LITTLE JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SOUTH—FLORENCE ALABAMA.
It is fitting that the story of the journey to Florence, Ala., should appear In the same issue with Jackson’s march into the Creek Nation; for the story of this pretty little city on the Tennessee, between the foothills of the mountains and the cotton plains beyond, is literally thumb-marked with Old Hickory.
Andrew Jackson knew and understood what was good in woman, in man and in land. In these he never erred. Never in his life did he tie on to a quitter or touch a yellow streak. When he stamped the seal of his friendship on a man or woman, or drove the steel of his compass[1] on land he had decided to buy, they were already registered. And history, a century later, will tell you they were not false.
When a man’s judgment, like his literature, stands the test of a century, it is good for all time.
But before the white man was the Indian, and before the Indian, the Mound Builders. The Mound Builders never were known to settle on poor land. They found Florence before the Indian, before the white man, before the hero of New Orleans.
It is beautiful to speculate about those people. Who they were and what they were only their great, silent mound monuments tell, and they are as dumb as the unreturning past.
The mound they built where the great creek meets the Tennessee is a perfect and splendid specimen of their custom. Scholars say it was built for religious worship—not to bury their dead within, and it is one of a series in the valley of the Tennessee. What robed, mysterious priest and peoples once worshiped around it? What censers of eternal fire burned always on its summit? What white-robed maidens met a sacrificial death on its summit overlooking the river? What warriors thronged around it, chanting their battle songs and dipping their spear points in the victims’ blood?
“Forever and forever flows the river,
Forever and forever rolls the plain—
Forever shall the pale stars ’round them quiver,
But never shall their past return again.
Hyperion dawns but light their frieze in vain,
And moons peer sadly through the columned way,
The midday glares on what doth yet remain
Of faded glory with a mocking play—
Thus passeth into shadow man’s imperial sway.”
[1] The following letter addressed to Gen. Dan Smith is preserved in Nashville:
“October 29th, 1795.
“Sir: Captain John Hays and myself wish to have our land divided; for which purpose to-morrow is appointed, wish to get the favor of you to do the business, as we wish it done accurate; therefore hope you will do us the favor to come to my house this evening, so that we may take an early start to-morrow. Will thank you to bring with you your compass and chain. If you cannot come will thank you to favor me with the loan of your compass and chain by the bearer. I am, sir with the highest esteem, your most obedient servant,
[Signed] “Andrew Jackson.”
At the sale of the first lots in Florence in July, 1818, James Madison (who but a few years before had been elected President of the young Republic, and Andrew Jackson, who in a few years more was destined to be another of her Presidents) both bought lots in the new town, then, as now, a goodly, fair site in the bend where the Tennessee, hugging the Southern hills as if to escape the mouth of the foaming, passionate, tumultuous shoals, shrinks away, and, like a beautiful woman when she throws off her mantle in the ball room, exposes shoulders fair to see.
They were fair enough in the wilderness to stop Jackson and Madison. Jackson must have seen the beautiful site for a city on this most beautiful and lordly river often. On his first taste of Indian fighting he crossed it somewhere near Florence, when pioneer Tennesseans struck the Indian marauders who lived at the great Coldwater spring at the present site of Tuscumbia, a few miles beyond. Later his troops crossed it down the old military road he cut out from Nashville to Pensacola, when they marched to New Orleans, to glory or to death. The gap in the mountainous hills near where the graceful bridge of the Louisville & Nashville crosses the river is still pointed out as the spot where the heroes of New Orleans pontooned across from the mouth of the creek. Methinks the old hero never forgot this spot—the great, splendid river, wooded, hill-crowned, plain-girdled and thunder-foamed with the spray from the long-leaping, shining shoals.
Rifle pits on hill at Florence used by Confederate soldiers.
He was young when he first saw it. He had made no name and no history. He was only a common, ordinary, hot-blooded, dare-devil, cussin’, fighting Irish boy, lank of form, peaked of face and forehead, with piercing blue eyes, a thin, lofty, religious, idealized, hatchety head, bequeued with bristling, sandy-red hair.
