USA > Tennessee > Bradley County > History of the rebellion in Bradley County, East Tennessee > Part 14
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The efforts of these rebel kidnappers to recapture Stonecypher being prosecuted without success, and the prospect on the whole becoming rather gloomy ; it was planned by them that the Gregories, the family whose
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child it was pretended the boy had injured, should swear out a State warrant, on which he was to be hunted out and taken by the civil officers and punished for his alleged crime upon the child. The warrant was put into the hands of an officer by the name of Lemuel Jones, a notorious rebel; and the besieging parties waited with anxiety for results. Notwithstanding Mr. Jones was a rebel, in this case, to his credit it must be stated, that he acted with some principle. Knowing that the boy was as innocent of this crime as himself, or the most distant person in the world, and knowing that the warrant in his hands was the fruits of perjury, and malice, created by the boy's escape from Bryant, and their inability to recap- ture him, purposely allowed a knowledge of the proceed- ings to reach the boy's friends as an advance warning to escape, or as a hint for him to leave the country entirely. Profiting by this advice, as well perhaps, as by the advice of his own friends, the boy fled from Bradley, going North or Northeast, and finally enlisted in the Federal army, joining the 111th Ohio infantry. He served in this regiment faithfully, nearly three years with honor and credit to himself, securing the esteem of his officers, and was discharged after the war at Columbus, Ohio, on the first day of August 1865, and is now at home, the sup- port of his widowed mother, as well as the guide and defender of his sisters, and a worthy, honored, and proud victor, to look with scorn upon his old enemies, and to laugh at the confusion and shame that have overtaken them.
It appears that when Bryant went to Dalton to receive Absalom from Kincannon, the plan was to take the cars immediately with him for Virginia, for he came to Dal- ton with a full supply of cooked and well prepared rations, sufficient for himself and the boy on the trip. What occurred to frustrate this plan and determine Bry- any to take him to his own home until the next day is not known, whatever it was, it was this, perhaps, that saved the boy's life.
At the time Absalom was kidnapped his father was
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lying upon his death-bed. His chronic difficulties having been increased by the abuse he received from Brown a year and a half previous, and being then aggravated by the troubles and sufferings through which he was still passing, he died a few days after this event and was buried while his son was hiding in the woods, the boy as well as his mother feeling it unsafe for him to visit his father in his last moments, or come out to attend his father's funeral.
When Bryant and the boy started from Dalton for Bry- ant's house, the boy asked him how much money he paid the men for getting him as his son's substitute, and how much of it he was to have himself. Bryant replied that he was to give old man Gregory five hundred dollars, and the other four each five hundred also, and whether they would give him any of the money he did not know.
What became of Bryant's rebel son, whether his father succeeded in procuring a Union substitute to fight his battles for him; or whether the five villains received each his five hundred dollars from Bryant, as a reward for steal- ing for him his neighbor's boy, is unknown to the writer.
That Bryant was deeply implicated, and guilty almost equally with the others in this crime, is beyond question. He probably knew as well as they before they went to Stonecypher's, that they intended to procure Absalom as the substitute, for which they were to receive the $2,500. The fact that Bryant met Kincannon at Dalton, with ra- tions, which had required some time to prepare, for the boy's trip to Virginia, is evidence that he and his family knew beforehand the day on which this identical boy was to be delivered.
Jathan Gregory, one of the most vicious men in Brad- ley although a loud professor in the Methodist Church, and having one of the most wretched families in the county, the boys of which committed, perhaps, as great an amount of robbery, murder and incendiarism as those of any other family in the country, as already seen, was near neighbor to Mr. Stonecypher. It was supposed by Union friends that some of the Gregories were present,
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though not discovering themselves, the night Absalom was taken. It was supposed also that they first indicated to the others, that this boy could be seized and made the victim by which they could comply with Bryant's offer and secure the $2,500.
Although the pretended object of the Gregories and the other kidnapping villains in swearing out the civil warrant against Absalom was punishment for his alleged crime, yet the real object was to get the aid of the civil officer in bringing him to light and getting possession of him. These rebels all knew that it was patent to the whole community that the charge was a malicious fabri- cation ; and they knew that no justice dare convict the boy and send him to the penitentiary on these charges. The real object, therefore, was, through the aid of the civil officer, once more to get possession of Absalom, when proposals of compromise would have been made as to the crime, the civil prosecution dropped, and he, through strategy, bribery, threats or kidnapping as before, re- tained and returned to Bryant as his runaway substitute.
We are now prepared briefly to remark upon the differ- ent parties concerned in this transaction.
The Gregories, Esq. Dean, Bryant, and the four scoun- drels, Kincannon, Tracy, Davis and Acock, were all nearly equal in guilt as the perpetrators of this infamous busi- ness. Dean and Bryant might not have been privy to all the minutiæ of its meanness, its consecutive and unmiti- gated shame, but their complicity in the matter crimi- nates them equally with the rest, all having outraged in the affair every principle of humanity, Christianity and civilization. Almost every crime that humanity can commit was embodied in this transaction. All knew equally well the distressed condition of Mr. Stonecypher's family when the boy was taken. All knew that the old gentleman had been nearly helpless for months, and that he must soon die, leaving none, in the absence of the boy, but females in the family ; and all knew what the family had already suffered from the rebellion. All compre- hended perfectly the finishing blow of suffering and ruin
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it would be to the family to have the boy dragged off in the manner they proposed, and sent to the rebel army on the Potomac.
Dean was an old citizen, a man of family, and an act- ing Justice of the Peace. Bryant was an old citizen and an independent planter; and before the war was consid- ered a respectable man. Gregory was also the head of a family, and a member of a Christian Church. The other four probably were all heads of families-Davis and Kin- cannon certainly were-and some of them men of some property and influence. The whole, before the war, pre- tended to be, and probably were considered, passably respectable citizens.
This case stamps all the parties concerned in it with infamy for life. Considering the innocence and helpless- ness of the victims, the extent of the injury contemplated, the abominable means employed to gain the proposed end, the number and social position of the perpetrators, the foregoing is a case of the most unrelieved blackness of human shame, beastly depravity, and uncompounded wickedness of any on the records of crime ; and tells with unmistakable significance the moral character of the rebellion in East Tennessee.
The writer saw this same Esq. Dean in the Federal guard-house at Blue Springs, Bradley county, in the spring of 1864. He and another rebel prisoner were sent south through our lines in exchange for two Union men who had been captured by the rebels. Bryant is proba- bly yet living upon his plantation in northern Georgia, south of Bradley. Gregory with his family is somewhere in Dixie. The last that was known of Davis he was in Loudon, a place some fifty miles west of Knoxville, engaged on the railroad. This Davis, with revolver in hand, was at one time in search of a Union man named Wm. B. Cowan, who was hidden but a few feet from Davis, in his own cellar. Being unable to find his victim, Davis presented his pistol at Mrs. Cowan, and threatened to shoot her dead if she did not tell where her husband was concealed. She, however, remained firm, and her hus-
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band was saved. Kincannon, Tracy and Acock, it was supposed by Union people, drifted south before the Fed- eral army under Sherman
Should these pages ever meet the eye of any of these rebel subjects, they must remember that the rebellion is a matter of history; and though they have escaped the punishment due to their crimes, yet such cannot always escape that which, however displeasing to them, may nevertheless be a benefit to others, namely, the unmerci- ful pen of the vigilant historian.
It has been stated that the capturers of young Stone- cypher were professedly rebel substitute brokers. It was known to be a fact that the Gregories and these four men who captured Stonecypher, with others, operated exten- sively through northern Georgia and southern Tennessee in this iniquitous business, and God and their own souls only know the deeds of blood they committed during the long years of 1862-63, in prosecuting this infernal work; and the number of helpless and innocent Union boys who finally lost their lives as the result of being captured and sold by these men into the rebel armies.
It is very probable that the whole of these blood-stained villains, unless justice has already demanded their lives, have taken the Federal oath, and are now not only plead- ing exemption from all prosecution in the matter of these crimes, but under the reconstruction policy of President Johnson are claiming restoration of all losses of property occasioned by the rebellion, and are also claiming equal political rights with those patriots whose friends they stole or murdered, and with those who fought and bled to save the country from being ruined by their treason,
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CHAPTER XV.
CASE OF MR. WILLIAM HUMBERT.
MR. HUMBERT was born in Green county, East Tennes- see, on the 27th of March, 1802, consequently at the out- break of the rebellion, was about sixty years of age. He came to Bradley with his family in 1839, settling in the third district, where he lives at the present time.
Mr. Humbert's ancestors were true to the cause of the Revolution, a fact in the history of his family of which he felt an honorable pride, and which had always endeared to him the flag of his country, and the government which it represented. It was not singular, therefore, that when a choice was to be made between this flag and the flag of treason-the flag of the Southern rebellion - that the heart of Mr. Humbert clung to the flag as well as to the government of his fathers. He received both from their hands, had enjoyed their blessings as an heir-loom in the family for sixty years, never feeling them to be oppressive and could not now, as a man, as a Christian, and as a patriot, be persuaded to rebel against either.
This was Mr. Humbert's crime, the crime of adherance to the government of his country and of his fathers, a government that his conscience dictated had never wronged him, nor those who were seeking to destroy it. Mr. Humbert had lived a useful citizen in the third dis- trict for nearly twenty-five years, this being the first crime of which he was ever accused, even in his life, or for which he or any of the members of his family were assaulted, either by the civil or the military power of his country. He had been Justice of the Peace in the third district for eighteen years in succession, and all had felt, that in his hands the law had been honored, and that with- out respect to persons, justice had been awarded equally to his fellow citizens.
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In the fall of 1861, Mr. Humbert, with other Union men of his district, for their sympathy with the Union cause, began to suffer persecution from their rebel neighbors, particularly from the Gregories, the Julians, and their most intimate associates, all of whom were the most bru- tal and bloodthirsty of any in the country. About the middle of October, to avoid being arrested and sent to Tuscaloosa, Mr. Humbert took up his abode in the woods, being supplied with food secretly by his two daughters, and occasionally stealing his way in the night to some Union house, until the last of December, a period of over two months. Toward the close of December, the noted Capt. Bill Brown of Cleveland, then in the height of his rebel glory, having Mr. Humbert among others in the third district marked for Tuscaloosa, with his plans pre- concerted and a full posse of men, made a dash upon the Union people of the district. One Union man who at this time fell into Brown's power, was Mr. S. D. Richmond. Shortly after capturing Richmond, Brown and his party boarded the premises of Mr. Humbert. The family of Mr. : Humbert at the time, consisted only of himself and two daughters, Rebecca and Sarah, the oldest in her seven- teenth year, having buried his wife the year before, also his only son, the son in April and the mother on the 17th of May. Mr. Humbert, whom to arrest was the principal object for which Brown visited his plantation, of course was not in the vicinity of his home, but was in the woods as already stated. Brown and his men, however, made a thorough search for Mr. Humbert in doors and out, barn and out-houses included, threatening and abusing the two daughters, to make them tell where their father was con- cealed. Knowing where their father was, and having some fears that he would be captured, and knowing that he was marked for Tuscaloosa, the daughters managed, while the search was going on, secretly to convey to Mr. Richmond, their Union neighbor, just mentioned as Brown's prisoner, a small bundle of clothing and $21.45 in money for him to give to their father in case Brown should capture him. Before the search was finished, how-
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ever, or soon after, Brown's men commenced to rob Rich- mond, and with his own money got that just given to him by Mr. Humbert's daughters. Richmond appealed to Brown in his own behalf, but the robbing was confirmed. Richmond then informed Brown that $21.45 of the money his men had pilfered from him, belonged to Mr. Humbert's daughters, that they had just given it to him to give to their father in case he too should be caught, and had to go to Tuscaloosa. Richmond also told Brown that he ought to give the money that belonged to Mr. Humbert's daughters, back to them, that if he would rob him he ought not to rob these defenseless and helpless children. Brown swore that Humbert was a traitor, and if the money taken belonged to his girls, it was the money of a traitor and he should keep it, and he would have Humbert also if he could find him, and joined in this strain of abuse by his men, they together berrated Richmond, Mr. Humbert and his family, in the use of other and similar language. This, however, inspired Richmond and Mr. Humbert's girls, though one was sick with the scarlet fever at the time, with a spirit to defend themselves. They appealed to Brown's sense of honor as well as to his sympathies, urging that he ought to have some regard to justice as well as some feeling for those whom he was kidnapping and robbing. Mr. Humbert's girls argued that their father, though he was a Union man, had never taken any part against the rebels, and never could on account of his age ; and as to their condition, they had just lost their mother and only brother, and if their father should be sent to Tus- caloosa, it would probably be the means of his death, when as a family they would be completely desolated and ruined. Brown finally told them that as he already had $21.45 of their money, if they or their father's friends would pay him $3.55 more, or in other words, would raise the sum to $25.00, he would give up the search for Mr. Humbert entirely, and leave him a certificate of citizen- ship, or to use Brown's own words, he would " citizenize him and let him stay at home." Notwithstanding this attempt at strategy, Brown got no more money, but kept
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his $21.45, and after he and his men had robbed Mr. Hum- bert's premises of what they could find that suited them, gathered up their plunder and left, greatly chagrined that the old gentleman had eluded their grasp.
