SPECIMEN CONVERSATION WITH AN AVERAGE NATIVE GEORGIAN—WE LEARN THAT SHERMAN IS HEADING FOR SAVANNAH—THE RESERVES GET A LITTLE SETTLING DOWN.
As the train left the northern suburbs of Savannah we came upon a scene of busy activity, strongly contrasting with the somnolent lethargy that seemed to be the normal condition of the City and its inhabitants. Long lines of earthworks were being constructed, gangs of negros were felling trees, building forts and batteries, making abatis, and toiling with numbers of huge guns which were being moved out and placed in position.
As we had had no new prisoners nor any papers for some weeks—the papers being doubtless designedly kept away from us—we were at a loss to know what this meant. We could not understand this erection of fortifications on that side, because, knowing as we did how well the flanks of the City were protected by the Savannah and Ogeeche Rivers, we could not see how a force from the coast—whence we supposed an attack must come, could hope to reach the City's rear, especially as we had just come up on the right flank of the City, and saw no sign of our folks in that direction.
Our train stopped for a few minutes at the edge of this line of works, and an old citizen who had been surveying the scene with senile interest, tottered over to our car to take a look at us. He was a type of the old man of the South of the scanty middle class, the small farmer. Long white hair and beard, spectacles with great round, staring glasses, a broad-brimmed hat of ante-Revolutionary pattern, clothes that had apparently descended to him from some ancestor who had come over with Oglethorpe, and a two-handed staff with a head of buckhorn, upon which he leaned as old peasants do in plays, formed such an image as recalled to me the picture of the old man in the illustrations in "The Dairyman's Daughter." He was as garrulous as a magpie, and as opinionated as a Southern white always is. Halting in front of our car, he steadied himself by planting his staff, clasping it with both lean and skinny hands, and leaning forward upon it, his jaws then addressed themselves to motion thus:
"Boys, who mout these be that ye got?"
One of the Guards:—"O, these is some Yanks that we've bin hivin'
down at Camp Sumter."
"Yes?" (with an upward inflection of the voice, followed by a close
scrutiny of us through the goggle-eyed glasses,) "Wall, they're a powerful
ornary lookin' lot, I'll declah."
It will be seen that the old, gentleman's perceptive powers were much more highly developed than his politeness.
"Well, they ain't what ye mout call purty, that's a fack," said the guard.
"So yer Yanks, air ye?" said the venerable Goober-Grabber, (the nick-name in the South for Georgians), directing his conversation to me. "Wall, I'm powerful glad to see ye, an' 'specially whar ye can't do no harm; I've wanted to see some Yankees ever sence the beginnin' of the wah, but hev never had no chance. Whah did ye cum from?"
I seemed called upon to answer, and said: "I came from Illinois; most of the boys in this car are from Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa."
"'Deed! All Westerners, air ye? Wall, do ye know I alluz liked the Westerners a heap sight better than them blue-bellied New England Yankees."
No discussion with a Rebel ever proceeded very far without his making an assertion like this. It was a favorite declaration of theirs, but its absurdity was comical, when one remembered that the majority of them could not for their lives tell the names of the New England States, and could no more distinguish a Downeaster from an Illinoisan than they could tell a Saxon from a Bavarian. One day, while I was holding a conversation similar to the above with an old man on guard, another guard, who had been stationed near a squad made up of Germans, that talked altogether in the language of the Fatherland, broke in with:
"Out there by post numbah foahteen, where I wuz yesterday, there's a lot of Yanks who jest jabbered away all the hull time, and I hope I may never see the back of my neck ef I could understand ary word they said, Are them the regular blue-belly kind?"
The old gentleman entered upon the next stage of the invariable routine of discussion with a Rebel:
"Wall, what air you'uns down heah, a-fightin' we'uns foh?"
As I had answered this question several hundred times, I had found the most extinguishing reply to be to ask in return:
"What are you'uns coming up into our country to fight we'uns for?"
Disdaining to notice this return in kind, the old man passed on to the next stage:
"What are you'uns takin' ouah niggahs away from us foh?"
Now, if negros had been as cheap as oreoide watches, it is doubtful whether the speaker had ever had money enough in his possession at one time to buy one, and yet he talked of taking away "ouah niggahs," as if they were as plenty about his place as hills of corn. As a rule, the more abjectly poor a Southerner was, the more readily he worked himself into a rage over the idea of "takin' away ouah niggahs."
I replied in burlesque of his assumption of ownership:
"What are you coming up North to burn my rolling mills and rob my comrade here's bank, and plunder my brother's store, and burn down my uncle's factories?"
No reply, to this counter thrust. The old man passed to the third inevitable proposition:
"What air you'uns puttin' ouah niggahs in the field to fight we'uns foh?"
Then the whole car-load shouted back at him at once:
"What are you'uns putting blood-hounds on our trails to hunt us down, for?"
Old Man—(savagely), "Waal, ye don't think ye kin ever lick us; leastways sich fellers as ye air?"
