General Van Dorn’s headquarters, near Spring Hill, where General Van Dorn was shot to death by one Dr. Peters for an alleged familiarity with the latter’s wife. Peters walked friendly into Van Dorn’s office, obtained a pass from the General to go through the line, shot him, jumped on a horse and escaped to the Federal line.
Here, from the first days of December until the 15th, much of the time in sleet and rain, Hood’s half starved veterans awaited the oncoming of Thomas’ well fed and well seasoned troops. Such a meeting could scarcely be termed a battle, however bravely the long, thin lines might hold out, and however desperately they might fight. Hood grimly made two stands, but his gray lines, outflanked and outfought, melted away into a disorganized rush, back through mud and slush and freezing rain to the Tennessee. And now, back again, over the same highway, rush the two armies. Truly this historic highway was baptized in blood. The weather was cold now, sleeting. When it thawed there was slush, and when it froze, needles of ice for bare and bloody feet. No army since Valley Forge suffered as did Hood’s brave men. Truly, the men who could follow Hood back to the Tennessee, in the biting cold and hunger of those days, in the numbness which knows that all was lost, and the sorrow for those who marched no more, truly, the stock of that kind who fought it to a finish, might well survive that their heroic tribe might be given as a future pledge for the perpetuity of the Republic.
Two things alone saved Hood from annihilation: The lack of real generalship in his pursuers, who failed to push their advantage to a finish, and the intrepid genius of Forrest, who covered Hood’s retreat. Had Johnston got Sherman, had Lee got McClellan in the fix Hood was now in, the map of the Union would be painted to-day in two colors.
Of Forrest’s skill in saving Hood’s army, General Cox pays tribute in the following paragraph, when he says: “At Columbia, Forrest rejoined Hood, and his cavalry, with an infantry rear guard, under command of General Walthall, covered the retreat to the Tennessee.... This force was able to present so strong a front that ... our advance guard was not able to break through.” But the freezing, pitiless retreat of a brave, broken army, who had gone into this Pike of Battles fit to fight for a kingdom, who had done more than any similar body of men had ever done before, in facing snow and sleet and hunger and bastions of steel and the entrenched thousands of a well-fed city’s troops, and now went out under the fatal inefficiency of him who led them, is one of the great tragic stories of the Lost Cause.
Forever will this historic highway run between sloping hills and sinking valleys, from the Basin’s Rim to the Tennessee; forever will it girdle with protecting arms the swelling glories of its maiden hills. The sentinel rows of corn land, the massed squadrons of wheat, forever will follow the line of its march, helmeted in tassle-caps, sheathed in scabbard sheafs, with meshes of gold and gilt, while from the forts of its over-towering hills orchards of apples will drop their balls of gold where once contending cannon hurled theirs of steel. Forever and forever, a tribute and a lesson to all time that brother no more shall kill brother in the dawning glory of a new age and a new Union. But never again will it see the equal of that desperate courage, that sacrifice for conscience, that valor for home and country as each saw it, as shown by these two armies which swept north and south in glory and in gloom.
Trotwood does not like to end anything in gloom and sorrow, and so will end this sketch of this historical highway with some cavalry yarns he has picked up from the old survivors of this and other battles.
Several years ago, at a Confederate reunion, he found himself among a group of interesting talkers—men who had been makers of history in this great struggle. All of them have now joined their comrades who had gone before—and right worthily they went, as their life’s record will show. Among that number was Gen. W. H. Jackson, the owner of Belle Meade, then the most famous thoroughbred nursery in America. |Some Cavalry Yarns.| On his left was the State’s chief executive, Governor Turney, or “Old Pete,” as the big brained and big framed fellow under the slouch hat was familiarly called by every schoolboy in the State. Other congenial spirits were around, high in social and political circles, drawn by the annual reunion of Confederate veterans. Some war yarns had passed around and General Jackson, who was a brilliant cavalry leader himself, was explaining how efficient the cavalry service was. The General himself fought through the war and thought that the best horses in the world for cavalry purposes were those with a good dash of thoroughbred in them. Jackson himself rode thoroughbreds all through the war. So did Fitz-Hugh Lee, of Virginia; John H. Morgan, the famous raider, and many others.
“I remember the time I longed for one mighty bad,” quietly remarked an Alabama colonel present, as he knocked the ashes off his cigar and smiled at the turn the story was taking. “It was around Vicksburg, in the trenches, and Grant was crowding us day and night. We lived on raw beef and such dogs as happened to stray out of the city, and were begrimed, dirty, half starved and homesick. Right next to us in the trenches was a Tennessee company, whose captain always managed to ride around on a black thoroughbred horse, as handsome a creature as you ever saw, and which he kept slick and fat and curried always—though the Lord only knows where he got his rations from. I watched that fellow and soon caught onto his game. Every time the Yankees would crowd us pretty close, and it looked as if we would have to surrender anyhow in the teeth of such overwhelming numbers, this fellow’s horse would get frightened and, in spite of all his owner’s endeavors, would break away with him to the rear. One day the fight got terribly hot, our lines were cut nearly in two, they swarmed over the breastworks, it was a hand-to-hand fight. To add to the demoralization, here came this captain on his black horse, going to the rear by the lines like wild, pulling like Hercules on his horse’s mouth to stop him, and shouting back as he flew along:
“‘Gentlemen, I can’t stop him—he is running away!’