You may think I am foolish to call him religious, but be patient. A man is born religious or not. And if born so, all his wildness and fighting and bloodshed and profanity will not eliminate it. No man had more of it than Jackson. He was naturally religious. Whenever the passions and fightings of his combatitive trend and nature gave him a breathing spell he fell back in every deed and act on the Scotch-Irish predestination of his breeding. Mr. Eaton walked one night into President Jackson’s bed room. He was preparing to retire. The miniature of the dead Rachel Jackson, which he wore next to his heart, with a silk string around his neck, underneath his clothes, lay on the table by her open Bible. He was reading the Bible, with tears in his eyes, and by him he had her picture to help him interpret it.
Some may not think this is religion. But it is religion of the deepest kind.
Florence is full of history, and history that counts.
John Coffee, Jackson’s right-hand general at New Orleans, and who married Rachel Jackson’s niece, was one of the founders of the town, a corporation known as The Cypress Creek Land Company. The old hero lies buried in a nearby hill. A gallant man he was, sturdy and true, and Jackson often said that but for him at New Orleans he knew not what he would have done. Old Hickory said that, but, rely upon it, he would have done something just the same.
Another incorporator was Col. James Jackson, whose old colonial home still stands at the Forks, the original plantation covering several thousand acres of as goodly land as ever felt the pressure of a race horse. For here it was that many famous race horses lived and bred their kind. Col. James Jackson imported Glencoe, a horse, to my mind, greater than any that Old Hickory or any of the Tennesseeans ever imported. Often James Jackson would meet the Tennesseeans in fierce contests of the turf, in the Tennessee valley or at the old Clover Bottom, and the laurels were more often with the Alabamian.
In going through the court records, back to the old books in search of early history of this beautiful town, I find some queer and quaint documents. I did not search closely, but what little I did see convinced me that James Madison must have come very near going broke on Florence. People who are used to booms in these days of cities, railroads, mines, spindles, furnaces and a fast-increasing population don’t know what a pioneer boom really was. Here in the heart of a wilderness a roadless territory, the land still flecked with the blood of the white and the red, the nearest town a village on the Cumberland, one hundred and fifty miles away, and only a few settlers along the bluffs of the river, with savage Indians lurking in the interior—no peoples, no cities, no industries—nothing but a yoke of oxen and a wilderness of uncleared land upon which to base coupons for the future—here was a boom to make one smile.
The lots were untouched forests jutting out on an Indian trail to the river. And yet the one on which the present bank stands fetched over $3,000, and the one just below the courthouse and diagonally across fetched $1,840! Here is faith for you—here is booming that booms. If such men as Jackson and Madison pinned their faith there like that, in July, 1818, what splendid opportunities now offer themselves for faith in a town which, as one stands on the hillside looking down on the same great river, sees it covered with a cloud, not from the sky, but from earth—from furnace and factory, and behold, the valley of erstwhile woods, the busy mart of men in homes and houses. And two great railroads—the Louisville & Nashville and the Southern—and one great river, to keep freight down.
The total sale of the first two or three hundred lots was $233,580. Andrew Jackson bought lot 6 for $350; Nos. 57 to 62, for $250 to $400. Madison bought lot No. 28 for $300; 39 for $390; 41 to 44, $400 to $600.
Madison made his first payments, and then—let them all go for taxes! Evidently the great expounder of the Constitution and President of the United States took his first lesson in boom towns when Fate sent him to the Tennessee River to close up an Indian treaty.
And he must have been easy. Oh, if the real estate agents of to-day could always meet his kidney!
Further tracing of old records shows that he caught it all around. November 1st, 1826, I find that James Madison appointed one Dabney Morris his agent to handle “all his lands in Alabama, all lots in Florence, also eight shares of stock in Cypress Land Company.” On August 22, 1826, is an agreement in which James Madison extends the time of payment of a judgment he held against one Bedford amounting to $4,680.96. And, worst of all, Dabney Morris laid down on him, for later a record shows that Morris’ notes to Madison went to protest, to satisfy which the said Morris turned over land to said Madison to the tune of $24,866—a small fortune in those days (in money, not in land) when money was worth nearly double what it now is. In the slang language of to-day, they evidently “did enough to Jimmy.”
But Old Hickory paid for his. It is not recorded that he lost a cent. Old Hickory was born holding on. He never turned loose.
