A Year in the South

by Stephen V. Ash

Sam attended Neely’s burial the next day. “It was [an] affecting sight to see the sorrow of his Mother and sister. Like Rachel’s daughters they refused to be comforted. The body was carried by hand to the grave. A good many neighbor negroes were present and as the procession slowly proceeded to the graveyard they sang the 103d. Psalm.” A few weeks later Sam made a headboard for the grave, carefully inscribing Neely’s name in black paint.25

  To the Agnews this incident was not only tragic but also disturbing. As Sam noted, Neely had “wanted to get the powder out but he never told what he wanted to do with it.” Sam did not dwell on the troubling implications, however. Neely was “a steady, quiet, industrious boy,” and a church member. Surely his intentions were innocent. And perhaps some blessings would come out of this, blessings both temporal and spiritual: “The negroes seem much affected by this terrible visitation. I hope it will be sanctified to their good.”26

  Neely’s death disrupted the plantation routine only briefly. After he was laid to rest the slaves resumed their sunup-to-sundown duties. Winter was not a busy time, of course, but there were always chores to do: livestock to be tended, equipment and buildings to be repaired, fences to be mended, firewood to be chopped, cooking and laundry to be done. This winter ended early for the Agnew slaves, for during a warm spell in mid-February Enoch decided to get a head start on spring plowing. On February 17 the field hands hitched the mules to the plows and went to work breaking up the hard, weedy ground.27

  The plantation demanded a great deal of Enoch’s attention, for it was large—372 cleared acres and over 1,400 of woodland—and he had no overseer. Sam, however, was little involved once hog-killing was finished. The only other time he was summoned to help that winter was a few days after plowing began, when a wind-whipped fire that had started somehow in the woods ignited a section of fence. He assisted in tearing down unburned fencing to halt the fire’s spread.28

  Sam spent most of his time that winter indoors with his family. The house was big but unpretentious, a comfortable, two-story white frame structure with lots of rooms and fireplaces and a veranda in the rear. His waking hours were mostly occupied with reading and writing, but he also spent time tutoring his sixteen-year-old sister, Margaret, whose schooling had been cut short by the war. He gave her lessons in physiology, botany, and mathematics, while Enoch tutored the youngest child, thirteen-year-old Erskine. The older daughter, Mary, was eighteen and had finished school. The other occupants of the house were Letitia, Sam’s mother, and Nannie, his wife. Nannie never left the house these days, for she was pregnant. The baby was due in early March.29

  Sam also devoted time that winter to gardening, but not for food or recreation. He was trying to raise opium poppies. Narcotics, like all other medicines, were critically scarce, and the Confederate government was urging citizens to grow poppies. Sam obtained some seeds and in January selected a plot of ground not far from the house. After preparing it for cultivation with the help of a slave boy, he spent all of one day and part of the next planting the seeds one by one in long, straight rows. In the weeks that followed he tended his poppy patch diligently but met with frustration after frustration: cows and hogs got into the patch and trampled it, heavy rains washed away many of the sprouts. Still, he was confident he could raise several hundred flowers to maturity, “If the sheep do not eat them up.”30

  On most Sundays, and some Saturdays, Sam was called away from home by ministerial duties. He usually had a preaching appointment, either at one of the local Associate Reformed Presbyterian churches whose pastor happened to be absent or at one of the “preaching stations” (mostly private homes) where he had been summoned by the faithful. When his appointment was at Hopewell Church, fifteen miles distant, he would usually set out Saturday afternoon and spend the night at a friend’s house on the way, so as to arrive in time for the eleven o’clock Sabbath service. When he preached elsewhere, there was enough time on Sunday morning to get where he was going if he kept his mount moving at a steady gait. He rode a mule these days, for there was only one horse left on the plantation and it was too decrepit to be mounted.31

