USA > Mississippi > Pike County > Pike county. Mississippi, 1789-1876: pioneer families and Confederate soldiers, reconstruction and redemption > Part 18
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As a matter of history with which Pike County is connected this circumstance is referred to. The election occurred on the 26th of April, the anniversary of its departure from Holmesville.
Colonel Posey was re-elected colonel; Capt. J. J. Shannon, of the Jasper Grays, lieutenant colonel; Samuel E. Baker, of che Adams Light Guards, major, thus retiring Lieut. Col. Robt. Clarke and Maj. T. R. Stockdale.
The Quitman Guards elected Lt. S. McNeil Bain, captain ; Colden Wilson, Ist lieutenant; John Holmes, 2nd lieutenant; Van C. Coney, Jr., 2nd lieutenant, thus retiring Capt. S. A. Matthews, Lieut. J. M. Nelson and Lieut. R. J. R. Bee, who returned to their homes.
In the early part of 1862 events indicated that the Southern States were entering the boundaries of a tremendous struggle. Pike County was doing her duty. She had already sent out some of her boys with the University Grays attached to the 11th Mississippi regiment under Captain Lowry, who participated in the first battle of Manassas, and two companies of over 200 men to Virginia now engaged in active hostilities, and with the opening of the campaigns her other eight companies followed in rotation and were attached to the western or Tennessee army; over one thousand men out of a population of 11,135, including slaves. Patriots imbued with the common cause came out from every nook and corner of the county, from all classes of whites. They saw the giant with frowning brow looking on them and threatening them with destruction and they calmly and resolutely came and took their places in the ranks.
The formation of these companies well nigh stripped the county of its men, except those over military age and boys under the age, and among this class a large number were serving in the army.
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There was one great problem to be solved and to be met by the people at home which fell upon the women and girls until the Con- federate government could prepare for the necessity. The South had no manufactories and supplies of clothing must be had by the men in the army. They had no uniforms and they, of necessity, went out with such as would best suit the conditions. The task to supply these necessities naturally fell on the women and they took hold of the situation with a genius and a patriotic impulse which few, if any, women of any country or age has ever equaled.
The artisans who had come as pioneers from the older states in the beginning of the century had not come in vain. From John Barnes, the father of little Margaret, who floated down the Cumber- land, Ohio and Mississippi rivers in a cypress canoe in 1798, William Ravencraft, who pulled his mill stones and turning lathes all the way from South Carolina to Magees Creek with cows, and from the Walker's and others down on the Bogue Chitto the lessons had been taught and handed down to the beginning of this conflict. The loom makers, slay makers, reel and spinning wheel makers were put to work to supply the needs and soon the hum of the wheel, the scratch of the cards, the flutter of the reel and the thump of the looms were heard in every household. The women and girls, and those who had slaves, the negro women and girls too, with creditable devotion, entered into the spirit of supplying the needs of the soldier as well as themselves.
From Indian Creek and the Darbun to Dillon town, from Hoover's to the Louisiana line; from Bogue Chitto to Osyka; from Clabber Creek to Bahala; from Topisaw and Leatherwood and Varnal; from Still Creek to the limits of the county on the western line, all through the hills and valleys of Pike County, amid the moaning of the pines, the thump of the loom and the buzz of the wheel was heard, cho- rused with the inspiring notes of the Bonnie Blue Flag, Dixie and the Homespun Dress.
The "Homespun Dress" was written by Lieutenant Harrington, an Alabamian, belonging to Morgan's cavalry command, who was killed in the battle of Perryville. It is said that the words were not
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printed during the war. However, it got rapid circulation and was generally memorized among the Confederate soldiers in the early part of the war, and was sung at home by the women and girls through- out the South to the tune of the Bonny Blue Flag. A writer in the Age-Herald of Birmingham says:
"While Morgan's army was in Lexington, Ky., the women of that city gave a ball one night in honor of Morgan's men. On this occasion it is said the women appeared in homespun dresses. Lieutenant Harrington, of Alabama, who was a member of Morgan's army and who attended the ball, was so deeply affected by the flower of Kentucky's young womanhood appearing at a ball gowned in homespun dresses that he wrote the words to the song: 'The Homespun Dress."