And to show what things cost in those days: On October 20, 1819, Thomas Childress and W. W. Warner, who had been appointed to sell the effects and settle up the estate of a deceased pioneer, report the sale of the following: Twelve negro slaves, $4,200; five head of horses, $225 ($45 each—ye gods! Evidently they were not Hals); twenty-three head of cattle, $165 (that was before the beef trust); twenty-nine head of hogs, $86.50; five beds and furniture, $100; two spinning wheels, $2; two rifle guns, $22; ‘one pare saddle bags,’ $1; and five ‘setting chairs,’ $2.50 (‘setting chairs’—this was evidently the beginning of the incubator idea). Just below it John W. Byrne sells a nineteen-year-old negro to James Hickman for $460, whom he guarantees to be “sound, healthy, clear of any disorder whatever.” And land sales—some of it fetched fifty dollars per acre. That was before it was cleared, too.
It can now be bought for $10 to $25 an acre, and will raise two crops in one year!
If there was any faith for their belief nearly a century ago, what a chance now for the man who invests in Florence or in Lauderdale land!
Some months ago I found a rare old book which has afforded me a great deal of pleasure as well as information. It is called “Letters from Alabama,” by Anne Royal, whom it seems was a most eccentric old woman, afflicted with a mania for writing down everything she saw or heard (and remarkably well she did it) on a trip by stage and horseback which she made for the purpose of seeing the new country. She left Washington November, 1817, and reached Melton’s Bluff, on the Tennessee River, about New Year. Her description of men and things in the new country is the most interesting I have ever read, and the most accurate. As Melton’s Bluff, as she called the place, is not far from Florence (I think it was afterwards called Marathon), I will give some of her descriptions of the new country as it looked then, six months before Florence was laid out into town lots:
“You have heard that this country consists of table and bottom land, also of the bluffs. These bluffs happen where there is no bottom land, but the tableland running up to the river forms a high precipice, called a bluff. This is the case at Melton’s Bluff, the highest I have seen. Here is a very large plantation of cotton and maize, worked by about sixty slaves, owned by General Jackson, who bought the interests of old Melton.
“No language can convey an idea of the beauties of Melton’s Bluff. It is said to be the handsomest spot in the world, off the seaboard, and rich as it is beautiful. I can sit in my room and see the whole plantation; the boats gilding down the river, and the opposite shore, one mile distant. The ducks, geese and swan, playing at the same time on the bosom of the stream, with a full view of the many islands. It is, after all, the great height of the site that pleases.
“I took a walk with some ladies to-day over the plantation, as we wished to have a nearer view of those snowy fields which so sedulously present themselves to our view, together with orchards, gin houses, gardens, Melton’s mansion, and a considerable negro town.
“We approached the mansion by a broad street running up the river bank east of the town. This street seems suspended between heaven and earth, as the whole premises for two miles, all in sight, appears to be elevated above the horizon, and none above the rest. We entered the courtyard, fronting the house, by a stile; and the first thing we met was a large scaffold overspread with cotton; as it was in the seed, there must have been many thousand pounds. Being damp from dew, and often rain, it must be dried in this manner. The mansion was large, built with logs, shingled roof, and may have been built twenty-five or thirty years since. I recoiled at the sight of a place once the habitation of such a monster as Melton was. Some of our party went in: I did not. General Jackson’s overseer, who joined us here, said he lived in the lower story, the upper being filled with cotton. This scaffold was about four feet from the ground. From this we crossed another fence, and found ourselves in a cotton field of about one hundred acres, white with cotton and alive with negroes. The center of this field is said to be the rallying point of viewing the scenery, as it doubtless is. You can see up to Brown’s Ferry, eight miles distant, with the naked eye, and the same distance down.
“The term ‘beauty’ is applied to anything which excites pleasant feelings. Beauty is said to be a uniformity amidst variety, a proportion of parts adapted to a whole, fitness of things to an end, quantity and simplicity. All this is realized on Melton’s Bluff. Here is a noble river which combines in itself all you can conceive of grandeur and utility, adorned with islands, spangled with boats, and enlivened with wild flowers. Lift your eye from the river, and lo! magnificent fields, white as snow, orchards, farms and houses all in view, without moving out of the spot. You may thus form some idea of this far-famed bluff. Here the green islands look like floating meadows. Here the boatman wields his mossy oar and guides his freighted boat along. Here the wild fowl arrayed in glossy plumes, wantons as she lists. Here the distant billows breaking o’er the shoals, echo back in murmuring sounds, and mingling sweetly with the music of the boatman’s viol, swells upon the ear and softly dies away upon the breeze. To crown the whole, here the majestic swan, robed in dazzling white, moves in all her graceful attitudes. These are beauties which may be felt but cannot be described. This combination of objects, each beautiful in itself, and so materially useful, constitutes the beauty of Melton’s Bluff. All the trade of East Tennessee pass by the Bluff and halt there to take in their pilots.”
