Charlotte told me the story as she had it from the sable “cloud of witnesses” that pervaded every Southern household, ending the recital with the wise remark, “We didn’t hide them spoons none too soon.”
“Bombs bursting in air” every few days gave assurance that the “guerrillas,” as a hastily organized band of rowdies and bullies, that hovered on the outskirts of the town, chose to style themselves, had “run in and fired off and run out again,” making just enough demonstration to call a return fire from the gunboats and scare everybody in town. These occurrences became so frequent that scarce a day passed that we did not hear, either of an intended raid by the “guerillas,” or the hissing and explosion of bombs, with shudders of unutterable agony for the safety of aged and defenseless friends.
The towns-people actually made excavations in their yards and covered them with planks for refuge in a bombardment. Some of the plank coverings were struck and shattered by fiery missiles, so the wretched inhabitants had to dig tunnels by which they could obtain shelter beyond the covered entrance. Plans and diagrams for these were passed around, and neighbor helped neighbor in the life-saving work. It was a terrible state of things, no military organization at hand to control the rowdy element on the Confederate side, and the Federals claiming to have no other way of putting a stop to these senseless raids except by firing from their gunboats.
In the midst of these occurrences, which we viewed from a safe distance, I was startled one day by seeing a man dressed in the striped and numbered garb of a convict enter the gates. He hurriedly explained to my husband that the doors of the penitentiary at Baton Rouge had been thrown open by military order, and the convicts freed, with injunctions to report at headquarters and enlist.
I do not know how many inmates there were, but the people of the town were terrified to find the whole criminal gang of the State turned loose upon their streets. The man who sought to escape the Federal service as well as the jurisdiction of the prison was a South Carolinian, who in a sudden burst of passion had made himself amenable to the law. He begged to be supplied with citizen’s clothing and transportation beyond the limits of the State, so that he could reach his home. We opened trunk after trunk that had been left at Arlington for safe-keeping, by men long gone to the front, to find a suit that would fit the slender, under-sized man. At last we succeeded, and gave him my little boy’s only hat, as the one that best fitted, and with its broad brim somewhat concealed his face, bleached from long confinement in the cotton-factory. A slight change of clothing was also provided in an improvised traveling-bag. My husband advanced him the needful funds, loaned him a pony, and gave minute directions as to the safest road to Camp Moore, where he could leave the animal and board the train that would quickly carry him toward his old home. When warned to be very cautious lest he be apprehended on the road, and not to carry anything on his person that could betray him, with moistened eyes and quivering lip he drew from his pocket and handed me a package of photographs of his little children and a bundle of letters the only things he turned back for when the portals of the prison were opened. “I can not tell you what a gift you are sending to my wife when you put me on the road to home; read these, they will tell you.” We stood on the back piazza at early dawn and watched the retreating form of that happy man until it disappeared from sight—then burned the unread letters and the thumbed and worn photographs.
Twenty years after, we heard from him as quietly and peacefully living in Carolina, surrounded by his family.
CHAPTER IV.
WILLY’S ERRAND—BRECKENRIDGE’S MESSAGE—THE RAW RECRUITS.
Taxes had to be paid on plantations in Mississippi. Federal gunboats cut off the usual means of communication. From New Orleans to Baton Rouge, and from Cairo to Vicksburg, they were in undisturbed possession. So we were compelled to send a messenger by land to Greenville, some distance beyond Vicksburg. I well remember how carefully Willy, a boy of fourteen, very bright and manly, though small for his age, was prepared for the undertaking. He had never been through the country. So he had a memorandum given him, how far and by what road to go the first day, and that would bring him to a certain house where my husband was known; he was to tell who he was and who sent him “on an errand,” but on no account to divulge the nature of his errand, and “die” before he told about the money he had on his person!
Day after day his route was mapped out; he was told what to say, what not to say, and where to stop each night; at Greenville to pay the clerk of the court the fifteen hundred dollars he had belted around his waist, get a receipt, and return home.
Willy was an orphan, whose entire family had died of yellow fever in New Orleans; a bright, intelligent boy, with only the little education we had been able to give him before the schools were closed and people’s minds turned to more exciting things; he was so apt and faithful that we confided many things to his care, though of course he had never been trusted to the extent of a four days’ journey on horseback with a large amount of money in his keeping. Even if we had found a man to send, he was liable to conscription on the road, so we had to depend on the boy’s natural shrewdness, willingness to obey orders implicitly, and diminutive size, to help us.