USA > Tennessee > Bradley County > History of the rebellion in Bradley County, East Tennessee > Part 20
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If intense personal suffering could have justified pre-
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varication or dissembling, Mrs. Low could have been among the first to claim such an advantage. The repeated injuries inflicted upon herself and family by the rebels, with her clear and sensitive view of the possible conse- quences, were a two edged sword, night and day lacerat- ing her very vitals-an inward anguish that none could have felt more keenly than herself; and that for weeks and months with none but her children about her, sent her to a tearful and sleepless couch, yet, with a high minded sense that she was suffering for the right, dis- guising her sorrow she moved among her persecutors with an air of defiance and self-respect, and with looks of withering scorn that not only evinced her self-control, but gave those enemies to understand that she compre- hended the insignificance of their moral worth, and the meanness of the treatment she was receiving at their hands.
Mr. Low concealing himself in the tenth district, in the spring of 1863, moved his family into that section. Early in the following fall the rebels stationed a regiment on Condy's Creek, not far from Mrs. Low's dwelling. The men of this regiment collected from the surrounding far- mers about three hundred swine. When the battle of Missionary Ridge opened the country to our armies the flight of these rebels was so percipitate that Mrs. Low found herself suddenly in possession of nearly all the swine in the north of Bradley county. Our forces soon took possession of Cleveland, and Mrs. Low dispatched her son, Lafayette, twelve years of age, by night, to in- form the Yankees of the valuable prize the rebels had left on Condy's Creek. A secesh family named Carr, dis- covered the boy traveling towards Cleveland, and mis- trusting his business reported him to a rebel, or rather bushwhacker, at that moment present, who threatened and attempted to shoot him down in the road. He, how- ever, escaped, reached Cleveland, and the Federals imme- diately took possession of the acceptable booty. Shortly after a rebel bushwhacker named Grigsby, meeting Lafayette accused him of reporting the swine, and of being
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sent by his mother to do so. The boy stoutly denied the charge telling Grigsby that he had been misinformed upon the subject. Grigsby replied that he believed he was lying, and if he knew positively that he was the guilty party, he would shoot him down in his tracks. After being denounced by Grigsby as the son of a d-d Lincolnite traitor, and as belonging to the vile race of Tennessee rebels, the boy was allowed to pass on.
In the summer of 1863, as well as previously, an abun- dance of letters, photographs, and other valuables sent by Tennessee soldiers in the Northern army to their friends in Bradley, were deposited by Red Fox, and other refugee pilots in the north part of the county. While on Condy's Creek, Mrs. Low and her family performed their share of distributing these valuables to their owners. Immediately after the arrival of one of these invisible messengers from the north, Union men women and chil- dren would be seen hunting stray cattle, going to mill, or hurrying to find the doctor, or in search of seed grain, or would be on some other errand of pressing necessity. Miss Mattie Low, Miss Rebecca Wise, Misses Jane and Nancy McPherson, with many others that might be named, participated in this work of patriotic affection. The Misses McPhersons had three brothers in the Northern army, one of whom lost his life at Knoxville. Miss Low and Miss Wise, each had one brother in the Federal ranks representing their interests in the Federal cause. Per- sonal experience therefore, in the importance of their mis- sion, prompted these ladies, notwithstanding the country was full of rebel citizens and rebel soldiers, to distribute these letters to their owners, and many a heart was made glad while many were made sorrowful by the intelligence received at their hands.
Notwithstanding Mr. Low and his family suffered incred- ibly as well as sustained heavy losses of property by the rebellion, yet the great calamity so much feared was providentially escaped. The end of the rebellion was reached and the lives of all were spared, a blessing in view of which all their temporal losses, and sufferings were
16
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not to be considered. Having thus survived the storm, Mr. and Mrs. Low and their family are now living in Cleveland, in the enjoyment of all, if not of an increase of their former happiness.
The most appropriate sequel, perhaps, to the present chapter, is a paragraph having some reference to one of the principal actors in persecuting Mr. Low and his family.
