ISAAC C FOWLER | FAMILY HISTORIES

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The following are excerpts from a comprehensive look at the Fowler family and their close allied family ties to other Southwest (and now, West Virginia) families contained in “Kissin’ Cousins” also compiled by Peter D. Johnston.

Being that some of the information garnered are from very old, hand-written and faded material, there may be some mis-spellings or in a few cases “blanks” when a word is totally indecipherable.

These excerpts are transcriptions of original, mostly unpublished, private documents in the possession of Fowler family descendants and are “as written with but a few punctuation items added for clarity. Newspaper articles are transcribed from original contemporary articles.

The Diary transcripts were obviously written for his personal recollection and contain many abbreviations. The Editor has added some notes to help clarify and identify some entries.

Southwest Virginia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I

Page 1. The Fowler Family (History of Summers County, West Virginia)

Part II

Page 5. Autobiography – Isaac Chapman Fowler 1897

By Issac Chapman Fowler

Part III

Page 42. The Story of Thomas and Priscilla and their move to “Indian”

By Isaac Chapman Fowler

Part IV

Page 51. The History of a Favorite Slave – Jessee Fortner

By Isaac Chapman Fowler

Part V

Page 63. Obituaries – I. C. Fowler and “Kizzie” Chapman Fowler

Part VI

Page 68. War Time Diaries – 1861 -1862 I. C. Fowler

By Isaac Chapman Fowler

Part VII

Page 112. Bristol News Editorials – The first year 1868

By Isaac Chapman Fowler

PART I

History of Summers County

Dr. THOMAS FOWLER

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History of Summers County, West Virginia Pages 479 – 488

J.H. Miller, 1908

THE FOWLER FAMILY.

The Fowler name is no more mentioned among those of the residents of the county, but no complete history of our territory would be perfect without mention of this illustrious family. The impress of a family of people with the strong characteristics of the Fowlers will be felt in any community in which they have made their habitations.

The founder of the Fowler family in this State was Dr. Thomas Fowler, who died at his large and elegant old-time Virginia plantation "Indian," as he named it, on April 2, 1858, in the 60th year of his age. He was born in the State of Tennessee, having been a native of Cocke County. When quite a young man he located at Tazewell, Va., and later emigrated to the mouth of Indian Creek, then in Monroe County. He married Priscilla Breckenridge Chapman, daughter of Isaac Chapman, of Giles County, Va. She died at the age of 73, at "Indian." She. as well as her husband, figured in the trials and events of the early settlement of that land, and in the events of the early settlements of the progress of peace and order and society there.

She was a pattern of the noble womanhood bred in her day. She. like her cotemporaries, rose to a peculiar dignity of character that was imparted to the exigencies of the early days and the brave part they sustained in social life. Trial and familiarity with the practical philosophy of daily life gave strength and nobility of mien to female virtue and grace. Mrs. Fowler was an estimable lady — a member of that community of brave and admirable ladies. Dr. Fowler's plantation was located on the thoroughfare much traveled in ante-railroad days, being on the old Red Sulphur Turnpike, and among the wayfarers in that day were the leading people in politics, commerce, and public concerns generally, and the beautiful residence of Dr. Fowler gave rest and recreation to the fatigued traveler, which gave the place a widely spread fame. Dr. Fowler lived at Tazewell from 1826 to 1835. the date of his emigration to the land now known as West Virginia, and of Summers County.

Dr. Thomas Fowler was a direct descendant of the English Fowlers, among his ancestors there having been the Lord Mayor of London, and another, an English Episcopal bishop of that name.

Dr. Fowler's grandfather came to America direct from England. He was an eminent physician, became a large owner of slaves, and acquired into one plantation a large part of the territory around Indian Creek, on which he erected a fine brick mansion on a beautiful eminence overlooking the New River, and almost opposite the Crump mansion on the noted Crump's Bottom, across the river. This brick mansion is still standing and will stand for ages.

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The walls are very thick, of brick and mortar, with fine locust doors and window facings, and dressed stone basements. The building is located on one of the most beautiful natural locations in all the country.

The lands of Dr. Fowler have been divided up, and are now held by many farmers. The mansion, with about 150 acres of the home place, is now owned by Mr. Tabor, of Arkansas, who purchased it from Captain C. R. Price some three years ago. Chas. A. Raber, Ward Simms, Dr. Wykel, and a number of others own the remainder of the lands.

At the time of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, the estate of Dr. Fowler owned a number of slaves, who, with their descendants, reside in the county, among them is Susan Muse, who lives in Hinton, and her son Samuel. Hon. I. C. Fowler, a few years ago learned accidentally that Susan's lot in Hinton was advertised for sale for non-payment of taxes. He immediately sent the writer a check to redeem the lot, and something for Aunt Susan besides; Patrick Lee was another of his slaves, with Oliver Lee and Amy Banks, his children, who live in Hinton at this time; Willis Dickinson, Beverly Stanard and others of his slaves now live at Stockyards. A number of these colored people remained long after their emancipation at the Fowler place, and were loath to leave their old masters, so greatly were they beloved, and some remained with them in the old place until the last of the Fowler descendants had parted with the last remnant of the estate. Patrick Lee and his wife, "Aunt Sallie" (the latter still living in Hinton), were deeded about 150 acres to enable them to spend their old age in comfort, free and without a cent's pay, by the children of Dr. Fowler, Mrs. Pearis, Mrs. Johnston and Hon. I. C. Fowler, so kindly did they feel towards these faithful servants.

Dr. Fowler left surviving him six children, Hon. I. C. Fowler, of Bristol and Abingdon, who died in 1905; Dr. Allen Fowler, who died in May 1902, in Salt Lake City, where he located after the war, having accumulated a large fortune and acquired a great reputation as a physician and surgeon.

Hon. I. C. Fowler was five times elected to the House of Delegates of Virginia and was the Speaker of that body. He was a politician of character and a statesman of ability — stumped the State in the days of the Funders and the Readjusters; was one of the trusted followers, counselors, and lieutenants of Gen. William Mahone in his political career in the Old Dominion.

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He, with his brother, Elbert Fowler, founded the "Bristol News," a newspaper, at Bristol, Virginia-Tennessee, and was its chief editorial writer for many years. He was a brilliant, forceful, and clear-cut writer. He was later appointed by Judges Paull and Bond as clerk of both the U. S. District and Circuit Courts, which positions he held until his resignation on account of failing health, when his son-in-law, Stuart F. Lindsay, was appointed as his successor. He was a soldier in the Confederate Army and a Republican in politics.

The second son of Dr. Thomas Fowler died in Texas in 1867. The third son, Hon. Elbert Fowler, died in Hinton, on March 21, 1884. A more extended sketch will be found elsewhere in this book.

There were two daughters, Amanda L., who married Dr. Robert. Pearis, and died several years ago; Mary, who married Hon. James D. Johnston, also died a few years ago; he was one of the eminent lawyers of Southwest Virginia. The only child of Dr. Fowler now living is Mrs. Amanda Pearis, who resides in Roanoke, Va. She had two children, Fowler Pearis, a mining engineer of note, who recently died while in the employment of the Norfolk & Western Railway Company; and Miss Louise, who resides with her mother in the city of Roanoke. Hon. I. C. Fowler left no sons. Dr. Allen Fowler was never married. Hon. Elbert Fowler left two sons, Bailey and Elbert, who are now citizens of Georgia. The daughters of I. C. Fowler are Mrs. Stuart F. Lindsay, Mrs. Mary Louise Preston, and Mrs. Priscilla Chapman Fowler Goodwyn.

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PART II

ISAAC CHAPMAN FOWLER

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

IN HIS OWN WORDS

1897

ISAAC CHAPMAN FOWLER - AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY – IN HIS OWN WORDS 1897

(TRANSCRIBED FROM ORIGINAL – AS WRITTEN)

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Up in the beautiful hills in Tazewell, Virginia, 2500 feet above high tide where amid its bluegrass and ferns, the Clinch fills its crystal urns and starts on its silvery path to the sea, - at nine o’clock on Friday morning, the 2nd of September, 1831 I first became a member of the human family. My mother was then aged 29 and my father 33. It was by no means an unimportant period in the life of our planet. The American Republic was then less than fifty years old. Washington had been dead but a third of a century and the Great Napoleon but a decade. Jackson had been on the throne of the Union a year and a half and as a rustic monarch of the new world, was ready to crush the serpent of Nullification. It was the dawn of the Steam Age. The first Railway of the World had just been built, between Baltimore and Ellicott City, and the first vessel propelled exclusively by steam had just crossed the Atlantic, from Halifax to England. The American Continent had nothing better in the way of travel and transportation than the horse and the mule.

Jackson had ridden on horseback to Washington and while taking the oath as President, had left his horse hitched at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue. Mankind had yet to wait ten years for the iron moldboard, twenty years for the threshing machine, fourteen years for the telegraph, forty-five years for the telephone, sixteen years for the Chloroform in surgery, and fifty years for the electric light. There was not a railroad in Virginia. The old stagecoach with its inspiring bugle was a luxury enjoyed only by exceptional communities.

The farmer still threshed his wheat with the same flail used by the patriarch on the plains of Judea, and the matrons of Virginia still wove the homespun on the hand looms that had come down from the ages gone. American manufacturers were practically unknown and goods imported were hauled in the then-familiar four-horse wagon for hundreds of miles from the heads of navigation on our streams, across mountains, to reach the frontier edges of civilization. A weekly mail was a luxury and new, “fresh” from London, and was forty days old on its arrival. Postage on a letter was for all distances over 50 miles, 25 cents, to be paid in money, until sixteen years later when the postage stamp was evolved from the brain of a genius.

The wonderful simplicity of the envelope was to remain unknown for fifteen years and the red wafer was in constant use.

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Chicago was a Hamlet of but twelve families aside from the garrison of Fort Dearborn. Girarf had just provided the amazing charity which has imbedded his fame in eternal granite, and which still towers above the loftiest works of the century.

Texas was still sleeping in the embrace of Mexico and California, with its golden viscera having for 17 more years to remain unknown. Thirty-one years had yet to elapse before Bessemer could give the Steel Rail to Commerce and for fifteen years women had to wait for the sewing machine.

For the third of a century longer the American slave had to wear his chain and the phonograph and typewriter and the bicycle and the trolley car and the “x-ray” were still invisible in the far-off haze that enveloped the coming close of the century.

The autumn of life is so short that now, at the age of 66 years, I may not find leisure from business sufficient in which to commit to writing such events of my own life as may be of interest to those family and friends who are to survive me.

The history of a single individual, born into the world in an important age and steered by a purpose, to be honest and useful, ought not to be uninteresting to those who have the time to read it. The great majority of persons, be it observed, have not yet been born at all. Countless numbers may never be, and yet who knows? If time can continue throughout Eternity, which is not impossible, it might and would be otherwise. Still a single life, honest and frankly recorded, ought to furnish some light to others who follow.

I said, or rather intimated, I was born, but the fact is I was not much more than born. After the period called birth, I was for many months going through the process called incubation. I was a very delicate specimen of mankind – so delicate that my parents had little hope, if any, that I would reach maturity. I lacked vital physical force. I soon became a victim of croup, and for many a night, my mother abandoned all idea of sleep and tried to loan me a portion of her own life, to bridge the deficiencies of mine. I was pronounced a precocious child and despite my feebleness, walked and pronounced the name of my nurse at the age of nine months. My maternal Grandfather, Isaac Chapman, of Ripplemead, Giles County, Va., took me on his knee, and after I had spelled for him “the Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser” gave me his own name.

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My parents were then visiting the old Chapman homestead, at Chapman & Snidow’s Ferry (now Ripplemead).

My parents continued to reside at Jeffersonville, now Tazewell, till the autumn of 1835, when they removed to “INDIAN” or Mouth of Indian Creek, on New River, Monroe County, Va. I remember many events of my four years at Tazewell, and distinctly do I remember the trip, on horseback and by wagon, to Indian, distant 60 miles. Prior to our leaving Tazewell, as a hopeful experiment, my parents sent me across Rich Mountain to spend some days with the Daugherty family in Thompson Valley, some few miles south of Jeffersonville. It was a family of old maiden ladies, who were first cousins of Hon. John Letcher of Rockbridge County, who in 1859, was elected Governor of Virginia, and subsequently known as the “War-Governor”. But the elevated atmosphere of Thompson Valley failed to furnish the expected relief and I well remember that at a late hour at night, I found my Father bending over me and asking me if I knew him. I had another attack of croup.

The Bluegrass and ferns of Tazewell, with its crystal streams over their clean, gravelly beds, possessed a charm which subsequent change of home never erased from my memory and when, after the interval of seventeen years, I returned to Tazewell to live, seemed as fresh and as charming as ever. There is a fragrance in its verdure, a beauty in its foliage and flowers and a rapture in its landscape which no other country has ever presented to my senses and even to this day they come trooping spontaneously down the avenues of brain and sense wreathed with the immortelles of youth and adding indescribable charm to the sunset of life. O. Tazewell, I look back beyond the obstacles and sorrows through which for two-thirds of a century I have fought and over which I have fallen and I see about than a halo of beauty so divine as “fancy never could have grown and never can restore.”

About 1820 my father came to Blountville, Sullivan County, Tennessee, where he commenced under Dr. Elkanah Delaney, the study of medicine. Thither he came from Parrottsville, Cocke County, Tennessee, where he was born in July 1798, being the oldest child of Dr. Thomas Fowler and his wife, who was Mary Baldridge. He afterward attended Medical lectures of Transylvania University at Lexington Ky. Returning to Blountville he found himself out of money, having exhausted his means in the pursuit of a professional education, after his course of study at Washington College under the celebrated “Elder Dr. Doak”, Wishing to prospect in South West Virginia he accepted from Dr. Delaney the loan of a horse, saddle and bridle and ten dollars in money. The ten dollars was never used by him as he met with immediate practice on his way to pay the expenses of his trip as far as Tazewell. There he met with a reception so hospitable that he determined to remain.

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Such was his immediate success that at an early day he returned to his old friend, Dr. Delaney, the money, horse, saddle, and bridle so kindly loaned him. After about a year of practice in Tazewell he again attended the Transylvania lectures. A copy of his carefully and handsomely written notes of these lectures now in my possession, shows this to be in 1824. In 1820 Col. John B, George, one of his earliest Tazewell friends, was married to Miss Rhoda Pearis, of Pearisburg, Giles County, Va., on which wedding occasion my father was selected as “Best Man” and there he met Miss Priscilla Chapman, who was leading Bride’s Maid, and who became my mother.

In those olden days, regardless of distance, at the close of the wedding festivities, the select members of the wedding party accompanied the bridle pair to the home of the groom, where a bountiful and joyous reception

awaited them. In this case, the distance was 60 miles, in emphatically a frontier country. Roads were imperfect and the only practical means of travel was by horse and saddle. During that two days travel and the return trip to Giles, Dr. Thomas Fowler and Miss Priscilla Chapman were by the conventionalities of the time were almost exclusive companions. In the course of time, they married, at the “Old Ferry”, in Giles and again in due time they returned to Tazewell to live.

The life of a Tazewell physician was of necessity a life in the saddle and so great was my father’s practice, I have heard my mother say that during one entire year, there was not a day during which he was at home for the entire 24 hours. Typhoid fever was then prevalent in the county.

On the south side of Main Street, Tazewell is still standing, in good condition, the frame dwelling he erected and which he occupied until 1835, the date of his removal from the county. In the cavernous soil of Tazewell, it was difficult to secure well water, but a “Crook” named Curtsinger, proposed to dig a well on the Fowler lot, his pay to be increased in case of success. He was a profane man, whose chief peculiarity was a habit of talking to himself, and he placed implicit faith in the Peachtree divining rod.

In his exploration of the lot he was overheard saying at one point, where he paused, “Just there is a very small stream of water by G-D”.

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It ended up in his digging at that point and the small stream was found, but it was too small to be satisfactory. I remember, with the distinctness characteristic of early impressions, accompanying my father uptown as he made his daily visits to superintend officially the erection of Tazewell’s first brick court house which outlived him, lasting for nearly half a century. I remember asking him in my crude explorations for knowledge, the meaning of such words as “Tazewell”, and tomorrow”, and how unsatisfactory to my hungry mind were his well-meant replies that “this is Tazewell”’ and that tomorrow meant “when we had slept all night”.

Many times, I wended my confident and important way to the store of Rees T. Bowen and told him I wanted “Marbles” and he always told me to go behind his counter and help myself from the sack in which they were kept, on the lower shelf entirely within my reach. Little did he then think that nearly forty years in the future I would be in the game of political marbles – would edit and own a leading newspaper in S/W. Va., and be one of the governing forces necessary to his election to a seat in the American Congress. I never forgot Rees T. Bowen, and those marbles he gave had much to do with his term in the House of Reps. He was my friend in childhood and I was his friend in his advancing age. Still, later my heart bled when I read the telegram which told me that he had in the night time fell through a hatchway in one of the Tazewell Hotels, receiving injuries that in a few days ended his life.

But, the glories of Tazewell life soon ended for me. As a passing cloud across the sun, their wave of light swept past me and I simply remember finding myself aroused from slumber in a bed of sweet-scented hay that one of our moving wagons contained. All unknown to me we had started from Tazewell to Monroe. In a short while, we came upon my father and mother, who mounted on horseback, had gone ahead. At my earnest request, I was transferred from the hay to the horse. My father having provided for the emergency, a leathern strap by which I was secured against accident.

Our first day’s journey ended at the residence of Howard Bane, Esq’r, 13 miles east of our late home. The second day we reached the head of the East River and on the third day the mouth of that stream, now known as the Norfolk and Western R.R., Glen Lynn, and that as the home of the

Toney family. I well remember a game of marbles, which upon our arrival, was being played by boys, both white and black. The fourth day ended our 60-mile journey. We landed at the Mouth of Indian Creek, Monroe County, Virginia, now known in the United States Postal Guide as Mouth of Indian, West Virginia.

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We halted our tired teams at the Butcher House, a neatly daubed and whitewashed log building with stone chimneys, situated on the edge of a 50-acre meadow, between Indian Creek and New River at their junction. Just opposite on the north side of the creek, was the William McDaniel homestead, another log house of structure similar to the one already alluded to. Near it was an old grist and sawmill, which my father quickly proceeded to demolish for in a few days the McDaniels moved out and we moved in, the former going to the new state of Indiana, where they prospered greatly.

This locality without any choice of my own became my future home for seventeen years. During that period there grew up the most intimate acquaintance between myself and its briars, thorns, thistles, snakes, and stony paths.

But it had deer, foxes, catamounts, ‘coons, possums, hares, squirrels, woodchucks, and fish, and I and my brother, Thomas, more than three years younger than I managed to get from those 17 years at Indian, a deal of the better phases of life.

Indian was the site of an ancient Indian burial ground. The level lands, which were the chief attractions of the locality abounded in leaden bullets and the remains of Indian pottery which we found in countless fragments, but never in complete vessels. Arrowheads and stone hatchets of the most beautiful construction was abundant. In 1840 there occurred a great flood in the New River Valley, that in some places so washed the soil that these evidences of past contests between whites and Indians were laid bare in wonderful profusion.

Despite all that was new to me there was a great vacuum in my soul. My memory ran back to Tazewell. My little town comrades were missing. No longer could I go to the store of Rees Bowen and ask for marbles. No longer did my father lead me in the activities that were evoked by the construction of the new court building.

Indian had no comrades for me. A single family lived only 300 yards distant from us, but my ambitious mother forbade me the privilege of associating with them and there were none other nearer than two miles. These were no better and day after day, I was lonely that the memory thereof still darkens the picture of Indian.

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Oh! Does the reader of these lines know what it is to the youthful inquirer to the lonely? Socially I had nearly as well have been on the Antarctic Continent, with my parents, one younger brother, and three negro slaves.

But my father seemed pleased with all this that so disappointed me and my mother was simply happy in his satisfaction. He had been led to believe that the James River and Kanawha Canal scheme of Washington would materialize and that Indian was in its pathway to the Ohio. Already he and some friends in Giles County had caught the dream of Railroad possibilities and they insisted that the first railway from the Chesapeake must meet the Canal at Indian. So he proceeded to purchase more land. James Gore owned a river and mountain farm on the river two miles below Indian and it “joined us”. So, the Gore farm was bought for $2000.00, and when added to the McDaniel $6000.00 purchase we had 2000 acres of farm, which had at heavy expense to be improved. It may be that some other youth in the Western Hemisphere has left more perspiration on its soil, and from his lungs and soil exhale more clouds of regret than did I in my fifteen years of exploration, pilgrimage, and toil, through the defiles and jungle and over the torrid declivities of this “Gore Farm”, but I doubt it and this doubt approaches the intensity of a religious conviction. Yet it was not wholly one-sided. Its uplands shot out into the New River Valley at one point with a promontory that was covered in the verdure of supreme beauty. One could stand at Indian three miles away and in the afternoon observe the cattle grazing on its amazing tilted surface till there would steal into the soul a picture of the heavenly lands. I would not be a true historian of the golden age of Indian if I should fail to add that the heavenly parallel failed to materialize in the realistic. When in April 1852, I took my departure from Indian for the sweet land of Tazewell again and took one last look at this promontory of heaven I was filled with ethereal delight.

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In a year from our first arrival at Indian my mother’s parents, Isaac Chapman and wife – at the Old Ferry – now Ripplemead, in Giles County – died, their deaths occurring in quick succession.

This wrought another link in the Indian chain, for we fell heir at once to five more negro slaves, and my first recollection is that one winter night my mother told me to go to the kitchen and tell “Uncle Jesse” she wished to see him in “the house”.

I was surprised to see that instead of five negro slaves we had ten seated about the immense old-fashioned fireplace. Some six or seven years later my father purchased another negro man, making our number of slaves, eleven.

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The purchase was due largely to the fact that the slaves of our neighbor, Mordecai Roles, two miles above us on Indian Creek, were at enforced sale, to pass into other hands and Patrick, the one alluded to, importuned my father to purchase him. It may be well to remark here that at the time of emancipation, these slaves had increased in number to 35. We would not sell these and we could not sell the farm even if we had been so inclined.

