Metta Andrews- Eliza's Sister
Today we continue our look at Eliza Frances Andrews’ A Diary of a Georgia Girl. This post will focus on Chapter I: Across Sherman’s Track, December 19-24, 1864. Ms. Andrews begins the chapter with an explanatory note describing how she and her sister would travel to Southwest Georgia to stay the winter with her older sister…
“EXPLANATORY NOTE. – At the time of this narrative, the writer’s eldest sister, Mrs. Troup Butler, was living alone with her two little children on a plantation in Southwest Georgia, between Albany and Thomasville. Besides our father, who was sixty-two when the war began, and a little brother who was only twelve when it closed, we had no male relations out of the army, and she lived there with no other protector, for a good part of the time, than the negroes themselves. There were not over a hundred of them on the place, and though they were faithful, and nobody ever thought of being afraid on their account, it was lonely for her to be there among them with no other white person than the overseer, and so the writer and a younger sister, Metta, were usually sent to be her companions during the winter. The summers she spent with us at the old home.
But in the fall of 1864, while Sherman’s army was lying around Atlanta like a pent-up torrent ready to burst forth at any moment, my father was afraid to let us get out of his sight, and we all stood waiting in our defenseless homes till we could see what course the destroying flood would take. Happily for us it passed by without engulfing the little town of Washington, where our home was situated, and after it had swept over the capital of the State, reaching Milledgeville November 23d, rolled on toward Savannah, where the sound of merry Christmas bells was hushed by the roar of its angry waters”
I do find it interesting that despite what one hears today about the rape and pillage of southern women by Sherman’s “hordes” that these young women would travel across Georgia just after Sherman’s Army had passed. She does comment on why their travels were delayed…
“By the middle of December, communication, though subject to many difficulties and discomforts, was so well established that my father concluded it would be practicable for us to make the journey to our sister. We were eager to go, and would be safer, he thought, when once across the line, than at home. Sherman had industriously spread the impression that his next move would be on either Charleston or Augusta, and in the latter event, our home would be in the line of danger. Southwest Georgia was at that time a “Land of Goshen” and a “city of refuge” to harassed Confederates. Thus far it had never been seriously threatened by the enemy, and was supposed to be the last spot in the Confederacy on which he would ever set foot – and this, in the end, proved to be not far from the truth.”
When they did travel, they experienced the destruction brought on by secession…
“Since the destruction of the Georgia, the Macon & Western, and the Central railroads by Sherman’s army, the whole tide of travel between the eastern and western portions of our poor little Confederacy flows across the country from Mayfield to Gordon. Mett and I, with two other ladies, whom we found on the train at Camack, were the first to venture across the gap – 65 miles of bad roads and worse conveyances, through a country devastated by the most cruel and wicked invasion of modern times.”
The narrative then describes an event that challenges some of the myths of the march. Notice how they encounter numerous soldiers who one would think would be required to be with the army and how she says that they has a royal breakfast when food was supposed to be scarce. It is there encounter with a Confederate Colonel and his new bride, a wounded soldier, a Captain of the Texas Rangers, a lieutenant and a “handsome” young captain. I would think that for a country on the brink of defeat they would need every able-bodied soldier from the lowest private to General Lee himself in the ranks.
“Near us sat a handsome middle-aged gentleman in the uniform of a colonel, with a pretty young girl beside him, whom we at once spotted as his bride. They were surrounded by a number of officers, and the bride greatly amused us, in the snatches of their conversation we overheard, by her extreme bookishness.”
“We had a royal breakfast, and while we were eating it, Mr. Belisle, who had spent the night at the hotel, drove up with a four-mule wagon, in which he had engaged places for us and our trunks to Milledgeville, at seventy-five dollars apiece. It was a common plantation wagon, without cover or springs, and I saw Mr. Simpson shake his head ominously as we jingled off to take up more passengers at the hotel. There were several other conveyances of the same sort, already overloaded, waiting in front of the door, and a number of travelers standing on the sidewalk rushed forward to secure places in ours as soon as we halted. The first to climb in was a poor sick soldier, of whom no pay was demanded. Next came a captain of Texas Rangers, then a young lieutenant in a shabby uniform that had evidently seen very hard service, and after him our handsome young captain of the night before.”
