The following day Mrs. Johnson received the following note:
“Murfreesboro, October 12th, 1862.
“Mrs. Andrew Johnson:—General Forrest sends a flag of truce to Nashville to-morrow morning, and he wishes you and your party to make your arrangements to go down with the flag, at seven o’clock A. M., to-morrow.
“The General regrets that he has no transportation for you; he will send a two-horse wagon to carry your baggage, etc. By remaining until to-morrow, you can go the direct route to Nashville; by going previous to that time, the route would be necessarily circuitous.
Respectfully,
“Isham G. Harris.”
A diary kept by a citizen of Nashville at this time contains the following:
“Quite a sensation has been produced by the arrival in Nashville of Governor Johnson’s family, after incurring and escaping numerous perils while making their exodus from East Tennessee. The male members of the family were in danger of being hung on more than one occasion. They left Bristol in the extreme northeastern section of the State, on the Virginia line, by permission of the rebel War Department, accompanied by a small escort. Wherever it became known on the railroad route that Andrew Johnson’s family were on the train, the impertinent curiosity of some rebels was only equalled by the clamor of others for some physical demonstration on Johnson’s sons. Arriving at Murfreesboro, they were met by General Forrest and his force. Forrest refused to allow them to proceed, and they were detained some time, until Isham G. Harris and Andrew Ewing, noted rebels, telegraphed to Richmond, and obtained peremptory orders allowing them to proceed. The great joy at the reunion of this long and sorrowfully separated family may be imagined. I will not attempt to describe it. Even the Governor’s Roman firmness was overcome, and he wept tears of thankfulness at this merciful deliverance of his beloved ones from the hands of their unpitying persecutors.”
Nashville and comparative quiet were at last reached, and the long separated family hoped their trials were over. Mrs. Johnson had exhausted her strength, and for many months kept her room, too feeble to venture out. But her little grandchildren enjoyed the freedom of play once more, and their happy faces are remembered by strangers and friends who watched them in their gambols about the capital.
By-and-by Mrs. Patterson joined the family in the safe asylum they had found in Nashville, and young and old were happy in the reunion. But trouble, never far from Mrs. Johnson, came very near in the cruel death of her eldest son. Not long after receiving his diploma as physician, he was appointed a surgeon in the First Tennessee Infantry.