American Adventures Part 45

Thus this part of the United States belonged first to Spain, and then to France; but in 1762 France ceded it back to Spain, and in the year following, Spain and France together ceded their territory in the eastern part of the continent to England. The next change came with the Revolution, when the United States came into being. The Spanish were, however, still in possession of the vast territory of Louisiana, to the west of the Mississippi. In 1795, Gayoso, Spanish Governor of Louisiana, came across and built a fort on the east side of the river, but was presently ousted by the United States. In 1820, as has been said, the settlement of Memphis had begun, one of the early proprietors having been Andrew Jackson. Some of the first settlers wished to name the place Jackson, in honor of the general, but Jackson himself, it is said, decided on the name Memphis, because the position of the town suggested that of ancient Memphis, on the Nile.

In 1857 Memphis got her first railroad--the Memphis & Charleston--connecting her with Charleston, South Carolina. About the time the road was completed there were severe financial panics which held the city back; also there was trouble, as in so many other river towns, with hordes of gamblers and desperadoes. Judge J.P. Young, in his "History of Memphis," tells of an interesting episode of those times. There were two professional gamblers, father and son, of the name of Able. The father shot a man in a saloon brawl, and soon after, the son committed a similar crime of violence. A great mob started to take the younger Able out of jail and lynch him, but one firm citizen, addressing them from the balcony of a hotel, persuaded them to desist.

Next day, however, there was a ma.s.s meeting to discuss the case of Able.

At this meeting the hotheads prevailed, and Able was taken from the jail by a mob of three thousand men. When the noose was around his neck, and he and his mother and sister were pleading that his life be spared, the same man who had previously prevented mob action, stepped boldly up, cut the rope from Abel's neck, and a.s.sisted him to fly, standing between him and the mob, fighting the mob off, and finally getting Able back into the jail. When the mob stormed the jail, furious at having been circ.u.mvented by a single man, the same powerful figure appeared at the jail door with a pistol, and, incredible though it seems, actually held the mob at bay until it finally dispersed. This man was Nathan Bedford Forrest, later the brilliant Confederate cavalry leader. Forrest and his wife are buried in Memphis, in a square called Forrest Park, under a fine equestrian monument, by C.H. Niehaus.

Before the war Forrest was a member of the slave-dealing firm of Forrest & Maples, of Memphis. Subjoined is a photographic reproduction of an advertis.e.m.e.nt of this firm, which appeared in the Memphis City Directory for 1855-6.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

CITY DIRECTORY. 251 --------------------

#FORREST & MAPLES,# #SLAVE DEALERS,#

#87 Adams Street#, Between Second and Third, #MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE#,

Have constantly on hand the best selected a.s.sortment of

#FIELD HANDS, HOUSE SERVANTS & MECHANICS#, at their Negro Mart, to be found in the city. They are daily receiving from Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri, fresh supplies of likely Young Negroes.

#Negroes Sold on Commission#,

and the highest market price always paid for good stock. Their Jail is capable of containing Three Hundred, and for comfort, neatness and safety, is the best arranged of any in the Union. Persons wishing to purchase, are invited to examine their stock before purchasing elsewhere.

They have on hand at present, Fifty likely young Negroes, comprising Field hands, Mechanics, House and Body Servants, &c.

When the Civil War loomed close, sentiment in Memphis was divided, but at a call for troops for the Union, the State of Tennessee balked, and soon after it seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Many people believed, at that time, that if the entire South united, the North would not dare fight. When the war came, however, Memphis knew where she stood; it is said that no city of the same size (22,600) furnished so many men to the Confederate armies. In 1862, when the Union forces got control of the river to the north and the south of the city, it became evident that Memphis was likely to be taken. A fleet of Union gunboats came down and defeated the Confederate fleet in the river before the city, while the populace lined the banks and looked on. The city, being without military protection, then surrendered, and was occupied by troops under Sherman. Nor, with the exception of one period of a few hours' duration, did it ever again come under Confederate control. That was when Forrest made his famous raid in 1864, an event which exhibited not only the dash and hardihood of that intrepid leader, but also his strategy and his sardonic humor.

