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Title: Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. II, No. 3, June, 1906

Author: Various

Editor: John Trotwood Moore

Release date: September 12, 2023 [eBook #71627]

Language: English

Original publication: Nashville: The Trotwood Publishing Co

Credits: hekula03 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TROTWOOD'S MONTHLY, VOL. II, NO. 3, JUNE, 1906 ***

Transcriber’s Note: New original cover art included with this eBook is
granted to the public domain. The table of contents lists a poem “WHY
SHOULD I FEAR TO DIE?” that doesn’t actually appear in the magazine.




                           TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY

         VOL. II.      NASHVILLE, TENN., JUNE, 1906.      NO. 3




CONTENTS


    HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH            John Trotwood Moore

    A MASTER HAND FOR MARRYIN’                 Florence L. Tucker

    MEMORIES                                  John Trotwood Moore

    MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY                    Mrs. H. P. Cochrane

    TOM’S LAST “FURAGE”                       John Trotwood Moore

    CASEY, THE FIFER                             Henry Ewell Hord

    IN THE STRAWBERRY COUNTRY                 John Trotwood Moore

    THE CANDLE                                John Trotwood Moore

    THE HISTORY OF THE HALS                   John Trotwood Moore

    WHY SHOULD I FEAR TO DIE?                                Poem

    WITH OUR WRITERS

    WITH TROTWOOD

Copyright 1906 by Trotwood Publishing Co. All rights reserved. Entered as
second class matter Sept. 8, 1905, at the Postoffice at Nashville, Tenn.,
under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.




Historic Highways of the South

PAPER VI.—THE ROAD TO NEW ORLEANS—THE NIGHT ATTACK

BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE


It was the last of April when I journeyed to New Orleans to study the
battlefield I had wished so often to see. No battlefield has ever
appealed to me as has that—none has come near it to me, in sentiment,
except when I stood in the trenches of Valley Forge and saw the
blizzard-swept lines where Patriotism stood in the last ditch.

[Illustration: Looking toward the British line.]

New Orleans is easily the greatest signal victory ever won on American
soil. History shows nothing in its class except King’s Mountain.
Everything else in the Civil War that we now regard as decisive was an
evenly matched, mathematically planned contest, between great armies, in
which, so far as the records go, one lost about as much as the other,
with victory at last on the banner of the side with the most troops, the
most guns, the better equipment and the best food for marching men.

Shiloh, Stone River, Chickamauga, in the West—Bull Run, Seven Days,
Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, in the East—these were all great
steel-sheathed locomotives rushing full speed to a head-on collision.

And, after the collision, there was scrap-iron all around.

But New Orleans was a steel ram striking a man-of-war, and the
man-of-war was not. There is only one way to explain the miracle of the
unexpected—the incongruity of the Incongruous—and that is, Providence.

Now, Providence had selected Jackson for this job.

Five miles below the city the street car lines stop, but it is an
interesting walk to clamber up on the bermuda and melilotus-covered levee
and follow the river to the Chalmette battlefield. The air is soft and
warm, the big river sweeps splendid along, the beautiful old homes on the
banks peep sleepily out from pecan and great moss-covered oaks. Far away
to the southeast stretch plain and forest.

No wonder they fought for it, you say. Who would wish to die in a fairer
land, under sunnier skies?

Then you get a shock.

[Illustration: The field across which the British charged.]

Just at the battlefield and where the unfinished Chalmette monument
(and why should it remain unfinished, O, ye of little faith save in your
scrambling for dollars?) looms up there is a repulsive derrick very
nearly on the spot where Jackson’s grim lines ran up to the river, and
where the Carolina’s fiery little battery spat at the Red Coats from
their earthworks. All around are evidences of something that smells
like Russell Sage, Rockefeller, Morgan or New York Life. It is a sugar
refinery, said to be the biggest of its kind anywhere—a trust, and hence
a thief by nature, and now it has butted into the battlefield, buying
as it goes, and paying for the privilege of wiping sentiment out with
sugar-coated pills. Its great banks already overtop the spot where
Jackson stood under the moss-grown oaks. Its embankments shut out the
sun of New Orleans. When it gets ready it will take the rest of the
battlefield. The sight of it and its vandalism hurts, and the hurt was
worse when I found that New Orleans did not care. Nay, I think from what
I heard, that she was prouder of the refinery than she was of the battle;
for everybody could tell me of the refinery, and no one knew anything
of the battle save a little woman who kept the cottage and grounds where
the half-completed Chalmette monument marked the spot of Jackson’s
breastworks and glorious stand. She knew that Jackson’s breastworks ran
down the row of trees at the lane, that his headquarters were right
over there in that clump of old oaks, and that Pakenham was buried for
six months under that pecan tree, where some old masonry showed there
had been a grave. The rest of it I had to dig out of the library of the
Historical Society.

An old fisherwoman who stood on the levee where Jackson’s line touched
the river, and where the cotton bales were confiscated to help form the
first line of breastworks, in answer to my question, told me, after
expectorating a large quantity of snuffy fluid into the river, that she
“had heurn of a right peart fight bein’ fit hereabouts when my mammy was
a baby—but jes’ whur I can’t say.”

[Illustration: “That Jackson’s headquarters were right over there in that
clump of oaks.” The trees alone were there, this house having been built
after the original one was burned.]

In his “Naval War of 1812,” Theodore Roosevelt thus graphically describes
the place as he thought it was then: “Amid the gloomy semi-tropical
swamps that covered the quaking delta thrust out into the blue waters of
the Mexican Gulf by the strong torrent of the mighty Mississippi, stood
the fair French city of New Orleans. Its lot had been strange and varied.
Won, and lost once and again, in conflict with the subjects of the
Catholic king, there was a strong Spanish tinge in the French blood that
coursed so freely through the veins of its citizens; joined by purchase
to the great Federal Republic, it yet shared no feeling with the latter
save that of hatred to the common foe. And now an hour of sore need had
come upon the city, for against it came the red English, lords of fight
by land and sea. A great fleet of war vessels—ships of the line, frigates
and sloops—under Admiral Cochrane, was on the way to New Orleans,
convoying a still larger fleet of troop ships, with aboard them some ten
thousand fighting men, chiefly the fierce and hearty veterans of the
Peninsular War, who had been trained for seven years in the stern school
of the Iron Duke, and who were now led by one of the bravest and ablest
of all Wellington’s brave and able lieutenants, Sir Edward Pakenham.”

When the President wrote that he was young and undecided whether he
would hunt grizzlies or write poetry, I, for one, am glad he hunted the
grizzly. Imagine any man standing on the melilotus-covered levees of the
Father of Rivers and tracing from horizon to horizon the faint penciling
of a sky so blue that it flushes at times into purple, corralling in
the compass of its circle, now an old mansion, pecan-shadowed and
wisteria-crowned, now a meadow, cattle-dotted and sheened with little
lakes, now groves of oak and ash, moss swept with hoariness, now fields
beyond, broad in their Southern fullness, big in benisons of eternal
summer—imagine this true picture, and then hearing from the Far North
the sepulchral croak of a sophomoric bullfrog: “Amid the g-l-o-omy
semi-tropical s-w-a-a-mps that covered the q-u-a-king delta!”

I failed to see the gloomy swamps, and the only things that ever quaked
there were the bull-bellied British, marching nearly a century ago for
the lust and plunder on this fair Creole city, utterly unconscious that
any foe worthy of their steel and stomachs stood before them, until
suddenly out of the sunset and shadows of the memorable day of the
evening of their landing Jackson’s grim Indian fighters fell on them in
the darkness and fought them to a finish, as they fought all beasts, at
close quarters, with clubbed guns and bear-knives.

That was the night of December 23d, 1814, the beginning of the battle of
New Orleans.

[Illustration: Old breastworks, primrose-covered.]

Let us briefly go back and bring events from our last paper—Jackson in
the wilderness of Alabama, victor of an Indian war, remover of the strong
allies of the Spaniard and British—the red, menacing, butchering wedge
that was thrust in between the two parts of the young Republic. It really
deserves a chapter itself, and that chapter might well be headed, “What
Jackson Did to the Spanish.” Briefly, it is this:

Jackson, having finished the Indian War, marched, May, 1814, homeward,
amid the plaudits of the pioneer West, disbanding his army at
Fayetteville, Tennessee, and receiving an ovation and banquet in
Nashville. He is appointed by the President Major General in the United
States Army, and later, by his influence and the great fear and respect
the Indians had for him, he closed a treaty with them at Fort Jackson,
and the Southern territory to Florida (which belonged to Spain), became
the Republic’s. And now, Jackson was free to turn on the treacherous and
double-dealing Spaniard, who had secretly helped Britain in the Indian
War, and, even then, contrary to her sworn neutrality, was housing and
feeding British troops at Pensacola and other portions of her territory,
and permitting them, five thousand strong, to rendezvous in Pensacola
preparing for the expedition which they knew was already on the high seas
bound for New Orleans.

As stated in our last paper, these were the darkest days of the Republic.
Only Jackson could have saved it. He alone was the cog that fitted
squarely into the wheel of things.

Jackson struck squarely out from the shoulder at the Spanish. He violated
our treaty with Spain openly when he marched on Pensacola, for to his
straight soul he saw more honor in doing a thing openly and aboveboard
than in doing it treacherously and slyly, as Spain had done all along.
If he had not whipped the British at New Orleans, we would have had a
war with Spain on our hands. He had to act quickly. The British had come
and were coming faster. By August, 1814, the sleepy town of Pensacola
had awakened to new life—and the life was red—red English. Eight or ten
English battleships lay in her harbor; regiments of negro soldiers from
the West Indies went ashore, with other British, soldiers, all drilling
daily. The English were repairing the forts, and their commander and the
Spanish governor slept under the same roof.

[Illustration: “Its great banks already overtop the spot where Jackson
stood.”]

There were rumors of a great force coming, but no one knew where it would
strike. Jackson learned it first from the Pirate Jean La Fitte, and that
pirate’s story and the gallant fight his crew made handling a battery of
guns at New Orleans is a story in itself.

Jackson decided to act. He wrote to the Secretary of War, “If the
hostile Creeks have taken refuge in Florida and are there fed, clothed
and protected; if the British have landed a large force, munitions of
war and are fortifying, and stirring up the savages, will you not say
to me, raise a few hundred militia, which may be quickly done, and with
such regular force as can be conveniently collected make a descent upon
Pensacola and reduce it? If so, I promise you the war in the South shall
have speedy termination, and English influence be forever destroyed with
the savages in this quarter.”

Jackson received an answer six months later, full of sound and meaning
nothing, or, if anything, that he mustn’t do it. In the meanwhile he had
done it, for the British became bolder, threw off all restraint, and
prepared to sally from the neutral port of Pensacola to take Mobile.
Jackson sent back to Tennessee through the wilderness for his old
fighters. And they came, so eager to fight again under their idolized
leader that many paid as high as eighty dollars for the privilege of
being substituted for those who could not go. Jackson wrote again and
again to the Secretary of War, imploring him, lecturing him: “How
long will the United States pocket the reproach and open insults of
Spain?... Temporizing policy is not only a disgrace but an insult to any
nation.... If permission had been given me to march against this place
twenty days ago I would ere this have planted the American eagle; now we
must trust alone to our valor and the justice of our cause.” And after
a long series of correspondence with the two-faced Spanish governor,
Jackson ended his talk with him: “In future I beg you to withhold your
insulting charges against my Government for one more inclined to listen
to your slander than I am; nor consider me any more as a diplomatic
character, unless so proclaimed to you from the mouth of my cannon.”

It was now in early fall. The Tennesseans under Coffee and Carroll were
pouring down South to him, past the old battlefields of the Creeks, now
an open road to Mobile and New Orleans.

Before they arrived he had strengthened Mobile, and the immortal Lawrence
had fought them off from Fort Bowyer, killing 162, wounding the vaunting
Colonel Nichols himself, and sending them crestfallen back to Pensacola.

Then, from La Fitte, whom the British had attempted to bribe, he first
knew that New Orleans would be attacked, and he waited no longer. He
marched on Pensacola and took it, and the English fleet and army vanished
at the first thunder of his guns.

But where? To New Orleans, where their great fleet on the high seas was
now headed—a fleet with a convoy of ten thousand fighting British. And
Coffee and his Tennesseans still in the wilderness!

November 25th, 1814. Good news! Coffee and his Tennesseans are at Mobile.
But that is not New Orleans, and a hundred miles of wilderness lie
between.

Jackson reached New Orleans December 2d. I hesitate to try to picture
him as he appeared to the gay, well fed, well bred people of that Creole
town. Chronic dysentery since two years before, terrible in its pains and
griping on his nerves and temper.

In the Howard Library, New Orleans, the librarian of which is William
Beers, undoubtedly the best living authority of Jacksonia, and a scholar
and natural-born bibliophile, I was shown many courtesies and gathered
some most interesting facts. Mr. Beers ranks Judge Walker’s book first
on Jackson, because he was an accurate, scholarly historian, who got
his information first-hand from survivors of the great battle who lived
with him in his native city. “Parton’s book was not even secondary, but
tertiary,” said Mr. Beers. “He took freely from Walker and gave but scant
credit.” Here is Judge Walker’s description of Jackson’s arrival in New
Orleans, written while many eye-witnesses were living, in 1855:

“Along the road leading from Ft. St. John to the city, early in the
morning of December 2d, 1814, a party of gentlemen rode at a brisk
trot from the lake towards the city. The mist which during the night
broods over the city had not cleared off. The air was chilly, damp,
uncomfortable. The travelers, however, were hardy men, accustomed
to exposure and intent upon purposes too absorbing to leave any
consciousness of external discomfort. The chief of the party, which
was composed of five or six persons, was a tall, gaunt man, of very
erect carriage, with a countenance full of stern decision and fearless
energy, but furrowed with care and anxiety. His complexion was sallow and
unhealthy; his hair was iron gray, and his body thin and emaciated, as
of one just recovered from a lingering sickness. But the fierce glare of
his bright and hawk-like eye betrayed a soul and spirit which triumphed
over all the infirmities of the body. His dress was simple and nearly
threadbare. A small leather cap protected his head, and a short Spanish
blue cloak his body, whilst his feet and legs were encased in high
dragoon boots, long ignorant of polish or blacking, which reached to his
knees. In age he appeared to have passed about forty-five winters—the
season for which his stern and hardy nature seemed peculiarly adapted.”

One of the strange things about the lives of all great men is the
almost certain fact that some grossly untrue story, picturesque lie or
exaggerated half-truth of some personal trait will be started and cling
to them for all time.

For a half-bred lie always outruns a full-blood truth.

The universally accepted misrepresentation of Jackson’s character is that
he was an uncouth backwoodsman, half-spelled, ill-bred and a bragging
bully.

[Illustration: “The beautiful old homes on the banks peeped sleepily from
pecan and oaks.”]

As a matter of fact there never lived a man of greater natural dignity,
of finer manners or more courtly grace when he wished than Andrew
Jackson, in spite of his violent outbursts of passion at times. In 1858,
one of the finest old ladies of New Orleans told this story to James
Parton:

The new aide-de-camp, Mr. Livingston, as he rode from the parade ground
by the General’s side, invited him home to dinner. The General promptly
accepted the invitation. It chanced that the beautiful and gay Mrs.
Livingston, the leader of society then at New Orleans, both Creole and
American, had a little dinner party that day, composed only of ladies,
most of whom were young and lively Creole belles. Livingston had sent
home word that General Jackson had arrived, and that he should ask
him to dinner, a piece of news that threw the hospitable lady into
consternation. “What shall we do with this wild General from Tennessee?”
whispered the girls to one another, for they had all conceived that
General Jackson, however becoming he might comport himself in an Indian
fight, would be most distressingly out of place at a fashionable dinner
party in the first drawing-room of the most polite city in America.
He was announced. The young ladies were seated about the room. Mrs.
Livingston sat upon a sofa at the head of the apartment, anxiously
awaiting the inroad of the wild fighter into the regions sacred hitherto
to elegance and grace. He entered, erect, composed, bronzed with long
exposure to the sun, his hair just beginning to turn gray, clad in his
uniform of coarse blue cloth and yellow buckskin, his high boots flapping
loosely about his slender legs, he looked the very picture of a war-worn
noble commander. He bowed to the ladies magnificently, who all arose at
his entrance as much in amazement as politeness. Mrs. Livingston advanced
to meet him. With a dignity and grace seldom equaled, never surpassed,
he went forward to meet her, conducted her back to the sofa and sat by
her side. The fair Creoles were dumb with astonishment. In a few minutes
dinner was served and the General continued during the progress of the
meal to converse in an easy, agreeable manner, in the tone of society,
of the sole topic of the time—the coming invasion. He assured the ladies
that he felt perfectly confident of defending the city, and begged that
they would give themselves no uneasiness in regard to it. He arose soon
and left the table with Mr. Livingston. In one chorus the young ladies
exclaimed: “Is this your backwoodsman? Why, madam, he is a prince.”

Jackson had indeed arrived, but never did a defender find so helpless and
utterly unprepared a city. The city was a bickering, divided thing, not a
fortification, not a battery mounted, not an idea even, and scarcely any
law.

And scared stiff.

Jackson was both law and idea, and in twenty-four hours, by his own calm
and intrepid bravery, his own self-assurance and fiery determination, he
had the impulsive inhabitants ready to fight to the death.

On December 8, 1814, just one month to a day before the great battle
was fought, a splendid double-deck battleship, the Tornant, flying the
British admiral’s flag, and the advance guard of the great host, anchored
off Chandeleur’s Island. There were two ways to reach New Orleans—up
the Mississippi, or in the open bay through Lake Borgne, thence a march
across the level delta straight to the city.

The English chose the latter. Five little American gunboats with 180
men lay in Lake Borgne, and these put up a gallant fight against the
forty-five barges and one thousand men who finally grappled with them and
took them with cutlass, pike and pistols.

And there, at noon, December 23, 1814, on the banks of the Bayou
Bienvenue, a lonely, marshy place, and the last place that Jackson
thought they would land, the British, 1,900 strong, under General Keane,
one of the ablest officers of the command, landed without opposition and
even without the knowledge of Jackson, who was beyond the city, near Lake
Pontchartrain, expecting them there. In two hours he had four hundred
more troops, a force larger that day than Jackson’s entire available
command, and in nine miles of New Orleans, on a dead level plain, bounded
on one side by the river and the other by the marshes of the lake.

It was a plain, easy march to New Orleans, and if he had marched at it
that afternoon it would have been his before night. And why did he not?
For only one reason—neither Pakenham nor Keane nor any general or soldier
of all the British army supposed for an instant that there was anything
before them but a lot of cowardly backwoodsmen whom they could brush away
with their bayonets or stampede with a single charge.

And who, indeed, were these men? Who was their commander, and what
had they done on battlefield before? Speaking of Pakenham’s utter
defeat of the French Field Marshal Soult, but a short time before, the
English historian, Napier, says: “He was opposed to one of the greatest
generals in the world, at the head of unconquerable troops. For what
Alexander’s Macedonians were at Arbela, Hannibal’s Africans at Cannae,
Caesar’s Romans at Pharsalia, Napoleon’s Guards at Austerlitz—such
were Wellington’s British soldiers at this period.... Six years of
uninterrupted success had engrafted in their natural strength and
fierceness a confidence that made them invincible.”

