15. the history of a brave heart.
Instead of saying the history of a brave heart, I should have said the sufferings of a brave heart, as being more explicit and positive.
A few days ago, a friend informed me of a very intelligent woman who had arrived as a refugee from Northern Alabama.
Thinking that her history might be interesting, I procured an interview, the results of which seem stranger than fiction.
My informant is a widow lady, named Davis, from Fanning County, Georgia.
She is a well-educated and well-read woman.
I am positive (even in these days of deceit and treachery) of the honesty of this lady.
Her history is briefly as follows, and may be relied upon as entirely authentic: ”She left her home on December sixth, 1863, and arrived here on the tenth instant.
For over a year previous to her departure, she had suffered all kinds of insults and abuses.
She was robbed of every thing she had in the world — her stock and edibles.
Not a mouthful was left in the house — no beef, no corn, no pork, no nothing.
Bed-clothes were carried off, and even the little jewelry she wore was taken off her person; and, as is usually the case, presented to some arrant secesh belle.
Her history, she says, is but the history of thousands.
The sufferings the Union people of Northern Georgia have to endure is terrible.
They are shown no mercy whatever, and wherever found are taken out and hung.
Such was the fate of Benjamin Hide, a neighbor of hers, and a man highly respected in the community.
A good Union man, named Beal, was hung, in Morgantown, simply because he remarked, that if he had his choice he would vote for the old Union.
A prominent lawyer, named Trett, was carried from the State line, between Alabama and Tennessee, where he resided, taken to Tuscaloosa, and there died in prison of sheer starvation.
William Thompson, an unflinching Union man, of Benton, Tennessee, near the State line, was taken out to the graveyard, blindfolded, and shot, and thrown into a hole with his clothes on. A number of days elapsed before his relatives were allowed to bury him decently.
These are but a few of the inhuman and barbarous acts committed upon Union citizens.
Mrs. Davis says that the people of the North know nothing of the persecutions the Union people of the South have to undergo; and adds, the truth of the sufferings can never be written.
Starvation stares them in the face.
Thousands of the people of the South, both rebel and Union, are often glad to get one meal a day, and that a scanty one of corn bread and pork.
It is nothing uncommon for a woman to bring one or two bushels of corn on her back, from five to ten miles, to mill, pay ten dollars a bushel for it, pay for the grinding also, and then carry it back, to be used in quantities just enough to sustain life.
When Mrs. Davis left home, it was at the hour of one o'clock in the night.
A reliable Union man accompanied her to where he knew a brother Unionist lived, and so the journey was conducted, from one Union man to another, until finally, after much sickness and delays, she arrived here.
She has one son in the Union army, and carries another at the breast.
Her fatigue and long journey have nearly exhausted her strength; but, being well cared for by the proper authorities, she hopes soon to recover her strength.
We have evidence, in abundance, of the awful condition of the Union people — of their heroic endurance and unwearied patience, in waiting for the advance of the old flag and of the armies of the Union.
Why not bend our energies to release them?
Will our rulers look for candidates for the Presidency, while the chivalry are hanging
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and murdering loyal Tennesseeans, Alabamians, and Georgians?
Will Chase and Lincoln be fighting over the future honors of the White House, while the valiant chivalry are hunting down, with bloodhounds, the loyal people of the South?
Will such fanatical ranters as Wendell Phillips and Beecher foam and froth about the emancipation proclamation, while thousands are being enslaved by the conscripting minions of Jeff Davis?
Will the little one-horse abolition and Republican editors of the North be howling about “copperheads,” while such a woman as Mrs. Davis is robbed of her property, and has to flee for her life?
Would it not be more chivalrous, gallant, and patriotic, for such puny creatures to add even their little might toward driving back the insolent foe, which they, with their pen-and-ink batteries, have annihilated a thousand times?
God knows, they have done enough to bring this accursed and atrocious war on, and they ought to do a little toward quelling a foe but little less criminal (if any) than themselves.
It would be the greatest blessing that ever befell humanity if the abolitionists of the North and the fire-eaters of the South consumed each other in this war, body and soul, so that not an atom of their vile natures would pollute or poison, or be left to corrupt and demoralize, future generations.
