The loyalty of the southern Unionists was intense. One Tennessean, whose hair was white with age, was taken before Major Carrington, the Provost-Marshal, who said to him:
"You are so old that I have concluded to send you home, if you will take the oath."
"Sir," replied the prisoner, "if you knew me personally, I should think you meant to insult me. I have lived seventy years, and, God helping me, I will not now do an act to embitter the short remnant of my life, and one which I should regret through eternity. I have four boys in the Union army; they all went there by my advice. Were I young enough to carry a musket I would be with them to-day fighting against the Rebellion."
The sturdy old Loyalist at last died in prison.
There were many kindred cases. Nearly all the men of this class confined with us were from mountain regions of the South. Many were ragged, all were poor. They very seldom heard from their families. They were compelled to live solely upon the prison rations, often a perpetual compromise with starvation. Some had been in confinement for two or three years, and their homes desolated and burned. Unlike the North, they knew what war meant.
Yet the lamp of their loyalty burned with inextinguishable brightness. They never denounced the Government, which sometimes neglected them to a criminal degree. They never desponded, through the gloomiest days, when imbecility in the Cabinet and timidity in the field threatened to ruin the Union Cause. They seldom yielded an iota of principle to their keepers. Hungry, cold, and naked—waiting, waiting, waiting, through the slow months and years—often sick, often dying, they continued true as steel. History has few such records of steadfast devotion. Greet it reverently with uncovered head, as the Holy of Holies in our temple of Patriotism!
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
——One fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights.