USA > Tennessee > Bradley County > History of the rebellion in Bradley County, East Tennessee > Part 19
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Spurgen's worst enemies in Bradley lived in the seventh and eighth district.s. Win. Parks, Lorenzo Alexander, Ezekiel Spriggs and their families, were the bitterest of rebels, and especially after he failed to fulfill his contract in regard to the Sequatchee cattle, the two latter families sought every opportunity to report him to the rebel authorities. At one time, Mrs. Alexander called at Mr. Spurgen's house, and discovered that he was at home. When Mrs. Alexander left, Mrs. Spurgen informed her husband that he would be reported within fifteen minutes after Mrs. Alexander should reach her home. Mrs. Spur- gen's perceptives, always awake when rebels were near, and perfectly able to look through their every external guise, were not mistaken on this occasion. In less than two hours after Mrs. Alexander left the house, a squad of rebel cavalry dashed up and enquired for Mr. Spurgen. His wife informed them that he was not at home. They, however, dismounted and thoroughly searched the house, as well as the entire premises, but the foxy piloteer, profit- ing by the good judgment of his wife, had vanished out of their reach ; and his enemies once more failed to stretch the neck of the ubiquitous and thousand-eyed Union skipper of the mountains.
Spurgen had another inveterate enemy in the seventh district, in the person of the notorious Capt. W. McClel- lan. McClellan incessantly watched for an opportunity to capture Spurgen, but like all the rest of Spurgen's enemies, failed to bag his prey.
This infamous McClellan and his men, arrested two of the Hooper boys, Spurgen's neighbors, and started them for Charleston. The father knowing the desperate char- acter of Mcclellan, followed the party with a view to intercede for his sons before the rebel authorities at Char- leston. McClellan's men saw him pursuing, when a num- ber of them met the old gentleman, tied a rope around
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his neck, telling him that he could now follow his Lin- colnite sons to the gallows, with a rope around his own neck to his satisfaction. They dragged the old man for- ward, drawing and pulling him about by the neck in the presence of his sons, as though he was some obstinate brute that they were taking to the slaughter. On the same trip these rebels arrested another man named Wm. Bracket. Reaching Charleston the rebels hung these three men by the neck for the second and third time, each time until they were entirely senseless and nearly dead. One object was to extort information in regard to other Union men in their neighborhoods. Mr. Bracket in par- ticular had been reported to them as aiding and secreting Union refugees, especially one whom they were very anx- ious to capture. Mr. Bracket had that morning given this refugee his breakfast, and although they hung him appa- rently within a breath of his life, more severely, perhaps, than they did the others, yet he nor the Hooper boys betrayed their friends.
What were the subsequent sufferings of these Union men at the hands of the rebels, or when or how they escaped is unknown to us. We know, however, that Mr. Hooper, his three sons, and Mr. Bracket all lived to see the rebellion crushed, and a part, at least, of their rebel enemies brought to justice.
Mr. Spurgen also, and his family, after suffering and toiling to destroy the hydra-headed monster, are now liv- ing in Bradley in the enjoyment of the fruits of the great victory, and with their feet upon the necks of their for- mer enemies and persecutors.
This sketch of the military career of Mr. Spurgen should not be concluded without a few remarks on the part borne in that career by his wife. Certain it is, that this career would have been greatly impaired by any other than such a wife as he possessed. In 1862 Mrs. Spurgen moved from the eighth district into the ninth, locating in the midst of a Union neighborhood. Previous to this change particularly, her privations and sufferings, as a Union
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woman, can never be fully known by any person living but herself.
In March, 1863, the writer visited Mrs. Spurgen at her house in the ninth district. He had conversed with her but a short time before he was taught a lesson of suffering patriotism that he will not soon forget. She and her infant children had been afflicted with chills and fever for months, which together with her lone condition, with no home of her own, her destitution caused by the great scarcity of provisions in the country at that time, partic- ularly the scarcity of medicines and other comforts that one in her state so much needed, with everything else that was against her, apparently would have crushed any spirit but her own. Reduced to a shadow, with features as pale as those of a corpse, and unable to speak without trembling from head to foot, she said that she and her children had suffered terribly during the winter, were still suffering, and she expected that they would continue to suffer during the war; that she greatly needed the presence of her husband; yet she desired him to remain in the army and do his part till the wicked rebellion was conquered.
