Читать книгу The Boys of '61 or, Four Years of Fighting, Personal Observations with the Army and Navy - Charles Carleton Coffin - Страница 13

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Feb., 1862.

The tide of success during the year 1861 was almost wholly in favor of the Rebels; but at length there came a change, in the defeat of Zollicoffer by General Thomas at Mill Springs, on the 19th of January. I hastened to the centre of the State to watch operations which had suddenly become active in that quarter.

It was on the last day of January that the zealous porter of the Spencer House, in Cincinnati, awoke me with a thundering rap at five o'clock, shouting, "Cars for Lexington." It was still dark when the omnibus whirled away from the house. There were six or eight passengers, all strangers, but conversation was at once started by a tall, stout, red-faced, broad-shouldered man, wearing a gray overcoat and a broad brimmed, slouched hat, speaking the Kentucky vernacular.

It is very easy to become acquainted with a genuine Kentuckian. He launches at once into conversation. He loves to talk, and takes it for granted that you like to listen. The gentleman who now took the lead sat in the corner of the omnibus, talking not only to his next neighbor, but to everybody present. The words poured from his lips like water from a wide-mouthed gutter during a June shower. In five minutes we had his history—born in "Old Kentuck," knew all the folks in Old Bourbon, had been a mule-driver, supplied Old Virginia with more mules than she could shake a stick at, had got tired of "Old Kentuck," moved up into Indiana, was going down to see the folks—all of this before we had reached the ferry; and before arriving at the Covington shore we had his opinion of the war, of political economy, the Constitution, and the negroes.

It was remarkable that, let any subject be introduced, even though it might be most remotely related to the war, the talkers would quickly reach the negro question. Just as in theological discussions the tendency is toward original sin, so upon the war—the discussion invariably went beyond the marshalling of armies to the negro as the cause of the war.

The gentleman in gray had not learned the sounds of the letters as given by the lexicographers of the English language, but adhered to the Kentucky dialect, giving "har" for hair, "thar" for there, with peculiar terminations.

"Yer see, I us-ed to live in Old Kaintuck, down thar beyond Paris. Wal, I moved up beyond Indianopolis, bought a mighty nice farm. I know'd all the folks down round Paris. Thar's old Speers, who got shot down to Mill Springs—he was a game un; a white-haired old cuss who jined the Confederates. I know'd him. I 'tended his nigger sale sev'ral years ago, when he busted. He war a good old man, blame me if he want. He war crazy that ar day of the sale, and war down on the nigger-traders. He lost thousands of dollars that ar day, cause he hated 'em and run down his niggers—said they wan't good when they war, just ter keep 'em out of the hands of the cussed traders.

"Wal, thar's Jim—I remember him. He's in Confed'rate army, too. I lost a bet of tew hundred dollars with him on Letcher's 'lection—that old drunken cuss who's disgracing Old Virginia; blow me if I didn't. That was hard on me, cause on 'lection day arter I'd voted, I started with a drove of muels, four hundred on 'em nigh about, for Virginia. I felt mighty sick, I tell you, 'cause I had employed a drunken cuss to buy 'em for me, and he paid more than they war wuth. Wal, I know'd I would lose, and I did—ten hundred dollars. Cusses, yer know, allers comes in flocks. Wal, only ges think of it, that ar drunken cuss is a kurnel in the Federal army. Blow me ef I think it's right. Men that drink too much ar'n't fit to have control of soldiers.

"Wal, I am a Kentuckian. I've got lots of good friends in the Southern army, and lots in the Union army. My idee is that government ought to confiscate the property of the Rebels, and when the war is over give it back to their wives and children. It's mighty hard to take away everything from 'em—blow me if it a'n't. The Abolitionists want to confiscate the niggers. Wal, I know all about the niggers. They are a lazy, stealing set of cusses, the hull lot of 'em. What can we do with 'em? That's what I want to know. Now my wife, she wants niggers, but I don't. If Kentucky wants 'em, let her have 'em. It's my opinion that Kentucky is better off with 'em, 'cause she has got used to 'em.

"The people are talking about starving the Confederates, but I've been through the South, and it can't be done. They can raise everything that we can, and it's my candid opinion that government is gwine to get licked."

