I chanced one Saturday to go
TO OAKLAND,
quite a nice town then—now a great city. My brother had told me of an old friend of his over there, Judge McKee, and I called on him. I found him to be an intense Southerner. His wife was a Miss Davis, from Mississippi, a kinswoman of Jeff Davis, afterwards President of the Confederacy. It so happened that there was to be a gathering of young people at his house that night and they were all Southern people. Of course I was not slow to accept an invitation to remain over. Such a company of fire-eating Southerners I had no idea could be gotten together in California. All the talk was about secession. All the songs were of the South. I heard Dixie for the first time. I had been boarding with a New Bedford Yankee—an abolitionist, a South hater. It required only a hint on the part of my new friends to make a great change in my living. I went to Oakland College, selected a room, and two days later I was out of the great city and over the bay where every week I could visit my Southern friends and talk "secesh." The more we talked, of course, the madder I got and when the war broke out a few weeks later, the spirit of rebellion was hot within me. It was a time of great excitement and great danger. On a Friday night I went over to the city. The next morning as I was dressing, I thought I heard an unusual tone in the voices of the newsboys and I heard excited voices on the street and in the hotel. When I reached the sidewalk I heard the cry: "Here's the Morning Call! All about the great battle of Bull Run." "Federal troops falling back on Washington, pursued by the Rebel army. Rebel army marching on the Capital." My first impulse was to shout:
"HURRAH FOR JEFF DAVIS!"
Had I done so, I would have been torn to pieces by crowds surging through the streets. All business was suspended, the streets were jammed. I bought a paper and got out of the crowd as quickly as possible. I hardly stirred out of the office of my friend all day, so fearful was he that my mouth would get me into trouble. The next day I attended Dr. Scott's church (Presbyterian) where I frequently went because he was from New Orleans. His and the Methodist Church, South, were the only churches which did not have flag staffs on them. A mob gathered on Saturday night and burned the old doctor in effigy and wrapped the lamp posts and the front of the church in American flags. In the streets Sunday morning was a wild mob of several thousand. The house was packed with an immense audience of men—only two ladies present, one the wife of the preacher. The sermon was a plain gospel sermon, with no reference whatever to the surroundings. After the service a large company of police fought their way through the crowd at the head of the carriage which conveyed the preacher and his family. On the next steamer, the good man sailed for New York, where I afterwards learned, he was pastor of a Presbyterian church during the four years of the war. It is impossible for one who was not there, to conceive of the excitement. Dr. Scott had said nothing to provoke this outbreak, except at the meeting of his Presbytery, he protested against the custom then prevailing of putting flag staffs on the church buildings. Though I was a Baptist, I did not affiliate much with the people of my faith because they had gone into politics—the preacher's prayers and sermons being leveled against the South. O. P. Fitzgerald, now a Bishop in Nashville, was pastor of the little Methodist Church, South, in the city. He had regular appointments at Oakland in the afternoons. I became very fond of him and he knew me right well. When the Southern Baptist Convention met in Nashville some years ago, the aged Bishop was introduced to the body. After the close of the session I approached him with the remarks: "You never saw me before?" Instantly he replied: "Yes, sir, this is Crumpton. I knew you by your voice." It had been thirty years since we had met. In such an atmosphere as we breathed in California in those days, it is not strange that Southern sympathizers began laying plans and schemes for getting back South.
[Chapter Three]
A firm resolve broken; A layover at Pittsburg; At Beloit, Wis.; The fall of Fort Donelson.
