TERMS OF SURRENDER AMID BOTTLES OF LIQUOR
TERMS OF SURRENDER AMID BOTTLES OF LIQUOR
Dr. William L. McDonald
Company C of the 9th Tennessee Cavalry surrendered at Waterloo in April 1865. They had been ordered to lay down their arms at a Yankee garrison in East Port, Mississippi. Federal authorities reasoned, however, that it would be expedient to send over a few officers to Waterloo so as to administer the oaths of allegiance rather than to ferry an entire company of Rebels across the river to East Port. These officers brought along bottles of whiskey which they passed around to the defeated Confederates. One of the soldiers who surrendered that day was Dr. John Wesley Young. More than fifty years later he wrote about this historic occasion: “… we became so intoxicated that we ran home without taking the oath.”
Private Young didn’t have far to run. His boyhood home was near Gravelly Springs, some ten or twelve miles east of Waterloo. Here he worked on the family farm for two years before earning his medical degree from the University of Georgia in 1870. Afterwards, Dr. Young served as a physician in Clinton, South Carolina, until his retirement some forty-seven years later.
In 1922, at the age of 79 years, Dr. Young responded to a questionnaire that had been mailed to surviving veterans of the Civil War. He mentioned his father’s 700-acre farm in Gravelly Springs and the eight slaves who lived with them: “My father and I … worked in the fields along with the slaves. We did all sorts of work that is to be done on a farm. My mother had no regular servants in the house. Sometimes she would get the Negro women on the place to help her. She and my sisters wove, cooked, spun, etc.”
He described the school he attended at Gravelly Springs as an “old field or country school.” There were several of these in this area of Lauderdale County, he said, where “anyone was allowed to attend … if the parents paid tuition.”
Dr. Young enlisted in the Confederate cavalry in April, 1861. His unit was first sent to Horse Creek in Hardin County, Tennessee, where “we pulled down telephone wires and tore up railroads.” His first battle occurred about a month later at Parkers Cross Roads where he barely escaped being captured. On August 24, 1862, his company became a part of a new regiment that was being organized by the colorful cavalry leader, Colonel Jacob Biffle of Wayne County, Tennessee. Although this unit was officially designated as the 19th Tennessee, its members served throughout the war believing they were the 9th Tennessee Cavalry.
Biffle, a veteran of the Mexican War, was one of Forrest’s most able lieutenants. Although accused by the enemy of sometimes engaging in “unconventional warfare,” he generally lived off the land and, consequently, was able to provide for the men in his regiment. Dr. Young gave an interesting account of these war-time conditions in the 9th Tennessee: “During all of my war experience I was fairly well clothed. Sometimes we had tents, but often we lived in the open, slept on the ground, frequently in sleet, rain, and snow. Generally we were right fortunate in having plenty to eat.” When we ran out of food we made raids on the nearby neighbors, capturing whatever we could.”
Perhaps the terms of surrender afforded Company C at Waterloo was unique in the annals of military history. It could be observed, as well, that the federals were dealing with an unusual company of soldiers.
The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
http://www.heartofdixiepublishing.com/williamlindseymcdonald.htm
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CELEBRATIONS FOR GENERAL FORREST AT FLORENCE
THE CELEBRATIONS FOR GENERAL FORREST AT FLORENCE
By
Dr. William L. McDonald
September 22, 1864, was a red letter day for the citizens of Florence. General Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most popular figures in the South, was given a hero’s welcome by the war-weary town. This celebration occurred in spite of a threat by Union General William T. Sherman to burn Tuscumbia and Florence if Forrest used the Shoals as his launching base for raids into Tennessee.
Forrest was moving toward Middle Tennessee. Most of his cavalry arrived in Cherokee on September 19. The mounted troops swam the river near Smithsonia while the artillery, ordnance, and wagons crossed on flatboats near Woodland. Forrest and his staff arrived in Florence on the 21st. His men made camp two miles west of town.
