“You’ll feel better about it in the morning, George—you will get over the shock. And then, too, remember that those who are behind the fortifications may be ordered at any time to make a charge, which would be more dangerous than the work you are now doing. But think about it; and if in the morning you would rather go back to your regiment, I will have the change made.”
The next morning George was all right, and he continued to drive for me until after Vicksburg was taken.
MEETING A REBEL WOMAN AT NASHVILLE.
THERE was great rejoicing over the fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. The gunboats and transport vessels were pressing on to Nashville, which was occupied by the Union army soon after the fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. I went up on the first transport.
The women were mostly left behind in the scramble to get out of the city, and they were more intense in war spirit and partisan feeling than the men. In the heat of the excitement the chief hotel was thronged with both parties, where I took lodgings. The women sung ditties about Beauregard and Davis before the door of my bedroom till midnight, at intervals.
The great parlor of the hotel was a scene of the utmost confusion, judging from the tumult of angry voices.
The women blamed the men about them. “Every man who is able to bear arms ought to be ashamed to be seen outside of a war-camp in days like these,” was the sharp rejoinder of a woman to her husband. I did not hear his answer, but suppose from her reply that he said he would only be throwing away his life.
“Throwing away your life, indeed! A man that is not true to our cause at such a time ought not to live.”
Some one was sitting at the piano, and banged the keys of the instrument in wildest fury to drown the sound of the contentions.