Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army Part 8

To return, we made some thirty miles, and ascending the c.u.mberland range in the evening, we again sought rest among the rocks. This we judged safest, since we knew not who might have seen us during the day, of an inquiring state of mind, as to our purpose and destination.

On the morning of June 4th, by a _detour_ to conceal the course from which we came, and a journey of a dozen of miles, we reached the home of my wounded friend. I shall not attempt to describe his tearful, joyful meeting with his mother and three sisters, and the pride of the good old father as he folded his soldier-boy to his heart. My own emotions fully occupied me while their greetings lasted. I thought of my own fond mother, who had not heard from me for more than a year, and was perhaps then mourning me as dead, perchance had gone herself to the tomb in grief for the loss of her first-born son; of my reverend father, whose wise counsel I had often needed and longed for; of my sweet sisters and little brother, who every day wondered if their big brother still lived and would ever come home.

After a kindly greeting to the stranger who had brought home their wounded son, for they never suspected either that he had deserted or that I was escaping to the hated Yankees, they introduced me to all the comforts of their pleasant dwelling; and for the first time for many months I began to feel somewhat secure. Yet they were all Secessionists, and talked constantly of the success of the cause, and I must, of necessity, conceal my views and plans.

The day after our arrival, the wounded soldier took to his bed and never rose again. The hardships he had endured in the journey home, acting upon a system enfeebled by his wound, terminated in inflammation of the lungs, which within a week ended his life. I watched by his bed, nursed him carefully, and told him what little I knew of the better world, trying to recall all the sweet words of comfort I had heard pious people pour into the ears of dying ones in my childhood, when my father, as pastor, was often called to such scenes. I was not an experienced counselor, but I knew there was One Name of sovereign power. That Name I told him of as best I could.

About the 12th of June he pa.s.sed into the Dark Beyond.

After the funeral ceremonies wore over, a letter came from the other brother, detailing the manner in which they had been compelled to swear in for the war, and saying that he would soon be home. He had not reached when I left there. I fear he failed in his attempt.

But one more step was needed to make me safe; that was, to get within the Federal lines, take the oath of allegiance, and secure a pa.s.s. But how could this be accomplished? Should the Federal authorities suspect me of having been in the Rebel service, would they allow me to take the oath and go my way? I knew not; but well I knew the Confederate officers were never guilty of such an absurdity. Judging others by themselves, they put little confidence in the fact that A.B. has sworn to this or that; and hence they watch him as carefully after as before. The North should know that oaths taken by Southerners before provost-marshals, in recovered cities such as Memphis, Nashville, &c, are not taken to be observed, as a general rule. They are taken as a matter of necessity, and with a mental reservation, that when the interests of their State demands, they are freed from the obligation. That this is a startling statement I admit, and if called on for the proof I might find it difficult to produce it; and yet from what I saw and heard scores of times, and in different parts of the South, I know it to be indubitably true.

An incident which occurred about the 20th of June, both endangered my escape and yet put me upon the way of its accomplishment. I rode my pet Selim into the village of McMinnville, a few miles from the place of my sojourn, to obtain information as to the proximity of the Federal forces, and, if possible, devise a plan of getting within their lines without exciting suspicion. As Selim stood at the hotel, to the amazement of every one, General Dumont's cavalry galloped into town, and one of the troopers taking a fancy to my horse, led him off without my knowledge, and certainly without my consent. My only consolation was, that my n.o.ble Selim was now to do service in the loyal ranks. My best wish for my good steed is, that he may carry some brave United States officer over the last prostrate foe of this ever-glorious Union.

The cavalry left the town in a few hours, after erecting a flag-staff and giving the Stars and Stripes to the breeze. Within a few days a squad of Morgan's cavalry came in, cut down the staff, and one of them rolling up the flag and strapping it behind his saddle, left word where General Dumont could see the flag if he chose to call.

I left soon after the Federals did, but in an opposite direction, with my final plan perfected. Spending two or three days more with my kind friends on the farm, I saddled my remaining horse, and telling the family I might not return for some time, I rode through McMinnville, and then direct for Murfreesboro, at that time in possession of the Union forces. When hailed by the pickets, a mile from the town, I told them I wished to see the officer in command.

They directed me where to find him, and allowed me to advance. They knew far less of Southern cunning than I did, or they would not have allowed me to ride into the town without a guard. When I found the officer, I stated that some Federal cavalry had taken my horse in McMinnville a few days ago, and I wished to recover him. He told me he could give me no authority to secure my horse, unless I would take the oath of allegiance to the United States. To this I made no special objection. With a seeming hesitation, that I might wake up no suspicion of being different from the ma.s.ses of farmers in that region, and yet with a joy that was almost too great to be concealed, I solemnly subscribed the following oath:

"I, A---- B----, solemnly swear, without any mental reservation or evasion, that I will support the Const.i.tution of the United States and the laws made in pursuance thereof; and that I will not take up arms against the United States, or give aid or comfort, or furnish information, directly or indirectly, to any person or persons belonging to any of the so-styled Confederate States who are now or may be in rebellion against the United States. So help me G.o.d."

The other side of the paper contained a military pa.s.s, by authority of Lieutenant-colonel J.G. Parkhurst, Military Governor of Murfreesboro. I regarded myself as free from any possible obligation to the Confederates when discharged from their service on account of my wounds at Corinth. In voluntarily taking this oath, I trust I had some just sense of its awful solemnity, for I have never been able to look upon the appeal to G.o.d in this judicial form as a light matter. How good men can, satisfy their consciences for the deliberate violation of the oaths which so many of them have deliberately taken to support the Const.i.tution of the United States, I know not. I know what they say in self-defence, for I have often listened to their special pleading. The [Greek: proton pseudos], as my good Professor Owen of the Free Academy would term it--the foundation falsehood--of the whole Secession movement, is the doctrine of State Rights, as held by the South. "I owe _allegiance_ to my State, and, when it commands, _obedience_ to the United States." This idea has complete possession of the leading minds, and a belief in it accounts for the conduct of many n.o.ble men, who resisted Secession resolutely until their State was carried for the Rebellion. Whenever a State act was pa.s.sed they yielded, and the people were a unit.

In addition to this fundamental error, they aver that they are engaged in a revolution, not a rebellion; and that the right of revolution is conceded, even by the North, now endeavoring to force them back into an oppressive and hated union; and that if we justify our fathers in forswearing allegiance to the British crown, we should not condemn the South in refusing obedience to a Union already dissolved. If this were as good an argument as it is a fallacious one, ignoring as it does the total dissimilarity in the two cases, and a.s.suming falsely that the Union is already dissolved, it fails to justify the individual oath-breaking of many of the leaders in the revolt. They swore to support the Const.i.tution of the United States at the very time they were meaning to destroy it. Some of them took the oath as Cabinet officers and members of Congress, that they might have the better opportunity to overthrow the government. The truth must be admitted--and here lies the darkest blot upon the characters of the arch-conspirators--they know not the sanct.i.ty of an oath, nor regard its solemn pledges and imprecations. They have shown, it has been eloquently said, the utmost recklessness respecting the oath of allegiance to the nation.

Men who sneered at the North as teaching a higher law to G.o.d which should be paramount to all terrene statutes, have been themselves among the first to hold the supreme law of the land and their oath of fealty and loyalty to that land, abrogated by the lower law of State claims and State interests. It could not be sin in the man of the North, if G.o.d and his country ever clashed, to say, that well as he loved his country, he loved his G.o.d yet more. But what plea shall shield the sin which claims to love one's own petty State better than either country or G.o.d? They have virtually tunneled and honey-combed into ruin the fundamental obligations of the citizen.

Jesuitism had made itself a name of reproach by the doctrine of mental reservation, under which the Jesuit held himself absolved from oaths of true witness-bearing, which he at any time had taken to the nation and to G.o.d, if the truth to be told harmed the interests of his own order, whose interests he must shield by a silent reservation. The lesser caste, the ecclesiastical clique, thus was held paramount to the entire nation; and oaths of fidelity to the religious order, a mere handful of G.o.d's creatures, rode over the rights of the G.o.d whose name had been invoked to witness truth-telling, and over the rights of G.o.d's whole race of mankind, to have the truth told in their courts by those who had solemnly proclaimed and deliberately sworn that they would tell and were telling it. The State loyalty as being a mental reservation evermore to abrogate the oath of National loyalty:--what is it but a modern reproduction of the old Jesuit portent?