The next day, in typical Forrest fashion, the General astride his favorite mount, King Phillip, led his long column of men and horses through downtown Florence. This parade entered the city from the west by way of Gunwaleford Road and West Tennessee Street. Proceeding north on Court Street which was partially disfigured by burned out buildings, they turned east at Mitchell’s Corner. From here they continued their line of march to the intersection of Circular Road (now Nellie Avenue and Grady Liles Drive) where they headed out the Huntsville Road. Along their route on Tennessee and Court Streets they were cheered by crowds of women, children, and old men who had gathered to see the parade. Private John Milton Hubbard, Company E., 7th Tennessee Cavalry, was here on leave. Years later he recalled this event in his biography: “To have stood on Mitchell’s corner that day, as I did, would mark an event in a life otherwise filled with adventure.”
At Shoal Creek Forrest was joined by an additional 1,500 of Brigadier General Phillip Roddey’s Brigade. Now with a force of about 4,500, Forrest headed east to Athens to begin his raid into Tennessee.
The Federal commands at Athens and Pulaski had already been alerted of Forrest’s presence. Colonel George Spalding was ordered to proceed to Shoal Creek from Pulaski with his U. S. 10th and 12th Tennessee Cavalry. On the way he ran into Confederate Colonel Jacob B Biffle’s 9th Tennessee Cavalry about three miles southeast of present Loretta, Tennessee. Here on September 22 the two commands clashed at James M. Powell’s Grist Mill. Moving south the next morning, Spalding managed to capture three of Forrest’s supply wagons along with five men near Green Hill. Now aware of Forrest’s presence and intentions, Spalding rushed back to Pulaski to sound the alarm.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel John B. Minnis was dispatched from Athens with his U. S. 3rd Tennessee Cavalry. Approaching Rogersville on September 23 with 300 men, he found himself cut off at the Huntsville Road. He barely escaped by taking the Snake Road which led to another ford across Elk River in Limestone County. A few days later Minnis surrendered 1,000 men, along with 700 small arms, two pieces of artillery, three ambulances, sixteen wagons, and 300 cavalry horses to Forrest a few miles north of Athens. These prisoners, plus another 931 that had been captured in Athens, were sent back to Cherokee by way of the Bainbridge Ferry, an early river crossing at the modern Kendale Gardens Subdivision east of Florence.
Forrest’s raids into Tennessee were cut short in late October by the plans of General John Bell Hood to invade Tennessee and Kentucky. This brought the famous cavalry hero back to Florence on November 14. On that same evening he was serenaded by the Tennesseans in Hood’s Army on the grounds of the stately mansion, Courtview, which is now a part of the campus of the University of North Alabama.
Thus, the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest at Florence includes times of festivity during bleak years when its people had little to celebrate.
The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
http://www.heartofdixiepublishing.com/williamlindseymcdonald.htm
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RANSOM MONEY
RANSOM MONEY
From
Dr. William L. McDonald
Captain Samuel P. Emerson was often referred to as “The Colonel” by those who feared him. These were mostly poor folk among the hills and hollows of Lauderdale County who chose to remain loyal to the Union during the Civil War. Their numbers grew as the ravages of war decimated both hope and livelihood. Many of their sons and husbands had joined the Union Army at the outset. Others had either been drafted or had been recruited into the Confederate Army. As times became harder, desertion, followed by recruitment to the Union Army, became real problems for the Confederacy. Locally, this became known as a “Turn Over.”
A network of espionage and intrigue soon evolved in Lauderdale County as a result of its close vicinity to the Tennessee line and especially to the Union strongholds in Wayne and Hardin Counties. Confederate soldiers were offered money, referred to as “ransom,” as an incentive to turn over. A structured channel was organized whereby the soldier could make contact with a member of this local network, usually a lady. This person would direct the potential deserter to a place located almost on the Wayne and Hardin County line a few miles north of Waterloo known as “Ransom Town,” and sometimes as “Turn Over.” Here the soldier would be paid his ransom money, then quickly sworn in and swished away as anew recruit in the United States Army.
Company B, 6th Kentucky Regiment, was sent to the Muscle Shoals to break up this flourishing ring of enemy activity. This outfit was commanded by Captain Samuel P. Emerson. Not much is known about him, although it is believed he may have had relatives living in the Waterloo area. One source indicates that Emerson had previously participated in one or more of the famous raids made by John Hunt Morgan which earned for Morgan the name “Thunderbolt of the Confederacy.”
