There were many genuine Rebels whose eyes glared at us with the hatred of caged tigers. Externally decorous, they would remark, ominously, that they hoped our soldiers would not irritate the people, lest it should deluge the streets with blood. They proposed fabulous wagers that Sterling Price's troops could whip the whole Union army; circulated daily reports that the Confederates had recaptured New Orleans and Nashville, and talked mysteriously about the fatality of the yellow fever, and the prospect that it would soon break out.
Gladness shone from the eyes of all the negroes. Their dusky faces were radiant with welcome, and many women, turbaned in bright bandanas, thronged the office of the provost-marshal, applying for passage to the North. We found Memphis as torpid as Syria, where Yusef Browne declared that he saw only one man exhibit any sign of activity, and he was engaged in tumbling from the roof of a house! But stores were soon opened, and traders came crowding in from the North. Most of them were Jews.
Everywhere we saw the deep eyes and pronounced features of that strange, enterprising people. I observed one of them, with the Philistines upon him, marching to the military prison. The pickets had caught him with ten thousand dollars' worth of boots and shoes, which he was taking into Dixie. He bore the miscarriage with great philosophy, bewailing neither his ducats nor his daughter, his boots nor his liberty—smiling complacently, and finding consolation in the vilest of cigars. But in his dark, sad eye was a gleam of latent vengeance, which he doubtless wreaked upon the first unfortunate customer who fell into his clutches after his release.
Glancing at the guests who crowded the dining-hall of the Gayoso, one might have believed that the lost tribes of Israel were gathering there for the Millennium.
Grant Orders Away the Jews.
Many of them engaged in contraband traffic, supplying the Rebels with food, and even with ammunition. Some months after, these very gross abuses induced Grant to issue a sweeping ukase expelling all Jews from his department—an order which the President wisely countermanded.
The Rebel authorities had destroyed all the cotton, sugar, and molasses they could find; but these articles now began to emerge from novel hiding-places. One gentleman had fifty bales of cotton in his closed parlor. Hundreds of bales were concealed in the woods, in lofts, and in cellars. Much sugar was buried. One man, entombing fifteen hogsheads, neglected to throw up a mound to turn off the water; when he dug for his sugar, its linked sweetness was too long drawn out! The hogsheads were empty.
On the 17th of June, a little party of Union officers came galloping into the city from the country. They were evidently no gala-day soldiers. Their sun-browned faces, dusty clothing, and jaded horses bespoke hard campaigns and long marches.
One horseman, in a blue cap and plain blouse, bore no mark of rank, but was noticeable for the peculiar brilliancy of his dark, flashing eye. This modest soldier was Major-General Lew. Wallace; and his division arrived a few hours after. He established his quarters at the Gayoso, in the same apartments which had been occupied successively by four Rebel commanders, Pillow, Polk, Van Dorn, and Price.
A Rebel Paper Supervised.