RAIDERS ROBBING A NEGRO.

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cotton yards. They blazed up so quick, the Yankees could n't have got thar without they went on wires. The next was the post-office; that they burned. The next was a drug store; the other drug store they did n't burn, but they smashed everything in it. The Arsenal was owing me and my family fifteen hundred dollars, when they destroyed it.

"They just ruined me. They took from me six cows, four mules, fifteen hogs, fifteen hundred pounds of bacon, eight barrels of flour, and fifty-five sacks of corn. They took my wife's and daughters' clothing to carry away flour in. I saw a man take my wife's best dress, empty into it all the flour he could tote, tie it up, clap it on his shoulder, and march off. Another went off with an elegantly embroidered petticoat full of flour swung on his arm. Another would take a pair of ladies' drawers, fill the legs with flour, and trot off with 'em It riding straddle of his neck. It made me feel curi's! made me feel like if I had 'em down in the squirrel woods, I could shoot a right smart passel of 'em with a will!”

There were one hundred and fifty dwellings burned; some caught from the shops and warehouses, and others were said to have been set by marauders. These robbed everybody, even the negroes in the streets and the negro-women in their houses. Charles Mencer, a well-known and respectable colored man, related to me the following:

“I worked here in a saddle-shop, at the time of Wilson's raid. I hired my time of my master, and had laid up two hundred dollars in gold and silver: I had invested my earnings in specie, and in two watches, because I knew the Confederacy could n't last. The Yankees came in on Sunday evening; they robbed my house and stole my gold and silver, and one of my watches. Four of them stopped me in the street, and took my other watch, and my pocket-book, with all my Confederate money in it."

The rest of this man's story possesses a semi-historical in

terest.

"The next Tuesday General Wilson sent for me; he wanted somebody that he could trust to carry despatches for him down

the river to General Canby, and I had been recommended to him by some colored people. I said I would take them; and I sewed them up in my vest collar. Then I went to my master, and told him there was no chance for work since the Yankees had come in, and got a pass from him to go down to Mobile and find work. Tuesday night I started in a canoe, and paddled down the river. I dodged the Rebel guard when I could, but I was taken and searched twice, and got off by showing my master's pass. I paddled night and day, and got to Montgomery Hill on Sunday. There I saw Federal troops, and went ashore, and delivered myself up to the captain. He took me to General Lucas, who sent me with a cavalry escort to General Canby at Blakely."

For this service Mencer was paid three hundred dollars in greenbacks, which he had recently invested in a freedmen's newspaper, "The Constitutionalist," just started in Mobile.

The negroes everywhere sympathized with the Federal cause, and served it when they could; but they would seldom betray a master who had been kind to them. Many stories were told me by the planters, illustrating this fidelity. Here is one, related by a gentleman of Lowndes County :

“The Yankees, when they left Selma, passed through this side of the river, on their way to Montgomery. The streams were high; that hindered them, and did us a sight of damage. I got the start of 'em, and run off my horses and mules. I gave a valise full of valuable papers to my negro boy Arthur, and told him to hide it. He took it, and put it in his trunk,threw out his own clothes to hide my property; for he did n't suppose the Yankees would be mean enough to rob niggers. But they did after they robbed my house, they went to the negro-quarters, and pilfered them. They found my valise, took out my old love-letters, and had a good time reading 'em for about an hour. Then they said to Arthur,

"You are your master's confidential servant, a'n't you?' "Yes, sir,' says Arthur, proud of the distinction.

"You know where he has gone with his mules and horses?'

DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY.

"Yes, sir, I know all about it.'

439

"Jump on to this horse, and go and show us where he is, and we 'll give you five dollars.'

6

"I don't betray my master for no five dollars,' says Arthur. "Then,' says they, we'll shoot you if you won't show us!' And they put their carbines to his head.

"He never flinched. • You can shoot me if you like,' he says, but I sha'n't betray my master!

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They were so struck with his courage and fidelity that they just let him go. So I saved my horses. He don't know it, but I'm going to give that boy a little farm and stock it for him."

Another planter in Lowndes County, an old man, told me his story, which will pass as a sample of a hundred others.

"The Yankees burnt my gin-house and screw. They did n't burn my house, for they made it a rule to destroy none but unoccupied dwellings. But they took everything from my house they wanted, and ruined about everything they did n't want. They mixed salt with the sugar, emptied it on the floor, and poured vinegar on it. They took a great fancy to a little grandson of mine. They gave him a watch, and told him they'd give him a little pony to ride if he would go to camp with them. I won't go with you,' says he, for you 're taking away all the flour that we make biscuit of." They carried him a little ways, when they stopped to burn a school-house. 'Here! You must n't burn that!' he says; for that 's our school-house.' And they did n't burn it."

"The Confederates used me as bad as the Yankees," said Mr. M, a planter whom I saw in Macon County. "They had taken twenty-six horses from me, when Wilson came and took thirty more. I ran off six of my best horses to a piny hill; and there I got on a high stump, and looked over the bushes, to see if the Yankees were coming. I was n't near as happy as I'd been some days in my life! All I thought of was to get my horses off down one side of the hill, if I saw the raiders coming up the other."

This gentleman had been extensively engaged in the culture

of the grape, to which, by the way, the soil and climate of Alabama are admirably adapted. He had in his cellar twenty thousand dollars' worth of wine, when Wilson came. His wife caused it all to be destroyed, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the soldiers. The last cask was scarcely emptied when they arrived. "She thought she 'd sooner deal with men sober than drunk," said M. "They treated her very well and took nothing from the house they did n't need."

The route of Wilson's cavalry can be traced all the way, by the burnt gin-houses with which they dotted the country. At Montgomery they destroyed valuable founderies and machineshops, after causing the fugitive Rebels to burn a hundred thousand bales of cotton, with the warehouses which contained it. I followed their track through the eastern counties of Alabama, and afterwards recrossed it in Georgia, where the close of hostilities terminated this, the most extensive and destructive raid of the war.

THE CAPITOL OF THE CONFEDERACY.

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CHAPTER LXII.

NOTES ON ALABAMA.

MONTGOMERY, the capital of Alabama, and originally the capital of the Confederacy, is a town of broad streets and pleasant prospects, built on the rolling summits of high bluffs, on the left bank of the Alabama, one hundred miles above Selma. Before the war it had ten thousand inhabitants.

Walking up the long slope of the principal street, I came to the Capitol, a sightly edifice on a fine eminence. On a near view, the walls, which are probably of brick, disguised to imitate granite, had a cheap look; and the interior, especially the Chamber of Representatives in which the Confederate egg was hatched, appeared mean and shabby. This was a plain room, with semicircular rows of old desks covered with green baize exceedingly worn and foul. The floor carpet was faded and ragged. The glaring white-washed walls were offensive to the eye. The Corinthian pillars supporting the gallery were a cheap imitation of bronze. Over the Speaker's chair hung a sad-looking portrait of George Washington, whose solemn eyes could not, I suppose, forget the scenes which Treason and Folly had enacted there.

I remained two days at Montgomery; saw General Swayne and other officers of the Bureau; visited plantations in the vicinity; and conversed with prominent men of the surrounding counties. Both there, and on my subsequent journey through the eastern part of the State, I took copious notes, which I shall here compress within as small a space as possible.

I have already sketched the class of planters one meets on steamboats and railroads. These are generally men who mix with the world, read the newspapers, and feel the current of