The arrival of the omnibus at the depot put an end to the talk.

The Licking Valley, through which the railroad to Lexington runs, is very beautiful. There are broad intervales fringed with hickory and elm, wood-crowned hills, warm, sunny vales and charming landscapes. Nature has done much to make it a paradise; art very little. The farm-houses are in the Kentucky style—piazzas, great chimneys outside, negro cabins—presenting at one view and in close contrast the extremes of wealth and poverty, power and weakness, civilization and barbarism, freedom and slavery.

The city of Lexington is a place of the past. Before railroads were projected, when Henry Clay was in the prime of manhood there, it was a place of enterprise and activity. The streets were alive with men. It was the great political and social centre of Central Kentucky. The city flourished in those days, but its glory has passed away. The great commoner on whose lips thousands hung in breathless admiration, the circumstances of his time, the men of his generation, have departed never to return. Life has swept on to other centres. In the suburbs were beautiful residences. Riches were displayed in lavish expenditure, but the town itself was wearing a seedy look. There was old rubbish everywhere about the city; there were buildings with crazy blinds, cracked walls, and leaning earthward; while even a beautiful church edifice had broken panes in its windows. The troubles of the year, like care and anxiety to a strong man, ploughing deep furrows on his face, had closed many stores, and written "To Rent" on many dwellings. A sudden paralysis had fallen, business had drooped, and society had lost its life.

The Phenix was the ancient aristocratic hotel of the place. It was in appearance all of the old time—a three-story, stone, brick, and plaster building, with small windows, and a great bar-room or office, which in former days was the resort of politicians, men of the turf, and attendants at court. A crowd of unwashed men were in the hall, spattered with mud, wearing slouched hats, unshaven and unshorn—a motley crew; some tilted against the walls in chairs, fast asleep, some talking in low tones and filling the room with fumes of tobacco. A half-dozen were greasing their boots. The proprietor apologized for their presence, remarking that they were teamsters who had just arrived from Somerset, and were soon to go back with supplies for General Thomas's army. There were three hundred of them, rough, uncouth, dirty, but well behaved. There was no loud talking, no profanity, indecency, or rudeness, but a deportment through the day and night worthy of all commendation.

While enjoying the fire in the reception-room two ladies entered—one middle-aged, medium stature, having an oval face, dark hair, dark hazel eyes; the other a young lady of nineteen or twenty years, sharp features, black hair, and flashing black eyes. They were boarders at the hotel, were well dressed, though not with remarkable taste, but evidently were accustomed to move in the best circle of Lexington society. A regiment was passing the hotel.

"There are some more Yankees going down to Mill Springs, I reckon," said the elder.

"O, isn't it too bad that Zollicoffer is killed? I could have cried my eyes out when I heard of it," said the youngest. "O he was so brave, and noble, and chivalrous!"

"He was a noble man," the other replied.

"O, I should so like to see a battle!" said the youngest.

"It might not be a pleasant sight, although we are often willing to forego pleasure for the sake of gratifying curiosity," we replied.

"I should want my side to whip," said the girl.

Hauling cotton.

"Yes. We all expect our side to be victorious, though we are sometimes disappointed, as was the case at Bull Run."

"Then you were at Bull Run? I take it that you belong to the army?"

"I was there and saw the fight, although I was not connected with the army."

"I am glad you were defeated. It was a good lesson to you. The Northerners have had some respect for the Southerners since then. The Southerners fought against great odds."

"Indeed, I think it was the reverse."

"No indeed, sir. The Federals numbered over sixty thousand, while Beauregard had less than thirty thousand. He did not have more than twelve thousand in the fight."

"I can assure you it is a grave mistake. General McDowell had less than thirty thousand men, and not more than half were engaged."

"Well, I wonder what he was thinking of when he carried out those forty thousand handcuffs?"

"I did not suppose any one gave credence to that absurd story."

"Absurd? Indeed, sir, it is not. I have seen some of the handcuffs. There are several pairs of them in this city. They were brought directly from the field by some of our citizens who went on as soon as they heard of the fight. I have several trophies of the fight which our men picked up."

No doubt the young lady was sincere. It was universally believed throughout the South that McDowell had thousands of pairs of handcuffs in his train, which were to be clapped upon the wrists of the Southern soldiers.