The following are the words:
Oh, yes, I am a Southern girl, And glory in the name; I boast of it with greater pride Than glittering wealth and fame; I envy not the Northern girl Her robes of beauty rare, Though diamonds deck her snowy neck And pearls bestud her hair.
CHORUS.
Hurrah! Hurrah! For the sunny South, so dear; Three cheers for the homespun dress The Southern ladies wear!
Now Northern goods are out of date, And, since old Abe's blockade, We Southern girls can be content With goods that's Southern made. We send our sweethearts to the war, But, girls, ne'er you mind- Your soldier love will not forget The girl he left behind.
The Southern land's a glorious land, And has a glorious cause; Then cheer, three cheers for Southern rights And for the Southern boys!
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We scorn to wear a bit of silk, A bit of Northern lace, But make our homespun dresses up, And wear them with a grace.
And now, young man, a word to you, If you would win the fair, Go to the field where honor calls And win your lady there; Remember that our brightest smiles Are for the true and brave,
And that our tears are all for those Who fill the soldier's grave.
On the 25th of May, 1862, Stonewall Jackson and R. S. Ewell attacked the Union forces under General Banks at Winchester, and drove them pell mell back across the Potomac. A large force under Gen. George B. McClellan, was threatening Richmond. At the battle of Winchester Jackson and Ewell's forces captured six hundred wagons with their horses and equipage, and. a large quantity of small arms with some cannon and army supplies. In order to save all this valuable stuff and to elude the junction of Fremont and Shield at Strasburg, forty miles in his rear, Jackson made a rapid retreat back to Cross Keys and Port Republic and made a stand. Fremont and Shields came up and on the 8th and 9th of June, both of them were severely defeated and driven back down the valley, followed by a few squads of cavalry and daring scouts. In the battle of Cross Keys Jared B. May, William Garner and Dr. A. P. . Sparkman were wounded and returned home, and Wesley Yar- borough was mortally wounded and died. Immediately following Cross Keys, Mcclellan advanced on Richmond against the Confeder- ate forces there under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, Jackson and Ewell secretly, and by a most extraordinary rapid movement, put their commands in position in front of Richmond without the knowledge of Fremont and Shields in the valley, and the series of battles before Richmond lasting seven days, resulted in the latter part of June and early days of July.
At Cold Harbor, where Ewell's forces fought, Captain Brown, of the Summit Rifles, and Joseph W. Collins, of the Quitman Guards,
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were killed and George W. Simmons of the latter company mortally wounded. George W. Root and Lieut. John Holmes were wounded, and Ike Dick, of the Summit Rifles, badly wounded while. bearing the colors of the 16th Mississippi in a desperate charge on the enemy's works. These series of battles resulted in the defeat of the enemy and forced them to abandon this line and fall back on Washington.
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston being wounded during this great con- flict, Gen. Robert E. Lee was placed in command of the army in Virginia and then another series of battles ensued at Slaughter Moun- tain, Second Manassas, Harpers Ferry, Boonsboro, Md., Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg in this eventful year, and the roll of the killed and wounded and prisoners of Mississippians in Virginia was greatly enlarged. While all these stirring events were occurring in Virginia, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston was organizing for the defense of the Southwestern department and the formation of the Army of Ten- nessee and the conflict was gathering with stupendous proportions.
The Bogue Chitto Guards under Captain Carter, were organized May 1, 1861. The Dahlgreen Rifles under Capt. Parham B. Wil- liams, August, 22, 1861, and the McNair Rifles in October, 1861, and then followed the Brent Rifles on the 26th of April, 1862. Nash's company, Holmesville Guards, Dixie Guards, Stockdale's Cavalry and Rhodes' Cavalry following. Of these the McNair Rifles par- ticipated in the battle of Shiloh. General Johnston fought this battle with less than 40,000 men, while his antagonist is credited with over 49,000 men, reinforced by Buel with 21,579 men. The war had been carried into Missouri and elsewhere west of the Mississippi river and in Kentucky and Tennessee. Forts Henry and Donald- son on the Tennessee river, had fallen under combined land and naval forces of the enemy in February, 1862, by which the Confederacy lost some 15,000 men by surrender and in killed and wounded, and Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston concentrated all of his available forces near Corinth, with General Beauregard second in command. The success of the Union arms at Forts Henry and Donaldson caused President Lincoln to make U. S. Grant a major general in command of that department and the two armies came together at Shiloh
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Church in Tennessee, on the 6th of April, when the great battle of that name was fought. The Union army under General Grant, was defeated and driven back under cover of his gunboats at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee river, but in the hour of the triumph of his mag- nificent military genius the great Confederate general received a mortal wound and died on the field from loss of blood from a severed artery in his leg, which misfortune to the Confederate arms, occur- ring when it did, prevented the utter destruction or surrender of their enemies. The enemy claimed a victory at Pittsburg Landing, but the facts seem to indicate that their victory consisted in not being destroyed, which was prevented by the timely reinforcement of Buel with over 21,000 fresh troops. In the battle of Shiloh the Confederates lost 1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded and 959 missing or captured; total, 10,699.
The enemy lost 1,500 killed, 6,634 wounded and 3,086 missing or captured, total, 11,220.
The reader of these pages must not expect in them a history of the war or detailed account of battles. The events which have been mentioned are intended to call the attention of the uninformed more particularly to the character of the great war in the beginning of active hostilities at this period. The student must turn to works devoted to it in order to obtain correct information as to the causes and events following, and they can find no better works on the sub- ject than Jefferson Davis' Rise and Fall of the Confederate Govern- ment and the Life of Albert Sidney Johnston, by his son, Wm. Pres- ton Johnston. The year 1862 was frought with many hard fought battles, with a preponderance of numbers always in favor of the enemy, and the victory generally in favor of the Confederates. At the end of two years from the secession of the States, with all the blood and treasure which had been expended on both sides, the war appeared to have just begun. The South had garnered nearly, if not all, her resources in men and means to beat back her ruthless invaders. Her entire roll of men reached only 600,000 and from this enrollment was taken men for employment in every branch of the civil and military service outside of the field. Some Southern
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historians have claimed that the South had less than 400,000 actual and effective fighting men in the different fields of operation, while the enemy shows by published records of their own that they en- listed and put in the field 2,678,967 men, besides their militia and maritime forces against our people. These figures come from the Rebellion Records published by the government and are copied from Davis' Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.
In Henry W. Rauff's Century Book of Facts, page 617, the reader will find the following figures:
Lincoln's Calls, 2,942,748.
Obtained, 2,690,401.
Number of men furnished by states in same table, 2,778,304.
These do not include the U. S. regular army and navy, nor several hundred thousand militia.
So persistent has some northern historians been in falsifying the true records that they cannot be relied upon. And this very same man Rauff in his Century Book of Facts is one of them, for he has stated that the North never had over 700,000 active men in the field at any one time. They have strained consciences and veracity to such a degree that they have tried to make it appear, and to falsely teach northern children, that the South outnumbered them in troops in the field, as shown by an essay written by a northern girl in which she stated that the Confederates numbered two-thirds of the Union soldiers, when the truth is they numbered about one-fifth.
What of this unequal contest? What age of the world has its like? Where is the argument or the record to justify the North's contemptuous boast of whipping the South? Four years for such a stupendous army and navy with unlimited means and armament, with the entire world to draw from, to overcome the South's 400,000 "ragged, barefooted, sickly, half-starved rebels," as they were sneer- ingly denominated in northern prisons to justify the inequality of prison deaths! History reveals the "Story of the Lost Cause." No people under the sun struggled under greater difficulties, or fought more desperately for the preservation of their rights and in defense of their homes and their beloved land, against such tremendous odds,
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cut off from the outside world, than those constituting the armies of the Confederate States.
When Thaddeus Stephens, the great abolition leader, gave the word to "beat the devil out of the South," it was the slogan for destruction ; the obliteration of the South's manhood and womanhood; the piling up of hecatombs from her chivalric sons and daughters, and the fulfillment of a cruel conqueror's dream of an African domination constructed over the ruins of her temples and the embers of her Cau- casian glory. "To hell with the constitution," which the South had revered, was the motto and the watchword in the coercion of the Southern States, with Abraham as their willing executive.