C. L. Hardwick, the specimen of humanity who has been already introduced as the rebel that arrested Mr. Low, has escaped the law, but with some relief to the many he injured, has not altogether escaped the merciless goadings of the historical quill. The writer had the pri- vilege of a squint at this diamond-eyed Union persecutor, as he among other rebels was crawling about the streets . of Cleveland in September, 1865. His activity in laying up other rebel crimes, besides that against Mr. Low's family, for himself to answer to in a future day, so emptied his purse in the summer of 1865, before Mr. Low could get a dash at his old arrester, that any redress by law for Mr. Low is, perhaps, impossible. Reduced to bankruptcy by his rebel crimes, Mr. Low can afford to let him pass, so far as his money is concerned, as that, could he fleece him of it by the hundred thousand, would not compensate for the deadly stab he inflicted upon himself and family. Let him and his money perish with each other, but let him not perish or escape until the anathemas of the Union families, whom he afflicted, compel him either to make a public confession of his faults, or until these anathe- mas drive him from civilized society. Though destitute of the means to pay in the unsatisfactory thing of money, he has not, nor has been destitute of the opportunity to make amends by an humble and manly acknowledgement of his errors, in a public manner before the people. Now that the war is over, and its surprising results are before us, no rebel, unless he is yet wilfully hardened can fail to see in these results, the sin of his past career and its injustice to those who suffered by it. One such act of genuine repentance on the part of Mr. Hardwick, would do him greater honor, and would do more to restore him
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to the confidence of considerate men, than all the money he could count in a life time. Until this is done, let Mr. Hardwick not complain about the libels of history, or talk about the exaggerated rhetoric of those whose duty it is to trace out and set before the public and the world, the conduct of individual rebels. Until he has done this, let his shame become so public that it will meet him at every corner, and face him in every rail car in which he rides, and on every highway that he may travel the rest of his life. Language can hardly do this man injustice until he has made these amends not only to Mrs. Low, but to others who suffered at his hands. While the rebellion was rampant, giving him the liberty to slay as he pleased ; and Mrs. Low and her children with other Union families, then not a stone's throw from his presence, were writhing in tortrue and trembling with fear for the results to them of his tyranny, in full view of the sufferers, he could com- posedly sit and stroke his aristocratic whiskers in the fashionable rebel doors of Cleveland. Go vile insect ! Go thou unseemly creature, branded with the mark of the Southern beast, and followed by the scathing tale of your infamous career, until an humble confession on your knees, as far as it can, shall make restitution at least to one whose nature could suffer so deeply from your vil- lainy, as to give you hope that it might now be moved by your repentance, and whose forgiveness would allow the world once more to call you a human being.
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CHAPTER XXII.
MURDER OF FANTROY A. CARTER.
FANTROY A. CARTER was born in Danville, Pittsylvania county, Virginia, December 15th, 1819, and came to Brad- ley county, Tennessee, in 1842. August 29th, 1844, he was married to Miss Ellen W. P. Soul, neice of Bishop Soul, so long and favorably known as one of the Bishops of the Methodist Church.
At the breaking out of the rebellion Mr. Carter was found an uncompromising Union man. When the railroad bridges were burned on the 8th of October, 1861, in East Tennessee, by the Federals, Mr. Carter was very unjustly accused of complicity in that matter; and upon this accusation was arrested by Capt. Brown, and forced into the rebel army. He was put into the 36th East Ten- nessee Rebel Infantry, and into the company of Wmn. A. Camp. This company was composed almost entirely of Union men, pressed like himself into the ranks. Through the influence of these Union members, Mr. Carter was made Lieutenant of the company.
As mentioned in another place, this regiment was or- dered to the field near Knoxville. In justice to Mr. Car- ter, and as an illustration of his case, and that of thou- sands of others in East Tennessee, we give a short extract from a letter written by him to his wife at Cleveland, while his regiment was at Cumberland Gap. The letter bears date March 12th, 1862 :
"Yesterday there was an alarm-the report came that the Yankees were closing in upon us. We could see them distinctly ; they looked like there were two or three thousand. The stars and stripes could be plainly seen-they looked very natural to one who has always been taught to love and reverence them, next almost to the Supreme Being. When I saw them floating in the breeze, feelings ran through my mind which will be forgotten only when this body of mine is laid beneath the clods of the valley. I could have stood there and gazed at them till the next day. without eating or sleeping.