And here is the same author’s description of how Pakenham fell on
Salamanca, routing the best soldiers of continental Europe:

“It was five o’clock when Pakenham fell on Thomieres.... From the chief
to the lowest soldier, all of the French felt that they were lost, and
in an instant Pakenham, the most frank and gallant of men, commenced the
battle. The British columns formed lines as they marched, and the French
gunners, standing up manfully for their country, sent showers of grape
into the advancing masses, while a crowd of light troops poured in a fire
of musketry, under cover of which the main body endeavored to display
a front. But bearing onward through the skirmishes, with the weight of
a giant, Pakenham broke the half-formed lines into fragments and sent
the whole in confusion upon the advancing support, spreading terror and
disorder upon the enemy’s left.”

Pakenham, and the army under him at New Orleans, were the pick of
Wellington’s troops, who had driven Bonaparte’s greatest general across
the Pyrenees. They had conquered at Rodrigo, Badajos, San Sebastian,
Toulouse, Salamanca. They laughed at raw backwoods militia, with not
even a bayonet to their long, uncouth rifles. And what were they in
victory? Was there any real ground for fear that they would carry out
their threats of Beauty and Booty in New Orleans? When Jackson rode along
in the afternoon of December 23 to the front to meet the British, women
and children surrounded him in consternation. “Say to them,” he said to
Livingston, “that no British soldier shall enter the city unless over my
dead body. I will smash them, so help me God!”

But that night many of the women of New Orleans slept with small daggers
in their bosoms. And well may the handsome Creole women of New Orleans
have been afraid. Badajos, San Sebastian, Toulouse, all were friendly
towns, only the garrisons being hostile to the English. And yet, General
Napier, who was an eye witness to what he describes, tells how these same
soldiers did at Badajos:

Jackson reached New Orleans December 2d, as stated, more fit for the
hospital than the camp, and with only three weeks in which (as it proved)
to prepare the defenseless city. But under the magic of that strange,
positive, fiery man, the quick tempers of the impulsive inhabitants
were welded to the white heat of desperate determination. And what a
motley lot of defenders he found—About 800 new troops, regulars, raw and
undrilled; Planches’ City Battalion, five hundred; two regiments of State
militia, armed with fowling pieces, muskets, old rifles; a regiment of
free negroes, or, as Jackson called them, “free men of colour,” and right
well did they quit themselves in the fight—in all, about 2,000 men. Two
little men-of-war-armed schooners, the Carolina and the Louisiana, lay in
the river.

But Coffee and his Tennesseans were coming from Pensacola through the
woods, and Jackson sent courier after courier to them, saying: “Don’t
sleep till you reach me or arrive in striking distance.” Carroll, with
other Tennessee and Kentucky troops, had floated down the Cumberland, the
Ohio, and were now on the Mississippi. But he had only one gun to ten
men until he overtook a boatload of muskets, and with these he drilled
his men on the decks of his boat. To him Jackson sent a steamboat up the
river with this message: “I am resolved, feeble as my force is, to await
the enemy on his first landing, and perish sooner than he shall reach the
city.”

Two thousand Kentuckians under Generals Thomas and Adair were also
floating down the Mississippi, a ragged, defenseless and almost gunless
crowd, without blanket or tents, and only one cooking kettle to every
eighty men. And now it was the 14th day of December, and the British had
been at the mouth of the river nearly a week.

On the evening of the 17th Coffee, one hundred and twenty-nine miles from
New Orleans, received Jackson’s note. His horses were poor, three hundred
of his men sick, but in three days he was there; but only with his picked
men—800—all that could follow so rapid a march. Here is a description of
them: “Their appearance was not very military. In their woolen hunting
shirts of dark or dingy color and coperas-dyed pantaloons, made, both
cloth and garments, at home, by their wives, mothers and sisters; with
slouching wool hats, some composed of the skins of raccoons and foxes,
with belts of untanned deerskins, in which were stuck hunting knives and
tomahawks, hair long and unkempt, and faces unshorn.”

[Illustration: “Paying for the privilege of wiping sentiment out.” The
Refinery’s work. The trees on the left were Jackson’s headquarters. The
half-completed monument shows in the center of the picture.]

Of their leader, Jackson, Roosevelt says, in his “Naval War of 1812:”

“Yet, although a mighty and cruel foe was at their very gates, nothing
save fierce defiance reigned in the fiery Creole hearts of the Crescent
City. For a master spirit was in their midst. Andrew Jackson, having
utterly broken and destroyed the most powerful Indian confederacy that
had ever menaced the Southwest, and having driven the haughty Spaniard
from Pensacola, was now bending all the energies of his rugged intellect
and indomitable will to the one object of defending New Orleans. No man
could have been better fitted for the task. He had hereditary wrongs to
avenge on the British, and he hated them with an implacable fury that
was absolutely devoid of fear. Born and brought up among the lawless
characters of the frontier, and knowing well how to deal with them, he
was able to establish and preserve the strictest martial law in the city
without in the least quelling the spirit of the citizens. To a restless
and untiring energy he united sleepless vigilance and genuine military
genius. Prompt to attack whenever the chance offered itself, seizing with
ready grasp the slightest vantage point, and never giving up a foot of
earth that he could keep, he yet had the patience to play a defender’s
game when it suited him, and with consummate skill he always followed out
the scheme of warfare that was best adapted to his wild soldiery.”

It was two o’clock, December 23, before Jackson learned that Keane, with
2,300 men, had landed and marched to the river’s bank, in six miles of
New Orleans. Without a moment’s hesitation he drew up his thin, sallow
form, struck his clenched fist on a table and said: “By the eternal, they
shall not sleep on our soil!”

Very quietly, later, he ate a little rice and dozed on a sofa—the only
sleep he had, say several reputable historians, for four days and nights
thereafter, and he started to meet the enemy with a little over two
thousand men.

I am willing to stake my claim, previously made, that this man was one
of the greatest military geniuses of the first century of the Republic
on this one act alone. Here were the British, more than a match for him
in numbers, equipment and confidence. So sure were they of taking the
city that they had loafed along all afternoon and now had gone in a jolly
camp at sunset, on the banks of the great river, preferring to march into
the city in the morning, and not at night. They were disciplined and
bayonetted, jolly as a lot of schoolboys, and brave as men get to be,
full of fun and fight. I cannot think of another general, from Washington
to Lee, from Gates to Grant, who would not have said: “I will fight them
in the morning; this evening I will prepare. I will barricade, I will
entrench, I will throw up my wall between them and the city.”

And this would have been fatal. In broad daylight Keane would have
whipped them. He would have whipped Jackson’s troops that night but for
the darkness, but for the darkness and the grizzled, homespun clothed
men, who had cat-eyes for night fighting, who had stalked deer and
panther and Indians in the shadows of it, who could steal in and steal
out and use their knives in close places.

This was December 23, but that night he won the greater battle of January
8.

He fell on them like a panther from the darkness of the swamp.

He gave them a jolt that Soult, nor Ney, nor Napoleon had ever given. He
taught them a warfare they had never dreamed of before. He took the sand
out of their craws and the conceit out of their boasting mouths.

When he finished with them, at midnight, they decided they had gone far
enough toward New Orleans for that day, and several others. They threw up
entrenchments and waited for more troops.

They were hacked, demoralized, beaten!

And this is the way that Jackson did it. For my part I think it a far
prettier fight than he made two weeks later, when he finished the blow.

Jackson put his troops in motion about three o’clock, amid alarm guns and
beating of drums. But he himself galloped to the river bank and signalled
to the little Carolina to drop down. Then he put spurs to his horse and
galloped after the dust cloud going down the road to the Rodriguez Canal.
I could see it all so plainly as I stood on the banks of the river and
saw the same landscape before me. The lean, sallow, booted man, his long
legs dangling underneath his horse’s belly, galloping seemingly to
defeat. This man of destiny, this man who believed in himself, this man
who knew that God Almighty had sent him to whip the British, just as he
knew he would kill Dickinson.

And the troops went down so merrily to death in that cloud of dust—what
pathos, what patriotism, what sublime ignorance of what they were up
against, what blind faith in Jackson and God went forth that day to fight
the conquering, red English, who knew no such word as defeat, no such
tactics as retreat. Marines, raw troops who hardly knew how to drill, and
one little battery, in all, 884; flashy Creoles, gaudily equipped and
making much noise, the battalion of St. Domingo, “men of color,” 210;
Choctaw Indians, 18; Coffee’s Tennessee Volunteers, mounted riflemen,
563; Beall’s Orleans Rifle Company, 62; Mississippi Dragoons, 107, in all
2,131.

And this crowd were going to drive the victors of Toulouse, San
Sebastian, Salamanca and Badajos into the river, and do it at night, and
not a hundred bayonets on their guns and only two little six-pound cannon!

It was six o’clock and the British were having a jolly good time, with
campfires burning merrily and abundance of supper for hungry, healthy
stomachs. And now it is seven o’clock and suddenly a little gunboat
looms out in the twilight of the river before them, a queer looking
little craft to them, and they crowd up on the bank to look at it. It
came steadily on, its guns trained on the crowd of soldiers on the bank,
who were laughing, jollying and bantering it with empty jokes. “Can it
shoot?” “What is it?” “Give it a few from a musket,” are the shouts, and
they fired on the little Carolina with muskets and out of the gathering
darkness came:

“Now, boys, for the honor of America. Give it to them” And, to their
consternation, there was poured into the joking crowd a regular hell of
grape and shell, driving the British pell-mell to camp and arms and the
levee banks.

Jackson had reached the Bayou Bienvenu about four o’clock and formed
his thin lines as far across the plain as he could, to flank the
enemy. Notices were stuck up everywhere, signed “Keane and Cochrane:”
“Louisianans, remain quietly in your homes; your slaves will be preserved
to you and your property respected. We make war against Americans!”

The Carolina floats down to the river opposite Jackson. He sends an
aide aboard and gives her commander his orders to drop down and open on
the British camp. It was an hour before the waiting Jackson heard her
guns two miles below, and then he advanced, Coffee, regulars, marines,
Indians, negroes, artillery, forward, with blazing guns and American
yells and the British caught a circle of fire.

No man can paint that battle in the dark, for no man ever saw such a
fight in the dark before. The English fought nobly, but Jackson went
right in on them, his men using their knives and rifle butts, and in the
mix-up they knew not front from rear, nor friend from foe. Powder smoke
settled, gray and sulphurous over the plain, half dimming an already
cloud-dimmed moon. The fog added to it, and out of it, on the river,
thundered the guns of the Carolina pouring shot into their ranks, and
before them the sheeted fire of Jackson’s battery, up the levee, poured
it in from the front. They fought by companies, battalions, squads.
They charged around in the darkness and under clouds of smoke and fog,
and heard strange backwoods yells and ungodly oaths, and felt strange
bear-knives rip into their vitals from out of the dark. They fell back,
fighting, to the river bank, to the camp of trees. They charged and drove
the Tennesseans time and again before the naked, cold bayonet, but each
time they came back before clubbed guns and tomahawk and bear-knife. It
was a riot, not a battle; a butchery, not a fight; a stabbing contest
in the dark, where the bear killers and Indian fighters had all the
advantage.

At midnight Jackson collected his men, fell back to the canal and began
there to throw up the long line of entrenchments over which the vaunted
British battalions never put their foot.

Keane was stopped, shocked, chagrined; his troops dumbfounded. Three
hundred and three lay dead or wounded in the field, and sixty-four had
run off or been captured.

And now before them, entrenched, lay the same intrepid backwoodsman who
had violated all the rules of warfare in fighting them hand-to-hand in
the night, when, if he had waited a few more hours, the city had been
theirs.

They had gone far enough. They would entrench and await Pakenham and the
ten thousand embarking troops. They would take the city later.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Shakespeare did not write his plays to live, but to make a living._

       *       *       *       *       *

_There is no greater coward than he who despairs._




A Master Hand for Marryin’

BY FLORENCE L. TUCKER


    (NOTE.—A real story and a touch of real mountain life.—Ed.)

A young girl on a bare-backed mule rode up in front of a cabin at the
foot of a hill in the Tennessee mountains. Slowly she surveyed the
premises; beside the open door hung a gun and a powder horn and a string
of red peppers; to the left, rearing itself against the hot afternoon
sky, stood a gaunt martin pole, and around the corner of the house,
inquisitive, but not unfriendly, advanced a lean, spotted hound.

“Hullo,” she called in a quiet voice.

From inside a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles was shined upon her, and
the heads of two half-grown girls peered out.

“Ther’s somebody at the gate, thar, Gabe,” said the woman.

But the man had already taken in the figure in the pink calico frock and
faded sunbonnet and was regarding it with a stealthy, sidewise glance
from under his flop hat. Deliberately he rose, and was followed by the
woman and the two girls.

“It’s Whit Bozeman’s Luce, from over t’other side the mountain,” he said,
halting in the doorway. Then to the girl waiting at the gate: “Hullo.”

But the woman went out. “’Light an’ come in,” she said, advancing with
some show of interest.

“No, I ain’t hardly got time,” responded the girl. “Ole Gran’pap Bozeman
is be’n tuk pow’rful bad with the mizry in his side, and I rid over to
see ef I could git a black chickin. I come acrost to Weems, but nobody
wasn’t to home, an’ I come on down here. I ’lowed I didn’t know none o’
you-all, but I’d hearn tell yer was mighty feelin fer folks in trouble,
so I’d resk it.”

“I seen yer at the meetin’ over at Big Valley,” said Gabe from his
station in the door.

“A black chickin? Co’se yer kin hev the blackest one we’ve got. Chicken
gizzard tea is mighty good fer the mizry in the side. My ole aunt used
to keep ’em dried and ready. Ever’ time she’d kill a black chickin she’d
save the gizzard an’ jes’ string it up ’gainst the time when some o’ the
folks or the neighbors would be tuck down. She wuz a master han’ fer
chicken gizzard tea. But git down an’ come in; settin’ in a cheer is jes’
as easy as on the back o’ that thar critter.

“Gabe, ketch that long shanked young rooster I be’n er-saving—the one
with feathers on his legs. G’long, chillun an’ he’p yer pap run that
chicken down! An’ don’t yer be long about it, fer the sun’ll be gittin’
low afore she gits back over t’other side the mountain.”

Luce sprank lightly to the ground and the two seated themselves on the
rude wooden bench upon the porch. As the girl removed her bonnet her
reddish hair clung in a mass of shining wave about her neck, the warmth
of the summer sun was in her cheek, and stood in a delicate moisture
above her full lip. The elder woman settled her glasses and regarded her.

“Law, yes,” she said. “I had gizzards saved up sence ’way back ’fore
Chris’mus two year ago, but Gabe’s las wife wuz sick quite a spell—she
jes died this spring—and the gizzards jes’ did hold out. She mighty
nigh lived on chicken gizzard tea toward the las’. I give it ter all
o’ his wives. Gabe’s be’n married moren’t onct or twict,” she said
explanatorily; “he don’t have no luck with his wives. The fust one died
in no time, an’ the next one didn’t live so very long—she wuz the mother
o’ these two chillun; the las’ one never had none. Gabe’s a master han’
fer marryin’.”

Just then Gabe and the two girls and the dog, in wild pursuit of the long
shanked rooster, the feathered legs well in the lead, rushed pell-mell
around the house.

“What’s them girls’ names?” asked Luce.

“Liz an’ Bet,” replied their grandmother. “The’r ma wuz name’ Lizabet’,
an’ when the twins wuz born I sez: ‘Well, ef it had er be’n jes’ one
we’d er called it Liz, an’ sence it’s two we’ll call ’em Liz an’ Bet.’
An’ so ’twuz. They’ll be fourteen year ole three days afore this comin’
Fourth o’ July. I ain’t never fergot, kase I didn’t want ’em ever axed no
questions about the’r age thet they couldn’t answer. I ain’t ever knowed
jes’ how ole I wuz, an’ sometimes I kinder wisht I did. My ole man, he
used ter figger on it, but I never could feel no ways certain. I wuz
married when I wuz fifteen, an’ from then on I kep’ ercount o’ things
jes’ in my head. Like them hats in thar tells me how many year I be’n er
livin’ on this mountain.”

She motioned her hand toward the open door, and Luce shifted her position
to get a better view of a string of wool hats swung across from one joist
to the other.

“Yer see, thar’s eleven of ’em. The ole man, he bought a new one ever’
two year—that would make twenty-two; an’ he’s be’n dead two year, which
makes twenty-four sence me an’ him moved into this yere house. I never
could bear to see nothin wasted, so ever’ time he quit wearin’ one I jes’
strung it up thar on the j’ist, an’ sence he’s be’n gone I ain’t never
had the heart to take ’em down.”

A great flapping of wings and squawking under the lean-to at the rear of
the house announcing that the remedy for Gran’pap Bozeman’s “mizry” was
in hand, if not in sight, Luce, conscious of the press of time, rose to
be ready to receive it. Gabe came round holding the feathered legs in one
hand and a strip of old cloth in the other. As he saw the girl’s look
full upon him, he straightened himself and quickened his gait.

“They do say,” said old Mrs. Freeler, “that a green gizzard ain’t nigh
the good that a dry one is. Ef I kin git holt o’ ary other black chicken
I’ll save it and dry it out fer yer.”

“I’m mighty glad I come on down here,” said Luce, as she mounted from
the rail fence. “I couldn’t er gone back without that chicken. Gran’pap
Bozeman’s pow’rful bad.”

“I’ll be over that er way Sunday,” said Gabe in a low voice, as he handed
up the firmly tied legs, “an’ll stop by ter see how the ole man comes on.”

“Ther’s preachin’” replied the girl, a little red coming into her cheek.
And when mule and rider had vanished behind the thick wood he took down
his gun called to the dog and followed slowly the way she had gone.

Sunday, betimes he had ridden away on the old gray mare.

“Yer pap mus’ be goin’ over ter Big Valley ergin,” said Mrs. Freeler to
the girls. “Ther’s a preachin’ over thar onct a month this summer. But
he never said nothin’ erbout it. Curious, too; he inginerally does leave
some idee o’ whar he’s goin’.”

“I heern ’im tell Dick Weems he seen a mighty fine lookin’ girl over thar
las’ meetin’-day,” said Bet.

“Mebbe pap’s courtin’ ergin,” commented Liz.

And when, four weeks from that day he again rode off without having let
fall any hint of his destination, the suspicion was confirmed. Mrs.
Freeler had come to know the signs; she grew restless and watched Gabe
furtively every time he left the house, and when he came into it. His
tall, lank form was less indoors than ever, and he grew more silent and
moody, riding away oftener over the mountain. Always a shiftless fellow,
he appeared more so now, except at times, when, in spurts of industry, he
worked off his newly-awakened energy. But not so with Mrs. Freeler. The
more her son idled, the faster her fingers flew. “I wuz allus a master
han’ at patchin’,” she said, as she turned over and over the garments of
them all.

As the haying season came on Gabe became possessed of an unusual fit
of application. He had worked steadily for three days when something
happened. Driving up with a load of hay piled rather higher than the
old mare liked, she rebelled, and while she and he were having it out
together the load was overturned. Liz and Bet, walking some distance
behind, rushed forward, and Liz stooped to pick up her father’s coat,
which, lying on top of the load, had been thrown to one side. As she did
so she discovered a letter that had dropped out, and at the same moment
his eye fell upon it.

“You Liz,” he cried, his voice trembling with excitement; “you leave my
love letter alone!”

The seal was unbroken and Liz turned it over in her hand.

“Gabe Freeler,” she read slowly, “frum Luce Bozeman.”

“You give it here,” he reiterated. “Er—mebbe,” sheepishly, “yer mout make
out ter read it. I ain’t rightly guessed what it mout be.”

The girl regarded him uncertainly as she hesitated to break the seal.