Emerson, to counter the Union network, established a similar system throughout Florence and Lauderdale County. This, too, was made up mostly of women who served as his “informants.” When they learned of a turnover. that was about to be made, these people quickly passed the word to Emerson. The Captain then would waylay the deserter on his way to Ransom Town. According to stories that have been handed down, these captives were sometimes shot by a firing squad when apprehended. Others, when time permitted, were taken to their home communities –places like Rogersville, Cloverdale, Lexington and Florence –where they were hanged from a nearby tree as a solemn warning to their neighbors.
According to the October 17, 1900, edition of the Dallas Times- Herald, Captain Samuel P. Emerson, was laid to a peaceful rest in that Texas town following his recent death in Denver, Colorado. Yet, some fifty years later, an elderly citizen of Waterloo was reluctant to talk about this man, advising the interviewer to “go home and forget you ever heard of the name of Sam Emerson.”
The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
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The Civil War stories found in Dr. McDonald’s Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley, can be found at Amazon.com or http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0971994676/ref=dp_olp_0/103-3940205-0330202?ie=UTF8&qid=1187314598&sr=8-1&condition=all
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CIVIL WAR WEDDING
CIVIL WAR WEDDING
This story is about a wedding in Florence on January 22, 1864, during the bleak days of the Civil War. Its circumstances could well have been a part of the romantic fairy tales of the Old World. The bride, Ann America Burtwell, called Mic by her friends, was a nurse in the hospital located in what is now Pope’s Tavern and Museum. The groom, Eugene Louis Frederic de Freudenreich Falconnet, a native of Bern, Switzerland, was a Major in the Confederate 14th Alabama Cavalry.
The bride’s father, John Trumbull Burtwell, had been a riverboat captain prior to his death in 1862. Her mother, Cornelia, was a daughter of Dr. John R. Bedford, whose plantation overlooked what is now Chisholm Road and Cox Creek Parkway. Her older brother, John, was Inspector General on General Braxton Bragg’s staff. Her younger
brother, James, was in the 16th Alabama Infantry.
Dr. William H. Mitchell, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, read the vows in the Burtwell home on North Pine Street. In 1916 this two-storied residence was converted into Florence’s first high school.
The bride’s former boyfriend, Lieutenant Colonel Jesse J. Phillips of the U. S. 9th Illinois Mounted Infantry, had been among the occupying forces at Florence on two previous occasions. He had met Mic Burtwell while visiting a wounded soldier in the hospital.
Colonel Phillips received a dispatch from Brigadier General Grenville Dodge on January 9th with information about the anticipated Florence wedding. He rightly guessed that several Confederate officers would be in attendance and offered to reinforce Phillips from Pulaski if he would try to capture them.
As a precautionary measure, the bridegroom had stationed pickets at the entrances to the city. The bride’s aunt, Eliza Bedford Weakley, had likewise placed her carriage and driver at the Burtwell home as a means of escape in case it was needed.
Dr. Mitchell had completed the ceremony and the wedding party was in the receiving line when the warning was sounded that Phillips was approaching the outskirts of town. The bride and groom were rushed to the river in the waiting carriage. According to one account they were rowed across to safety within Confederate lines in a skiff which had been placed there by the groom. Family tradition has it that Falconnet “wrapped his bride in a blanket, put her in a canoe and eluded the federal troops by means of the river.”
The newly married couple spent their wedding night at Moorefield, located on what is now the Wilson Dam Reservation. This was the plantation of George Jackson, son of James Jackson of the Forks of Cypress near Florence. It is said that a piece of the wedding cake, made from hoarded sugar provided by the aged widow of General John Coffee, was sent to Colonel Phillips under a flag of truce.
The Union Colonel who failed in his efforts to stop the wedding later won the hand of a young lady in nearby Athens. Following the war the Falconnets moved to Nashville. He was credited with surveying the railroad to the Alabama line, which later was extended into East Florence. He was also a brilliant inventor, having designed an air ship some fifteen years before the German Count von Zepplin’s first air flight. Ann died in 1883 when she was only thirty-eight years old. Her husband died four years later.