  The hazards Sam faced on his Sabbath rounds were not limited to possible encounters with Yankee raiders. Bad weather was an even bigger threat to his ministry. Even if he persevered through the rain, snow, or cold to keep his appointment, he could not be sure that the congregation would do so. On January 8, “A raw, unpleasant day,” he rode to the Mt. Zion community to preach in the home of a family named Anderson, but besides the Andersons only seven people showed up. Four weeks later he made his way to the Corder home through rain and sleet, getting his feet wet crossing the swollen streams, but found not a soul there to greet him besides the Corders. On Sundays when the weather was so miserable that there was no hope of a “respectable congregation,” he simply stayed home.32

  When he had no Sabbath appointment and the weather was tolerable, he usually attended services at Bethany, an ARP church located at Brice’s Crossroads, three miles away. This was the pastorate of his beloved “Uncle Young”—the Reverend James L. Young, a fifty-six-year-old widower and Sam’s ecclesiastical mentor. Sam occasionally preached at Bethany himself, at Uncle Young’s invitation. It was something of a miracle that the church still stood, for it had been at the vortex of the battle in June 1864. It was left riddled by bullets and shells, its floor and pews sticky with the blood of wounded soldiers. Members of the congregation cleaned up the building and grounds and repaired most of the damage in a matter of weeks, but reminders of that dreadful day remained: a bullet hole in the pulpit, and dozens of soldiers’ graves in the little cemetery beside the church.33

  All winter long, whether he was at home or traveling about, Sam continued his assiduous news-gathering. He talked to almost everyone he saw and devoured every newspaper he could get. Much of what he picked up was rumor, a lot of it absurdly improbable, but he carefully evaluated everything and generally had a pretty good idea of what was going on. The war news was very discouraging. By late January Sam knew that a large portion of what remained of Hood’s army was being sent east to try to block Sherman’s advance through the Carolinas. “This leaves Mississippi without the shadow of defense,” he noted glumly, “and the Yankees are expected soon to occupy the whole country.” When torrential rains in late February turned Tippah County’s roads into quagmires, Sam and others were actually thankful, for the only thing that could stop the enemy now was mud.34

  Almost every day he heard rumors of peace, but he had long ago learned to discount them. Great Britain and France were going to intervene, it was said, and guarantee Confederate independence; the British were massing an army and a fleet of ironclad ships in Canada and intended to attack the United States; French warships had broken the Yankee blockade of Mobile and French troops were coming to the South’s aid; Lee and Grant had signed a truce. Others might credit such stories, Sam sniffed, but “I simply believe not one word.… Drowning men catch at straws and our people swallow with avidity everything that promises peace.”35

  One of the peace rumors that winter turned out to be factual, however, and as the story unfolded even skeptical Sam paid heed. President Lincoln, it seemed, had agreed to meet face-to-face with Confederate commissioners to discuss ending the war. The meeting took place in early February on a ship anchored in Chesapeake Bay. It ended in failure, however. Lincoln made it clear that he would cease hostilities only if the Confederates abolished slavery and returned to the Union. This was essentially a demand for Confederate surrender, and the Southern commissioners rejected it out of hand.36

  There were those who refused to be disheartened by this news, insisting that peace might yet be negotiated. But Sam thought otherwise. There would be no armistice, he prophesied in the waning days of winter, but instead “war to the bitter end.”37

  PART TWO

  SPRING

  SAMUEL AGNEW

  When Sam Agnew arose on the first day of March, he looked for signs of spring but saw none. The early morning sky wa
s overcast, and he noticed no blossoms on the peach trees that grew near the house. But late in the morning the sun came out, and during the day his father spotted a blossom. “March came in like a lamb,” Sam reported in his diary. “[T]he sun shone brightly” and the day was “quiet and calm.”1

  All that day Sam kept one eye on the road that ran past the house, as was his habit. At some point an ox-drawn wagon came by, heading north, and Sam hailed the driver to see if he could pick up any news. The driver was a neighbor, Miss Williams. Women driving wagons had been an uncommon sight before the war, but everyone was used to it now. Also in the wagon was a man, a wounded Confederate soldier on his way home. Alex Merrell was his name, Sam learned, and he belonged to the 51st Tennessee Infantry. Sam offered to let him stay until someone could be found to take him further along his way, and Merrell accepted the invitation.2