“Read it, ef yer kin,” he said irritably, standing beside the mare
now disentangled from the broken harness and shafts, and mopping the
perspiration from his brow. “Ef ever I’d er be’n ter school three months
I ’low I could read any writin’ thet ever wuz writ.”

“’Tain’t no three months!” replied the girl with asperity. “’Twasn’t but
only two months and three weeks; but I reck’n I kin read anything Luce
Bozeman kin write!”

“You gimme that letter!” he flared. “I guess yer won’t git no chanct ter
read it!”

As he advanced to take it from her hand the attention of the three was
arrested by the approach of a shock-headed youth riding rapidly around
the bend in the thickly-shaded road. He wore no hat and appeared to be in
excited haste. Without salutation or unnecessary parley, he delivered his
message:

“She says, air yer er comin’? Yes or no!”

Freeler stared at him blankly. “Wall, I know who ye air, an’ I know whar
yer come frum,” he said slowly, “but I’ll be durned ef I know what ye air
er drivin’ at.”

“Luce,” said the boy, “she writ yer a letter and sont it by Dick Weems
las’ Sadday.”

Liz and Bet regarded their father silently. His face was a curious
mixture of chagrin, earnestness and baffled determination. He had said
Liz should not read the letter; yet he must know the contents now; and
how to do it without disclosing to the boy his ignorance of learning?

“I ain’t but jes’ got the letter a little bit ago,” he said, lying lamely
as Liz’s eyes were upon him. “Liz, thar, wuz jes’ about ter read it when
we seen yer er comin’—I ain’t seein’ very well sence that spell I had o’
the yaller janders.” He brushed an awkward hand across his eyes. “Read
it, Liz—ef yer kin!”

But this time the girl did not retort; her curiosity invited nothing that
would delay its satisfying.

“Ef yer mean what yer sed las’ Sunday,” she read, spelling out the words
slowly, “ther ain’t no time ter lose. Gran’pap Bozeman wuz berried
yistidy, an’ no sooner wuz he in the groun’ than Hiram he sez the place
is hisn now, an’ ef I’m goin ter stay on here I got ter marry him next
Chuseday when ’Squire Stark comes here. Which I’ll die fust, fer I ain’t
goin’ ter marry no cuzzen. In pertickler I ain’t goin’ ter marry Hiram
Bozeman which I do despise fer the meanest man on this mountain. Ef yer
ment what yer sed, then yer kin come ter the big spring Monday nite an’
I’ll be waitin’ fer yer in the shadder er the ole chestnut. Ef yer ain’t
thar by nine o’clock thar won’t be nothin’ fer me ter do but ter run
away, which I will, so help me God afore I’ll marry him as sez I must.”

“You will no hoo this is frum fer the name is writ on the outside.”

Gabe sat during the reading as if stupefied, but when Liz had finished
and held out to him the scrawled sheet, he rose. He looked at the sun; it
was five o’clock and a good three hours to Bozeman’s when the mare was
fresh; he would have to take it easy, for there was the return trip with
the double burden. “Lord!” he ejaculated under his breath, and threw a
leg over the animal’s lean flank.

“I ain’t got no hat,” said the boy. “I dropped it fordin’ the crick an’
this pesky critter wouldn’t let me git it—orneriest mule I ever see!”

“I got ter git my saddle an’ bridle. Come on an’ I’ll find yer a hat,”
answered Gabe, as he put off in the direction of his stable, followed
by the other. And in a few minutes the two returning passed Liz and Bet
still sitting in a state of bewilderment by the side of the overturned
hay load. As they gazed after the disappearing figures Liz turned to Bet,
a growing horror in her wide eyes.

“That’s one o’ Gran’pap’s ole hats he’s got on!” she said in an
awe-struck voice.

To reassure themselves they hastened home. Crossing the porch where
the dog lay asleep, their hurrying feet lagged a little, a sort of
superstitious fear upon them. A sound fell upon their ears—a low, piteous
sobbing, that made them clutch each other’s frocks and peer breathlessly
in at the half-closed door. On the sill was a freshly-filled pail of
water, and in the middle of the floor knelt their grandmother, her head
bowed in the string of wool hats which hung dependant from one nail—in
his haste Gabe had not taken time to fasten again the end which he had
removed from the opposite joist. And so it was, when she returned from
the spring whither she had gone when he entered the house, the sight
met her gaze—the sacred line of relics trailed in the dust, as it were,
affection’s altar rudely torn of its sacred image, and that by the
ruthless hand of her own son—and his son!

She raised her head as the boards creaked under the stealthy tread of
the twins. “He done it!” she cried brokenly, the tears running down her
wrinkled cheeks. “Gabe done it. I seen ’em ez I wuz comin’ up the hil
frum the spring—him an’ that thar Bozeman boy er ridin’ off—but I didn’t
know ez ’twuz yer Gran’pap’s hat the boy wuz er wearin’ ’tel I got here
an’ seen it wuz gone, an’ then I knowed it hed looked pow’rful familiar.
But what did he do it fer? What did he do it fer?” her voice rose into a
little wail and her bent form shook with painful sobbing.

Bet stared at her, dumb; her round eyes filled with responsive tears
which she wiped away with the corner of her dress.

“Did he tell yer?” asked Liz. “He’s gone ter git married.”

Mrs. Freeler sank weakly into a chair, and her hands fell limp in front
of her. “I knowed ’twuz comin’,” she said, “but I ’lowed ez how he’d tell
me. He ain’t never married yet ’thout tellin’ me.”

“He never had time, I reck’n,” said the girl, and then recounted the
incident of the coat and the letter; the coming of the Bozeman boy and
the reading of the letter, the contents of which were fully detailed;
and, finally, the circumstance which had led to the taking of the hat.

The old woman interrupted her not at all, only when she came to the
mention of the hat, wiped her tears again with shaking hand. Then they
sat in silence, drifting after a while into desultory talk, as other
occasions like this came back to memory.

“I rickerleck,” said the grandmother, “when he brought yer ma home. It
was jes’ this time o’ year. She wuz the likeliest one of ’em all—I knowed
the minute I set eyes on her she’d do. The fust one wuz a peart enough
young thing, too, but she whirled in an’ died that very summer, an’ in
two months he married yer ma. You know how long it’s ben sence the las’
one was tuk. Well, Gabe never did lose no time!”

The sun’s rays grew less strong; she rose mechanically. “Git up some
light-’ood knots,” she said, as she gathered her milk pail. “They’ll be
late gittin’ here, an’ the nights is growin’ chilly. I’ll set up fer ’em
an’ have a blaze in the chimley, an’ some supper ready—he allus wants
sumpin’ hot when he comes in late.”

And when “the chillun” had gone to bed she sat through her lonely vigil,
pondering over the advents and the changes the room had known since
the time she and her “ole man” had been its first occupants, gazing
mournfully upon the string of hats still hanging as she had found
them, and going now and then to look out on the changing sky. She had
calculated the extra three miles around by Parson Damon’s would make it
twelve o’clock by the time they could arrive, and at eleven the moon had
disappeared and clouds were gathering thick and ominous. She moved about
restlessly, threw on a fresh pine knot, trimmed the small lamp, and was
just settling herself to renewed rumination when a low “Whoa!” fell on
her ears. Rising quickly, she flung wide the door so that the friendly
light streamed out.

“Well, ye’ve come!” she called into the darkness.

Gabe and the mare disappeared in the direction of the stable, and Luce
came in rather uncertainly after her cramped ride in the chill air.
“Yes,” she replied, blinking in the light, “an’ I brung yer this,”
holding out an old woolen hat. “When Lige Bozeman come back er wearin’
it, I says, ‘That thar ain’t the hat you went off from here with,’ an’ he
says, ‘No, this yere’s one o’ ole man Freeler’s,’ an’ I says, ‘Well, jes
give it here, an’ I’ll take it back,’ I says. Which I did, knowin’ what
store you set by them hats—an’ here it is!”

The old woman was trembling violently. She looked at the girl with eyes
that saw only the lost and recovered treasure. When Luce had finished she
turned from her without a word, and, hurrying across the room, restored,
with little inarticulate cries of joy and love, the precious hat to its
place with the other ten, then, mounting a chair, fastened the end of
string to the joist again. Descending stiffly she turned to her with
glistening eyes.

“Ye’re welcome,” she said. “It’s the most I’ve ever said to any of ’em. I
inginerally waits to see how it’s goin’ to turn out—yer never kin tell.
But this time, I says, ye’re welcome—an’ Gabe’ll treat yer right; he
allus good to his wives. Yer know, Gabe’s a master han’ for marryin’!”

       *       *       *       *       *

_Knowledge is not so much in knowing as in knowing how to know._

       *       *       *       *       *

_It was Plautus who said: “To make any gain some outlay is necessary.”_




[Illustration: Photo by Julie Royster, Raleigh, N. C.]

MEMORIES


    O mystic Land of Smiles and Tears,
      O Land that Was and Is,
    Alone—unchanging with the years—
      The Land of Memories.

                 —JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.




Matthew Fontaine Maury

PAPER BY MRS. H. P. COCHRANE, FRANKLIN, TENN. AND MRS. MARY LEWIS
PRESTON, VA.


It seems but fitting that those who are interested in the great seaman’s
life should know something of his ancestors and early life.

His maternal ancestor in America was Dudas Minor, an English gentleman
who received large grants of land from King Charles II and settled in
Virginia.

[Illustration: Matthew Fontaine Maury.]

On the father’s side he was of Huguenot descent. Rev. Jas. Fontaine thus
gives an account of Maury’s ancestor, Jean de la Fontaine, a French
nobleman who held an exalted position in the court of Francis I:

When the “Edict of Nantes” was revoked the persecution of the Protestants
followed, and Fontaine was a shining light for the Catholics, and it
was deemed advisable to get rid of so prominent a heretic as soon as
possible. A band of ruffians were dispatched on the memorable St.
Bartholomew’s eve, and Fontaine and his wife were dragged from their beds
and their throats cut. “Oh, my children!” exclaimed the narrator, “let
us not forget that the blood of martyrs flows in our veins.” This may
explain the strong religious bent of Maury’s nature, which was evident to
all long before he connected himself with the Episcopal Church.

He was born near Fredericksburg, in Spottsylvania County, Va., January
24, 1806. When he was four years old his parents moved to Tennessee and
settled near Franklin. Maury assisted his father and brothers on the
farm, and lived the life of the early settler in a new country. He thus
became a sturdy, healthy boy. Here in the wilderness schools and churches
were alike few and far between, and the education of the pioneer’s
children was derived at home, or in the “old held school.” Plain living
and high thinking was the motto in the Maury household.

Matthew’s father was strict in the religious training of his family. He
would assemble them night and morning to read the Psalter for the day
antiphonally, and in this way so familiar did the barefooted boy become
with the Psalms of David that in after life he could cite a quotation
and give chapter and verse, as if he had the Bible open before him.
Surrounded by simple and pure influences, Maury passed his youth. He
possessed a deep and inquiring mind and an insatiable craving for truth.

Perhaps his greatest mental strength lay in the direction of mathematics.
“My first ambition,” he says, “to become a mathematician was excited
by an old cobbler, Neal by name, who lived not far from my father’s
home, and who used to send the shoes home to his customers with the
soles scratched all over with little x’s and y’s.” Maury was sent to
the Harpeth Academy, taught by the Rev. James Otey, first Bishop of
Tennessee, and Wm. Hasbrouck, afterwards a prominent lawyer of New
York. Here his brilliant mind and studious habits won the esteem of his
teacher, which lasted through life.

Maury had an exceeding fondness for the sea, which was fostered by the
adventures of his elder brother, who entered the United States navy when
but thirteen years of age. When Maury made known his determination to
accept the position of midshipman, which the Hon. Sam Houston obtained
for him, his father did not command him to decline; but he did not
approve it, and would not give him any financial aid, or even his
blessing. This was a great grief to Maury, but he had put his hand on
the helm, and there was no turning back. So, borrowing a horse, and with
only thirty dollars in his pocket, and the limited experience of nineteen
years, he set out to seek his fortune. There was no naval academy, and
the young middy began his duties and his studies on board a man-of-war.
What powers of concentration he possessed, with what unflagging zeal he
pursued his studies, proving by his subsequent career that genius is the
capacity for labor. William Irving, brother of Washington Irving, loaned
him many books.

During his first year of service his frigate, the Brandywine, conveyed
Lafayette back to France. The great Frenchman was much attracted by the
young midshipman, and had many a kind talk with him. In 1831 he passed
his examination, was appointed master of the sloop-of-war Falmouth, and
ordered to the Pacific on a four years’ cruise. It was on this voyage
that Maury conceived the idea of the famous “Winds and Currents Charts,”
which have done so much for the commerce of the world.

He returned to the United States in 1834 and married his cousin, Miss
Herndon, to whom he had been engaged several years. Shortly after this
marriage he went to Philadelphia to arrange for the publication of his
works on navigation. His book, like himself, had the true ring or true
metal, and won distinction In England and became the text-book of the
United States navy.

At this period Maury obtained leave of absence, and on his way to his
old home in Tennessee he was thrown from the top of a stage coach, which
resulted in an accident that lamed him for life and interrupted his
active service afloat. His leg was improperly set, had to be broken again
and reset, and this in a day when anaesthetics were unknown. This period
of enforced inactivity was most distressing to the ambitious lieutenant,
but proved a blessing in disguise, for it was then that his active mind
turned to and grasped the scientific part of his profession. In 1839
he began a series of articles on naval reform. He advised that a navy
yard and forts can be established on the Gulf coast. “They cannot be too
strongly fortified with outfits for shipping and implements of war.” He
advocated also a naval school for young midshipmen. This article led to
the building of forts at Key West and the Tortugas, and the establishment
of the naval academy at Annapolis.

In 1843 he wrote a notable treatise, entitled “The Gulf Stream and its
Causes.” These and other contributions to science were written under the
pen name of “Harry Bluff.” They attracted so much attention and were so
generally approved by the navy that the officers had great numbers of
the papers printed and circulated. When it became known that the young
Lieutenant Maury was the author of these papers, his ability and grasp
of mind were universally recognized, and his position as authority on
naval questions was established. Soon after he was placed in charge of
the Depot of Charts and Instruments, which office he developed into “The
National Observatory and Hydrographical Department of the United States.”

In a speech before the Senate John Bell said: “No man could have been
found in the country better fitted than Maury for this difficult duty,
and he worked with the zeal and energy expected of him.”

At this time he gave to the world the famous “Winds and Currents Charts
and Sailing Directions.” Seamen were at first distrustful of the new
charts, fearing that a route which could save from ten to twenty days on
an outward voyage, was fraught with danger. At last a Baltimore vessel
determined to follow the new chart. The voyage was a complete success,
for he made both trips in the time consumed under the old system in the
outward passage alone. There was now no hesitation about the use of the
charts. Active interest was excited and the world rang with the fame of
Maury’s “Winds and Currents Charts.” Copies were sent to every government
and distributed to men-of-war and merchantmen. It has been estimated
that “if the money he saved to the world were collected, a monument of
precious stones could be erected to his memory.” It was frequently urged
that Maury, who was drawing a pay small in comparison to his service,
might secure a copyright and thus reap material reward from his labors,
but his aim through life had been to make himself of use to his fellow
men, and he did not put in a claim for prize money.

While at the observatory he wrote his “Physical Geography of the Sea and
Its Meteorology.” This work met with great enthusiasm in England and
America, and was translated into many languages for use in the schools.
The interest now excited in meteorology and deep sea study enabled Maury
to assemble at Brussels, under the auspices of King Leopold, a congress
to which England, Russia, France, United States, Belgium and other
countries interested in commerce, sent delegates. At the close of the
congress Maury returned to America laden with honors and rich in fame.
Many of the learned societies of Europe elected him an honorary member.
Orders of knighthood were offered him and medals given him by nearly
every crowned head of Europe.

It is said that Humboldt received the Cosmos Medal as being the greatest
scientist in the world, but he presented it to Maury as being greater
than he, saying that he was the “founder of a new science.”

Maury now began to carry out his plan for meteorological co-operation
on land. To effect this he was obliged to travel much and deliver many
addresses. Out of these efforts grew the vast “Weather Bureau” of to-day.
As early as 1848 Maury had believed that a broad level plateau lay
under seas between Newfoundland and Ireland, and Congress dispatched
three vessels to perfect his discoveries, and to decide if it would be
practicable to lay the cable between Europe and the United States. He was
consulted by Cyrus W. Fields and others as to the kind of cable to be
used, the way and the time to lay it. At a dinner given in New York to
celebrate the first message across the Atlantic, Mr. Field rose and said:
“I am a man of few words. Maury furnished the brains, England the money
and I did the work.”

In 1858 Maury was advanced to the rank of Commodore, by special act
of Congress. Maury also originated the idea of water-marks and river
gauging along the Mississippi and its branches. In 1860 he had reached
the high tide of his worldly prosperity. He began to realize material
benefits from the fruits of his pen when the Civil War broke out. Mr.
Lincoln called for 75,000 troops. Virginia’s answer was secession and
a call upon her sons for support. Maury resigned his office and went
to Richmond. Nothing had been offered him by the Confederacy. He had
everything to lose, nothing to gain. He was a peace-loving man, a student
and philosopher; besides, he was greatly opposed to the war. But when
Virginia called he left his congenial pursuits, his achievements and
his discoveries for what he held to be his duty to his mother State.
When it became known abroad that he had severed his connection with the
United States, he was invited by France, Russia and Mexico to become
their guest, but he declined both. He entered the Confederate States
navy, with the rank of commodore and chief of the seacoast, harbor and
river defences of the South. He assisted in fitting out the Merrimac and
invented a formidable torpedo. In 1862 he established the Confederate
submarine battery service, at Richmond. In the same year he was ordered
to England to purchase torpedo material. After the war he was not allowed
to come home for several years.

In 1868 he, together with Tennyson and Max Muller, received the degree of
LL.D. from the University of Cambridge. In 1869 he accepted the chair of
physics in the V. M. I., at Lexington, Va. Here, surrounded by his family
and friends, he passed the remaining years of his life in peace and
rest. He died February 1, 1873.

I will conclude with two short extracts, the first from the Richmond
Dispatch, as follows:

“The joint resolutions introduced into the Legislature, memorializing
the President and Congress to erect, in the shape of a lighthouse on the
Ripraps, a monument to Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, opens the way
for the nation to efface from its escutcheon a blot that has long rested
there. Soon after the death of Maury a movement was inaugurated abroad
to build at a point off the coast of Brazil, an international lighthouse
as a memorial to the ‘Pathfinder of the Seas.’ It was intended that each
nation should contribute individually to the fund for this purpose, and
that the structure should be as enduring as money and human skill could
make it. The movement found great favor with foreign nations, and would
have materialized but for the attitude of the United States. When this
government was sounded on the subject it was found that the partisan
hatred and sectional prejudice was so strong at that time that, for
diplomatic reasons, the matter was dropped.

“It is designed that the proposed monument shall be dedicated in the
presence of the combined nations of the world. And should the United
States make the occasion practicable, the grandest naval demonstration
that has ever been witnessed anywhere, and in any age, may be expected.

“The great foreign nations in whose scientific societies and aboard
whose ships Maury’s name is a synonym of reverence, would delight in an
opportunity to pay such a tribute to his genius and to his services. By
affording such an opportunity the United States government would put
honor not only upon Maury, but upon itself, and reach a higher plane in
the eyes of the governments abroad than it has ever occupied since the
war. The memorial not only would be a monument to the ‘Wizard of the
Winds and Currents,’ but a perpetual reminder of the nation’s confidence
in republican institutions and in the fact that we are a reunited
people.”

