The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-12-11
THEY HATE THE YANKEES.


Chosen to Live Abroad.
Lieutenant c. C. Wood of her Britain
mic majesty,s North Lancashire Reg1-
ment, whose death at Kimberley from
wound received in action against the
Beers was reported in last weeks dis
patches was the son of an American
and a great grandson of Zachary Tay-
lor. Many of his cousins, through the
Taylor branch of his family, are to be
found in Kentucky, and perhaps in otn-
er parts OF the Union, who are good
Americans and would scorn to be any
thing else. To those Americans VINO.
like most Americans, have spent all
their lives in their own country or gone
abroad only for an occasional summer
holiday in the beaten track of the tour
list, this announcement may have ap-
peared a remarkably strange reversal
of the natural order. To those who
have roamed much abroad the fact that
Lieutenant Woods father was an ex-
Confederate living in self-imposed ex-
lie, will only put the case in line VITA
many others more or less like 1T. Tnere
may not be many men now serving IN
the British army who, like this young
officer, are descendants of the makers
of early United States history, but in
the cities Of Europe, especially LONDON,
many an "unreconstructed rebel mas
passed away within the last fifteen or
twenty years, and of these many must
have left children, born on foreign SOIL,
who have never even dreamed that
they ought to be Americans.
During the decade Immediately fol-
lowing the close of the Civil War many
officers of the heroic but defeated Con-
federate army drifted to Canada, and
some to the British West Indies. Some
of them eventually came back to their
old States and helped on the slow, pain
full work of national reconciliation. In
a single city just on the far side OF
Mason and Dixon's line a list of the ten
men of greatest prominence in the local,
Industrial and financial life would IN
clude not fewer than four ex-Confeder-
ates who in 1865 had turned their backs
on this Republic with but little hope OF
ever returning within it's borders. Per-
haps some of these can now look back
to the days when they themselves were
just as irreconcilable as those others
who have never come back-even as
Colonel A., some time of the Atlanta
Light Horse, who used to explain MS
position briefly and forcibly by saying
that nothing would ever induce him to
live in a country dominated by those
blasted Yankees"
All the same. there were two days In
the year when the little cigar store on
the south side of Hanway street, close
to the Tottenham Court road displayed
the starred and striped emblem of the
blasted Yankees: one was the Fourth
of July and Thanksgiving Day was the
other. Living in London, with whom he
was wonderfully familiar, the Colonel
never ceased to abuse the climate, the
manners, the police, the cooking, the
social and political ARRANGEMENTS OF
England in general and London in par
ticular He was much too we'll bred to
force his criticisms upon strangers or
mere casual acquaintance, but his
friends and his regular customers, who
loved to tilt back their chairs and puff
pipes or cigars by the hour in that lit
tie shop, would there hear more in
vective against their country than they
could hear anywhere else in the same
time. And the strange thing was that
none of them seemed to object. or to
like the Colonel one bit the less on ac-
count of his candor- But then they
all knew that he could give it to the
blasted Yankees" even harder than to
the London fog or the House of Lords,
and, with it all. there was the convic-
ton that this perfectly groomed man
with the soldierly bearing and the su-
perbly waxed mustache, who would sell
you threepence worth of tobacco if you
wanted that quantity, and on whose
word you could always rely-who never
called cigar good unless it was good
had fought, and fought hard; led cav
airy charges, been wounded, been made
prisoner and had taken prisoners, in
the service of the Lost Cause, for which
most Londoners, if not most English
men. always had more or less sympa-
thy-especially after it was lost.
The Colonel was a Georgian by birth.
His family gave it's name to one of the
counties nearest to Atlanta His father
owned large tobacco estate in that
neighborhood, with many slaves. AS
a boy the Colonel had been sent to West
Point, and thence had passed into the
United States Cavalry. He fought
Apaches for several years, off and on.
Many of his best stories were from that
Apache fighting period, Then, when
Georgia, seeded, he sent in his resig-
nation and made his way from Arizona
to Atlanta, where he Joined the Confed-
crate regiment which he afterward
commanded. After the war his West
Point record and the United states
commission he had held made things
particularly hard for him. He could
not get possession of even the remnant
of his patrimony without submitting to
the "ironclad OATH" So he stiffied his
aristocratic feelings, took a place In a
New York clothing store, made little
money by introducing an Improvement
in the making of shirts, and went to
Canada.
From Canada the Colonel went to
Germany, where, as he spoke the langu-
age fluently, he managed to get along
pretty we'll in the retail tobacco bust
ness. From Germany he removed to
Havre, France, using his knowledge OF
French to equal advantage. But Lon
don held out the strongest inducements
to him.
There, in spite of the climatic, social
and political drawbacks, he prospered
and was popular. Everybody who knew
him liked him; the British found him an
honest man, with the feelings and the
polished manners of what they call the
upper classes his humble business, his
eccentricities and his unique Georgian
manner of speech Notwithstanding. The
Americans, including Consul General
Merritt, who was one of his close
friends and frequent visitors, both in
the shop and at the Colonels suburban