"Why," he said, "we are indebted to the North for everything." While he was speaking he held a pocket-knife in his hand; holding it up he said:
"This knife comes from the North; the hats and clothes we wear, the shoes on our feet, every piece of furniture in this room," and, pointing to an adjoining room, where one of the ladies was quietly engaged in preparing the tea-table for our entertainment, "the ware on that table, out there; and the farmer gets all the tools North to work the farm that supplies the food we eat." Then with an expression of disgust: "Even the spades that dig our graves, and the coffins we are buried in, come from the North."
Here Miss Maggie felt impelled to speak a word in defense of her native South, observing:
"But, Mr. Brownlow, they haven't any better minds or people in the North; it's only their educational facilities that give them this advantage."
This gave me an opportunity to say that "the North didn't have any clearer heads than Mr. Brownlow's, nor any sweeter ladies than I had seen in Tennessee."
The Parson didn't even smile at this attempt at flattery, but kept on in the same strain, reciting some of his experiences while in the prison at Knoxville, only one or two of which I can recite.
That which made the greatest impression on my mind was the interview of a young girl with her aged father the morning of the day set for his execution, as one of the bridge-burning conspirators. The Parson's manner was at all times serious, but his story of the heart-breaking farewell of the daughter to an aged father, and its effect upon the one hundred other suspects who were confined with him, and who were obliged to witness the scene, is beyond the powers of my pen to describe.
The one redeeming feature of it was—the rough-talking Parson, acting in the character of a minister, endeavored to soothe the heart-broken daughter as he could in the most comforting words for an hour, alternately praying and talking, amid the sobs of the hardy mountaineers who were witnesses to it all.
The Parson said it occurred to him, as a matter of policy, in order to separate them, and not with any hope of success, he suggested sending a message to Jeff Davis in the name of the daughter, begging a pardon for her aged father—her only dependence in the world. The execution was to occur at 4 P. M., and he had purposely delayed mentioning this last hope that she might have all the time that was possible of the last hours with her father. It was 2 P. M. when he wrote with his pencil, on a leaf torn from his note book, a brief dispatch addressed to Jeff Davis, craving his mercy and a pardon for her old father. The girl herself took it to the telegraph office, which was in the same square with the jail; the kind-hearted telegraphers interested themselves in her behalf, and rushed her message through to Richmond, not expecting a reply, as there was but an hour or so left; when, to the surprise and delight of every person, probably without an exception, a message was promptly returned by Mr. Davis commuting the sentence to imprisonment at Tuscaloosa during the war.
I am glad to be able to record this fact in favor of Mr. Davis. I believe it may also be set down to his credit that much of the persecution of Unionists, and the brutal punishment of the same, was without his knowledge. It has been said that if Mr. Davis has been consistent in anything more than another, it has been in his life-long devotion to his principle of State rights or local self-government. Yet one has to wonder how his relentless attitude toward the coerced Unionists of East Tennessee is to be explained.