The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
http://www.heartofdixiepublishing.com/williamlindseymcdonald.htm
The Civil War stories found in Dr. McDonald’s Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley, can be found at Amazon.com or http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0971994676/ref=dp_olp_0/103-3940205-0330202?ie=UTF8&qid=1187314598&sr=8-1&condition=all
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A CONFEDERATE HERO IN A TUSCUMBIA CHURCHYARD
A CONFEDERATE HERO IN A TUSCUMBIA CHURCHYARD
From
The Civil War Tales
of the
Tennessee Valley
By
Dr. William L. McDonald
A highly decorated hero of the Civil War is buried in the cemetery at Our Lady of the Shoals Catholic Church in Tuscumbia. Father Emmeran Bliemel, O.S.B., who as far as anyone knows had never been in North Alabama, was Chaplain of the 10th Tennessee Regiment of the Confederate Army. It is said that he was the first American priest of the Catholic faith to die in combat during the Civil War.
Known as “Father Emery” by the fighting Irish of the 10th Regiment, he was born in 1831 in Ratisbon, Bavaria. He had barely reached his twentieth birthday when he arrived in America to become a monk in St. Vincent Abbey, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. At the young age of twenty-five years, Father Emmeran was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church.
Bliemel had already made a name for himself as a fiery German priest in Nashville prior to becoming a chaplain. As a pro Southern activist his writings and speeches infuriated the authorities during the federal occupation of that city. On one occasion he escaped imprisonment because the commanding general did not wish to be accused of “throwing a Catholic priest in jail.”
Father Emmeran had been elected in absentia to serve as chaplain of the 10th Tennessee Regiment in the fall of 1862. Although he tried time and again to assume that role, it was not until after the Battle of Chickamauga that his superiors in the Church finally agreed for him to serve. Over the next nine months the new chaplain saw plenty of action in the battles of Rocky Ridge, Mill Creek Gap, Resaca, Pine Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Utoy Creek, and Jonesboro.
The Battle of Jonesboro became a disaster for the 10th Tennessee after the collapse of its main line of defense. Witnesses remembered how Father Emery remained on the battlefield helping as many of the wounded as he could reach, in spite of exposure to heavy enemy fire. It was during this melee that he struggled to reach his commanding officer, Colonel William Grace, who had been mortally wounded. While kneeling beside his colonel, and with uplifted hands in prayer, Chaplain Emmeran was suddenly decapitated by the direct hit of a cannonball. Afterwards, both the chaplain and the colonel were buried on the battlefield, and moved later to a nearby cemetery.
The remains of Father Bliemel were brought to Tuscumbia in 1888 by Father Otto Kopf, who was serving the local Benedictine Parish. This Tuscumbia priest had been a boyhood friend of the chaplain in Bavaria. Having lost contact with Father Emmeran during the war, Father Otto had not given up until he found his old friend in the graveyard at Jonesboro. He then made arrangements to have the chaplain moved to the Our Lady of the Shoals Cemetery in Tuscumbia.
In recent years the Sons of Confederate Veterans awarded their Medal of Honor posthumously to Father Emmeran Bliemel. This was in recognition of the chaplain’s courageous actions at Jonesboro, Georgia, on August 31, 1864. This prestigious medal is on display at the Knights of Columbus Assembly Grounds in Jonesboro which was named for Father Bliemel. A noble cross in the churchyard at Tuscumbia marks the final resting place for this soldier who gave his life in the line of duty as a military chaplain and as a Catholic priest.
The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
http://www.heartofdixiepublishing.com/williamlindseymcdonald.htm
The Civil War stories found in Dr. McDonald’s Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley, can be found at Amazon.com or http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0971994676/ref=dp_olp_0/103-3940205-0330202?ie=UTF8&qid=1187314598&sr=8-1&condition=all
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Civil War Stories - Uncle Sam By Dr. McDonald
THE STORY OF SAM AT SWEETWATER
Sam was one of the 120 African-American slaves who resided on the 3,800-acre plantation east of Florence known as Sweetwater. More importantly, Sam was a Civil War hero whose name was enshrined by the gratitude of a family who never forgot his noble deed following the terrible Battle of Shiloh.
