Showing posts with label Tories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tories. Show all posts

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Diary of Private Richard R. Hancock: Saturday, November 16, 1861

According to orders from brigade headquarters, Captain Allison's Company was detached from First Battalion, and proceeded from Jacksborough to Wartburg. Morgan County, where they arrived the next day, and remained there until the brigade came up. Allison was instructed to keep a sharp lookout for tories, and guard any stores that might be sent to that point from Knoxville for the brigade.

SOURCE: Richard R. Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, p. 80-1

Monday, October 17, 2022

Brigadier-General Felix K. Zollicoffer to Lieutenant Colonel William W. Mackall, November 17, 1861

KNOXVILLE, TENN., November 17, 1861.
Lieutenant-Colonel MACKALL, Bowling Green, Ky.:

SIR: Having blockaded the roads over the mountains near Jacksborough, and believing the fortifications at Cumberland Gap very strong, I do not think an army train of the enemy can pass the mountains anywhere between the Pound Gap, in Virginia, and Jacksborough, a distance of about 120 miles. I have started the regiments of Colonels Statham, Newman, Cummings, and Battle, the first battalion of the Sixteenth Alabama Regiment, and Branner's battalion of cavalry, with Rutledge's battery, around by Wartburg, on the way to Jamestown, Tenn., and Monticello, Ky.

I came here rapidly last night to obtain more definite information of the state of things along the line of the railroad and among the tories generally. I will leave for Wartburg this evening, feeling that there is no necessity for remaining longer. General Carroll telegraphs me from Chattanooga that he is there with two regiments, half armed. I have ordered him here, with such of his command as are not engaged in pursuing Clift, a leading tory of Hamilton County, and his followers. Three different expeditions are moving from different points upon Clift's men. I fear they will disperse and take to the mountain fastnesses, eluding our forces. A Pensacola regiment, I learn, is at Chattanooga, and a regiment from Virginia is near Elizabethton, I hear. The present indications are that the tories are about being rapidly overwhelmed. I am seizing arms of Union men known to be inimical to Confederate Government, and hope in this way to arm Carroll's men who are not already armed. I propose to take and strengthen a position between Monticello and Somerset, giving us facilities for commanding the Cumberland River, the coal region supplying Nashville, &c. If I can clear the banks of the Cumberland of our enemies, supplies may this winter be furnished us by boats from Nashville. So soon as the state of things will justify, I would be pleased that General Carroll's brigade would support me in a forward movement.

Very respectfully,
F. K. ZOLLICOFFER,        
Brigadier-General.

P. S.—I should probably state to you more in detail what I telegraphed on the 15th, that I have information I think reliable that the enemy have no infantry nearer Cumberland Gap than London, where there are four regiments. They have about 200 cavalry at Barboursville. They have, I think, three regiments at Somerset, and are raising a fourth. They have a regiment at Crab Orchard, one at Rockcastle Camp, and one at Camp Dick Robinson. I suppose they have a regiment of cavalry at Somerset and near Monticello. My information is that six regiments, under General Nelson, advanced on Prestonburg, before whom Colonel Williams has retired through the Pound Gap.

Very respectfully,
F. K. ZOLLICOFFER,        
Brigadier-General.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 4 (Serial No. 4), p. 244-5

Brigadier-General Felix K. Zollicoffer to Lieutenant-Colonel William W. Mackall, November 20, 1861

BRIGADE HEADQUARTERS,        
Wartburg, one mile from Montgomery, November 20, 1861.
Lieutenant-Colonel MACKALL,
        Assistant Adjutant-General, Bowling Green, Ky.:

SIR: I am moving as expeditiously as possible, with four and a half infantry regiments, a battalion of cavalry, and Rutledge's artillery, to unite with Stanton's command (his and Murray's regiments and McClellan's cavalry) beyond Jamestown, with a view of taking a strong position on the Cumberland River beyond Monticello. The country is sterile from near Clinton to beyond Jamestown, Tenn. The counties of Wayne and Clinton and the western half of Pulaski, in Kentucky, are, I learn, comparatively good counties for subsistence and forage. If I can find a good position on the Cumberland for hutting in winter I hope, by scouring the country on the north bank down to Burkesville occasionally, to command the river, and draw supplies from Nashville when the roads to Knoxville are bad. From this camp as a base of operations I hope in mild weather to penetrate the country towards London or Danville, or in other directions, and command the approaches to Cumberland Gap or Jacksborough. I hope it may be practicable, by scouring the intervening country occasionally by detachments from both camps, to establish and safely maintain a line of express messengers between General Buckner's outposts and my camp.

My information, when at Knoxville, induces me to believe that the numbers under Clift, in Hamilton County, were greatly exaggerated. I doubt whether he had at any time more than 100 to 200 followers. They are not now to be found, having dispersed. The tories in Sevier seem also to have retired where as yet our troops are not able to find them. I sent a few men up to Greeneville to arrest Andrew Johnson's sons and son-in-law. Have no late news from Carter and Johnson Counties. By this time I presume General Carroll is at Knoxville, in command, and instructed to make proper dispositions to guard the railroads and crush the tory combinations.

The recent burning of the bridges brought a crisis which I think demonstrates that but comparatively a small proportion of the population will now give countenance to hostile acts against the Confederate Government, and that those who are still hostile are only running upon their own destruction. They should now be dealt very severely with. Leniency and forbearance have gradually won many thousands over who would have been driven to the enemy had our policy been severe two months ago, but those that are yet hostile can only be cured of their folly by severity. They should be made to feel in their persons and their property that their hostile attitude promises to them nothing but destruction.

Very respectfully,
F. K. ZOLLICOFFER,        
Brigadier-General.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 7 (Serial No. 7), p. 686-7

Friday, September 23, 2022

Brigadier-General Felix K. Zollicoffer to Samuel Cooper, November 22, 1861

BRIGADE HEADQUARTERS,        
Jamestown, Tenn., Nov. 22, 1861.
General S. Cooper,
        Adjutant and Inspector-General, Richmond:

SIR: Heavy rains have made the roads slippery and will somewhat retard our progress. Day before yesterday I ordered Colonel Stanton, with his regiment, Colonel Murray's and Lieutenant-Colonel McClellan's cavalry, encamped about 10 miles north of Jamestown, to make a rapid and stealthy forward movement to capture the ferry-boats at four or five crossings of the Cumberland, and, if practicable, the enemy's cavalry said to be on this side of the river. I have not heard whether the movement has been made. I see it stated in the Nashville newspapers that General Ward has 2,000 men at Campbellsville, 1,200 at Columbia, and a regiment at Lebanon. It is reported to Colonel Stanton that the two or three regiments between Somerset and the river have moved towards Columbia, to join other forces there. He communicates also a rumor of the crossing of the Cumberland by a force of the enemy at Green's Ferry; but all these reports seem to be uncertain.  I have no dispatches from Knoxville since I left there, but hear through various scouting parties that the tories in Lower East Tennessee are dispersed, a number of prisoners taken, a few Lincolnites killed and wounded, and several hundred guns captured. Citizens have turned out in large numbers and assisted the soldiers in scouring the mountains and hunting down the fugitive traitors. They should now be pursued to extermination, if possible.

Very respectfully,
F. K. ZOLLICOFFER,        
Brigadier-General.
[Similar report to Colonel Mackall.]

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 7 (Serial No. 7), p. 690

Friday, March 30, 2018

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: September 6, 1863

Northern papers received yesterday evening contain a letter from Mr. Lincoln to the Illinois Convention of Republicans, in which I am told (I have not seen it yet) he says if the Southern people will first lay down their arms, he will then listen to what they may have to say. Evidently he has been reading of the submission of Jack Cade's followers, who were required to signify their submission with ropes about their necks.