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"The time I have yet to serve the Confederacy as a volunteer is nine months from this good day ; then I will again be a free man. and once more be permitted to speak the sentiments of a freeman, without the fear of any. Then, probably, I can the better appreciate what freedom is.
" I have understood that there is a great deal of excitement in and around Cleveland. If such is the case I wish you to remain at home; do not become alarmed, you have done nothing for which you need to run; therefore I charge you particularly to stand your ground; no difference who runs or who does not. If I am in the Southern army it will not hurt you; there are plenty of witnesses in Cleve- land who are friends of ours, who know my condition, and know what placed me in my present situation."
It is melancholy to reflect that Mr. Carter in this ex- tract expresses not only his own feelings, but the feelings of thousands of other Tennessee boys who were then in a similar condition with himself. It is still more melan- choly that so great a multitude of these boys, like Mr. Carter, and young Stonecypher who died at Knoxville, were not permitted to live to enjoy their own and their country's freedom.
As mentioned in another place, the 36th Tenn. was ordered to Georgia-returned to Cleveland and dis- banded. Mr. Carter accompanied his regiment on this tour, but resigned when it was disbanded, being in the rebel service only about seven months.
From his resignation, June, 1862, till September, 1863, Mr. Carter was at home. Though a Union man, and freely expressing himself as such in company with confidential Union neighbors, yet, having served in the rebel army, he had to conduct himself with reserve in the presence of rebels, as the result of which discretion, he was permitted during this interval to live with his family comparatively free from molestation.
When our army reached the Tennessee River on its way to Chickamauga, Union men in Bradley enjoyed the privilege of enlisting to fight the rebellion without hav- ing to flee to Kentucky to find a Federal command. In view of this, Lieut. O. G. Frazier commenced at Cleve- land to recruit a company of horsemen. Mr. Carter united with Lieut. Frazier to raise this company, with the mutual understanding that Frazier should be Captain and Carter 1st Lieutenant of the company.
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From the time Bird's men came into Cleveland -- Septem- ber 11th, 1863-till after the battle of Missionary Ridge, Cleveland was taken and retaken, and thus alternately occupied several times by rebels and Federals.
Enlisting as a Federal soldier, and engaging in recruit- ing this Union company, exposed Mr. Carter to the malice of Cleveland rebels. They called him the traitor, tory, Lincolnite, &c .; and reported him to the rebel soldiery when in their turn they occupied Cleveland. Mr. Carter was living at the time about three miles from town, in rather a thickly wooded country ; and knowing the rebel hatred against him, kept himself secreted in the thickets whenever he thought danger was near.
Venturing one day from his hiding place to go to Cleveland, he was met by Dr. Thomas Brown, a bitter old rebel citizen, who, the moment he saw Mr. Carter, wheeled and rode back towards Cleveland. Having been acquainted with Brown, and knowing his character, this sudden movement excited Mr. Carter's fears that rebel soldiers were in town, and that Brown had gone to report him. He returned to his home as soon as possible, related the circumstance to his wife, when she advised him to flee to the woods. He however delayed a little, and shortly a troop of rebel cavalry was seen approaching from the direction of Cleveland, and this same old Brown on the same horse, one of the company. Mr. Carte: started for the woods, but was discovered, and surrounded by the rebels just as he struck the edge of the timber, when one of them leveled his carbine and shot him through the heart. Closing around him, two of the rebels dismounted and robbed him of his money, his watch, tore his gold studs from his bosom, and endeavored to wrench his gold ring from his finger. The ring was not easily removed, and in this they failed.
Mr. Carter was murdered perhaps a hundred yards from his own dwelling. Mrs. Carter, her children, and her two sisters, were present, saw the rebels spur their animals and converge upon her husband as he entered the wood, and nothing but the undergrowth of bushes skirting the
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MURDER OF FANTROY CARTER.