The Indian Mound on the banks of the Tennessee River, at Florence, Ala.
Can description be more beautiful? Anne Royal, whoever she was, could write classic English for her day and generation.
From Huntsville, December 25, 1817, she wrote: “The face of this country has changed five times in my tour. From Big Sandy river (the boundary of Kentucky and Virginia) to Mount Sterling, the soil is black, firm, uneven and covered with heavy timber, beech and oak principally. From Mt. Sterling to Danville, called first-rate land, it is generally black as your hat and the growth is locust, cherry and walnut. They continue to the Red river, in Tennessee, one hundred miles. They are not a dead or prairie-like level, but rather waving.
“Next to them comes on the lofty timbered black, rich soil and large grape vines and continues to Nashville. Upon leaving Nashville the red cedar begins and though the land is still rich, it is much interrupted with swamps and stones. This is well watered and continues to Fayetteville, on Elk River, near the southern boundary of the State. There again we have the black loam and heavy timber, till within eighteen miles of Huntsville, when the chocolate lands commence again, like the barrens; though light, it is not destitute of timber. All of these lands extend from the mountains on the left, to the Ohio on the right. We forded all the rivers in Kentucky and Tennessee except Kentucky river. The Kentuckians are the handsomest people, by far, in the United States. They are not very stout men, but have fine features and very beautiful complexions. The Tennesseans are not so stout as the Kentuckians, nor so fair, but they are well shaped and more active. There is a native, bold independence in both, with this difference: the Kentuckians are great brags, whilst the Tennesseans, equally as brave and gallant, are wholly unconscious of their virtues. What astonished me most was their careless indifference on the subject of their late gallant achievement, particularly at New Orleans. They spoke of it with perfect unconcern, and only mentioned it when applied to, and then not half the same interest they would show on the subject of hunting and killing deer. Not so the Kentuckians—they appreciate their bravery to the greatest extent. The Kentucky ladies are very large, but are fair and well featured, and much more polished (excepting the ladies of Nashville) than the ladies of Tennessee; but the latter are better shaped, are very artless and the young women have a sweet simplicity in their looks and countenance. Both men and women are without disguise, nor have they any of that impertinent curiosity common to other States. But the most distinguishing trait of the Tennessean is that he treats all men alike. The nabob, with his splendid equipage, receives no more nor as much attention as the pedestrian. They are extremely jealous of wealthy, or what we call big, men. One of them, as I came on, being asked rather peremptorily by one of the big bugs, to rub down his horse, cursed him and told him to ‘Do it yourself—I am no man’s servant.’
“Last evening I had the pleasure of seeing General Coffee, the renowned soldier and companion of General Jackson. This hero, of whom you have heard so much, is upward of six feet in height, and proportionately wide. Nor did I ever see so fine a figure. He is thirty-five or thirty-six years of age, his face is full, and features handsome. His complexion is ruddy, though sunburned. His hair and eyes black and a soft serenity diffuses his countenance. His hair is carelessly thrown to one side and displays one of the finest foreheads in nature—high, smooth and retreating. His countenance has much animation while speaking and his eye sparkles. I expected to see a stern, haughty, fierce warrior. No such thing. You look in vain for the Indian fighter. He is as cool as a dewdrop, but deep in his soul you see very plain that desperate, firm, cool and manly courage which has covered him with glory. He must be a host when he is aroused. He speaks very slowly and may weigh about 200 weight.”
