General Mitchel's division (to which I belonged) of the Army of the Ohio we left at Nashville, ready to move on an independent line. When the other divisions had started for Savannah, Mitchel, March 18, 1862, resumed his march southward, encamping the first night at Lavergne, fifteen miles from Nashville. The next day we marched on a road leading by old cotton fields, and felt we were in the heart of the slaveholding South. The slaves were of an apparently different type from those in Kentucky, though still of many shades of color, varying from pure African black to oily-white. The eye, in many instances, had to be resorted to, to decide whether there was any black blood in them. But these negroes were shrewd, and had the idea of liberty uppermost in their minds. They had heard that the Northern army was coming to make them free. Their masters had probably talked of this in their hearing. They believed the time for their freedom had come. Untutored as they all were, they understood somehow they were the cause of the war. As our column advanced, regardless of sex, and in families, they abandoned the fields and their homes, turning their backs on master and mistress, many bearing their bedding, clothing, and other effects on their heads and backs, and came to the roadsides, shouting and singing a medley of songs of freedom and religion, confidently expecting to follow the army to immediate liberty. Their number were so great we marched for a good part of a day between almost continuous lines of them. Their disappointment was sincere and deep when told they must return to their homes: that the Union Army could not take them. Of course some never returned, but the mass of them did, and remained until the final decree of the war was entered and their chains fell off, never to be welded in America on their race again. They shouted "Glory" on seeing the Stars and Stripes, as though it had been a banner of protection and liberty, instead of the emblem of a power which hitherto had kept them and their ancestors in bondage. The "old flag" has a peculiar charm for those who have served under it. It was noticeable that wherever we marched in the South, particularly in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, we found men at the roadside who had fought in the Mexican War, often with tears streaming down their cheeks, who professed sincere loyalty to the flag and the Union.
We reached Murfreesboro on the 20th without a fight, the small
Confederate force retiring and destroying bridges as we advanced.
The division was kept busy in repairing the railroad, and especially in rebuilding the recently destroyed railroad bridge near Murfreesboro across Stone's River. I worked industriously in charge of a detail of soldiers on this bridge. In ten days it was rebuilt, though the heavy timbers had to be cut and hewed from green timber in the nearby woods. The Union Army never called in vain for expert mechanics, civil or locomotive engineers.
I took a train of ninety wagons, starting to Nashville on the 31st, for quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance supplies, with instructions to repair, while on the way, broken places in the railroad. In consequence of the destruction of bridges the train and guard had to travel a longer route than the direct one, making the distance above forty miles. We repaired the railroad, and reached Nashville and loaded my wagons by the evening of the second day. The city was a demoralizing place for soldiers. A few of my men of the 10th Ohio became drunk, and while I was engaged in the night trying to move the train and guard out of the city, some one threw a stone which struck me in the back of the head, cutting the scalp and causing it to bleed freely. I got the train under way about midnight, and then searched for a surgeon, but at that hour could find none. Knowing that Mrs. McMeans, the wife of the surgeon of the 3d Ohio, was at the City Hotel, I had her called, and she performed the necessary surgery, and stopped the flow of blood. Long before sunrise my train was far on the road, and by 8 P.M. of the 2d of April it was safely in our camps at Murfreesboro. It was attacked near Lavergne by some irregular cavalry, or guerillas, but they were easily driven off. Such troops did not, as a rule, care to fight. The conduct of a supply-train through a country infested by them is attended with much responsibility and danger, and requires much energy and skill.
Mitchel, now being supplied, marched south, April 3d, and we reached Shelbyville the next day—a town famed for its great number of Union people. Loyalty seemed there to be the rule, not the exception. The Union flag was displayed on the road to and at Shelbyville by influential people. Our bands played as we entered the town, and there were many manifestations of joy over our coming. This is the only place in the South where I witnessed such a reception. I recall among those who welcomed us the names of Warren, Gurnie, Story, Cooper, and Weasner.
While here Colonel John Kennett, with part of his 4th Ohio Cavalry, made a raid south and captured a train on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad and some fifteen prisoners.
A short time before we reached Shelbyville, Mitchel sent a party of eight soldiers, in disguise, under the leadership of a citizen of Kentucky, known as Captain J. J. Andrews, to enter the Confederate lines and proceed via Chattanooga to Atlanta, with some vague idea of capturing a train of cars or a locomotive and escaping with it, burning the bridges behind them. The party reached its destination, but for want of an engineer who had promised to join it at Atlanta, the plan was abandoned, and each of the party returned in safety, joining their respective regiments at Shelbyville. Andrews, still desiring to carry out the plan, organized a second party, composed of himself and another citizen of Kentucky, Wm. Campbell, and twenty-four soldiers, detailed from Ohio regiments, seven from the 2d, eight from the 33d, and nine from the 21st.( 1) This party started from Shelbyville, Monday night, April 7, 1862, disguised as citizens, professing to be driven from their homes in Kentucky by the Union Army and going South to join the Confederate Army. They were to travel singly or in couples over roads not frequented by either army, but such as were usually taken by real Kentucky refugees to Chattanooga or some station where passage on cars could be taken to Marietta, Georgia, where the whole party were to assemble in four days ready to take a train northward the following (Friday) morning. Each man was furnished by Andrews with an abundance of Confederate money to pay bills. It was understood that if any were suspected and in danger of capture they were to enlist in the Southern army until an opportunity for escape presented. Mitchel, it was known to Andrews and his party, was to start for Huntsville, Alabama, in a day or two, and Andrews hoped to be able to escape with his captured train through Chattanooga, thence west over the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and join Mitchel at some point east of Huntsville.
The distance was too great for all the party to reach their destination before Friday, and on the way Andrews managed to notify most of his men that the enterprise would not be undertaken until Saturday. About midnight of the 11th of April the members reached Marietta, and, with two exceptions, spent the night at a small hotel near the depot. Big Shanty (where passengers on the early morning train were allowed to take breakfast), north of Marietta, was the place where the party proposed to seize the locomotive and such part of the train as might seem practicable, the engineer (Brown) of the party to run it north, stopping at intervals only long enough to cut telegraph wires, to prevent information being sent ahead, tear up short portions of the track to prevent pursuit, and to burn bridges, the latter being the principal object of the raid. Porter and Hawkins of the party, who had lodging at a different hotel from the others, were not awakened in time, and consequently did not participate in the daring act for which the party was organized.
During the night Andrews carefully instructed those at his hotel, each man being told what was expected of him. The party were almost to a man strangers to him until five days before, and hardly two of them, though of the same regiment, until then knew each other. Never before, for so extraordinary an attempt, was so incongruous a band assembled. I knew one of them—Sergeant-Major Marion A. Ross, of the 2d Ohio. He had no previous training, and no special skill for such an expedition. He was a farmer boy (Champaign Co., Ohio) of more than ordinary retiring modesty, with no element of reckless daring in his nature. He had almost white silky flaxen hair, and at Antioch College, where I first met him, he rarely associated with his schoolmates in play or amusement. He was called a ladies' man; and this because he did not care for the active pursuits usually enjoyed by young men.
It is said that when Ross ascertained the number of trains, regular and irregular, with which the exigencies of war had covered the railroad, and considered also the distance to be passed over, he tried at the last moment to dissuade Andrews from undertaking the execution of the enterprise. In this he failed, but Andrews gave any of the party who regarded the design too hazardous the right to withdraw.( 2) Not one, however, availed himself of this liberty. Ross saw that the scheme must fail, but was too manly to abandon his comrades.