The Portland daily press., 1892-06-08

torn from their homes and forceu INTO
the Confederate service. Conservation
was not enforced SO thoroughly and with
SO much harshness in districts where a
majority of the people were strongly in
favor of secession. The first Confeder-
ate congress that met in Richmond
passed a CONSUMPTION act that exempted
d majority of the rich and provided that
the last son of a widow or the sole sup
port of poor family might be drafted
for home guard duty, but could not be
taken beyond the reach of those depend
ent on him.
But East Tennessee was an exception
to the rule that prevailed in the rest OF
the seeded states and in the rest of
Tennessee. 1t was believed, and with
some reason, that if the Confederates
did not conscript, imprison or kill the
East Tennesseeans at once they would
make their way through to the Union
lines and don the blue. The enforce
ment of the CONSUMPTION act in the
mountains of East Tennessee, western
North Carolina and western Virginia
was not intended so much to recruit the
ranks OF the southern army-for the
Confederates had more troops than could
be equipped and properly organized at
this tlme-as to crush out the Union SEN
tlment with a stunning blow.
No matter who were the men exempt
ed in other places the mountaineers were
regarded as an exception, and SO in the
dragnet of the conscripting officers
gray haired old men and beardless bows
were caught and brought in. If there
were six sons in family, with a father,
not one was left. If there were only
one son to take care of a widowed
mother, as in the case of Jack Hurd, of
Campbell county, he was seized; and if
he resisted to the death, as was his
right, he was treated as murderer.
All the conscripts brought down from
the mountains to Knoxville were at once
sworn into the Confederate service and
sent to camps of instruction, and they
were too much stunned to enter pro-
test. But as soon as they had time to
think and talk with each other they
swore to pursue course-if they could
not desert-that would not add to the
efficiency Of the organizations to which
they were attached.
Many of the friends and relatives of
the conscripted men had been shot down
resisting down as if they had been
lawless desperadoes-and others had
been thrown into the county jails or car
ried to Knoxville, where at this time
they were packed like fish in a basket.
These acts intensified the hate for the
Confederacy, and kindled a fire in every
Union heart that only blood could
quench.
The fact that Jack Hurd had killed a
conscripting officer was known in all the
camps before that young man was
brought a prisoner to Knoxville, and the
verdict of the mountain men was s'Bully
for jack"
The court martial was very properly
regarded as needless farce and the YER
dict as a declaration of murder. The
conscripted Union men were not cowed,
but with their inherited caution they
refrained from expressing themselves
except in the presence of those whom
they knew they could trust.
'.Jack Hurd's to be hung in the
mawnin." This was not news; every
one in and about Knoxville knew it, but
they repeated it one to the other like a
text that must lead up to the discussion
of other things, among which was the
possibility of getting him out.
Mrs. Hurd was not an ordinary wom-
an. If she had been she would have
been helpless and crushed under her
load of trials. In relating this part of
her experience to me, she said with a
flash of the eyes that there was no mis-
taking:
SID fetched revolver with me from
home, one ez Pike he'd gin to Minny fo'
a plaything, but even he reckoned that
at thirty feet hit was bout ez good ez
any pistol that could be got, even if hit
did have some silver fxins on. I keerd
her loaded in my breast, and when /
heard that ofser say my Jack he'd got
ter hang, | kinder said to myself, with
my hand onter the stock and my finger
a-rubbin the hammer, that ez soon ez
Jack was dead, that man would be
a-follern close arter with bullet in his
heart"
The man in charge of the prison at
this time seems to have been of a
kindly disposition, for, contrary to his
orders, he freed Jack Hurd's hands from
the manacles when he returned from the
court house, and when Mrs. Hurd called
to see her son he admitted her without
the customary pass.
In her heart she hoped to see Jack be-
having like man, and in this she was
not disappointed. She found him smok-
ing and talking with the other prisoners
in the quiet way that was habitual with
him, but there was nothing in his man
ner to indicate that he was in the least
unnerved by the awful doom that
awaited him on the morrow.
Upto this time Mrs. Hurd had borne
herself with characteristic fortitude,
but as soon as she caught sight of her
son in the Jail corridor she broke down
and would have fallen to the floor had
he not clasped her in his arms.
EEEJit oi,,,4 in tho hloo1 to er11, y,1,,,,, 49,