From Milton’s Bluff (which she says was afterward changed to Marathon), January 18, 1818, she writes: “Good news awaits you. Read on. Having collected a few books in a corner I heard some one say: ‘General Jackson, General Jackson comes,’ and running to my window I saw him walking slowly up the hill between two gentlemen, his aids. He was dressed in a blue frock coat, with epaulettes, a common hat, with a black cockade and a sword by his side. He is very tall and slender. He walked on by our door to Major Wyatt’s, his companion in arms, where he put up for the night, though he called on us that evening and the next morning. His person is finely shaped and his features not handsome, but strikingly bold and determined. He is very easy and affable in his manners, and loves a jest. He told one of our party he ‘was one of the blue hen’s chickens.’ He appears to be about fifty years old. There is a great deal of dignity about him. He related many hardships endured by his men in the army, but never a word of his own. His language is pure and fluent, and he has the appearance of having kept the best company. He has been ordered by the government against the Seminole Indians. His army is on the march considerably ahead of him, having crossed at Ditto’s Landing, up the river, but he came round by this place, to see his plantation and slaves.”
And what of those lands to-day, and what are the inducements they offer to the Northern farmer seeking a home in the South? Meeting a very intelligent and reliable farmer, Mr. W. M. Sammon, who had moved from Dalton, Ill., to Lauderdale country, near Florence, some seven years ago, I interviewed him on this subject, reminding him that Trotwood’s was a medium which would rather under-estimate than over-color the picture; that a people did not take much stock in highly-colored pictures of glorious Edens, finding them to be untrue and as such hurting all concerned. “That is true,” said Mr. Sammon, “and well said. Many hundreds of Northern people are misled by such statements and become disgusted when the real facts are enough to captivate any one wishing to make a home here. To begin with, I sold my land in Illinois at three times what just as good, if not better, land cost me here, with three more months in the year for working it. I found the land just as level as in Illinois, and hence I could use the same tools I had there for corn, wheat, oats and alfalfa. I find red clover grows here just as well as in Illinois, and other grasses we cannot grow there, such, for instance, as Bermuda, which will grow anywhere here and make the finest summer pasture in the world, standing sun and drought when other grasses would die. The land does not produce as much corn per acre as does Illinois. Corn in the South, owing to the longer climate, goes much to stalk and fewer stalks can be planted in the hill, but mine produces from twenty-five to forty bushels on the upland and as high as sixty in richer lowlands. But this is to a great extent offset by the difference in price, selling here all the time at sixty to seventy cents, whereas in the North we do well to get forty cents per bushel. All kinds of live stock I find do better here, for they are not troubled with flies, and hence we have no nets to plough under, nor screens for the house. One of the greatest problems to the farmer in Illinois is help. Last fall a friend of mine came here and told me he had to help his wife wash the clothes every week. I paid $25 and board for my farm help up there, but here I get good help at $8 to $10 and board. As for water, there is no comparison. Up there it was ponds and cisterns, but here is a country of springs. I never saw anything like it. Creeks, too, with beds full of gravel, which make the finest roads in the world. It is the best watered and healthiest country I ever saw. The water here is plentiful and easy of access.
“The greatest crop I have found here to build up the land is peas—the Southern pea. It is equal to clover as a nitrogen producing crop, enriching the land, and as a money-maker it beats anything in the North. I sow peas in my corn every third row and run round it a few times. It is laid by with the corn. I can make ten dollars worth of pork per acre in peas and leave the land better than it was. I can raise all stock cheaper here, even turkeys, on account of the peas and grasshoppers. There are nine months of pasture, year in and year out. The land is not as rich as in Illinois, but I make more, owing to peas. My clover there, I could hardly give away, it selling at $2 to $4 per ton, but here I find ready sale for my pea hay at $12 to $15 per ton, and raise more per acre than clover. Wheat needs some fertilizers here, as the belt is far south, but it produces fairly well. I find good money in raising mules. Pastures are so cheap that they practically cost nothing. I buy western mares, good workers, very cheap, and raise a mule worth $150 that is not housed at all and runs in the pasture or on cane all the year.
“The climate is mild and pleasant. People have a mistaken idea as to the heat. It is not as hot here as there, for the heat is steady, even temperature, and a good breeze in the summer.
“I think I know when I have a good thing, and I am sorry I have not lived here all my life. I have made more money and enjoyed better health, and the people are kind, neighborly and hospitable. They are not after the dollar alone.”
This is the talk of a straightforward, practical farmer, who knows what he is talking about, and what he says the reader of Trotwood’s may rely upon.
Florence is at the head of the famous Mussel Shoals, the opening of which has cost Uncle Sam the sum of seven million dollars.