Myself—"Well, we warmed it to you pretty lively until you caught us. There were none of us but what were doing about as good work as any stock you fellows could turn out. No Rebels in our neighborhood had much to brag on. We are not a drop in the bucket, either. There's millions more better men than we are where we came from, and they are all determined to stamp out your miserable Confederacy. You've got to come to it, sooner or later; you must knock under, sure as white blossoms make little apples. You'd better make up your mind to it."
Old Man—"No, sah, nevah. Ye nevah kin conquer us! We're the bravest people and the best fighters on airth. Ye nevah kin whip any people that's a fightin' fur their liberty an' their right; an' ye nevah can whip the South, sah, any way. We'll fight ye until all the men air killed, and then the wimmen'll fight ye, sah."
Myself—"Well, you may think so, or you may not. From the way our boys are snatching the Confederacy's real estate away, it begins to look as if you'd not have enough to fight anybody on pretty soon. What's the meaning of all this fortifying?"
Old Man—"Why, don't you know? Our folks are fixin' up a place foh Bill Sherman to butt his brains out gain'."
"Bill Sherman!" we all shouted in surprise: "Why he ain't within two hundred miles of this place, is he?"
Old Man—"Yes, but he is, tho'. He thinks he's played a sharp Yankee trick on Hood. He found out he couldn't lick him in a squar' fight, nohow; he'd tried that on too often; so he just sneaked 'round behind him, and made a break for the center of the State, where he thought there was lots of good stealin' to be done. But we'll show him. We'll soon hev him just whar we want him, an' we'll learn him how to go traipesin' 'round the country, stealin' nigahs, burnin' cotton, an' runnin' off folkses' beef critters. He sees now the scrape he's got into, an' he's tryin' to get to the coast, whar the gun-boats'll help 'im out. But he'll nevah git thar, sah; no sah, nevah. He's mouty nigh the end of his rope, sah, and we'll purty' soon hev him jist whar you fellows air, sah."
Myself—"Well, if you fellows intended stopping him, why didn't you do it up about Atlanta? What did you let him come clear through the State, burning and stealing, as you say? It was money in your pockets to head him off as soon as possible."
Old Man—"Oh, we didn't set nothing afore him up thar except Joe Brown's Pets, these sorry little Reserves; they're powerful little account; no stand-up to'em at all; they'd break their necks runnin' away ef ye so much as bust a cap near to 'em."
Our guards, who belonged to these Reserves, instantly felt that the conversation had progressed farther than was profitable and one of them spoke up roughly:
"See heah, old man, you must go off; I can't hev ye talkin' to these prisoners; hits agin my awdahs. Go 'way now!"
The old fellow moved off, but as he did he flung this Parthian arrow:
"When Sherman gits down deep, he'll find somethin' different from the
—little snots of Reserves he ran over up about Milledgeville; he'll
find he's got to fight real soldiers."
We could not help enjoying the rage of the guards, over the low estimate placed upon the fighting ability of themselves and comrades, and as they raved, around about what they would do if they were only given an opportunity to go into a line of battle against Sherman, we added fuel to the flames of their anger by confiding to each other that we always "knew that little Brats whose highest ambition was to murder a defenseless prisoner, could be nothing else than cowards end skulkers in the field."
"Yaas — sonnies," said Charlie Burroughs, of the Third Michigan, in that nasal Yankee drawl, that he always assumed, when he wanted to say anything very cutting; "you — trundle — bed — soldiers — who've never — seen — a — real — wild — Yankee — don't — know — how — different — they — are — from — the kind — that — are — starved — down — to tameness. They're — jest — as — different — as — a — lion in — a — menagerie — is — from — his — brother — in — the woods — who — has — a — nigger — every day — for-dinner. You — fellows — will — go — into — a — circus — tent — and — throw — tobacco — quids in — the — face — of — the — lion — in — the — cage — when — you — haven't — spunk enough — to — look — a woodchuck — in — the — eye — if — you — met — him — alone. It's — lots — o' — fun — to you — to — shoot — down — a — sick — and — starving-man — in — the — Stockade, but — when — you — see — a — Yank with — a — gun — in — his — hand — your — livers get — so — white — that — chalk — would — make — a — black — mark — on — 'em."
A little later, a paper, which some one had gotten hold of, in some mysterious manner, was secretly passed to me. I read it as I could find opportunity, and communicated its contents to the rest of the boys. The most important of these was a flaming proclamation by Governor Joe Brown, setting forth that General Sherman was now traversing the State, committing all sorts of depredations; that he had prepared the way for his own destruction, and the Governor called upon all good citizens to rise en masse, and assist in crushing the audacious invader. Bridges must be burned before and behind him, roads obstructed, and every inch of soil resolutely disputed.
We enjoyed this. It showed that the Rebels were terribly alarmed, and we
began to feel some of that confidence that "Sherman will come out all
right," which so marvelously animated all under his command.
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