Could those Northern mothers-mothers whom the country had blessed with everything the heart could wish, but who were muffling their sons in furs and packing them in warm overcoats, for secret transportation to the Canadas, the pineries, and the distant territories, to keep them out of the army while their country was struggling for existence-have witnessed the courageous and patri- otic heroism of that frail and suffering creature, as exhib- ited during that conversation, the spectacle would have inade these Northern mothers blush for their own dis- graceful want of this great virtue.
The patriotism of Mrs. Spurgen, however, was by no means a solitary example of this virtue among the Union women hidden away among the hills of Bradley and other portions of East Tennessee. The fireside of many an humble Union cabin in this county, and thousands of them throughout East Tennessee, cabins lining the interminable
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valleys, spotting the vales, and standing out against the sky like specks, upon the mountain ranges, can furnish histories of female patriotism, heroic sufferings and sacri- fices, unconquerable loyalty to the stars and stripes, equally praiseworthy with those virtues as exhibited by Mrs. Spurgen.
DEATH OF MICHAEL BAUGH.
Mr. Baugh lived, we believe, in the eleventh district, Bradley county, and was a staunch and bitter rebel. He was a man of some talent. and was somewhat active as a politician. His talent for abus- ing and insulting Union people was not excelled, perhaps, by that of Capt. Brown himself. Universally, when traveling past the dwell- ings of his Union neighbors, he would insult and abuse any who might be in sight or within reach of his voice. He would frequently tie his pocket handkerchief to the end of his cane. insultingly dis- playing it in the presence of Union people, in token of his love for the Southern Confederacy, and as indicating the bloody triumphs the rebel flag had obtained in the field.
A Union family named Miller, lived in the twelfth district, in which there were three or four sons, who were active Union men. They were pretty rough characters, but were strong Union men. Bangh had frequently reported these Miller boys to the rebels, and had made strong efforts to have them arrested and punished. He had, perhaps. otherwise misused and injured them.
On the 20th of April. 1863, Baugh was found dead in the road about seven miles north or north-west of Cleveland, having been shot by some unknown person. The general impression was, among Union as well as rebel citizens. that the deed was performed by some one of the Miller boys.
Mr. Thomas Low, the jailer, who with his dogs hunted and cap- tured Mr. McDowell, as already related, and two or three other rebels, with these same dogs, spent a number of days hunting the Miller boys among the White Oak Mountains, with a view to cap- ture them and bring them to trial for murdering Baugh. Mr. A. K. Potts was chartered to guide this company of men and dogs in the search, but its efforts were fruitless.
Upon the supposition that the Miller boys were the murderers of Mr. Baugh, this was the only case in Bradley county that came to our knowledge in which any rebel citizen was murdered by Union men. Other rebels in Bradley were wounded by Union men, but in no other instance, as we could ascertain. was murder charged to Union people of the county. even by the rebels themselves.
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CHAPTER XXI.
WILLIAM LOW.
AT the opening of the rebellion Mr. Low had lived in Bradley fifteen years ; and at the time was acting as con- stable in the sixth district. Being a civil officer, his politics immediately became the subject of severe criti- cism, which soon ended in his expulsion from office as one of the obstinate and fool-hardy favorers of the Lincoln Dynasty.
In October, 1861, Mr. Low was suspected of bridge burning ; and on this suspicion was arrested by Mr. C. L. Hardwick, a pompous rebel merchant of Cleveland,-a man who in the heat of his rebel zeal spent a portion of his nights locked up in his store, smelting lead and man- ufacturing rebel bullets with which to kill Union men and Yankees; and to use as ready arguments to bring such men as Mr. Low to a sense of duty. After being dragged about town and through the rebel military camps by Capt. Brown and this rebel Hardwick for some days, Mr. Low was sent a prisoner to Knoxville. On his way he was kept under a strong guard of soldiers, who allowed him to be insulted and abused as a "d-d Lincolnite, tory, traitor, bridge burner," etc.