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timber shut off the foul deed from the gaze of the entire family. Mrs. Carter and her family, bewildered and filled with terror, looked on from her door; and in a mo- ment the fatal report of the rebel gun, followed by the lull in the general clamor of their commingling shouts and yells, and savage blasphemies, urging each other on to take the life of that innocent man, told that her hus- band was murdered. Mrs. Carter and her two sisters ven- tured across the narrow field and met the fiends emerging from the timber. They told Mrs. Carter that they had "killed a d-d Lincolnite over the fence there," and she could go and attend to him. She asked one of them to assist her to bring the body out of the bushes, but this was refused.
In savage glee the murderers left the premises and re- turned to Cleveland. The party consisted of about twenty-five or thirty armed men. None but the following were, perhaps, personally unacquainted with Mr. Carter : Wash. Brooks, Cam. Brooks-cousins-Capt. Peters, and the bloodthirsty Doctor who guided the others to the retreat of his victim.
As the gang, on their return, entered Cleveland, Capt. Peters, though his thirst for blood had been satiated, at least for the time, was, nevertheless, through the exertion this had cost him, thirsting physically, and called at the house of Dr. Jordan for a drink of water. The doctor and his two daughters came out and were supplying his wants, when he began to boast of what he had done. He- said he had "just killed a d-d Lincolnite down in the woods by the name of Fant. Carter." The doctor replied that if it was Fantroy Carter, he had "killed a mighty fine man." "Well, he was the man, a d-d traitor, that had turned Lincolnite, and such men ought to die ;" and exhibiting his carbine, added, "there is the gun that did the deed." It is a pity that the doctor and his daughters did not administer to the wretch a dose that would have put an end to his thirst for Union blood as well as for the common beverage of life.
By some of their own company it was subsequently
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disclosed that when the two men robbed Mr. Carter after they had shot him down, one of them opened his bosom, looked at the wound, saw the blood flowing, and remarked that "it was a d-d good shot !"
These men it appears belonged to Capt. Everett's com- pany of Hoge's regiment, then a portion of Wheeler's Cavalry.
In connection with this affair, or about the time it hap- pened, this same gang of murderers boasted that, in one of their trips through Kentucky and Tennessee, the sabres of their company alone drank the blood of sixty Union men.
After three days Mrs. Carter succeeded in getting the remains of her husband buried in the cemetery at Cleve- land. Fear seized the entire Union population of Cleve- land and its vicinity, and scarcely any one dared to assist her. Mr. Carter's own brother, who was then either a rebel soldier or a rebel employee, was not allowed to leave his post to assist in the burying. Another brother, when news of the murder reached him, remarked that "Fantroy was his brother, but any man who would turn traitor to his country ought to suffer."
How little did this Mr. Carter reflect, when he made this remark, that it was a sentence of condemnation against himself, rather than against his murdered brother. His murdered brother, when alive, possessed the identical virtue, which he in his remark was contending for, conse- quently he died an innocent man, while he himself was the traitor that deserved to suffer.
Mr. Carter was killed on the 23d of September, 1863. The deed was known in a few hours after it was com- mitted, to the entire community, rebels and Union peo- ple; yet not the least rebuke was administered to the perpetrators by their superiors, but the villains were allowed to boast of it as publicly and as much as they pleased. Nor was any expression heard from any of the leading rebel citizens that the deed was by them either, disapproved. The murder was no more disapproved by rebel citizens of Bradley than it was by the rebel sol-
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diery. Mr. Carter was universally known as one of the best of men, and this, perhaps, was spoken of and admitted by rebels in Bradley, at his death; yet, that there was any injustice in his death, was not, as a general thing, admitted by the rebel citizens of the country.
Mr. Carter left a wife and five children dependant, prin- cipally, if not entirely upon their own exertions for sup- port. The following are the names of the latter: Maria V., Anna L., Frank W., Florence E., and Charles Fantroy. In addition to these, two maiden sisters of Mrs. Carter- Misses Maria and Jane Soul-were also members of the family, and equally with the others suffered under the blow, and were left to bear this distressing bereavement.
Old doctor Brown who acted the bloodhound in this fearful tragedy, subsequently left for Dixie. If justice has not yet demanded his life, and he should ever again display himself in Cleveland, it is hoped that he will be summarily called to an account, and the gallows allowed to settle its claims with this rebel monster.
