Friday, June 10, 2016

Major Charles Fessenden Morse: Notes From A Journal

NOTES PROM A JOURNAL.

When we first came to this place, General Slocum received a telegram from headquarters which said that if we needed any scouting or important secret service done, we had better use a certain John Douglas, who was very faithful and efficient. The General told me he wanted me to take charge of everything in the scouting department, and that I had better see Douglas as soon as possible. At this point, it is very necessary to depend on scouts and citizens, as our force is very small and we are entirely without cavalry, so I sent for Douglas and he came to see me the next morning.

I was very much struck by his appearance; he was the first man who came up at all to my idea of what a scout should be like. He is a man about fifty years old, I should think, medium size and a little bent over, but with a very tough, hard looking frame; his striking features, though, are his eyes; they are jet black and piercing in their expression, with a restless, eager look, as if he was always expecting to see the rifle of an enemy sticking out from behind a tree or bush; his eyebrows are also black, but his hair has turned gray with age. His walk was very peculiar, and was exactly like that described of Leather-stocking in the “Deerslayer,” a sort of gait which, without seeming to be much exertion, was equal to what we call a dog trot. He made me think of all the old backwoods heroes I had ever read of, from Daniel Boone down.

I found that he had papers from Rosecrans, Burnside, Dupont and several others, all testifying to his marked ability and energy, and his entire knowledge of every part of Tennessee and northern Georgia, and Alabama. I talked with him some time and found that he was very intelligent and well informed.

A few days after my first interview with Douglas, I received a telegram from Murfreesboro stating that they had certain information that a band of six or eight hundred guerrillas were in the neighborhood of McMinnville. I sent for Douglas and told him I wanted to know the truth of the story. He didn't stay five minutes after I had told him the rumor; this was about seven o'clock in the evening. The next afternoon, about three o'clock, he made his appearance and said the story was true; since he left me, he had ridden nearly seventy miles to within three or four miles of the guerrilla camp. The next day we were told by some citizens that this cavalry was supported by infantry, and that it was the advance of a portion of Bragg's army. We didn't believe this at all; still I was anxious to find out just what the force was. I sent Douglas out again, telling him to find out every particular before he came back. He was gone two days, and on his return, he said he had spent several hours inside the enemy's camp; his information proved that we had nothing at all to fear from them except depredations. I asked him how he got inside their lines; he said that the picket he passed was a very green-looking countryman; that when he approached, he was ordered to halt; he rode up to the picket and said he was a bearer of dispatches to the commanding officer. “Who is the commanding officer?” said the sentinel. “That is nothing to do with your instructions, and you will get into difficulty if you don't let me pass.” The sentinel passed him, and he went inside and talked with the men and officers and saw the commanders. There was nothing remarkable in this, but a man discovered as a spy by these guerrillas would be hung or have his throat cut five minutes after he was caught.

The pay Douglas gets as chief of scouts of this vicinity is only three dollars per day, very small compensation for the risk. He has told me a number of stories of the sufferings of East Tennesseeans; they are equal to any of Brownlow's; he says there is no exaggeration in the latter's statements.

He told me of one young lady who lived with her mother near Knoxville, whose brothers and father were strong Unionists. They had hidden away among the mountains. He described her as a very refined, well educated young woman. One day, a party of guerrillas came to her house and took her and her mother out in the woods and tied them to a tree; they then asked them to tell where their men relations were hidden; they refused to tell them; these brutes gave them each a terrible whipping, but they still refused to give them any information. These chivalric gentlemen then put nooses round their necks, untied them and threatened them with instant hanging if they didn't tell what they required. The young girl told them they might be able to torture her more than she could bear, but before she would say one word that would compromise her father or brothers, she would bite off her tongue and spit it in their rebel faces.

They raised them off the ground three times, nearly killing them. Afterwards, this same girl became a spy for our cavalry and led them on several successful expeditions. Douglas was on one of them, and said that during a fight that occurred, she insisted on staying under the heaviest of the fire. She used sometimes to go inside the rebel lines and act as nurse in one of the rebel hospitals; after she had got all the information that she could, she would return inside our lines and tell what she had found out.

Yesterday there was very near being a terrible accident on the railroad, about fifty miles from here, in amongst the mountains. Some infernal guerrillas put a species of torpedo underneath a rail, just before the passenger train from Nashville was due. Fortunately a locomotive came along just before it and set the machine off; the explosion was tremendous; the engine and tender were blown to pieces; railroad ties and rails were blown as high as the tops of trees; the engineer was thrown twenty or thirty feet and severely injured. If it had not been for this locomotive, probably hundreds of men would have been killed and wounded, as the cars go crowded with officers and soldiers. The perpetrator of this outrage, of course, could not be discovered, but a man living near by seemed to be implicated, and his house and barn were burnt.

They are very summary in dealing with guerrillas in this country when they catch them. There is one despatch from General Crook to Rosecrans on record to this effect: that he (Crook) fell in with a party of guerrillas, twenty in number; that in the fight, twelve of them were killed and the rest were taken prisoners. He regrets to state that on the march to camp, the eight were so unfortunate as to fall off a log and break their necks.

SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 152-6

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