Also, as was their custom to treat all Union prisoners who became the victims of their pleasure, Mr. Low, at the different stations on the road, came in for his share of the complimentary greetings of the secesh ladies. These sensitive creatures, sneering with disgust, and pointing the finger of scorn, were horrified at the sight of a " Yan- kee bridge-burner "-" sneaking traitor "-" mean Lincoln- ite," and showered upon Mr. Low their rebel execrations and personal insults, as though he was some stark speci- men of existence, whose very presence was contamina- tion.
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After confining him two weeks in the Knoxville jail, unable to prove him guilty of bridge burning, he was allowed to return to his home.
The time of Mr. Low's arrest by this Cleveland mer- chant-this bullet making and bullet-headed traitor-was the period of the greatest excitement in the country in regard to the burning of the bridges on the East Tennes- see & Georgia R. R .; and when great numbers were being arrested, and many being hung on suspicion of complicity in that affair.
During this period even two Union men dare not be seen conversing together on the streets of Cleveland. Mr. McDowell, of the tenth district, about this time was ar- rested by Congressman Tibbs, for stopping a moment as he passed the court house window to speak to Mr. Joseph Hicks, the county recorder. At the time of Mr. Low's arrest the Union men were afraid to stir from their houses. Mrs. Low's own brother, whose door was but a short dis- tance from her own, dare not offer her the least sympathy, not even to visit her to speak a word of comfort, or to assist her in the concerns of her numerous family.
The jail in which Mr. Low was confined was overflowing with Union prisoners. Many had to be guarded at rail- road depots, hotels, &c. Mr. Low remarked upon his own confinement that, feeling himself innocent of the crime of bridge burning, and guilty of nothing but loyalty to his country, he found it rather humiliating to have the keys of the Knoxville jail turned upon him as though he was a thief or a murderer; yet, the disgrace was not with- out its counteractiug benefit. Being closely locked up in the Knoxville jail, he spent the two weeks without any injury to his purse, living entirely at the expense of the Confederacy. Other Union prisoners in Knoxville at this time, less disgraced than himself in the circumstances of their confinement, on being released were confronted by their landlords with very considerable bills of entertain- ment, which they were compelled to pay before they were allowed to leave the place.
Having reached his home, Mr. Low was again applying
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himself to support his family, but the end of his troubles was not yet. In November, 1861, his son, Powell H. Low, sixteen years of age, was arrested and pressed into the rebel ranks. In July following he deserted, and through many privations and narrow escapes found his way back to his home. His old enemies, however, were soon upon him the second time, when he fled to the woods and mountains, in which, and in different Union houses, he secreted himself a number of months.
In the spring of 1862, young Low joined one of the ref- ugee companies, reached the Federal lines, and at Nash- ville enlisted in the 4th Tennessee Cavalry, in which he faithfully fought the rebellion till it was crushed, and is now at home enjoying the fruits of his victories.
In 1861, before young Low was pressed into the rebel army, he was requested by a rebel ruffian to drink with him to the health of Jeff. Davis. Young Low refused, in- timating his preference for Abraham Lincoln. With an oath the rebel instantly struck at Low's breast with a knife, inflicting a dangerous wound in the arm, from which the blood flowed freely, requiring the utmost skill of Low's physician to arrest it. The wound was dangerous, and disabled him for five or six weeks.
In the fall of 1865, after the political tables in East Ten- nessee were turned, Low and his old antagonist met in the streets of Cleveland. The Jeff. Davis toaster was called to an account by Low, and informed that his un- provoked attempt four years previous to take his life must now be atoned for. Like all other cowards when they have not the advantage, this infamous brute stood speechless and idiotic before his accuser, too mean and low to make a manly confession, and too big a coward to utter a word in self defence. Unable, by abusing him with his tongue, to insult him or provoke him to move or speak, and disliking to shoot him down while thus crouch- ing like an insensible stock before him, Low fell upon him with his loaded cane, and whelting him over the head as he would a sullen and incorrigible spaniel, soon cudg- eled him out of the streets of Cleveland. His flight,
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after he was beyond the reach of the shillalah, was accel- erated by a shower of rocks, in the midst of which his receding skeleton made a similar show to that of old Jeff. Davis himself, hobbling away from the Yankees in a flurry of petticoats.