  Sam had seen a good deal of the war’s human wreckage, but poor Merrell was one of the more poignant examples. He had been wounded in the thigh at the battle of Atlanta in July 1864. The surgeons managed to save his leg, but only by cutting away a lot of gangrenous flesh. Later he made his way to North Carolina, where relatives took him in, and now he was trying to get to his home in west Tennessee. Walking was hard for him, and he could not sit on a horse at all. It had taken him thirty days to get from North Carolina to Guntown, located nine miles southeast of the Agnew plantation. Miss Williams found him there and offered him a ride. Merrell knew, of course, that west Tennessee was in Yankee hands, but it did not matter to him: his war was over.3

  That evening the sky clouded up again, and by the time Sam retired for the night a heavy rain was coming down. Over the next two days it continued, “pattering on the housetop and gurgling through the gutters,” in Sam’s words. His poppy patch was inundated and the nearby creeks rose threateningly. “[F]rom the back piazza I can see a silver sheet of water covering the entire branch bottom.” There was nothing to do but stay indoors. He talked with Merrell for hours, reread old newspapers, and watched the road. Few people passed by, however. It was still raining on the evening of the third, when Merrell left in a cotton-laden wagon driven by a friend of Sam who was going to try to get to Tennessee to trade for provisions.4

  The weather cleared up the next day, and on Sunday morning, March 5, Sam rode to the Corder home to preach. Usually he prepared a new sermon for each Sabbath appointment, but for this occasion he dusted off an old one. His text was John 10:9, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” The ride over was enjoyable, for it was a lovely day, but the Corders had some unpleasant news: someone had dug into their storage shed and stolen the pork they had recently butchered and salted. They had lost the meat of a whole hog. Sam was distressed but hardly surprised, for as food got scarce in the community there were more and more such incidents. “Thieving,” he remarked, “has become common.”5

  He heard more bad news the next day: Yankee raiders were headed for Tippah County. It was a thirdhand report, however, and he did not get really concerned until the following morning, when he learned from “reliable sources” that Yankees were already in the county and had skirmished with rebel troops near Ripley, fifteen miles away. “I … regard it as certain,” Sam affirmed in a diary entry that morning, “… and now the question is will they come [by] this road.” He was willing to wait a little longer to find out, but his father was not. Around noon they rounded up the livestock and went to the woods.6

  No enemy soldiers appeared, however, and after nightfall Sam and Enoch returned home. But they did not rest easily, for a wagoner who camped for the night near their house informed them that he had just come from the vicinity of Ripley and knew for a fact that “there are plenty of Yankees there.”7

  No one slept well in the Agnew home that night, but the Yankees were not solely to blame. Sometime before midnight, Sam’s wife, Nannie, went into labor. Sam was banished from their upstairs bedroom to the downstairs sitting room while Enoch took charge of the delivery, assisted by Letitia. “Pa and Ma were up all night,” Sam reported the next day. “Nannie had a right hard labor but was happily delivered of a fine large son between 4 and 5 o’clock.… This has rendered the day famous in our annals.” They named the little one Enoch, after his grandfather.8

  All that day and the next the household bustled with activity. Sam’s sisters, Mary and Margaret, were “busy attending their little nephew.” Kinfolk came by to see the newborn, and “The little negroes also have been curious to see him.” Sam hovered around solicitously, anxious about the health of mother and child. Fatherhood was a new experience for him, and he was moved to ponder his responsibilities and the future of the human being he and Nannie had brought into the world: “May God spare his life and make him a good and useful man.”9

  The Agnews scarcely had time to enjoy this happy event before the war again intruded. Just twelve hours or so after Nannie’s delivery, Sam learned from a passer-by that “The Yankees are still at and about Ripley, devastating the country, robbing the citizens of their provisions.” The next day, March 9, as he was riding over to Uncle Young’s place to return a borrowed book and get some castor oil for Nannie, he ran into a friend who reported that the enemy was even closer now. Back at the house, he met two cavalry scouts who insisted that a Yankee force was now this side of the Stubbs plantation, which was less than six miles to the northwest on the same road that ran by the Agnew place. “This news,” Sam wrote, “impelled us to be off to the woods.”10

