"The ever-beginning, never-ending topic of conversation was the war, with its incidents and prospects. We breakfasted, dined, and supped on startling reports of victories or defeats, and vague hints of prodigious things shortly to occur. It is noteworthy that our reports were almost uniformly of victories, frequently qualified by the slow and reluctant admission that, having won a brilliant success, the Confederate forces at last fell back. This trick of disguising defeat came, after a while, to be so well understood, that 'to conquer and fall back' was tossed about as a grim jest.
"As the tide of war surged southward, and at last reached Chattanooga, our village, like nearly all others on railway lines, became a hospital station, and the large academy was appropriated to the sick and wounded.
"After the battle of Chickamauga great trains of cars came lumbering through our town, crowded with Union captives. They were a sad sight to look upon. Standing one day by the track as such a train was slowly passing, the irrepressible prisoners shouted to me, 'Old Rosey will be along here soon!' 'Old Rosey' never came, but 'Uncle Billy' in due time put in an unmistakable appearance, which more than fulfilled what at the moment seemed the prediction of mere reckless bravado.
"During the summer of 1864 our secluded little village was rudely shaken by its first experience in the way of invasion. After steadily pushing back the Confederate columns, Sherman had at last reached Atlanta, and his hosts were in fact only about seventy miles away from us. In certain conditions of the atmosphere we could hear the dull, heavy thunder of his guns. Yet, strangely enough, this proximity of war in its sternest form created no panic among us. In fact, a kind of paralysis now benumbed the sensibilities of the people. The back of the Confederacy had been definitely broken in the preceding summer by the battle of Gettysburg. Nearly all discerning persons were conscious of this, and but for the foreordained and blind obstinacy of Jefferson Davis and his satellites efforts would have been made to save the South from utter wreck. Alexander H. Stephens was understood to entertain very definite ideas as to the hopeless and disastrous course of events under Davis's policy.
"On a hot July morning I was sitting, Southern fashion, with a number of gentlemen before a store just outside of the public square. We were canvassing a strange rumor which had just reached us, to the effect that Yankee soldiers had been seen not far from the town. At that moment a man from the country rode up to our group, and, hearing the topic of conversation, generously offered to 'eat all the Union soldiers within ten miles of Madison.' Scarcely had he uttered these reassuring words when a man in uniform galloped into the square. Now, we said, we shall get trustworthy information, thinking that this was a Confederate scout. In a moment, however, another cavalryman dashed around the corner, and fired a pistol at a fugitive clad in Confederate gray. The truth instantly flashed upon us, and with a cry of 'Yankees!' we all sprang to our feet. Not much alarmed myself, I called to my friends, 'Don't run!' but the most of them, disregarding my advice, took themselves off in remarkably quick time. The strange intruders, coming upon us as suddenly as if they had dropped out of the summer sky, now poured into the square and overflowed all the streets. Boldly standing my ground, I approached the first officer I could make out, and requested permission to go at once to my home on the outskirts of the village. He informed me that I must wait until the arrival of the colonel in command. So it was that for a space of five or ten minutes I may be said to have been a prisoner under the flag of my country. The colonel soon rode up, a stalwart, square-built, kindly-faced Kentuckian—Colonel Adams, as I afterward learned—who promptly granted my request, and directed an officer to see me safe through the crowd of soldiers. At my gate I found two or three soldiers, quietly behaved, and simply asking for food. Gratefully receiving such as we could give them, they departed, leaving us quite unharmed.
| By permission of Dick & Fitzgerald, New York. From "Twelve Decisive Battles of the War." |
"In November an important ministerial service called me to southwestern Georgia, and, as all seemed quiet about Atlanta, I hesitatingly ventured, accompanied by my wife, upon the journey. Starting homeward after a few days, we reached Forsyth, and paused there on the edge of the desert. For a desert it was that stretched for some sixty miles between us and Madison, a terra incognita, over which no adventurous explorer had passed since Sherman's legions had blotted out all knowledge of it. Only wild rumors filled the air. At last a friend took the serious risk of letting us have his carriage, with a pair of mules and a negro driver, for the perilous journey. Having crossed the Ocmulgee, we at once struck the track of Sherman's army, his right, under Howard, having kept near the river. In that day's ride we met on the road but one human being—a negro on horseback. A white woman rushed frantically from her little cabin to inquire if any more Yankees were coming, a question which I ventured to answer with a very confident negative. Rather late in the afternoon, as we were passing a pleasant farm-house, a gentleman came out to our carriage and with a very solemn voice and manner warned us against going any further. He had just been informed that ten thousand Yankee soldiers were at somebody's mills, not far away, and he declared that we were driving straight into their ranks. This staggered me for a moment. But a little reflection convinced me of the violent improbability of the rumor, and a little further reflection determined me to go on. From that moment to the evening hour when we drew up before a planter's house to spend the night, we saw not a human being, scarcely a living thing. Indeed, the wide, dead silence was the most marked sign that we were in the path over which a few days before a great army had passed. The road here and there was considerably cut up, showing that heavy wagons had recently gone over it. Fences were frequently down or missing, and two or three heaps of blackened ruins, surmounted by solitary chimneys, denoted that the torch had done some destructive work. The next day, in passing through Monticello, I saw the charred remains of the county jail, but the signs of conflagration were surprisingly few.
"The family with whom we spent the night had had the strange experience of being for a while in the midst of an encamped army. The soldiers, they informed us, had swarmed about them like bees, but had behaved as well as soldiers commonly do. The planter's horses and cattle had been freely appropriated, and as much of his corn and vegetables as were needed; but there was no complaint of violence or rudeness, and an ample supply of the necessaries of life was left for his household. Indeed, from my observations in this trip across the line of Sherman's march, that march, so far from having been signalized by wanton destruction, was decidedly merciful. No doubt bummers and camp followers committed many atrocities, but the progress of the army proper was attended by no unusual incidents of severity. The year had been one of exceptional bounty, and there was no want in Sherman's rear. Such was the plenty that I believe he might have retraced his steps and subsisted his army on the country.
"On reaching Madison we found the place substantially intact. Not a house had been destroyed, not a citizen harmed or insulted. The greatest sufferers from the invasion were the turkeys and chickens. The country was thickly strewn with the feathers of these slaughtered innocents. When I expressed to a friend some doubt as to Sherman's ability to reach the sea, he replied, 'If you had been here and seen the sort of men composing his cohorts, you would not question that they could go wherever they had a mind to.'
"Our life between the time of Sherman's march and Lee's surrender, with the scenes and incidents that attended and followed that surrender, was as strange and abnormal as a bad dream. We had, indeed, an abundance of the necessary articles of food and clothing. I have hardly ever lived in more physical comfort than during the last year of the war. The few fowls that had escaped the voracious appetites of the invaders soon provided a fresh supply of chickens and eggs. Coffee at twenty-five dollars a pound (Confederate money), and sugar at not much less cost, were attainable, and I managed to keep a fair supply of them for my little family. But though our physical conditions were tolerable, life was subject to a painful strain of uncertainty and anxiety, relieved only by the conviction that the war, of which all were weary and sick unto death, was nearly over. When the end came, confusion was confounded in a jumble so bewildering as scarcely to be credited with reality. The town streets and country roads were full of negroes, wandering about idle and aimless, going they knew not whither—a pitiful spectacle of enfranchised slaves dazed by their recent boon of liberty. Presently Union soldiers were everywhere. A German colonel, lately a New York broker, moved among us in the spick-and-span bravery of his uniform, the sovereign arbiter of our destinies. The world had rarely presented such a topsy-turvy condition of things, half tragical, half comical.