Sam went away with the Confederate Army to be with his young master, Billy Patton, the very next week following the secession of Alabama from the Union. Sam and William Anderson “Billy” Patton grew up together. Sam was born in 1837 and Billy a year later. Before the war when Billy became a Florence merchant with his older brother, Brahan, Sam went along to drive the buggy.
Billy’s father, Robert Miller Patton, who after the war became Governor of Alabama, owned the plantation. Sam’s mother, Mary, was the family cook and lived with her children in the kitchen behind the big house.
The story of Sam at Shiloh actually had its beginning in the early Cumberland Gap Campaign in Kentucky. It was here the body of their fallen leader, General Felix Zollercoffer, was disfigured and dishonored by the Yankee soldiers. Sam resolved he would never permit this to happen to his friend, Billy.
Lieutenant William Anderson Patton, Company C, 16th Alabama Infantry, fell mortally wounded during the charge made just south of Shiloh Church on Sunday morning, April 6, 1862. This and the recovery of the body was described by his commanding officer, Captain Alexander Donelson Coffee - for whom Coffee High School was later named - in his letter dated April 10th , 1862:
“. . . we here lost most of our men and here it was poor Billy fell, he was about five feet from my right . . . when a ball struck him in the forehead, killing him instantly. . . . I left the regiment at dusk: and went to look for poor Billy . . . I then put him in a small log hut they used for a sutler’s store . . . and I walked by moonlight back to the road and camps through the ground we had fought over.”
However, the tide of the battle changed the following day. The 16th Alabama was in the brigade commanded by Brigadier General Stirling Alexander Martin Wood, a son of Florence’s first mayor. Wood wrote that the regiment next to his brigade on the left broke and fell back; all except two of his field officers were wounded. The entire Confederate command under General Beauregard had no alternative but to retire to Corinth from whence they had come.
And thus begins the narrative that has been told and re-told by generations of the Patton family. Sam refused to leave the field with the retreating Confederate Army. It was during the night when he found the sutler’s hut to recover his master’s body. Years later an old veteran of Green Hill remembered seeing Sam with Billy’s corpse and wondered how he had made the agonizing trip from Shiloh to Corinth. But this was only the first part of the long and tedious journey that led down the Memphis Pike, across the Tennessee River, and through the front gate and the portals of the Sweetwater Plantation. Sam’s homecoming was somberly described by Howard Weeden, who was connected to Sweetwater by marriage, in her poem, The Worst of War:
“I led his horse back home where they sat expecting him - and I saw Mistis’ and Master’s hearts when they broke - and that was the worst of war!”
Some heroes are unknown, unmourned, and consigned to oblivion because they had no bard to sing their praises. Determined that this would never happen to Sam, the hero of Sweetwater, the Pattons placed a marker in the family cemetery which read:
“SAM -Faithful to the end to those who trusted him.”
The old burying ground lies hidden and forgotten along side the busy boulevard that leads into Florence from the east. Ruthless vandals have pulled over the large markers with heavy cables and removed forever the stone dedicated to Sam. Perhaps in the telling of this story to another generation it may come about that the deeds of the old slave at Sweetwater will yet be remembered.
The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
http://www.heartofdixiepublishing.com/williamlindseymcdonald.htm
The Civil War stories found in Dr. McDonald’s Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley, can be found at Amazon.com or http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0971994676/ref=dp_olp_0/103-3940205-0330202?ie=UTF8&qid=1187314598&sr=8-1&condition=all
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Civil War Stories By Dr. McDonlad
Civil War Stories
THE ANECDOTE OF THE OFFICER’S PARTY AT SWEETWATER
The story of East Florence’s Sweetwater Plantation would not be complete without telling the colorful yarn of the Confederate General who stumbled into the water fountain at its front entrance. This embarrassing incident became a part of the lure and lore of this
great ante-bellum mansion as told by each generation of the family who lived there. The circumstances surrounding this event became the subject of mischievous banter as the hard-pressed soldiers made their way northward to the ill-fated Battles of Franklin and Nashville.
The agonizing days of the terrible war were converging on an even more painful ending when Brigadier General Gideon Johnson Pillow used the manor house at Sweetwater for his headquarters and camped his men around the big spring at the foot of the hill. No doubt, Pillow’s selection of Sweetwater for his camp site was suggested by his military aide, Sergeant Robert Patton, who was later to die in the Battle of Selma. Young Robert was one of the three Patton boys in the Confederate Army.
