"One day," said he, "I was waited on by a party of leading Nashville citizens, who remarked: 'Captain May, we know very well that you are with us in sentiment; but, as you come from the North, others, less intimate with you, desire some special assurance.' I replied: 'Gentlemen, by education, by instinct, and by association, I am a Southern man. But, gentlemen, when you fire upon that small bit of bunting known as the American flag, you can count me, by Heaven, as your persistent and uncompromising foe!' The committee intimated to me that the next train for the North started in one hour! You may stake your existence, sir, that the subscriber came away on that train. Confound a country, anyhow, where a man must wear a Secession cockade upon each coat-tail to keep himself from being kicked as an Abolitionist!"
Inexorable war knows no ties of friendship, of family, or of love. Its bitterest features were seen on the border, where brother was arrayed against brother, and husband against wife. At a little Missouri village, the Rebels raised their flag, but it was promptly torn down by the loyal wife of one of the leaders. I met a lady who had two brothers in the Union army, and two among Price's Rebels, who were likely soon to meet on the battle-field.
In St. Louis, a Rebel damsel, just about to be married, separated from her Union lover, declaring that no man who favored the Abolitionists and the "Dutch hirelings" could be her husband. He retorted that he had no use for a wife who sympathized with treason; and so the match was broken off.
Bitterness of Old Neighbors.
I knew a Union soldier who found at Camp Jackson, among the prisoners, his own brother, wounded by two Minié rifle balls. He said: "I am sorry my brother was shot; but he should not have joined the traitors!" Of course, the bitterness between relatives and old neighbors, now foes, was infinitely greater than between northerners and southerners. The same was true everywhere. How intensely the Virginia and Tennessee Rebels hated their fellow-citizens who adhered to the Union cause! Ohio and Massachusetts Loyalists denounced northern "Copperheads" with a malignity which they never felt toward South Carolinians and Mississippians.
St. Louis, May 20, 1861.
When South Carolina seceded, the slave property of Missouri was worth forty-five millions of dollars; hence she is under bonds to just that amount to keep the peace. With thirteen hundred miles of frontier, she is "a slave peninsula in an ocean of free soil." Free Kansas, which has many old scores to clear up, guards her on the west. Free Iowa, embittered by hundreds of Union refugees, watches her on the north. Free Illinois, the young giantess of the prairie, takes care of her on the east. This loyal metropolis, with ten Union regiments already under arms, is for her a sort of front-door police. Missouri, in the significant phrase of the frontier, is corraled.[10]
Here, at least, as The Richmond Whig, just before going over to the Rebels, so aptly said: "Secession is Abolitionism in its worst and most dangerous form."
Rebels glare upon Union men like chained wild beasts. Citizens, walking by night, remember the late assassinations, and, like Americans in Mexican towns, cast suspicious glances behind. Secessionists utter fierce threats; but since their recent severe admonition that Unionists, too, can use fire-arms, and that it is not discreet to attack United States soldiers, they do not execute them.
Captain Lyon, who commands, is an exceedingly prompt and efficient officer, attends strictly to his business, exhibits no hunger for newspaper fame, and seems to act with an eye single to the honor of the Government he has served so long and so faithfully.