Successive purchases of adjoining lands were made and so the farm became larger and more unmanageable. Its largest besetment consisted in the fact that its tillable portions were of various areas so disjoined that most of them required separate enclosures entirely. A division fence between fields was the exception. Many of them were far beyond the field of vision, which the homestead commanded. Everywhere was sandstone and shale. Grasses had to be sown and cultivated. Fences were poor and stock owned by others and running at large, depredated upon our fields with a degree of enterprise that filled me with a supreme dislike of the whole region.

As I was a delicate youth it became a conceded and ruling policy of the household that I should “rough it”. I became quite active and found myself intensely useful in looking after the roguish hogs, cattle, and sheep that complimented our enclosed lands by forsaking other foraging grounds for them. Every disposition on my part to kick against this free use of my anatomy was at once politely repelled by the flattering declaration that I could attend to it more reliably and intelligently than others. Then it was too “good for my health”, they declared, that nothing else must be thought of.

Roads were few and horrible. I soon became an expert horseback rider and as a general agent and messenger, I was pronounced a success. Our nearest Post Office was Red Sulphur Springs, distant five miles up the Creek. All sorts of workers in wool, iron, or leather, all flouring mills, wool carding machines, and stores were distant from 6 to 12 miles. While few and distant they were needed by our family with a frequency that I grew weary of and for any and all trips I was held in convenient and constant reserve.

My education in this line was progressing beautifully until it became a settled conviction that the corn and harvest fields of the farm offered to me an opening that ought not to be longer neglected. I was anxious to be regarded as generally expert and before I knew the danger I had so distinguished myself in this new role that I no longer was permitted to abandon it.

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Oh, how I did welcome the old log field schoolhouse. It was distant more than two miles over roads and Across creeks that would have been deemed intolerable save as a means of escape from the horrors of the field.

I had been taught at my mother’s knee, through Webster’s Speller, and even to read to a limited extent. About 1837 my Uncle Abijah Fowler, one of the authors of Fowler’s Arithmetic, at a late hour of a wintry night, arrived with a “carry-all” load of his books and halloed at our front gate. My mother exclaimed, “that is Abijah Fowler’s voice”. He lived 200 miles distant and had not been seen by her for years, but women’s intuition was in this instance verified and in a few minutes our social circle was ablaze with his fund of anecdote and personal reminiscence. In a few days, he organized quite a large “Thirty days arithmetic school”. Both sexes were admitted, most of the pupils being adults. Three times per day – morning, noon, and evening, the entire school stood up in a row and repeated every table and rule in the book – all speaking at once.

There was a degree of pleasing excitement and of delightful emulation, a rhythm and unanimity of action that was wonderfully promotive of progress. The entire lesson soon became so thoroughly learned by all and was delightfully easy and beautiful that the exercise was awaited and looked for with inexpressible anxiety. Of course, the hours between these recitations were devoted to the study of examples so that at the close of the thirty days term there was scarcely one so dull as not to have mastered the work. This old system has passed into disuse, but it is by no means certain that it has been or will be improved upon.

But to the “Old log” or “Old Field Schoolhouse”. In the autumn of 1840 one George B. Vass, a native of the vicinity, by drawing on the hills and hollows within a radius of three miles, succeeded in organizing a country school of fair size. Neither age nor size presented any bar to matriculation into varied but limited classes. Far up in a wooded hollow near the only Mill within ten miles of Indian, the principal patrons of the school met and with axes chopped timber down enough to make a necessary opening which they erected of unhewn logs, simply daubed with mud and covered with clapboards. In its northern end was the great old fireplace, on its eastern side there was the door, made of boards and framed o wooden hinges, while on the west side, there was an opening for the only window of this crude building. It was some twelve feet in length, made by sawing out one of the logs, and simply contained a single row of panes of glass.

In front of it, there was a sloping poplar plank on which the pupils by turns practiced at penmanship. Except when the weather permitted the open door the only light to the school room was admitted by this writer’s window and the great old widemouthed chimney. The seats were of split puncheons, with auger holes for the reception of very crude legs.

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Near this building was erected a smaller one for the Teacher’s residence. The school was to last a year and it opened with the winter.

At the dinner hour, each male pupil was required to repair to the steep wooded hillsides and procure and chop his proportion of the firewood for the use of the school.

The Teacher should be mentioned as a fine sample of honesty, for he had lost his little all on a drove of horses and was withal of so heavily in debt that, to protect himself, he filed his petition in Bankruptcy, but all the same undertook to pay these debts, even though it should take his lifetime to do so. So that during this school term, before breakfast, at noon, and at the evening hour, he grubbed a few acres on the hillside contiguous to the schoolhouse and by his own manual labor produced thereon the means of providing partially for his scanty table in the little log cabin. The product of his labor as a teacher he scrupulously divided among his creditors. For years afterward, he taught and grubbed till he paid the last farthing, then went to Indiana and died there.

Twice a day, at noon and at the close of the day, the entire school “stood up to spell”, the successful one passing to the head of the column. A small prize was promised by this poor man to the pupil who during the entire year should “stand head” oftenest. At the end of the year, this prize was awarded to me with the remark that I had stood head more than half the time.

Mr. Vass used the birch rod liberally and while I excelled in spelling and in other branches. I also succeeded in getting my share o the Birch branch. After the expiration of this year in the woods Mr. Vass was employed by my father for a year as a teacher of our family school, using therefore the comfortable old Butcher House where we first landed on our removal from Tazewell.

I at one and the same time respected and hated this man Vass. Young as I was, respected him for his hard-fisted honesty. It appeared to me that a man who, in the face of and under the protection of the Bankruptcy law, would live in the woods as he did and grub Dogwood and Sourwood saplings for a scanty remuneration, sleep in a room where he cooked his meals – for he was unmarried – in order to divide through long years among his creditors the little pay he got, and should thus tough it and rough it and patiently endure it all, was entitled to my respect.

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But he singled me out of his large school for the first victim of his birch rod. I had laughed out in school and he coldly sent one of my fellow pupils to the wooded hillside for a birch rod and when it was brought in, he demanded that I should walk in front of him, and in the view of the entire school, while he should publicly chastise me. I absolutely refused to go. He even pleaded with me to do so, but I stubbornly refused. At last, he led me to believe that if I would obey him by taking the position demanded, he would not apply the rod to me. I then stepped out and he immediately proceeded to castigate me unmercifully. He evidently exhibited much feeling against me in doing so. Meantime the entire school looked on with satisfied surprise. I was unspeakably humiliated. I felt he had abused my confidence and deceived me. I believed then and believed yet, at the end of half a century, that he deliberately and weakly a public example of me for the purpose of the effect it would have over the other pupils of whom he was actually afraid. My father’s family exceeded in wealth and rank the other patrons of the school. Mr. Vass thought that if I were made the first victim of his authority it could not subsequently be said of him, by more obscure pupils, that he chastised them because they were socially weaker than I.

From that hour, I despised him and I even swore on that silent and unseen altar which has been planted in every proud though youthful breast that if I should live to manhood, Vass and I could live peacefully toward each other only by existing in widely separated communities.

But he had many virtues. He was a man of delicate physique. His hair was fine, straight, and fearfully black. His compaction was like yellow tallow but I never saw among the blue veins, that were ever visible on his forehead and his hands, the slightest tinge or indication of arterial glow. His countenance was cold and unfeeling. I went ahead as best I could with spelling, writing, and reading. It was my good fortune to have my father procure for me a number of Farley’s books. It was lucky for me to have my very first lessons in reading in the pure and simple style in which they were written. Farley’s Tales, Farley’s Bible Stories, and Farley’s Asia and Farley’s England, and Farley’s Oceanica, were devoured by me with a curiosity and delight that almost reconciled me to Vass for the time. I had one more year of him at the old Butcher House and then my cousin, Robert A. Pearis, wishing to study medicine under my father, agreed to teach our private school in the same building, at the same time pursuing his own studies. At this time my brother Thomas was practically my sole companion, but John Tiffany, Esqr. Who lived ten miles distant, wished to avail himself of the advantages of our school and it was agreed that his son Charles, who was of companionable size for us, should board with us and go to our school.

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This was a great streak of luck for us. The difference between the social pleasure and enjoyment incident to a year’s contact of two boys, and of three boys may be described as immense. We had dogs, a gun, a fishing

tackle, and a canoe. The river was on one side of us and Indian Creek on the other. The streams were stocked with catfish and the eddies abounded in bullfrogs and turtle.

Our school had new rules inaugurated by my father, giving us study hours from sunrise till eleven o’clock a.m., the frolic till 3 p.m., and study till sunset. That four hours at midday was largely spent, during the summer season in the river, for we soon learned to swim. On rare occasions at night, we went with neighboring young men “gigging” or spearing fish, using huge torches made of the rich pine in which portions of the river hills abounded. On frosty autumn nights, we hunted the raccoon and the opossum being always accompanied by some of the negro men belonging to the family.

The last I ever saw of my first teacher, Mr. Vass, was in March 1852. I went on a business trip to Logan Court House, now West Virginia. I had heard that Anthony Lawson, a greatly successful merchant of the region wished to employ a clerk. I was very tired of life at Indian and I concluded to ask Mr. Lawson in person. Oh, what a lonely ride of a hundred miles. The eternal silences that greeted and grieved De Soto could hardly been exceeded the major portion of that trip. I spent my second night with a friend and relatives at Oceana, then quite a new town County town of Wyoming County. To my amazement I there met Mr. Vass, who had gone there to teach a school. For the first time in all my acquaintances with him, his demeanor toward me was that of pleasant familiarity. He knew I was a recent student of Emory and Henry College and I teaching a class in surveying he had encountered a problem that neither he nor his class could solve.

He thought I was his man and he at once applied to me to help him out of the difficulty. I promised to do so on my return home, and to write him the solution, which I did, as follows: The problem is:

From a station P, there can be seen three objects, A., B., & C., whose distances from each other are known; Now there are measured the horizontal angles, A.P.C.: - B.P.C., It is required to find the three distances, P.A., P.C., and P.B.

(It should be premised that any three points – for instance, A.P. & B. – can all be put in the rim of one common circle?

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Now then, draw or describe the Circle that will have in its circumference, or ri, the three points A.P. & B. Then mark the point O where the line C.P. intersects the circle. And by drawing the lines we have the following figure.)

Problem:

From a station marked P. three objects are shown, Whose distances, each from the other are known; And the angle each makes with the others from P. Are each of them known – (B.P.A. –B.P.C.) Now the distances, each we just find from this post, Ere of reason, Mathematics, or skill we can boast.

Solution:

When the chord of a circle two triangles stand, Whose angles are all I the circumference planned, The angle of each that opposite lies to the common base are equal in size; And therefore O.P.A., your reason will show, just equals the angle marked A.C.O. So does O.P.C. equal O.A.C., - you can’t doubt this is right to the hair of a flea you can’t doubt this is right to the hair of a flea. Now you see of our figure we’ve found one chief part But observe no credit – ‘twas plain at the start. Now we know C.B., B.A. and A.C., we can find the three angles they make to a “T”. Because when here sides of a triangle are known, The angles themselves are easily shown. Now from C.A.B. taking C.A.O. we’ve O.A.B. - this the figure will show: O.A.C., O.C.A. and A.C. the base – all three being given, ‘tis quite a plain case To find the two sides, O.A. and O.C. And then in the triangle above, O.A.B., we’ve two of the sides A.B. and A.O.. Besides this the angle O.A.B. for a “go” to get the third ……..angle O.B.A – for we must - Or the same A.B.P. (you see it I trust). Then in the triangle A.B.P. we’ve a plan sir - A side and two angles to get at the answer

A.P.B., B.P.A. and B.A. are known sir – The other two sides we can easily tell sir: For a side and any other two parts of any triangle Are always enough to settle the “wrangle”.

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Then two of the sides that at first were unknown, By a simple process have been easily shown.

That other small line I am sure any “Dumber” Can get by a glance from that side of the “number”, On which the line lies, in a similar way sir; The problem is plain; so I bid you Good Day Sir.

But before I am done – one word, with your leave, Perhaps you will smile, - Ah laugh in your sleeve, To see I’m so “green”, as to mix, on one page, Demonstration and Rhyme, or my time to engage In such futile attempts to fill up a leaf;

But when one sober thought you will take at the grief Of my poor sickly Muse, as she struggles and bleeds, From such murderous use to which, my sport leads,

Your smiles will all fade, like a Summer Fly light and Your visage be dark as a “black cat at night”.

Like the free summer rain your tears will come down, And you’ll say I’m cruel as a blood-thirsty hound.

My subject’s not tame, I tell you most truly; You’ll see by his leaps he’s a colt quite unruly; You’ll see by his flounces he’s broken the fetters Which measure has placed on all of his betters. Was there ever such folly, e’en as old as the attics, To measure Demonstration and rhyme with mathematics

Indian

March 20th, 1852

I think it was the spring of 1842, that my father employed him as a teacher of a family school, for that purpose, using the “Butcher House”. It was the following year that Robert A. Pearis (The A. standing for Alexander) took charge of this family school, and for two years – 1843 & 1844 – the sovereignty of the Butcher House was transferred from Mr. Vas to him. He was my first cousin – his mother, Rebecca Chapman, who was the sister of my mother, having died in early married life. My father became his guardian and so for years, he became a member of our family. After the usual friction at the usual country schools, he decided to prosecute the study of medicine under my father, so that he became at the same time Pupil and Teacher. Under him, I was advanced to Green’s English Grammar, Mitchell’s Geography, Comstock’s Natural Philosophy, and Fowler’s – and later, other Arithmetics. These days were happy ones.

Owing to my advancement and to my age, I was permitted to leave the school room and pursue my studies where it best suited my inclinations.

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Smugly ensconcing myself among the hay stacks, in the cool and sunny days of Spring and Autumn, or beneath the Apple and Plum trees I Summer, the new and surprising beauties revealed in these books, gave me a supreme delight. But it should be understood that during the winter seasons, our Teacher visited the Philadelphia Medical College, and our school was there for not continuous.

At the close of the winter of 1844 and 1845, our teacher found himself as “M.D.”, and was at once interested in seeking for himself a location for the practice of his profession.

He first visited my father's old friends and relatives in Parrottsville, Cocke County, East Tennessee. There was said to be an excellent village school there. Tennessee though, maybe years younger than Virginia, had already outstripped the older state in that she had a rudimentary free school system, supplemented by taxation. This advantage soon bore fruit that attracted to Parrotts-ville a very competent teacher from the Olden Plains of Eastern Virginia, Powhatan Bouldin, a citizen so close to the dividing line between the counties of Charlotte and Halifax, that the county of his former home is in doubt. He was a brother of the late Judge Wood Boudin of the Virginia Court of Appeals period at Parrottsville. He was running a large and successful school, distant one mile from the farm residence of my uncle, Josiah Fowler.

My brother, Thomas B Fowler, accompanied Dr. Pearis on his Tennessee trip and became a boarder in the family of my uncle., with whose sons and daughter he attended as a pupil, the school of Mr. Bouldin In the autumn of 1845, my father concluded to visit his Tennessee friends and to have me accompany him so that I might enter Mr. Boudin's school. In September 1844, he had taken me on a mare visit to the same place. In both cases, the journey was 200 miles and both were made on horseback and in the space of six days. I was favorably impressed with the appearance of Mr. Bouldin, who was a man of fine physique fully six feet in stature and weighing some 220 pounds. He had a Roman nose and protruding chin that impressed the average pupil so greatly with his strength of purpose and with a sublime sense of his authority in general appearance. He was a silver gray and well knew how to assume an attitude of importance that never failed to make the small pupil shake in his shoes.

The side of the schoolhouse was handsome and even inspiring. Situated, north of Main Street at the rear of a commodious vacant square and the foot of a beautiful grove of native oaks that shaded the large Methodist campground stood the school building. It was comparatively new of commodious size and of frame structure, weatherboarded withoutand plastered within.

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At each end was a large brick chimney with a large fireplace for each half of the large room, which was the one distinctive feature of its plan. The west end was occupied by the male pupils and the east end for the female pupils. On the south side of the large room, there was an elevated platform on which sat and spat and presided the august and pompous Mr. Bouldin. At each end were closed desks in the wall for the reception of the books, slates, and writing material of the pupils. The immense floor space was well provided with benches of good style and there was an air of light and comfort about the entire interior that was promotive of study. The campground was an acre of ideal landscape, surrounded almost with comfortable and presentable wooden tables in the center of which stood a large and imposing shed constructed of huge oaken timbers and covered with shingles.

Immediately at one end of it was quite a comfortable and substantial building for the use of the preachers during the annual camp meeting for an epoch only 45 years down the 19th century. This was a good outfit for a country school.

There were nearly 100 pupils and many of them were grown gentlemen and ladies studying the Latin and Greek languages and similarly advanced others otherwise. And yet Mr. Bouldin used the rod.

During the long days. He sat on his wooden throne with his five-foot hickory scepter, spat his tobacco juice, and looked sublime. He had two daughters of tender age, the older, extremely ugly, and he beat her often and cruelly in the presence of the school. The younger was beautiful, winning, and bright, and he petted and caressed her but never chastised her. My heart pitied poor Tyler as she was named and my very soul burned with indignation at the brutal treatment of the unfortunate girl. I was just fourteen years of age and I greatly feared this imposing monster. My young wrath swelled within me and I nursed it along. And well, even then I had an idea that “time at length sets all things even”. He professed however to regard me with partiality and he gave me a carte blanche to enjoy together with the older male pupils the freedom of the grounds in pursuit of my studies.

By some occult and schismatic influence. The young men of the school were divided into the Parrottsville and Big Creek parties. Mr. Bouldin kept a boarding house in connection with his school and the young men from Big Creek boarded with him. It soon became the idea that Mr. Bouldin was a Big Creeker. I was necessarily one of the Parrottsville party which contained some very nice young men, though none of them were physically a match for the stalwarts from Big Creek.

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As the months wore away the feeling between the two parties became so intensified and persons outside the school participated in it. A bad pugilistic encounter occurred between one of the grown pupils and a merchant of the town, and as the two antagonists were of opposite school alignment, it made matters worse. As the town party was not equal in muscle to the Big Creek party, there was no desire on their part to participate in a collision and there was a subdued peace till the following September.

Meantime, I pursued my studies in English going through Smith's and then Boyens, English Grammar, Mitchell Geography, Fowler's Arithmetic, Pike's Arithmetic, Davies Arithmetic and Emerson's arithmetic, and Davies geometry. In the outdoor practice of my studies. I became even to some of the grown young men a teacher, especially in mathematics, a number of whom declared they preferred my instructions to those of Mr. Bouldin.

But the summer vacation put in its appearance in due time and the feuds and ambitions that were fed by daily associations had time to subside as the social life of a school dissolved for the dog days. In the meantime, let us go back for a while to the:

HOME LIFE ON CLEAR CREEK

A beautiful little stream called Clear Creek threaded its silver pathway through the environments of Parrottsville and ran westerly through a semi-wooded mile of distance to the home of my uncle Josiah Fowler, with whom I and my brother were boarding, who had spent a portion of his young manhood in getting up in partnership with his older brother, Abijah Fowler, Fowler's arithmetic. After its general introduction throughout East Tennessee, he married and settled at the point above indicated on Clear Creek and became a model and successful farmer. During the winter we spent there, it was a continuous round of enjoyable home life varied by the excitements connected with school days at Parrottsville.

In that winter of 1845-6, my uncle's family was visited by John Fowler of Laurens District, South Carolina, who brought with him his two sons. Wade Fowler, Wiley Y. Fowler and daughter Millie, all of them being grown. John Fowler was a second or third cousin of Josiah Fowler. After a delightful visit of several weeks, he and Wade Fowler returned to South Carolina, leaving Wiley and Millie, who entered Mr. Bouldin's school and remained as pupils of it till its inglorious ending to be chronicled further on in this narrative.

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These additions to our home circle enabled us to pass the long winter nights in study that were enlivened and heightened by the most delightful social intercourse in which vocal music and anecdotes abounded. John Fowler was a man of the same age as my uncle and the two were fully as mirthful as the younger pupils. Companionship with them was delightful. During the following summer, Edward Baldridge, who was also a cousin of some degree of Josiah Fowler, the latter's mother being Mary Baldridge, dropped down into the Clear Creek Ranch and there remained for several months. I think he too came from South Carolina. He was a man of fine intellectual facilities but was, as I remember, a bachelor of some fifty years and seemed to have no special aim in life. I regret that neither from him nor from my father's mother did I think to get any history of the Baldridge side of my family's house. During the year 1846, the inspiring and exciting news of the battles of Taylor and Scott with Santa Ana and Mexico reached us by the tedious process of the stagecoach, steamboat, and horse mail. But it was nonetheless interesting for the fact that the telegraph was scarcely evolved from the wonderful brain of Morse and certainly in a very limited use.

SCHOOL AGAIN

At last in the beautiful month of September, when skies looked fairest and earth looked richest, a small portentous explosion occurred in Parrottsville. The school of the august Mr. Bouldin was seemingly on Heavenly seas, and while it was drifting in sweet serenity as still as Longfellow's “Wreck of the Hesperus”, she drifted where the salt sea waves looked soft as carded wool.

It was perhaps the last Monday morning of September that on my arrival at this schoolhouse, I was told of an occurrence of the day previous that in the parlor of one of the Parrottsville families, in which reflections were made on one of my friends who was a pupil of mature years. I promptly informed him of it. The little spark became a blaze and in less than an hour, the bully of the Big Creek party attacked my aforesaid friend near the schoolhouse door.

As the fight progressed, the entire school rushed out to witness it. Prominent in this crowd was the important Mr. Bouldin, who stood within six feet of the contestants with a composure that was devilish, saw my friend overpowered by his coarse antagonist and his head beaten against the schoolhouse wall until he bled and was finally forced to call for relief. Another big creek bully then stepped forward at the sight of Mr. Bouldin and said there were some more present who needed chastisement and if such would then step forward, they would be accommodated. Mr. Bouldin waited to see that no one responded to the challenge and without having uttered a word during the whole affair, he announced that school would then be resumed.