Very odd in deed for December of 1864 just after Sherman made his march from Atlanta to the Sea without much resistance. I am sure there is a very good reason for this, however Eliza does not explain it to the reader. The most interesting part of this chapter so far has to do with the killing of Yankee prisoners.
“Just beyond Sparta we were halted by one of the natives, who, instead of paying forty dollars for his passage to the agent at the hotel, like the rest of us, had walked ahead and made a private bargain with Uncle Grief, the driver, for ten dollars. This “Yankee trick” raised a laugh among our impecunious Rebs, and the lieutenant, who was just out of a Northern prison, and very short of funds, thanked him for the lesson and declared he meant to profit by it the next chance he got. The newcomer proved to be a very amusing character, and we nicknamed him “Sam Weller,” on account of his shrewdness and rough-and-ready wit. He was dressed in a coarse home-made suit, but was evidently something of a dandy, as his shirt-front sported a broad cotton rude edged with home-made cotton lace. He was a rebel soldier, he said: “Went in at the fust pop and been a-fightin’ ever since, till the Yankees caught me here, home on furlough, and wouldn’t turn me loose till I
had took their infernal oath – beg your pardon, ladies – the jig’s pretty nigh up anyway, so I don’t reckon it’ll make much diff’rence.”
He told awful tales about the things Sherman’s robbers had done; it made my blood boil to hear them, and when the captain asked him if some of the rascals didn’t get caught themselves sometimes – stragglers and the like – he answered with a wink that said more than words:
“Yes; our folks took lots of prisoners; more’n'll ever be heard of agin.”
“What became of them?” asked the lieutenant.
“Sent ‘em to Macon, double quick,” was the laconic reply. “Got ‘em thar in less’n half an hour.”
“How did they manage it?” continued the lieutenant, in a tone that showed he understood Sam’s metaphor.
“Just took ‘em out in the woods and lost ‘em,” he replied, in his jerky, laconic way. “Ever heerd o’ losin’men, lady?” he added, turning to me, with an air of grim waggery that made my flesh creep – for after all, even Yankees are human beings, though they don’t always behave like it.
“Yes,” I said, “I had heard of it, but thought it a horrible thing.”
“I don’t b’lieve in losin’ ‘em, neither, as a gener’l thing,” he went on. “I don’t think it’s right principul, and I wouldn’t loseone myself, but when I see what they have done to these people round here, I
can’t blame ‘em for losin’every devil of ‘em they kin git their hands on.”
“What was the process of losing?” asked the captain. “Did they manage the business with fire-arms?”
“Sometimes, when they was in a hurry,” Mr. Weller explained, with that horrible, grim irony of his, “the guns wouldgo off an’ shoot ‘em, in spite of all that our folks could do. But most giner’ly they took the grapevine road in the fust patch of woods they come to, an’ soon as ever they got sight of a tree with a grape vine on it, it’s cur’ous how skeered their hosses would git. You couldn’t keep ‘em from runnin’ away, no matter what you done, an’ they never run fur before their heads was caught in a grape vine and they would stand thar, dancin’ on nothin’ till they died. Did you ever hear of anybody dancin’ on nothin’ before, lady?” – turning to me.
I said he ought to be ashamed to tell it; even a Yankee was entitled to protection when a prisoner of war.
“But these fellows wasn’t regular prisoners of war, lady,” said the sick soldier; “they were thieves and houseburners,” – and I couldn’t but feel there was something in that view of it.
One has to wonder about this type of activity and how often it occured during the March and the war.
To be continued…