But perjury however palliated, and whether in Old World despots or in New World anarchists, involves, in the dread language of Scripture, the being "clothed with cursing as with a garment." That terrible phrase of inspiration describes, we suppose, not merely profuse profanity, but the earthly deception which attracts the heavenly malediction, the reply of a mocked G.o.d to a defiant transgressor, vengeance invoked, and the invocation answered. "SO HELP ME G.o.d!" is a phrase so often heard in jury-boxes and custom-houses, beside the ballot-box, and in the a.s.sumption of each civil office, that we do not at all times gauge its dread depth of meaning. It is not a mere prayer of help to tell the truth, but like the kindred Hebrew words, "So do G.o.d to me and more also!" it is an invocation of His vengeance and an abjuration of all His further favor if we palter with the truth. It means, "If I speak not truly and mean not sincerely, so do I forswear and renounce henceforth all help from G.o.d. I hope not His help in the cares of life. I hope not His help for the pardon of sin. I ask not His grace,--nor hope from His smile in death,--nor help at His hand into His eternal and holy heavens. All the aid man needs to ask, all the aid which G.o.d has to the asking heretofore lent, I distinctly surrender, if He the truth-seeing sees me now truth-wresting." Now the risk of trifling with such a thunderbolt is not small. The many n.o.ble, excellent, and Christian men, who may have been heedlessly involved in this Rebellion, in spite of past oaths to the nation, it is not our task to judge. But the act itself, of disregarding such sworn loyalty to their whole country,--the act in its general principles apart from all personal partakers in it,--we may and we must ponder. Now in this respect, if these views of our national oaths be just, our present Rebellion has not been merely treasonable, but its cradle-wrappings, its very swaddling-bands, have been manifold layers of perjury,--its infancy has been "clad with cursing as with a garment."[*] Can a jealous G.o.d consolidate and perpetuate a power commenced in perjury?

[* Rev. W.R. Williams, D.D.]

After taking the oath, I told the officer that there were from seven to ten thousand Rebel cavalry at Chattanooga, a detachment of whom would surprise him some morning if he was not wide awake.

Having performed this first loyal act under my oath, I went out in search of Selim. He was not to be found in Murfreesboro, and a further search would have consumed time and thrown me back toward the Rebel lines. Overjoyed at my escape from the last danger, and not reluctant to make this contribution to the cause of my country, I turned my now buoyant steps homeward, under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. I rode into Nashville the 28th of June, with feelings widely different from those which crowded my breast when four months before I had ridden out of it in the rear of General Johnson's retreating army. I was then, though pleased with the excitement and dash of cavalry service, in a cause where my heart was not, in a retreat from my own friends, and becoming daily more identified in the minds of others with the Rebellion; now I was free from its trammels, with my face toward my long-lost home, with a wish in my heart, which has grown more intense daily, to aid my country in her perilous struggle.

A few hours at Nashville enabled me to see my father's friend, who had treated me so kindly when sick, and again thank him for his good deeds, and then I left for home.

I will not ask the reader to follow me in my rapid journey through Louisville and Cincinnati, and thence to New York. Nor need I describe my joyful, tearful, welcome reception by father, mother, sisters, and brother, as of one alive from the dead.

The story of my life in Secessiondom is ended. If the foregoing pages, beside depicting my personal experience, have given any facts of value to my bleeding country--facts as to the diabolical barbarism of Southern society in trampling upon all personal rights--facts showing the intense and resolute earnestness of the whole Southern people in the Rebellion--facts demonstrating the large resources of the Rebels in arms and men, and the absolute military despotism which has combined and concentrated their power--facts of the atrocious character of the guerrilla system organized and legalized among them--facts exhibiting the efficiency of every arm of their military service--facts showing the necessity of restrictions upon the freedom of the press in times of war--facts revealing the demoralizing influence of the doctrine of State Rights in nullifying national fealty, and disregarding the sanct.i.ties of an oath--facts which, if universally known and duly regarded, would stir the North to a profounder sense of the desperate and deadly struggle in which they are engaged than they have ever yet felt--then my time and labor will not have been spent in vain.

THE END.