"We have some terrible uncompromising Union men in this State," said the eldest, "who would rather see every negro swept into the Gulf of Mexico, and the whole country sunk, than give up the Union. We have more Abolitionists here in this city than they have in Boston."

It was spoken bitterly. She did not mean that the Union men of the State were committed to immediate emancipation, but that they would accept emancipation rather than have the Secessionists succeed.

A gentleman came in, sat down by the fire, warmed his hands, and joined in the conversation. Said he: "I am a Southerner. I have lived all my life among slaves. I own one slave, but I hate the system. There are counties in this State where there are but few slaves, and in all such counties you will find a great many Abolitionists. It is the brutalizing influence of slavery that makes me hate it—brutalizing to whites and blacks alike. I hate this keeping niggers to raise human stock—to sell, just as you do horses and sheep."

In all places the theme of conversation was the war and the negroes. The ultra pro-slavery element was thoroughly secession, and the Unionists were beginning to understand that slavery was at the bottom of the rebellion. As in the dim light of the morning we already behold the approach of the full day, so they saw that these which seemed the events of an hour might broaden into that which would overthrow the entire slave system.

Anthony Trollope, an English traveller and novelist, was stopping at the hotel at the time—a pleasant gentleman, thoroughly English in his personal appearance, with a plump face, indicative of good living and good cheer. In his work entitled "North America" he mentions the teamsters in the hall, and draws a contrast between English and American society. He says:—

"While I was at supper the seventy-five teamsters were summoned into the common eating-room by a loud gong, and sat down to their meal at the public table. They were very dirty; I doubt whether I ever saw dirtier men; but they were orderly and well-behaved, and but for their extreme dirt might have passed as the ordinary occupants of a well-filled hotel in the West. Such men in the States are less clumsy with their knives and forks, less astray in an unused position, more intelligent in adapting themselves to a new life, than are Englishmen of the same rank. It is always the same story. With us there is no level of society. Men stand on a long staircase, but the crowd congregates near the bottom, and the lower steps are very broad. In America, men stand on a common platform, but the platform is raised above the ground, though it does not approach in height the top of our staircase. If we take the average altitude in the two countries, we shall find that the American heads are the more elevated of the two. I conceived rather an affection for those dirty teamsters; they answered me civilly when I spoke to them, and sat in quietness smoking their pipes, with a dull and dirty but orderly demeanor."[4]

If Mr. Trollope, who has a very just appreciation of the character of those quiet and orderly teamsters, will but wait a century or two, perhaps he will find that democracy can build a staircase as high and complete as that reared by the aristocracy of England. We have had but two centuries for the construction of our elevated common platform, while England has had a thousand years. There the base of the staircase, where the multitude stand, is either stationary or sinking; but here the platform is always rising, and bearing the multitude to a higher plane.

A short distance north of the city of the living is the city of the dead. It is a pleasant suburb—one which is adding week by week to its population. It is laid out in beautiful avenues, grass bordered, and shaded by grand old forest-trees. It is the resting-place of the dust of Henry Clay. The monument to his memory is not yet finished. It is a tall, round column upon a broad base, with a capital, such as the Greeks never saw or dreamed of, surmounted by a figure intended to represent the great statesman as he stood when enchaining vast audiences by his matchless oratory. Within the chamber, exposed to view through the iron-latticed door, star-embellished and bronzed, lies the sarcophagus of purest marble. It is chaste in design, ornamented with gathered rods and bonds emblematic of union, and wreathed with cypress around its sides. The pure white marble drapery is thrown partly back, exposing above the breast of the sleeper a wreath, and

HENRY CLAY.

Upon the slab beneath the sarcophagus is this simple inscription:—

"I can, with unbroken confidence, appeal to the Divine Arbiter for the truth of the declaration, that I have been influenced by no impure purpose, no personal motive—have sought no personal aggrandizement, but that in all my public acts I have had a sole and single eye, and a warm devoted heart, directed and dedicated to what in my best judgment I believed to be the true interests of my country."