It is out of the power of language to describe the dia- bolical character of this man Brown. He comes to the third district to rob and kidnap Union men, and after exhausting his skill to get possession of the person of Mr. Humbert without success, a man sixty years of age, under the pretence that his liberty endangered the Southern Confederacy, stung with his failure to perpetrate this cruelty, he robs Mr. Humbert's children of their last penny, then to get more he turns traitor to his own cause, and actually tries to sell Jeff. Davis and his whole Con- federacy for $3.55.
The miserly and unfeeling wretch is probably yet alive somewhere in this world, and should he accidentally keep with him in this life enough of the human to allow him, like other men, to die a natural death, or in other words, if his diabolical career and companionship on earth do not rob him of all humanity and leave his nature a stark devil, so that upon the principle of Satanic ubiquity, with- out dying he can pass in and out of this world at pleasure, whoever will dare, when death strikes him, to perform on his frightful remains a post mortem examination, instead of a human heart will doubtless find in his bosom a clump of hissing serpents.
It ought to be stated here that a Union man named A. Morton, one whom Brown had previously pressed into the rebel army, and who was compelled to be one of Brown's squad on that day, did all he could consistently with his own safety to defend and protect Mr. Humbert's family.
The next night after this visit from Brown, Mr. Hum- bert, influenced by his friends, notwithstanding the pre- carious and unprotected condition of his children, under the cover of night fled to the mountains of North Caro- lina. The point he wished to reach in that State was Haywood county, distant a hundred and seventy miles.
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In performing this journey Mr. Humbert was com- pelled to avoid the settlements and public roads, keeping the unfrequented thickets, but more particularly follow- ing the ranges of mountains, traveling by night and con- cealing himself during the day. Sixty miles of his jour- ney was performed on the crest of the highest mountains in the country. After thirteen days of toil in this way, being exposed to hunger, cold and fatigue, wading the streams and climbing the mountains, sleeping in the woods and swamps, or among the negroes, not daring to show his face at the door of a white man, unless pre- viously advised by the negroes that it would be safe ; and living in constant fear of being captured or shot down by the guerrillas, or the rebel cavalry, Mr. Humbert, with the exception of considerable injury to his health, reached Haywood county in safety.
In this county, and in Cox and Sevier counties joining it across the line in Tennessee, protected by relatives, old acquaintances, and newly made Union friends, Mr. Hum- bert remained a refugee four months. Part of this period he spent with a nephew, Mr. Wm. Humbert, and a Union family by the name of A. Duggan. Many other families extended their friendship to Mr. Humbert during his stay as Union refugee in these counties. Among these, in particular, was the family of Mr. Abraham Hopkins. Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins were people whose Unionism and love of country enabled them quickly to perceive the condi- tion and anticipate the sufferings of refugees fleeing in the dead of winter, and burying themselves in the caves, or living in the forests to escape the merciless fury of their rebel enemies. On the head of Crosbys' Creek, Cox county, Mr. Humbert found a Union community that received him, as well as all other Union refugees, with open arms.