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At night. I told my uncle of the affair and asked him if he thought that a man who would thus demean himself was a proper one to teach a school. I had stated the case allegorically, suppressing any reference to names or locality. He instantly asked me if any such case had occurred within my knowledge. I saw I had “struck oil” and frankly told him the whole truth. I saw him bite his lips and I knew Mr. Bouldin’s school was ended. Our family was represented in it by eleven cash-paying pupils and Josiah Fowler was no pawn in any Parrotsville game. The next morning a servant and two horse wagons were at my disposal for a “very determined man was this quiet uncle of mine”. At his soft command. I went to Mr. Bouldin’s schoolhouse as the sun was shifting beautifully and the very quietness of the whole scene bespoke a calm, suggestive of peace and love. The vast school minus our eleven were in their seats and Mr. Bouldin was on his throne and was quietly masticating his tobacco and spitting its Virginia juices on the floor. There was not a sound to break this unnatural silence as I timidly walked into the schoolroom. It was my last pilgrimage to the Bouldin throne. Poor Tyler and my bloody but intellectual and plucky friend were now to be avenged.

In the non-poetic language which best fitted the occasion. I informed my late teacher that my uncle had directed me to ask for the privilege of removing from the building all the books, desks, and furniture that belonged to our cabalistic eleven and that a wagon was waiting without for the purpose of removing them.

The lordly and fearful Mr. Bodine sprang from his throne as if fired from a catapult with his awe-inspiring anatomy he towered. To be brief about it. He first exploded and then declared I had just saved myself from expulsion -- that I was the cause of the whole affair that he had intended on my arrival to expel me from the school and to use a homely phrase, he proceeded in the presence of some seventy-five pupils to preach my funeral. In sundry and diverse ways. he gave vent to a towering and guilty rage that bordered on insanity. For a moment I was terrorized, but the sun was shining so sweetly overhead that I felt somewhat reassured. The audience was fine and we both had the most quiet and flattering attention. No expulsions were now needed in that school. That bright day was it's last. Next morning, of the fifty Parrotsville adherents, not one was at school, and never again did even one of them muster under Mr. Bouldin's banner. Mr. Bouldin became quickly and fearfully drunk and proceeded to terrorize the village. As he walked, the Parrotsville earth was like an enraged mastodon.

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In a few days and during his intoxication, the Methodist Camp Meeting was so close at hand that tent holders began their preparations for that interesting annual event. Mr. Bouldin walked into the sacred grounds and proceeded to insult Major Smith, the father of three of the pupils who had followed us out of the school. Within five minutes he received a thrashing that was simply indicative of retributive justice. Major Smith stamped him till he feared to progress further with the delightful pastime.

A week thence, I and my brother, accompanied by our uncle, were welcomed at Old Indian by the loving ones there who were first amazed and then delighted. We had done just right was the verdict of my father and mother. My Uncle Josiah made an exception of me and kept up for years thereafter a correspondence with me. During many of the following months he wrote me that every time he met the dethroned monarch of the Parrottsville Academy, the latter had declared to him that “Chap” Fowler had broken up his school and I always asked my uncle to reply to him that I was proud to have the credit of it.

Sixteen of the sweet years of my life had passed. I had bid adieu to Indian and had gone back to the sweet-scented summers of Tazewell. There I had married and had spent eight years of happiness and then removed to Emory, where I had been educated, after losing sight of Parrottsville. The wonderful piece that distinguished the Union had terminated and the bloody and fearful war of secession had come. East Tennessee had divided over the question of the Union. Her people had become enraged at each other and there was no longer peace within her borders. Many of those who adhered to the southern flag refuged to Virginia. It was in January 1863, almost midway through the war, that I was for a while assisting Mr. W. A. Stuart at Saltville, leaving my family at Emory where I had an apology for a store for no one could procure anything of value owing to the blockade. I had left my store clerk in charge of the store and post office during my absence in the above-named capacity. A tall, gray-headed, and gray-bearded man came plodding on foot from the west through the snow to the door of my store and asked permission of my salesman to warm himself at the fire. While doing so, he inquired the name of the proprietor and expressed a lively curiosity as to whether I had once been a pupil of his at Parrottsville, Tennessee. On being told that often I had been heard to speak of going to school at that locality, he at once remarked he must be going on and went slowly down the snowy track of the railroad leading to eastern Virginia. On my return from Saltville I was told of the matter and looking back through the intervening years I thought I could see that the storms and disappointments of domestic life had told on Mrs. Bouldin. She had died and the children had

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matured and sought the thousand by-paths that lead from the parental roof out into the wide world so that my old teacher had fled from the hostile guns and fratricidal strife between the divided people of East Tennessee and vainly sought the last Paradise at East Virginia. That broken in Fortune had bent with age and pining for the still sweet visions of younger and better days. He had undertaken the painful pilgrimage on foot to the land of his fathers; that naturally he had taken the line of railway that leads from the beautiful French Broad to the winding and slow-moving Appomattox.

My heart filled at once with sorrow over the picture I had conjured. And I greatly regretted that my absence had prevented me from giving him a welcome to my door and the pitiful aid that the war had left in my power. Of course, he has long since passed the way of man, men and I fain would hope, has passed up the golden stairs.

BACK ON THE INDIAN FARM

This rupture of the Parrotsville school resulted in my renewal of the experience of the old Indian farm and for more than a year I had the renewed delights afforded by its bruises and its briars, its snows and its torrid heat, its fishes and its fruits. For Indian was a land of the apple and the peach and the grape. New River was a stream of alternate shoals and eddies and its waters were of delightful temperature at summer time. I became an expert swimmer being at the curious and inquiring age of sixteen. I became quite a reader. My father had a fair library which I took every opportunity to utilize and I eagerly devoured every newspaper and literary monthly I could procure up to this period of my life. My experience had alternated between the farm life and the seclusion of Indian and the delights of school life away from home. I could but sympathize with the kindly-hearted Negro slaves with whom I had at times toiled in the field but who had no intermissions of relief from its terrible monotony.

I found myself unconsciously but steadily drifting into sympathy with the anti-slavery cause. I took in what appeared to me to be the enormity of human slavery, and I often conversed with my parents on the then-utopian idea of the freedom of the Negro slave.

Our own slaves were increasing in numbers and in the necessary life with them on the farm, I found them always kindly disposed, loyal to me, and even companionable in many ways. I looked eagerly forward to the day when I would be emancipated from the horrors of lonely country life and the hardships and exposure of the farm.

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But as I listened to the monotonous songs of these slaves and witnessed their exclusion from the

satisfaction of books and from the hope that education inspires, I could see no bow of promise in their sky, and my heart pitied them. Some of them besought me to teach them to spell and read so that they could read the Bible and the church hymns. And I was informed that the code of Virginia by Act of Assembly session of 1830 and 1831, Page 108 and of 1847 1848, page 120 enacted that “If a white person assembled with Negroes for the purpose of instructing them to read and write, he shall be confined in jail, not exceeding six months and fined, not exceeding one hundred dollars. All the same, I proceeded to do so as the opportunity offered.

These slaves owned by us were free from one source of awful dread to the slave race as a rule. They knew we would not willingly put them on the auction block. Still, the idea that as the children of my father matured, they would naturally revolt a separation of them. To some extent, this was ever present and they looked forward to it with mingled solicitude and curious interest.

At last, came the winter of 1847-8, and it was then agreed I should be sent to Emory and Henry College, the only institution of note within our reach. It was distant 100 miles across streams and mountains and was reached only by wagon roads that were quite imperfect. There was no stage route between and it was an absolute necessity that its students should take with them their own outfits. Taking advantage of some wagons that were going to Saltville which is distant ten miles from the college. I, in the cold and dreary days of early January, landed at Emory and Henry and introduced myself to President Charles Collins, was assigned to room 36 third story West Wing of the College building with Oscar Wylie of Botetourt County, now, Dr. Wylie of Salem and my roommate. The almost intolerable loneliness of my first college days surpassed, if possible, that of Indian, but soon gave way to delightful companionships that were speedily formed and I found my new life filled and expanded with intense satisfaction, often resulting from enlarged literacy and social advantages. The thorns and exclusion of Indian formed in my mind imperishable background on which the real life I had commenced and the luminous hopes of the future took shape in pictures that made me supremely happy. But trooping across this bright picture came gloomy convictions that the slaves had left in fields of Indian could look forward to no future brighter than their then present.

During the two entire years of 1848-9 that I remained at Emory for such the college post office was called. I devoted myself to the completion of the English course of study. I soon joined the Hermesian Society and having access to its library, I gratified my thirst for reading by resort to those offers most celebrated for the purity of their style, such as Prescott, Irving, Addison, Macaulay, Milton, and Walter Scott.

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During 1848. Reverend Frederick A. Ross, D.D., a Presbyterian Divine of East Tennessee, invaded the college vicinity on a purely doctrinal mission. He was a declared Calvinist and one of the ablest Logicians in the country. The college and all its staff were Methodists. The college being the child of the Holston Methodist Conference. The notorious “Parson” Brownlow of the Knoxville Whig was a violent advocate of Armenianism. He and Ross had collided in the literary debates that distinguished that period. This oratory and doctrinal invasion of Dr. Ross was resented by the Methodist and very heated and interesting discussions in the vicinity of the college resulted during one of the large occasions of this kind being a very large assemblage of old Glade Spring Church.

To hear him, I made a pencil portrait of him that was pronounced lifelike and I soon found myself famous among the students of the College and this spread into the faculty of the college. Then consisting of President Charles Collins and Professor E. E. Wiley and Edmund Longley, all Northern men. I was quickly overwhelmed with applications for many of these to make like portraits of them. This pressure soon amounted to quite an obstacle to the proper pursuit of my studies. At first, the idea of receiving any remuneration for such services was repugnant to me and I stoutly refused every offer of money that was made to me. At last, however, I was compelled to charge for these portraits in order to lessen the number of applications that I found my lean purse replenished so that I was no longer scarce of pocket money. It was told and retold to me. I was destined to become an artist and a distinguished career as such was predicted. If all this happened in this age of railways and cheap fares to Europe, it might have been. But at the close of 1849, fate took me back to Indian and that was sufficient to snuff out any flame of artistic ambition. I had no one to look to in a line that seemed fated to the seclusion of some European attic for years to come. I was again bitten by the water snakes of Indian and bled by their thorns and briars and various experiences, including quite an experience in teaching again at a family school. I formed a plan of getting a position as a salesman in some mercantile establishment with a view to becoming a merchant. For this seemed to me the speediest way to a little money. I found I could do nothing in life till I had first accumulated some money. This was no sort of desire on my part. What is money? It is stored up power. It is accu-mulated labor. It is hard to be a force in the world till one has a cash storage battery of financial power. Without it, Rome would and could never have been built. Without it Napoleon would have been unknown. Without it Caesar would never have had his map of the world. Without it, Columbus could not have gotten beyond the three-league belt of the Spanish coast. Without it, Inglewood never have led the Anglo-Saxon march of man.

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Morse could not move his telegraphic key to Congress in its closing revel of drink voted him forty thousand of power. Then he moved the clock of ages forward. It is true that on my return from Emory, I had found Indian improved by the erection of a large and elegant brick dwelling. It was spacious and imposing and standing on a fine promontory that commanded a sweeping view of the New River Valley for five miles. It was a thing of delight to any beholder. Still, I longed for a broadened horizon than that of Indian and I saw no means of easier exit than the one I have alluded to. To my disappointment, I found the scheme difficult of execution. There were no such openings near Indian. Wherever I applied, I found the proprietors had sons and relatives whom they were disposed to employ. At last to the westward still further in the wooded frontiers. I heard of two situations that were said to be open to some aspiring young man. One was at Wyoming a hundred miles across on the Guyandotte and the other some thirty miles further at Logan Court House.

After a long and lonely journey heretofore alluded to, I found both positions filled by family friends of the respective proprietors and I returned disappointed. At last, in the rainy gloom through which the month of April 1852 entered the Zodiac. I received a letter from my cousin John C. MacDonald at Tazewell stating that if I chose to visit him sixty miles across the woods of Mercer, he would give me employment for a few weeks. The next morning, I was in the saddle headed for Tazewell. As I ascended to the Mercer County Highlands and looked backward, I took a farewell look at the silver stream of the New River winding beneath the elegant mansion where I had left the anxious parents who had so hopefully watched my youthful footsteps. I felt that I was leaving Indian forever through the tears of regret at leaving them behind, my soul swelled with exultant hope and I pressed on till the blue grass, valleys, and crystal streams of Tazewell arose like a vision of celestial beauty.

My wages were at first only $100 and my board. But they soon were voluntarily advanced until they had trebled. And after some months I had exclusive charge of the establishment, sold its goods, kept its books, and reduced the stock to such order that I could in the darkness put my hand on any article wanted.

LIFE IN TAZEWELL.

I had been so thoroughly disgusted with the seclusion and hardship of Indian that I was delighted beyond measure with my transference to town life at Tazewell and yet town life in the 50s was wanting in many of the luxuries that distinguished the close of the century. Water was still carried in pails from the spring or in rare instances drawn by crude devices from the well, which was by no means an improvement on those of Samaria in the days of Jesus.

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The only artificial light was the tallow candles for even the great future of kerosene had not been entered upon. It had been discovered. But save a sale in country stores under the name of “rock oil” as a remedy for rheumatism, it had no market value. Town life at Tazewell was simply intoxicating to an “Indian” boy. Instead of the dry branches and runs of the New River hills with their parched slopes of shale, I saw the perennial blue grass grow and was thrilled with the poetic impulse at its crystal waters everywhere flowing over the cleanest beds of pebble. The oldest and best families of Southwest Virginia had lovely homesteads at short intervals and in every direction. I had suddenly been landed in a new world where social intercourse was easy and delightful. Even the mountain passes that connected the loveliest of its sections were odorous of the richest woods and fragrant with their shaded ferns. For here there is a real distinct and unmistakable odor of supreme quintessence in the Tazewell Woods. Then too, I began to be regarded and acknowledged as a young man of more than average business promise to be appreciated as one of the sweets of life to those who have striven to deserve it, even if diluted by the suspicion of flattery. It is a sweet morsel to the uneducated tongue for to those without power, flattery is rarely bestowed on the unworthy.

At first, my desire to please my employer and Cousin, McDonald was so consuming that I asked his advice and approval So often that it appeared to be a source of absolute displeasure to him and it seemed as though he was disappointed in me. At length, I concluded to resent his seeming disappointment with me. My taking my own advice, obeying my own judgment, and stubbornly taking the consequences.

I soon had reason to regard my desperate remedy as success. McDonald at once became to me a changed man. He was pleasant in his manner, free in his communication with me, and on many occasions absented himself on distant business journeys, directing me to look after his entire interests until his return. He never failed on his reappearance to express his entire satisfaction as to my management of his business. I sold the goods, kept the books, made settlements of the accounts, handled the cash kindled my own fires when needed, and kept the entire store in order. To be plain:

I slept in the store. I swept up the floor.

In those days, business was far different from its present character in one respect it was like the recent department store in that it kept everything supposed to be demanded by the community, but it lacked the modern division of labor and it sadly lacked the exclusive cash principle.

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The one building contained in its one underground story and its two stories above ground. Groceries, dry goods, hardware, queensware, drugs, hats, boots, and shoes and notions. These were sold largely for country produce such as pork, bacon, hides, wheat, corn, oats, flax seed, tallow, lard, homespun goods woven on hand looms, deer skins, venison hams, fur skins, ginseng, and other mountain roots. This detail may seem homely, but this method of business is so rapidly fading that no adequate idea of the trouble of mercantile business of that period can be preserved or understood without it.

The modern elevator was unknown and the appliances that preceded it were crude and of course inconvenient. The great Logan Merchant, Mr. Anthony Lawson, heard of me and wrote me offering me increased wages if I would now come to him. I wrote him the proper reply, declining to desert my friend who had tried me when he, Lawson, feared to do so and telling him no amount of money he could offer would induce me to comply with his request.

At last, I became a victim of the dreaded dysentery that so often made me fearful of the beautiful summers and autumns of Tazewell. In a lonely room over the dining hall of my hotel, I suffered anguish while for a hundred times, I counted the blade and joints on a mammoth stalk of Indian corn, which had been by G.W.L. Brickley, author of “The History of Tazewell”, displayed on the wall in front of my bed of torture. Oh, how I now longed for the tender and almost divine hand of that mother I had left on the lonely slopes of Indian. The cheap structure of the wooden building of the hotel permitted the intolerable noises that made the dining room beneath me a confused and resonating hell to defy and absolutely prevent sleep between the spasms of pain with which I was racked till at last, at the end of a century of semi madness, a friend of the family at Indian heard of my illness and called to see me. By him I sent word to my father, Dr. Fowler, who at once came to my rescue and in due time I recovered. As was said, by this illness, I was long enfeebled but renewed my duties at the store.

I think it worthy of mention that my friend McDonald, who like all other merchants there, went north twice a year to purchase his goods on his return from one of these trips presented me with a copy of his Treatise on Business which he requested me to read and study. This book proved so valuable to me in after life that I am sure it has saved me from repeated misfortune. Three of its points I have never forgotten and I esteemed them so valuable that I cannot resist with a desire to copy them here and give them for memory; to-wit:-

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First, when everybody wishes to sell is the time to purchase. Prices are then low but never remain so.

Second, when everybody is with the idea of purchasing, it's the time to sell. Prices are then high but never remain so for long periods.

Third, never invest in any speculation no matter how sure the result may appear to you. More money than you can lose without inconvenience. Never speculate on any sum for loss of which would embarrass you. Never violate this rule for any apparent certainty of success.

I am sure that these simple rules have saved me more than once. And yet it will appear that I lost all and had to begin life anew at a time when I was loaded with a family and when all the avenues of trade were excluded by the darkness that in the southern states followed the surrender of the slave power.

Still, when I had slowly recuperated, started after an inheritance of baldness and silver hair, I recalled the fine business intellect of John C. McDonald and his kindness of purpose toward me and the wisdom of friendly, so that when the intoxication of the boom of 1890 rocked from their bases, many of the bright minds of that age, I was saved from the financial maelstrom that resulted.

In the autumn of 1858, I entered into a business arrangement with Isaac E. Chapman, which necessitated a severance of the relation between McDonald and myself. The latter was intensely opposed to my departure from his employment and in many ways he targeted me to remain. But my arrangements had gone too far to be reversed and the Mercantile House of Chapman & Fowler was open in time for the fall trade of 1853. In every respect this venture was by the public counted a success, our sales being larger than justified by our limited capital. For in Tazewell eighty percent of mercantile sales were made on indefinite time.

In the meantime, McDonald erected the largest, finest, and most imposing business house in the town, and he proceeded to fill it with a stock of goods which in volume and variety surpassed anything of the kind in the country. Business went on swimmingly in the usual ways. Large accounts and slow collections till the autumn of 1856 when McDonald, who was supposed to have based himself for a lifetime career in Tazewell, suddenly announced an entire change of plan by which he was to remove to the city of Richmond, Virginia, and to become the leading member of a large wholesale grocery and commission house. The firm of McDonald, Spotts, and Harvey, and McDonald astounded the Tazewell firm of Chapman & Fowler by proposing to sell to them his immense stock of general merchandise at Tazewell.

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The audacity of the proposition staggered us, but he proposed easy terms which meant a long time and plenty of interest at six percent. Visions of enlarged business careers for us were floated before our fervid imaginations and we first said no and later expanded into a stage of sublime satisfaction inconsistent with our refusal. We said yes. The immense invoice was taken and booming ourselves with large hopes and serene confidence. We sprang to our enlarged position at the busi-ness front for a wealthy country.

BACK A LITTLE

In 1854 I had met the girl whose modest demeanor, bright eyes, and tasteful attire caught me. And on December 8th of that year, I was married to Miss Keziah McDonald Chapman. We rented a small dwelling and began real life on a scale that was modest and moderate. My father and mother presented us with a couple of slaves, Melinda and her son Beverley and in true Virginia style, we found ourselves slaveholders. In a short time, we purchased a lot and erected on it a small cottage and soon had it surrounded with fruit trees, vines, and roses. At the end of half a decade, three tiny graves under the blue grass sod of the town cemetery told of the only sorrow that clouded our young lives.

As time ran on. We grew into the confidence and affection of the leading families of the county and when all else looked roseate and blissful, there slowly across in the mind the conviction that business conditions were becoming unpropitious. To his great amazement, I whispered to my partner in business that we need better sell out and proceed to secure and harvest results, by collections and payments. Vowing he would not even entertain nor discuss the proposition. He on the following morning informed me that he had slept, or rather not slept on it, and concluded the idea was worth entertaining. And a few days we had made a sale and it was soon decided that Mr. Chapman should remain in Tazewell and close up our beautiful and tidy home to the tender care of a tenant and with our little eight-month-old Nanny Bell, bade goodbye to all the sweet lights and shadows on Tazewell and removed to Emory in Washington County. Friends protested and pled, but the step had been too firmly taken to admit of hesitation and with many a tear and many a sad farewell, we drove our horses forty miles across the mountains and watered them in the Crystal Spring at Emory.

We were still in bluegrass land. It was not like Tazewell, Redolent of eternal beauty and odorous of the rhododendron and Fern. But we were at the railroad, the only one west of the Blue Ridge.

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It had long appeared to me that the valley north of Clinch Mountain would invite and compel the construction of railroads therein. But they came not. Time was running against me, but the railroad defied time. I would go to the railroad sooner than one could come to me. So, I went to the railroad.

I have heretofore told the division of our business chosen by Mr. Chapman. It was agreed that I should open and attend to a mercantile business we were to undertake in Emory. The firm would be really Chapman & Fowler, but for business reasons, it was called I.C. Fowler & Company. As such, it bought out Samuel Vance, the only merchant near the college, for Emory was the postal name for Emory and Henry College.

We rented the only contiguous storehouse with its dwelling attached from the proprietors. One of the college professors and I immediately went north for more goods to add to the “Vance” stock.