Mr. Lincoln stated in his first inaugural address that he had no constitutional right to interfere with the institution of slavery and that there was no purpose to do so; but there was just as much reason to believe this as there was to put confidence in anything which had transpired relating to the Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumpter affairs- a complete and cunning piece of official perfidy, from start to finish.
In his second inaugural address after he had issued his emancipa- tion proclamation, he said: "All knew that this interest (slavery) was somehow the cause of the war," and he helped to make it so.
In 1833, at a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at Philadelphia, a declaration of sentiments was adopted as follows:
"We maintain that the slaves of the South ought to be instantly set free."
"We maintain that no compensation should be given to the planters emancipating their slaves."
When it is considered that this same year the British government had paid her planters the sum of one hundred ($100,000,000) millions of dollars for their slaves emancipated, and the South's slave property largely greater than this in value, the intelligent reader will admit that from a financial point of view alone, the South had a good cause for her fears and complaints. It was a consciousness of right that actuated them.
"I had rather be right than to be president," said an eminent Southern man.
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"I may not be on the winning side, but I know I am on the right side," said a Southern Governor.
Vice-President Alexander H. Stevens, of the Confederate Gov- ernment, a man acknowledged by all to be devoted to the Union and the Constitution at the period of the secession of Georgia, which he represented in the United States Senate, said:
"I am afraid of nothing on earth, or above the earth, or under the earth, except to do wrong."
"Duty is the sublimest word in the English language," said Gen. Robert E. Lee.
The declaration embodied in the resolutions of the American Anti- Slavery Society was an echo of the sentiment of England after it was found that there was no more kidnapping money to be made out of the Southern States, which had passed laws forbidding their nefarious crime. It was all right for the Eastern Yankee to steal Africans and sell them to the South, but it was wrong in their eyes for the South to be paid for them on emancipation.
A period frought with so many things to attract the attention of the historian cannot be given in a local record.
When all the men fit for military duty in Pike County were in the field, it must be plausible to the minds of the living, that the women had a struggle all to themselves that no man or woman of the present generation can comprehend. More than half of them had to depend on their own resources, for they were not slave owners. And with all their efforts for the maintenance of themselves and children came the reports, wafted by every breeze, of the great battles being fought, bringing tidings of loved ones killed or wounded. Distress and suffering broadened and deepened the chasm where sorrow found its habitation. Old men and women of pioneer fame who sprung from revolutionary sires, fell upon their knees in humble suppli- cation to ward off the great affliction; but here in these pine hills, where joyous hopes had lived and brightened and beautified life, a deep wail went forth to gratify the ever insatiable maw of northern hatred and crime.
A السوق
أساميكم
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All the men in Pike County capable of bearing arms were in the field, as stated before, except a few men who were allowed under the conscription act of Congress to remain at home to manage negro labor in productions necessary for the support of the army. One- tenth of the home productions of all were exacted for this purpose, and those who had no slaves to help them on the farms were equally burdened with this tax, making it doubly severe on those unable to provide a sufficiency for themselves and helpless children. Some old men, subject only to militia duty as home guards, were detailed to look after those who were in dire distress and seek means for their relief. Human fortitude was taxed to the extreme point, but they never lost any of their chivalrous characteristics. Like their an- cestors of the revolutionary period, they could and did often subsist on parched corn and roasted sweet potatoes.
In the year 1863, the Confederate Army may be said to have reached its full strength, about 600,000 men, while the enemy had called out nearly 3,000,000, and the prospect for peace was yet with- out hope. This preponderance of forces enabled the U. S. govern- ment to blockade all the Southern ports and in a manner cut them off from foreign communication, besides placing more than four times their strength against them in the field.
