A Rebellion in Dixie

by Harry Castlemon

Leon Sprague was sixteen years old, and had been a raftsman all his life. He had but little education but much common sense, for schools were something that did not hold a high place in Jones county. In fact there had been but one school in the county since he could remember, and some of the boys took charge of that, and conducted themselves in a manner that drove the teacher away. Leon was a fine specimen of a boy, as he stood there listening to his father’s instructions—tall beyond[beyond] his years, and straight as one of the numerous pines that he had so often felled and rafted to Pascagoula bay. His countenance was frank and open—no one ever thought of doubting Leon’s word—but just now there was a scowl upon it as he listened to what his father had to say to him.

These people, the Spragues, were a little better off than most of those who followed their occupation, owning a nice little farm, four negroes, and a patch of timber-land from which they cut their logs and rafted them down to tide-water to furnish the masts for ocean-going vessels. His father and mother were simple-minded folks who thought they had everything that was worth living for, and they did not want to see the Government broken up on any pretext. The negro men worked the farm and their wives were busy in the house, which they kept as neat as a new pin. Just now the men had been butchering hogs in the woods, and were at work making hams and bacon of them. These negroes did not have an overseer—they did not know what it was. They went about their work bright and early, and when Saturday afternoon came they posted off to the nearest village to enjoy their half-holiday. They loved their master and mistress, and if anybody had offered them their freedom they would not have taken it.

In order that you may understand this story, boy reader, it is necessary that you should know something of the character of the inhabitants, and be able to bear in mind the nature of the country in which this Rebellion in Dixie took place, for it was as much of a rebellion as that in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Missouri, where men were shot and hanged for not believing as their neighbors did, and their houses were set on fire. They made up their minds at the start—as early as 1862—that they would not furnish any men for the Southern army; and, furthermore, they took good care to see that there was no drafting done in their county.

If you will take your atlas and turn to the map of Mississippi you will find Jones county in the southeastern part of the State, and about seventy-five miles north of Mobile, a port that was one of the last to be captured by the United States army. It comprised nearly twenty townships, the white population being 1482, a small chance, one would think, for people to live as they did for almost two years. The land was not fertile, “the entire region being made up of pine barrens and swamps, traversed by winding creeks, bordered by almost impenetrable thickets.” It was bounded on four sides by Jasper, Wayne, Perry and Covington counties, which were all loyal to the Confederacy, and it would seem that the people had undertaken an immense job to carry on a rebellion here in the face of such surroundings. The inhabitants were, almost to a man, opposed to the war. They were lumbermen, who earned a precarious living by cutting the pine trees and rafting them to tide-water, which at that time was found on Pascagoula bay. They had everything that lumbermen could ask for, and they did not think that any effort to cut themselves loose from the North would result in any glory to them. They could not get any more for their timber than they were getting now, and why should they consent to go into the army and fight for principles that they knew nothing about?

Of course, this county was divided against itself, as every other county was that laid claim to some Union and some Confederate inhabitants. There were men among them who had their all invested there, and they did not think these earnest people were pursuing the right course. These were the secessionists, but they were very careful about what they said, although they afterward found opportunities to put their ideas into practice. When General Lowery was sent with a strong force to crush out this rebellion he was met by a stubborn resistance, and some of these Confederates, who were seen and recognized by their Union neighbors, were afterward shot to pay them for the part they had carried out in conducting the enemy to their place of retreat. Taken altogether, it was such a thing as nobody had ever heard of before, but the way these lumbermen went about it proclaimed what manner of men they were. It seemed as if the Confederacy could run enough men in there to wipe out the Jones County Republic before they could have time to organize their army; but for all that the inhabitants were determined to go through with it. They held many a long talk with one another when they met on the road or in convention at Ellisville, and there wasn’t a man who was in favor of joining the Confederacy, the secessionists wisely keeping out of sight.

Things went on in this way for a year or more, during which the lumbermen talked amazingly, but did nothing. Finally Fort Sumter was fired upon, and afterward came the disastrous battle of Bull Run, and then the Confederates began to gain a little courage. They knew the South was going to whip, and these battles confirmed them in the belief; but the raftsmen did not believe it. In 1862, when the Confederate Congress passed the act of conscription, which compelled those liable to do military duty to serve in the army, the lumbermen grew in earnest, and a few of them got together in Ellisville and talked the matter over. The market for their logs had long ago been broken up, and some of them were beginning to feel the need of something to eat; and when one of their number proposed, more as a joke than anything else, that they should cast their fortunes with the Confederates, and so be able to go down to tide-water and get some provisions, the motion was hooted down in short order. There were not enough people there to hold a convention, and so the matter was postponed, some of the wealthy ones who owned horses being selected to ride about the county and inform every one that the matter had gone far enough—that they were going to hold a meeting and see what the lumbermen thought of taking the county out of the State of Mississippi. Leon and his father were two of those chosen, and they were just getting ready to start on their journey.

“I don’t know as I ought to send that boy out at all, Mary,” said Mr. Sprague, when he arrived at home that night after the convention had been decided upon. “I have never seen Leon in trouble and I don’t know how he will act; but the boys down to Ellisville seemed determined to let him go, and I never said a word about it.”

“I think you have seen Leon in trouble a half a dozen times,” said his wife, who was prompt to side with her son. “The time that Tom Howe came so near being smashed up with those logs down there in the bend—I guess he was in trouble then, wasn’t he?”

“But that was with logs; it wasn’t with men,” said Mr. Sprague. “Yes, Leon was pretty plucky that day, and when all the boys cheered him I didn’t say a word, although I had an awkward feeling of pride around my heart, I tell you.”

Leon and three or four other fellows of light build were frequently called upon to start a jam of logs which had filled up the stream so full that the timber could not move. A hasty glance at the jam would show them the log that was to blame for it, and armed with an ax and bare-footed the boys would leap upon the raft and go out to it. A few hasty blows would start the jam, and the timber rushing by with the speed of a lightning express train, the boys would make their way back to the shore, jumping from one log to another. Sometimes they did not get back without a ducking. On the occasion referred to Tom went out alone, and after he had been there some minutes without starting the jam, Leon was sent out to assist him. Two axes were better than one, and in a few minutes the timber was started. It came with a rush, too, but Tom was just a moment too late. The log upon which he had been chopping shot up into the air fully twenty feet, and when it came down it struck the log on which Tom was standing and soused him head over heels in the water; but before he went he felt somebody’s around him. It was Leon Sprague’s arm, for the latter struck the water almost as soon as he did. Leon came up a moment afterward with Tom hanging limp and lifeless in his arms, and heard the cheers of the “boys” ringing in his ears, but had to go down again to escape the onward rush of the logs which were coming toward him with almost railroad speed. By going down in this way and swimming lustily whenever the logs were far enough away to admit of it, Leon succeeded in landing about half a mile below, and hauling his senseless burden out on the bank. Tom could swim—there were few boys on the stream that could beat him at that—but when that log came down on him it well nigh knocked it all out. Leon’s father never said a word. He walked up and gave the boy’s hand a hearty shake, and that was the last of it. Leon had the opportunity of knowing, as soon as Tom came to himself, that he had made a life-long friend by his last half-hour’s operations.