Chattanooga, Saturday, June 3. A hot day for drill in the morning. 1st Division Cavalry Corps lying in camp near Mission Ridge. David Evans went outside and brought in Johnny Evans, looking very fleshy and healthy, natural as ever, but much larger. He staid with us all day. Went home late in the evening. He has seen the elephant, although only in for one year service. I think it has improved him, instilled some wholesome ideas in his mind. Policed camp as usual. No orders for mustering out any of us yet. Rations are very objectionable these days, and cause much dissatisfaction as circumstances do not demand such living. But it will not be long.
June 3.—I was invited up to Sonnenberg yesterday and Lottie and Abbie Clark called for me at 5:30 p.m., with their pony and democrat wagon. Jennie Rankine was the only other lady present and, for a wonder, the party consisted of six gentlemen and five ladies, which has not often been the case during the war. After supper we adjourned to the lawn and played croquet, a new game which Mr. Thompson just brought from New York. It is something like billiards, only a mallet is used instead of a cue to hit the balls. I did not like it very well, because I couldn’t hit the balls through the wickets as I wanted to. “We” sang all the songs, patriotic and sentimental, that we could think of.
Mr. Lyon came to call upon me to-day, before he returned to New York. He is a very pleasant young man. I told him that I regretted that I could not sing yesterday, when all the others did, and that the reason that I made no attempts in that line was due to the fact that one day in church, when I thought I was singing a very good alto, my grandfather whispered to me, and said: “Daughter, you are off the key,” and ever since then, I had sung with the spirit and with the understanding, but not with my voice. He said perhaps I could get some one to do my singing for me, some day. I told him he was very kind to give me so much encouragement. Anna went to a Y.M.C.A. meeting last evening at our chapel and said, when the hymn “Rescue the perishing,” was given out, she just “raised her Ebenezer ” and sang every verse as hard as she could. The meeting was called in behalf of a young man who has been around town for the past few days, with only one arm, who wants to be a minister and sells sewing silk and needles and writes poetry during vacation to help himself along. I have had a cough lately and Grandmother decided yesterday to send for the doctor. He placed me in a chair and thumped my lungs and back and listened to my breathing while Grandmother sat near and watched him in silence, but finally she said, “Caroline isn’t used to being pounded!” The doctor smiled and said he would be very careful, but the treatment was not so severe as it seemed. After he was gone, we asked Grandmother if she liked him and she said yes, but if she had known of his “new-fangled” notions and that he wore a full beard she might not have sent for him! Because Dr. Carr was clean-shaven and also Grandfather and Dr. Daggett, and all of the Grangers, she thinks that is the only proper way. What a funny little lady she is!
2nd. Mr. Birge told us of Martin Fitch’s death by drowning. God sustain the afflicted. After washing up at the Gibson House, Melissa went to see Ellie Bushnell. I attended to business and then went home with Albert. Pleasant visit. Like Mr. Morgan and family. Al and wife went back with us—ice cream.
Friday, 2d—For the first time we saw mustered-out soldiers leaving for their homes today.
June 2d. Our regiment is the only one left at this post. Details continue to hunt and collect government property. Some western regiments pass through this town on the B. & O. R. R., bound for home, singing and cheering, happy.
Chattanooga, Friday, June 2. Friday morning drilled with Battery for two hours. Very hot indeed. Big mail came in. I received three letters, one of them from Miss Sue J. B. of Ohio, of which I must write before it gets later. About a month ago I obtained a Ladies’ Repository with some other magazines from the Christian Commission, on which was written a note with the above address annexed. Thought it no more than justice to thank the donor, and assure her that their efforts were duly appreciated by the soldier. Contrary to my expectations I received an answer requesting a reply, which of course I complied with at some length, giving personal description. And so here comes two sheets to-day. I think she is a “Methodist sister” in the habit of itinerating with her brother, a minister. She forgot to give her age, notwithstanding I gave her mine, consequently I infer she is an old maid. Not very highly accomplished in letter writing, but a good composer and a fine use of language and a vivid conception of the beautiful. Seems to have received a very favorable impression of me. I did not attempt it. I have revolutionized her ideas.
June 1st. Thursday. At breakfast met an old friend of the 2nd. Raised Co. F. Comfortably settled in the cars at 8. Melissa enjoyed the Cheat River and Cheat Mountain scenery first rate. Bellaire at dark. Some country lads and lassies on board. Met Birge on Central Ohio sleeping car.
Thursday, 1st—The weather is quite sultry. There is nothing of importance. Our camp duty is very light here. The ground is rough, and it would be impossible to find a place for a drill ground or even a parade ground.
