight, when the writer had the opportunity to make a sketch of Fort Bruce and its vicinity, events at which will be considered presently. We left there while breakfasting; and nearly all of that beautiful day we were voyaging on that winding and picturesque river, whose bosom and shores have been made historical by great events. At about two o'clock in the afternoon we passed the ruins of the Cumberland Iron Works, and at three o'clock we landed at the site of Dover. The little village, with its church, court-house, and almost one hundred dwellings and stores, when Fort Donelson' was built, had disappeared. The public buildings and most of the private ones had been laid in ashes during the war, and only a few dilapidated structures remained.

At Cooley's tavern, near the landing-place (in which General Tilghman had quartered), the writer was introduced to Captain James P. Flood, the commander of the famous Flood's Second Illinois Battery, who performed gallant service at Dover, in repelling an attack by the cavalry of Forest and Wheeler. He had settled there as a lawyer, and was familiar with every foot of the battle-ground. He kindly offered to accompany the writer to the points of interest in connection with the battle, and took him to the house of G. M. Stewart, near the fort, an old and leading citizen of Stewart County, who had been faithful to the old flag, and had suffered much for its sake during the war. Mr. Stewart and his son (who had been in the Union service) kindly offered to go over the field of conflict with us. He furnished saddle-horses for the whole company, and at twilight we had traversed the entire line of works, in front of which the divisions of McClernand and Wallace fought, and visited the head-quarters of General Grant. Near McClernand's extreme right, in IIysmith's old field, we found the grave-yard of the Illinois troops, delineated on page 217. We followed the lines toward the center in their devious way through the woods, and clearings covered with sprouting oaks, and came to the burial-place of the dead of the Eleventh Illinois Regiment, similar in appearance to the other, and having a board in the center with the names of the killed upon it. Everywhere the trees were terribly scarred by bullets, and cannon-shot and shell, giving evidence of the severity of the battle. All through these woods and openings, we found the detached lines of the Confederate intrenchments half concealed by the already rank growth of grass, and bushes shoulder high, and blackberry shrubs and vines, then white with blossoms. Nature was rapidly hiding from view these evidences of man's iniquity.

Grant's head-quarters, as we have observed, were at the house of Mrs. Crisp, a short distance from the road leading from Dover to Fort Henry. Mrs. Crisp, a stout, kind-hearted, good-natured old lady, was still there, and refreshed us with a draught of the finest spring water. She did not approve of National troops in general, but had most pleasant recollections of General Grant and his staff. She committed to our keeping kind

1 This fort was so named in honor of Andrew Jackson Donelson, the adopted son of President Jackson, and who at that time was occupying the "Hermitage," a few miles from Nashville. He warmly espoused the cause of the conspirators.

228

VIEW AT FORT DONELSON.

compliments to the General, and then, at almost sunset, we bade her farewell 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

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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

1 This is a view looking down the river, in which tho 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.

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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 children, 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 Jackson" were 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.

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ADVANCE ON BOWLING GREEN.

CHAPTER IX.

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

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• Feb. 11,

HEN Fort Donelson fell, Kentucky and Missouri, and all 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.

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.

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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.

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