William G. Stevenson

“ What an awful thing is war! Here lay, almost within cannon-shot of one another, eighty or ninety thousand men—brothers of the same race and nation, many of them [149] blood relations; thousands of them believing in the same Saviour, and worshiping the same God, their prayers meeting that night at the throne of Heavenly Grace;—yet waiting for the light of the holy Sabbath that they may see how most surely to destroy one another! ”

“ Here was a long line of wagons loaded with wounded, piled in like bags of grain, groaning and cursing, while the mules plunged on in mud and water belly-deep, the water sometimes coming into the wagons. Next came a straggling regiment of infantry pressing on past the train of wagons, then a stretcher borne upon the shoulders of four men, carrying a wounded officer, then soldiers staggering along, with an arm broken and hanging down, or other fearful wounds which were enough to destroy life. ”

“ No, the Southern government is now a complete military despotism, and for a successful carrying on of the war against them I think we must adopt, to some extent, the same rigid policy. Freedom of opinion is a precious right, and freedom of the press a valuable boon, but when the publication of news and the utterance of personal opinions endanger the lives of our soldiers, and even the success of our armies, surely it is the duty of the government to restrain that utterance. ”

“ Refined and Christian women, feeling that the Northern armies are invading their homes, cutting off their husbands and brothers, and sweeping away their property, are compelled to take a deeper interest in the struggle than the masses of the North are able to do, removed as they are from the horrors of the battle-scenes, and scarcely yet feeling the first hardship from the war. Indeed, I do not doubt that regiments of women could be raised, if there was any thing they could do in the cause of the South. ”

“ Does any reader say, "You did wrong—you had better have died than have given your name to such an infamous and causeless rebellion?" I can only answer: It is far easier to say what a homeless youth, hunted for his life for two nights and a day, until exhausted, faint, and friendless, in the midst of an excited and armed populace, should do, than it was in the circumstances to do what will stand the test of a high, calm, and safe patriotism. ”

“ The Southern generals always kept cavalry pickets out for miles, even when no enemy was supposed to be within a day's march of them. The infantry pickets of Grant's forces were not above three-fourths of a mile from his advance camps, and they were too few to make any resistance. With these facts all made known to our head-quarters on Saturday evening, our army was arranged for battle with the certainty of a surprise, and almost the assurance of a victory. Every regiment was carefully and doubly guarded, so that no man might glide away from our ranks and put the Union forces on their guard. ”

“ If it be said that the institution of slavery can not tolerate freedom of thought and speech with safety to the master, then the system is barbarous, and can not exist in a free land. Let it be admitted that there are difficulties connected with the institution; that John Brown raids, and incendiary emissaries, are wicked; that unlicensed denunciations of all implicated in the system, are grossly wrong. ”

“ During that dark and uncertain voyage, I had time not only to coax into quietness my restive horse, but also to conclude that it would never do to dismiss our Charon on the other bank, as half an hour might put on our track a squad of cavalry, who, in our ignorance of the roads and country, would soon return us to Rebeldom and a rope. A man who would take twenty dollars for twenty minutes' work, after swearing that his conscience would not allow him to disobey the authorities, was not to be trusted out of your sight. ”

“ But what could one man, and he a youth and a stranger, do against a corrupt and reckless populace? When suspicion was once aroused, I knew that the least spark would kindle it into a flame. Society there was completely barbarous in its character, so far as law was concerned. The mob has ruled for years, and the spirit of rebellion, now rampant all over the South, had taken form and expressed itself in these vigilance committees, constituting as cruel courts of inquiry as was ever the Inquisition. ”

“ Men have trampled on you, dying men have groaned all around you, and yet you slept as soundly as a babe in its cradle. Where is your wound?"
[173] How I endured the horrors of that night, rather how I was entirely unconscious of them and slept refreshingly through them, is to me a mystery. But so it was, and it seemed to be the turning-point of my knee-wound, as it has never troubled me so much since.
I now rode on to Corinth, where I changed clothes, had a bath and breakfast, and found a hospital and a surgeon. He decided that I was unfit for duty, and must take my place among the invalids. ”