The second extract is from a tribute paid him by the Hon. A. J. Caldwell
before the “Agricultural Society.” He said:

“A farmer lad, he was trained by his country for the sea. She made him a
sailor; God made him a genius. A genius like Ariel’s, which made wind and
tide and meteor’s glare his servants, and laid its wand upon the main of
the ocean and made it the servant of the servants of men. The maritime
world to-day would be lost if his great works were blotted out from human
memory.

“He first spoke of the submarine telegraphic plateau between Ireland and
Newfoundland, on which the ocean cable is laid. He first told the ocean
steamers of the ‘sea lanes,’ where, outside of the area of icebergs they
run safe from shore to shore. And such was the plenitude of his power,
such the comprehensive grasp of his reason, and the fullness of the
blessing which his genius bestowed upon the world, that, as experience
and time go by, his scientific methods are adapting themselves to the
needs of every tiller of the soil in every State of the Union and nation
of the earth. The Signal Service, with its daily weather reports, its
prognostications, control the actions of every intelligent agriculturist
in the land to-day.

“With Promethean hand he snatched the meteoric fires from heaven and
lit up the altars of industry. He is dead and gone; but what Columbus
was to discovery, Newton to astronomy, LaPlace to physics, Humboldt to
national history, Maury was to navigation, meteorology and agriculture.
The winds and currents of the ocean bear his name around the watery
world. The lowing herd, the bleating flock housed by him from the storm,
the flowering meads and golden fields which filled with the shouts and
laughter of happy toil are memorials on the lands. His memory will
brighten as the years go by, and the blessings of his genius will reach
every household and the gratitude of mankind will follow him where sweet
fields beyond the swelling flood stand dressed in living green.”

Read before the D. A. R., June 30, by

                                                      MRS. H. P. COCHRANE.

The Daughters of the American Revolution plant this tree in honor of
Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, that they may show in this simple way,
here in his old home, how they reverence his name. Also by this act that
they may help to remove the stain, the disgrace to the American people
that no monument has been raised to his memory. This small beginning,
they earnestly hope, will lead to greater endeavor. To this end this
Chapter has recently endorsed a petition asking the co-operation of
the Convention of National Daughters, composed of 7,000 ladies, to
memorialize Congress to erect a light-house to his memory, to efface from
the nation a blot which has long rested there. This, indeed, has been the
third attempt. Soon after the death of Maury a movement was inaugurated
abroad to build on the coast of Brazil an international lighthouse as
a memorial to the “Pathfinder of the Seas.” It was intended that each
nation should contribute individually to the fund for this purpose,
and that the structure should be as enduring as money and human skill
could make it. It would have materialized, but for the attitude of the
United States. When this government was sounded on this subject it was
found that partisan hatred and sectional prejudice were so strong at
the time that, for diplomatic reasons, it was dropped. Afterwards the
Virginia Legislature petitioned the President and Congress to erect a
light-house on the Ripraps, off the coast of Virginia, in the Chesapeake
bay. It was designed that the proposed monument should be dedicated in
the presence of the combined nations of the world, and to be the greatest
naval demonstration that had been witnessed anywhere and in any age. How
fitting if this could be done at the proposed exposition at Jamestown, in
1907. It is but meet that he should receive the highest acknowledgment of
his greatness, not only in reparation, but in gratitude, for it has been
said if the money Maury has saved to the world by his charts on the winds
and currents and navigation generally, were collected, it would be enough
to build a monument of precious stones to his memory, not to speak of the
saving of human life. But Humboldt paid him the highest compliment when
he presented him with the Cosmos Medal, which he received as being the
greatest scientist of the world. He said Maury was greater than he.

It seems particularly appropriate that this tree should be planted in
the shadow of this school building, as Maury’s text-book is used here to
instruct the children.

And now, Ladies of the American Revolution, I feel that we honor
ourselves in paying this tribute to one who, by his goodness, as well as
his greatness, has his “name written in the Hall of Eternal Fame.”

The following paper was also received by Trotwood’s, written by Mrs. Mary
Lewis Preston, Seven Mile Ford, Va.:

In the little mountain village of Lexington, Va., on February 1, 1873,
there passed from earth one of her most choice souls, great in mind,
earnest in work, simple in faith, courted by every civilized nation!

His end was so beautifully simple and childlike that even the newspapers
far and near rang with it. This great man, when called by the God who
made him, simply lifted his hands in the attitude of a little child
expecting to be taken up into the arms of a loving father, and died in
that attitude.

This was significant of his character. He was too learned to be doubting,
too great for shams, too gentle and trusting for affectation.

This man was Matthew Fontaine Maury, “The Pathfinder of the Sea,” born in
Spottsylvania County, Va., January, 10, 1806, and was taken by his father
to Tennessee in his fourth year.

In 1825 he was appointed midshipman in the United States navy, making
his first cruise in the Brandywine, on the coast of Europe and in
the Mediterranean. In 1826 he made a cruise around the world in the
Vincennes. In 1831 he was master of the sloop-of-war Falmouth, but was
soon acting first lieutenant on the Dolphin, then transferred to the
frigate Potomac, in which he returned to the United States.

At the age of 28 he published his first work, “Maury’s Navigation,” which
was at once adopted as a text-book in the navy!

He was at this time selected as astronomer and offered the place of
hydrographer to the exploring expedition to the South Seas, but declined.

In 1837 he was made lieutenant, and not long after met with the accident
which lamed him for life.

While unable for active duty, he cultivated his mind, and by his views
published in the “Southern Literary Messenger,” worked great reforms in
the navy and secured a naval academy.

He first directed the observations of the flow of the Mississippi. He
proposed a system which would enable the observers to give information by
telegraph, as to the state of the river and its tributaries. He suggested
to Congress efficacious plans for the disposition of the drowned lands
on the Mississippi. He brought forward and successfully advocated a
warehousing system. In 1842 he was appointed superintendent of the depot
of charts and instruments at Washington. He added to his labors of
astronomer the task of unraveling the winds and currents of the ocean.
He instituted the system of deep sea sounding, leading directly to the
establishment of telegraphic communication between the continents by
cable.

The “Physical Geography of the Sea,” translated into various languages,
is an enduring monument to the genius and usefulness of its author. The
powers of Europe recognized the value of his services to mankind. France,
Austria, Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia,
Holland, Bremen and the Papal States bestowed orders of knighthood and
other honors.

The academies of science of Paris, Berlin, Brussels, St. Petersburg and
Mexico conferred the honors of membership.

He left the Federal navy to aid his own State, when Virginia seceded,
declining from a sense of duty highly honorable positions from Russia and
France.

There have been few greater scientists in the world. Humboldt pronounced
him “the greatest the world had ever known.”

The University of Cambridge conferred on him the degree of L.L. D., and
Emperor of France invited him to the superintendency of the Imperial
Observatory, at Paris. He patriotically preferred to accept the chair of
physics at the Virginia Military Institute.

While here he prepared his latest work, “The Physical Survey of Virginia.”

His remains rest beneath a modest monument of native James River granite,
in Hollywood, Virginia’s beautiful city of the dead.

When he died the Commander of Virginia Military Institute thought it
but just and proper that every power in the world should be informed,
and telegrams were sent. All were responded to in the most appropriate
manner, except one—that of the United States. Not one word from our then
President U. S. Grant!

As his body lay in state at Lexington it was literally covered from
throat to waist with decorations, some of them the richest and most
valuable jewels, the gifts of the crowned heads of the earth.

Then to the man who first gave a complete description of the Gulf stream,
who first marked out the specific routes to be followed in crossing the
Atlantic, who first instituted the system of deep sea sounding, who first
suggested the establishment of a telegraphic communication between the
continents by cable, on the bed of the ocean, and who indicated the line
along which the existing cable was laid, who caused the erection of our
naval academy—to this great man the D. A. R. of America are striving to
induce Congress to build a suitable monument. And what place could be
more appropriate than Hampton Roads, and what time better than to have it
ready before the greatest naval display the world has ever seen, which is
arranged to come off during the Jamestown exhibition in 1907.

Isn’t it a great mistake that America does not see fit to honor her great
ones, and if she does not, why cannot Virginia and Tennessee join hands
and do honor to whom honor is due?

       *       *       *       *       *

_The voice which lives is the one which moulds the souls of men._




Tom’s Last “Furage”

BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE


    Manager’s Note—There has not been a week since we commenced to
    publish Trotwood’s Monthly that we have not received one or
    more letters asking us to reproduce “Tom’s Last Furage,” it
    never having been published in any of Mr. Moore’s books; hence
    is not in permanent form. In compliance with these requests, we
    reproduce the story together with a note by the author as it
    appeared in the Olympian Magazine, in October, 1903. Since that
    publication, the old Judge after serving a quarter of a century
    as Judge of the Black Belt Circuit, died in harness, while
    holding court in Greensboro, Alabama, April 27, 1904. It is
    said that no judge ever lived in Alabama, who held so generally
    the love and affection of all the people, white and black, as
    did Judge Moore. It seems almost incredible to relate that the
    last time he was re-elected to office, in a general election,
    in which all parties were represented and all classes of men
    voted, out of 9,500 votes cast, Judge Moore received all of
    them but one.

    Speaking of his death the Birmingham News said: “In his death,
    the last link of the old leaders of just after the war, passed
    away, honored, loved, lamented sorely; not only by his home and
    district, but by the South. As his pastor said at the funeral,
    ‘let us pray God’s guidance to fill his place; not only as a
    jurist, but in the hearts of his people.’”

    A few years ago William Jennings Bryan related the story of
    “Tom’s Last Furage,” in an after dinner speech, and said it
    expressed more clearly the relationship existing between the
    old Southern gentleman and his slaves than any story ever
    written.

    Peace to the ashes of so noble a man. The old Judge has passed
    into the beyond. May he meet and know all whom he loved here,
    even old Tom.

                                                   E. E. SWEETLAND,
                                                   Business Manager.

       *       *       *       *       *

    Author’s Note.—This story was first published in the Horse
    Review of Chicago, December, 1897, but in December, 1899, it
    was plagiarized by some writer whose name, I am glad to say,
    I have forgotten, and published in Munsey’s Magazine under
    the title of “Jim’s Defense.” Mrs. Frances Herrick Fowler,
    the gifted California writer, called Mr. Frank A. Munsey’s
    attention to the plagiarism and he very promptly wrote me a
    letter of apology. Since then, so many public readers and even
    negro minstrel companies have used the story, giving credit
    to the plagiarized form, that, at the earnest request of the
    editor of The Olympian, I am permitting it to appear again in
    its true form.

    A coincident so amusing in the plagiarism occurred that I shall
    mention it. Much of the story is an incident in the life of my
    father, Judge John Moore, still Judge of the Black Belt circuit
    of Alabama, and Tom’s home coming, bringing my father’s saddle,
    clothes, and sidearms, is the first distinct memory of my life.
    In plagiarizing it the author in Munsey did little less than
    to change the names, and in doing so he changed “Miss Mary” to
    “Miss Emily,” and thus unintentionally gave all the characters
    their true names.

                                                            J. T. M.

    Columbia, Tenn., October, 1903.

Tom was a sly, rollicking rascal of a darkey, with a catfish smile
and a jaybird eye. He was ever ready for a laugh, a joke, a drunk, or
a profession of religion. He would spend his nights as quickly in a
bar-room as at a prayer-meeting, and by day he was equally as ready
to battle for politics as for religion. But his strong card was his
wonderful experience “endurin’ de wah,” whither he went as a body servant
to “Marse John,” and his “hairbreadth ’scapes in the imminent deadly
breach” would have put a flush of envy in the dusky cheek of Othello
himself. But Tom’s fighting was now mostly under his tongue, and, like
many who are yet wearing the blue and gray a full generation after all
hostilities have ceased and all animosities should long ago have ceased
with them, Tom’s war spirit increased as the square of the distance from
the crack of the last cannon. From his own statements there could be no
doubt that, besides actually participating in every battle of the civil
war, the Confederate forces were maintained in the field as long as they
were, entirely on account of his own skill and genius as a “furager.”

His other weakness was his habit of disputing upon questions theologic.
In this he was peculiarly strong; for, if the discussion waxed hot,
and he found he could not convince his hearer with words, he did not
hesitate to smite the centurion’s ear, or bite off his nose; and as
his war record among the darkies was already Achillean and his fistic
abilities unquestionable, there were few who were willing to “’spute de
p’int wid ’im.” His great argument was the efficacy of faith over work,
and he was so scrupulously religious in his belief that he finally ceased
to work altogether, while it required but the spirit of a July sun and a
weedy garden to set him to arguing with renewed zeal.

Now, a man is what his beliefs make him; and so the effect of Tom’s
belief developed one virtue truly apostolic; he took no thought for the
morrow, what he should eat or drink; he carried no scrip in his purse,
and, at the beginning of this story, he had not even a change of raiment.

But his staunch friend was “Marse John,” the old Judge, who had long been
Judge of a Circuit Court in Alabama—so long “the memory of man runneth
not to the contrary,” as the law books have it. The old Judge was a good
man and a good Judge—so just that the poorest and the blackest negro,
when jerked up before his bar, never failed, equally with the richest
and the whitest man in the district, to get that justice to which he
was entitled. Nay, more; for in the dignified old gentleman who looked
down upon him, pitying him in his environments of ignorance and poverty,
and scrutinizing the evidence brought out by the wily lawyers with an
alertness that reminded one of an eagle on his eerie watching the sly
maneuverings of a congregation of foxes below, the poor wretch often
unexpectedly found a strong and stubborn friend. And if the evidence
contained but the germ of a doubt in the prisoner’s favor, he promptly
got the benefit of it, though often, to get it, the old Judge had to
bring to bear in the case the guns of his own learned and analytical
mind. As he grew older, he continued to fight for truth with a zeal that
seemed to increase with the silver of his locks, and he would acquit
innocence though the hangman’s rope was already around her neck.

The old Judge’s influence in the district was wonderful, as is always
the influence of truth and strength. Though unpretentious and often
silent, not all the preachers of the circuit could have spun the moral
woof that was in the warp of his work.

Tom had belonged to the old Judge “befo’ de wah,” and had gone through
that fiery ordeal with his master. There is a peculiarly strong bond
existing, in the South, between the master and the servant who have thus
faced death together. The world cannot show a similar instance where the
tie of servitude was forged in the white heat of its destiny.

And so the old Judge now stood up for Tom through thick and thin, and
while he openly lamented Tom’s worthlessness, secretly he never failed
to come to his assistance when in trouble or supply him and his family
with food when hungry. If Tom got in jail, he “saunt for Marse John,” who
quickly bailed him out. If, in a religious scrimmage with another darkey,
he adopted the warlike methods of Peter, and was fined for assault and
battery, he “saunt for Marse John,” who, after listening to his tale,
paid his fine before the Mayor; and turned him loose, to the terror and
dismay of all the other darkies who differed from him religiously. If
he even concluded that marriage was a failure (and the Chancery Court
records will show that he did so conclude at least several times during
the first thirty years after the war), he “saunt for Marse John,” who,
after listening to his tale, must have concluded that the poor woman
was entitled to a divorce, whether Tom was or not, as he never failed
to go Tom’s security for the costs and the $15 lawyer’s fee—all that is
required in the black belt of Alabama to enable two yoked-up darkies to
separate, and then proceed to make themselves miserable again in another
effort to solve the problem. This last act raised the old Judge among
the gods in Tom’s estimation; there was nothing, he thought, Marse John
couldn’t do. The man who could thus sunder bonds that God had joined
together, possessed, in Tom’s opinion, a few Olympian attributes himself.

Therefore, Tom went on, in spite of the old Judge’s talks, admonitions,
and even threats, until one day something happened. The grand jury
returned a true bill against Tom for hog stealing. Now, the old Judge
would do anything in the world for Tom outside of his own court, but when
Tom got into that temple of justice, he found himself among the laws of
the Medes and Persians—and he knew it. If that true bill, properly drawn
up by the solicitor and signed by the foreman of the grand jury, had
indicted the old Judge’s own son, he would have tried him as calmly as
Brutus did his boys of old.

But if Tom was in great danger, he never troubled himself about it in the
least. Throughout the trial he sat with the air of one who considered he
was being highly honored to be tried by “Marse John,” and in the depths
of his face was a secret exultation that foreshadowed a complete, a
startling, and even a sensational exoneration.

He had stolen the shoat from “the major,” the old Judge’s neighbor, and
the major made out a plain, dead-shot case against Tom. In fact, several
colored witnesses, led by the centurion’s servant, as aforesaid, and
others who differed from Tom religiously, had even waylaid and watched
the defendant and seen him take the shoat and carry it to his own cabin.

In his own behalf, Tom said nothing, but sat with a broad and knowing
grin on his face, and in his eyes the look of one who, besides having a
straight flush in his hand, held a royal one up his sleeve. His lawyer
made a feeble effort at defense, and, after submitting a charge or two to
the old Judge, who promptly overruled them, the jury was duly charged,
retired, and quickly brought in a verdict sentencing Tom to five years
in the penitentiary. This made Tom chuckle outright; he almost split his
sides in quiet laughter, to the disgust of the court and the astonishment
of his own lawyer.

“Stand up, sir!” gruffly thundered the old Judge. Tom arose with his
broadest grin and most waggish air.

“Have you anything to say why this sentence should not be passed upon
you?” said the Judge, looking sternly at the prisoner.

And then came a rich scene.

“Look erheer, Marse John—he! he! he!—I sutn’y am s’prised at you—he!
he! he!—to sot up dar on dat bench, an’ heah dis jury scan’lize my
rippertashun lak dat, an’ den you turn roun’ dar, so sassy-lak, in dat
cheer, an’ ax me whut I got ter say erbout it—he! he! he! Marse John,
whut you mean by doin’ dis way? Jes’ tell me.”

The old Judge turned red with anger.

“Mr. Sheriff,” he thundered, “take this prisoner to jail!”

For a moment Tom was thunderstruck. Could it be possible Marse John
really meant it? Was Marse John, the only white friend he had, about to
desert him? Quick as a shot he changed his tactics. He had tried his
straight flush and had failed. Now for his royal flush.

“Hol’ on, Marse John! hol’ on!” Tom cried, dropping his funny ways and
assuming a look of intense earnestness and desperate seriousness. “You
dun ax me now, an’ if nuffin’ else gwi’ do you, I hafter tell you whut
I do kno’ erbout it. An you’ll ’skuze me, Marse John, ef I happens not
to be mealy-mouf ’bout tellin’ it, nurther; fur you makin’ me do it,
whuther-no. But I want you, gemmen ob de jury, an’ de shearf dar, an’
dese lawyers heah, an’ all ob you, to b’ar witness to de fac’, dat Marse
John don’ fotch all dis row down on hisse’f, befo’ all dese heah folks
heah, er-tryin’ to scan’lize my rippertashun. ’Stid ob sayin’ to you
all at the berry fus’, befo’ dis row was urver started: ‘Gem’men, dese
seedlings am squash, an’ dis ole nigger kin go!’ he sot up dar on dat
bench an’ kerry dis thing on, an’ kerry it on, an’ aig you all on, an’
aig you on, er s’archin’ an’ er s’archin’ an’ er axin’ questions, an’ er
nosin’ round in my privut bus’ness twell you all, gemmen, jes’ bleegter
go out an’ fotch in dis heah vurdick—an’ I don’t blame you all ’tall,
gem’men; I don’t think hard of you ’tall. But I sut’n’y was ’sprised at
Marse John, when he turn roun’ so sassy-lak in dat cheer, much es ter
say: ‘You ole rascal, I’ve got you now! Whut you gotter say erbout it?’