This morning I saw dispatches from Atlanta, Ga., stating that in one of the northern counties the deserters and tories had defeated the Home Guard which attempted to arrest them. In Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia, we have accounts of much and growing defection, and the embodying of large numbers of deserters. Indeed, all our armies seem to be melting away by desertion faster than they are enlarged by conscription. . They will return when there is fighting to do!

A letter from Col. Lay, dated North Carolina, to the Chief of the Bureau of Conscription, recommends the promotion of a lieutenant to a captaincy. The colonel is great in operations of this nature; and Col. Preston is sufficiently good natured to recommend the recommendation to the Secretary of War, who, good easy man, will not inquire into his age, etc.

Gold is worth from 1000 to 1500 per cent, premium; and yet one who has gold can buy supplies of anything, by first converting it into Confederate notes at low prices. For instance, coal at $30 is really bought for $3 per load. A fine horse at $1000 for $100. Bacon, at $2 per pound is only 20 cents; boots at $100 is only $10, and so on.

Thank Heaven! the little furniture, etc. we now have is our own — costing less to buy it than the rent we paid for that belonging to others up to the beginning of the month. A history of the household goods we possess would, no doubt, if it could be written, be interesting to haberdashers. I think we have articles belonging in their time to twenty families.

The following list of prices is cut from yesterday's paper:

“Produce, provisions, etc.—Apples, $30 to $35 per barrel; bacon is firm at $2 to $2.10 for hoground. Butter is advancing; we quote at $2.50 to $3 by the package. Cheese has advanced, and now sells at $1.50 to $2 per pound; corn, $8 to $9 per bushel; corn-meal, $9 per bushel, in better supply. Flour, at the Gallego Mills, new superfine, uninspected, is sold at $25 per barrel; at commission houses and in second hands, the price of new superfine is from $35 to $40; onions, $40 to $50 per barrel; Irish potatoes, $5 to $6 per bushel, according to quality; oats firm at $6 per bushel. Wheat—the supply coming in is quite limited. The millers refuse to compete with the government, and are consequently paying $5 per bushel. It is intimated, however, that outside parties are buying on speculation at $6 to $6.50, taking the risk of impressment. Lard, $1.70 to $1.75 per pound; eggs, $1.25 to $1.50 per dozen; seeds, timothy, $8 to $10; clover, $40 to $45 per bushel.

Groceries.—Sugars: the market is active; we hear of sales of prime brown at $2 to $2.15; coffee, $4.25 to $4.15 per pound; molasses, $15 per gallon; rice, 25 cents per pound; salt, 45 cents per pound; soap, 50 cents to 80 cents, as to quality; candles, $2.75 to $3 per pound.

"Liquors.—We quote corn whisky at $20 to $25 per gallon; rye whisky, $38 to $40, according to quality; apple brandy, $25 to $30; rum, $28 per gallon.”

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2p. 34-6

Monday, March 4, 2013

The Foe in our Midst

In St. Louis there are scores of dangerous men, zealous and scheming rebels, who are both acting the part of spies in our camp, and, by their position, presence, example and counsel, are rendering valuable service to the enemy.  The immunity with which they have long done this emboldens others to follow in their footsteps, and gives encouragement to the almost despairing foe in the field.  It is time that these mischief makers were placed where their influence would be powerless.  The peace of the city, the welfare of the State, and the cause of the country, as well as genuine kindness to these disturbers and their friends, all demand this. – Justice, policy, precedent and propriety alike require it.

During the struggle that gave birth to the Republic, the country was grievously infested by active and bitter tories.  In certain portions of the land they especially abounded, and in some were actually predominant in numbers.  They frustrated the efforts of patriots, gave invaluable information to the enemy, and materially aided in protracting the conflict.  Many of them were wealthy, educate, of high standing, had even gained a reputation for integrity, and thus wielded an influence mischievous in the extreme.  The journals of that time have since been published, tell us how these citizens were disposed of.  They were made to pay heavily for carrying on the war, and were removed to some region where their power for evil ceased.  This course was adopted by the advice and with the hearty concurrence of Washington.