When it had been opened and put in position, it so far surpassed anything Emery had theretofore seen but was quickly rated a mercantile lion. The man who makes an unusual show in this world is for a time at least overrated financially and in this instance, I was no exception to the rule. In one sense, my horizon was luminous to the point of intoxication. But now there was a cloud upon it no bigger than a man's hand. We arrived at Emery on October 25th, 1860. In less than 30 days as Lincoln had been elected president of the American Union. Already the budding horns of secession were visible in the southern sky. Buchanan was still President, but the coming Ides of March was to close his career. As such, the future of the Great Republic was in doubt. The bloody hand of revolution was shaking in the heavens. Stripped of all guise, slavery was at the last face-to-face with its antagonist. For the first time, Fannuil had sounded her “Fire bell in the night” The anti-slavery states had elected their candidate to the presidency and stood ready to inaugurate him. Jackson was dead. In South Carolina, brought forth the her slave flag that had been buried since Jackson’s day. Virginia was a border state and the coming storm seemed gathering over her soil. She did not wish to secede, but the cotton states in various ways threatened her with eternal ostracism, lest she should make common cause with them. But Virginia saw she was to be the battleground in the portending conflict. The Ohio River was on her west, the Potomac on her north and the Atlantic on her east. With no navy and no means of protection on her river exposures, it was fully understood that her fate must be bloody and probably ruinous. In any event, the outcome would be the dissolution of her homes and the destruction of her businesses. Tyler was still alive at his Charles City home and in the full possession of his powers. The stately statesman was sent by her to a national Peace Congress. But there came no peace. South Carolina fired on the national flag and in a clap of thunder, Virginia

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seceded. As I looked on, I beheld the ruin of all business hopes for a generation. Even if I should live to see it. It eventuated as I had expected, and at its close, I had nothing but the worthless debts due me for goods that had all gone on the evil winds of the Euroclydon that swept the Southern states. I was left owing the north for the northern goods I had purchased for the Emory market. All my visions of peace and prosperity had vanished and I was left penniless in a moneyless land.

During the long night of the war, there were many incidents in which the friction of succeeding years had only brightened and burnished in my memory. My old friend McDonald came to me in 1861 and proposed to receive from Chapman & Fowler at par all the Confederate currency they could pay him and all then solvent bills receivable in payment of a debt due him for the Tazewell stock. I soon met him and paid him nearly the uttermost part. He then entered the Confederate service as a Major in the commissary department and was stationed at Dublin, which was considered the gate to the Kanawha Valley and to which point Major John C. Chapman was subsequently assigned as his headquarters. He was double first cousin to Mrs. F. and first cousin to me and all the roar of war and of the disruptive forces that sundered many old ties. He became more steadfastly our friend if he lost an opportunity to visit us and refresh us with his delightful presence. I do not remember it.

I was twelve years his junior. but one day in 1863 he came to me and proposed to resign his position in the Quartermaster's department and enter the active service of the army. I promptly advised him against it, telling him that in his position with the honorable rank of Major, he would probably survive the war. The result of which I already regarded doubtful that if he entered the active service he would probably sacrifice his life. He fought over the matter for a time and then deter-mined to take the course he had indicated. Having never married, he regarded it incumbent on him to go to the front of the battle line. In a short time, he had volunteered as a private in the cavalry regiment of Colonel E. S. Bowen of Tazewell, and going into the pending invasion of Maryland, he was quickly captured and imprisoned at Elmira, New York, and was never again seen by a friend. For very many years his friends failed to learn definitely what had become of him. In his last letter, he announced that he and other Confederate sick was on the eve of starting by vessel to Fortress Monroe for exchange. But when the vessel arrived he was not on board and it was believed he had died on the way and been buried in the Atlantic.

For a third of a century. I sighed for the romantic and impossible that takes shape in our dreams that came of the extravagances of half sorrow and half hope. Perhaps he had escaped and being penniless, there and knowing his estate had been dissolved in the acidity of the war he had been too proud to return would yet recuperate his lost fortune and return Perhaps in some way he had been thrown on some foreign shore and would yet come back in the flesh. But he came not.

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At last. In 1897 when most of the friends he had revered had gone to the unknown bourne, the Richmond Times procured the roster of the Confederate dead who were buried at Elmira and published it there in the great column of heroes who died unattended by friendly hands in their dying hours with the name of John C McDonald. At first, I burned with the impulse to exhume his dust and bury it beside both of my own loved and lost in the little cemetery at Bristol overlooking both Virginia and Tennessee. But I now think otherwise. Peace and rest be to this honest man and unswerving friend beneath. There neath the same stars that shone over his lonely death and burial. Let him sleep. The day has changed. The slave has lost his chain. The dark wall that for a century stayed the time of empire between New York and Virginia has crumbled into sand. The march of men

has gone on till at last there is only a step between the graves of York and the graves of Virginia. I would rather visit the spot where flickered beyond vision the splendid intellect of McDonald than attempt the impossible feat of restoring his remains to Virginia. At last and at least we know where he is beyond the bloody line of war, where he closed his eyes away from home and friends. He lies in the emerald field of the Confederate dead at Elmira. Oh, that He had taken my advice at Emory.

During our stay in Tazewell. My brother Allan Fowler, ten years my junior, was sent to us for the purpose of obtaining the benefit of our town school for Indian as before intimated had none. And after our removal to Emory, he and my brother Elbert, two years younger than Allan, became inmates of our home and attendants of Emory and Henry College. As soon as hostilities commenced in 1861, there was a conflict between us to determine our course as to the war.

It was instantly agreed that two of us should enter the Confederate service and that one should remain to protect and provide for the two families. Our mother being still on the farm at Indian with over thirty Negroes, the majority of whom were not self-sustaining. It was realized that Indian would be in an exposed position being precisely in the path of any invading force by way of the Kanawha Valley. Nor could I see any possible way of leaving my large unsettled business uncared for by anyone. I proposed that one of my younger brothers should remain and I and the other one would go to the front.

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This they instantly refused, saying that as young men without families, neither of them could remain at home without dishonor. All attempts to reason with them that the college would probably not be closed on account of the war and that neither of them had even half finished his education were useless and the lot fell on I.C. My wife's parents were long since dead and my father had died in 1858 so that my mother, distant from my own family of 140 miles across mountains, would be absolutely without protection. If all three of her sons should go to the seat of war. It was agreed that doubtless in the near future our mother, with all her then encumbrances, would have to be removed to Emory. For reasons too apparent to justify specific mention a premonition that was soon sadly realized.

Allen Fowler joined Lowry s battery from Monroe County and was at once made first lieutenant a position he held throughout the war. After many hairbreadth escapes, he was finally wounded at Fisher's Hill in the valley of Virginia, his forearm being broken by a minie ball. This disabled him for a time and he came to my house and remained till able to return to his command. I have since the war, often met General G. C. Wharton, who never lost an opportunity to tell me that he believed Allen was the most gallant soldier he had ever saw on the battlefield.

Elbert likewise enlisted in Lowry's Battalion. But afterward in company with Captain Rambo of Washington County, Virginia, made up a company of cavalry and after bloody campaigning under General William E. Jones between Cumberland Gap and Morristown, Tennessee, was finally captured in September 1864 at Moorefield, Hardy County and sent to Camp Chase, Ohio, where he remained till sometime after the surrender of Lee. In his service as a cavalryman, he was a lieutenant of his company.

HOW THE WAR OPENED

The first six months of our life at Emory was simply delightful. The first families of that fine section of a fine county received us with an open social welcome. Business results seemed more auspicious than we had expected. Never had we seen the kindly fruits of the earth more abundant and delicious from various states of the South. More than a hundred young gentlemen had entered Emory and Henry College and their presence added to other features of our new life. A vivacity and social flavor that was as desirable as it was new. The April sun was nearing its entrance to the Zodiac when with many concealed misgivings, I took the cares for New York to make new purchases of merchandise for Emory. I had heard the seismic warning from South Carolina and to my surprise, I found a businessman in New York as anxious as ever to sell to Southern merchants their goods on the usual six months' time. Most of the cotton states had followed South Carolina into the mad experiment of secession.

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But Virginia stood firm having elected a sovereign convention to which this whole question should be referred.

This convention by a large majority was opposed to secession. Dynamite was still unknown to chemistry, but all the same, it was represented on that floor by convention and in the press of Richmond City by a number of fiery hotspurs who made it dangerous. A simple spark could fire a peaceful city and only one serpent was needed to destroy the peace of Paradise. The leader of these was probably ex-Governor Wise, who hanged John Brown at Harpers Ferry. On my way to New York, I stopped in Richmond and of course, visited the convention and took an intense interest in its sulphurous debate. Approaching Governor Wise, I asked him if he thought the state would succeed. Putting himself in the erect attitude which largely distinguished him. He replied, “By God: sir, we shall succeed.”

I proceeded to New York and deemed the business pulse of that city the most unerring guide to the business future. I pitched in and bought a full stop of goods, mostly on time. I had abandoned my own judgment for that of others. Angel of God was there none to warn me of my fearful error.

On my return to S.W. Va, I must needs to take Richmond en route. In those days it was necessary to take a ferry boat between Washington and Alexandria. As I passed through Washington, I saw waving from the top of the Marshall House Hotel in Alexandria, the new Confederate flag. Taking the boat as I stood on the prow, I was almost transfixed by the audacity of that flag on the Marshall House. And while looking at it, some passengers approached me and asked me if I had heard that Fort Sumter was at that moment being fired on by the Confederate forces under Beauregard. I shuddered at the disclosure. On landing at Alexandria Wharf, I took the usual omnibus to that same Marshall House. I had already been informed that some days previous quite an assemblage of Virginia Unionists had assembled at Cocoquan a few miles lower on the Potomac and reared a union flag and that some of the advocates of the secession of Virginia had defied its erection and threatened to cut it down. That the unionist had threatened with immediate death any man who should attempt to execute the threat; that James T. Marshall, proprietor of the Marshall House, had procured an ax and had boldly walked to the flagpole and cut it down.

After the usual supper hour, I introduced myself to the proprietor of my hotel and informed him of what I had heard and asked him if it was true. He promptly replied that it was not only true but added that he had the Confederate flag then waving from the flagstaff of his hotel and that he intended to kill the first man who should attempt to remove it. Resolution was written in every line of his face and in every intimation of his voice.

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The first gun of a coming war had been sounded at Charleston, and I felt that my landlord would be heard from before it ended and I asked him for his autograph and presenting my memorandum book to him. He replied I will do better than that for you. Opening his hotel deck, he took therefrom a sheet of note paper and an envelope on both of which was emblazoned in colors the tricolor Confederate flag. He wrote across the envelope –

James W Marshall. MarshallHouse, Alexandria, Va.

Placing within the envelope the usual business card of his hours and two of his omnibus tickets. He handed the package to me. These I have carefully preserved and have now in my relic drawer. His was the first Confederate blood spilt in the war. He was the first of the long list of Confederate dead.

In a short time, Virginia seceded. “By God”, sir. And a squad of the Michigan Zouaves headed and led by Colonel Ellsworth, crossed the Potomac on the aforesaid boat and at early dawn walked into the Marshall House, passed up the stairway to the roof, pulled down that Confederate flag and wrapping it around his body. Colonel Ellsworth commenced the descent of the stairway to the street. He did not know his man as I did. By the time Marshall had been aroused, from his morning nap and apprised of what was going on, springing in his nightclothes from his bed, he grasped the double-barreled shotgun, bounded into the stairway hall, and in a moment he and Colonel Ellsworth were dead. He had made good his threat to me. And here in the gray twilight of the morning and in the gray twilight of the war lay dead, bloody, the first two victims of Lincoln's irrepressible conflict. The long foreboded and oft-predicted war over slavery. This was on April 12th and on my arrival at Richmond the next afternoon I found a city aflame with passion. Fort Sumter had surrendered. All the artillery in the city had been brought to the southern front of Capitol Square, which was a mass of excited humanity. Brought of congratulatory cannon was ever earsplitting in its thunder. Roger A. Pryor’s assertion made a few days theretofore that “if you wish to make Virginia secede in twenty-four hours by Shrewsbury clock strike a blow” was practically vindicated. Lincoln called on Virginia to furnish her proportion of seventy-five thousand troops to save the Union of Washington.

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Jefferson and Jackson. Virginia responded with the instantaneous ordinance of secession. On my return to Emory, even staid old Washington County was ablaze with the war, her to Union members of the convention had yielded and signed the ordinance.

In a few weeks. Emory and Henry College crumbled like the unsubstantial fabric of a vision. It's one hundred students rushed to their homes in the southern states and volunteered. “Dixie” became the soul-stirring song of the country. The Stars and Stripes disappeared. Silver and gold fled from sight. All the appliances of prosperous business conditions stopped as though its great band had slipped or its master wheel had been broken by the pile driver of revolution. In order to atone for her tardy response to the Confederate explosion, Virginia invited the Confederate government to make Richmond it's capital. Exultant and gaily decorated trainloads of troops from the Gulf States crowded the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, which became the aorta of the Southern war current. People flocked to the stations with loads of the finest viands their home afforded in order to refresh and welcome the boys who were rushing to the front. Generally speaking, those who had been violent in their opposition to secession now became the most vehement advocate. The spirit of the American Union was gone and the Confederacy was on top in extravagant glory.

At the first, I had looked on this secession fever as madness doomed to unmistakable misfortune and unsustainable because cornered on human slavery, which I detested. But all the friends I had were otherwise. I had been in the Dickinson and Hill slave auction rooms where stands the Ballard House Addendum to the old and aristocratic Exchange Hotel in Richmond. There I had seen the numbers of slaves standing in line for inspection by traders who did not hesitate to grasp them rudely by their upper and lower lips and pull their mouths open for the purpose of examining their teeth. And then take them behind a screen to be stripped by a burly Negro who prided in his office to be examined for possible physical defects.

It is disagreeable to tell this. It was disagreeable to witness it. At the sight of it, my soul burned within me and for the first time, I recalled with faint mental resistance the impassioned utterances of Windell Phillips at Boston, when an octoroon girl was by Massachusetts authorities under the slave law of 1850 being returned to slavery in a cotton state. The soul of Phillips was on fire for human rights. And there at Faneuil Hall, he exclaimed. Fellow citizens, I am required and expected to say God bless the state of Massachusetts.

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But with the sight of this woman who has escaped being returned to her chain by the power and consent of this state, I say God damn the state of Massachusetts.

Living where I did no such revolting or soul-stirring spectacle could occur. But here was slavery in its last analysis and most diabolical form. I said even to friends that I believed that if I had the right to so treat a human being, I had the right to kill and eat him. This may be unpopular, but it is frank and I will not suppress it.

But now here I was face to face with the awful question. Disguise it as we may. The North and South went to war. Not over the question of whether slavery should be abolished. Both admit did it must endure. The South claimed that slavery was embedded in the Constitution and therefore had equal rights in all the states and especially in the territories. The North claimed that slavery had rights, but that these rights were conferred to the states where it then existed. That no more slave territory should be tolerated. Slavery should be respected and protected where it already existed, but no further. Slavery was good enough to exist but not good enough to grow. In this dilemma I gave my support to the Confederate cause down to its very collapse.

At a later period of the war, I found myself in Lynchburg, Virginia, which was one of the points at which all-through travel was required to stop overnight and pay tribute to the local interests. I was on my way to Richmond to see if I could find any of the many articles of necessity which the blockade of all Confederate ports had deprived us of. Along with me were a number of my old Tazewell friends. Among them James P. Kelly, George W. Spotts, Isaac E. Chapman, John C. Higginbotham, and one or two others I cannot now name. Trains at that time were mostly occupied by soldiers in transit and all passengers had to enter by the front or second-class car and pass through the train to the rear. As we passed in at the car allocated to colored people, we were greeted by a sight that no one with the cold of heart could ignore in the crowded second-class car was seated, a Negro woman standing behind her with his arms around her was a Negro man. Both were sobbing with intense grief and sorrow unspeakable.

When finally seated in the rear car, I was quickly followed by the friend already named for a while. All was silence at length. Spotts remarked he had seen something that rendered him unhappy. Kelly remarked that he had seen what had made him an abolitionist. All agreed as to its horror. My solution was that the wife had been sold and was being taken to the cotton states.

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It was agreed that Spotts should return and ascertain the absolute facts. In a few moments, he returned with the true story. Husband and wife had been living in Lynchburg, but each belonging to different owners. At last, the owner of the wife resolved to remove to one of the cotton states, leaving the husband who belonged to a different master in Lynchburg. It was many a mile before our little crowd even talked or slept.

I do not care to depict much further the heart of the slave system. Many of my acquaintances have seen the “slave driver” march to the southern markets, his double column of slaves, each handcuffed and a common iron chain connecting and securing them in pairs. It was never my fortune to see this, but it was the method usually adopted by slave dealers. Even now, while I write this, there sits before me a gentleman of high character reared in this who tells me he has seen it with his own eyes. I make this record because I believe it is due to the honesty of history.

There is another but possibly less sad feature of slavery that ought to be noted. Let me illustrate. My own wife's father was a slave owner. It so occurred that he failed in business and his slave had to be sold. The consequences are usually foreseen. In another case, a relative who became the owner of one of the family slaves in the unfortunate world of business had this young woman placed in the auction block. The usual slave speculator was present and I determined he should not take her away from her father and mother who resided in my vicinity. The bidding became spirited and when the eager eye of my opponent became dazed at my unexpected audacity, he exclaimed, God, don't she go high. I was not there to fail and I was the purchaser at a high price. Of course.

THIS IS WHERE THE DOCUMENT ENDS

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PART III

A Biography

Thomas Fowler

and

Priscilla Breckenridge Chapman

And Their Move to “Indian”

A Biography of Thomas and Priscilla and their move to “Indian”

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The Story of David and Icelia Fowler By I.C. Fowler Date written (Date Uncertain) After comparing the following storyline to I.C. Fowler’s autobiography and his diaries, I have concluded that the following is an account of the migration of Thomas and Priscilla Fowler from Tazewell to “Indian”. After much digging, I can find no David Fowler nor Icelia records in Tazewell County.

The dates of family members and locations all point to Dr. Thomas Fowler – If so, it is curious as to why the names were changed. David aka Thomas Fowler, Icelia aka Priscilla Chapman Chapman and Robert aka I.C. Fowler.

Also no mention of Thomas as being an M.D. – By all accounts he looks to have been a man of some means at the beginning of this episode.

Original documents: Some pages are typed, and some are hand-written transcriptions. Page numbers correspond to the manuscript pages. (As Written)

Excerpted from "Kissin’ Cousins", The Story of the Thomas Fowler and Allied Families of Southwest Virginia By Peter D. Johnston (Cousin)

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HIS STORY:

The sun shining through the trees cast myriad shadows. It was the afternoon of a hot summer day in the year 1835. The beauty and stillness of the Virginia mountains was broken by the creaking of wagon wheels and the clop-clop of horse’s hoof beats. Into a clearing, at the top of the mountain, came a wagon, pulled by two tired and sweaty horses. Tied to the back of the wagon by a short lead rope, a weary saddlehorse with head drooping, slowly plodded along.

The wagon, old, heavy, canvas-covered, and in need of repair was piled high with the household goods of its three sleepy, exhausted occupants. Looking closely, it was easy to see that their journey had been one of hardship and suffering.

They had left the town of Tazewell, which was sixty miles away through mountainous country. The trail they had been following, no more than a footpath, was used many years ago by the Indians as they journeyed from one region of the country to another. Now for the first time, a wagon was leaving its wheel tracks for the settlers of the future to follow.

All that day, it had been, climb, rest the horses for a short time and then slowly climb some more. The trail up the mountain had been torturous as it wended its snake-like way, slowly to the top.

Reaching the middle of the clearing, the horses came to a halt, their legs quivering from the work they had been doing that day. Their sides heaved as they sucked in great breaths of air.

The grass in the clearing was a foot high. The virgin forest around them on three sides was alive with the chatter of birds talking to each other. Looking closely, squirrels perched in the trees could be seen peering at the travelers and then madly chattering as if to say they resented the intrusion of their domain.

On the seat of the wagon sat David Fowler and his wife, Icelia. Inside the wagon, on a bed of blankets, Robert, their three-year-old son tossed fretfully in his sleep.

Looking back along the trail, David thought of the many hours of toil that had been spent in chopping a way through the shrubs and brush that dotted the mountainsides. His muscles ached from the labor of the logs that had to be hauled from the path they had to follow.

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As their gaze wandered to the other side of the clearing, the beauty of what lay before them, revived their waning spirits. Their eyes beheld a valley nestled among the mountains. Through the center of this valley, a river flowed between acres of green grass. Forest reaching from the green grass, to the foot of the mountains, brought thoughts of buildings that could be constructed from the lumber.

The spell was finally broken by a small plaintive cry from within the wagon – Robert was calling for water.

David and Icelia exchanged anxious looks. They had been worried about their son. From birth, he had been a sickly child and was now suffering from croup and sore throat. His condition was the reason for their journeying so far from the town that had seen them both grow up and marry. They felt that nature would help them in their fight to build him into a strong healthy man.

Icelia asked David to get Robert some water. Swinging down from the wagon seat he made his way to the side of the wagon, on which was strapped a water barrel.

Taking a dipperful he passed it to Icelia, who by this time was at her sick son’s side.

The inside of the wagon was hot from the sun beating down on it. Robert’s frail body was burning with fever, as he tossed restlessly to and fro.

Gulping the water thirstily, he looked up into his mother’s anxious eyes. He saw a face that though young and pretty, was now lined with worry. She was saying a silent prayer asking her Maker for help in this time of need.

Icelia, taking a cloth and wetting it with water applied it to her son’s feverish brow. Soon the cooling effects of the water and her fanning caused his body to relax into a peaceful sleep. Closing her eyes and leaning back against the side of the wagon, her thoughts went back to the years gone by. Soon even these thoughts left her and she was in a deep sleep.

David seeing them both asleep quietly went about preparing for that night’s camp. He unhitched the horses and tethered them close to the wagon.

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Rubbing down their wet sides with great handfuls of grass, he soon had them dry. From the water barrel, he brought them just enough water to slake their thirst. He realized the great amount of work that would have to be done in the future by himself and the horses, so he was concerned as much about them as he was of his family. After watering them, he patted their sides and left them to graze on the sweet mountain grass.

Walking to the wagon, he got his axe and slinging it over his shoulder, strode toward the forest, from which he soon returned with an armful of wood. Clearing a place in the thick grass, he had a fire burning on which to cook their dinner.

Returning to the back of the wagon he cut from a huge smoked ham, enough meat for their meal. The frying pan was taken down from its hook in the wagon. David with both hands full slowly made his way back to the fire. Soon the pleasant aroma of frying ham curled its way up from the pan.

Stepping up on the wagon, David gently awoke Icelia and told her to leave Robert for a while to come and eat some food. Icelia slowly stretched her cramped body making sure not to disturb Robert. Handing David some cornbread which she took from a box under the seat of the wagon, they both made their way to the ground.

