Riding southward along the eastern side of the mountain, we commenced the ascent of it by a steep, rough road, winding among forest-trees, and huge limestone rocks colored with exquisite tints of brown and gray and green, by the moss and lichens that covered them. A range of precipitous crags rose before us, and soon hung toppling over us as we continued to climb. A heavy cloud was on the mountain, combed by the pine-tops a thousand feet above our heads.
As we proceeded, I conversed with the General’s orderly. He was a good-looking young fellow with short curly hair and a sallow complexion. I inquired to what regiment he belonged.
“The Sixth Ohio, colored.” I looked at him with surprise. “You didn’t take me for a colored man, I reckon,” he said laughingly.
I thought he must be jesting, but he assured me that he was not.
“I was born in bondage,” he said, “near Memphis. My master was my father, and my mother’s owner. He made a will that she was to be free, and that I was to learn a trade, and have my freedom when I was twenty-one. He died when I was seven years old, and the estate was divided between his mother and two sisters. I don’t know what became of the will. I was run off into Middle Tennessee and sold for three hundred dollars. I was sold again when I was fourteen for sixteen hundred dollars. I was a carpenter; and carpenters was high. When I saw other men no whiter than me working for themselves and enjoying their freedom, I got discontented, and made up my mind to put out. The year Buchanan run for President I run for freedom. I got safe over into Ohio, and there I worked at my trade till the war broke out. I went out as an officer’s servant.”
He met with various adventures, and at length became General Grant’s body-servant. He described the General as “a short, chunked man, like a Dutchman;” quiet, kind, a great smoker, a heavy drinker, very silent, and seldom excited. “There was only one time when he appeared troubled in his mind. That was on the road to Corinth, after the battle of Shiloh. He used to walk his room all night.”
After the government began to make use of colored troops he went back to Ohio and enlisted. Since the war closed, he had obtained a furlough, returned to his native place, and found his mother, who in the mean time had been held as a slave.
The clouds lifted as we reached the summit of the mountain, fifteen hundred feet above the river. We passed through Summer Town, a deserted village, formerly a place of resort for families from Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, during the hot season. A rough road over the rocks and through the woods took us to Point Lookout, a mile farther north.
A lookout indeed! What cloud shadows were sweeping the mountains and valleys! We left our horses tied to some trees, and clambered down over the ledges to the brink of the precipice. Away on the northeast was Chattanooga, with its clusters of roofs resembling saw-teeth. Below us was the crooked Tennessee, sweeping up to the base of the mountain, in a coil enclosing on the opposite side a foot-shaped peninsula, to which the Indians gave the appropriate name of Moccasin Point.
Immediately beneath us, on a shelf of the mountain, between its river-washed base and the precipice on which we stood, was the scene of Hooker’s famous “battle in the clouds.” The Rebels occupied a cleared space on that tremendous elevation. Behind them rose the crags; before them gloomed the woods, covering the lower part of the mountain. Along the cleared space, between the woods and the crags, ran their line of stone breastworks, which still remained, looking like a common farm-wall. The enemy had heavy guns on the summit of the mountain, but they could not be got into position, or sufficiently depressed, to be of service. Beside, the summit, on the morning of the attack, was immersed in mist, which concealed everything. The mist did not envelop the scene of the fight, however, but hung over it; so that the “battle in the clouds” was in reality a battle under the clouds.