Frank, the son, who was perhaps twelve years of age at his father's death, was at the time captured by his father's murderers. The rebels ordered him to follow them, and he struck in behind them, but soon, when unob- served, darted to one side and fled through a cornfield, making his escape. While in their possession he heard the report of the gun but a short distance from him, which killed his father.
Mrs. Carter and her two sisters, from the fact that the Union people of Cleveland dare not befriend them, and because the rebels would not, struggled three days almost entirely alone with the remains of Mr. Carter, to get them buried. They had scarcely left the grave, however, when they were summoned before the rebel Provost Marshal, and requested to take the oath of allegiance to the Con- federate government. Not manifesting a disposition to comply, they were told that they would not be allowed to leave Cleveland until they did so. Mrs. Carter, as we have seen, lived three miles from Cleveland, having tem- porarily only left her house for the interment of her hus-
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band. Detention, therefore, would occasion her the loss perhaps of all she left at home, besides the mortification and suffering of being held in durance by the murderers of her husband. Mrs. Carter and her two sisters were, therefore, compelled to submit, and reluctantly sub- scribe to the hated rebel oath.
This was the kind of sympathy extended by the rebel authorities of Cleveland to Mrs. Carter and her two sis- ters, in their sorrowful and heart rending bereavement. These rebels had murdered the husband and brother of these defenseless and harmless women, had given them three days in which to bury his remains, then with their feet yet stained with the clay that covered his coffin, bewil- dered and nearly senseless from what they had passed through, these stricken creatures were made to stand before their persecutors and swear allegiance to the very power that had so heartlessly bereaved and crushed them.
0
MRS. CARTER AND HER TWO SISTERS TAKING THE REBEL OATH.
With a knowledge of this fact before us, it will be dif- ficult for any argument to counteract the truth of the
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statement, that the murder of Mr. Carter was, as a gen- eral thing, justified by the rebel element of the country.
In our judgment it is not too severe to designate the leading rebels of Bradley, such as the Tibbses, Donahoos, Sugarts, Tuckers, Browns, McNellys, Hoyls, Hardwicks, Grants, Johnsons and others, as in a measure responsible for this murder, and as those who with the immediate per- petrators, will have to give an account to God for the slaughtering of that innocent man.
The death of Mr. Carter stands among the most lamentable and unprovoked murders committed by the rebels in East Tennessee; and will go far in the judg- inent of history to deepen the general blackness of the rebellion in Bradley county.
W. M. WILLHOIT.
Mr. Willhoit was principal of Flint Spring Academy in the fourth district, Bradley county. In November. 1861, while his school was in session. the Academy building was surrounded by a squad of rebels led by Stephen Gregory, and himself and a number of his pupils captured. They were taken to Red Clay St., put into a guard-house and kept until next morning. While in this guard house, Mr. James Huff, in order to insult Mr. Willhoit and his students, came in among them with his overgrown dog, and made the dog go through with a performance which he called cursing Abraham Lincoln.
The next morning the prisoners were offered their choice of three things : to go into the rebel army, be sent to southern prisons, or buy their liberty with money. Mr. Willhoit accepted the latter. He was afterwards appointed rebel enrolling officer in the fourth district. Not wishing to aet in that capacity he and forty others fled North. Guiding the company across the Tennessee, and to the erest of Wal- dron's Ridge, Mr. Willhoit arranged for the others to proceed, but returned himself to Bradley for another company. He raised the second company and conducted it also safely across the Tennessee, when he returned to Bradley as before for the third company.
Reaching the Tennessee with his third charge. he found that John Morgan had just heavily picketed the river, and that it was impossi- ble for him to cross. He secreted his men in the White Oak Moun- tains and waited for an opportunity to get over. While here, two men pretending to be rebel deserters were sent to him by Union friends. After being with him one day, one of these men slipped away. reported him to the rebels. in consequence of which he and his men were all captured. They were taken into Georgia and delivered to John L. Hopkins, general conseripting officer of that State. For the consideration of seventy dollars Hopkins agreed to give them a trial, but afterwards forfeited his word and sent them all prisoners to Ma- con.
After being in the Macon prison a few months, through the influ- ence of friends at home, we believe, Mr. Willhoit and his entire com- pany were released and reached home in safety.
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