Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1888-06-22

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bic aspect of the conflict that has never
been half made known.
TheIConfederate armies at the West
had disappeared, but thousands of
their soldiers swarmed in the woods,
unwilling to go to their desolate homes.
OF the remains of Hoods army that
melted away after the defeat at Nash
vile this was peculiarly true. Dis
couraged and demoralized, without
means Of subsistence or hope for the
future, they took to the forests and
mountain glens, and many of them lived
for months wild and wandering life.
Then there were thousands more of
irregulars, guerrillas, who had never
been under any kind of military dis
cipline, who were far more lawless and
dangerous than the disbanded soldiers
who had been in the armies of the
Con:ederacy. Large camps of supply
were established by the United States
Government, where clothing and food
were issued to a host of refugees and
their families, and some of the classes
we have named took advantage of the
opportunity and came in to receive
much-needed aid; but there were great
numbers who preferred to retain their
arms and keep up the war on their
own account. Some were actuated by
a mere brutal desire for fighting, and
unwillingness to give up the contest
that had been so long waged: and
others were no better than lurking
highwaymen and assassins. 1t is a
dark picture, and has no parallel in
the quiet and orderly dispersion of the
armies of Lee and Johnston after their
surrender. And it is safe to say that
the worst outrages committed in the
Southwest at the time named were the
work of men who had never been in
the Confederate uniform at all.
Along the Southern rivers the guer-
rillas and outlaws did deadly work.
They skulked behind trees and rocks,
firing at every passing steamboat, and
killing and wounding not only Union
soldiers but citizen passengers. The
pilots were most frequently the tar
gets of their deadly aim, for they were
skilled marksmen, and were familiar
with the business of killing men with
rifles. The pilot-houses were sheathed
with boiler iron, and their inmates
avoided exposing themselves as much
as possible; but the fatal bullet fire.
auently searched them out. 1t would
naturally be supposed that there would
be difficulty, under such circumstances,
in securing pilots for the trips; but
there was not. This hardy class of
men were accustomed to the dangers
of the rivers, they were attached to
their calling, were mostly stanch
Union men, anxious to be of service to
the cause, they received very large
pay, and coolly treated the danger
from guerrillas along the shores as one
of the risks that their business neces-
sarily exposed them to. In was an ad-
mirable manifestation of true American
pluck.
Let the reader turn to good map
of the West, and mark the course OF
the Tennessee River, as it winds from
PASSPORT, in the northeast corner of
Mississippi. to the Ohio at Paducah,
across the States of Tennessee and
Kentucky. It is navigable all the way,
and over this long route steamboats,
were continually passing after the VIC
tory at Nashville. The Army of the
Cumberland had been established at
PASSPORT, and supplies, ammunition,
soldiers on furlough and returning to
camp, and everything that relates to
an army in the field loaded the busy
steamboats,.
The boat upon which my informant
was returning to his regiment, after a
sixty days furlough, had on deck a
large invoice of hard bread in the or
binary boxes, which the twenty or
thirty soldiers aboard had built up
along the guards for protection, with
instertices left for firing out. The boat
had passed the Tennessee line before
there was much trouble. Then there
was hardly an hour but there was a
rifle-shot from the woods. Those peer
ing out through the loopholes would
see a puff of white smoke from behind
q tree or in thicket, would hear re-
port, and leaden ball would flatten
itself against the iron armor of the
pilot-house, or bury itself in the boxes
It was q favorite joke Of the soldiers
that bullets couldn't possibly make an
impression on the crackers.
M, G.. 500, ~ vovo rof1rno6 HOma