Where Hood’s army crossed the Tennessee River at Florence, Ala., November, 1864.
Uncle Sam never does anything on a small scale, and here, at headquarters, on the banks of the clear, silver river, where seven millions of dollars have been appropriated to unlock 660 miles of navigable water and 1,000 miles of tributary streams, all of which had been locked in the beginning of things and its key hidden to all save the unconquerable spirit of American enterprise, here everything was in keeping with the magnitude of the undertaking and the build and mold of things. It is a paradise in the woods, an Arcadia in primeval forests. It is strength and beauty—a touch of modern art on a background of the antique, a background of rock and beetling cliff, in a setting of sternest and ruggedest realism. Modern houses for offices on the brow of a rock, whose crinkled lips smile a grim and perpetual smile, as if enjoying the joke that a few thousand years will make in the change of man’s baubles above it. Handsome government buildings on a level plateau, surrounded with silence and eternal hills, which half-mockingly look down, as if to say, “Did we not see it ten thousand years ago, when another civilization did the same?” Steel aqueducts, leading captive waters across Shoal creek—a tube of steel binding the waist of this barbarian of the woods, that civilization might walk over his breast—water flowing across water, and that below grumbling with spiteful whirl and jealousy at the usurpation above. A rare picture of the present and the past, of strength and weakness, of beauty and grandeur, but above all the never-changing setting of eternal hills, and through it all the sigh of perpetual silence unbroken by this ripple of living laughter which scarcely touches the skirts of its dream.
No prettier ride than that on the little government railroad which runs for fourteen miles on the edge of the canals and locks, and between it and the river. Now it shoots through classic-looking caves, in somber woods, that brings to one’s mind Keats’ Temple of Latona:
Beyond the matron temple of Latona
Which we should see but for these darkening boughs
Lies a deep hollow from whose ragged brows
Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart.
Now it whirls around a great, lofty cliff, around whose neck the red berries cling like beads on savage shoulders, and then into valleys where the skies seem to stoop down to kiss the river.
It is a poem to look at all this—a never-forgotten poem—a poem, and an opera to live and act it.
Strolling through the grounds which Uncle Sam has made to look like a paradise in the wilderness, I ran upon a unique character in Uncle Reuben Paterson, one of your old-time darkies. Uncle Rube is a character in his way. A giant in stature, except a lameness which has made him always prefer riding to walking. Hence this yarn. He is one of the few darkies you meet who is really humorous. Many people think all darkies are more or less funny, and while they are, it is rarely you find one who appreciates the humorous, from an intellect capable of seeing it. It took me some time to draw Uncle Rube out—he is a darky of more than usual intelligence—but when he found I was fond of horses he gave this experience of his in the Civil War:
“You see, boss, I wuz body servant for Colonel Josiah Patterson, endu’in’ de wah, an’ I got inter some purty close places. Bein’ crippled, I seldom could walk much, so I was mighty nigh raised on a hoss. I regards ’em ez bein’ made fur man, an’ I allers thought I wuz entitled to my sheer. Talk about these heah merchines dats run widout hosses, I’d like ter know whut dey’d done in de wah! De wah suited me fine. I got a new hoss ebry time I wanted ’im. Ebry fight we’d get inter I’d come out on a new hoss. I started in on a little gray jackass. At Shiloh I swapped ’im off fer a good government mule. Dat is ter say, I allers called it swappin’ yer know. It’s true Uncle Sam didn’ hev nobody ter repersent ’im at de swappin, but when de fight gits hot an’ his nat’ul agents gits kinder rattled and retires kinder briefly to de reah fur consultation, a-leabin’ fine mules stampedin’ ’roun’ an’ tryin’ ter tramp on my toes, dey needn’ wonder ef I swaps den an’ dar. ’Taint my nature to let no mule tramp ’roun’ over me. Wall, sur, in de scrimmage in Kentucky I swapped de mule fur a fine, gray mare. She wuz mighty good, but wuz kinder mixed gaited. I wuz ’fraid she mout be a knee-banger when I called on her fur speed in a close place, an’ yer know we hed ter come out’n Kentucky purty fas’, boss, purty fas’. We hed cross-firin’ ernuff frum de Yankees, widout bein’ mounted on a mare dat kep’ it up too! Wall, sur, at Mission’ry Ridge I swapped her off fer a black stallion thet come tearin’ out’n de ranks in de full regalier uv a colonel’s saddle, bridle an’ holster. An’ he wuz a good one, an’ I didn’ think he’d need any hobbles. I rid ’im a little while an’ den give ’im ter my colonel. It come so easy ter swap fer ’em I’d ruther do it den ter eat. Whilst de fight wuz goin’ on I’d be swappin’ hosses, an’ I’m black ef in de battle uv Stone Ribber I didn’ mouty nigh mount ebry man in de company. Whilst dey wuz fightin’ I wuz swappin’ hosses, an’ I done hit all frum one little ole bay mule. Ef de wah hed gone on much longer, I b’lieve I’d swapped Uncle Sam afoot.
