A few miles from here, at a cross roads, is a guide-board: "☞ 15 miles to Liberty." If liberty were indeed but fifteen miles away, the stars to-night would see a thousand negroes dancing on the way thither; old men with their wives and bundles; young men with their sweethearts; little barefooted children, all singing in their hearts:
"De day ob jubilee hab come, ho ho!"
On the march hither we passed a little, contemptible, tumble-down, seven-by-nine frame school-house. Over the door, in large letters, were the words:
Central Academy.
The boys laughed and said: "If this is called an academy, what sort of things must their common school-houses be?" But Tennessee is a beautiful State. All it lacks is free schools and freemen.
31. Colonel Keifer, in command of four hundred men, started with ninety wagons for Nashville. He will repair the railroad in two or three places and return with provisions.
APRIL, 1862.
3. Struck our tents and started south, at two o'clock this afternoon; marched fifteen miles and bivouacked for the night.