1861.] A "RUNNIN' NIGGER!" 149 The flying flags, playing bands, galloping officers, long lines of our boys in blue, and sharp metallic reports, impress you with something of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. But Captain Jenny, a young engineer officer, quietly remarks, that he once witnessed a review of seventy thousand French troops in the Champ de Mars, and in 1859 saw the army of seventy-five thousand men enter Paris, returning from the Italian wars. Colonel Wagner, an old Hungarian officer, who has participated in twenty-three engagements, assures you that he has looked upon a parade of one hundred and forty thousand men, whereupon our little force of five thousand appears insignificant. Nevertheless, it exceeds Jackson's recruits at New Orleans, and is larger than the effective force of Scott during the Mexican war. Our first contraband arrived here in a skiff last night, bearing unmistakable evidences of long travel. He says he came from Mississippi, and the cotton-seed in his woolly head corroborates the statement. I first saw him beside the guard-house, surrounded by a party of soldiers. He answered my salutation with "Good evenin', Mass'r," removing his old wool hat from his grizzly head. He smiled all over his face, and bowed all through his body, as he depressed his head, slightly lifting his left foot, with the gesture which only the unmistakable darkey can give. "Well, uncle, have you joined the army?" "Yes, mass'r" (with another African salaam). "Are you going to fight?" "No, mass'r, I'se not a fightin' nigger, I'se a runnin' nigger!" "Are you not afraid of starving, up here among the Abolitionists ?" 150 CAPTURING A REBEL FLAG. [1861. "Reckon not, mass'r-not much." And Sambo gave a concluding bow, indescribable drollery shining through his sooty face, bisected by two rows of glittering ivory. June 13. A reconnoitering party went down the Mississippi yesterday upon a Government steamer, under command of Colonel Richard J. Oglesby, colloquially known among the Illinois sovereigns of the prairie as "Dick Oglesby." Twenty miles below Cairo, we slowly passed the town of Columbus, Ky., on the highest bluffs of the Mississippi. The village is a straggling collection of brick blocks, frame houses, and whisky saloons. It contains no Rebel forces, though seven thousand are at Union City, Tenn., twenty-five miles distant. On a tall staff, a few yards from the river, a great Secession flag, with its eight stars and three stripes, was triumphantly flying. Turning back, after steaming two miles below, the boat was stopped at the landing; the captain went on shore, cut down the flag, and brought it on board, amid cheers from our troops. The Columbians looked on in grim silence-all save four Union ladies, who, "Faithful among the faithless only they," waved handkerchiefs joyfully from a neighboring bluff. Each star of the flag bore the name in pencil of the young lady who sewed it on. The Maggies, and Julias, and Sues, and Kates, and Sallies, who thus left their autographs upon their handiwork, did not anticipate that it would so soon be scrutinized by Yankee soldiers. And, doubtless, "Julia K- "the damsel whose star I pilfered, scarcely aspired to the honor of furnishing a relic for The Tribune cabinet. 1861.] THE RETRIBUTIONS OF TIME. 151 CHAPTER XI. And thus the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges. TWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILL Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventors.-MACBETH. ON the 15th of June I returned from Cairo to St. Louis. Lyon had gone up the Missouri River with an expedition, which was all fitted out and started in a few hours. Lyon was very much in earnest, and he knew the supreme value of time in the outset of a war. How just are the retributions of history! Virginia originated State Rights run-mad, which culminated in Secession. Behold her ground between the upper and nether mill-stones! Missouri lighted the fires of civil war in Kansas; now they blazed with tenfold fury upon her own soil. She sent forth hordes to mob printing-presses, overawe the ballot-box, substitute the bowie-knife and revolver for the civil law. Now, her own area gleamed with bayonets; the Rebel newspaper was suppressed by the file of soldiers, civil process supplanted by the unpitying military arm. Governor Claiborne F. Jackson, in 1855, led a raid into Kansas, which overthrew the civil authorities, and drove citizens from the polls. Now, the poisoned chalice was commended to his own lips. A hunted fugitive from his home and his chair of office, he was deserted by friends, ruined in fortune, and the halter waited for his neck. Thomas C. Reynolds, late Lieutenant-Governor, by advocating the right of Secession, did much to poison the public mind of the South. He, too, found 152 A RAILROAD REMINISCENCE. [1861. his reward in disgrace and outlawry; unable to come within the borders of the State which so lately delighted to do him honor! I followed Lyon's Expedition by the Pacific railway. The president of the road told me a droll story, which illustrates the folly that governed the location of the railway system of Missouri. The Southwest Branch is about a hundred miles long, through a very thinly settled region. For the first week after the cars commenced running over it, they carried only about six passengers, and no freight except a live bear and a jar of honey. The honey was carried free, and the freight on Bruin was fifty cents. Shut up in the single freight car, during the trip, he ate all the honey! The company were compelled to pay two dollars for the loss of that saccharine esculent. Thus their first week's profits on freight amounted to precisely one dollar and fifty cents on the wrong side of the ledger. The Rebels had now evacuated Jefferson City, and our own troops, commanded by Colonel Bornstein, a German editor, author, and theatrical manager, of St. Louis, were in peaceable possession. The soldiers were cooking upon the grass in the rear of the Capitol, standing in the shade of its portico and rotunda, lying on beds of hay in its passages, and upon carpets in the legislative halls. They reposed in all its rooms, from the subterranean vaults to the little circular chamber in the dome. Governor and Legislature were fled. With Colonel Bornstein, I went through the executive mansion, which had been deserted in hot haste. Sofas were overturned, carpets torn up and littered with letters and public documents. Tables, chairs, damask curtains, cigarboxes, champagne-bottles, ink-stands, books, private letters, and family knick-knacks, were scattered every Some of the Governor's cor- respondence was amusing. was a model of brevity. Here it is-its virgin paper unsullied by the faintest touch of "B. Republicanism." "JEFFERSON CITY, fed. 21nd 1861. "to his Honour Gov. C. F. JACKSON.-Please Accept My Compliments. With a little good Old Bourbon Whisky Cocktail. Made up Expressly in St Louis. fear it not. it is good. And besides it is not even tainted with B. Republicanism. Respectfully yours, "P. NAUGHTON." There was a ludicrous disparity between the evidences of sudden flight on all sides and the pompous language of the Governor's latest State paper, which lay upon the piano in the drawing-room: "Now, therefore, I, C. F. Jackson, Governor of the State of Missouri, do issue this my proclamation, calling the militia of the State, to the number of FIFTY THOUSAND, into the service of the State. Rise, then, and drive out ignominiously the invaders!" * Beds were unmade, dishes unwashed, silver forks and spoons, belonging to the State, scattered here and there. The only things that appeared undisturbed were the Star Spangled Banner and the national escutcheon, both frescoed upon the plaster of the gubernatorial bed room. As we walked through the deserted rooms, a hollow echo answered to the tramp of the colonel and his lieutenant, and to the dull clank of their scabbards against the furniture. General Lyon opened the war in the West by the battle of Booneville. It lasted only a few minutes, and the undisciplined and half-armed Rebel troops, after a faint show of resistance, retreated toward the South. Lyon's command lost only eleven men. |