Seated on the ground by the fire they were soon lost in their enjoyment of the food. Time was not wasted in talking, as both of them were hungry from their hard day's work. After finishing their meal, Icelia broke the silence by asking David, how long he thought it would be before they would reach the place they were going to.

Icelia, he said, if the weather stays as it is and nothing happens to the horses or the wagon, we will be there around this time tomorrow.

David told her of how on one of his many camping and hunting trips in years gone by, he had crossed this mountain by horseback and rode down into the valley. The river afforded him much fishing and the hunting, with its birds and animals, was a place that had forever stayed in his heart. He had made a vow, that at some future time, he would return to build a home and spend the rest of his life in its peaceful environs.

Icelia seeing its beauty could understand David’s love for the valley. Sitting at her husband’s side, she too, silently made a vow that her life would be devoted to helping him build this home.

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Like one, they both got up and taking each other’s hand, walked to the edge of the clearing overlooking the valley. To them, it seemed as if the grass in the valley was beckoning them to come down. The movement of the grass was caused by the soft wind passing over it.

David, clutching Icelia’s hand tightly asked her if she thought she would like living so far away from other people and its attendant loneliness. – David, she replied, when I am with my family, I am never lonely. David’s face broke into a smile, leaning over he kissed her gently on the forehead. They then turned around and walked back to the fire.

Icelia left him to climb into the wagon to see if Robert was still sleeping. Looking lovingly at him, she envisioned the future and what it held in store for her son. Through her teachings, he would learn to live the life of a Southern gentleman. With David’s help, he would learn to ride, hunt, fish, and extract from the soil the full benefits of nature.

The shadow of night was fast falling as she left Robert to help David prepare for the night.

In her absence, he had cut a load of grass that was now piled high beneath the wagon. Over this, he had thrown a canvas, which was to serve as their bed. He was now returning from the forest with an armful of wood, with which to keep the fires burning throughout the night. Over the fire was hung a cooking pot in which their evening meal was now simmering.

He told Icelia that he had yet to water the horses and prepare them for the night after which he would join her at the fire which by now was blazing brightly. In a short while, he was back and they both sat down to eat their fragile meal. The fire cast its dancing shadows all about them. As they gazed aloft, they could see millions of stars carpeting the deep greyish-blue sky of the night. Finishing their meal, they got up from the fire and walked to the wagon.

David swung himself up into the wagon and reappeared with Robert, wrapped in blankets to keep out the clear, crisp air of the night, in his arms. He was awake and a little cross. David passed him to Icelia who carried him over to the fire. Robert said his throat was still a little sore and hurt when he swallowed. They brewed some tea for him which relieved the soreness somewhat.

Icelia, warming some water over the fire, washed her little son’s body. Wrapping him carefully in the blankets again, she carried him to the bed that David had prepared for them.

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Lying down with Robert nestled in her arms, the soft, fresh-smelling grasses soon lulled them to sleep. David came over from the fire and looking down at them sleeping so peacefully, covered them with blankets and returned to the fire. Fixing it for the night he rejoined his family, laid down beside them, and was soon fast asleep.

The brightness of the morning sun awoke the sleepy travelers. Refreshed after a good night’s rest, David and Icelia crawled from beneath the wagon to stretch their aching limbs. Taking deep breaths of the clean mountain air they made ready for the day’s journey.

Robert awoke calling for his mother. She went to him and feeling his brow was relieved to find that the fever had subsided. She asked him how his throat felt and he replied that it no longer hurt and that he was hungry.

Icelia happily called to David to tell him the good news. He was busily building a fire to cook their morning meal. Stopping what he was doing he rushed over to them both to see for himself that his ears had not been wrong. The three of them, David carrying Robert, and Icelia walking by his side laughingly made their way to the fire.

David left Icelia and Robert, going to the water barrel to get water for the horses which he gave to them. Icelia, bundling Robert in a blanket prepared their morning meal which was ready. Icelia, calling David told him breakfast was ready. They were both so excited about the day trip ahead of them that in no time at all they were through the meal and making preparation for breaking camp to be on their way. After loading the wagon, David helped Icelia and Robert to its seat. He then hitched up the horses. Jumping up to the seat, David took the reins in his hands and clucking to the horses, they were at last on the final day of the journey.

The trip down the mountain was uneventful and by noon time were on the broad plain of the valley. The grass was high, its color green and its smell an aroma matched only by its beauty. They could see rabbits and other small game running through the tall stalks as they made their way to the center of the valley.

Stopping the horses on a slight rise of the valley floor near the banks of the river, David proudly announced that at some future date, a house would stand on this very spot overlooking the river as a monument for the work that was to come. Waving his arms around him he told Icelia of his plans for planting acres and acres of cotton and tobacco.

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There also would be planted enough wheat, grain, and vegetables for themselves. On the other side of the river, the corral would be built to hold the cattle he planned to raise. The river could be crossed by building a log bridge across its narrowest point which was not far from where they were now standing. The lumber could be gotten from the not-so-far distant forest. The forest and valley both were rich in all kinds of animal life so a scarcity of meat they thought would never be felt.

The three of them, getting down from the wagon busily went ahead making ready for a makeshift home.

Unhitching the horses from the wagon and taking his axe with him, David, riding his horse led them toward the forest. Soon could be heard the chop of the hard axe, biting its way into the trees that had been undisturbed for centuries back. David hummed a tune as he carefully trimmed each tree after it had fallen. It was late afternoon when he got back to where he had left his family.

Icelia had a fire going and was now cooking over its glowing embers. She told David of how she had been down to the river’s edge to wash clothes which he could now see stretched out over the tall grass. She laughingly told him of how she about stepped on a rabbit as she walked toward the river. She said she did not know who was the most scared, she or the rabbit.

Dark was now falling and soon nightfall would envelop them in its dark cloak. Work would have to be done before it came so they both went ahead making camp for the night. Looking back a few years later to that last campfire, David and Icelia could see the work that had been done since that time.

A long, low, log cabin served as their home. In the back of it stood a building made of logs that was used as a barn for the livestock. Another building served as a storehouse. This also was of logs. The land had been cleared of the grass and in its place, cotton, tobacco, and farmer produce was now growing.

During the first year, David had returned to Tazewell to buy a few pigs and cattle which were now grazing on the land adjoining the house. Fences cut from the forest timbers reached out afar to encircle their land.

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The years had been good to them, their livestock had multiplied, the truck farm was yielding more than enough for their wants and they had tobacco and cotton stored away to be taken to the markets later on.

Robert was growing into a sturdy youngster, he loved to go to the forest with his father and watch him chop down trees. It meant that he would ride in the saddle in front of David and hold the reins in his hands. As it was an all-day trip, the lunch that was in the saddle bags served as a picnic for Robert. Icelia proudly watched them ride away and anxiously looked forward to their return.

She could see that nature was indeed helping.

Years had rolled by. Fowler Estate was now a reality. The house with its pillars rising to the roof gave it a colonial air. Surrounding the house were smaller houses tenanted by the negro slaves that worked the fields. Cotton, tobacco, and vegetable plants could be seen growing in abundance.

David had started out with 2 slaves that had been sent to him from Icelia’s father’s house. In the succeeding years, he had bought more until now 10 slaves occupied the small houses. They were a happy lot of people and at night music and singing could be heard as they gathered, after a day’s work, around the nightly fire.

Robert used to visit and sit with the negroes, listening to and joining in at times with their chanting. Joe, a young negro Robert’s age was his playmate. Many times the two of them could be seen, stalking through the woods that enclosed the estate, hunting for deer, bear, or many kinds of birds that found haven in the woods. Fishing in the streams that flowed through the estate was another of their pleasures.

One day on one of their hunting trips the two boys were engrossed in the lure of bear tracks. Robert said, “Joe, I think we will get us a bear today. You go around the hill and I will follow the trail ahead. We will meet at the junction a short distance away. Joe, keep your eyes open and your gun ready, and be careful.”

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Robert, after Joe’s leaving, followed the bear prints along the trail. His eyes glued to the ground did not see the two beady eyes watching him from behind a large boulder. The stillness caused Robert to look up almost too late. Hastily shouldering his gun, he fired but in his haste his aim was poor. Instead of killing the bear, he only wounded him. The bear in a rage, charged at Robert, who fired again, causing only another minor wound, which further infuriated the animal. Robert turned to run but stumbled and fell to the ground. Robert cried out, “Joe, Joe, Help!” Just as the bear reached Robert, a report came from on top of the hill. Joe silently praying that aim would be true, had fired at the charging bear. The bullet flew true to its mark. The bear fell dead across Robert’s trembling body. Joe came running down the hill at breakneck speed and crying “Master, Master, are you hurt?” Tugging frantically at the carcass he rolled it off of Robert’s still form. Thinking Robert was seriously hurt, Joe covered his face with his hands and started crying.

Robert’s moaning brought Joe to the realization that his young master was alive. Tenderly lifting Robert’s head, Joe placed it in his lap and started swaying back and forth, tears rolling down his cheeks.

Soon Robert was able o sit up, gingerly touching his body. He found that outside of a claw mark on his shoulder, he was all right. “Joe,” he said, “that was mighty close and if it weren’t for you, I would not be alive. When I get home, I will tell mother & dad that you are not to be a slave in the fields anymore, but will be a servant in the big house. I will also teach you how to read and write so that you in turn can help your people to learn things.”

Robert and Joe followed the trail toward home. They were both very excited over the day’s event. Their hurrying footsteps soon were echoing on the broad veranda of the estate.

Icelia was sitting in a large easy chair, her fingers busily sewing. Looking up from her work, her eyes came to rest on Robert’s torn clothes. The sewing fell to the floor as she got up to rush to her son. “Robert!” she cried, “what happened to you?” He told her of his narrow escape from the bear. After assuring her that he was all right, he followed his mother to the kitchen where she busily cleaned the wound on his shoulder.

HERE IS WHERE THE DOCUMENT ENDS

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PART IV

HISTORY OF A FAVORITE SLAVE

JESSEE FORTNER

I. C. CHAPMAN

1869

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HISTORY OF A FAVORITE SLAVE IN VIRGINIA.

LIFE TRAITS, TRICKS AND TRAPS OF JESSEE FORTNER.

Eighty Years Journey to the Promise Land, and Death in the Wilderness of Emancipation.

I.C. Fowler

Bristol News,

November 5, 1869

By reference to the last will and testament of my grandfather, I find that he purchased Jessee Fortner of John Kirk, who lived on Walker’s Creek, in the County of Giles, Virginia, and to whom he was born a slave in 1786. My first accounts of him represent him as filling certain offices of trust and preferment in the family, such as carrying the keys of the establishment, sowing the grain crops of the farm, and giving general oversight to the “plantation” when the eye of his master was diverted by other matters. In a position so trying and delicate, he managed to maintain the confidence of the white family and to avoid alike the envy and the ill will of the colored ones. At the close of my grandfather’s life, he passed by inheritance into my father’s possession, and after having served a portion of three generations, he passed away in the year 1866, at the ripe old age of four score years. His birth was at the time when Western Virginia was little more than a field for the adventures of the frontiersman. He lived to see it opened and tilled by a people noted for their honor and their hospitality, and finally for a season seized and politically possessed by a class noted for its cruelty, ignorance, and excesses.

Notwithstanding Jesse’s position was one of ease and distinction, he seems to have imbibed in early life and ardent desire for freedom. As years passed on this desire became a passion and afterward a mental disease. I never knew him to forget or abandon the dream. While quite young he was married to Milly, who my grandfather purchased of John Sartin, on Walker’s Creek, in Giles County. Few marriages are destined to exist for so many years. The number of their children was scarcely less than 20, and those who are now living have their homes in various portions of the country. In complexion, Jesse was a degree above the perfect black, and his wife a degree below it. Some of their offspring are the blackest portion of the African race I have ever seen, their complexion amounting almost to a deformity. In stature, he was little above 5 feet, but he was athletic to such an extent that either at sport or labor there were few of his race that could excel him. In point of activity and endurance, he was the equal of any. His forehead was perpendicular for a short distance and then retreated with a persistence and rapidity which was not successfully met until the apex of his head made further progress in that direction an impossibility.

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His eyes were black, brilliant, and rather small, while his nose was of the most unassuming dimensions until near its inferior termination, where it immediately assumed an outline and a prominence which at once invested him with an air of cunning and oddity.

My first acquaintance with Jesse was in the year 1836 in fact, I was totally unconscious of his existence until upon a cold winter evening my mother requested me to step to the kitchen and deliver a message to Uncle Jesse. I found him resting and warming himself before a huge fire of hickory wood, for he had just journeyed from the old homestead at the “Ferry,” distant 25 miles, and had come to spend the remainder of his days at “Indian.” His countenance being pleasant and his manner attractive, I found myself at once installed in his society, and I proceeded to propound my usual number of questions; and all of which he seemed to be able to answer with great promptness. I found him distinguished by a peculiar baldness, which had for its exceptional feature a narrow strip of hair running longitudinally to the precise center of his head for its entire length. He could read quite intelligibly, and from his acquaintance with scripture, I was induced to ask him if he were not a preacher. To this he halfway demurred, but boasted that he had long been in the habit of celebrating the right of matrimony. My father always called him “Parson,” and among the colored people living in the vicinity of Indian he officiated on all matrimonial occasions-save one, the marriage of his own daughter, for which he invited his old friend and brother Parson, Billy Holmes, who still lived in Giles.

On his arrival at Indian, he was at once assigned a position of honor, and installed as “Uncle” Jessee. Henceforth he was an object of deference and respect. The best corner in the “Loom House” was assigned to him and Aunt Milly and there they erected their high-posted bed, which in itself was quite a distinction among the colored people. At that time, he was enjoying a portion of those vigorous years denominated the prime of life, and for many seasons he went to the fields and plowed in the beautiful alluvial bottoms of New River and the fruitful uplands which overlook it. He soon became noted for his success at fishing and trapping; he had the fortune to be the possessor of two steel traps, and with these he walked among the foxes of the mountain like a destroying angel. His success stimulated other members of the family to compete with him for the game. It was of no avail. He possessed a secret which he either could not impart or was unwilling to make known. The gables of the Loom House were at all times ornamented with the skins of foxes, catamounts, raccoons, opossums, otters, groundhogs, muskrats, &c. These he stretched upon his mansion with much the same pride as that with which the Indian belts himself with the scalps of his enemies. If he planted a bank hook or put out a line, he was sure of fish.

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These pursuits were with him the prime object of life. With him, slavery was a great obstacle to that success in them of which he continually dreamed. It may be remarked here, that more than once he was made acquainted with the fact that emancipation was within his reach; but there were always conditions coupled with his general demands which defeated his aims. A home on one of the upland sections of the farm would not do. He must be located on the “big road,” with the river on his left and the hills on his right. Then he could hail each traveler for a conversation and pleasantly re-create himself by the use of his hocks and his traps.

I have heard it said he used assafoetida on his traps and hooks. As far as I was able to see, there must have been truth in the allegation as to the traps. His strategy in setting them seemed no strategy at all. So far from taking pains he seemed studiously to avoid both pains and the means of concealing his trap. But I was peculiarly ambitious of success in angling, and I watched Uncle Jesse. He always carried his bait and his hat, and after removing the dock leaves, which were used alike for the purpose of packing and their nonconducting qualities, he drew forth plentiful supplies of dead toads, mad worms, and the entrails of chickens. There was nothing else to distinguish him from other disciples of Isaac Walton, and I retired, feeling that if these were the symbols and means of his success, they were such as I could neither expect nor desire to attain to. His pockets were collectively an omnium gatherum, upon which he can draw in every hour of need. A detailed statement of their contents would be impossible; but at any time might have found to contain nails, leather thongs, tow strings, slugs of lead, pieces of old iron, bits of cloth, and angle worms-in short, it is unsafe to say they did not contain any one article within their capacity except tobacco and spectacles. These he never carried, and the use of the former he studiously avoided.

He had known a citizen of Giles County by the name of Brumfield, who, a number of years previous, had gone to the State of Ohio, and taken with him his slave Reuben, who was a friend of Jesse. Of course, there was a bargain between Brumfield and Reuben, for Ohio was a free State. At any rate Reuben had done well for himself, and the news thereof came near un-hinging Jesse’s usefulness for life. He possessed a naturally inquisitive mind and a peculiar aptitude for halting and catechizing strangers.

Often while plowing with him in the river fields I have observed with deep interest how, by a prearranged plan, he has managed to intercept the travelers from the West, as if by a happy incident, appearing suddenly on top of the fence and bringing him to a halt by an unexpected salutation of “Sarvent,sir.” His next move was to ascertain where the stranger was from, particularly if from the “Hio.” Strange as it seems I scarcely ever saw him miss his man. He was generally from the “Hio,” and often knew positively “one Humphrey Brumfield.” Even positive information of

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“Reuben, a man of color,” has frequently been evoked by his confidence and persistence.

In religious creed Jesse was a Baptist, and believed in witchcraft with all the force of his ardent nature. This peculiar feature of his religion was largely to the disgust, and annoyance of my father, who lost no occasion to attempt to convince the Parson of his error; but reason would not do. The batteries of his ridicule were brought to bear, but Jesse besought him to desist, before some great evil should overtake the family. “Marse Thomas, if I was in your place, I really would be afraid to dare the witches so much.” Jesse was the growth of years, and his whole emotional being could not be reversed at the demand of modern belief. As well have tried to reverse the current of his blood and cause it to feed within him again the fires of youth. Then he told how neighbor Caperton Right had been recently ridden almost to death by that old sorceress, Polly Ellis, who came over his door in the shape of a cat, and with whip and spur and eyes of fire had ridden him all night around the orchard on the top rail of the fence, up the corners of the barn and over the roof, then up and down and across all the angles of his dwelling. This neighbor Right would swear to.

Not long thereafter my father had occasion to pass up the creek for several miles, and calling on business at Ellis’, where the reputed sorceress lived, observed while sitting on his horse at the gate the approach of a cat on the fence. Of course, the story of Jesse was irresistibly in his memory, and observing the cat quite closely, it came to a point sufficiently near and spring from the fence, alighting upon the front of his saddle. On his return home Jesse was called in at the hour of supper, and the story of the cat related in his presence. He was buttoned in his long janes hunting shirt with great dignity, and ejecting the saliva between his teeth in a manner indicative of great agitation, he ejaculated, “well, please goodness, I’de a dashed its brains out!” Then dropping his chin upon his breast until the bald portion of his head was made to assume the vertical line, and crossing both hands behind him, he strode with great gravity out of the dining hall. On the subject of witchery intelligence had no power to relieve his mind. To disbelieve in sorcery was to defy and bring down upon his head superior powers; but having believed, he had his remedy and never failed to use it. Above the door of the Loom House, he kept nailed a horse shoe. Beneath its protection he was safe. As well might the slayers of Israel’s firstborn have passed beneath the bloody lentel as Polly Ellis to have violated the sacred warning of the shoe. He even carried his faith so far as to nail one above the broad fireplace, beneath which Milly sat and spun her flaxen bush from day to day. The frequency with which they were called in to use upon the potrack was indicative of his regard for assurance made doubly sure. The special dishes for his benefit were often roasted upon a spit suspended from a shoe in the chimney. The very chest over which he knelt in silent devotion at the head of his bed was provided with the mystic iron shoe.

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He won deserved distinction for his ability to find lost articles, and was always satisfied with the reward if it were a dram. But a single exception is remembered. Being in a strait on one occasion for a sinker to a hook and line he was about to cast into the river, in confident expectation of catching a fine catfish, he suddenly, as if inspired by an original idea, thrust his hand into his pocket and drawing forth his heavy pocketknife, fastened it securely, as he supposed, upon the line and went slowly home, trusting to his usual luck. Morning came and revealed the fact that he had caught that rare specimen of New River fish, an eel. In its contortions it had twisted the knife from its position, and the stream being muddy and at its flood tide, there was no immediate opportunity of recovering it. There was never a season of his subsequent life that he did not at low water wade and search for it among the rocks in the bed of the stream, but it was never found. When after the lapse of years, he was assured that it must have been ruined by rust, he would shake his head distrustful he and continue to wait and “sarch” for the knife. It was never found, but sleeps the long sleep which has at last overtaken its owner.

A more serious misfortune was the loss of one of his favorite steel traps. Years were spent in fruitless search, but at length the old man espied it in possession of a neighboring white man, whom he felt convinced had stolen it. Yet, such was his character in the neighborhood that Jesse dared not attempt the recovery of his trap, as the mere assertion of his claim would imply trouble. Since the termination of Jesse’s life, this man has become noted as a thief, and has escaped the State prison by accidents of so rare a nature that public opinion no longer fears to attack him.

He had a peculiar zest for a drink of whiskey, and regarded it as a sufficient return for any amount of devotion or labor. As a financier he was gifted, and from his scanty means I have known of his acquiring perhaps as much as a quart of silver; at least he proposed on one occasion to endow the husband of his youngest daughter with a double handful of that useful article, provided the selection should please him.

If entrusted with the team, he was never afraid to leave it standing unprotected, and if his attention was called to the error, although 100 paces distant, he always responded, with an air of sufficiency, that he was “watching it.”

As time wore on Uncle Jesse exhibited the most unmistakable signs of the encroachment of years upon his powerfully knit frame. He was always invested with complete authority to direct and control my brother and myself in the absence of our parents.

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This authority even went to the extent of empowering him to chastise us at his discretion. This, however, was a dernier to which we were never subjected. On one occasion I’m sure, however, that I escaped only by the most determined and vigorous resort to leg bail. In threshing his own children, he was seldom engaged, but when he did undertake that kind of discipline, he was one of the most unmerciful castigators I ever knew. On such occasions he made his most dangerous approaches to profanity. “By Jings!” Was an indication of fearful rage.

For many years he suffered very extreme pain and inconvenience from an attack of rheumatism in his left hand. This interfered largely with his leading pursuits of fishing and trapping, but nothing short of death ever caused their abandonment. He came at stated hours to my mother for linaments and other lotions with which to bathe and relieve the affected part. These intervals were always at mealtime and he never left without obtaining a plate of delicacies for his impaired appetite. The leg of a fowl, a cup of coffee and some biscuits were sure to reward his punctual call at the dining hall. This always improved the condition of his hand. He deserved them, for there was nothing in his possession which he would not at any time cheerfully share with me. Of Melons, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, Sarvices, Hickory Nuts Walnuts and other similar articles in season he was always possessed and I was always sure of a portion. A string of fish was sure to await me on each return to the homestead.