In principle, the secessionists of this war are more flagitious than the tories of ’76, and in practice those of them near our military lines are worse.  The difference between the olden and the modern tory is purely circumstantial, and the circumstances are in favor of the former.  The one breathed in the times of ’76, when a republic was an experiment, the other knows that the experiment has been gloriously successful for four score years.  The one was opposed to a government of the country by the people of the country, and the other is so opposed.  The first was unwilling to have the people of the land rule the land, and the second is similarly unwilling.  But while one objected to sacrifice, peace and the ties of the fatherland, with its hallowed memories and proud historic associations, to enter upon a novel experiment under gloomy auspices, the other invokes war, tramples upon every sentiment of national price, outrages the glorious history and flag of his country, in order to render abortive the tried and well proved experiment of national self government.  Every sentiment that palliated the course of the tory of ’76, aggravates that of the secessionist of to-day.

What plea can be urged in behalf of further tolerance to the foe in our midst?  Why has he more claim to the shelter of constitutional law than the [foe] in the field?  How, when his whole spirit, all his aspirations, hopes, efforts and influence, are known to be hostile, is he not amenable to the laws of war?  Are the friends and well wishers of the enemy to be indefinitely harbored and cherished among us? – It is time that all illusions were at last dissipated, and that many of our citizens, who seem to be still dreaming amid the terrible realities upon us, were startled with a discovery of the serious nature of their position.  We are at war, St. Louis is a military post, yet in all quarters she is infested with prying, hypocritical, plotting, ingenious, implacable and deadliest foes.  What shouts of jubilee would they send up in our streets should some chance of war enable the enemy, through their aid, to gain possession of St. Louis?  How much mercy would be shown to their Union fellow-citizens?  Not a particle.  Every Unionist would be banished, or imprisoned and his property confiscated.  The wealth of the patriots of St. Louis has been by Sterling Price distinctly offered, though with absurd imbecility, as the prize of his rebel horde!  We urge no such wholesale treatment of those here who may sympathize with the enemy. – Yet the busy leaders and conspicuous intriguers among these sympathizers ought to be, and we trust soon will be, marked and effectually disposed of.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 8, 1862, p. 2

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Subjugation of the South – Loyalty in Dixie

(From the Richmond Dispatch, Feb. 26th.)

The Yankee nation, elevated by the recent victories of its hireling armies, is entirely certain of the speedy and thorough subjugation of the South.  It laughs to scorn any idea of any other possibility, and exults in delicious daydreams of the degredation to which its enemy will be reduced.  It glories in the consciousness of its brute strength, and intends to exercise it in the spirit of a brute.  All the enormous self complacency and self conceit which for a while were humbled by the battle of Manassas have renewed their ancient exultation, and they fancy themselves the masters of the universe and the predestined conquerors of all mankind.  But the work of subjugation is as distant now as ever – more distant, more impracticable than it was before the shadow of disaster had been cast upon our flag.

If our early victories had been followed up, and a blow struck which would have paralyzed the north and compelled a peace, it would have been a temporary paralysis, and a peace which would have subjugated the South more completely than she is ever likely to be by the hands of her enemies.  The inevitable consequences of a speedy peace would have been the restoration of the old commercial and manufacturing dependency of the South upon the North, with no other results of her nominal independence than a temporary exemption from abolition legislation, and the heavy expenses of a separate Government, with none of those sources of wealth to support it which commerce, manufactures, and trade supply.  Such a condition, call it by what name we may, would be essentially subjugation; and if the North had taken counsel of wisdom instead of pride, malignity and revenge, it would, in the first instance, never have permitted the war to be waged, or, when it had begun to have brought it to a termination as speedily as possible.