The name of this rebel offender unfortunately has been mislaid, otherwise we should be happy to give him as well as others, that historical christening that would leave his name as well as his conduct on record, for the benefit of himself and friends and their posterity.
Leaving young Low to enjoy the savor of his good name among his Union friends, and to profit by the ad- vantages his patriotism and virtues have given him over his rebel enemies, we will return to the other members of the family.
From Mr. Low's acquittal at Knoxville, until the spring of 1863, with prudent management, he was permitted to remain at home. Being under forty-five, he now be- came subject to the rebel conscript law, having to make the best of the difficulty. He fled to Nashville, where he remained a few months, but finally stole his way back, once more reaching his home attempting to remain and provide for his family. His old enemies, however, were as merciless as ever. He, Mr. John O'Neil, Mrs. Low's brother, and a Mr. Batt, all citizens of Cleveland, fled to the tenth district. They concealed themselves in artifi- cial refugee caves, near the residence of Mr. Elisha Wise, a Union man, arrangements being made, among others, with the family of Mr. Wise for their supplies. Miss Rebecca Wise participated very cordially and very labor- iously in the humane work of fulfilling these stipulations.
The ground home of these refugees, was nearly west of Mr. Wise's house, which stood on the south side of an east and west road, and about twenty feet from it. Four or five feet to the rear or west of the main building, stood a small out-house, frequently used as a cook room. Having stolen from their caverns, these refugees, about eight o'clock one evening, with the family of Mr. Wise, were supping in this cook room, with Susa, a little negro girl
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on the road fence as a picket. Suddenly twenty or twenty-five rebel cavalry came dashing down the road from the west. The little girl gave the alarm, but through mistake made the impression that the rebels were coming from the east. The refugees bounded from the cook-room, Mr. Low in advance, and attempted to strike for their caves in the woods. These caves being west from the house as just explained, the same direction from which the rebels were coming, Mr. Low, before he saw them, the night being rather dark, ran almost into the midst of his enemies, and while but a few steps from them was halted and fired upon at the same instant. The shot, how- ever, was harmless, with the exception of scratching his boot and knocking the earth and gravel against his shins. Thus headed off, the refugees wheeled, Mr. Low darting into the main building, and taking shelter in a refugee hiding place, prepared by Mr. Wise against such emergen- cies, the others, sinking back into and screening them- selves as best they could in the cook-room. The rebels were instantly in possession of the premises, and soon succeeded in dragging Mr. O'Neil and Mr. Batt from their imperfect concealment, very much to their mortification and chagrin. In finding Mr. Low, however, they were less successful. Although he was on the lower floor of the house, which was only about twenty feet square, divided into only two rooms, with an angular stair-way in the end and corner of one of the rooms, while the rebels were all around him, and frequently not more than six inches from him; yet it was impossible for them to find him. After fifteen or twenty of them had scoured the building from top to bottom, for half an hour, leaving as they supposed, not an inch of it uninspected, and after peering up the chimney also, they gave up the search, concluding that Mr. Low had given them the slip to the bushes before they got the building completely surrounded.
Thus vanquished in regard to their third man, they took their two prisoners and departed, leaving Mr. Low stand- ing there nearly in the middle of the floor, no doubt
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greatly to his satisfaction, as well as a good deal to his surprise.
To understand the ingenious device by which Mr. Low was concealed, the reader has only to imagine the lower part of Wise's house made into two rooms, and a stairway at the end of one of the rooms, having a double partition between it and the room from which it was taken, or in other words; a stairway with one partition fastened to the end of the stairs, and another perhaps sixteen inches from this, further in the room, forming a space between the two sufficient to enclose the body of a person. When on the stairs one would see the partition fastened to the end of the stairs. When in the room he would see the one sixteen inches from the stairs, or sixteen inches from the one fastened to them.
The rebels took their two prisoners to Cleveland, from which place they were sent to Knoxville. Fortunately both proved themselves clear of the conscription, Mr. Batt from being a tanner, then manufacturing leather in Cleveland, Mr. O'Neil, from previously being connected with business belonging to the county.