It is not a declaration which goes home to the heart as that simple recognition of the Christian religion which his compeer, Daniel Webster, directed should be placed above his grave in the secluded churchyard at Marshfield, but Mr. Clay was a remarkable man. Of all Americans who have lived, he could hold completest sway of popular assemblies. Hating slavery in his early life, he at last became tolerant of its existence. He cast the whole trouble of the nation upon the Abolitionists. In some things he was far-sighted; in others, obtuse. In 1843 he addressed a letter to a friend who was about to write a pamphlet against the Abolitionists, giving him an outline of the argument to be used. Thus he wrote:—

"The great aim and object of your tract should be to arouse the laboring classes in the Free States against abolition. Depict the consequences to them of immediate abolition. The slaves being free, would be dispersed throughout the Union; they would enter into competition with the free laborer, with the American, the Irish, the German; reduce his wages; be confounded with him, and affect his moral and social standing. And as the ultras go for both abolition and amalgamation, show that their object is to unite in marriage the laboring white man and the laboring black man, and to reduce the white laboring man to the despised and degraded condition of the black man.

"I would show their opposition to colonization. Show its humane, religious, and patriotic aims, that they are to separate those whom God has separated. Why do the Abolitionists oppose colonization? To keep and amalgamate together the two races in violation of God's will, and to keep the blacks here, that they may interfere with, degrade, and debase the laboring whites. Show that the British nation is co-operating with the Abolitionists, for the purpose of dissolving the Union."[5]

This was written by a reputed statesman, who was supposed to understand the principles of political economy. The slaves being made free would enter in competition with the free laborer. But has not the free American laborer been forced to compete through all the years of the past with unrequited slave labor? Without inquiring into the aims and purposes of the Abolitionists—what they intended to do, and how they were to do it—Mr. Clay accepted the current talk of the day, and shaped his course accordingly. That letter will read strangely fifty years hence. It reads strangely now, and goes far to lower our estimate of the real greatness of one who for half a century was the idol of a great political party—whose words were taken as the utterances of an oracle. But ideas and principles have advanced since 1843. We stand upon a higher plane, and are moving on to one still higher.

Returning to the hotel, I fell into conversation with a Presbyterian minister, who began to deplore the war.

"We should conduct it," said he, "not as savages or barbarians, but as Christians, as civilized beings, on human principles."

"In what way would you have our generals act to carry out what you conceive to be such principles?"

"Well, sir, the blockade is terribly severe on our friends in the South, who are our brothers. The innocent are suffering with the guilty. We should let them have food, and raiment, and medicines, but we should not let them have cannon, guns, and powder."

"When do you think the war would end if such a plan was adopted?"

He took a new tack, not replying to the question, but said—

"The North began the trouble in an unchristian spirit."

"Was not the first gun fired by the Rebels upon Fort Sumter?"

"That was not the beginning of the war. It was the election of Lincoln."

"Then you would not have a majority of the people elect their officers in the constituted way?"

"Well, if Lincoln had been a wise man he would have resigned, and saved this terrible conflict."

There is a point beyond which forbearance ceases to be a virtue, and I expressed the hope that the war would be waged with shot and shell, fire and sword, naval expeditions and blockades, and every possible means, upon the men who had conspired to subvert the government. There was no reply, and he soon left the room.

Buell's right wing under General Crittenden, was at Calhoun, on Green River. Intelligence arrived that it was to be put in motion.

Leaving Lexington in the morning, and passing by cars through Frankfort—an old town, the capital of the State, like Lexington, seedy and dilapidated—we reached Louisville in season to take our choice of the two steamers, Gray Eagle and Eugene, to Henderson. They were both excellent boats, running in opposition, carrying passengers one hundred and eighty miles, providing for them two excellent meals and a night's lodging, all for fifty cents! People were patronizing both boats, because it was much cheaper than staying at home.

Taking the Gray Eagle—a large side-wheel steamer—we swept along with the speed of a railroad train. The water was very high and rising. The passengers were almost all from Kentucky. Some of the ladies thronging the saloon were accustomed to move in the "best society," which had not literary culture and moral worth for its standards, but broad acres, wealth in lands and distilleries. They were "raised" in Lexington or Louisville or Frankfort. They spoke of the "right smart" crowd on board, nearly "tew" hundred, according to their idea.