In April 1862, hoping that changes in Bradley had trans- pired which would permit him to remain at home, Mr. Humbert threaded his way back to the county, nearly in the same manner and nearly by the same route that he made the outward trip ; and owing to the season, returned
12
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with less suffering and less injury to his health than his outward trip occasioned him. The January nights on his outward trip were severe, during one of which in particu- lar, one that he spent on the top of a high mountain, it was with the utmost mental and bodily exertion that he kept himself from perishing.
Though absent five months, the hatred of Mr. Humbert's old enemies had not abated. No sooner was it known by rebels in the third district that he had returned, than steps were taken to have him arrested. He fled the second time, and for six months longer was compelled to absent himself from home, concealing himself in the dif- ferent parts of the country. Toward the last of October, or late in the fall of 1862, the face of things in the county having somewhat changed in regard to arresting and imprisoning men of Mr. Humbert's age, he ventured to make another effort to live with his family. Although no further attempts were made to arrest and imprison him, yet after this, in common with other Union people in his district, his premises were robbed, plundered, and torn to pieces, his plantation swept clean of everything in the shape of stock, his household goods, furniture, bedding, cooking utensils, and even knives and forks were carried off by the guerrilla gangs that frequently desolated the country.
Mr. Humbert and his two daughters had the good for- tune to live to see the end of the war, though it may be truthfully said, everything considered, that it is remark- able that all of them escaped with their lives. After having suffered in common with others, with an exposure of life equally with others, but in this respect more fortu- nate than many, they are now living upon their extensive plantation of six hundred acres, in the third district of Bradley county, in the full enjoyment of the fruits of the great victory.
In presenting a history of the case of Mr. Humbert's family with the rebels, we have not done so from the fact that its remarkableness formed any exception to the gen- eral rule of cases in the third district, or in the south part
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of the county. Had any one case been selected as an average of what each family in the district suffered, this perhaps would have been as near an average as any other. The sufferings of every other unswerving Union family in the third district, other things being equal, were doubt- less as great as those of the family of Mr. Humbert.
THE HOLLOW LOG.
The following incident occurred in Bradley county in the twelfth district, in the fall of 1862, an account of which was furnished by Mr. A. K. Potts.
" Wiley Willhoit was a good Southern man. He talked long and loud about his rights in the Southern Confederacy. His family was too large for him to leave altogether and enter the rebel army during the war, but when his country should be invaded, he would shoulder his gun and defend his rights. One Southern man could whip five Yankees, etc. Shortly after the rebel conscript law passed, which included all under thirty-five, Wiley just escaped it, his age being between thirty-five and forty, something entirely new to his acquain- tance. Then came Wiley's time to show his patriotism. The enroll- ing officer came round ordering him to report at rebel headquarters immediately. Wiley, however, was not quite ready, but would report the next day. The next day came, Wiley put three days rations in his haversack and starts from the midst of tears and sobs, of a be- loved wife and children. Wiley walked slowly toward rebel head- quarters with his gun upon his shoulder, and finally began to reason with himself thus : 'If I go into the army, and get into a fight I shall stand seven chances to be killed to one of escape. Those Yankees can shoot seven times to my one, and they are no respectors of per- sons. If I go to Kentucky, so many Union boys have already gone there, who are acquainted with me, that I fear they will kill me there. I am resolved what to do. I know these woods like a checker-board, peradventure, I can hide in the forest and dodge the war altogether. Wiley now steps aside and takes up his abode in the bushes. The enrolling officer returned in a day or two but Wiley was gone. Weeks rolled on-no news of Wiley. At last the rainy season set in and there came a very wet night. It rained hard and was very dark. Wiley knew of a large hollow log, but how to find it in that dark night was the point. It appears, however, that somebody else knew of the log also. A Union conscript fleeing from the rebels, had crept into the log early in the evening. Wiley groped his way through the darkness, the rain pouring down in torrents and at last found his log. He stooped down and when in the act of crawling in, wet and shivering and boiling with rage, he was muttering to himself, 'ain't this h-1?' ' Yes,' cried a voice in the log. ' come in.' ' Whose there ?' asked Wiley, 'Enrolling officer,' responded the voice. Wiley ske- daddled among the trees, cutting both rain and darkness as he went. But that night and that hollow log cured Wiley of his rebelism, and after that he lay many a day and night in a cave with Union men. hiding from the rebels.
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