General A.J. Smith, with 13,000 Union soldiers was marching on the great grain district of central Mississippi, and was forcing Forrest, who had but 3,500 men, to the southward. Unable to meet Smith's force on anything like equal terms, Forrest conceived the idea of making a "run around the end" and striking at Memphis, which was Smith's base. Taking 1,500 picked men and horses, he executed a flanking movement over night, and before Smith knew he was gone, came careering into Memphis at dawn at the head of 500 galloping, yelling men--many of them Memphis boys.

There were some 7,000 Union troops in and about Memphis at this time, but they were surprised out of their slumbers, and made no effective resistance. The only part of Forrest's plan which miscarried was his scheme to capture three leading Union officers, who were then stationed in Memphis: Generals C.C. Washburn, S.A. Hurlbut and R.P. Buckland.

General Hurlbut's escape occurred by reason of the fact that instead of having pa.s.sed the night at the old Gayoso Hotel, where he made his headquarters, he happened to be visiting a brother officer, elsewhere.

General Washburn was warned by a courier and made his escape in his nightclothes and bare feet from the residence he occupied as headquarters, running down alleys to the river, and thence along under the bluff to the Union fortifications. Forrest's men found the general's papers, uniform, hat, boots and sword in his bedroom, and also found there Mrs. Washburn. The only things they failed to find were the general's nightshirt and the general himself, who was inside it. General Buckland also avoided capture by the narrowest margin. The soldiers first went to the wrong house to look for him. That gave him time to escape.

It is recorded that, later in the day, under a flag of truce, Forrest sent General Washburn his sword and clothing with a humorous message, informing him, at the same time, that he had 600 Federal prisoners without shoes or clothing, and that he would like supplies for them.

The supplies, we are told, were promptly forthcoming.

Forrest waited until he was sure that news of the raid had been telegraphed to General Smith in the field. Then he cut the wires. Smith immediately came back toward Memphis with his army, which was what Forrest desired him to do. The Confederates then retired from the immediate vicinity of the city.

Judge Young, in his history, reports that when General Hurlbut heard of the raid he exclaimed, "There it goes again! They superseded me with Washburn because I could not keep Forrest out of West Tennessee, and Washburn cannot keep him out of his own bedroom!"

After the War there was corruption and carpet-bag rule in Memphis, and Forrest was again to the fore, becoming "Grand Wizard" of the famous Ku Klux Klan, the mysterious secret organization designed to intimidate Scalawags, Carpet-baggers and negroes, whose arrogance had become intolerable. General George W. Gordon prepared the oath and ritual for the Klan, which was founded in the town of Pulaski, Giles County, Tennessee. General Forrest took the oath in 1866, in Room 10 of the old Maxwell House, at Nashville.

It is my belief that the Ku Klux Klan has been a good deal maligned.

Many of its members were men of high type. I have been told, for instance, that one southern gentleman who has since been in the cabinet of a President of the United States, was active in the Ku Klux. I withhold his name because the purposes of the Ku Klux Klan, and the urgent need which called it into being, are not yet fully understood in the North, and for the further reason that depredations committed by other bodies were frequently charged to the Ku Klux, giving it a bad name. So far as I can discover the Ku Klux endeavored to avoid violence where it could be avoided. Its aim seems to have been to frighten negroes and bad whites into behaving themselves or going away; though sometimes, of course, bad characters had to be killed. It must be remembered that the ballot was denied former Confederate soldiers for quite a period after the War, that they were not allowed to possess firearms, and that, at the same time, negro troops were quartered in the South. In many parts of the South the government and the courts were in the hands of third-rate Northerners (carpet-baggers) who had come down to dominate the defeated section, and who used the Scalawags (disloyal southern whites) and negroes for their own purposes. Obviously this was outrageous, and equally obviously, a proud people, even though defeated, could not endure it. The service performed by the Ku Klux Klan seems to have been comparable with that rendered by the Vigilantes of early western days. Something had to be done and the Klan did it.

In 1869 General Forrest ordered the Klan to disband, which it did; but owing to the fact that it was a secret organization, and that disguises had been used, it was an easy matter for mobs, not actually a.s.sociated with the Ku Klux, to a.s.sume its costume and commit outrages in its name.