“But yer ax me about close places. Wall, et warn’t allers a honeymoon. I b’lieves ’twuz in ’63, ennyway we wuz holdin’ back Gin’ral Blair’s corps, an’ Marse Josiah sont me through de enemy ter git ’im er new uniform. Bein’ a nigger, uv co’se I cud pass off fer ennything. I hed dem clo’es an’ wuz steppin th’u’ de ranks all right, when I run splank-dab up agin a reg’ment uv Yankees. I hed de good sense ter th’ow Colonel Josiah’s fine cloes ober in er thicket, an’ ’tend lak I wuz a Union nigger gwine ter meetin. Sez de colonel:
“‘You damned pair uv brackets, whar yer gwine?’
“‘Gwine ter meetin’, boss,’ sez I.
“‘Wall, we’re needin’ a teamster right now more’n you need salvation, so I guess we’ll get you to team a little for us.’
“‘Boss, I cain’t drive er waggin,’ sez I.
“‘Yer cain’t? Wal, we’ll call up er drumhead cote martial in de mawnin’ an’ see erbout it. Yer knows whut dat means, don’t yer?’
“‘Boss,’ sez I, ‘dat’ll jes fetch on mo’ talkin’ an’ sputin, so I’ll do de bes’ I kin ter drive er team.’
“I noticed de colonel wuz mounted on be finest black hoss I hed eber seen, an’ ez dey hed treated me so bad, I concluded den an’ dar I’d swap fer ’im. Dat night dey tuck me to haidquarters an’ made me sleep jes’ outside de colonel’s tent. I’d seed whar dey hed tethered de hoss down by de fence, so ’bout ’leben o’clock, I laid out by de tent, jes outside, and made lak I’d gone ter sleep. When all wuz quiet, I run my han’ under de tent an’ pulled ez easy ez I cud, twell I pulled out de colonel’s bridle. Den I pulled er little at er time twell I got de saddle and holsters, pistols an’ all. I slipped ’em off, put ’em on dat hoss, struck up de crick so ez ter keep frum bringin’ on enny furder talk wid de pickets, an’ I rid dat hoss inter camp, twenty odd miles away, in jes two hours. O, he wuz er dandy, saddle an’ all. Marse Josiah rid dat hoss mouty nigh two years, but I kep’ on a-swappin’.
“But de funnies’ thing happened down in Mississippi whilst we wuz fightin’ Sherman ’roun’ Jackson. Dar wuz er nigger dar named Torm. Torm, he wuz de body-servant ob de colonel ob er Tennessee reg’ment, an’ hed er mighty rep fer bein’ de bes’ furrager in camp. I didn’ ’fess ter bein’ much uv er furrager, but I know Torm cudn’ hold er candle ter me. Marse Josiah ’u’d laff an’ say:
The Forks and the famous old home of Jas. Jackson. He imported Glencoe and owned many famous racers.
“‘When Rube goes er-furragin’ you’d think we’d done struck de valley ob de Nile.’
“Wal, Sherman wuz keepin’ us purty hot, an’ grub wuz hard ter fin’. In our marchin’ one day I seed a mighty fine mud-lark ober in a farmer’s orchard.
“What’s a mud-lark,” I asked.
