CHAPTER XXXIV.
SAVANNAH.
First Visit to Savannah.—Camp Davidson.—The City During the War.—An Escaped Prisoner.—Recapture and Final Escape.—A "City of Refuge."—Savannah by Night.—Position of the City.—Streets and Public Squares.—Forsyth Park.—Monuments.—Commerce.—View from the Wharves.—Railroads.—Founding of the City.—Revolutionary History.—Death of Pulaski.—Secession.—Approach of Sherman.—Investment of the City by Union Troops.—Recuperation After the War.—Climate.—Colored Population.—Bonaventure, Thunderbolt, and Other Suburban Resorts.
My first visit to Savannah was made on the twenty-ninth of July, 1864, when I was brought there as a prisoner of war. I found the city with its business enterprises in a state of stagnation, and the streets thronged with soldiers in Confederate uniforms. About four thousand troops were doing garrison duty in the city, which was thronged with refugees, and the entire population was suffering from a paralysis of all industrial enterprises, and from the interruption of its commerce by the Federal blockade at the mouth of the river. Camp Davidson, where we were confined, was in the eastern part of the city, near the Marine Hospital, with Pulaski's Monument in full view, to the westward.
The camp was surrounded by a stockade and deadline, and the principal amusement and occupation of the prisoners was the digging of a tunnel which was to conduct them to liberty beyond the second line of sentinels, without the stockade. But our little camp, like Chicago, had a cow for an evil genius. This luckless creature broke through the tunnel, as it was nearing completion, and suddenly ended it and our hopes together.
The nearest Union forces were at Pulaski, at the mouth of the Savannah River, and Savannah was one of the most important military posts of the Confederate army. Our treatment at Camp Davidson was exceptionally kind and considerate, and the ladies of the city, in giving suitable interment to the remains of a Union officer who had died in the camp, proved themselves to be possessed of generous hearts. Therefore it was with regret that we received the order to leave Savannah for Charleston.
I next visited Savannah a few months later, when the war was drawing to a close, after General Sherman and his army had made their successful entrance into the town. On the sixteenth of December, myself and a companion found ourselves twenty miles from Savannah, after having been many weeks fugitives from "Camp Sorghum," the prison-pen at Columbia, South Carolina. We were on the Savannah River Road, over which Kilpatrick's Cavalry and the Fourteenth Army Corps had passed only a week before. Emboldened by our successes and hairbreadth escapes of three weeks, when we at last felt that deliverance was close at hand, we pursued our way, only to fall suddenly into the hands of the enemy. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. But who shall describe the terrible sinking of the heart—the worse than sickness—when hope is thus suddenly crushed and turned to certain despair? Our second captivity was not, however, of long duration. Death was preferable to bondage under such masters. Taking our lives in our hands, a second escape was effected, and on December twenty-third, but two days after Sherman's occupancy of the city, Savannah proved itself, indeed, a city of refuge. Union troops welcomed us with open arms, and we were soon despatched northward.
The traveler who visits Savannah to-day will view it under very different auspices. The white wings of peace have brooded over it for more than half a generation, loyalty has taken the place of treason in the hearts of her people, and prosperity is visible on her streets and wharves. Let him, if he can, approach the city from the sea, and by night. Fort Pulaski stands like a sentinel guarding the entrance to the harbor, the lighthouse upon the point keeping a bright eye out to seaward. As he glides up the river, which winds in countless lagoons around low sea islands covered with salt marshes, at last he will see in the distance the lights of the city set on a hill, and of the shipping at her feet. A distant city is always beautiful at night, though it may be hideous by daylight. Night veils all its ugliness in charitable shadows; it reveals hitherto unseen beauties of outline, crowns it with a tiara of sparkling gems, and enwraps the whole scene in an air of romance and mystery which is charming to the person of poetic nature. But whether seen by night or day, Savannah is indeed a beautiful city, probably the most beautiful in all the Southern States.