“I have great confidence in your ability to command success, and am sure the darkies have a wholesome respect for the same. So, wishing you all success, I also bid you good-day.”
The General now called more frequently upon the white people along the way, but soon found them anticipating his coming and ready to join him soon; forming quite an escort of cavalry as they proceeded.
It was two o’clock and intensely hot when they arrived at Sommer Hill, and found about one hundred and fifty men grouped in the shade of two wide-spreading oak trees near a church there, and around a grog shop opposite.
The General’s arrival was greeted with three cheers, three times repeated, and three “tigers;” and the men, anxious to do him honor, pressed around his carriage to shake his hand and assure him that they still cherished the recollections of his gallantry on behalf of the “lost cause.”
Though quite animated, this scene was brief, for courteously declining the scores of invitations to “drink,” General Baker informed his followers that the call to duty was still more imperative to his mind than those to eat or drink, and he must hasten forward to consult with his clients before the hour for court arrived.
Directing them to remain there till signaled, and to keep an outlook from the brow of the hill overlooking Baconsville, two miles away, he bravely rode thitherward entirely unattended, notwithstanding the earnest protestations of his numerous friends.
“So brave a man who can decline such entreaties to drink, and as gracefully as the General did, ought to be at the head of a temperance society,” said a young man, lounging near the church.
“That’s so, Jimminy!” replied a comrade. “Wonder if he isn’t.”
“I’m afraid not. I suppose he takes his wine, and probably something stronger sometimes; though he wants a cool head now. I wish those fellows over there wouldn’t drink so. I’m for breaking up the nigger militia; but we want cool heads for it. We can scare the niggers out of it if we work it right, and all keep sober.”