As he grew older he became more frequently engaged in reading and scriptures. His stock of hymns was large and quite peculiar. Many of them were largely original with him and he was no mean singer. He steadfastly withstood every influence which tended to press him into the ministry. He consented to exhort on rare occasions and to pray in public generally, but a “sarmont” was a degree above his calling.

There was a large, gloomy, strong and homely bay horse named “Snap” belonging to the family. I think his advent was made at the same time that Jesse’s was. He was the least interesting, and in some respects, the most despisable horse on the farm. For Snap he had always a peculiar friendship, and would consent to plow or drive no other.

His control became paramount over the old bay. On one occasion as I attempted to pass through the lot, I evinced my hatred of Snap, who was standing lazily in one corner, by pointing a finger at him and hissing. The old horse was always noted for his temper and the insult was more than he would brook. Backing both ears with great liberation and curling his upper lip with a bitterness which could not be mistaken he ran at me with great violence. No time was to be lost.

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I believed I could reach the fence before he would overtake me, but the gate was shut and bolted and the delay of climbing was sure to be fatal. I saw it all in a moment. Snap was after me with the most desperate plunges and I felt there was no escape. Onward he came pawing at me with each one of his ponderous fore feet in a manner which insured my annihilation as soon as he should reach me. I resolved to die game and refused to holloa. At this moment Uncle Jesse called out in a stentorial tone of authority “You Snap!” And the danger was over as it had nearly proven fatal to me. The old man had been at work close by and hearing the plunges made by Snap looked up just in time to save me.

For many years his labors consisted in salting and counting the stock upon the farm, going to the post office, attending to the milling and in looking particularly after the hogs. So thoroughly did the swine acquiesce in his assignment to them that the attachment became a great nuisance. The signal of his presence was seized upon by them for the most combined and determined assault upon the old man. Their cries were often little less than alarming to a nervous system not unusually proof against noise. No New York City riot for bread could approach it, and nothing short of corn could appease it. One blast upon his bugle horn were only less potent than that of Roderick, for a thousand swine responded, and as the long columns came filing out of the hollows and defiles of the river hills until the entire herd came squealing and bellowing to his feet his pride was such as he could not restrain and would not conceal.

But the peaceful and pleasant days alluded to were destined to termination as brief as it was unexpected. The war between the States and the Union was at length precipitated and the happy days of Jesse were ended. The position occupied by the family at Indian was an exposed one and its abandonment was resolved on as a necessity. Seeking a temporary abode on the Southern border of Virginia the life of the refugee was found to be even more bitter than one of alarm at home. With all the abundance of tillable land it was difficult to obtain enough on which to earn the most meager subsistence. This selfish determination to withhold encouragement and aid from those who were driven from their homes is as difficult to account for rationally as it was impolitic and unnatural. The party applied to always “wanted to put his land down in grass,” and yet it is notorious that stock was so scarce that grass was 12 inches high upon the commons. A foreign blockade could be endured but this home blockade was more than equal to ordinary courage and the family returned to Indian. Prior to the war a great calamity had overtaken Jesse in the death of his wife Milly, and as war brought gray hairs to the head of many, he felt the stealthy footsteps of death approaching in their circumambient way and he desired to return that he might be buried by her side.

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The commodious and comfortable quarters so recently inhabited by the slaves had been burned by vandals who infested the region of Indian. Only the venerable Loom House remained. It stands there today the only building left of the old homestead- for their is a new one not many rods distant on the hill- and a solitary chimney reaching many feet in the air is the only thing else to mark with its silent finger in the sky the sacred family abode.

Many spare hours of Uncle Jesse’s happiest years were devoted to horticulture. Just inside a point where the waters of a rough but inconstant mountain stream debouched into the plain, leaving only room for a road leading to the upland, the hills mutually withdrew from contact leaving a small but very fertile triangular plain terminated at its base or northern end by a third abrupt slaty hill which appears to have been an attempt on the part of nature to splice the fissure in the hills fronting it. The triangular piece of land contains perhaps one fourth of an acre, and was selected by Jesse as his reserve and he proceeded to blaze the principal trees upon its border and, to assert his claim and more forcibly, at once begin its improvement. On one of its sides, it was skirted by the farm road and on the other two by the stream alluded to. The huge stones which fringed its margin were useful in building a secure wall which effectually kept off encroachments of the floods. About its borders, he planted the peach and the apple and in its midst a vine near which he established a colony of bees. The trees and the vine grew and bore luxuriant crops. In the shale bluff which formed a feature in one corner, he dug an apple house and stored it bountifully for his winter use. The bees multiplied and beneath his lucky hand yielded large crops of honey. As a crowning work, he built a coop and raised quite a number of domestic fowls. On one occasion having observed a suspicious espionage upon his domain by a company of soldiers, he made use of the earliest darkness to remove the chickens and bees to a place of safety, leaving a number of worthless gums well ballasted with stone. Morning revealed by the broken gums on a neighboring hill the abortive attempt upon the old man’s property. As to this “patch” his watchful eye never slumbered. He always met with the success his vigilance deserved, and many a time have I shared his generous hospitality as monarch of that domain. Nothing which he possessed was too good for me to possess and enjoy.

At length, the turbulent era of bloodshed was ended. The hero of the Rapidan had surrendered to the immense physical force which he had so nearly vanquished. The war was ended, and emancipation was declared an irreversible consequence. The slaves of our family were amenable to the fears so common to others, and regarding their freedom of doubtful authority they were unwilling to remain at their old homes, the scenes of their slavery, fearing it might be the easy means of reducing them to bondage again.

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They were offered comfortable positions upon the farm but declined. Jesse was very old and followed two of his children to a cabin on a bleak and sterile mountain bluff in the vicinity of Bradshaw’s Run. His long dream of freedom was realized. Alas, its fruits were ashen to his aged lips. His keen eyes were sunken and dim, his frame was bent with years, his arm was useless at his side. The luxuries of his little “patch” were no longer to be obtained with a regularity necessary to their worth. Other hands ministered to him, but their assistance was no more willing than intelligent. The change was mortal. No longer came Jesse at the hour of breakfast to the dining hall.

The bountiful river ceased to give up its fish for his dainty appetite and his traps were idle on the mountain. The stony hills of Bradshaw refused to yield their increase; the corn was exhausted and no more the herd of swine reminded him of plenty. The spirit which took him thither was too proud to acknowledge defeat, he pined and reeled about the brow of the mountain in delirious disappointment until an hour when he thought not the Angel of Death came for him and Jesse cease to be.

Today, in the company with a friend, I visited the little domain that was once his and in the cultivation of which he became so happy. Years had passed since last I had looked upon it. It’s monarch was no more. The stone wall was an irregular line of ruins the stream had invaded and destroyed the fertile margin, and the peach and apple trees have been choked by the encroachments of the forest until they were alike unsightly and unfruitful. The sides and roof of the apple house had fallen in; the once fruitful vine was dead; the bees had flown to the mountain, and the sheep were grazing upon the little plain. Nearby there is a unique and singular promontory of great beauty called “Graveyard Hill.” Its sides are declivitous, and save a few stunted oaken shrubs, which stand like beaten sentinels upon them, there is not to relieve their shale and barren composition. Upon the top there is a lovely grove of perennial and symmetrical pines, and as they rear their long trunks heavenward in support of their frost-defying foliage, they seem to speak the peace and rest of the endless life above. Deep in their somber shade, there are two grass-grown graves unmarked by the polished marble of opulence; but as faithfulness is above avarice, and as integrity is loftier than lust, their story shall not be untold. There was one heart which, though it beat beneath the skin of ebony, was never untrue to me, and though it could never feel the promptings of consanguinity, it never ceased to long for my promotion and happiness. At length it sleeps the sweet sleep of death, for there, beside the wife of his early years, lulled by the grand roar of a great but turbulent stream, wrapped in the endless piece of the tomb, sleeps Jesse Fortner.

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Bristol News.

The “History of a favorite slave in Virginia,” to be found on our first page today was written because of his virtues and the fact that all over the South there have been many servants of which he is a faithful representative. The aim of the writer has been to illustrate many points of interest in the character of the colored man and to place on record the fact that like his entrance upon physical life his new birth of freedom was more fruitful of sorrow than the slavery which it succeeded. The story as written is a literal and faithful narration of facts as they occurred and it is believed will in many instances like the true theory of human nature find its highest testimony in the experience of the reader.

Transcript of Bill Of Sale

(Blanks are unreadable words)

Know all men by their presence that I John Kirk of the county of Montgomery and the state of Virginia have bargained sale and delivered unto Isaac Chapman of the county and state affore said, one Negro boy named Jesse about 15 years old. For the sum of three hundred dollars to me in hand ------ by the said Isaac Chapman at or before the --------- of and delivery of those present the receipt where of is hereby acknowledged and is forever ----- the title of the said negro against all persons what ever I bond my self my heirs executors administrators family in the final sum of six hundred dollars like money. Given under my hand and seal this 19th day January 1801.

John Kirk

------

James Stanford

John ---------

David Johnston

Note: Jesse died in summer of 1866 in Monroe Co. West Va. aged about 80 years

Montgomery County, Virginia

Sale of Jessee Fortner to Isaac Chapman from John Kirk. Jessee was bequeathed to Priscilla Chapman (Mrs. Dr. Thomas Fowler). BIO by I. C. Fowler.

Photocopy of original Bill of Sale

Original in possession of Rita Springer, great granddaughter of Isaac Chapman Fowler–

See next page.

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iii

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PART V

OBITUARIES

ISAAC CHAPMAN FOWLER

KESIAH “KIZZIE” McDONALD CHAPMAN

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Obituary

Tazewell Republican

Thu. May 4, 1905

PASSING OF I.C. FOWLER DIES AT HIS HOME IN ABINGDON

AFTER A LONG LIFE OF USEFULNESS

The funeral took place in Abington on Wednesday. On Monday afternoon at 1:00, after which the remains were taken to Bristol for interment. Mr. Fowler was born at Tazewell, on September 2nd, 1831, on honorable I.C. Fowler is dead. His death came quietly and peacefully Saturday morning at 5:00 at his home in Abingdon, Virginia. Mr. Fowler had been in fast-failing health since the first of the year and his death was due to a general breakdown of the nervous system and physical collapse in an accident of old age. He being nearly threescore and 15 years old.

The funeral.

The funeral services will be held at the Episcopal Church at Abingdon Monday afternoon at 1:00 and will be conducted by Rector R. E. Boykin. The remains will be brought to Bristol immediately following the funeral on the train, arriving here at 3:20 p.m. Interment and Eastville Cemetery will follow from the train. The vestry of Emmanuel Episcopal Church of Bristol, of which Mr. Fowler was one of the chief founders and main supporters, while a resident of Bristol will accompany the remains to the cemetery in token of their recognition of his former usefulness in and devotion to this church. The vestry consists of Colonel J. B Peters, John B Newton, Colonel S Z, Fulkerson J. Norman Powell G. Prior, Hal F, Lewis and Major W G. Sheen.

Isaac Chapman was born September second, 1831, in Tazewell, Virginia. His father was Dr. Thomas Fowler, who was a leading physician of Cocke County, Tennessee, and afterward of Tazewell, Virginia and Monroe County, West Virginia. His great-grandfather came from England. He was descended from the old English Fowler family, among whom was the Lord mayor of London. His mother was Priscilla Breckinridge Chapman, daughter of Isaac Chapman of Giles County, Virginia. The family's former lived living in Culpeper County, Virginia. Mr. Fowler was married on December 4th, 1854, to Miss Cassie McDonald Chapman, who survives him at the age of nearly 75. They being having celebrated their golden wedding on December fourth, 1904. Mrs. Fowler is the granddaughter of Edward McDonald, a prominent Virginia family of McDonald. She is a lineal descendant of King Robert Bruce of Scotland.

The children born to them were Mrs. Stuart F Lindsay wife of the Clerk of the United States Court at Abingdon, Virginia. Mrs. Mary Louise Preston, deceased.

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The late wife of David Preston, Esquire. Deputy Clerk of the United States Court Abingdon, Virginia. And Mrs. Priscilla Fowler Goodwin, wife of Mr. Peterson, AG Goodwin of Washington, D.C. His grandchildren are Miss Dawn Fowler Lindsey, McDonald Stuart Lindsay, Louise McDonald Preston, Icilia May Preston, Kizzy Duval Preston, Alan "AG" Goodwin and Chapman Fowler Goodwin. His brothers were Dr. Alan Fowler, deceased, formerly of Salt Lake City, Utah, who died May 7th, 1902, and who was in Lieutenant Lowery. S battalion Battery of the Army of Northern Virginia and who was wounded several times during the war and Honorable Elbert Fowler, deceased, who was well known in Bristol in the 70 ends when associated with the honorable I.C. Fowler and was a brilliant lawyer and brave soldier. The sisters are Mrs. James D Johnston SR and Mrs. L Paris, Roanoke, Virginia.

Mr. Fowler was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from Washington County, Va., and Bristol, Va., in 1875-6, 1877-8, 1881-2. He was speaker of the House of Delegates in 1881-2, and served with distinguished ability. In some of his rulings, he antedated the late speaker of the House of Representatives. Hon. Thomas B. Reed, whose fame is so well known. He made the same points, and at the time made a great political commotion, in those days of readjustment when politics meant something and served with distinguished ability and some of his rulings. He antedated the late speaker of the House of Representatives, Arnold Thomas Read, whose famous is so well known. He made the same points and at the time made a great political commotion

In those days of readjustment when politics meant something. He was a trusted friend and adviser of the late General Mahone. He canvassed Virginia several times as a Republican and was recognized as among the foremost political orators and debaters in Virginia. From 1876 to 1896 and met successfully with Democratic giants as ex-governor of apparel. Honorable John Good ex-Governor Kemper, Honorable M Burton and others in joint discussion. He was mayor of Bristol, Virginia, in 1896- 7. All knew his tireless efforts and confidence in her growth and destiny. The older citizens who better knew him then thoroughly appreciated his warmth and zeal and what foundations he laid for Bristol's growth. He was a leader in the incipient stages of the work that built the railroad the Odessa and Ohio Railroad. He was the owner and editor of the Bristol Newsroom, from 1868 to 1890. And here his wonderful talents shone in a high degree. There he wielded an influence for Bristol and Virginia that still stands as a monument to his culture and attachments and far-sightedness.

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He was one of the original owners of the natural tunnel, one of the greatest natural wonders in Southwest Virginia. During the last two years of the Civil War, he was an honored attache of the commissary department of Breckinridge's division. On February 2nd, 1884, Judge Hugh L Bond, United States Circuit Judge and John Paul district judge appointed him United States clerk of the Circuit and District courts at Abingdon, Virginia. He resigned from this office on January 1st, 1905, after nearly 21 years of service and Honorable Stuart Lindsay was appointed as his successor. During the score of years of service, Mr. Fowler made a most excellent record for proficiency and fidelity in the discharge of his official duties as clerk, a fact emphasized

by the judges upon his resignation, expressing great appreciation of his long and valued service.

Mr. Fowler was a devoted Protestant Episcopalian for nearly half a century. But passing of his high born, aspiring noble spirit out into the great beyond removed from among the walks of men not only an honest man, one of the noblest works of God, but one of nature's noblemen, a high class, scholarly, cultured gentleman, a strong, true, unfailing friend and influential powerful politician and a good, pure, patriotic and nobly citizen. Bristol Herald. Sunday, April 30th.

……………………………………………………………………………………..................................................................

Jan 11, 1906 (Unknown publication - Newspaper clipping has header missing)

Therefore, Mrs. Fowler, wife of the Late Honourable I.C. Fowler, passed away yesterday at the home of Mrs. Lindsay. Of the best blood of Scotland. Mrs. Fowler and her husband were instrumental in organizing Emmanuel Episcopal Church in the city. Mrs. Kezia MacDonald. Chapman Fowler. Relic of the Late Honorable Isaac Chapman Fowler died at 8:00 yesterday afternoon at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Stuart F Lindsay, Number 482 Lee Street, Bristol, Virginia. Mrs. Fowler had been in feeble health for some months and since the death of her husband on April 29th, 1905. The immediate cause of death was bronchitis. She was born about 1880 and was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Chapman. Mrs. Fowler, the district lineal descendant of the MacDonalds who settled in eastern Virginia in the early colonial days and were the descendants of Robert King of Scotland and of the best blood in the Scottish Highlands.

Mrs. Fowler resided for many years in Bristol with her husband prior to their going to Abington and together with her husband, was instrumental in organizing the Emmanuel Episcopal Church of Bristol. Her husband started the first newspaper in Bristol. They later moved to Abington,

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where Mr. Fowler became clerk of the United States District Court, which position he retained until his death went to his son-in-law, Stuart Lindsay was appointed in his stead. She is survived by her daughter, Mrs. Stuart Lindsay and Mrs. F.p. Goodwin, both of whom were at her bedside when her death came. Her other daughter, Mrs. David Preston, had been dead for some three years. Mrs. Dawn Fowler Lindsay of Bristol is her eldest granddaughter. Her other granddaughters are McDonald, Stuart, Lindsay, Allen Agee and Chapman. Fowler Goodwin. Mrs. Fowler was a consistent Christian and during the many years of her useful life was an example of religious fidelity, love and sincerity coming as she did directly from the most celebrated blood in continental Europe and from the aristocracy of eastern Virginia. She was of a most refined and cultivated nature, consistent and untiring in her devotion and care of those who were near her. Her life was an inspiration to her people and her memory will long live in the hearts of her many friends.

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PART XX

I.C. Fowler Diaries

The War Years

1861-1862

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I.C. FOWLER DIARIES 1861-1862

As written – unreadable words = _________ (Commas and periods are added for separation as there is no punctuation). These diaries were apparently only meant for personal usage and as such are full of abbreviations. I.C. Fowler at this time was a store owner at Emory.

EDITOR NOTE: These diaries are very small and have faded greatly over time. (150 years old). Photocopies of all the pages are in possession of the writer and I have added some notes to some of the entries in parenthesis and italics to help clarify relationships and names.

1861

JANUARY

Jan 1 -Tues. 1861 – Deep snow

Jan 2 Wed. 1861 – Deep snow, at Mo. Indian

Jan 3 Thurs 1861 – Cleared, went with Skaggs to Gore place

(The Gore’s were neighbor of the Fowlers)

Jan 4 Fri. At Mo. Indian

(Mouth of Indian "Indian" – the Fowler home place on the New River)

Jan 5. Sat Same

Jan 6 Sun. At Mo. Indian all day, cut grafts at Robertsons

Jan 7 Mon Left Mo. Indian 10:00 am, JDJ along, Left Mary with Ma, Stopped to Anderson Meadows, Stopped in Peters Town – sent Shellery back

Jan 8 Tues. Left Pearisburg 10:30 am in carriage – Mose driving. Got to T T Shannon (Poplar Hill) 2 pm. Stayed there & sent Mose back

(Mary also shown as Mary F. is Mary Priscilla Fowler, niece of Dr. Thomas Fowler – would marry 1st Capt. Alex. L. Halsey (1863) and then 2nd to Dr. Harvey G. Johnston (1869). In 1861 she was living with her uncle and aunt as her parents left her an orphan. Mose is a slave.)

Jan 9 Wed. At Shannon’s, Went to Brislgs

Jan 10 Thurs. At Shannom’s all day, Read Dr. Pepper’s Med. Works (or books)

Jan 11 Fri. We left Shannon’s (Polplar Hill) 10:00am, Crossed the creek in boat & took Jno Tiller’s 2 for wagon to Dublin

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Jan 12 Sat. Kizzie & ______ got to Emery at 9:00 am, At store – my note in Bank Jeffersonville -450

Jan 13 Sun. At church – J A Davis preached

Jan 14 Mon. Wrote to I E Chapmans, Sent $25 : 5 c money to Geo Stannet

(I.E. Chapman aka Isaac Edward Chapman, is Kizzie’s 1st cousin and business partner of I.C. Fowler)

Jan 15 Tues At store

Jan 17 Wed At store

Jan 17 Thurs Fair – very pleasant, Moved up from Pro Davis to store & went to housekeeping, Spent day fixing up.

Jan 18 Fri. Rain in morning, Continued to fix up

Jan 19 Sat. Fair – very pleasant

Jan 20 Sun. Fair – somewhat cool, Haskens preached – Allen, Elbert & Jeff Breiff spent day with us

(Allen and Elbert are I.C. Fowler’s two younger brothers. Allen would become a prominent Doctor in Salt Lake City. Elbert would eventually become the owner and editor of a newspaper in Hinton, WVa and be shot down on Main Street due to an unfavorable editorial)

Jan 21, 22, 23 (No notation)

Jan 24 Thurs. Rainy, cold all day. Went to Glade Spring discussion between Jno B. Floyd, Jno H. Campbell & B. R, Johnston. Candidate for State Convention

Jan 25 Fri. Cloudy & warm, visited Jno Dunn Wood Chopper

Jan 26 Sat. Snowed hard forenoon, Ordered 1 Bbl Kerosene P I & Co, ordered 1 Bbl Syrup T& US. Dressed Dunn’s ankle

Jan 27 Sun. Fair – 3” snow

Jan 28, 29, 30, 31 (No notation)

FEBRUARY

Feb 1 Fri. Rained

Feb 2 Sat. Raining till noon, Huton went to see Jno. Dunn.

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Feb 3 Sun. Cloudy – Went to church College Wiley. Allen & Elbert came home with me

(Wiley was the preacher at Emory & Henry College. Close friends of the Fowlers. His daughter would marry Gen. Thomas Newton Fowler, I.C. and Kizzie's cousin)

Feb 4 Mon. Cloudy – went to Morrell’s Mills election – John A Campbell & Rev Grant elected to State Convention

Feb 5 Tues. Rained

Feb 6 Wed. Fair – cold

Feb 7 Thurs Fair – cold - at store

Feb 8 Fri Fair – pleasant – sold goods

Feb 9 Sat. Fair- very pleasant. Julia Caperton, Mary & Virginia Smith spent the day. Mrs. Wiley and Mrs. Buchanan called.