“ Nothing but the resolute bearing of General Beauregard, threatening to shoot the first man who should attempt to leave, saved the Rebel army from destruction; for if the troops of one State had been allowed to withdraw on the plea of protecting their own borders, why should not all? This was well-understood, and hence resisted resolutely and successfully. At a later day, and as if in pursuance of a general plan, the Arkansas troops did go home; and thus they avoided a mutiny, which, had it been fully developed, would have involved at least 10,000 men. ”

“ In addition to this fundamental error, they aver that they are engaged in a revolution, not a rebellion; and that the right of revolution is conceded, even by the North, now endeavoring to force them back into an oppressive and hated union; and that if we justify our fathers in forswearing allegiance to the British crown, we should not condemn the South in refusing obedience to a Union already dissolved. ”

“ The second prominent characteristic of guerrilla warfare, is the license it gives to take by force from supposed enemies or neutrals, horses, cash, munitions of war, and, in short, any thing which can aid the party for which he fights; with the promise of full pay for whatever he brings off to his head-quarters. This is the essential principle of the system, giving it its power and destructiveness. As it displaces patriotism from the breast of the fighter, and substitutes in its room the desire for plunder, the men thus engaged become highway robbers in organized and authorized bands. ”

“ During the month of December, sickness in the form of pneumonia and measles became fearfully prevalent, and by the middle of January one-fifth of the army was said to be in the hospital. The prevalence of disease was attributed by the surgeons to the constant rains, the warm winter, and incessant labor day and night on the fortifications.
Though up to this time I had enjoyed uninterrupted good health, the pneumonia now seized me violently; and after a week of "heroic treatment," I was put into a box-car and started for the hospital at Nashville. This was the dreariest ride of my life thus far. ”

“ The tyranny of public opinion is absolute. No young man able to bear arms dares to remain at home; even if the recruiting officers and the conscription law both fail to reach him, he falls under the proscription of the young ladies and must volunteer, as I did, though from not quite the same kind of force. And then, no expression of Union feeling would be tolerated for a moment. ”

“ About a hundred regiments were numbered in the army. The full complement of wagons to each regiment—twenty-four—would give above two thousand wagons. Imagine such a train of heavily loaded wagons, passing along a single mud road, accompanied by 55,000 infantry and 5000 horsemen, in the midst of rain and sleet, day after day, camping at night in wet fields or dripping woods, without sufficient food adapted to their wants, and often without any tents, the men lying down in their wet clothes, and rising chilled through and through ”

“ In addition it should be said, the common feeling is, "We are in for a fight, and must carry it through; there is no hope for us but in fighting; if we give up now, our institutions are ruined, and we forever the vassals of the domineering and meddling Yankees." This the leaders [135] and prominent men feel most acutely, and hence they will fight to the last, and keep the people up to that point as long as possible. How long that will be depends upon the will of the North, as no sane man doubts they have the power, and no loyal man questions the right. ”

“ When Morgan had learned the whole story, with the embellishments, he dismissed the lieutenant. But the story was too good to keep, and by morning the scare and its cause were fully ventilated, greatly to the chagrin of Major Bennett's battalion, to which the routed men belonged. They were questioned daily about "those three hundred Yankees who made that terrific charge;" and whenever a loud noise of any kind was made, even by a mule, it was asked, with a serious face, if that was equal to "the unearthly yells of the Yankees." ”

“ He spoke in a firm, decided tone, in a voice which could be heard by many hundreds, and nearly in the following words. "Fellow-soldiers, Tennesseans, I was forced into Southern service against my will and [183] against my conscience. I told them I would desert the first chance I found, and I did it. I was always a Union man and never denied it, and I joined the Union army to do all the damage I could to the Confederates. I believe the Union cause is right and will triumph. You can kill me but once, and I am not afraid to die in a good cause. ”

“ That the masses of men do not reason, but feel. A few minds give the cue, and the herd follow; and when passion takes possession of the heart, its fumes obscure the brain, and they can not see the truth. A general impression reiterated in a thousand forms, always affirmed and never denied, fills the mind, and is believed to be the truth. ”