But there is another class of Kentuckians as distinct from these excellent ladies as chalk from cheese. They are of that class to which David Crocket belonged in his early years—born in a cane-brake and cradled in a trough. There were two in the saloon, seated upon an ottoman—a brother and sister. The brother was more than six feet tall, had a sharp, thin, lank countenance, with a tuft of hair on his chin and on his upper lip. His face was of the color of milk and molasses. He wore a Kentucky homespun suit—coat, vest and pants of the same material, and colored with butternut bark. He had on, although in the saloon, a broad-brimmed, slouched hat, with an ornament of blotched mud. He was evidently more at home with his hat on than to sit bareheaded—and so consulted his own pleasure, without mistrusting that there was such a thing as politeness in the world. He had been plashing through the streets of Louisville. He had scraped off the thickest of the mud. There he sat, the right foot thrown across the left knee, with as much complacency as it is possible for a mortal to manifest. In his own estimation he was all right, although there was a gap between his pants and vest of about six inches—a yellowish tawny streak of shirt. He sat in unconcerned silence, or stalked through the saloon with his hands in his pockets, or stretched himself at full length upon the sofa and took a comfortable snooze.

His sister—a girl of eighteen—had an oval face, arched eyebrows, and full cheeks, flowing, flaxen hair, and gray eyes. She wore a plain dress of gray homespun without hoops, and when standing, appeared as if she had encased herself in a meal-bag. There was no neat white collar or bit of ribbon, or cord, or tassel—no attempt at feminine adornment. She was a "nut-brown maid,"—bronzed by exposure, with a countenance as inexpressive as a piece of putty. A dozen ladies and gentlemen who came on board at a little town twenty miles below Louisville were enjoying themselves, in a circle of their own, with the play of "Consequences." The cabin rang with their merry laughter, and we who looked on enjoyed their happiness; but there was no sign of animation in her countenance—a block of wood could not have been more unsympathetic.

Among the ladies on board was one a resident of Owensboro', who, upon her marriage eight years before, had moved from the town of Auburn, New York, the home of Mr. Seward.

"I was an Abolitionist," she said, "before I left home, but now that I know what slavery is, I like it. The slaveholders are so independent and live so easy! They can get rich in a few years; and there is no class in the world who can enjoy so much of life as they."

It was evidently a sincere expression of her sentiments.

She was for the Union, but wanted slavery let alone. The strife in Owensboro' had been exceedingly bitter. Nearly all her old friends and neighbors were rampant Secessionists. Secession, like a sharp sword, had cut through society and left it in two parts, as irreconcilable as vice and virtue. There was uncompromising hostility ready to flame out into war at any moment in all the Kentucky towns. There was also on board a loud-talking man who walked the saloon with his hands in his pockets, looking everybody square in the face; he was intensely loyal to the Union.

"Why don't Buell move? Why don't Halleck move? It is my opinion that they are both of 'em old grannies. I want to see the Rebels licked. I have lived in Tophet for the last six months. I live in Henderson, and it has been a perfect hell ever since the Rebels fired on Fort Sumter. I have lost my property through the d—d scoundrels. I want a regiment of Union troops to go down there and clean out the devils."

It was early morning when the scream of the Gray Eagle roused the usual crowd of loafers from their sleep and inanition at Owensboro'. A motley mob came down to the wharf eager to hear the news. I had been informed that the place was one where whiskey distilleries abound, and the information proved to be correct. The distillery buildings were distinctly recognized by their smoking chimneys, creaking pumps, and steaming vats. The crowd on the shore had whiskey in their looks and behavior. Among them was one enthusiastic admirer of Abraham Lincoln. He was bloated, blear-eyed, a tatterdemalion, with just enough whiskey in him to make him thick-spoken, reckless, and irresponsible in the eyes of his liquor-loving companions. While we were at a distance he swung his hat and gave a cheer for Old Abe; as we came nearer he repeated it; and as the plank was being thrown ashore he fairly danced with ecstasy, shouting, "Hurrah for Old Abe! He'll fix 'em. Hurrah for Old Abe! Hurrah for Old Abe!"

"Shet up, you drunken cuss. Hurrah for Jeff Davis!" was the response of another blear-eyed, tipsy loafer.

