Colonel. Mrs. Brown, if you do not be quiet I will gag you.
Mrs. B. Ye'll gag me, will ye? Well, I'd like to see ye about it. Ye would make a nice reputation to yerself, gaggin' a woman!
Colonel. Very well, Mrs. Brown, I will show you that I am in earnest. Sergeant, place a gag in that woman's mouth.
Mrs. B. Och, Colonel dear, ye wouldn't be so bad as that, would ye? Shure, Colonel, I'll be jist as quiet as a lamb. So I will.
Colonel. Well, Mrs. Brown, if you will promise to behave yourself I will not gag you; but you must not make any more noise.
Mrs. Brown promised obedience and was soon after released, and went to her tent to search for the precious jug and drown her sorrows in another dram; but while the mêlée had been going on I had smashed the jug, and she came back again to bewail her sorrows with Brown, who was still under guard. He was soon after released, and they returned to their quarters a wiser if not a happier pair. That night Mrs. Brown was heard to say:
"Sergeant Brown, ye made a fool ov yerself to-day."
"Yis, Missus Brown, I think we both made a fool of ourself. So I do."
About the first of July we were ordered to Fort Pillow, which is by land fourteen miles above, on the same side of the river. When we reached that place, they were daily expecting an attack from the gunboats, of which we had heard so much, but had not yet seen or feared. Here the commanders wanted to exact the same amount of toil as at Fort Wright; but the men drew up petitions, requesting that the planters, who were at home doing nothing, should send their slaves to work on the fortifications. General Pillow approved of this plan, and published a call for laborers. In less than a month, 7000 able-bodied negro men were at work, and there would have been twice as many, if needed. The planters were, and are yet, in bloody earnest in this rebellion; and my impression, since coming North, is, that the mass of Union-loving people here are asleep, because they do not fully understand the resources and earnestness of the South. There is no such universal and intense earnestness here, as prevails all over the Rebel States. Refined and Christian women, feeling that the Northern armies are invading their homes, cutting off their husbands and brothers, and sweeping away their property, are compelled to take a deeper interest in the struggle than the masses of the North are able to do, removed as they are from the horrors of the battle-scenes, and scarcely yet feeling the first hardship from the war. Indeed, I do not doubt that regiments of women could be raised, if there was any thing they could do in the cause of the South. That they are all wrong, and deeply blinded in warring against rightful authority, makes them none the less, perhaps the more, violent.
The employment of slaves to do the hard work was of great advantage in several respects. It allowed the men to drill and take care of their health, as the planters sent overseers who superintended the negroes. It kept the men in better spirits, and made them more cheerful to endure whatever legitimately belongs to a soldier's life, when they had slaves to do the toilsome work. These slaves were not armed, or relied upon to do any fighting. I have no means of judging how they would have fought, as I never saw them tried.