In writing of Raleigh I referred to the post-bellum activities of the Confederate cruiser _Shenandoah_. Captain Dabney M. Scales, a distinguished citizen of Memphis, was on the _Shenandoah_. Born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1842, Captain Scales was appointed to the Naval Academy by L.Q.C. Lamar. He was a cla.s.smate of Captain Clark, later of the _Oregon_. When the war broke out, young Scales was in his second year at the Academy, but like most of the other southern cadets he resigned and offered his services to the South. When commissioned he was the youngest naval officer in the Confederate service. Eight months after the War was over, the _Shenandoah_ was still cruising in the South Seas, looking for Federal merchantmen. In January 1866, somewhere south of Australia, she overhauled the British bark _Baracouta_, taking her for a Yankee man-o'-war flying the British flag as a ruse. Young Scales was sent in command of a boarding party, and was informed by the skipper of the _Baracouta_ that the Civil War had terminated months and months ago. The _Shenandoah_ then made for Liverpool. In the meantime a Federal court had ruled that her officers were guilty of piracy--a hanging offense. Naturally, they did not dare return to the United States. Young Scales went to Mexico and remained there two years before coming home.

When the Spanish War came, Captain Scales volunteered and was made navigating officer of a naval vessel. At the time of our visit he was a practising lawyer in Memphis, and was in command of Company A of the Uniform Confederate Veterans, a body of old heroes who go out every now and then and win the first prize for the best drilled organization operating Hardee's tactics.

Another distinguished citizen of Memphis who has lively recollections of the Civil War, is the Right Reverend Thomas F. Gailor, Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee. Bishop Gailor, who succeeded the famous Bishop Quintard, is my ideal of everything an Episcopal bishop--or I might even say a Church of England bishop--ought to be. The Episcopal Church seems to me to have about it more "style" than most other churches, and an Episcopal bishop ought not to look the ascetic. He ought to be well filled out, well dressed, well fed. He ought to have a distinguished appearance, a ruddy complexion, a good voice, and a lot of what we call "humanness"--including humor. All these qualities Bishop Gailor has.

In the bishop's study, in Memphis, hangs the sword of his father, Major Frank M. Gailor, who commanded the 33rd Mississippi Regiment. Major Gailor was killed while giving a drink of water to a wounded brother officer, and that officer, though dying, directed a soldier to take the Major's sword and see that it reached Mrs. Gailor, in Memphis, within the Union lines. A young woman, a Confederate spy, took the sword, and wearing it next her body, brought it through to Mrs. Gailor. Somehow or other it became known that the widow had her husband's sword, and as the possession of arms was prohibited to citizens, a corporal and guard were sent to the house to search for it. They found it between the mattresses of Mrs. Gailor's bed, and confiscated it. Mrs. Gailor then went with another lady to see General Washburn. Her friend started a long harangue upon the injustice which had been done, but Mrs. Gailor, seeing that the General was becoming impatient, broke in saying: "General, soldiers came to my house and took away my dead husband's sword. I can't use it, nor can my little son. I want it back. You would want your boy to have your sword, wouldn't you?"

"Of course I would!" cried Washburn. "Thank G.o.d for a woman who can say what she has to say, and be done with it!"

The sword was returned.

In the Spring of 1863, when Bishop Gailor was a child of about seven years, he accompanied his mother on a journey by wagon from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. The only other member of the party was a lady who had driven in the same wagon from Jackson to Kentucky, to get the body of her brother, a Confederate soldier who had been killed there. The coffin containing the remains was carried in the wagon. When it was known in Memphis that Mrs. Gailor was going through the lines, a great many people came to her with letters which they wished to send to friends. Mrs. Gailor sewed many of the letters into the clothing of the little boy. ("I remember it well," said the bishop. "I felt like a mummy.") Also one of Forrest's spies came with important papers, asking if she would undertake to deliver them. Only by very clever manipulation did Mrs. Gailor get the papers through, for everything was carefully searched. After they had pa.s.sed out of the northern lines they met one of Forrest's pickets. Mrs. Gailor told him that she had papers for the general, and before long Forrest rode up with his staff and received them. Then the two women and the little boy, with their tragic burden in the wagon, drove along on their two-hundred mile journey. And later, when Jackson was bombarded, they were there.

Before the war Major Gailor had been editor of the Memphis "Avalanche,"

a paper which was suppressed when the Union troops took the town. After the War the "Avalanche" was started up again, and had a stormy time of it, because it criticized a Carpet-bag judge who had come to Memphis. In 1889 the "Avalanche" was consolidated with the "Appeal," another famous ante-bellum journal, surviving to-day in the "Commercial-Appeal," a strong newspaper, edited by one of the ablest journalists in the South, Mr. C.P.J. Mooney.