Feb 10 Sun Cloudy – warm – at home – We walked west on rail road, Wrote Ma, A. & Elbert for tea.

Feb 11 Mon Fair – fine

Feb 12 Tues. Fair – fine Had garden ploughed

Feb 13 Wed. Fair – fine, Started Bev to Tazewell after wagon & c

(Bev was a slave boy given to I.C. and Kizzie at their marriage by Priscilla Fowler)

Feb 14 Thurs. Fair – pretty

Feb 15 Fri. Rainy – Cloudy

Feb 16 Sat. Cloudy, rainy, snow in evening

Feb 17 Sun. Very cold – snowy

Feb 18 Mon. Very cold, snow, Allen & Elbert spent day

Feb 19 Tue. Cold

Feb 20 Wed. Fair, windy, cold

Feb 21 Thurs. Fair, pleasant

Feb 22 Fri. Fair, fine – Fadices called – all of them. Jones finished his prize boots

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Feb 23 Sat. Jno Hutton & Mrs. Scott dined – write IEC enclosing JWJ

Feb 24 Sun. (No notation)

Feb 25 Mon. Wrote to WF Noon Rich N.Y. Balt. Went to court Abingdon ins Co. with W.C. Edmond, son & SM Smithson put up with McCarty, Saw AC & C

Feb 26, 27 (No notation)

Feb 28 Thurs. Fair, fine, made walks in garden

MARCH

Mar 1 Fri. Fair, fine, planted peas, sowed lettuce

Mar 2 Sat. Fair, fine, set out gooseberries, planted onions – wrote W.W.

Hunt. J. Johnston Co. & Owens Hopton Co.

Mar 3 Sun. Fair, windy. Church – College, Rev. New Brown of Abingdon

Mar 4 Mon. Mixed – Abram Lincoln is inaugurated

Mar 5, 6 (No notation)

Mar 7 Thurs. Planted out grape vine in garden – Mrs. Milnor spent day.

Mar 8 Fri. Fair, pleasant, sowed spinach in garden – set out pie plant, visited Mrs. Swingles , evening – I took tea at Fulton House

Mar 9 Sat. Cloudy, cold -Rec’d 1st of my years rent to Rich examiner, semi-weekly - Began No. 53 –

Mar 10 Sun. Cloudy, cold

Mar 11 Mon. (No notation)

Mar 12 Tues. Fair

Mar 13 Wed. Fair, sent to Mrs. for flowers

Mar 14 Thurs. Fair, rained, I went to see E.E. Wiley about College lot. Defresse -Gave in to deed

Mar 15 Fri Cloudy, rather windy, at store all day

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Mar 16 Sat. Cloudy – cool. Rode to WPM’s, then Hunt & Jouce & Defreese walked to Abingdon, Jones & Defreese gave Deeds of Trusts. Kizzie & I went to Pub. Debate H. Soc. Rained from noon today

Mar 17 Sun Cloudy, cold – At home all day. Write to T,N, Fowler, Greenville, Miss.

(Gen. Thomas Newton Fowler was a 1st cousin and good friend - Married the daughter of Mr. Wiley, preacher at Emory & Henry College.)

Mar 18 Mon. Snowed all day, Took out attachment rs G.H. McPhatridge

Mar 19 Tues. (no notation)

Mar 20 Wed. Note I.C. Fowler & Co. discounted Abingdon $1.00

Mar 21 through Mar 27 (No notation)

Mar 28 Thurs. Fair, Made garden. I. E. Chapman came

Mar 29 Fri. Fail with light showers, IEC and I went to town & paid off two of our notes to S. Vance – called at Milmoris

Mar 30 Sat. Fair, fine, IEC & I took tea at 9. A. Davis

Mar 31 Sun. Fair, IEC left for Tazewell.

APRIL

Apr 1 Mon. Rained last night, cloudy, Grafted trees, transplanted plum tree, went to Marion

Apr 2 Tue. Rained, Collected C.C. Taylor debt, Also $50 of A.C. Pendleton Jr. on the A. Clark debt, Dined with J.W. Boring. A.C.P. Jr. gave me a little axe made by Ashley in the penitentury

Apr 3 Wed. Fair, at home

Apr 4 Thurs. Left late ______ at _______, Breakfast at Farmville, At Richmond to dinner – Exchange Hotel. Went to Mechanics Hall to State Convention. Wise spoke.

Apr 5 Fri. Breakfast at Farmville, At Richmond to dinner – Exchange Hotel. Went to Mechanics Hall to State Convention. Wise spoke.

Apr 6 Sat. Rained , all day at Mechanics Hall in Convention. W.B. Preston offered resolution to have committee appoint to _______ Lincoln.

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Apr 7 Sun. Heard Duncan preach ”I know that my Redeemer liveth”

Apr 8 Mon. All day in Loby of Convention. Preston resolution carried, appointees, Preston, Stuart & Randolph, Rained all night

Apr 9 Tue. Rained hard, Left at 6:00 am by Central RR, Baltimore, Omnibus from Alexandria to Washington. Went to Capitol for the last time I suppose, At Baltimore for supplies – Room 57 Bainums

Apr 10 Wed. Fair – Bought goods at Owens Hopkins & Co., Clothing of Shipley Roan & Co.

Apr 11 Thurs. Fair, fine, bought notions – Windsbough, Neats, Cole & Co., Bonnets, Armstrong Catler & Co., Bought “Dixie” of Jones L St.

Apr 12 Fri. Fair forenoon, rained from 4 pm all night & next mornibg. Leftat 4: pm for Richmong. On back at Washington heard of attack on Ft. Sumpter. Put up at Marshall House Alexandria

Apr 13 Sat. Fair afternoon, Left Alexandria ay 2 ½. Got to Richmond at 4 pm. Stopped at Linwood Ho. # 13 Room, My note to NW Bank $450. (Heavy Writing)

Went to Capitol. Saw 100 guns fired and processions formed in honor of Ft. Sumpter. Flag raised on Capitol, Immense demonstration at night

Apr 14 Sun. Rain, Walked to lower end of city before breakfast, went with M. Chapman to hear Duncan preach. Called at Gov. Wise’s room with “P_____” John Tyler, B.G. _______ & M. Chapman. In evening went with Cecil McD. & others to Penitentiary & Hollywood Cemetery. Saw Pres. Monroe’s tomb. ____ Tucker told us result of mission & Washington DC

Apr 15 Mon. Bought groceries etc, etc, Convention went into secret session

Apr 16 Tue. Bought goods.

Apr 17 Wed. Went to Southern Rights Convention, Saw Dr. McComas & H. Fremel & C, Met J B Dunn, Dr. Haskell in Committee at & pm at Hotel. Ordinance of Secession passed about 3 or 4 pm.

Apr 18 Thurs. In Southern Rights Convention – Fair, fine, bought ______. Ordinance of Secession made public. Custom House seized.

Apr 19 Fri. Fair, cool. Left Richmond at 7 am – L.S. Neale, E.W. Pearis, W. Spotts, R.A. Richardson & C along. Took dinner & supper at Liberty. Detrained 1 1/3 hrs., 10 miles below Lynchburg

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Apr 20 Sat. Fair, cool, Got home at 3 this morning

Apr 21 Sun. At Home

Apr 23, 24, (No notation)

Apr 25 Thurs. Fair, Senior class with dress

Apr 26 Fri Students leaving

Apr 27 Sat Fair – Settled with students – rained

Apr 28 Sun Fair, fine Allen, Elbert & C.E. Vaughn left for home at 6 pm. Sent Newfoundland pup to Ma.

Apr 29 Mon Fair, fine – At store, Wrote to Cookford & Son. College suspended operations

Apr 30 Tue. Fair, fine, Went on handcar with M______ to lower end of section

MAY

May 1 Wed. Fair, cool, 475 Kentucky and Alabama troops passed

May 2 Thurs. Rain

May 3 Fri. Fair – Troops going East, Had corner lot laid off

May 4 Sat. Fair, cool – very warm afternoon, Three long trains of troops passed. Went over to R Road to meet our train

May 5 Sun Cold, damp, Troops going East

May 6 Mon. Rained, Troops going East. Kizzie & May Wiley made flag of flannel

May 7 Tue. Fair, Bracing – Troops going East, Raised flag on store

May 8 Wed. Troops went East

May 9 Thurs. Troops went East

May 10 Fri. Troops went East, 3rd letter from CH Corkfield

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May 11 Sat. Showery – Volunteer company made “Emory Home Guards” Troops went East

May 12 Sun. Fair, very warm, Went with Kizzie & Brnff & W.P. Milnors & spent day there. All walked – Kizzie rode

May 13 Mon. Fair – Made belt for pistol

May 14 Tue. Fair, fine – At store

May 15 Wed. Fair, Troops going East – Went to Abingdon on freight, came up on mail train. Bought $100 in gold from Express office (T.R. Freeman). Saw Nannie Pendleton

May 16 Turs. Fair, I.E. Chapman here

May 17 Fri. Fair, fine, Isaac & I went in hand car to Sheffey’s & below

(Mr. Sheffey was a cousin)

May 18 Sat Fair, Went to muster at Glade Springs, Elected 1st Lieut., Paid Haskell our tax to May 1862 - $60, I.E. Chapman went home

May 19 Sun. Rained, At home, wrote Ma and T.N.F. Sent pistol and cartridges by Barrett and Smoot to Elbert

May 20 Mon. Rainy all day, Wrote to C. Oakford & Chapman Lyons & N____y

May 21 Tue. Cloudy, cool & damp, Cashed draft for Greening, wrote N.A. Williams

May 22, 23 (No notation)

May 24 Fri. Fair, fine, Kizzie spent day at E.E.W,’s, Jno. Dutton mended buggy spring

May 25 Sat Fail, Went with Kizzie & May Wiley in buggy to Glade Springs Depot to see Banner presented by Mrs. Floyd to “Glade Springs Rifles” Gen. Floyd spoke.

May 26 Sun. Fair, Went in buggy to Middle Fork. Came back by Antioch for preaching – Storing field

May 27 Mon. Cloudy, windy, fair evening, Went on handcar to Abingdon to See about insurrectionists on Laurel, Stringfield stayed all night

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May 28 Tue. Fair, I H. Brieffy left

May 29 Wed. Fair, Had potatoes ploughed, Rec’d my rifle from Marion $35. Jefferson Davis reached Richmond

May 30 Thurs. Fair, made shot pouch, Volunteers leaving. Wrote to Ma.

May 31 Fri. Rainy tonite, Commenced walking cellar. Abingdon Regt. Left for Richmond. Jno. Saunders 6 ft.

JUNE

Jun 1 Sat. Rainy

Jun 2 Sun. (No notation)

Jun 3 Mon. Fair forenoon, Went after strawberries, Rained very hard. Defreese & I sheltered in Bentley old house in sight Col. Byars

Jun 5 Tue. Rained all day, Meeting of Board of Visitors, E.E.W., No quorum

Jun 5 Wed. Fair afternoon, Made belt for knife & C, My commission as 1st Lt. Militia came

Jun 6 Thurs. Fair, fine, Kizzie spent day at J.A. Davis, Meeting of Joint Board Trustees & Visitors of College. M.N. Buchanan elected Trustee, Vice -R.B. Edmondson resigned.

Jun 7 Fri. Fair, Went to W. Williams after Bowie knives. From there with Smithson to depot to see troops. Saw Reg’t from Pensacola. Capt. Hall “Emigrants” Stopped at Dan’l Sheffey’s

Jun 8 Sat. Fair, Went to Valley Meeting House to organization of Home Guard. Had May cherries on way at Mrs. Housley. Dined at Maj. Davis, Came home with D.M. Stuart

Jun 9 Sun. Fair, At home, Went to church at Mellow Springs

Jun 10 Mon. Fair, Kizzie & I went with W.T Evans, S. Parker (and others) to Jack Kelly’s field in Saltville Valley after strawberries.

Jun 11 Tue. At home, Allen volunteered at Centerville, D. Lowry Captain

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Jun 12 Wed. Fair forenoon, Rained hard afternoon. May Wiley spent evening & stayed all night

Jun 13 Thurs. Fair, warm, Confederate Fast day, Went to church college, Kennedy Ezras – 8 21-23, Store closed, Matthew & Brown Aiken came

(The Aikens were cousins and in-laws, who resided in Jonesboro, Tennessee)

Jun 14 Fri. Fair, very warm, Went with Brown Aiken to Regimental Muster at Glade Springs

Jun 15 Sat. Fair, very hot, Brown Aiken left for Tazewell, Went to Abingdon, rode to Dr. Grant’s, then walked. Paid installment & left note in bank box for ICF & Co., Came home on t rain – 2 hours – refund time.

Jun 16 Sun. Fair, very hot, Started towards town after Ben. 4 Troop trains, Letter from Ma saying Allen had volunteered

Jun 17 Mon. Fair, pleasant, Wrote to Ma & to Allen, Settled with M.D.L. Jones. Took stock in _____, Ship $63.47

Jun 18 Tue. (No notation)

Jun 19 Wed. Fair, fine, Brown, Nannie & Lou Aiken came from Tazewell

Jun 20 Thurs. Fair, pleasant, M. Aiken and lady came at 2 ½ this morning

Jun 21 Fri. Fair, hot, M. Aiken paid me $68 Cover Ap & H_____ & 5 notes, M. Aiken & Lady left tonight

Jun 22 Sat. Fair, very hot, Emory Home Guard _______, Letter from Allen, Indian Creek, Letter from Jno. Saunders, Went to muster (militia) – Morrells

Jul 9 Tue. Rained all day, finished white washing room

Jul 10 Wed. Fair with hard showers – evening, Spent day at Hankla’s, Dewberries ripe

Jul 11 Thurs. Fair – Miss Smith & David Sheffey dined with us. Sent Edging and gun lock to Mouth of Indian

Jul 12 Fri At home

Jul 13 Sat. My note in WW Bank comes up, Mustered at Morrell Mill. I was elected Captain of Company, Election illegal and Capt. Smith still retains com.

Jul 14 Sun. Fair, fine, Kizzie & I went in buggy to church at Glade Spring. Rev. Wm. McMahon preached.

Jul 15 Mon. Fair, E.W. Chamberlaine came from Tazewell Court House – got here after dark, Cool

Jul 16 Tue. Rained all day, EWC _____, here

Jul 17 Wed. Fair, fine, E.E Wiley& J.S. Buchanan families spent the day with us

Jul 18 Thurs. Fair forenoon – rained all afternoon, E,E, Wiley & I went in buggy via Centerville to Abingdon to see Dr. Manly – He was not there. Battle of Bull Run fought near Manassas.

Jul 19 Fri. Fair nearly all day, rained hard in evening & night. At store, I went to town on freight to get news of Battle of Bull Run, Saw Peguum’s _____

Jul 20 Sat. Fair, warm, 70th Regt. At Glade Spring, ENC & I went, I was elected Adjutant of the Regiment.

Jul 21 Sun. E.W. Chamberlaine preached in College chapel, Grand Battle of Manassas at Stone bridge, Victory “GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO”

Jul 22 Mon. East rain all day, E.W. Chamberlaine went home today

Jul 23 Tue. Fair, cool, Crowds here all ay to get news

Jul 24 Wed. Fair, rather cool – Kizzie & Miss Smyth spent day at Toby Smyth’s

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Jul 25 Thurs. Fair, Pleasant, Miss D. Logan, Mr. & Mrs. Swingle spent day.

Jul 26 Fri. Fair, pleasant, Letter from Alle – K.C.H., King’s Mountain Rifles,

Capt. B Elmant assembled here & left in evening to barrack in Abingdon. Kizzie spent evening at Fulton Ho. Rev. J.M. Sheffield stayed with us

Jul 27 Sat. Mixed, Rained after 3 pm, Muster at Morrell’s Mill with Capt. J.B. Smith, met there

Jul 28 Sun. (No notation)

Jul 29 Mon Fair

Jul 30 Tue Fair, Mail train ran off in cut above here, Went back on it to Glade Spring, Sent blankets to Grant’s Company. Kizzie & I took tea at E.E. Wiley’s, Miss Trentman there

AUGUST

Aug 1 Thurs. Fair, made political scrap book, Sowed turnips

Aug 2 Fri. Fair

Aug 3 Sat. Fair, hot, Battalion muster at Newton Logans for volunteers, Toby Smith & DR. McCulloch spoke

Aug 4 Sun. Fair, Jno Hasken preached in College chapel

Aug 5 Mon. Ma & Mr. Thompson left Mo. Indian to see Allen – Stayed in Union, good, big carriage

Aug 6 Tues. Ma and Mr. Thompson of Wheeling went to Lewisburg finding Allen had rejoined his company at White Sulphur Springs, Went there & brought him home on 30 days furlough

Aug 7 (No notation)

Aug 8 Fair, hot, Worked on lock of gun

Aug 9 Fair, Worked all day on the lock of our gun – rainy evening

Aug 10 Fair, very warm at muster at Morrell’s mills, Rec’d Volunteers Manuals – 3 hiers illing haus contling ?? w/ Rich (Richmond),

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REST OF PARAGRAPH IS CONFUSING –

Aug 11 Sun. Showery, Stayed at home, Wrote to Allen

Aug 12 Mon. Cloudy, rainy

Aug 13 Tue. Rained in evening, Went to platform in evening

Aug 14 Wed. Fair, cool, Mr. Liggins & family came down on Wood train & bought goods, Squire Milnor in town, Dan’l Sheffey here – Letter from I.E. Chapman

Aug 15 Thurs. Fair, cool, In store all day, Wrote to Walter Preston NC

Aug 16 Fri. Fair, fine, At store, News of ______ and death of Gen. Lyon in Mo.

Aug 17 Sat. Cloudy, cool rather, Mustered at Morrell’s, Company drill for first time, Opening & Closing ranks, revilsuseing fronts, Front T oblique, March flank movements

Aug 19 Sun. Rather fair, showers, Spent evening atMrs. Swingles

Aug 20 Tue. Fair

Aug 21 Wed. Fair, May Wiley came up. We all dined at Defreeci’s , Fish, Met Mrs. Byars & Mrs. Earnest at store

Aug 22 Thurs. Fair, rained in evening, Stringfield, stayed with D.C. Dickenson

Aug 23 Fri. Fair, Graveled walk in front of store, Slide on RR

Aug 24 Sat. Fair, cool, Drilled company, Stott & Bro along

Aug 25 Sun. Fair, At home

Aug 26 Mon. Cloudy rather, Went to town on freight, Depot in plamco - $385 & 175, W.P. Evans left with his Father.

Aug 27 Tue. Rained all day, Pres. Peters house ”um_____d”

Aug 28 Wed. Rained all day

Aug 29 Thurs. Rained all day

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Aug 30 Fri. Fair, Wrote to IEC

Aug 31 Sat. Fair, Earthquake at 5 am, Drilled the company at Morrells Mills. Came by Kelly’s & got peaches

SEPTEMBER

Sep 1 Sun. Fair, warm, We went to Zion Camp meeting, Wiley preached

Sep 2 Mon. Fair, warm, We spent day at Mrs. Smith’s. Calling to see Mr. Adams, Miss Amy Smith & Miss Hull. Militia got to Cotton Hill.

Sep 3 Tue. Fair, very warm, Saw E. Longley about appointment as P.M. Allen left to join his company

Sep 4 Wed. Fair forenoon – rain afternoon, Painted map of Manassas, Mr. Thompson, Mrs. Lyon at store. Miss Jane Brown died at 11 ½ AM

Sep 5 Thurs. (No notation)

Sep 6 Fri. Cloudy, Attempted to go to town on freight. Mr. Leisman spent day

Sep 7 Sat. Warm, Elected me Captain of 8th Company Militia

Sep 8 Sun, Fair, warm, Went to church, Smiths, EE wily, Wrote to I.R. Chapman, IEC, Ma, S______, & C

Sep 9 Mon. Fair, warm, I went to Abingdon Circuit Court, Judge M McComas, Dep. Money in bank

Sep 10 Tue. Fair, warm, We went (foot) to James Nye’s funeral – 1 o’clock p.m. EE Wiley at Can’t read rest of sentence

Sep 11 Wed. Fair, Wrote to BM Clements Chief of appointment Bureau POD.

Sep 12 Thurs. Fair & pleasant, Packed domestic _______ & peppers for Ma. Wrote to her & Mary, Tried to go to Tazewell

Sep 13 Fri. Fair, pleasant, Kizzy & Smith, Nannie Bell left at 6 ¾ am for Jeffersonville, All there at 7 pm. Stayed at EWC’s, W.O. George died of flux

84

Sep 14 Sat. Fair, warm, IEC, EWC & I went in buggy to W.O. George’s burying. Acted as one of the pallbearers. Masonic burial – stayed at IEC’s

Sep 15 Sun. Fair, cool, We all spent day at Mrs. W.P. Cecil’s. Called to see AA Spotts (flux) night. Rev. Mr. Grossclose preach at Pr. Church. Stayed at EWC’s

Sep 16 Mon. Fair, pleasant, Dined at John S. Anderson’s who is living ________ house renting it on same terms with those of D.B. Baldwin. Militia left for Wyoming. Stayed at I.E.C’s

Sep 17 Tue. (No notation)

Sep 18 Wed. Fair, pleasant, I went to Tazewell, White Sulphur to get j----, Assent to the discount of T.R. Smith’s note to us $1200. Dined at R.B. Gillespie, Tea at W.E. Perry, At IEC (night)

Sep 19 Thurs. Fair, pleasant, dined at IEC’s, Isaac appointed assistant Company General to Floyd’s Brigade is preparing to leave. Stayed at EWC’s, Made deed to EWC

Sep 20 Fri. Fair, warmer - After acknowledged, gave deed to EWC for Roffel property. Left for college 7 ¾ am – got home at 7 ¾ pm

Sep 21 Sat. Rained afternoon (a sentence can’t read) M------ --- with 3500 men, survivors at Lexington _____ to Gen. Price. $90,000 captured

Sep 22 Sun. Fair, Stayed at home, Wrote Allen, I.R., R.C & Ma

Sep 23 Mon. Fair, - Court day, Went to town – horseback. Paid off C.F.’s last nego notes to S. Vance $2132. Squared own account at Bank. Fixed up ICA & Co.’s note for 900. End, J.W Johnson, W.O. Edmondson & A D Hutton

Sep 24 Tue. At store all day

Sep 25, 26 (No notation)

Sep 27 Fri. Rained all night and all day – Tremendous rain

Sep 28 Sat. Cloudy forenoon – cold, fair afternoon, Mustered company & dismissed it for 2 weeks. No trains on railroad

Sep 29 Sun. First frost, Hasken preached CC

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Sep 30 Mon. (No notation)

OCTOBER

Oct 1 Tue. Settled with S. D. Saunders

Oct 2 Wed. Rainy, At home

Oct 3 Thurs. Fair, Bought bolt of goods of Mrs Swingle

Oct 4 Fri. Fair – pleasant, Wrote to IEC about T LP. Notes & WK Heskell event

Oct 5 Sat. Fair

Oct 6 Sun. Cloudy, Rained afternoon, Wrote Mr JRPC, IEC, RAP, J.A. Browne, JO Cox, Slett/Ex Co.