June 1st. Fine weather. All is very quiet. The country has on its summer dress. Looks fine. The most important question with us is, home, sweet home, when do we go. Soldier’s life at this time is a dull one. Our only interest is our dress parades. We have many visitors from town.
June 1st.—The New York Herald quotes General Sherman as saying, “Columbia was burned by Hampton’s sheer stupidity.” But then who burned everything on the way in Sherman’s march to Columbia, and in the line of march Sherman took after leaving Columbia? We came, for three days of travel, over a road that had been laid bare by Sherman’s torches. Nothing but smoking ruins was left in Sherman’s track. That I saw with my own eyes. No living thing was left, no house for man or beast. They who burned the countryside for a belt of forty miles, did they not also burn the town? To charge that to “Hampton’s stupidity” is merely an afterthought. This Herald announces that Jeff Davis will be hanged at once, not so much for treason as for his assassination of Lincoln. “Stanton,” the Herald says, “has all the papers in his hands to convict him.”
The Yankees here say, “The black man must go as the red man has gone; this is a white man’s country.” The negroes want to run with the hare, but hunt with the hounds. They are charming in their professions to us, but declare that they are to be paid by these blessed Yankees in lands and mules for having been slaves. They were so faithful to us during the war, why should the Yankees reward them, to which the only reply is that it would be by way of punishing rebels.
Mrs. Adger[1] saw a Yankee soldier strike a woman, and she prayed God to take him in hand according to his deed. The soldier laughed in her face, swaggered off, stumbled down the steps, and then his revolver went off by the concussion and shot him dead.
The black ball is in motion. Mrs. de Saussure’s cook shook the dust off her feet and departed from her kitchen to-day—free, she said. The washerwoman is packing to go.
Scipio Africanus, the Colonel’s body-servant, is a soldierly looking black creature, fit to have delighted the eyes of old Frederick William of Prussia, who liked giants. We asked him how the Yankees came to leave him. “Oh, I told them marster couldn’t do without me nohow; and then I carried them some nice hams that they never could have found, they were hid so good.”
Eben dressed himself in his best and went at a run to meet his Yankee deliverers—so he said. At the gate he met a squad coming in. He had adorned himself with his watch and chain, like the cordage of a ship, with a handful of gaudy seals. He knew the Yankees came to rob white people, but he thought they came to save niggers. “Hand over that watch!” they said. Minus his fine watch and chain, Eben returned a sadder and a wiser man. He was soon in his shirt-sleeves, whistling at his knife-board. “Why? You here? Why did you come back so soon?” he was asked. “Well, I thought may be I better stay with ole marster that give me the watch, and not go with them that stole it.” The watch was the pride of his life. The iron had entered his soul.
Went up to my old house, “Kamschatka.” The Trapiers live there now. In those drawing-rooms where the children played Puss in Boots, where we have so often danced and sung, but never prayed before, Mr. Trapier held his prayer-meeting. I do not think I ever did as much weeping or as bitter in the same space of time. I let myself go; it did me good. I cried with a will. He prayed that we might have strength to stand up and bear our bitter disappointment, to look on our ruined homes and our desolated country and be strong. And he prayed for the man “we elected to be our ruler and guide.” We knew that they had put him in a dungeon and in chains.[2] Men watch him day and night. By orders of Andy, the bloody-minded tailor, nobody above the rank of colonel can take the benefit of the amnesty oath, nobody who owns over twenty thousand dollars, or who has assisted the Confederates. And now, ye rich men, howl, for your misery has come upon you. You are beyond the outlaw, camping outside. Howell Cobb and R. M. T. Hunter have been arrested. Our turn will come next, maybe. A Damocles sword hanging over a house does not conduce to a pleasant life.
[1] Elizabeth K. Adger, wife of the Rev. John B. Adger, D.D., of Charleston, a distinguished Presbyterian divine, at one time a missionary to Smyrna where he translated the Bible into the Armenian tongue. He was afterward and before the war a professor in the Theological Seminary at Columbia. His wife was a woman of unusual judgment and intelligence, sharing her husband’s many hardships and notable experiences in the East.
[2] Mr. Davis, while encamped near Irwinsville, Ga., had been captured on May 10th by a body of Federal cavalry under Lieutenant-Colonel Pritchard. He was taken to Fortress Monroe and confined there for two years, his release being effected on May 13, 1867, when he was admitted to bail in the sum of $100,000, the first name on his bail-bond being that of Horace Greeley.