  They spent a miserable night. In their rush to gather up the livestock and get to their hiding place, he and Enoch failed to bring along quilts to make a tent, although they did take some blankets. It began snowing in the evening, and before long the ground was white. “It was very cold and unpleasant to be out in the woods without house or shelter. We however had a large fire and sat around it.” A few kinfolk who lived nearby joined them. The sky cleared overnight, and by morning it was bitterly cold. Sam got hardly any sleep, partly because of the cold but also because “I was [so] apprehensive that our bed clothing would be set on fire by sparks that I deemed it best to sit up while the rest were snoozing.”11

  Late in the morning Enoch returned to the house, satisfied himself that there was no immediate danger, and sent word to Sam to round up the livestock and come home. It turned out that the report that had sent them to the woods was false. The two cavalry scouts, Sam learned, had not been anywhere close to the enemy yesterday and had simply made up the story that a force was near. Sam was furious. “They certainly merit severe rebuke. They are I am told poor soldiers, members of Loughridge’s Reserve company, shirking all the duties of their position they possibly can.… I call them great liars.”12

  Later that day and the next he picked up enough reliable information to persuade him that the Yankees were headed back to Tennessee. Once again, his district had been spared. He was greatly relieved, for from all reports this was a particularly voracious party of raiders. “They have been very destructive on the scant supplies of the citizens.” One man whom Sam knew lost all his mules. Another, Colonel Berry, was stripped of his stored provisions and his horses. Berry’s case was particularly disturbing, for, as Sam noted, “One of his negroes went to [the Yankees], and it is thought piloted them to where his horses were conce[ale]d.”13

  Once the excitement subsided, Sam turned his attention back to Nannie and the baby, whom they had nicknamed Buddy. Mother and child were doing well for the most part, but Nannie was complaining of soreness in her left breast. An application of warm vinegar helped, but when swelling developed, Enoch had to perform some minor surgery, lancing the breast to let fluid escape. It was not serious, Sam was pleased to learn, and Nannie quickly recovered.14

  By mid-March, spring was well advanced and the Agnew plantation was busy. On the thirteenth, Sam saw his first martin of the season, which spurred him and Enoch to repair the birdhouse that had fallen down over the winter—the more martins around, the fe
wer insects. The next day Letitia began sowing her vegetable garden. As the weather warmed, Sam spent a lot of time in his poppy patch, battling the invading weeds and livestock. The field hands, who had been plowing since February, started planting corn on March 24, which kept them occupied well into April.15

  The corn was a matter of special concern. The Agnews, like everyone else in Tippah, were praying for a good crop, for the county’s supply was nearly depleted. The Yankee raiders exacerbated the crisis, and so did the notorious rebel cavalry units in the area, whose ruthless impressment continued unabated. “Huff’s company was up in the hills last night and ‘tore up Wash Chisholm,’” Sam learned on March 12. “Their thieving propensities are much complained of.” The next day he met a man from the northern part of the county who had come down in his wagon seeking corn. The man had cotton cards to trade, and was willing to give one pair for ten bushels of corn. Cards were scarce, and many people in Sam’s community would have been glad to get a pair, but there was simply no corn to spare. “Everybody needs corn,” Sam wrote. “Uncle Jo is entirely out. Several bags were stolen last night from Thompson’s Mill.… It does look as if there was some danger of a famine of bread.”16

  The only place where large quantities of corn might be obtained was farther south, in the less ravaged counties of the state. During the first part of March the Agnews and some of their neighbors agreed on a plan. Two men from the area would collect money, take a train south, and see what they could buy. They had some luck. On April 1, a train pulled into the Guntown depot with a load of corn for the group. Enoch dispatched a wagon to retrieve the Agnews’ share, which amounted to thirty and a half bushels. He had wanted more, but did not have enough cash.17

  At about the same time, county officials sent an agent south to buy corn to feed the poor. He managed to get 400 bushels. Nobody believed that this would keep all the county’s poor from going hungry, but it was better than nothing.18