The steamer Storm was tolling its bell as the Gray Eagle came to the landing at Evansville, bound for Green River. Her decks were piled with bags of corn and coffee. A barge was tethered to her side, loaded with bundle hay and a half-dozen ambulances. We were just in time to reach the deck before the plank was drawn in. Then with hoarse puffs the heavily laden old craft swung into the stream and surged slowly against the swollen tide of the Ohio. Green River joins the Ohio ten miles above Evansville. It is a beautiful stream, with forest-bordered banks. At that season of the year there was nothing particularly inspiring to the muse along this stream, unless one can kindle a poetic flame in swamps, lagoons, creeks, and log-cabins standing on stilts, with water beneath, around, and often within them. On the spit of land between the Ohio and Green rivers, on posts several feet under water, was a log-cabin; a row-boat was tied to the steps, a woman and a half-dozen children stared at us from the open door. All around was forest. A gentleman on board said it was a fishing family. If so, the family, little ones and all, might ply the piscatory art from doors and windows. A more dreary, watery place cannot be imagined.

The Storm was not a floating palace with gilded saloons, velvet tapestry carpets, French mirrors, and a grand piano, but an old wheezy tow-boat, with great capacity below and little above. There was a room for the gentlemen, and a little box of a place for any ladies who might be under the necessity of patronizing the craft.

There were no soldiers on board, but thirty or forty passengers. We were a hard-looking set. Our clothes were muddy, our beards shaggy, our countenances far from being Caucasian in color, with sundry other peculiarities of dress, feature, and demeanor.

There was one stout man with an enormous quantity of brown hair, and a thick yellow beard, belonging to Hopkinsville, near the Tennessee line, who had been compelled to flee for his life.

"We got up a cannon company, and I was captain. We had as neat a little six-pounder as you ever saw; but I was obliged to cut and run when the Rebels came in December; but I buried the pup and the Secessionists don't know where she is! If I ever get back there I'll make some of them cusses—my old neighbors—bite the dust. I have just heard that they have tied my brother up and almost whipped him to death. They gouged out his eyes, stamped in his face, and have taken all his property."

Here he was obliged to stop his narrative and give vent to a long string of oaths, consigning the Rebels to all the tortures and pains of the bottomless pit forever. Having disgorged his wrath, he said—

"Now, sir, there is a grave judicial question on my mind, and I would like your opinion upon it. If you owned a darkey who should get over into Indiana, a bright, intelligent darkey, and he should take with him ten niggers from your secession neighbors, and you should happen to know it, would you send them back?"

"No, sir; I should not."

"That is my mind 'zactly. I knew you was a good Union man the moment I sot my eyes on ye." Then came an interesting explanation. He had one slave, a devoted fellow, who had become an active conductor on the underground railroad. The slave had been often to Evansville and knew the country, and had enticed away ten negroes belonging to the Secessionists in the vicinity of Hopkinsville. He had seen them all that morning, and more, had given each of them a hearty breakfast! "You see," said he, "if they belonged to Union men I would have sent 'em back; but they belonged to the—-Secessionists who have driven me out, taken all my property, and do you think I'd be mean enough to send the niggers back?"

On board the Storm were several other men who had been driven from their homes by the Secessionists. There was one gentleman, a slaveholder from the little town of Volney, between Hopkinsville and the Cumberland River. All of his property had been taken, his negroes, if they were not sold or seized, were roaming at will. He had two brothers in the Rebel army. He was a plain, sensible, well-informed farmer. He lived close upon the Tennessee line, and was acquainted with the Southern country.

"Slavery is a doomed institution," said he; "from Kentucky, from Missouri, from Maryland and Virginia the slaves have been pouring southward. There has been a great condensation of slaves at the South where they are not wanted, and where they cannot be supported if the blockade continues. The South never has raised its own provisions. She could do it if she put forth her energies; but she never has and she will not now. The time will come, if the blockade continues, when the master will be compelled to say to the slaves, 'Get your living where you can,' and then the system, being rolled back upon itself, will be broken up. As for myself, I would like to have kept my slaves, because I am getting along in years and I wanted them to take care of me; but as the Secessionists have taken them and driven me out, it won't make any difference to me whether the system is continued or not."