When Memphis was captured the "Appeal" would have been suppressed, as the "Avalanche" was, had it been there. But when it became evident that Memphis would fall, Mr. S.C. Toof (later a well-known book publisher) who was then connected with the "Appeal," packed up the press and other equipment and shipped them to Grenada, Mississippi, where Mr. B.F. Dill, editor of the paper, continued to bring it out. When Grenada was threatened, a few months later, Mr. Dill moved with his newspaper equipment to Birmingham, where for a second time he resumed publication.

His next move was to Atlanta. There, when he could not get news-print, he used wallpaper, or any sort of paper he could lay his hands on. When Sherman took Atlanta the "Appeal" moved again, this time to Columbus, Georgia, where, at last, it was captured, and its press destroyed.

Wherever it went it remained the "Memphis Daily Appeal," with correspondents in all southern armies. No wonder a paper with such vitality as that, has survived and become great!

Poor Memphis! After the War she had Reconstruction to contend with; after Reconstruction, financial difficulties; after that, pestilence. In 1873, when the population of the city was about 40,000, and there had been a long period of hard times, yellow fever broke out. The condition of the city was exceedingly unsanitary, and after the pestilence had pa.s.sed, was allowed to remain so, though at that time the origin of yellow fever was, of course, not known, and it was a.s.sumed that the disease resulted from lack of proper sanitation.

In 1878 there was another yellow fever epidemic. The first case developed August 2, but the news was suppressed until the middle of the month, by which time a number of cases had come down. The day after the news became known 22 new cases were reported. Terror spread through the town. Hordes of people tried to flee at once. Families left their houses with the doors wide open and silver standing on the sideboards. People flocked to the trains; when they could not get seats they stood in the aisles or clambered onto the roofs of the cars; if they could not get in at car doors they climbed in through the windows, and sometimes, when the father of a family was refused admittance to a crowded car, he would force a way in for his wife and children at the pistol's point.

In the first week of the panic there were 1,500 cases, with an average of ten deaths daily; in the next week, 3,000 cases with fifty deaths daily, and so on into September during which month there was an average of 8,000 to 10,000 cases with about two hundred deaths a day.

Not every one fled, however. Leading citizens remained, forming a relief committee, and some brave helpers came from outside. Thus the sick and needy were attended to, though of course many of the volunteers contracted the disease and perished.

Added to the epidemic there was, as so often happens in such circ.u.mstances, an outbreak of thievery and other crime, which had to be put down. It is related that in the height of the epidemic hardly any one was seen upon the streets save an occasional nurse, doctor, or other member of the relief committee; household pets starved to death or fled the city; among the newspapers the staffs were so reduced that only two or three men were left in each office, and in the case of the "Appeal," but one, that one Colonel J.M. Keating, the proprietor, who stuck to Memphis and for a time wrote, set up and printed the paper without a.s.sistance, feeling that refugees must have news from the city.

The next year the epidemic came again, but in less violent form, there being, this time, but 2,000 cases. However the effect was c.u.mulative.

Memphis dropped from a city of nearly 50,000 to one of 20,000 and the reputation of the place was such that a bill was proposed in Congress to purchase the ground on which the city stood and utterly destroy it as unfit for human habitation.

Stricken as she was, however, Memphis "came back." A great campaign for sanitation was begun; city sewage-disposal was installed, and after a few years, artesian wells were bored for a new water supply. And though, as we now know, yellow fever does not come from the same sources as typhoid, nevertheless the new sanitary measures did greatly reduce the city's death rate.

Memphis, like all other cities, has her troubles now and then, but since the great pestilence there has never been a real disaster. The city has grown and thriven. Indeed, she had become so used to growing fast that when, in 1910, the Federal census gave her but 131,000, she indignantly demanded a recount, for she had been talking to herself, and had convinced herself that she had a great many more than that number of inhabitants. However, the census was taken again, and the first count proved accurate.

CHAPTER L

MODERN MEMPHIS

To be charmed by the social side of a city, yet to find little to admire in its physical aspect, is like knowing a brilliant and beautiful woman whose housekeeping is not of the neatest. If one were compelled to discuss such a woman, and wished to do so sympathetically but with truth, one might avoid brutal comment on the condition of her rooms by likening them to other rooms elsewhere: rooms which one knew to be untidy, but which the innocent listener might not understand to be so.