After the departure of the rebels, Mr. Low emerged from his confinement, and receiving the congratulations of the family on his narrow escape from death, repaired alone to his haunts in the mountains. He remained in these retreats until our lines encircled Bradley, when he was once more privileged to sit upon his own threshhold, with the great viper, together with all the little vipers, lifeless at his feet-his family all saved, and with him joy- fully gazing at the stars and stripes waving above his dwelling in the town of Cleveland, while his lock-jawed rebel neighbors, marched quickstep to the tune of Yan- kee Doodle, on their way to swear themselves back into the fold of the old Government.
This sketch would be incomplete without reference to the part borne by Mrs. Low and other members of the family in contending with Mr. Low against the rebellion.
The history of the rebellion in East Tennessee will never be effectually written, the secret of her miraculous
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resistance and long endurance will be an unexplained mystery, until the noble examples of patriotism, the invin- cible and suffering constancy throughout the struggle of her phalanx of Union women and children, are by the hand of some studious and lively chronicler, given to the world.
The better half of man is his wife, the next better por- tion are his children, and with all these unflinchingly to stand by him in a good work, the Devil might as well hang up his fiddle, for we know of no just cause on this earth, that an army of households thus marshaled, could not carry.
The patriotic conduct of Mrs. Low and other members of her family, is recorded as honorable and praiseworthy, not only to themselves, but as being a fac- simile of the noble conduct of hundreds of other Union women and their children in Bradley county, conduct equally meritorious, and which would be equally interest- ing and instructive to narrate.
Mrs. Low was a Union woman from principles of right as well as from motives of policy. Right and wrong with her, were naturally the pivotal points of action, and blessed with a high sense of honor and feelings of strong self-respect, she was never long in deciding that rights were to be defended and wrongs resented, irrespective of consequences. Naturally possessing these qualities in a high degree, Mrs. Low was not easily deceived in the moral quality of human enterprises and human institu- tions, nor was it her doctrine in order to prevent the breaking of a few limbs weakly, to temporize or vascilate, after opinions in regard to enterprises had been perman- ently fixed. The rebellion was thus by her instinctively seen to be the embodiment of crime, when she as quickly decided that its votaries, notwithstanding their numbers ought to be treated as criminals, a course of reasoning which at once decided her position, a position which she immediately took, and that without any trembling hesita- tion in regard to consequences. Mrs. Low felt her way to be right, and a way that was right although it might be
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studded with thorns, she felt, was not very likely, time and eternity both considered, to lead to a disastrous termina- tion.
Without any very elaborate philosophizing upon the subject, but rather from an intuitive sense of right and natural love of justice, the foregoing were the only wheels of logic Mrs. Low had to turn, to place her in the position thus described, in regard to the rebellion, a position which she found equal to all emergencies, and which car- ried her safely through all the troubles of the war.
In this position, Mrs. Low had nothing to fear but the possible extent or fatality of calamities to herself and family, fatalities common to the bloody struggle, and from which Providence alone could exempt her. Her husband might be hunted down and murdered by gueril- las, or hung or imprisoned for his loyalty ; her son might be slain by bushwhackers, or shot down in the ranks fighting for his country, but all these were calamities for which her position provided, and which she at the beginning balanced against the crime, and probable safety of taking sides with the rebellion. Bad as her fate was, or worse as it sometimes promised to be, Mrs. Low at no time had any apology to make for the stand which she or her family had taken, and when the bolts came thick and fast-her husband threatened to be hung at Knoxville, her son dragged from home, pressed into the rebel ranks and made to assume the attitude of a traitor to his country, her premises plundered, her property appropriated and destroyed by the rebel cavalry, her children tremblingly gathering about her, and looking to her for protection and support, with fear on every hand, no one daring to advise her, nor pretending to know what an hour might bring forth, there were no signs of recantation, none of that hypocritical dissembling, or appearing to side with the rebels; but she openly declared her sentiments and announced her position as a Union woman, defying the malignant ingenuity of her enemies, and unflinchingly accepting the storm smiting and wrathful as it was.
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