“Erhuh! Erhuh!” said Tom, chuckling and scratching his head in deep
thought. “Wall, suh, heah’s whut I gotter say erbout it: In korse I
tuck de majuh’s little bitter old po’ shoat! But I jes’ swap fur ’im,
an’ de majuh kno’ as well es I do I was gwi’ gib ’im ernudder one back
dis fawl, soon es my ole sower hed pigs—an’ er heap better shoat den I
got fum ’im, too; fur, es you all kno’, my old sower is three-quarters
Burksheer, an’ ’fo’ Gord, gem’men, es I stan’ heah on my oaf, ’kordin’
to de supervisement of Marse John, to tell you all whut I kno’ ’bout dis
thing, dat wus de little bitteres’, no-countes’ pig I urver swap fur in
all my life! Gem’men, he didn’t make me one good meal fur de old ’oman
an’ de ten older chilluns, let ’lone de two twins—de majuh an’ de jedge.
We had ter put dese ter bed befo’ supper, by tellin’ ’em we gwi’ have de
pig fur bre’kfus’, an’ ter make ’aste an’ go ter sleep so ester wake up
soon in de mohnin’ an’ git dey sheer. Arter dey went to sleep, we greased
de majuh’s an’ de jedge’s mouf wid sum cracklin’ skin, an’ put er plate
ob rib-bones an’ scraps by de baid, an’ de naixt mohnin’ when dey wake
up, we tell ’em dey dun eat dair part whilst dey sleep, an’ dey b’leeve
it to dis day! Now, ain’t dat er hog fur ter be kickin’ up sech er dust
erbout? Ef it ain’t so, gem’men, an’ dat wa’nt de littles’ razzerback I
eber swap fur, den I ain’t nurver stole horgs in Georgy!

“Erhuh! Erhuh!” said Tom, reminiscently again. “Nurver stole horgs in
Georgy? Hi-yi-ee! An’ now I’m gettin’ dar, is I? But b’ar in min’,
gem’men, Marse John dun fotch all dis down on hisse’f. I’d nurver tole
on ’im—no! not eben at de jedgment mohn—don’t keer how hard old Gabri’l
keep tootin’ his horn, an’ er lookin’ at me so s’archin’ lak wid his fiah
eyes, an’ er sayin’: ‘Tom, whut you kno’ ’bout horg stealin’ in Georgy?’
An’ I jes’ say: ‘Nuffin,’ Marse Gabri’l, nuffin, ’tall, suh, Gord bless
you, Marse Gabri’l: nurver was in Georgy in my life, suh, Gord bless
you!’ But I can’t say dat now no more, gem’men, ’kase Marse John hisse’f
dun ax me to tell whut I kno’ ’bout it!

“Gem’men, when I fus’ went to de wah wid Marse John, fur ter wait on
’im, I was es hones’ es de noonday sun; but I didn’t bin in de wah six
weeks befo’ I’d steal ennything frum er saddle blanket to de hoss dat wus
under it; ennything frum er hen-aig to de guv’ment steer! An’ why? ’Kase
Marse John dar had ter hab sumpin’ n’ur ter eat. You think I gwi’ see my
young Marster starve ter def’ fightin’ day an’ night, wid no chance to
git nuffin’ to eat, an’ libin’ on parch cohn an’ Georgy branch water,
an’ hit smellin’ ob de week’s washin’ ob de po’ Georgy white trash up
de creek, allers washin’ dey clothes in it? Ruther walk five miles to
wash dey clothes in er branch den ter hab som-body wash ’em fur ’em in
er silver-lined wash-tub. You think I gwi’ see ’im starve, I say, jes’
on ’count ob er littl ’lig’us skooples? Menny an’ menny a mohnin’, suh,
Marse John ’ud git up from camp so hongry an’ weak he couldn’t hardly
walk, an’ say: ‘Tom, you sly raskil! did you furage enny las’ night?’
(He call it furagin’ den, gem’men!) An’ I’d laf an’ say: ‘Marse John,
you kno’ you ain’t nurver gin me no money fur to get ennything!’ An’ den
he’d laf an’ say: ‘G’long, you sly raskil, an’ fotch in my bre’kfus’!—jes
lak he wus orderin’ it from er resterrant. An’ den I’d laf an’ fotch ’im
out de sof’-b’iled aigs, an’ de br’iled chicken, an’ de home-made Georgy
kwored ham, an’ de biskits. An’, fo’ Gord, gem’men, in all dat campange
I nurver knowed ’im to challenge de rigularity ob his empanelmen’ nur
ter s’arch too close into de wharfore ob de fotchness. Nur did I eber
kno’ ’im ter go out an’ hab er jury ob twelve men fotch roun’ to de tent
to hol’ enny inques’ ober de remains ob dat fellerny, wid er leetle ole
s’archin’ lawyer fur to ax quextunes, an’ keep hintin’ ’bout stealin’,
an’ de pen’tenshury, an’ all dat! No, suh, gem’men; ’stid ob all dis
hooraw an’ red-tape, he’d jes’ smile all ober an’ fall to an’ say: ‘Gord
bless you, Tom; you am er jewel, an’ no mistake!’

“Now, whar’d dem aigs cum frum, Marse John, an’ dem chickens? Whar’d I
laf an’ tell you dey cum from? Ax de Georgy hen-roosts frum Ringgold to
Dalton. An’ whar’d dem home-kwored hams cum frum? Ax de smoke-houses ob
de widders in de mountings frum Chat’nooger to Atlanter! Erhuh! ’Twas
furagin’ den, wus it; an’ it won’ no harm fur to eat de po’ widders’ las’
ham or slorter de chickens ob de innercents, long es you didn’t pull ’em
yo’se’f? Erhuh? An’ I ax you right now, gem’men, ef he didn’t read outen
a book dis mohnin’ mos’ Solomonly, an’ ’splain to you all mos’ capisly,
dat de ’sessery to de crime mus de same es de ’sessor? Erhuh! ’Scuse me,
Marse John, fur recognizin’ dis thing so p’intedly, but you kno’ yo’se’f
you tell me most p’intedly ter tell whut I kno’ er-bout it, an’ I’m
bleegter do it!

“Ole Gabri’l hisse’f c’u’dn’t made me do whut you kin!

“An’ dar’s de majuh, er settin’ an’ er smilin’ an’ er aigin’ dis thing
on. Mebbe he’d lakter kno’ whut I gotter say erbout it! Lemme ax you,
majuh, ef you disremembers de week befo’ de battle ob Resaker, an’ dat
mohnin’ you cum ober to me an’ Marse John’s tent an’ say: ‘Tom, you
theevin’ son ob darkness, me an’ yo’ Marse John wanter hab little Jo, an’
General Cheatem, an’ Pat Claybu’n, ober in de tent fur supper ter-morrow,
fur we’re all hongry an’ want sumpin’ fit ter eat. We can’t fight fureber
on er empty stummic. Now, you jes’ git on my hoss, ter-day, an git er
huff on you, you black scamp, an’ go up in dese hills an’ hollers, an’
steal ennything fit ter eat in hair, hide or feathers—jes’ make dese
Georgy hen-roosts howl! Git us sumpin’ fit fur de men dat’s gwinter eat
it, Tom, fur yo’ rippertashun es er furager is sho’ at stake!’

“Erhuh! Erhuh! You ain’t furgot dat, is you, majuh, nur de supper I
got up fur you all? Er hole b’iled ham—I stole dat frum er widder’s
smokehouse whilst I wus pricin’ aigs wid her, an’ watchin’ de lay ob
de hen-house, waitin’ fur de moon to go down. Er tucky gobbler which I
mistuck an’ shot fur er wild one, meanderin’ round in er meader in front
ob er orphin ’sylum. Biskits frum flour I got outer er mill dat seem
ter kinder run itse’f, an’ two gallins ob mountain dew I stole outen er
hard-shell preacher’s cellar. An’ when all de ginerels dun sot round de
pine boards I fix up fur er table, an’ I fotch all dem things in, smokin’
hot an’ smellin’ lak er supper in heaben, didn’t all the ginerels’ eyes
sparkle lak di’mon’s; an’ little Jo up an’ say: ‘Why, majuh, you ax us
ter supper, an’ sot us down to er banquet! Whar in de wurl you git all
dis?”

“An’ den you wink yo’ eye at Marse John, an’ say: ‘Gineral Johnson, ef
you’d jes’ p’int dat nigger Tom, dar, Cheef ob de Commissary Departmen’
ob de Army ob Tennessee, we’d nurver go hongry enny mo’, an’ we’d whip
Gineral Sherman in two weeks!’

“An’ den you all laf, an’ went to furagin’.

“Erhuh! Ain’t dat so? An’ lemme ax you, majah, whut’s de difference in
furagin’ in wah an’ in peace? An’ s’pose sum thirty years arter de wah me
an’ my fambly ’bout to starve, an’ I heah de chillun cryin’ fur sumpin’
ter eat, an’ I goes by yo’ lot sum dark night er kinder dreamin’ all de
time an’ sorter libin’ lak er ole man will, in de past, an’ I ’gin ter
think I’m in dat bloody wah erg’in, an’ out furagin’ fur you an’ Marse
John, an’ I happen ter knock over one ob yo’ little ole razzer-back
shoats, ter take back ter camp ergin—is dat ennything fur ter raise sech
er hooraw erbout? Ain’t I gwi’ gi’ you er nudder one back dis fawl? Jes’
tell me!

“But dat ain’t all, Marse John; an’ you kno’ you ax me to tell it all!
Who wus it nussed you, day an’ night, when you had de chills an’ fever
in camp round Atlanter? Who wus it stood by yo’ side at de bridge, whar
de giner’l tole you to hol’ wid yo’ kumpny tell dey capture you or kill
you, an’ when de Yankees cum lak bees er swarmin’, an’ shot you outen
de saddle, an’ dey captured you, bleedin’ to def—who pick you up an’
kerry you quick to de Yankee surgun’s tent an’ tied de art’ry dat sabed
yo’ life? An’ who nussed you in de hospital, day an’ night, er stealin’
aigs fur you when hard-tack would er kilt you, an’ young chickens when
bacon meant def? An’ when you got well ernuf ter be keeried to Johnson’s
Islan’, who wus it, ’stid ob gwine on wid Sherman’s army to freedom,
nurver to be er slave enny mo’, gether’d up yo’ things, took de letter
you writ, an’ footed it all de way to Alabama to tell Miss Mary you wus
safe an’ well? An’ when he got dar, an’ seed Miss Mary—Gord bless ’er—er
cryin’ in de door, an’ de chillun cryin’ erroun’ er’, ’kase when dey
seed me bringin’ back yo’ things dey dun gib you up fur dead, lak de
papers sed, an’ when I got up close ernuf ter tell ’er you wus safe an’
well, an’ gib ’er de letter you saunt, an’ tell ’er how I cum jes’ ter
bring yo’ letter an’ things an’ sword an’ pistol home, who wus it but de
statelies’ an’ queenlies’ ’oman in de State—now, thang Gord, one ob de
anguls in heaben—dat wept ober an’ clung to dis ole black han’ dat now
you say am de han’ ob de hog-theef, an’ fit only fur de pen’tenshury; an’
es ’er tears ob gladness drapt on it, she smiled sweetly through it all,
an’ say: ‘Oh, Tom! Tom! Gord will reward you sum day fur this, fur though
you am po’ an’ black an’ a slave, you have acted the whites’ ob de white;
you chose yo’ duty befo’ yo’ own freedom!’

“Dat’s whut she sed, Marse John; yo’ own blessed wife an’ my Mistis’
dat’s in heab’n an’ de grandes’ women dat now libs in dat lan’ ob light!
An’ dar I staid, Marse John, an’ ’tended de place an’ wurked de crap, an’
tuck keer ob Miss Mary an’ de chilluns tell you cum home yo’se’f. Dat’s
de truf, Marse John, es you kno’ it is yo’se’f; and now I’ve tole it all
es you ax me.”

And Tom sat down.

From suppressed laughter in the beginning of Tom’s speech, the entire
court had now dropped into subdued sympathy, and even tears. The old
Judge himself blew his nose vigorously, and looked carefully over his
charges again, while the major came up and whispered in his ear. Finally
he said, quietly, yet subduedly:

“The court is of opinion it has been too hasty in this matter, for, on
reading carefully the second charge submitted by the defendant’s counsel,
the court is convinced it erred in not giving this charge to the jury.
The verdict is, therefore, set aside, and a new trial will be given the
defendant.”

And Tom walked out quietly and solemnly, but a free man yet. But the
case never came to a trial again. Tom was not himself from that day on.
He was sobered, subdued, crushed. He seemed to think “Marse John had
gone back on him.” He quit drinking, fighting, and disputing on things
religious. He even quit telling his experience “endurin’ de wah,” and,
more wonderful still, he actually went to work. All this was too much
for him. As the day approached for the trial he became melancholy,
morbid, and finally took to his bed in earnest. At first they thought
he would get up soon, but he grew rapidly worse; and a week before the
trial, the doctor said that Tom would never “furage” again. The old Judge
was holding court in another county, and had not heard of Tom’s sickness.
He promptly called the case in its order on the docket. Tom’s lawyer read
the physician’s certificate as to Tom’s condition. The old Judge looked
worried—even troubled. Then he glanced around the court—the major was
not there. He took up his pen and wrote quickly across the docket: “Case
nolle prossed; no prosecutor!” and as soon as the court adjourned he went
by Tom’s cabin to see if he wanted anything, and to tell him about the
nol prossing his case. As he neared the cabin he heard the uncanny music
of the negro mourning song, and it startled him as he went in and found
them chanting it around Tom’s bed.

He looked at Tom; he was sober, but dying.

The old Judge went up, sat by the bed, and took Tom tenderly by the
hand. The negro’s face lit up for a moment with its old-time light as he
recognized the old Judge. Then he remembered:

“Will dey try me ergin; will dey convict de old man ergin, Marse John?”
eagerly asked Tom.

“Not while I am Judge of this circuit, Tom—never!” as he gripped Tom’s
hand.

“Thang Gord, Marse John! thang Gord! I knew you—wouldn’t! You see
I—wus—jes’ furagin’! The majuh knowed it—jes’ furagin’.” He was quiet a
little and dozed some. Then he sprang half-way up in bed—a startled look
in his eye:

“Lemme out! lemme out!” he cried. “Don’t you hear it, Marse John? Dat’s
taps—de army ob de Tennessee am sleepin’—de lights mos’ out—I must hustle
an’ git sumpin’ to eat—I mus’ furage—gwine on er long furage—but I’ll
wait—on—you—foreber—in—de—camp—dar, Marse John——.” He broke off suddenly;
a radiant light gleamed in his eyes; “Miss Mary, my mistis; O dar she am,
beckinin’ an’ smilin’ to po’ ole Tom; beckinin’ an’ smilin’, ‘Gord will
reward—you—sum—day!’ Oh, home, home, Marse John!”

Two hours later the old Judge came out of Tom’s cabin, crying like a boy.
Tom had gone on his last “furage.”




Old Casey, the Fifer

By HENRY EWELL HORD


    [NOTE.—The Editor of Trotwood’s believes this is one of the
    best descriptions of Franklin’s bloody and needless fight ever
    written, and a pathetic pen picture never to be forgotten. Its
    author is an inmate of the Old Soldiers’ Home, Nashville, and
    was one of the bravest soldiers of the Lost Cause. We are told
    by an old comrade of the writer that in one of the fiercest
    fights of the war, a large shell bursted in a foot of Mr.
    Hord’s head, knocking him down and completely destroying his
    hearing, killing two men behind him and one at his side. The
    historic value of this pathetic story is great. It has been
    said and denied that Forrest, with his wonderful foresight,
    went to Hood just before he ordered his army to the holocaust
    of Franklin and begged him for permission to flank the Yankee
    army out, saying he would do it in fifteen minutes, and there
    need be no battle. “No,” exclaimed Hood, “no, charge them
    out.” Forrest rode off in disgust. In studying the battle of
    Franklin for a chapter in the writer’s new novel, “The Bishop
    of Cottontown,” we read all the Records of the Rebellion
    pertaining to the fight, endeavoring, among other things, to
    find some evidence of the truth of this. In Gen. J. D. Cox’
    report we found it corroborated, that General saying in the
    afternoon he saw evidence of Forrest’s Cavalry preparing to
    flank him, and he prepared immediately to evacuate Franklin!
    And thus was Forrest’s military genius corroborated by the
    other side. But here is the man who carried the despatch,
    and the thrilling picture of the brave boys going into that
    veritable mouth of hell so gallantly, and of old Fifer leading
    them on till his tune ceased beneath a clubbed musket, caused
    the writer to lay down the graphic story of this old, maimed
    soldier and use his handkerchief. And no more graphic story of
    Franklin was ever written.]

The following characteristic letter accompanied the story:

    Dear Mr. Moore: I send you the enclosed yarn of Fifer. If you
    think it worth publishing in Trotwood you can do so. I am, as
    you see, not much of a writer like Ben Hord. I get the facts
    all O. K., but, to tell it so somebody will be interested,
    that’s the rub. The trouble about writing a war yarn, no two
    soldiers see things alike, and some fellow is liable to make
    you out a liar before you know it. I once wrote an account of
    a drill we had against the 15th Mississippi for a flag offered
    by the ladies, of Canton, Miss. I gave, as I thought, and what
    some of my old regiment had written, the exact facts. The
    colonel of the 15th Mississippi is still living. He answered my
    article, and made me out seventeen kinds of liars. I felt left.
    Not long after that the last ex-Confederate Reunion was held at
    Nashville. One day I was standing in front of the Tulane Hotel
    watching the big crowd going by, and a man passed with a metal
    badge with “15th Miss.” on it. I stopped him, and asked him if
    he remembered that drill, and when he found out I was in the
    other regiment, he was delighted. He had a crowd of Mississippi
    boys with him, but none of them had been members of the 15th,
    so he stood there and gave them an account of the drill, and
    corroborated every word I had written, though he had never seen
    it. Well, I believe you literary fellows say it is misquoted,
    but we privates have another name for it.

                          Respectfully yours,

                                   HENRY EWELL HORD.
                                   Hermitage, Tenn., Soldiers’ Home.

It was at Gainsville, Ala., we parted with our old Fifer Casey. He had
been with us ever since the regiment was organized at Camp Boone, Tenn.
He had fifed all through the Mexican War and nearly three years of the
Civil War. At first he had lots to tell us about Cerro Gordo, Palo Alto
and Chepultepec, but after we got down to business old Casey gave the
Mexican War and Greasers a rest.

He was a tall, slim old fellow, carried himself as if steel ramrods were
his regular diet, scorned to ride in an ambulance or wagon on a march,
kept at the head of the regiment all the time, and went into all battles
playing his liveliest tunes.

At Shiloh, in the charge that broke up the “Hornet Nest,” old Casey was
playing “Cheer, Boys, Cheer,” and the whole regiment singing it as they
closed in with the Yanks.

At the tale end of many a long day’s march, when everybody was footsore
and weary, thinking and wishing for camp, marching any kind of old way,
Casey would notice it, and strike up “The Girl I Left Behind Me” or “The
Stump-Tail Dog.” The boys would forget about their weariness, close up,
catch the step, and before we had gone an hundred feet, without a word
from any officer, we would be sailing along like we were “passing in
review.”

Casey had a musical chum that belonged to the 9th Arkansas, of our
brigade, who was just the opposite of Casey—short and stout built. The
top of his head would scarcely reach old Casey’s shoulder. When those two
got together with a canteen of whisky there would be little sleeping in
that regiment that night. We used to call it “The Girl I Left Behind Me,”
with variations, “Long Girl” and “Short Girl.”

