Among the passengers was a short, florid-faced, red-whiskered gentleman, with an empty coat-sleeve, who seemed a general favorite. “Poor fellow,” said one, as he passed near, “the war pretty much broke him, I guess.”
“Broke him! well, now, you just go below and look at the seventy-five mules he’s got on board, bought in New Orleans for his plantations, at two hundred dollars a head, cash, and see whether you think he’s broke.”
“I’m mighty glad he’s got his property back,” said another. “He owns three of the finest plantations in Louisiana; and one good crop will put him all right again, and let him go into politics if he wants to.”
All shared in the expressions of good will, and it was evident that the red-faced, one-armed little gentleman was a popular favorite. It was General Yorke, late of the Rebel army, scarred with three wounds, and back among those for whom he had unsuccessfully fought. At Monocacy he led the final charge which swept back Lew Wallace’s forces and opened the way for Ewell and Breckinridge to the Capital. At Spottsylvania a bullet struck him in the head; in another Virginia battle he was wounded in the shoulder; from several he came out with clothes riddled with bullets and all his horses shot under him; at last, in the Wilderness, his arm was carried away.
It was common at the North to regard such men as the leading criminals of the rebellion, but I would rather trust General Yorke in Congress, unpardoned Rebel as he is, than a single one of the pardoned Congressmen elect from Mississippi or Louisiana.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he exclaimed, impetuously, to some one who was haranguing against the tyranny and cruelty of the government; “I tell you, sir, you have got and I have got the most merciful government in the world. What’s the use of our trying to disguise the facts? We attempted to destroy the government and failed; any other would have hung me for my share in the matter; and would have had a perfect right to do it. I consider myself a standing proof of the mercy of my government. It confiscated my property, while I was gone, fighting against it. I don’t complain; it did perfectly right. Since then I’ve got my property back; a thing I had no right to expect; and I’m very grateful for it. I only want a chance to prove my gratitude. If we get into a war about this Mexican business, I’ll try to show the government how I appreciate its generosity to me.”
Very few of his hearers seemed to like the General’s views—much as they all admired him personally. To them it seemed a very great outrage that while he was losing his arm under Lee, in the Wilderness, government lessees should have been cultivating his splendid cotton plantations, within the national lines, at Natchez. What business had government to be interfering with the rights of property?
Some one said the war wasn’t over yet. “Isn’t it?” said the General. “Well, may be you havn’t had enough of it. But I tell you, the men that did the fighting have. What’s more, they are satisfied to quit and to take things as they can get them. More still, I don’t know of anybody that isn’t satisfied to quit, except the stay-at-home sneaks that have never yet made a beginning. You’re very full of fight now, all of a sudden, when it isn’t needed. Why didn’t you show some of it when we wanted you in the trenches at Richmond?”
Yet the General was as firm a believer in the right of secession as ever: “I have my own views as to the constitutionality and rightfulness of our course; I thought our cause just, and I did all I could to make it successful. But we were beaten, badly beaten. Some of those fellows that have been hanging around Natchez, or making money out of army contracts, may not be subjugated, but I am. And now, having submitted, I do it in good faith. What difference does it make now about our beliefs and our arguments in favor of secession? All that has been settled against us in the court to which we appealed; we have submitted to the verdict; and, as honorable men, we have no right to revive the controversy.”
The General assured me that his negroes were working well; and that he had not experienced the slightest difficulty in getting all the labor he wanted. “My people all knew well enough that I had been a kind master to them before the war; and you couldn’t have hired any considerable number of them to leave me. Why, when I came back here to White-Hall,[[69]] from the army, it was a perfect jubilee. They picked me up and carried me into the house on their shoulders, and God-blessed me, and tanked de Lo’d for me, till I thought they were never going to get through.”