The enemy had captured New Orleans, thus cutting off the main depot of supplies for a large section of Louisiana and Mississippi. It was difficult to procure salt and the people had to dig up the dirt of their old smoke houses and boil it to extract the salt from it. At times it could be procured from the Avery Island, in Louisiana. Sugar was procured from Baton Rouge and other points by wagons and taken in exchange for cotton or other products. No means were at the command of the people at times, and it was a desperate con- dition which confronted them. Confederate money was greatly depreciated in value. Flour and coffee were out of the question with the masses far South, and even the wealthy could not procure them. Parched meal or corn and other things were used as substi- tutes for coffee. Sometimes the blockade, as it was termed, could be slipped through and coffee obtained from places within the enemy's
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lines. A woman with a house full of little children to support was at a great disadvantage in the struggle for existence.
The years of 1863 and 1864 were fruitful of desperate encounters. The enemy was straining every resource and power to accomplish the defeat of the Confederate armies. Thousand dollar bounties were given to enlist, and hundreds of thousands of foreigners from Europe flocked to their standard for the sake of the money to fight "mit the flag" and save the Union (?). After a most heroic defense, Vicksburg and Port Hudson were given up in 1863, and Lee, with his invincibles, penetrated into Pennsylvania and the swelling tide of the struggle seemed to be at its height; but there were no re-inforce- ments nor recruits to be had to replace the losses of the Confederates, while to destroy a thousand of the enemy might bring a hundred thousand more. Shut out from the whole world, with depleting ranks and scant rations, they fought on without a thought of defeat, and the whole land from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and to the Gulf, was baptized in blood and marked with conflagrations and ruin.
A considerable force of the enemy's cavalry under Grierson, taking advantage of the absence of regular troops, marched diagonally across Mississippi through Meridian, tearing up the Vicksburg and Meridian and the Mobile and Ohio railroad tracks, destroying the town and committing other acts of vandalism, which was one of the peculiar characteristics of Yankee soldiers. They were notorious as robbers and thieves, when there were no forces in their way to oppose them, except a few squads of militia and women and children.
They passed through the town of Brookhaven, and of Summit, in Pike County, plundered the towns and destroyed all the business houses and some residences that belonged to men in the Confederate army, whose names are recorded in this book; men who were pur- suing a civilized mode of warfare and not cowardly and disgraceful vandalism, perpetrated by these so-called United States patriots.
The small force of militia composed of men and boys exempt from the regular army stationed here under Colonel Wingfield did not feel it safe to risk a battle with the well equipped and trained troopers
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under Grierson, and they retreated across the Bogue Chitto at Hoover's bridge, while Grierson, after accomplishing his vandalism, proceeded on his route unmolested through the country to the Southwest.
Lieut. Sampson Ball, who had seen service in the regular army and had been discharged, made application for 100 boys belonging to the militia forces for the purpose of disputing the passage of the enemy* across the Tangipahoa, but the application was refused.
HOOVER IRON BRIDGE Scene on the Bogue Chitto River
Lieutenant Ball related to the writer that he thought Grierson's forces had been greatly overestimated and with a bold attempt, coupled with a little strategy, he might have delayed and annoyed them sufficiently to have secured their surrender to other forces seeking to apprehend them on the line to Baton Rouge, but his appli- cation was refused.
The few conscripts stationed at Brookhaven, under Capt. S. A. Matthews and Lieut. A. M. Bickham, made a circuitous retrograde
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movement into the dismal regions of the Otopasas and thus eluded the Yankee cavalier, running rough shod over the unprotected women and children of Mississippi and Northeast Louisiana.
Grierson, like Sherman, in his celebrated, proudly heralded farce act through Georgia, against a similar foe, landed at Baton Rouge, covered all over with glory and wreaths of victory in the estimation of the Northern government.
When the civil war ended in 1865, the South was a land of deso- lation indeed, and those who survived its consequences were left without a ray of hope. All they had possessed was gone save the land they returned to, and that was offered by the Yankees to the negroes in sections of forty acres and a mule.
The great battles fought by the Army of Tennessee succeeding that of Shiloh, under the command of Gens. Leonidas Polk, Beauregard, J. E. Johnston, Bragg and Hood, on the fields of Marietta, Resaca, Peach Tree Creek, Mission Ridge, Chicamauga, Atlanta, Franklin and elsewhere, reduced their forces so much that when Lee surren- dered, the others followed in quick succession.
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