Florence was overrun with soldiers in November, l864. Confederate task forces had crossed the river at two places on October 30th to clear the town of its occupying Federal garrison. Major General Nathan Bedford Forest arrived fifteen days later with some 3,000 cavalrymen to await the river crossing of General John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee on November 15th with about 27,000 infantrymen and 2,000 cavalrymen. The historic north end of Court Street became Hood’s general headquarters with some of his staff and general officers quartered in its stately residences. The divisions and brigades were camped in and around the city. The presence of a large military force in this small rural town was not new. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, with his 15th U. S. Army Corps, had occupied Florence the previous November. Sherman used Wesleyan Hall as his headquarters and a number of his senior officers were quartered at North Court Street.
Sweetwater and the nearby Price and McCorstin Plantations had been used by both Union and Confederate soldiers at various times for most of the war years. Until a few years ago, a long and well-defined earthen fortification could be seen along the slope of the cedar crest hill of the old McCorstin Plantation overlooking Sweetwater Avenue, an
early stagecoach route into Florence from the east. Similar fortifications made at Sweetwater were obliterated by the horse and plow within a few years following the war’s end.
Gideon Pillow was one of the “political” generals of the Confederate Army. A graduate of the University of Nashville, he practiced law before and after the Civil War. In l844, Pillow played a key role in getting his law partner, James K. Polk, nominated for President of the United States. As a military officer he rose to the rank of Major General in the Mexican War. However, fate was not on his side during the Civil War. The General’s unfortunate role as second in command of Fort Donelson at the time of its surrender plagued him for the remainder of the war years. Although he fought at Stones River and in other battles he was never given another important command.
General Pillow was no stranger to the charms of Sweetwater. His political connections had brought his elegant carriage from his magnificent plantation near Columbia, Tennessee, to the home of Alabama’s future governor before the gathering of war clouds. In fact, the Pillow family earlier had become a part of the aboriginal history of the Muscle Shoals area. It was the General’s uncle, William Pillow, who was credited with killing the notorious Creek Chief Big Foot near the mouth of Cypress Creek in the summer of 1787.
Hood’s encampment at Florence was not only a time to prepare for the military advance into Tennessee, but off-duty hours became brief interludes for festivities. There were a number of dances and gala events, including a military ball at Sweetwater attended by officers throughout the command. It was on the night of this party when General Pillow fell into the basin of the lovely fountain in the center of the wide front walk, “in which blooms lilies and blue water hyacinths, upon which is poised a smiling boy … where the sound of dripping water is heard.” The extent of the General’s injury was never officially reported. Rumors repeated by the soldiers had it that his arm was broken. In writing about the Battle of Franklin, Private Willie Smith noted that Pillow had fallen into a fountain while at Florence.
The daughters of Robert Patton, Mattie and Marie, were more gracious to their guest than the men who served under him. Mattie said that he was “walking up and down the front walk so intently thinking he stepped into the iron railing around the basin of the fountain and fell into the basin of water, being badly bruised.” Marie wrote: “He stumbled over the low curb … and fell into the water, startling the fish, and badly bruising himself.”
A former slave at Sweetwater remembered this anecdote differently than the Patton girls. As one of the Negroes assigned to help with the party that night, his version was more attuned to the banter of the soldiers. Some fifty years after the war, Uncle Mose, who lived to be more than one hundred years of age, loved to entertain his audiences with his humorous account of the General who fell into the water fountain. And, with a big grin, Mose, without fail, would end his story by saying: “…and that soldier was drunk!”
THE NIGHT SHERMAN’S MEN RAIDED SWEETWATER
This is a story about terrorism that happened near Florence during the Civil War. It involved the family of Robert Miller Patton who later served as Governor of Alabama.
The Patton home, known as Sweetwater, is located in a grove of trees alongside Florence Boulevard and is one of the area’s most priceless relics of the past.