Casey always refused to be mounted, saying he did not enlist in a cavalry
regiment and did not propose to be killed by some fool horse. He did not
condescend to ask for any papers, but coolly walked over and joined the
9th Arkansas, with his old chum.

Our only regret about being mounted was leaving the other regiments of
our brigade—Buford Brigade, Loring Division. We had been together a long
time, and many battles and long marches had formed many warm friendships.
General Buford had drilled us till we were one of the best drilled and
most soldierly-looking brigades in the C. S. A., and always gave a good
account of ourselves in battle. The regiments were the 35th and 27th
Alabama, 9th Arkansas and 12th Louisiana, nearly all young men, and as
good soldiers as ever marched. After we left, Colonel Scott, of the
12th Louisiana, was ranking officer, and commanded the brigade. General
Buford accepted an offer from General Forrest, and followed us to North
Mississippi, where we joined General Forrest. The 3d, 7th, 8th and 12th
Kentucky were brigaded, and Col. A. P. Thompson commanded. He was killed
a short time after at Paducah, Ky., and General Lyon succeeded him. Lyon
and Bell’s brigades formed the Buford Division.

We followed the “Wizard of the Saddle” till the surrender, and were
engaged in every fight and raid in which he was.

On the campaign to Nashville in front of General Hood, I was detailed to
act as courier for General Buford. The day of the battle of Franklin,
Tenn., General Buford had the right wing of our army. There was nothing
but General Wilson’s cavalry in front of us. We drove the Yankees back
across Harpeth River, and at a crossing five miles above Franklin they
dismounted and prepared to make a desperate resistance to our crossing.
They formed their line on the north bank close to the edge, and across
the river was an old field which we would be forced to cross to reach
the ford. They could rake us fore and aft before we could get to the
river. As soon as General Buford saw the situation, he dismounted two
of Lyon’s regiments back of the field a half mile from the river, and
with four guns of battery double-quicked them across the field up to the
river. They then opened a rapid fire on the Yankee line across the river.
The two lines made a dense smoke which hung like a fog over the river.
Under cover of the smoke, General Buford with the balance of the command
crossed, mounted, the smoke completely screening their movement, and the
Yankees never fired on them while crossing. The boys had orders to cease
firing after we got down the bank, which they did. The Yankees thinking
they had gained a victory because the fire stopped, cheered lustily, and
almost ceased firing. While they were still cheering, a long line of
stern-faced men cleared the bank and fell onto them with carbine, pistol
and saber.

I thought I would be smart, and got right behind General Buford, going up
the bank at a place that I did not think a goat could climb. The General
weighed 320 pounds, and rode a big, old horse. I did not think a ball
could find me behind such good works. A moment after, when I saw old
“Waggoner” and the General hanging right over me, I thought I had been
a little too smart, but old “Waggoner” did not slip. He got his front
feet on the top and sprang as lightly as a cat right into the Yankee
line. One of them thought he had found a loose horse and grabbed him by
the bit, but turned him loose with an awful howl. We actually surprised
the Yankees as much as if we had ambuscaded them from a stone wall, got
the first fire, which at such close range counts up. The boys who did
the firing on the south bank, and the battery, mounted and came over
and joined. The Yankees were of the very best brand—tall Westerners,
could ride and shoot with the best. They put up a good fight, but we got
away with them and scattered them. There was nothing between us and the
Nashville and Franklin pike then.

General Buford made a report to General Forrest, and told him if he were
backed up by Infantry he would swing on around and grab the Nashville
pike, and that would force the Yankees out of their breastworks at
Franklin. I was selected to carry that dispatch.

To my anxious inquiry where I would find General Forrest, “Damn if I
know,” said old Abe. “About Franklin, I guess,” was all I could get.

The fight at Franklin was just commencing then. I recrossed the river. I
had the choice of two routes. The one up the river was shorter, but as
far as I could see it lay across soft fields that would force me to ride
slowly or kill my horse. The other was a good, hard road that, from the
course it ran, I knew must lead into the pike on which General Hood’s
army was advancing, a few miles south of Franklin. I chose the latter.

I reached the pike just as Hood’s artillery was going to the front under
whip and spur.

There is nothing more thrilling than to see a well-equipped battery
going to the front. As far as I could see up and down the pike they were
rushing forward, six horses to each gun, and on the Jump. Cannoneers
sitting braced in their places, stripped to the waist, yelling and
laughing at everything, as if it were the most joyous thing in the
world—fighting. The guns followed each other so close, and were going
at such a rapid gait, that I had to watch my chance and slip across the
pike. Across the pike, and marching in the field parallel with the pike,
was the head of General Stewart’s Corps, just passing, the General riding
in front. I knew him by sight, and I thought he might be able to give
me some information as to the whereabouts of General Forrest. I slipped
across the pike, jumped a wall and saluted General Stewart. The General
returned my salute as politely as if I were General Hood. I told him who
I was, and asked him if he knew anything about General Forrest.

He said no, he had not been to the front yet, and did not know what they
were doing.

I had turned, and was riding with him. He then inquired of me what the
cavalry were doing. I told him about the fight at the river, and added
that if we could get the infantry there would be no serious fight at
Franklin. He seemed to be greatly interested.

Just then a staff officer came flying down the pike, jumped the wall in
front of General Stewart, saluted, and said: “General Hood’s compliments;
you will please move your command forward at double-quick.”

While he was talking to General Stewart, I was sizing him up. He was
a young, handsome, dashing looking fellow, finely mounted, and a good
rider, but he looked as proud and haughty as if he commanded the whole
army. I hesitated some little time before I could muster courage to
address such a magnificent creature. Poor couriers did not always get
courteous treatment.

I think General Stewart noticed my slowness, for he turned to the staff
officer, and said: “Here is a young man very anxious to find General
Forrest. Can you inform him?” The fellow never even looked at me, but
whirled his horse around and said, “Follow me!” He took the wall, into
the pike.

There was something about that “follow me” and manner that got my back
up. He had hardly got his horse straightened out down the pike before I
was alongside of him. If my thoughts had been spoken there, they would
have been something like: “D— you, I have always been used to riding
beside better men than you are.”

We passed the guns as if they were standing still. Never a word or look
did that fellow give me. He kept on till I thought he was surely going
to charge the town. After I had about given him up as crazy, he suddenly
pulled up, and I, not expecting it, shot on by, but stopped in almost a
bound and rode back. Pointing to the right of the pike, he said: “I saw
General Forrest up there a few moments ago, and guess he is there yet.”

I looked in the direction he pointed, but could make out nothing for the
smoke. The lines seemed to be close together and engaged in a fearful
conflict. This was my first and lasting sight of the fearful fight
at Franklin. I turned toward the staff officer to get more definite
directions, and found he had disappeared. I never saw him any more. I
left the pike and rode in the direction he had pointed. The ground was
strewn with dead and wounded men. I had to ride slowly. I worked my way
along in the rear of the Confederate lines a long ways to the right, but
could not find General Forrest. Then I concluded I was too close in. I
knew he had no command there. I did not think he would go up so close to
the firing line if he were only looking on, so rode further off and then
turned towards the pike again.

I had almost reached the pike when I heard someone swearing at a fearful
rate. I could not see very far for the smoke and gloom.

I thought, “If that is not the General, it’s his twin brother, for nobody
could swear that way but he.”

It proved to be the old boy himself. By that time our lines were giving
way, and men were going to the rear in squads. The General was trying to
rally them. He had worked himself into a terrible rage, had his saber
drawn, and I expected to see him use it on some of them, and they would
probably have shot the stuffing out of him. They did not know him, and
seemed to resent his interference. Their own officers rallied them and
charged those impregnable breastworks nine times, they say.

I rode up to General Forrest, stuck my dispatch under his nose and told
him it was very important. He glared at me a moment like he could not
make up his mind whether to cut my head off or shoot me. Finally he
called, “Major!”

Out of the smoke rode the major and took the dispatch and read it to the
General. I don’t recollect now whether it was Major Strange or Anderson.
Both were nice men to do business with. Before he got through reading the
report all signs of anger and passion had disappeared from the General’s
face. It was always my private opinion that most of it was “put on,”
though I did not tell him so for various reasons.

“Bully for old Abe,” says General Forrest, after hearing the report.
“Major, tell him to hold what he’s got, and I will be with him as soon as
I see General Hood and get the infantry.”

He went off on the jump. We were standing then on the side of the pike.
The major was dismounted, stooping down writing on his knee, and I was
holding his horse.

Out of the gloom and smoke came the sound of drum and fife. I looked back
down the pike and saw a long line of bayonets coming at a double-quick
with “trailing arms.” They were not yelling, their line as straight as
a string, and perfect time. Though they were leaving a broad trail of
dead behind, they kept the ranks closed up. From the stern, set face and
fierce light of battle in their eyes, I could see they meant business. In
front of them was our old fifer, Casey, and his Arkansas chum, playing
“The Girl I Left Behind Me.” They had two kettle-drums and a bass. They
passed within ten feet of me.

I yelled at old Casey as he recognized me, and nodded as he flashed
past. I knew then that was our old infantry brigade. I saw General Scott
further down the line. It enthused me so to see our comrades going in
so gallantly that I yelled to beat the band. My horse thought hell had
broken loose somewhere and wanted to go, too. The Yankees were sending a
perfect storm of shot and shell down the pike. Two lines of breastworks,
two solid sheets of flame above them, the batteries looked like the whole
top of the hill was ablaze, but into that hell our old boys charged, over
the first line like a flash, and a race with the Yankees for the second
line. I watched old Casey. All the musicians were killed or wounded
before they reached the second line, but Casey, above the roar of the
guns and the bursting of shells, still marched, playing on, and I could
hear that old fife screaming “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” At last, for
one short moment, I saw old Casey’s tall, slim form mount the second line
of Yankee works, and then “The Girl I Left Behind Me” came to a sudden
end. His music suddenly ceased. A Yankee knocked him over the head with a
gun. Casey was captured and sent to prison. I have never seen him since,
but the last I heard of him he was living in Cadiz, Ky.

I was called back to my own business by a gentle tap on my knee and heard
the major say, with a very superior smile: “You seem to be a little
excited.”

“Don’t get that way often, Major,” I replied, “that’s our old infantry
brigade. Look how they go in.”

He looked across my horse, and I could see his face light up. “By God,
those are gallant fellows,” he says.

“Yes, old Abe trained them,” was my answer.

The major gave me the dispatch, and I was obliged to leave at once.

Hood would not give Forrest the infantry nor allow him to flank and
follow up our victory.

Twice in twenty-four hours had Forrest let the bars down to the Yankee
rear, and Hood would not take advantage of it. Things were changing every
moment, and I had to make several trips between Buford and Forrest, just
how many I don’t remember. I was riding long after the fight was over.

       *       *       *       *       *

_The education which is worth while is the one we learn in making a
living._




The Candle


Some people work and wait, and smile and steal, and cringe and plan; make
shifty cuts and cheat, lay up whole tons of revenue and rot and work
their lives out—just to see how big a funeral they may have.

                                                     —JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.




In the Strawberry Country

BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE


                                        Castleberry, Ala., April 28, 1906.

This is the center of the strawberry industry of Alabama. As your car
passes through the pine lands, stretching along the lower half of
the State, you catch a whiff, now and then, from a passing car-load
of the queen of fruits. It extends practically from the thriving
town of Greenville to Flomaton. It is a delightful odor—these
strawberries—mingled with that of the pine, and the perfume of some wild
flower gifted beyond its kind. It is a pretty sight to step off at this
little pine-bowered village, which, a few years ago, was virgin pine
lands, and see some five hundred berry pickers in one field of a hundred
acres or more. The pickers are nearly all negroes, and about half of
them women and children, and they make wages while the season lasts that
should easily keep them the rest of the year.

That is, it would keep anybody but a negro—who never keeps.

At two cents a quart they earn from two to four and one-half dollars per
day. They could earn more and save it all if they would work Saturday
afternoons.

But a negro, like a mule, has some peculiar ideas engrafted into the
network of his being, garnered from a long line of holiday-taking
ancestors. “Like produces like or the likeness of an ancestor” is the
unchanging rule of the physical world; and it must not be forgotten that
for many thousands of years the negro took nothing but holidays and
whatever else he found lying around that was good to eat.

And he wore nothing but a smile. This knowledge may help you in solving
the problem.

It is creditable to the white man that he has bred any work into him at
all. However, he has ideas on the subject yet, and one of them is that,
since his freedom, it is contrary to some amendment of his Constitution
to work Saturday afternoons, even in fields carpeted with berry leaves,
studded with crimson clusters of reflected sunset, cooled with healthful
pine breezes and saturated with the perfume the gods loved most and the
soft balminess of the eternal spring in the sky.

That sounds like heaven, but it is not the heaven the negro wants. That’s
the white man’s heaven, and the white man would just be fool enough to
work right on till dark, making that extra two dollars and saving it
and all the rest of his week’s wages by keeping away from the dives of
near-by towns.

But the white man is a vain and foolish creature to the negro.

He has aspirations and he lives for the morrow. The negro has none—the
pure-blooded negro never had an aspiration in his life—and he lives not
even for the day but for the night following it, when his work ends and
he may be a nigger among his kind.

The white man works to accumulate; the negro to spend. And Saturday
afternoon and night is a bully time to spend what he has made the rest
of the week. There is only one better time, and that’s the next day, if
there is a foot-washing or a funeral.

That’s enough for the negro. His problem is nearly solved, for the tide
of immigration that has been flowing westward is being turned southward.
And when it turns there will be no negro question. Like everybody else he
will take his place in the order of things where his nature fits. He will
be then one muscle in the South’s great arm of labor, but he will never
be the biceps.

I found the people primitive, but honest and kind. They have lived around
here all their lives, and this thing is a revelation to them. It is more
money than they ever heard of before. Why, people actually carry bags of
silver around with them to pay off pickers. Heretofore the land had been
most anybody’s for the asking, but now they can make more money on one
acre properly tended to berries than they had before on a whole farm.

[Illustration: Berry field and pickers, Marble, Alabama.]

[Illustration: A group of berry pickers.]

A small boy came in going to mill, driving two little steers hitched to
a cart with wheels as primitive as the ancient Britons used, sawn from
the sound pine logs. He is immediately surrounded by the jolly drummers,
while their picture is taken for Trotwood’s. The big, two-wheeled log
carts used for hauling the big pine logs, are everywhere. Four, five,
six and even twelve yoke of oxen are seen in the woods or on the roads,
with tall, rawboned, sinewy fellows driving them with a long whip able to
reach to the farthest yoke. He whirls it around his head and it cracks
with a noise that would make it a great thing for a small boy on the
fourth of July.

Only it takes a man to crack it, and I noticed that it never fell on his
patient team—only the terrible exploding crack popped in the air above
their ears, and I rather thought the yoke seemed as proud of it as their
driver, for after every crack I noticed he added soothingly and softly:
“Haw there, Buck!” and Buck hawed calmly, as if he was not at all afraid,
nor even in a hurry, and they all went forward together with the steady
pull of perfect understanding between the man and his team.

I induced one of them, a lithe, fine looking fellow, to stop his team in
front of a car of berries, that I might take them, whip and all. And as I
looked at him I knew that in all his life nothing he had ever eaten had
ever disagreed with him, and that he had eaten everything that came his
way.

O for his legs and back and these pineland quail, and my own love for
hunting!

This pine belt of Alabama (I think while geology was fresh with me that
it was called a tertiary formation, it came far after the carboniferous
period around the Birmingham district) is one of the finest opportunities
in the world for the homeseeker. The price of the lands is simply a song
with a pine-top attachment. Two dollars per acre, wild, and the improved
lands ten to fifteen. They are sandy, with a good clay foundation, and
capable of holding what they get, and of great improvement. When I went
through them last they were a wilderness untouched, save where large
corporations had gobbled them up in vast tracts for almost nothing and
held them for the long-leafed yellow pines upon them. After the sawmill
came the cotton and corn. And of late has it been learned that in this
belt alone lie possibilities of all kinds of fruits and vegetables,
undreamed of four or five years ago. It is safe to say that in the belt
alone, extending from the seaboard clear across the South, through Texas,
even, and Oklahoma, lies the future’s great early fruit and vegetable
area of the continent.

[Illustration: A load of Klondyke berries ready for the car.]

The industry has scarcely begun here yet, and that only along the line of
the railroad, and yet from Castleberry the L. & N. railroad is shipping
from five to ten car-loads of strawberries alone per day.

The American people are now rich—richer than any nation ever was before.
They are learning how to eat and to live comfortably, and to spend their
money for delicacies. They hunt Southern climates in winter and winter
climates in summer. Once, when they were poor, they were satisfied with
things in their season. In the memory of the young man of to-day he who
used ice or had ice cream in summer was classed as the profligate Solomon
spoke of, and was destined to die in rags. As for having strawberries
in February and March, tomatoes at Christmas, asparagus the year round,
cabbages, lettuce—many of the vegetables so common that even the poor may
indulge now and then out of season—it was undreamed of. Think of what
it will be a century from now. Think of it and all this great, balmy,
bright-watered, sky-domed, clay-founded, health-breeding, beautiful,
blossoming land, greater in extent than a half dozen Eastern States,
lying sweet and cool under the dark green of shadowing pine, untouched
by ax or plow, that may be bought up for two dollars, and needs only a
little brains and energy to flush crimson in peach or berry or green in
vegetables.

And will it pay? I will give just one instance, not the unusual incident,
but the common one. I had walked around taking in the pretty picture at
Castleberry, the cottages among the pines, the great gaps cut out solidly
in the woods, forming fields alive with pickers, veritable pictures of
life in paints of red and green, and enclosed in frames of deep emerald.
I crossed the yellow, bright waters of a creek, stepping from log to
log. I saw a dozen kinds of birds that had not yet reached Tennessee
in their northern flight. Wild vines and flowers bloomed everywhere. I
walked two miles along from Castleberry to Marble, another coming town of
berries and fruits, enjoying it all as I did as a boy, when I wandered
among these trees of poetry in a land of poems.

[Illustration: BUYING BERRIES AT CASTLEBERRY, ALABAMA.

This photo shows fifteen berry buyers from as many different commission
houses. Over sixty houses have been represented at different times this
season at Castleberry.]

The very smell of them said “home.” The skies said “home,” the dying
pine needles, giving out their aroma beneath the foot, the way a little
stiff-tailed woodpecker shifted around a rotting pine stump. It meant
home and memories—memories that had slept embalmed.

Life—it has always hurt me. Was it given us for pain, that we might not
become as the fatted swine, who, having no hurt neither have any hope of
immortality?

To me it has been one great hurting and the times I have been joyous are
the times I have acted in self defense.

I unslung my little kodak and tried to take a razor-back in the edge of
the woods. I wanted a good picture of one—this hog of the Cracker South,
whose sinewy, lean, sweet bacon is sought for at fabulous prices by the
nobility of Europe. I approached him with confidence, thinking he would
recognize me as an old friend—nay, even, from my build, as one of his
kine. (A horrid pun, but a slippance.) But the razor-back is born in the
land of the darky, and the same great Designer who gave lightness to the
fingers of the darky gave speed to the heels of the razor-back.

And thus has he survived and still lives. I think he did not even stop to
look at my face. To this day he thinks I was black.

