We breakfasted at Huntsville at 5.30 A.M. The Federal
officers captured in the Harriet Lane are confined in the penitentiary there,
and are not treated as prisoners of war. This seems to be the system now with
regard to officers since the enlistment of negroes by the Northerners.
My fellow-travellers were mostly elderly planters or
legislators, and there was one judge from Louisiana. One of them produced a
pair of boots which had cost him $100; another showed me a common wide-a-wake
hat which had cost him $40. In Houston, I myself saw an English regulation
infantry sword exposed for sale for $225 (£45).
As the military element did not predominate, my companions
united in speaking with horror of the depredations committed in this part of
the country by their own troops on a line of march.
We passed through a well-wooded country — pines and post
oaks — the road bad: crossed the river Trinity at 12 noon, and dined at the
house of a disreputable looking individual called a Campbellite minister, at
4.30 P.M. The food consisted almost invariably of bacon, corn bread, and
buttermilk: a meal costing a dollar.
Arrived at Crockett at 9.30 P.M., where we halted for a few
hours. A filthy bed was given to the Louisianian Judge and myself. The
Judge, following my example, took to it boots and all, remarking, as he did so,
to the attendant negro, that “they were a d----d sight cleaner than the bed.”
Before reaching Crockett, we passed through the encampment
of Phillipps's regiment of Texas Rangers, and we underwent much chaff. They were
en route to resist Banks.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
months in the southern states: April-June, 1863, p. 74-5
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