Scores of suspected persons were brought before it daily, and, if they could not exculpate themselves, sentenced to banishment, with head half shaved, to whipping, or to death. Though, by the laws of all slave States, negroes were precluded from testifying against white men, this inquisition received their evidence. My friend dared not avow that he was coming North, but purchased a ticket for St. Louis, which was then deemed a Rebel stronghold.
A Horrible Spectacle in Arkansas.
As the steamer passed Osceola, Arkansas, he saw the body of a man hanging by the heels, in full view of the river. A citizen told him that it had been there for eight days; that the wretched victim, upon mere suspicion of tampering with slaves, was suspended, head downward, and suffered intensely before death came to his relief.
All on board the crowded steamboat pretended to be Secessionists. But when, at last, nearing Cairo, they saw the Stars and Stripes, first one, then another, began to huzza. The enthusiasm was contagious; and in a moment nearly all, many with heaving breasts and streaming eyes, gave vent to their long-suppressed feeling in one tumultuous cheer for the Flag of the Free. Of the one hundred and fifty passengers, nearly every man was a fleeing Unionist.
The all-pervading railroad and telegraph in the North began to show their utility in war. Cairo, the extreme southern point of Illinois, now garrisoned by Union troops, was threatened by the enemy. The superintendent of the Illinois Central Railway (including branches, seven hundred and four miles in length) assured me that, at ten hours' notice, he could start, from the various points along his line, four miles of cars, capable of transporting twenty-four thousand soldiers.
Patriotism of the Northwest.
The Rebels now began to perceive their mistake in counting upon the friendship of the great Northwest. Indeed, of all their wild dreams, this was wildest. They expected the very States which claimed Mr. Lincoln as from their own section, and voted for him by heavy majorities, to help break up the Union because he was elected! Though learning their delusion, they never comprehended its cause. After the war had continued nearly a year, The New Orleans Delta said:
"The people of the Northwest are our natural allies, and ought to be fighting on our side. It is the profoundest mystery of these times how the few Yankee peddlers and school-marms there have been able to convert them into our bitter enemies."
On the mere instinct of nationality—the bare question of an undivided republic—the West would perhaps fight longer, and sacrifice more, than any other section. Its people, if not more earnest, are much more demonstrative than their eastern brethren. Their long migration from the Atlantic States to the Mississippi, the Missouri, or the Platte, has quickened and enlarged their patriotism. It has made our territorial greatness to them no abstraction, but a reality.
No one else looks forward with such faith and fervor to that great future when man shall "fill up magnificently the magnificent designs of Nature;" when their Mississippi Valley shall be the heart of mightiest empire; when, from all these mingling nationalities, shall spring the ripe fruitage of free schools and free ballots, in a higher average Man than the World has yet seen.