Around Marble there are 350 acres in strawberries and 100 or more in
Alberta peaches, and as I stepped into the clearing I met a native with
a good, honest face and carrying a bag of silver in his hands. We soon
became acquainted and he told me his name was John Barns and that he
was going to the field to pay off his pickers. It being Saturday noon.
I found him very straightforward and not inclined to exaggerate. He had
bought his farm of 240 acres Christmas, 1901, for $500. His daughter
married one W. W. Wright, who took a notion to plant strawberries—just
one acre. He set out the plants December, 1905, and though this had
been the poorest year in the history of the berry around Marble, the
late spring and frosts holding them back fully three weeks, and cutting
off the first crop entirely, Mr. Wright had cleared, after paying for
his plants, labor, fertilizers and picking, one hundred and twenty-five
dollars on that acre.

“Now, 1903 was our best year,” said Mr. Barns, and he pulled out a little
notebook he had. “Now, that year I planted my first berries, one and
one-quarter acres, and they netted me $521.27, to be exact.”

[Illustration:

    “Under the dark of shadowy pines
    Untouched by axe or plow.”]

We were joined, as we walked along, by another native, Mr. W. R.
Adkinson, who told me that in 1905 his neighbor, Mr. Elisha Downing,
cleared $2,050, net, on seven and one-half acres of berries. They both
agreed that this year was not so prosperous, and yet the railroad agent
told me they shipped fifteen carloads the Saturday before. They fetched
$2.50 to $3.50 per crate f. o. b. track at Castleberry. There were
several representatives of rival commission houses on the ground all
during the shipping season.

Although the section is comparatively new in the berry and fruit
business, I found it had spread all up and down the railroad, and from
a reliable party I found the area planted to be about 1,800 acres in
berries and 1,100 acres in Alberta peaches, extending from Bolling and
including Garland, Dunham, Owassa, Evergreen (a beautiful little town and
a great health resort), Sparta, Marble, Castleberry, Kirkland, Brewton
(another beautiful and thriving town), Flomaton, Century and Canal. An
hundred acres will be planted at Evergreen this year in cantaloupes,
while many cars of radishes were shipped from Greenville this year.
Eighteen hundred acres out of as many hundred thousand, and two or three
weeks of strawberries for the millions of people who have been waiting
all winter for them! This looks small and shows what may be done in the
future.

[Illustration: Mr. Adkinson and Mr. Barnes on their way to pay the berry
pickers.]

[Illustration: Before the berries came.]

At Marble I found a most interesting strawberry farm, and there I saw
the field dotted with pickers, a picturesque, poetic sight, especially
when dinner time arrived and the berries came in with the cream. The
berries we had for dinner were red and firm, with a fine flavor, and Mr.
Lister, who raised them, assured me that just thirty-five days before,
or on March 23, he had transplanted the vines. He called them, I think,
the Three W’s, though other berries which were cultivated for market were
Lady Thompson, Klondike and Excelsior.

I found Mr. Lister a great stickler for fertilizer, and though he said he
had not yet been able to carry out his plans fully, he recommended the
following as a sure process to attain the highest degree of success in
raising the berries: Five hundred pounds of acid phosphate and cottonseed
meal, equal parts, to begin with. Later, in October, side dress them
with 500 pounds equal parts acid phosphate, cottonseed meal and kainit.
Top dress in February with 400 pounds fertilizer, one-eighth per cent.
potash, seven per cent. acid phosphate and five per cent. nitrate soda.
After they are one year old about 500 pounds under them in fall, and so
applying about three dressings a year, every four months apart, of about
400 pounds, for feeding the plants and building the foundation for the
berries.

[Illustration: “I induced one of them ... to stop his team in front of a
car of berries, that I might take them, whip and all.”]

Mr. Lister thinks that the land may be bought cleared, fenced,
fertilized, planted and cultivated ready to pick for sixty dollars per
acre. The following are some of the companies I found engaged for a
hundred miles down the line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. I was
unable to get all of them: Bolling Stock Company, Bolling, Ala., about
$20,000, eighty acres in berries, eighty in peaches and tomatoes in car
lots; Garland Company, Garland, Ala., forty acres; Dunham Stock Company,
Dunham, Ala., sixty acres, radishes in car lots; Brown Shepard Fruit Co.
and Gravella Fruit Co., Owassa, about 215 acres in berries and peaches;
Evergreen, Ala., about 100 in berries and 300 in peaches; Sparta, Ala.,
forty acres in berries; Marble, Ala., 350 acres in berries and 100 acres
in peaches, and so on, as enumerated above. In some places I have found
that they were planting the berries between the rows of peaches, and,
they tell me, with good results. Mr. W. D. Brown, of Gravella, told me of
eight acres of berries which netted their owner $1,800. I was impressed
by the fact that the entire business was in its infancy, so far as
gauging the possible demands of the future or in establishing the line
of fruit and berries for which the land was adapted. As time goes on
they will doubtless find that the land will be found suitable for both
cantaloupes and watermelons and fruits of all kinds, including figs and
grapes. In the matter of grapes alone, I happen to know that in a similar
section in Butler County, Ala., a light, sandy land, with good clay
subsoil, the finest of Scuppernong grape arbors flourished, some of them
covering a half-acre of ground, from which the best of home-made wines
are brewed.

Throughout all that section of the South, the land itself is good for
all farm purposes, differing, more or less, in different sections, but
all capable of holding the fertilizer used and returning good crops of
cotton, corn, oats, sugar cane, peas and other legumes. I doubt if better
cotton lands may be found in the South than in the pine flat section of
Alabama. On all of these lands wild grasses and clover grow in abundance,
and I find the cost of growing stock reduced to a minimum.

Strawberries and fruits are the poetry of it—the prose is there, too, and
awaits only the hand of the practical, steady, industrious man to make as
good a yield of good things all under the fairest skies and in a climate
as healthful and amid people as hospitable as may be found in all the
world.




The History of the Hals

PART X.—THE FIRST TOM HAL

By JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE


The first Tom Hal of which there is any record was a roan pacer about
fifteen hands high or a little over, with a black mane and tail,
very strong and well muscled, and of a great deal of style. He was a
clean-limbed, beautifully-turned little saddle horse (if tradition has
it right), remarkably fast at the pace and going all the saddle gaits,
especially the running walk or fox trot, so desirable then, as now, when
a business gait under the saddle was needed. This was about the year
1824-5; and he was ridden (so says tradition) by a Dr. Boswell, who
bought him in Philadelphia and rode him from that city to Lexington, Ky.,
his home. Boswell called him a Canadian, and declared he was the best
saddle horse he ever rode. He also said he was an iron horse, and later,
to prove it, he agreed for a wager to ride the horse from Leesburg, Ky.,
to Louisville, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and back, in the
same day. It was midsummer at that. He did it, but tradition says the
hard, hot ride came nearly ruining the horse, causing him to go blind. I
have often thought of this Dr. Boswell. A right gallant pill mixer and
letter-of-blood he must have been. I have never heard anyone describe
him, but I think I can: A good natured, horse-loving, poker-playing,
jolly cuss, a little fat, with a well padded seat, or else he had not
been so fond of a saddle and seventy-five miles a day. No skinny man
ever sticks to a saddle long. They prefer to walk, even in those days
when all the goods for the Western Settlement (as Kentucky and Tennessee
were called) were purchased in Philadelphia and hauled across the
mountains five hundred miles, or floated down the rivers a thousand. So
Boswell loved a horse, and loved to ride. He was not averse to sharp
horse-trading (as was customary in those days), nor did he fail to put up
a little wager now and then, as witness his bet that he could ride Tom
Hal from Leesburg to Louisville and back in a day.

Now, in studying Boswell and his horse, we must go back to the times in
which they lived. Philadelphia was the city which then rivaled New York,
and was the business market for nearly all the Western and Southwestern
States and Territories. In our story of the Hermitage we have seen that
General Jackson bought all the goods for his store, even as far as
Nashville, in Philadelphia. It was the great mart for the Western world.
And all men rode in those days. There were few roads, and rough ones, and
when the now famous Dr. Boswell (it is very likely he was a young fellow,
who finished his medical education at old Jefferson College) started
back to Kentucky, the cheapest and best way to get there was to buy a
Canadian pony, ride him through, and sell him in Kentucky. Anyway, that
is what he did.

A sad pity it was that the booted mixer of pills and calomel did not
leave some record behind as to just what the little roan was. A sad pity
he did not tell us in enduring lines why he called him Tom Hal, whom
he beat in a horse trade when he got him, whom he robbed when first he
mounted the original Tom Hal and rode him to Kentucky to fame.

For Boswell is famous—yea, as the other one was, for the other one is
known as the biographer of Johnson, and this one as the biographer of the
little Canadian pacing stud horse, the immortal Tom Hal, the pregenitor
of the tribe of Hals.

Glorious Boswell, we know not what was his life, nor how nor when his
taking off; nay, nor whom he took off—though we may be sure that in his
day and generation he did his share with his lancet, his blue-mass and
his calomel. Doubtless around the classic town of Lexington, perhaps
even from Leesburg to Louisville, he left in his track lamenting widows
and heart-broken orphans, whose sires first called in the horse-trading
Boswell, and whose widow next called in the undertaker. Many a night,
too, he rode the little pacer through the mud and sleet to the cabin of
some lusty pioneer who had partaken too freely of biled cabbages and
moonshine, and let a quart of blood from his guzzled body at the time
he needed it most, or put a hot rock on the stomach that already had
too much thereon. Often—often—the little pacer followed the trail of
the stork at a two-minute clip, until, doubtless, in the language of
Sentimental Tommy, he knew the difference between the wail of a “kid” and
the groan of a “deader.”

And the pride of it—the glory of it! Didn’t every barefoot boy know him?
“That’s Dr. Boswell an’ Tom Hal.”

“Didn’t the boys around the old fort store know him?

“Doc, thet’s a hell of a good little pony you’re ridin’.”

Didn’t all the old grannies know him: “Thar comes the Doctor, Sal,
a-ridin’ his little amblin’ stud. Lemme get some clean sheets on the
bed.”

Didn’t all the world know him—all the great, wide world, extending from
Leesburg to Louisville? For there was nothing beyond. You bet your life
they did. They all knew “Doc an’ his pacin’ stud.”

And Doc died and went the way of all the others he helped over the Styx,
and, saddest of all, he left us nothing that we know.

For knowledge at last is just nothing that we know.

Less even than Shakespeare. For we know positively three things of Shake:
He stole a deer in his youth, he married Anne Hathaway in his manhood,
and he died and left a will in his older age—left a will in which he
very cautiously told what was to be done with his best bed. But Tom Hal,
the equal of his kind—equal even to Billy Shake and Dr. Jonson—of Tom
Hal (he never had any best bed), and all we know is he was bought in
Philadelphia, was a little, clean-limbed, rubber-hard pacer, and had his
eyes ridden out of his head by a little wind-galled, blood-letting Doctor.

Great is Billy Shake! Great is Tommy Hal! Genius runs in parallel lines,
and after centuries of mixing recipes to produce it, mankind has given
it up and is willing to let it hit the earth now and then, untrammeled
by toe-weights, unreined, unchecked, unbitted and unspurred. Shakespeare
once wrote a description of a horse. You will find it in Venus and Adonis
(if you’re not an old maid or a preacher), and this verse is as great and
beautiful a description of Tom Hal, as he was and as he must have looked
then (barring his “fet-locks shag and long”), as the poem itself is the
most vivid and beautiful story of red-hot, immodest love:

    “Look, when a painter would surpass the life
      In limning out a well proportioned steed,
    His art with Nature’s workmanship at strife,
      As if the dead the living would exceed:

    “Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fet-locks shag and long,
      Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide,
    High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
      Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide—
    Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,
      Save a proud rider, on so proud a back.”

But the horse of Shakespeare’s day was not the horse of Tom Hal’s day.

“Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,” doubtless
expressed the Norman blood that Shakespeare knew. To-day the round-hoofed
ones are plugs, the short-jointed ones are cart horses, and those with
fetlocks shag and long are close kin to the Mustang.

But the rest of it was Tom Hal:

    “Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostrils wide,
      High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong.”

Yes, all this was the first Tom Hal—and more.

       *       *       *       *       *

                                                    Lexington, Ky., May 3.

    Mr. John Trotwood Moore, Nashville, Tenn.

    My Dear Sir: In one of your issues you say that “in 1816 Maria,
    at Lexington, Ky., beat Robin Grey.” My maternal grandfather,
    Benjamin Hieronymous, of Clarke County, Ky., was Robin Grey’s
    original owner (owned his dam, of course), and slept all night
    in the stall with her the night little Robin was foaled, March,
    1804—such glowing visions inspired him of the coming prodigy.

    Hence, if Maria beat Robin Grey in 1816, it was when Robin
    was twelve years old. But there must be some mistake about
    it. If reliance can be placed on tradition, it was the boast
    of my grandfather to the day of his death, June, 1859, when
    in his ninetieth year, that Robin Grey won every race, from
    one-quarter to four miles, that he ever entered. In boyhood I
    read the worn copy of a famous placard, of which this is the
    substance: “Captain Cook’s celebrated ‘Whip’ challenges any
    horse, mare or gelding to run any distance, from one-quarter to
    four miles, barring Robin Grey.”

    Captain Cook was a Virginian, and owned, I think, a famous
    mare, “Fanny,” or I may have the names mixed, and give my
    early impressions. For more than fifty years the children and
    grandchildren of the grand old man were raised on Robin Grey.
    No man ever idolized the genus horse as he did—not General
    Jackson, nor Hanie, nor Bailie Peyton. I fear he was really
    a crank on the subject of the horse, and Robin Grey was his
    prophet. Two gentlemen were once visiting his paddock, when one
    of them (perhaps in a spirit of fun) discredited a pet of its
    owner. Quick as a flash the critic went down. In a moment the
    assailant was penitent, led the victim tenderly to the house,
    washed the crimson from his face, saying: “I’m sorry—I’m—so
    sorry! But you oughtn’t to insult my horses. There now; it’s
    all over!” Better offend him personally a thousand times than
    to insult his horses.

    It was at the old Lexington race track. Robin Grey was there,
    and his owner, also, of course. “Hurry up, Mr. Hieronymous! The
    other horses are about ready to start,” the judges called.

    “Go ahead, gentlemen, whenever you like,” replied the
    enthusiast, “a quarter or a half minute, or such a matter,
    doesn’t make the least difference to Robin Grey. He’ll be in at
    the home stretch.”

    I could relate, if you had the patience to read, many amusing
    and, to me, at least, thrilling stories of Robin Grey. Mr.
    Hieronymous sold a half interest in him to Col. John Hunt,
    grandfather of the afterwards famed cavalry leader, Gen. John
    Hunt Morgan, such were the exigencies of security debts. But
    the old man never loved a child more devotedly than he loved
    Robin Grey.

    I must modify the statement that Robin Grey never lost a race.
    Once, the old Lexington track had been recently repaired and
    widened, and a bridge near the first quarter laid across a
    gully to supply the necessary width, and covered with dirt.
    Unfortunately Robin Grey took this side of the track, went,
    heels up, through the treacherous but unsuspected pitfall,
    threw his mount and himself to the ground, but was up at once
    and waited for his rider to spring again into the saddle,
    for Robin had the brains of a statesman. Even then he made
    sufficient speed to save his distance.

    Please don’t ever tell it, especially to “one of his kinfolks,”
    that anything on four feet ever beat Robin Grey! You mustn’t
    “insult his horses!”

    Sincerely for Trotwood,

                                                            C. E. MERRILL.

[Our authority, as may be seen from the chapter quoted, is Hon. Bailey
Peyton, now deceased, than whom no more accurate authority on that
subject existed. We are glad, however, to publish the above.—Ed.]

       *       *       *       *       *

_He who jests is weak, and nothing kills greatness like humor._




With Our Writers


The South’s Need for a Magazine of Its Own.

    Editor Trotwood’s:

    While New York and the East may be the natural publishing
    place for American magazines, it should not be forgotten that
    the South has within itself many important problems peculiar
    to itself. If one should start from the Potomac and travel
    southwest two thousand miles, barring mountainous sections,
    he would find, generally speaking, less difference in people,
    customs, and institutions than he would be going one or two
    hundred miles north from that river. Coupled with this fact,
    the following story may not be without significance:

    A Northerner who had moved South noticed that his new neighbors
    had what struck him as being a rather unsatisfactory method
    of doing a certain thing. So he wrote an article suggesting
    another method and sent it to a local publication. The
    editor returned the article, pronouncing what it proposed to
    be “impracticable and visionary.” The writer then sent the
    article to a Northern publication, at the same time asking if
    what it proposed was impracticable or visionary. It was again
    returned, but the returner stated that, so far from proposing
    anything impracticable or visionary, the trouble lay in the
    opposite direction. He said that what was proposed had been
    in successful operation so long that it would be useless and
    tiresome reading.

    This story seems to me to illustrate the case of innumerable
    subjects important to the South. In the matter of education,
    for example, what would sound revolutionary in some Southern
    States would, I believe, be called pioneer work by the majority
    of American-born Northerners. Again, in the realm of economics,
    most of us in the South have yet to learn some of the first
    principles. As to our code of social relations there are some
    sections, fertile and penetrated by railroads, which are in
    vital respects half a century behind the advance guard of
    Anglo-Saxon civilization. As to our courts of justice, although
    law has been the favorite profession of our ambitious young
    men, and although we are supposed to have some of America’s
    ablest practitioners, it seems that almost none of them ever
    try persistently to contribute anything towards making either
    our courts or our politics better, and by so doing accomplish
    that for which courts and politics are supposed to exist. In
    conclusion, let it be remembered that not only the Northern
    magazines are not so directly interested in these matters as
    are we, but also that when one wishes to make a suggestion
    to his own section he naturally prefers to do so through a
    publication in that section.

    Some of our newspapers have done creditable work through their
    editorial columns, but an editor cannot be a specialist in
    everything. We need, I think, a publication of the nature
    of a magazine whose editors know what to solicit and can
    determine whether or not a contribution meets a need. Such a
    magazine should be free from imitation. With questions of vital
    sectional importance bubbling and seething all around it, there
    is no reason why it should give us stories and treatises in
    competition with Eastern magazines which can pay larger prices
    for such. Finally, its purpose should be for general rather
    than partisan interest.

    Generally speaking, Southerners seem to me not to be finished
    writers. While some of our newspaper editors have a plain,
    unadorned style which is better than the style of most
    “authors,” nevertheless almost all of us Southerners seem
    troubled with a limited and inaccurate use of the English
    vocabulary. But there are plenty of Southerners who know their
    business and can go to the root of a matter. I believe that
    most readers who are looking for a Southern magazine would
    rather hear from these than from the more finished narrators
    and expounders of nothingness. Finally, a magazine which would
    put a premium on substance told with clearness and brevity, at
    the same time emphasizing the fact that a contribution must
    meet a real need, would have a tendency to develop writers
    whose work possessed style as well as substance.

    Recently I made the acquaintance of Trotwood’s Magazine, and,
    believing that I noticed in it a strong and sincere inclination
    to be original, the question arose in my mind, Why should not
    this magazine, already in actual operation, become a forum
    for discussing Southern problems? So, if this be Trotwood’s
    purpose, to it I say, may you succeed; and to Tennessee and the
    South, give Trotwood a chance. It may prove to be what you have
    long needed.

                                                     J. G. SIMS, JR.

    Nashville, Tenn.

