APPROACH TO CITY OF MEMPHIS. 141 formed the connecting link between the commerce of the North and the Gulf of Mexico. With such remarkable facilities for trade and commerce, it enjoyed unequalled prosperity before the rebellion.. Treason had blasted its fair prospects, and reduced the ambitious city to a conquered province-a mere military post. The court-house and offices were closed, the pulpits silent, the school-houses deserted. Hotels and warehouses were transformed into military hospitals, many of the stately mansions, encircled with lofty trees and velvet lawns, were occupied as military headquarters. Large numbers of the citizens had entered the rebel army, and sent their families into the interior. Those that remained, were seldom seen abroad. Ichabod was written on the walls of this conquered city, which was reaping the bitter fruits of rebellion. We have rarely seen a more perfect little gem than the public square in Memphis, with its gorgeous magnolias, arbor-vitæ and southern pines, in full green robes in January. But treason had left its marks even here, for the statue of the heroic Jackson in its centre had been mutilated, and the rebuking motto, "The Federal Union, it must be preserved," defaced. The desolation of southern cities, towns, settlements, and plantations, was complete and indescribable. The "Father of Waters" had been the great highway of the Mississippi Valley, the main artery of commerce and prosperity, carrying the life-blood from the heart to the extremities, giving the glow of health, the bloom of beauty, and vigor of body, to all the States through which it coursed and throbbed. On the bosom of this majestic stream had been borne a continu ous fleet of steamers, almost floating palaces, going to and fro like the ships of Tyre, till merchants had become princes, and planters oligarchs. Southern plantations were among the gardens of the earth for beauty, fragrance, verdure, landscape art, and almost principalities in extent, population, and luxurious appendages of living. Choice libraries, gems of art, curious devices of gold and silver, formed part of the oriental splendor of these Southern palaces; abodes of luxurious ease and unsuspecting, indolent repose. Beneath, around, at the very core of this seeming prosperity and dazzling display, lay the element of its destruction; the cause of its decay. Like the fabled vampire, it fanned its sleeping victims while it fed upon their vitals; or like the mistletoe of its forests, it draped the stately trunk with the bright green robe of prosperity, while it drew from it the sap of its existence. The mighty steamers had not only carried silver, gold and merchandise, but they had transported human beings, men, women and children, born in God's image, for sale and barter, converting them into chattels. They had carried husbands away from wives, and wives from husbands; parents from children, and children from parents. They had borne manacled runaway slaves back to the plantation and the lash; sometimes had become the platform of execution for hopeless beings, who, in the desperation of despair, bursting their bonds, found a watery grave in the turbid Mississippi, to hide them from further bondage, or hopeless separation from wife and children. These princely plantations had been sustained and furnished by the blood and sweat of unrequited, scourged labor. Their stately halls had often SLAVERY THE CAUSE OF TREASON. been polluted with deeds of cruelty. 143 The only hope for the conservation of this iniquitous system, being the legalized perpetuation of the ignorance of its victims, they toiled on, generation after generation, without hope of redemption, or opportunity for improvement, and were then reproached for vice and ignorance. The God of justice slumbered not, but was silent, permitting this great crime, till by the fulfilment of His incomprehensible plans, those who had clung to this system of abominations, defending it from revelation, and clothing it with the sanctity of heaven, struck the blow themselves that unloosed the manacles; drew the sword that cut the gordian knot, that had perplexed and bewildered statesmen and philanthropists, and gave the key to the solution of the sphinx riddle that had baffled the world. Treason against the "old flag," was the hammer, the sword, the key; and in blood and fiery desolation it did its work. I saw the fruits of this mighty convulsion. Had I doubted the enormity of slavery, or the tenacity of its hold on an otherwise noble people, I should have been convinced when I saw the effects of the scathing revolution, necessary to end its existence and blot out its effects. The Red Sea had been rolled up on either side, crushing, sweeping, obliterating all traces of life and prosperity, and the enfranchised people were preparing to walk over dry-shod. Until this redemption shall be complete, and justice to this long down-trodden race thorough, the South will not be regenerated. nor her prosperity restored; for the Lord Jehovah, who changeth not, hath said: "I have made of one blood all the nations. of the earth;" and again: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." On our arrival at Memphis, we immediately commenced our visitations to the hospitals, and found them in good order, having been emptied as far as possible by sending the patients North, to make room for the anticipated inmates, from the coming battles. Alas! they were soon filled. The day subsequent to our visit, several hundred wounded from the unavailing assault on Vicksburg, were placed in the vacant beds. The Sanitary depôt, under the care of Dr. Warriner, was in successful operation at Memphis. An accu rate daily account was kept with every hospital, and the precise amount and number of every article, given to each hospital or regiment, stated. These accounts, on printed forms, were remitted each month to the North-Western Sanitary Commission at Chicago; consequently I felt at home in the work at Memphis. DEPARTURE FROM MEMPHIS. 145 CHAPTER IX. Departure from Memphis.-Arrival at Helena.-Wretchedness of the place. A sketch of first army Sabbath.-Embarkation of 15,000 troops.-Sketch of a cavalry regiment.-Embarkation of a battery. -Interview with Gen. Gorman on fleet.-Decision to accompany White River Expedition.-Anxious father on the Ruth.-Contrast between recruits and veterans.-Mouth of White River.-Rumor of battle at Arkansas Post.—Organization of battle fleet.-Entrance to the White River.-Description of its banks.-Council of war.Changing weather.-Organization of hospital on Ruth.-St. Charles. -Gen. Fisk's talk with a rebel.-Cavalry regiment sent out as scouts. -Suffering of the men on marches.-Arrival at Duvall's Bluff.Hardships of soldiers on transports.-The morality of the army.Their endurance. ON a bright afternoon, with cheers and shouts from the men, beating of drums, waving of flags and handkerchiefs, and hearty farewells of military and sanitary friends, we puffed into the stream, and struck out boldly for Helena. The "boys" insisted the word was spelled wrong. It ought to have had but one syllable, and that the first. As we steamed up to its muddy bank, and saw the ricketty dwellings and narrow, filthy streets fringing the levee, filled with our soldiers, looking as if they were labelled jaundice, ague or scurvy, we did not wonder the soldiers thought the name a mistake. 'Twas difficult to discern the color of their uniforms; they were so bespattered with mud, and moulded with |