“Wal, a mud-lark in wah times,” said Uncle Rube, “is a fatt’nin’ shote, an’ I wanted dis one, but I wanted to tote fair wid Torm, an’ dat ebenin’ I ’proached ’im on de subjec’ uv gwine in partnership wid me an’ dervidin dat hawg up ’twixt our messes. Now, I knowed Torm w’u’d steal de repertashun ob er guvment mule, but when I proached ’im, you jes orter seed ’im git indignant an’ ’low he wuz er genl-mun an’ w’u’dn’ steal no hawg an’ er Christian, an’ all dat. Wall, sur, wheneber er man ’gins to fall back on his ’ligion, I know he’ll do ter watch. ’Sides dat, I nurver did b’lieve in bein’ too active in ercomplishin’ er thing when and gib you de proceeds. Somepin’ in Torm’s talk made me know he wuz gwine at dat berry hawg, so dat night I hid out in de bushes whar he hed ter pass, an’ sho nuff, ’bout midnight heah he come wid dat mud-lark on his back, all done scraped an’ cleaned fer de mess. When he got close ernuff I riz up an’ sez:
“‘Halt! Who goes dar?’
“I seed he thort he’d run inter er Yankee picket, an’ I pulled my gun—bang! bang! bang! Lord, you orter seed ’im drap dat hawg an’ come out’n de woods lak de ole gray hoss a-tearin’ down de wilderness. I tuck de hawg an’ put ’im in our chist, an’ de naix day Torm got me off, lookin’ mighty mournful, an’ ’lowed he wuz mouty nigh starved. Sez he, sheepishly.
“‘Brer Rube, arter I lef’ you, I prayed ober de thing, an’ de angel tole me whar I’d fin’ a fat mud-lark. I bagged ’im in good fashion an’ wuz comin’ home wid ’im when I run inter de whole Yankee army an’ come mouty nigh bein’ kilt, an’ den an’ dar I drapt de purties’ mud-lark dat ever sung in de cane-brakes.’
“Sez I: ‘Brer Torm, arter I lef’ you, I prayed ober de situation too, an’ I tole de angel I wuz crippled an’ c’u’dn’ do much myse’f, but dat I wuz mouty hungry an’ wanted a mud-lark. De righteous am nurver fursaken,’ sez I, ’an’ dat night he made a fool nigger go out an’ fotch me one to my very door.’
“I gin Torm a shoulder,’ laughed the old man, ’an’ he nurver talked no mo’ ’ligion ter me dat yeah.
“But ter show yer jes whut kin’ uv er furrager I kin be when I gits my han’ in,” he went on, “a week or so arter dat, we got clean out, an’ I went out ter git somepin ter eat. I c’u’dn’t fin’ nuffin but some bee hives in a farmyard. Wall, I wuz ez handy wid bees ez I wuz wid mud-larks, an’ de nex’ mawnin’ fo’ gallons ob lubly honey wuz in de haidquarters mess chists.
“De ole farmer raised Cain when he foun’ it out, an’ heah he come down to haidquarters nex’ mawnin to tell de majah. Wall, de majah, he tells de colonel, an’ de colonel he gits mouty mad. He draws de reg’ment up an’ makes ’em er speech, an’ he sez, sezee: ‘Enny man dat’ll rob his countryman am worse dan er dawg;’ an’ ef he c’u’d fin’ de man whut robbed de ole man’s bee-gums he’d hang ’im up by de thum’s. Wall, sur, he talked on twel he git so patriotic he issues er sarch warrant. De fust chist dey went in wuz his’n, an dar sot fo’ gallons ob lubly honey. De colonel looked dum’-founded at de majah, an’ de majah looked jes ez nachul at de colonel, an’ de ole farmer he looked lak he done los’ all ’spect he hed fer de Sudern Confedercy, and den de colonel, he sez ter de majah:
“‘Majah,’ sezee; ‘whyn’t yer tell me ole Rube wuz out furragin las’ night? I’d nurver let you issue dat d— little sarch warrant.’”
The opportunities of the Florence of to-day fills one with wonder and enthusiasm. Here, where once were woods, is a growing city, its manufactories covering the banks of a noble stream, which, with the two greatest railroads in the South—the Louisville & Nashville and the Southern—give it rates and an opportunity unsurpassed anywhere. It is as sure to be a great city as men are to see and hear. Here is the opportunity of a life for any young man who wishes to till the land or to build factories or stores.
But this part of it is all better told by Mr. Sweetland in another chapter herein, and I desist.—Ed. Trotwood.