Editor’s Note.—Trotwood’s thanks Mr. Sims (who, so far, like many of our
readers and contributors, is a stranger to us) for his kind expressions.
We learn that he is a graduate of Princeton, and a teacher and writer of
reputation. We agree with him that the South has problems peculiar to
itself, and that the proper place for their discussion is among ourselves
and in a Southern journal. It is the aim and ambition of Trotwood’s to
be the medium for this as well as for the development of the South’s
great resources. We welcome such communications as the above, even if
some of his plain assertions do grate somewhat on our nerves; for only
by a calm and fair discussion of the problems which confront us can the
truth be ascertained. Some of Mr. Sims’ assertions above are plainly open
for discussion, and some are plainly ambiguous. For instance, what does
he mean by “As to the code of social relations, there are some sections
fertile and penetrated by railroads which are in vital respects half a
century behind the advance guard of Anglo-Saxon civilization?” Social
relations and civilization are two different things, and as to the
former, it is our opinion that the South, in her fight for the purity of
her race, the integrity of her morals and the hospitality of her people,
surpasses all other sections of this country. In proof of this I will
call our esteemed contributor’s attention to the following facts.

1. The white population of the South, never having been augmented by
foreign immigration to any appreciable extent, is more purely American
than any other section. It is to-day as it was one hundred years before
the Revolution. I am not asserting that it is better for this fact,
but as a matter of “social relations” I am claiming that it is purely
American.

2. The religion of the South is in keeping with the Anglo-Saxon race; it
is the simple religion of the Protestant peoples of England, Scotland
and Wales, the Huguenots of France, and the sturdy, honest Catholics of
Ireland. There is less skepticism and less materialism in the South than
in any other section. I consider the above statement appropriate, under
the head of “social relations.”

3. There are fewer barrooms in the South than in Greater New York
alone—about 35,000. The South is essentially temperate. This, too, seems
to Trotwood too, under the head of “social relations.”

4. Lastly (and this will doubtless astonish some of our readers) since
the half-breed, the grade—the mulatto—is the curse of any nation, whether
white, black, red or yellow, every mulatto is a living misfit, whose
making is the spoiling of two men—a white man and a black man. Either of
these, in his ability to accomplish the ends for which he was made, is
far greater than the cross-bred, this being true in Maine,[1] where there
are no barriers between the social relations of the whites and blacks,
about two per cent. of the population are negroes, but about 59 per cent.
of her negroes are mulattoes, while in South Caroline, where 59 per cent.
of her people are negroes, only 9.7 per cent. are mulattoes. And it runs
about that way in the entire country, north, where negroes are permitted
to intermarry with the whites. And if the sturdy white population of the
grand old State of Maine—the State of such intellectual giants as Blaine,
Hale and hosts of others—if this State becomes wholly mulatto, it might
as well be wiped from the map of civilization and be added to Hayti, the
Philippines and Cuba.

This, to Trotwood’s, seems to be an unanswerable argument as to the
superiority of the South’s social relations.

But this is as we understand social relations. We welcome all
communications of thought and progress, but we expect each correspondent
to defend his position and if, on the other hand, our correspondent means
to use social relations and civilization as synonymous, this is another
proposition, and one which, doubtless, he is able to defend.

There are other of his premises so painfully true that we repeat them for
emphasis:

1. “In the realm of economics, most of us in the South have yet to learn
some of the first principles.” For example, it is said that the thrifty
Yankee can live on what the Southerner wastes. And

2. “As to our courts of justice,” etc.—e.g., where to-day is the old
Southern lawyer, who held his profession above money, and his opinion
beyond barter?

[1] See page 16, Census Bulletin No. 8.


EDMUND WINSTON PETTUS.

It is seldom that any magazine may present to living readers the letter
of a man who has seen four generations arise and pass away. And such a
man!

Edmund Winston Pettus is one of the great living men of the world. He is
an old Roman who represents the high-water mark of the Republic’s true
greatness—one who might sit at the council table of the Gracchii, of
Pitt, of Washington. I speak not from hearsay—all my life I have known
him. And never will the Republic look upon his like again, for as he
quotes, “Time changes and men change with it.” But there was a scope, a
broadness, a breadth and dignity in the Time which reached out to all
the ages in making the men of his day and generation which seems sadly
lacking to Trotwood’s in making of some of our Southern statesmen of
to-day. But blame not the South for this. She has passed through the
shoals and the rapids of politics since the war. It is natural that much
froth and foam should follow it. But the two old Romans which Alabama has
sent to the Senate go far to atone for the froth of some of our sister
Southern States. All honor to Alabama for clinging to such ideals!

The picture we present of this grand old man (by courtesy of The Saturday
Evening Post) brings to my mind a flood of remembrance—tender, and of
the kind which has gone into the soul of me. One morning in the year
1868, when I was too small a boy to go anywhere alone, my father took me
by the hand and led me to the courthouse to hear General Pettus speak. He
turned me over to the sheriff while he himself went on the bench, and the
sheriff placed me in a big chair, and, small as I was, I sat spellbound
under the thunder of this man’s oratory. It was the first great speech I
had ever heard.

And when I see this picture I see the old Judge, before whom he
practiced—the old Judge, my father—who died the oldest judge in the
State, wearing for twenty-six years the ermine and never sullying it.

They were men of the same type—men of the Old South—men whom the poet
called for, saying:

    “‘God give us men. A time like this demands
    Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
      Men whom the love of office cannot kill;
    Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
      Men who possess opinions and a will;
    Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
      Men who can stand before a demagogue
    And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
      Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
    In public duty and in private thinking—
      For while the rabble with their thumb-worn creeds,
      Their large professions and their little deeds,
      Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
      Wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps.”

The Saturday Evening Post, in its issue of March 17th, says this of
Senator Pettus: “It isn’t much of a trick to be eighty-five years
young, but to be a vigorous and virile senator at eighty-five is an
accomplishment. Few men have done that. Edmund Winston Pettus, of Alabama
is one. One is reminded of a buffalo when Pettus comes into the Senate
chamber. He has shoulders a yard across and a barrel of a chest upholding
a short, thick neck and a massive head. When he walks he holds his
head forward and shakes it slowly from side to side. It is fascinating
to watch the sturdy old man and speculate how strong he was when he was
young. He left Selma with a party of neighbors at the beginning of the
gold excitement and rode horseback to California. He carried a Bible and
a copy of Shakespeare in his saddle-bags and read them while on horseback
and by the light of the camp fires at night. The Senator asserts that no
better library has been taken there since. Pettus was a lieutenant in the
Mexican War and a brigadier-general in the Confederate Army in the Civil
War. There is a big, sprawling painting of the battle of Chepultepec over
one of the stairways in the Senate wing of the Capitol. A few days ago a
man was studying the picture. Senator Pettus came along.

[Illustration: Edmund Winston Pettus.]

“Sir,” said the man, “I observe that you are an old man. Will you kindly
tell me if the people of those days wore clothes like those in the
picture there?”

“No, sir,” thundered Pettus, “they did not! I was in that battle, and I
saw no such clothes as those. So far as that raiment is concerned that
representation is a mere pictorial lie!”

It is remarkable that from one section of Alabama—the Black Belt—and from
one town in it—Selma—should have come two such men as Pettus and Morgan,
both now octogenarians, and the same intellectual giants they were a half
century ago.

In a near issue of Trotwood’s, perhaps in the next number, will be told
the story of that section—a section rich not only in sturdy, progressive
people, but in a soil and climate of such great natural advantages that
the mere telling of it will be a revelation to those who have not heard
of it before.

    Mr. John Trotwood Moore, Columbia, Tenn.—My Dear Sir: I
    received your letter and the magazines you sent me. I read
    carefully your article on what Parton calls “The murder of
    Dickinson,” and I enjoyed it very much. I have always thought
    that people who live in this age give too much importance to
    questions of right and wrong, to what I call “modern ideas,”
    or, rather, who attach too little importance to the theories of
    the former generations. I have lived through four generations
    complete, and there have been in my day marvelous changes
    in public opinion, and even the established theories in the
    churches as to whether a certain thing is right or wrong. When
    I was a boy in North Alabama instrumental music in a church
    was considered as a sacrilege, and was not allowed under
    any circumstances. Duelling was not more condemned than the
    resenting of an insult in any other way, and the old saying is
    perfectly true, “Times change and we change with them.” In your
    article about the duel you failed to notice that Mrs. Jackson,
    with her first husband, resided in Kentucky, but Kentucky was
    then a part of Virginia.

    In my young days I was familiar with the Hermitage grounds.
    For four years I was a student at what was then called Clinton
    College, which was in Smith County, between Carthage and
    Alexandria, and about forty miles east of the Hermitage on the
    old emigrant road from Knoxville to Nashville. I visited the
    Hermitage on several occasions. My grandfather lived for many
    years about a mile from the Hermitage, and General Jackson
    attended the marriage of my father and mother, and my father
    and several of my uncles went with General Jackson through the
    Creek War.

    In 1840 I went from Clinton College to attend the Nashville
    convention, in what has been called “the log cabin and hard
    cider” campaign, and we stopped at the Hermitage to see General
    Jackson. Whilst we were sitting with a number of persons on the
    piazza the East Tennessee delegates to the Whig convention, in
    vast numbers, passed on the pike in front of the house. One
    party of them had a small cannon, and when they reached the
    front gate, then about two hundred yards from the house, they
    brought the cannon inside the gate and fired on the house, with
    blank cartridges, of course. This created great indignation
    throughout Tennessee. I did attend the convention. The
    principal purpose of the students in attending the convention
    was to hear Henry Clay; and we did hear him. It was as poor a
    speech as I ever heard from any man reputed to be a speaker.
    The speech was not more than ten minutes long, and the best
    part of it was a fling at Felix Grundy. Mr. Clay said that
    when he reached Nashville he inquired for his old friend, the
    Hon. Felix Grundy, and that he learned “that he was at his old
    trade in East Tennessee defending criminals.” Mr. Grundy was
    then making political speeches in East Tennessee for Mr. Van
    Buren and the Democrats. You remember that Mr. Clay was beaten
    for the nomination a few weeks before by General Harrison, and
    his whole speech and demeanor on that occasion indicated great
    sourness and dissatisfaction, and did him much injury with his
    party.

    I was much gratified to see from your letter that you remember
    how your father, the late Judge John Moore, and I were for so
    many years fast and devoted friends. Most respectfully, your
    friend,

                                                       E. W. PETTUS.

    Washington, March 30, 1906.

       *       *       *       *       *

_And Plutarch says: “We are more sensible of what is done against custom
than against nature.”_




                           TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY

                    Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.

                TROTWOOD PUBLISHING CO., Nashville, Tenn.
                     Office 150 Fourth Ave., North.

                          JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE,
                            Editor-in-Chief.

                E. E. SWEETLAND      Business Manager.

                GEO. E. McKENNON            President.
                JOHN W. FRY            Vice-President.
                EUGENE ANDERSON                 Treas.
                WOOTEN MOORE                    Sec’y.

     TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION: One Year, $1.00; Single Copy, 10 cents.
                    Advertising Rates on application.

                      NASHVILLE, TENN., JUNE, 1906.




With Trotwood


THE TRUTH IS PRECIOUS.

Trotwood holds that the truth is a very precious thing. “It is more to be
desired than gold; yea, than much pure gold.” It is more to be desired
than office or fame or popular approval. For these things are transient,
while truth is eternal. And one truth fits every other truth in the
world, whereas, a lie fits nothing but some other lie, made especially
for it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Trotwood loves also to build up. He does not wish to tear down. And if
he is anything, the records of his writings—and there is no record so
complete as the records put in writing—will show that he has, both in and
out of season, plead for a reunited country.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the May installment of our “Historic Highways” we gave what we knew
to be the plain facts of history when we said that the War of 1812 was
very unpopular in New England; that she secretly aided the enemy; that
she held the first secession convention ever held on our soil. And this
was said, as stated, not in malice nor to arouse bitterness, but for the
truth of history, which is precious.

       *       *       *       *       *

                                        Buffalo, N. Y., May 3, 1906.

    Mr. Trotwood Moore,

    Dear Sir: We all read your monthly and are very much pleased
    with it. Wish you success. In the May number you speak of
    New England sitting sullenly, secretly aiding the enemy and
    watching for a chance to secede. As a descendant of New England
    parents, I must protest. Whatever may have been the sins of New
    England, secession was not one. Not all of New England favored
    the War of 1812, but that isn’t secession. Men were killed
    in Baltimore, Md., because they opposed the war, but no one
    accused Baltimore of secession. Write for the whole country and
    not for a section.

                              Yours truly,

                                                      E. D. PRESTON.

Fortunately, we know Dr. Preston, the writer of the above, and remembered
most pleasantly that he stopped off once to see us in his journeyings
South. He is a gentleman and a man of much intelligence, and we must make
good our assertions or acknowledge we have erred.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Thomas Jefferson was elected to the Presidency in 1800, New England
regarded it just as the South did Lincoln’s election sixty years later—as
a fit cause for secession. John Quincy Adams published a statement over
his own signature in which he said that in the winter of 1803, a plot was
formed in New England to separate from the Union: “The plan,” he says,
“was so far matured, that a proposal had been made to an individual to
permit himself, at the proper time, to be placed at the head of military
movements which, it would be foreseen, would be necessary to carry the
project into successful execution.” Again, he says: “The separation of
the Union was openly stimulated in the public prints, and a convention of
delegates of the New England States, to meet at New Haven, was proposed.”
This is the same gentleman who was the sixth President of the United
States, but who, before that event, was forced to retire to private
life by his New England constituency for voting with the Jefferson
Administration in laying an embargo on all shipping in American ports in
retaliation for the insults of England. “The great damage fell upon the
maritime States of New England, and there the vials of Federalist wrath
were poured forth with terrible fury upon Mr. Jefferson and the embargo.
But the full measure of their ferocity was reserved for the Adams,” etc.
(Appleton’s Enc. of Am. Biography, Vol. I., p. 25.)

       *       *       *       *       *

Governor Wolcott, of Connecticut, said: “I sincerely declare that I wish
the Northern States would separate from the Southern the moment Jefferson
is elected.”

And Governor Plummer, of New Hampshire, declared in 1805 that it was the
purpose of certain distinguished New Englanders “to dissolve the Union.”

James Millhouse, U. S. Senator from Connecticut, said: “The Eastern
States must and will dissolve the Union and form a separate government of
their own, and the sooner they do it the better.”

Jonah Quincy, on the floor of Congress: “I am compelled to declare, as my
deliberate opinion, that if this bill (to admit Louisiana) passes, the
bonds of the Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose
it are hereby freed from the moral obligations, and that, as it will be
the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to prepare definitely
for the separation, amicably, if we can; forcibly, if we must.” When he
was called to order for this by Poindexter, of Mississippi, who proposed
a vote of censure by the House, the House sustained Quincy and let him
proceed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Julian Hawthorne, in his “History of the United States,” says: “In the
War of 1812, our antagonists were many. First, we had to fight the New
England Federalists.” Again, he says: “Connecticut went so far as to
raise a separate army for the defense of her own domain—whether against
England or America might be left to decide.” (U. S. History, p. 709.) And
again, he tells that by a system of blue light signals the New England
Federalists kept the English fleet informed of the plan of our troops,
thereby greatly aiding the enemy and embarrassing our movements. “Thus,”
he says, “the Blue Light Federalists secured for themselves a place of
infamy in our annals.”

The Supreme Court of Massachusetts declared that no power was given to
the President or to Congress to declare war or to levy troops; that
only to the States did they belong; and thereupon the Governor of that
State refused the request of the President for its quota to defend
their coast. When the New England members who voted for the War of 1812
returned home, they were reviled, denounced and one of them actually
kicked and cuffed by a mob in historic Plymouth. The Federalists of
New England prevented the Government’s every effort to raise money or
troops. Finally, on December 15, 1814, when Jackson was moving heaven
and earth to save New Orleans, a New England Convention, “summoned by
State authority, assembled at Hartford, Connecticut, whose object was to
secure armed resistance and overthrow of the Union.... This convention
was attended by twenty-six delegates, all respectable, cultivated
gentlemen.” (Hawthorne’s U. S. History, p. 731.) “It was composed of
twelve delegates from Massachusetts, seven from Connecticut, four from
Rhode Island (appointed by the legislatures of these States), and two
from New Hampshire, and one from Vermont (appointed by counties), all
Federalists.... Its proceedings were carried on in secret, and the
convention was suspected at the time of treason.” (Cent. Dict., Vol.
IX., p. 484.) In their declaration this convention said: “But in cases
of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infraction of the Constitution,
affecting the sovereignty of a State and liberties of a people, it is not
only the right but the duty of such a State to interpose its authority
for their protection in the manner best calculated to secure that end.
When emergencies occur which are either beyond the reach of the judicial
tribunals or too pressing to admit of the delay incident to their forms,
States which have no common umpire must be their own judges and execute
their own decisions.” (Niles Register, Vol. VII., p. 306.)

This was the view taken by the Southern States when they seceded in
1861, and which the great Civil War decided in the negative forever, not
as a question of right nor of wrong, but as a policy of a majority of the
people of this country, in arms assembled and on the field of battle.

“Whatever may have been the sins of New England, secession was not
one,” says our correspondent. In proving that our friend is mistaken
in his facts, I take the liberty also of defending New England as to
his assertion that this was a sin. It certainly was not a sin. The
New England States had this right, as did every State up to its final
settlement by arms in 1861-5. It were no more a sin then than for New
England to vote for McKinley and the gold standard in 1896, or for
the South to vote for Bryan and silver. There can be no sin in a mere
question of national policy by any people or peoples. “Not all of New
England favored the War of 1812, but that is not secession,” he adds, as
the gist of his argument.

That is true—neither did all the South favor secession in 1860-61.
Perhaps it may be interesting to relate here that Tennessee, on the
only vote taken by her as to whether it should be secession or not,
voted by nearly 60,000 majority against secession. Afterwards, Governor
Harris and the Legislature declared her out of the Union. Perhaps it
may be still more of interest when I say that although the South sent
fully 600,000 troops into the war to battle for States’ rights, she sent
nearly 400,000 to fight on the other side. But everybody knows that a
majority of the Southern people were for seceding and the foundation of
our esteemed correspondent’s argument is gone when I assert, as I can
prove, that from the election of Jefferson to the Battle of New Orleans,
the majority of the people of New England, as voiced in the Federalist
vote, were opposed to the policy of Jefferson, to War of 1812, and but
for the Treaty of Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans would have voted to
secede. In conclusion, let me say, those questions are all settled—“those
far-off, old, unhappy days.” But the truth, at all times, should be
precious, for among its many crowning glories, it teaches us that man is
not very different from his neighbor after all. In 1898, at the outbreak
of the Spanish War, and when the United States troops had rendezvoused on
Chickamauga battlefield, before marching into Cuba, Tennessee unveiled
her statue erected to both her soldiers of the Blue and the Gray who died
there. The writer was asked to read the dedicatory poem. On the stage
were General Wheeler, General Stewart and many distinguished soldiers of
both armies. And thus was the poem read:

                      REUNITED.

    By steel-sheathed ship and iron gun
      And forts that frown on a crouching sea,
    Like a reef-split wave in the mad ebb’s run,
      Like the foam, rock stopped, from the driven lea,
    They have halted their butchering lines of red,
      For a star-flung banner has published a ban:
    Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
      Now and forever, American.

    It has girdled the depths of our heart’s red blood,
      It has welded our chain in a white-heat fire,
    And the Gray has come with the old-time flood,
      And the Blue stands firm in the old-time fire.
    And starving eyes, whence Hope had fled
      Look up where the light of the message ran:
    Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
      Now and forever, American.

    O, valorous Gray, in the grave of your fate!
      Oh, valorous Blue, in the long deady ears!
    Ye were sown in sorrow and harrowed in Hate,
      But your harvest to-day is a nation’s tears,
    For the message you left through the land has sped
      From the lips of God to the heart of man:
    Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
      Now and forever, American.

                                   JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.




*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TROTWOOD'S MONTHLY, VOL. II, NO. 3, JUNE, 1906 ***


    

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