The background for the story began on November 3, l863, when the 15th U. S. Army Corps moved into the small rural town of Florence. Their commander was none other than General William Tecumseh Sherman who later won lasting fame when he burned his way across Georgia. The tall, hardy, and homely general made his headquarters at Wesleyan Hall on the University campus. He established his own living quarters in the spacious General Samuel Weakley home that fronted both North Pine Street and North Court Street near the downtown area of the city. Florence and the surrounding countryside became an armed camp overnight. One of Sherman’s divisions made encampment at Sweetwater, which in that early day was located on one of the main pikes leading into the city from the east.
The soldiers began roaming over the plantation grounds in search of spoils as soon as their tents were erected near the big spring. All the meat that had been stored for the winter was taken. Turkeys, chickens, ducks, and geese were shot and tied to the saddles of the raiders. All of the horses and cows were confiscated to be used in Sherman’s forthcoming march to Chattanooga. The house was raided time and again. Most of the edibles, including pickles, beans, potatoes, and corn, were carried away. As expected, a clean sweep of the wine cellar was made at the very beginning. Slave cabins on the grounds were used as infirmaries for soldiers suffering from small-pox. Two of the newest cabins were burned along with the bodies of two victims as a means of preventing the further spread of the disease.
But the night of fear that forever lived in the memories of the Patton’s was different from the other raids by Sherman’s men. It began about an hour before midnight and did not end until around three in the early morning on that cold November day. The two daughters, Martha and Marie Jane, were with their father and mother in the house that night. So was Marie Jane’s husband, Captain John Jackson McDavid, who was recovering from an illness contacted while serving with the Confederate Army. All had retired for the evening when the soldiers appeared.
The hero of this story was the Negro slave, Edmund Patton. Edmund, who was later to be affectionately called “Uncle Champ” by the other Negroes, must have had a premonition that night. Rather than retiring as was his custom after the family went to bed, Edmund waited and watched from the front steps of the mansion. It wasn’t long before he heard the rattle of sabers and the sound of feet on the front driveway. On the tip of his toes, Edmund reached upward as high as he could and tapped on the window at the master bedroom. Patton quickly opened the front door. Edmund rushed in with the alarm: “soldiers are coming!” He quickly moved toward the stairs in the main hall that led to the second floor where the young ladies were sleeping. It was then that the side door was battered down by the invaders. They rushed toward the stairwell as the servant threw his arms across their path. Edmund’s heroic statement made to the soldiers that night has been carefully recorded and preserved in the old plantation ledgers: “My two young mistresses are upstairs and you can not go there unless over my body.”
The horrified family watched as the house was ransacked room by room. The master of the house offered a meal to the terrorists. The only food in the house were the last two turkeys, which had been baked that day. The soldiers quickly consumed both platters of meat, then drew their guns and demanded the wallets of Patton and Captain McDavid. It was at this moment that Mrs. Patton, scared and completely exhausted, broke away and ran to her room. She was quickly pursued by one of the soldiers. Her screams brought the entire family to her side. They found the soldier on his knees while attempting to search her body. Mr. Patton raged at the intruder: “touch my wife for your life!” Mrs. Patton, sensing the danger, dropped her purse which had been concealed in her sleeve. It contained $40 in gold and greenbacks, several jewels including three diamond studs that had belonged to her son, Captain Billy Patton, who had died at Shiloh.
It was after 3 O’clock in the morning when the siege ended. The soldiers went away with all that they could carry. As they departed they demanded that all the lights be extinguished. Any alarm from the family would result in their burning the house.
Sherman’s stay in Florence was brief. His memoirs say little about the area and its people. In all fairness to the General, he probably never knew about the night of violence at Sweetwater. But the townsfolk knew and would never forget.
The Pattons remembered not only the horror, but the heroism of old Edmund as well. The Governor gave him a farm and built for him a comfortable house where he lived the remaining years of his life. Miss Howard Weeden, the artist and poet, painted Uncle Champ’s portrait which was later published in one of her books. The old hero of Sweetwater was buried in the family cemetery, and a lovely marker placed over his grave by the family. However, modern-day vandals have destroyed Edmund’s gravestone along with the other monuments in the ancient burying ground at Sweetwater.
Time has a way of erasing some memories. Yet, there are recollections that become engraved within the human soul as if carved in granite.
The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
http://www.heartofdixiepublishing.com/williamlindseymcdonald.htm
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