It brought the Parson out, and for a moment or two the air was thick with such elegant epithets as, "Hell-deserving scoundrels, white-livered villains," etc.
"I've not been on speaking terms with Johnson for thirty years, but I know it's a lie."
He was cautioned by his wife not to give expression to his views so freely. When I reminded them that the matter was public talk, and even printed throughout the South, the old fellow broke out in a new place:
"Oh yes, I know the Postmaster at Knoxville delivered the letters addressed to Johnson to a certain party here who is known to be in the employ of Wigfall of Texas."
That was enough for me. I was prepared to believe that Wigfall and his crowd would stoop to forgery, or anything else, to do a Southern Union man an injury. Wigfall was especially vindictive towards Johnson, as will be remembered.
If Brownlow had not been talking in the same strain to everybody about his Union sentiments, even while he was a prisoner, I should have felt from his free, outspoken manner toward me, every time I met him, that, by some instinct, he knew of my true character as a Union Spy who was about to return North, and would carry his messages home. I have often thought that Mr. Brownlow did divine my true character.
In this forged letter matter, if I am not greatly mistaken, Mr. Brownlow connected one of the present Senators from Tennessee, who was then Governor of the State. The Parson, in his odd way, had a name for everybody: Governor Isham Harris, was Eye-Sham Harris. Everytime I have looked at Senator Harris since he has been in Washington, and I have seen him almost daily, I have had this queer expression brought to my mind.
Rebel troops were being concentrated at Knoxville by railroad, to be marched thence to Cumberland and other gaps in the mountains. Something was up. Those who were on the Kentucky side about this time will know more about what caused the commotion than I who was on the inside and could only "guess," as the Yankees say.
The General in command of the forces in East Tennessee at the time was E. Kirby Smith. He was, I believe, a distant relative of mine.
Our Brigadier, and immediate commander, was General Ledbetter, a native of Maine, one of the meanest, most tyrannical and brutal men I have ever heard of, in either the Rebel or the Union Armies, or any place else. He had been an officer in the Regular Army before the War; and, as Parson Brownlow put it, "he had married a lot of niggers in the South." The Parson made this observation in the presence of his wife and the lady visitors who had accompanied me to the house one afternoon; though I did not exactly understand the drift of the expression at the time, I refrained from pressing the conversation just then. I learned afterward that he simply meant that Captain Ledbetter had married an Alabama lady, who owned sixteen slaves.