“Fellow-Citizens: This is not the time for speaking, but for action. It is a time when every man should enlist for the war. Not a day is to be lost. We had only ten thousand effective men, who fought four days and nights against forty thousand of the enemy. But nature could hold out no longer. The men required rest, and having lost one third of my gallant force I was compelled to retire. We have left a thousand of the enemy dead on the field. General Johnston has not slept a wink for three nights; he is all worn out, but he is acting wisely. He is going to entice the Yankees into the mountain gaps, away from the rivers and the gunboats, and then drive them back, and carry the war into the enemy’s country.”[7]
General Johnston’s army, retreating from Bowling Green, began to pass through the city. The soldiers did not stop, but passed on towards the South. The people had thought that General Johnston would defend the place, the capital of the State; but when they saw that the troops were retreating, they recklessly abandoned their homes. It was a wild night in Nashville. The Rebels had two gunboats nearly completed, which were set on fire. The Rebel storehouses were thrown open to the poor people, who rushed pell-mell to help themselves to pork, flour, molasses, and sugar. A great deal was destroyed. After Johnston’s army had crossed the river, the beautiful and costly wire suspension bridge which spanned it was cut down. It cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and belonged to the daughters of the Rebel General Zollicoffer, who was killed at the battle of Mill Springs in Kentucky. The Rebel officers undertook to carry off the immense supplies of food which had been accumulated; but in the panic, barrels of meat and flour, sacks of coffee, hogsheads of sugar were rolled into the streets and trampled into the mire. Millions of dollars’ worth were lost to the Confederacy. The farmers in the country feared that they would lose their slaves, and from all the section round they hurried the poor creatures towards the South, hoping to find a place where they would be secure.
Throughout the South there was gloom and despondency. But all over the North there was great rejoicing. Everybody praised the brave soldiers who had fought so nobly. There were public meetings, speeches, processions, illuminations and bonfires, and devout thanksgivings to God.
The deeds of the brave men of the West were praised in poetry and song. Some stanzas were published in the Atlantic Monthly in Boston, which are so beautiful that I think you will thank me for quoting them.
“O gales that dash the Atlantic’s swell
Along our rocky shores,
Whose thunders diapason well
New England’s glad hurrahs,
“Bear to the prairies of the West
The echoes of our joy,
The prayer that springs in every breast,—
‘God bless thee, Illinois!’
“O awful hours, when grape and shell
Tore through the unflinching line!
‘Stand firm! remove the men who fell!
Close up, and wait the sign.’
“It came at last, ‘Now, lads, the steel!’
The rushing hosts deploy;
‘Charge, boys!’—the broken traitors reel,—
Huzza for Illinois!
“In vain thy rampart, Donelson,
The living torrent bars,
It leaps the wall, the fort is won,
Up go the Stripes and Stars.
“Thy proudest mother’s eyelids fill,
As dares her gallant boy,
And Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill
Yearn to thee, Illinois.”