The following story was related to me by a Northern man, who had been twenty-five years settled in Eastern Georgia:—
“My neighbors were too much frightened to do anything well and in good order. But I determined I’d save as much of my property as I could drive on its own feet or load on to wagons. I took two loads of goods, and all my cattle and hogs, and run ’em off twenty miles into Screven County. I found a spot of rising ground covered with gall bushes, in the middle of a low, wet place. I went through water six inches deep, got to the knoll, cut a road through the bushes, run my wagons in, and stuck the bushes down into the wet ground where I had cut them. They were six or eight feet high, and hid everything. My cattle and hogs I turned off in a bushy field. After that, I went to the house of a poor planter and staid. That was Friday night.
“Sunday, the soldiers came. I lay hid in the woods, and saw ’em pass close by the knoll where my goods were, running in their bayonets everywhere. The bushes were green yet, and they didn’t discover anything, though they passed right by the edge of them.
“All at once I heard the women of the house scream murder. Thinks I, ‘It won’t do for me to be lying here looking out only for my own interests, while the soldiers are abusing the women.’ I crawled out of the bushes, and was hurrying back to the house, when five cavalrymen overtook me. They put their carbines to my head, and told me to give ’em my money.
“As soon as I’d got over my fright a little, I said, ‘Gentlemen, I’ve got some Confederate money, but it will do you no good.’
“’Give me your pistol,’ one said. I told him I had no pistol. They thought I lied, for they saw something in my pocket; but come to snatch it out, it was only my pipe. Then they demanded my knife.
“’I’ve nothing but an old knife I cut my tobacco with;—you won’t take an old man’s knife!’
“They let me go, and I hurried on to the house. It was full of soldiers. I certainly thought something dreadful was happening to the women; but they were screeching because the soldiers were carrying off their butter and honey and corn-meal. They were making all that fuss over the loss of their property; and I thought I might as well have stayed to watch mine.
“That night the army camped about a mile from there; and the next morning I rode over to see if I could get a safeguard for the house. But the officers said no;—they were bound to have something to eat. I went back, and left my horse at the door while I stepped in to tell the women if they wished to save anything that was left they must hide it. Before I could get out again my horse was taken. I went on after it; the army was on the march again, and I was told if I would go with it all day, I should have my horse come night. I marched a few miles, but got sick of it, and went back. I could see big fires in the direction of my house, and I knew that the town was burning.
“I got back to the poor planter’s house, and found a new misfortune had happened to him. The night before, all his hogs and mine came together to his door,—the soldiers having let the fences down. ‘This won’t do,’ I said; ‘I’m going to make another effort to save my hogs.’ But he was true Southern; he hadn’t energy; he said, ‘No use!’ and just sat still. I tolled my hogs off with corn, and scattered corn all about in the bushes to keep them there. The next day it was hot, and they lay in the shade to keep cool; so the soldiers didn’t find them.