When we say that the subjugation of the South is now more remote than it would have been after an early peace, we have no reference to that small minority which, in the South, as well as every community, is willing to purchase peace at any price.  There are tories in the South, as there were tories in the Revolution, whose only sympathies are with the enemies of their country, who lament its victories and rejoice over its defeats.  The subjugation of these is not the question; for all the tyrants who threaten to oppress us, they, in the event of an opportunity, would be the most revengeful and inexorable.  The tories in the Revolution committed atrocities which far surpassed the most cruel oppressors of the British invaders, and we are prepared to expect from Southern tories – happily not so many in number, nor so capable of mischief as their illustrious predecessors – the exhibition of a similar spirit.

There is another and more numerous class who may be subjugated, because they are already subjugated by their apprehensions of the evils and calamities which are incident to a state of war.  Whilst generally honest and patriotic, they look upon national honor as an abstraction, not to be weighed against personal comfort and security and material gain.  “Dying for one’s country” they consider a very pretty poetical sentiment, much to be admired in novels and tragedies; but like many other poetical sentiments, nonsensical and Quixotic when reduced to practice.  Self indulgence is the rule of life with many men who are patriotic, honest, virtuous and moral, as long as the exercise of those qualities costs them no sacrifice.  But of any higher life than the life of the flesh they have not the faintest conception, nor can they imagine any greater evil than the loss of money, the deprivation of physical comforts, and, above all, the loss of life.  No one will deny that the subjugation of this class is practicable, even with a moiety of immense forces which Lincoln has brought into the field.

But such is not the spirit of the great majority of the Southern people.  They are devoutly attached to their country, to its institutions, to its habits and modes of life, and they have in innate and ineradicable antagonism to the political and social system of the invading race, to their character and habits of their very modes of speech, which the present cruel war has intensified into such passionate and profound detestation that sooner than acknowledge the Yankees as masters, they would rather see the whole Southern country sink to the bottom of the ocean.  As a whole the South is proud, sensitive to the last degree to a stain upon her honor, and holding death an inferior evil to degradation.  Such men may be overrun, may be exterminated, but they cannot be subjugated. – They will resist as long as resistance is possible, and if conquered, they will not stay conquered.  When the spirits of a people are indomitable, they can never be enslaved, and so long as the South is true to herself, she will maintain her freedom of independence.

What can the enemy do with such a people?  If driven from the cities they will retire to the country, and their cities altogether could not make a town half the size of New York.  To follow them to the country, in the vast territory of the South, would require an army more numerous than that of Xerxes.  They will retire to the country and take their arms with them, each man his trusty rifle, and be prepared to seize the first opportunity to re-assert their rights.  They will at once destroy the cotton and other staples which the North is endeavoring to force from them by the sword, and will never cultivate them again till they can do so for their own benefit.  Every bale of cotton in the Southern States will be burned, and the proprietors will raise wheat and corn and other articles which they have hitherto purchased of the North.  They will return to the simple and frugal ways of their forefathers, in dress, furniture, and all the comforts of life, manufacturing for themselves such plain and useful articles as their simple wants and absolute necessities require.  If the Yankees chose to hold their cities, and be masters of the only spots where their enemies are quartered, these will be but islands in the midst of a vast ocean, and will not affect the freedom and independence of the people so long as they are constant to their cause and true to themselves.

In the very worst aspect of the Southern cause, this is the extreme limit which Yankee subjugation can reach, even if our armies would be driven from every battle field, and every Southern city, and fort fall into the enemy’s hands.  But the accomplishment of even that result, with all their superiority of numbers, is an achievement beyond their power.  They have taught us, by the perseverance with which they contrived to fight us after their signal reverses at Bethel, Bull Run, Manassas, Springfield, Belmont, Carnifex Ferry, Leesburg, Green Briar River, Alleghany and others, not to be dismayed and disheartened by reverses, but to make them incentives to new energy and fresh determination.  We shall rise, like Antreus, refreshed by every fall.  The farther the enemy penetrates into the interior and extends his line of march, the more costly and perilous will be his means of aggression, and the more economical and practical our means of defence.  Every where he will be met by desperate and prolonged resistance, until the foreign world, dependant as it is upon Southern commerce, would become impatient of the eternal contest, and itself interpose to put an end to the mad dreams of Southern subjugation.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1