On Monday morning, at ten o’clock, a part of the prisoners left Corinth, for Columbus, Mississippi. Wherever the cars stopped, the wildest excitement prevailed.
“How goes the day?” was the constant inquiry.
We were exhibited as some of the trophies of the battle. That the people were somewhat divided, could easily be perceived from their countenances. On the evening of the same day, we arrived at Columbus, and there we were placed under a heavy guard, in an old warehouse; but the ex-Governor of Mississippi came to the prison, and took us to the hotel, where we enjoyed supper at his expense. There the crowd gathered round us as though we were some mammoth traveling menagerie, while our hostess kept commenting earnestly upon our handsome appearance, that, in spite of my longitudinal neck and limbs, I began to suspect myself worthy the compliment. While under guard here, I heard men declaring most unequivocally their opposition to a Republican form of government. Two ministers who visited me—Rev. Doctor Tensley, of the First Baptist Church, and Rev. Mr. Morris, of the M. E. Church South—expressed but little confidence in the Confederate cause. These gentlemen invited me to their church on Sabbath, but the force of circumstances compelled me to decline the invitation. These circumstances were, close confinement under a heavy guard; and of this fact they were perfectly aware. I was led from this to believe that their sympathy was not genuine.
After the ministers left me, a deaf and dumb man came to the door, and handed me a paper which contained an article relative to the recent battle of Shiloh. The account began in the following self-gratulatory style: “Glory! glory! glory! Victory! victory! I write from Yankee paper.” The writer proceeded in his intense and heated manner by saying, “Of all the victories that have ever been on record, ours is the most complete. Their repulse at Bull Run was nothing to compare to our victory at Shiloh. General Buell is killed, and General Grant wounded and taken prisoner. Soon we will prove too much for them, and they will be compelled to let us alone. Our brave boys have driven them to the river, and compelled them to flee to their gunboats. The day is ours.”
The mute who had given me the paper was so permeated with the prospect of rebel success, that he favored hoisting the black flag, and in this was sustained by a large number in that neighborhood. As the news came slowly in, the comments made on the state of affairs were as various as they were amusing. Only through the friendship and ingenuity of the slaves, who were the attaches of the prison, were we privileged to receive papers giving the account of the recent fight. When they learned the true condition of their army after the battle, and realized that their boasted victory was a bloody defeat, they became more charitable in their opinions. I became well satisfied from the conversation I overheard from rebel officers and visitors, during my incarceration here, that a favorite doctrine of Dixie is to adjust their “peculiar institution” in such a way as to include the poor whites as well as the colored people as chattel property.
I was here visited by two rebel captains belonging to Bushrod Johnston’s staff, one of whom was a lawyer from Virginia, named McMoore. These men converged freely on the times. Both of them expressed themselves as decidedly in favor of an American Aristocracy! They argued, with as much earnestness and ability as their vocabulary furnished words, the imbecility of Republican government; and to prove the immutability of their opinions, cited to me the semi-idiotic and degraded “clay-eaters” of the South, saying:
“What do these men know of civil institutions, and what right have they to vote?”
Said I, “Gentlemen, is it possible that this is the faith of your leaders?”
They replied emphatically in the affirmative.
“Then, sirs, we of the North have not been mistaken on a subject which has been forcing itself upon us as a fact, but which we were loth to believe could harbor itself even in the basest American heart. Since you are frank enough to own it, certainly the world should know it, and execrate it as it deserves.”