I was in command of a detachment of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry, at Cairo, when orders came that we should proceed with the reinforcements going up to Fort Donelson. Our fleet consisted of eighteen steamboats, filled and covered with troops, convoyed by six gunboats. We arrived at the landing below the fort on Thursday night. The battle had already been inaugurated. Next morning, at daylight, these reinforcements were marching to the battleground in rear of the fort, my detachment of cavalry acting as advance guard.
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From this scene I passed rapidly into others, some of a very different character. When I got back to my command, I found one of our Lieutenants had Col. Hanson, of the Kentucky Second, in custody. He was a rough looking customer, dressed in citizen’s dress, short, muscular and blear eyed—he looked to me as a fit person to command a band of pirates. He said he wanted somebody to tell him where to march his men; that he was tired waiting. He acted and talked like one having a “heap of authority,” and not much like a prisoner. Finding no one to give him, immediately, the information he desired, he became sociable.
“Well,” said he, “you were too ‘hefty’ for us.”
“Yes, but you were well protected by these splendid defenses.”
“Your troops fought like tigers.”
“Do you think now one Southern man can whip five Northern men?”
“Not Western men,” he replied, doggedly. “Your troops are better than Yankee troops; fight harder—endure more. The devil and all hell can’t stand before such fellows. But we drove you back.
“Why did you not keep us back?”
“You had too many reinforcements.”
“But we had no more troops engaged in the field than you had.”
“Well, you whipped us, but you have not conquered us. You can never conquer the South.”
“We don’t wish to conquer the South; but we will restore the Stars and Stripes to Tennessee, if we have to hang ten thousand such daredevils as you are.”
“Never mind, sir, you will never get up to Nashville.”
“Then Nashville will surrender before we start.”
“Well, the old United States Government is played out—we intend to have a right government down here.”
“What am I to understand by a right government?”
“A Government based on property, and not a damned mechanic in it.”
“Do these poor fellows all around us here, who have been fighting for you, understand that they are to have no voice in this ‘right government’ you seek to establish?”
“They don’t care—they have no property to protect.”
I thought—confound the fellow—he is the most honest, outspoken rebel I ever saw. This man is a fair type of that most active, most impudent and reckless class of men who have persistently inaugurated this war, to the destruction of every material interest of the country.