It is utterly impossible to convey to a New-Englander who has never crossed the Hudson a correct idea of a Kentucky country village, like that of Calhoun, as seen from the deck of the steamer Storm, in the light of a beautiful morning, so mild and spring-like that the robins, bluebirds, jays, pewits, and sparrows were filling the air with their songs, having returned from their sojourn in a Southern clime. A sentinel was plashing through the mud along the bank, guarding the ferry to the town of Rumsey, on the opposite side of the river. The bank rises abruptly into the main street of the town. First we have the McLean House, the first-class hotel of the place—a wooden building two stories high, containing six or eight rooms. There is beyond it one brick building, then a number of smaller buildings containing a couple of rooms each, and forty rods distant a church, respectable in style and proportions. The land is undulating, and on the hillsides there are dwellings, a half-dozen of which you might call comfortable. The original forest oaks are still standing. A creek or bayou runs through the town, the receptacle of all the filth generated by ten thousand men, and thousands of mules, horses, and hogs.

Rumsey, on the opposite side of the river, is of smaller dimensions. Years ago it was a "right smart" town, but business has disappeared. The people have also gone, and now one sees a row of windowless, doorless, deserted houses, soaked in every flood of waters.

Visiting the "first class" hotel of the place, we sat down in the parlor or reception-room, or whatever room it was, while the cook prepared breakfast. It was also the landlord's bed-room, occupied by himself and wife.

Calling upon the landlord for a place for toilet operations, we were invited into the kitchen which was also the dining-room and pantry and Jim's bed-room—Jim being a tall negro, who just now is washing dishes, with a tin pan of hot water, and without any soap. Dinah is rolling biscuit, and tending the hoe-cake, which is cooking nicely on the stove. There is the flour-barrel close at hand. There is one dinner-pot, with two kettles, a pail of water, a lantern, the pepper-box, a dish of fat, a plate of butter, and a great heap of tin dishes on the table, where Dinah is moulding the biscuit, while Jim occupies the other end. The dining-table stands in the centre of the room. The plates are laid, and the whole is covered with a blue cloth, which at first sight seems to be a soldier's blanket, and which upon close inspection leaves us still in doubt whether it is a table-cloth or a bed-coverlet. There are some chairs, and an old desk which has lost its lid, in which are nails, a hammer, some old papers, and a deal of dust. It evidently "came down from a former generation."

We have time to notice these things while the landlord is preparing for our washing exploit, which is to be performed near Jim, with a basin on a chair.

Then we have breakfast—beefsteak and porksteak, and buckwheat cakes, all fried in lard, sausages, potatoes, Dinah's hoe-cakes, hot flour biscuit, and a dish of hash, which will not go down at all, and coffee without milk, preferred to the water of Green River, which in its natural state is somewhat the color of yellow snuff, and which is drank by the inhabitants of Calhoun, notwithstanding thousands of horses are stabled on its banks.

There was no movement of the troops, therefore nothing to detain us at Calhoun, and knowing that there was something of interest up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, we went on board the Mattie Cook, the downward-bound steamer. While waiting for her departure we gazed at the sights upon the shore. There was a great deal of life—wagons, soldiers, citizens floundering through the mud to the landing, transporting goods. There were ludicrous scenes of men and teams stuck in the mortar-bed; but in the midst of life there was death. A squad of soldiers came down from camp to the hospital with a bier, and with the slow funeral dirge brought two of their comrades to the boat—two who had just passed from the scenes of strife on earth to the eternal peace beyond. Those who bore them were by no means unaffected by the part they were called upon to perform. There were sad countenances, too, on board the boat—two ladies, both strangers to the dead, but not indifferent to the scene. They had woman's tender sensibilities, and could not keep back the tears from their eyes, for they thought of their own sons whom they had just left, and who now stood upon the bank to say perhaps a last good-by.

But how transitory are all the most solemn impressions of death! Ten minutes later a company of soldiers appeared for a trip down the river to Stevensport to bag, if possible, the squad of Rebels which had been prowling about the town of Stevensport. They came on board with a hurrah, and made the welkin ring with the "Red, White, and Blue." It was a pleasure to them to leave the hateful place even for a night, and be in active service.