“ As a consequence of the inherently demoralizing effect of war, and this great destitution of conserving influences, vice reigned almost unrestrained in the army. The few good and devout men, and the infrequent prayer-meetings which were held, seemed powerless to restrain the downward tendency of morals. Profanity, the most revolting and dreadful, abounded, though contrary to the Articles of War, and many of the officers were proficient in this vice. Gambling, in all the forms possible among soldiers, was the main amusement on the Sabbath-day. ”

“ Every daily paper I have read since coming North has contained information, either by direct statement or implication, which the enemy can profit by. If we meant to play into the hands of the Rebels, we could hardly do it more successfully than our papers are doing it daily; for it must be remembered that they only need hints and scraps of information, which, added to the antecedent probabilities that our army is about to proceed to a certain point, will enable them to forecast with almost absolute certainty the movements of their enemies. ”

“ They have shown, it has been eloquently said, the utmost recklessness respecting the oath of allegiance to the nation. Men who sneered at the North as teaching a higher law to God which should be paramount to all terrene statutes, have been themselves among the first to hold the supreme law of the land and their oath of fealty and loyalty to that land, abrogated by the lower law of State claims and State interests. It could not be sin in the man of the North, if God and his country ever clashed, to say, that well as he loved his country, he loved his God yet more. ”

“ I rode my pet Selim into the village of McMinnville, a few miles from the place of my sojourn, to obtain information as to the proximity of the Federal forces, and, if possible, devise a plan of getting within their lines without exciting suspicion. As Selim stood at the hotel, to the amazement of every one, General Dumont's cavalry galloped into town, and one of the troopers taking a fancy to my horse, led him off without my knowledge, and certainly without my consent. ”

“ General Hindman, than whom no more fearless, dashing, or brave man is found in the Rebel service, was leading his men in a fearful struggle for the possession of a favorable position, when a shell from the Federal batteries, striking his horse in the breast and passing into his body, exploded. The horse was blown to fragments, and the rider, with his saddle, lifted some ten feet in the air. His staff did not doubt that their general was killed, and some one cried out, "General Hindman is blown to pieces." ”

“ Then the system of slavery gives them almost unlimited power over the persons and lives of large numbers of human beings, and this fosters a spirit of despotism so natural to all men, even the most civilized, when invested with supreme power. ”

“ A Federal cavalryman related to me, since my escape, an unusual act for an enemy. Losing the command of his wounded horse, which goaded by pain plunged wildly on, he was borne into the midst of Morgan's force. "Don't shoot him!" cried Morgan to a dozen of his men who raised their pistols. "Give him a chance for his life." The pistols were lowered and the man sent back to his own lines unharmed. Few men have appeared on either side in this contest who combine dash and caution, intrepidity and calmness, boldness of plan with self-possession in execution, as does Morgan. ”

“ And, still further, some fanatical men from the North, determined violently to break the bonds of the poor slave, had been found in recent years spreading incendiary works among the poor white population and the negroes who could read, thus endangering the lives of the masters and their families. As a matter of self-defence, Northern men were watched with unremitting and eagle-eyed vigilance. ”

“ The court of Judge Lynch opened, and I was put upon trial as an "Abolitionist whose business there was to incite an insurrection among the slaves."
The first efforts of the chairman to get the witnesses to the point, were unsuccessful. A mob is not an orderly body, and a drunken mob is hard to manage. General charges were freely made without much point. One cried out, because I refused to drink with them: "This should hang him; he is too white-livered to take a dram with gentlemen, let him swing." ”

“ Yes, the South has arms in abundance, and good ones; and they know how to use them, and they are resolved to do it.
The question is often asked, Where does the ammunition come from to supply the Southern army? I would state in reply, that with the cargoes of arms, ammunition was supplied, at the rate of a thousand rounds for each gun. While engaged in the Ordnance Department, I often issued boxes of ammunition, which were [91] put up in London for the Enfield rifle. The fixed ammunition of England is said by Southern officers to be the finest in the world. But much was also made at home. ”