Oct 7 Mon. Rained all day

Oct 8 Tue. Fair

Oct 9 Wed At store

Oct 10 Thurs. Went to Abingdon on Saltville train – Saw Jno W. Johnston about Seg Act, At night train took me to Glade Springs Depot.

Oct 11 Fri. Rained, cool

Oct 12 Sat. My note in N.W. Bank comes up $380, Kizzie spent day at J.H. Smythes, After muster I went there

Oct 13 Sun. Fair, cool, At home, E.L. C_____ in Abingdon

Oct 14 Mon. Fair, fine, Called At College to see Stott

Oct 15 Tue. Fair, fine – night cool, Stayed at home, Baled goods for M H French. Sent wagon to shop

Oct 16, 17, 18 (No notation)

Oct 19 Sat. Kizzie spent day at J.A. Davis, Fair, warm, Took 7 boxes Ten & 39 C pots & things for me including side sole, 16 pounds to Depot

86

Oct 20 Sun. Fair, cool, Funeral of Mr. J.W. Pruitt, Writ Ma, KP Co. & 9 Stanett

Oct 21 Mon. Rained all day, Victory at Leesburg, 653 prisoners taken. Go it Yankees! “On to Rich’d

Oct 22 Tues. Cloudy, damp, Letter from ESC

Oct 23 Wed. Fine, At store

Oct 24 Thurs. Fair, fine, At store

Oct 25 Fri. Cloudy, cool, Lunch at Mr. Swingle’s – Good, Commenced digging potatoes

Oct 26 Sat. Fair, cool, J. S. Kennedy spoke at College – did not go

Oct 27 Sun. Fair, cool, Kennedy preached at college

Oct 28 Mon. Fair, pleasant, Went to Court at Abingdon. Saw Robert Gibboney

Oct 29 Tue. Fair, cool, At store

Oct 30 Wed. Fair, cool, Worked at building

Oct 31 Thurs. Fair, cool, Worked at building

NOVEMBER

Nov 1 Fri. Cold, East rain, Finished covering building

Nov 2 Sat. Rained, Wrote to Allen & JRP

Nov 3 Sun. Cloudy, Rainy, Wrote IEC & SRC at Raleigh CH about box, Wrote Memorial letter from JRPC

Nov 4 Mon. Fair, cool, Buggy cover stolen. May & Jennie Wiley took tea

Nov 5 Tue. Cloudy, rained, At store

Nov 6 Wed. Rain, very windy, I kept Jefferson Davis and A.A. Stephens

poll at Morrell’s precinct. Voted for Davis and Stephens. Walter Preston for Congress – McMullin 15, Preston 23, Davis 39. Mr. Tiffany died

87

Nov 7 Thurs. Fair, pleasant, Went to Peter’s house to get Carter to do some work. Jno. B. Smith & Nannie Herill married

Nov 8 Fri. Fair, pleasant, Jno. B. Smith and wedding party called at store, Dr. Harrison petition 36 names. Jennie Louise Johnston died

(Neice of I. C. and Kizzie - Jennie Johnston was the 5-year-old daughter of Mary Fowler and James D. Johnston.)

Nov 9 Sat. Rainy, Fight at 3 miles below Piketon, Ky. Mrs. Lyon & Mrs. Moorman,

Another Confed. flag – crisscross

Nov 10 Sun. Fast day for Holston Conference. EE Wiley preached at College.

Nov 11 Mon. Rained, Carter laid floor in Granary

Nov 12 Tue. Fair, fine, Carter finished Granary

Nov 12, 14, (No notation)

Nov 15 Fri. Fair, windy, At Court Martial at J.N. Logans

Nov 16 Sat. Cloudy, cold, Note of Co. Fat Jeffersonville for $4300. Endorsed J H Anderson, A.A. Spotts, At store, Wrote K.P. & C

Nov 17 Sun. Cloudy, alternately Pxxx, Heard I. Hasken preach at chapel College, W.W. Wiley started off.

Nov 18 Mon. Cloudy, Drake cut my se______ ____, Letter from J.D. Johnston, E. Longley called to but us out

Nov 19 Tue. Fair, cool, Rec’d from POD C.S.A instructions to qualify as PM at Emory under appt. 30 August. Qualified & gave as-- Sewitors A.D. Hutton, J.H. Smythe. Witnesses T.W. Pruitt & S.D. Saunders, Mrs. J.A. Smythe spent the day

Nov 20 Wed. Rainy all day, Sent mem. & vouchers to J.D. Johnston to make settlement with estate. Sent bond & qualification as PM to B. N. Clements, chief of Appt. Bureau. Notified Longley of my qualifications

Nov 21 Thurs. Fair, fine, Made letterbox, Engaged Pork of A.D. Hutton at 9 ¾, Talked to James Kelly about pork at 8 ½, May Wiley took tea

Nov 22 Fri. Cloudy, evening rainy, At Court martial Glade Spring, Fort Pickens attacked Pensacola

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Nov 23 Sat. Cloudy, cold, Made pigeon holes for P.O., Sent box to JDJ & Ma

Nov 24 Sun. Cold, snowy, windy, Letters from Allen, Elbert& Julia B, Wrote Ma, Allen & JDJ, Ground white with snow

Nov 25 Mon. Cold, Court day

Nov 26 Tue. Fair, pleasant, Took possession of P.O., Put mail on at College

Nov 27 Wed. Dark, rainy, Went to Abingdon after dinner, Supper at Vx HoteL, Came up in mail car & went to Glade Spring & walked back, Night very dark, 4 Reg’ts passed by from Richmond

Nov 28 Thurs. Cloudy, fair & misty, Wrote B.N. Clements about changing plat for me

Nov 29 Fri. Dark, rained in evening, Mail train 5 am, Mrs. Buchanan& May Wiley spent evening & stayed all night

Nov 30 Sat. Fair, pleasant, Mail 4:20 am at College

DECEMBER

Dec 1 Sun. Cloudy, cool, Fulton Kelly rec’d news on Sam’s death. Mail here at 8 ½ pm

Dec 2 Mon. Fair, cool, Finished platform for mail, Mail at 8:30 am. there here

De4c 3 Tue. Fair, cool, Will & George Aiken came. Mail 3:20 am.

Dec 4 Wed. Fair, cool, Cut up 5 Hogs in granary, Mail 3:16 am

Dec 5 Thurs. Fair, fine, Cut up and salted pork, McVeigh to help, Fixed & smoked ham, No mail

Dec 6 Fri. Fair, fine, Mail 3:25 am. Will Aiken & I went west on R-road to the Mail train, Went down on it to Edmonson’s & back, W.C. Edmonson returned from Harrisonburg.

Dec 7 Sat. Fair, Fine, At home

Dec 8 Sun. Cloudy, moderate - At home

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Dec 9 Mon. Fair, fine, At home, Will Aiken and I went to Glade Spring on Mail train & to Tank & back on train.

Dec 10 Tue. Fair, fine, At home

Dec 11 Wed. Fair, cool, Sent Mrs. Swingle’s wagon om to Saltville and had it numbered 1533 for M. Aiken. W.M Aiken came along. Bought 5 b------- for me & 2 for Casey.

Dec 12 Thurs. Fair, very cool & still

Dec 13 Fri. Mrs. Davis spent day with us

Dec 14 Sat. Fair, sharp but fine, Went by P.B. Snapps to Capt. Strothers and back.

Dec 15 Sun. Fair, fine, Went to P.B. Snapps and back, Passed by Longley’s Springs

Dec 16 Mon. Fair, fine, Went to Morrell’s precinct to Confederate War Tax assessment, My assessment $1,800, Left at 5 pm (on pole car) for Glade Spring on my way to Monroe. Stayed at Dublin Depot.

Dec 17 Tue. Fair, fine, Slept last night on mattress in commissary bldg.. with Wm McClarity & Mr. Dearing. WFD & IEC there. Left with Harvie _____ _____ horse at 2:40 pm for Pearisburg. Saw Jno. A. Dearing. Arrived at 7:45 pm.

Dec 18 Wed. Fair, tolerable, Stayed in Pearisburg at J.D.J’s. Went at 2 pm to EWC’s – returned to EWC’s at 4 pm & stayed there. Called at J.W English’s at 7 pm.

Dec 19 Thurs. Fair, fine, At 11:00 am, left in buggy with Mary Ann & Elbert on horse for Mo. Indian, Saw Capt. W.H. Browne at Camp of 45 near Peterstown, Got to Mo. I. at dark. Col. Dickerson, Capt. Dickey & Wm. Prince, present to assess damage.

Dec 20 Fri. Cloudy, Wm. Crump & Heslip assessed damage done by Brigade. Went to town & enjoyed J.A Skagg’s park

Dec 21 Sat. Fair, fine, Maj. A.J. Dunn & Capt. Cox came & made certificate of m_______ claim for keeping the expense riders for Floyd’s Brigade $52.00, Made stamp

Dec 22 Sun. (No notation)

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Dec 23 Mon. Cloudy, windy very, At Mo. Indian all day

Dec 24 Tue. Fair, fine, Our note for $900 at Exchange Bank, Abingdon. Elbert & I went to Red after mail. Went to see C.W. Pearis, M.D. who was sick.

Dec 25 Wed. Rather fair, Ma, Elbert, Mary J., Mary F. & I with Capt. W.H. Browne of Co. G, 45th Reg’t spent day at Crump’s, I fixed Mrs. Crump’s clock, Mrs. Hunt there. J.D. Johnston came over from Giles.

Dec 26 Thurs. Fair, pleasant, Ma & I went to R. C. Skagg’s to get Power of Attorney acknowledged. J.D.J., Elbert & I went to Skaggs receive and weigh 16 hogs, Total 2019 ½ net.

Dec 27 Fri. Fair, windy, cool, Mr. Crump’s family, Capt. W.H. Browne & Dr. Earont spent day. Had 2027.17 Pork of Skagg’s cut & salted.

Dec 28 Sat. Fair, fine, Elbert went to Red for mail. I got letter from Kizzie & Milnor.

Dec 29 Sun. Fair, fine, Jno. Saunders caught fugitive slaves in Mud Gut Hollow, Mary J., Mary F. & Elbert went to Martha Browne’s . Capt. Wm. Crump called

Dec 30 Mon. Fair, fine, Went to Centerville& settled with McNeir for tabs for store to date, Gave him receipt as EC for $242.87 as credit on his notes. This sum is then due by I.C. Fowler& Co. to the estate of Thos. Fowler dec’d. Came to Red Sul. & stayed w/ C.W. Pearis & Earont.

(Red Sulphur Springs was a resort spa and hotel – the closest inhabited town to “Indian”)

Dec 31 Tue. Fair, fine, Came to Mo. Indian for dinner.

I.C. Fowler Diaries

1862

Jan 1 Wed. Message sent by Mr. James Roles by Tom (negro) that the advance guard of the Yankees stayed there (Mouth of Bluestone) last night. Mrs. C. went as far as Shanklin Ferry. Mary Johnston & Elbert went to Giles in buggy. I rode to Clark Hill & to H. Saunders.

Upton came from Iauping Bridgr & said the Yankees had ret’d to Raleigh, John A. Down (Dunn?) and I showed Gore Bottoms.

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Jan 2 Thurs. Went with Deason to Gov. Hill, Rented him the Gore place (Big Meadow excepted) for $150. Dr. S.C. Humphrey’s came at 4 pm, At night, George Carter (boy) came from Land crafts 1 hour after dark & said he left a Yankee mounted armed & uniformed, at that place, who said he was coming to Red Sul Spgs that night. I rode to Red Sul to get some force. At 9:00 a Yankee attempted to pass Mo. Of Indian and was halted by E. Fowler who was on picket. He fired at Elbert, the bullet piercing through his coat. Elbert fired with musket & followed firing 6 times with revolver at the Yankee who lost his gun in his flight. Elbert got his gun (fine Sharpes Rifle). I came from Red to Mo. Ind. At 3 the next morning with 9 other men, mounted & armed. Picket kept up all night.

Jan 3 Fri. Capt. Lively’s Cavalry sank Mr. Hinton. Packs & Harvey boat, I went to “War Fort” & back. Crump’s boat brought up & p_____d Indian Creek

Jan 4 Sat I went to Red Sulphur & came back with J.D. Johnston who was on his way from Union. VF. Tiffany, C. Spangler & Jno. Anderson, Lewis Spangler & I on picket tonight.

Jan 5 Sun. Cloudy, J.D.J. left for Giles

Jan 6 Mon. Cold, At home Mo. Indian

Jan 7 Tue. Cold, snowy, Went to Red Sul. Spgs. C.W. Pearis (sick) & Dr. earont(driving?) came in “90 cart” to Mo. Indian. We warned CWP at F. Ellisons.

Jan 8 Wed. Moderate, I went on to Gov. Hill looking for my gloves.

Jan 9 Thurs. Cloudy, Silas McClung came & paid Ma his note for $315. Dr. Earant came

Jan 10 Fri. Cloudy, warm, Dug perpetual roses. Dr. Earant and I Left Mo. Indian at 12 m. Got to J.D.J’s at Pearisburg at dark

Jan 11 Sat. Left letter with JDJ, signed by him & me to Dr. L.C. Thrasher (all copy). Left Pearisburg at 1 ¾ pm. Left Earant at T. Shannon’s. Met Col. Jennifer. Got to Dublin (Sarah & Harve along) at dark. Saw JRPC & Capt. Jno. Whitley. Left in car for Emory – at 10 pm. JRPC along.

Jan 12 Sun. Cloudy, Got off cars at home at 31/2 am. Found all well having been gone toMo. Indian since 16 Dec. ‘ 61. Mail at 3:42

Jan 13 Mon. Cloudy, At home. Measured distance from old P.O. to plot

92

form. 370 yds & reported to H. St. Geo Affuret of POD, Mag Wiley stayed all night, Mail at 3:12

Jan 14 Tue. Cold, sleet on snow. At store all day, Mail – 3:20

Jan 15 Wed. Rained all day, At store, Mail 3:18

Jan 16 Thurs. Fair, very fine, Mrs. Fulton Kelly spent day, Mail 3:24

Jan 17 Fri. Fair, fine, Mail 3:18

Jan 18 Sat. At store, Mail 3:30

Jan 19 Sun. Cloudy, Dan’l Sheffey spent day. Wrote to RAP & TBF by Norfolk & flag, Mail 5½ pm, Battle Fishing Creek, Ky

Jan 20 Mon. Cloudy, rained, At store, Mail 4½ pm.

Jan 21 Tue. Rained, At store, Mail 11 am

Jan 22 Wed. Cloudy, Mail 1:20pm

Jan 23 Thurs. Fair, cool, We dined at EE Wiley’s, I finished Nannie Belle’s shoe, Mail 3:35

(Nannie Bell was I.C. daughter)

Jan 24 Fri. Cloudy, Jack Smythe’s wife died, Mail 3:40

Jan 25 Sat. Fair, pleasant, Kizzie & I went to funeral & burying. EE Wiley preached Daniel 3:30

Jan 26 Sun. Wrote to Ma & JD Johnston, Mail 3:40

Jan 27 Mon. Snow & rain, Mail 3:50

Jan 28 Tue. 251 Bee com of W Casey, Mail 4:45 pm

Jan 29 Wed. Cloudy, moved safe & desks in County room, Mail at 5 am

Jan 30 Thurs. Cloudy, Plastered fractures in shop, Went to EEW’s & cut greens for Lillian Buchanan

Jan 31 Fri. Worked at white washing shop, Mail at 12:25 pm

93

FEBRUARY

Feb 1 Sat. Finished repairing shops & moved into them at dark, Mail 5:10

Feb 2 Sun. Fair, At home all day, Wrote to Dr. L.C. Thrasher in reply to J.D.J and me. Enclosed it to J.D.J. Mail 3:25

Feb 3 Mon. Snow & rain, At store, Dr. A.D. Hutton & I ordered Daily Republican L______ for 3 months $1.50, Gen Beauregard passed. Mail 3:50

Feb 4 Tue. Fair, fine, Made envelope & platform in front of shops. Ord. D. Repub. For T. Smythe, 3 mo. $1.50, Mail 3:00

Feb 5 Wed Fair, At store, Mail 5:15

Feb 6 Thurs. Rained all day, Made culvert from yard, Mail 3:30

Feb 7 Fri. Damp, dark, Went with Pro Davis to Sale “little” Andy Edmonson’s, South Fork & back. Capt. Patterson paid me 6.00 for Hardee’s Tactics. Put on mail by holding bag with both hands. Danville cars did not connect. Mail 3:25

Feb 8 Sat. Damp, dark, At store, Mail 6:00 am

Feb 9 Sun. Fair, cool, Went to College for preaching, Mail 10 am, No preaching there. 2 Letters from Ma.

Feb 10 Mon. Mail 6 pm

Feb 11 Tue. Cold, snow, Mrs. J.S Buchanan, Misses Kennedy, May,& Jennie Wiley spent the day. Heard of capture of Roanoke Inn

Feb 12 Wed. Cold, cxx Mail 4 pm

Feb 13 Thurs. Fair, fine, I S Kennedy & J.K. Springfield spent day & dined with us. Heard of safety of Capt. Lowery’s Company at Elizabeth City

Feb 14 Fri. Rained, R. Clark returned from Winchester, Letter from J.D.J. Valued ware for JAB & JBS, Mended ______, Mail 3:25, 55 cans

Feb 15 Sat. Snowed, Snow 7 inches deep. Finished platform to RR door. Mail 3:25,

94

Feb 16 Sun. Sun forenoon, very cold, snow unmatched. Mail 4:07

Feb 17 Mon. Rained, News of Fort Donelson’s fall. I painted flags, New one.

Feb 18 Tue. Rain, Mail 3:20, No connection SS RR

Feb 19 Wed. Rained, night very windy, Wrote Ma, No mail

Feb 20 Thurs. Cloudy, rained morning, Worked at porch, Mail 4:10, Slide not removed

Feb 21 Fri. Cloudy, cool, Finished platform, Mail 12:25

Feb 22 Sat. Rained hard all day, Tremendous rain, Jefferson Davis inaugurated, Mail 12:35

Feb 23 Sun. Cloudy forenoon, fair afternoon, Soldiers passing west on foot, Dr. Easterley, Don & 2 others stayed all night with us, No mail

Feb 24 Mon. Snowy, cold, Soldiers passing on foot, Railroad ruined nearly by storm of Sat. No Mail, Sent Bev to Abingdon with Dr. Easterley to bring horses back

Feb 25 Tue. Fair, Found store cellar with 4 ft. of water in it. Cut ditch to drain it. Soldiers from Evansport stayed with us. (Bedford Co. Tenn) last night. Mail train passed east tonight, did not return.

Feb 26, Wed. Rained, No mail train

Feb 27 Thurs. Cloudy, wind, cold, Went to Glade Spring Ck meeting of officers for enrollment. H. Buchanan along

Feb 28 Fri. Confederate Fast Day, Cloudy, cold, I.E. Chapman came at 10am, having stayed at Ben Buchanans

MARCH

Mar 1 Sat. Very cold & snowy, I.E. Chapman here, No mail

Mar 2 Sun. Fair, fine, I.E.C & W.C. Edmondson at dinner, Rec’d papers from 22 to 28 inclusive, Mail at 3:30 pm

Mar 3 Mon. Rainy all day, moderate, I.E. Chapman started home at 7 1/2 am, Mail train 3:00 pm, No mail

Mar 4 Tue. Very cold, Went to Morrell’s Mill, Enrolled 8th Co. for the draft

Mar 5 Wed. Cold, windy, Went to J.H. Eamont & reported the enrollment of 8th Company, Mail 6 pm

Mar 6 Thurs. Cold, snowy, Dan’l Sheffey dined with us, Kizzie at Mrs. Swingles, No mail

Nov 7 Fri. Cold, Snowy, Went partridge hunting, Went into cellar first time since 27th Fchy, Mail 6 am

Mar 8 Sat. Fair, fine, Letter from J.D.J. & E.S.N, Mail 4pm, Cross written: Battle in Arkansas – Gen. McCullock & McIntock killed

Mar 9 Sun. Fair, fine, Went to College Church, E. Longley, Mail train 3:45 but no mail & no connection

Mar 10 Mon. Rained, Went to Clade Sp. Depot, War news telegraphed to us. Naval battle Hampton Roads. I. S. Kennedy stayed all night with us, Mail 6 am

Mar 11 Tue. Fair, fine, Worked at slide to RR, Had tray handled on sledge, Mail 4:45

Mar 12 Wed. Fair, fine, Finished style, Miss Kelly & Miss Jane Smythe spent day, Mail 2: 40 pm

Mar 13 Thurs. Raining, Went to Antioc & voted for ratification of new constitution & for right of secession & for Isaac M. Tarace for Secroeyor

Mar 14 Fri. Fair, Made strawberry bed & had upper in side of garden, ploughed. Freight train "Bristol” stalled here, Mail 3:40 am

Mar 15 Sat. Rained, At store, Pro. Davis ret’d, Mail 5½ am

Mar 16 Sun. Cold, rainy afternoon, Pro. Davis dined with us. Mrs Absalom Beatie died. Kizzie rode over there in the afternoon. Wrote Ma & JDJ. Mail train 4½, No mail put off

Mar 17 Mon. Cloudy am & fair afternoon, News of fall of Newbern, N.C.,

Mrs. Beatie buried. Mail train 4½ am, No mail put off

96

Mar 18 Tue. Fair, made strawberry bed & set out gooseberries, Mail 3:30

Mar 19 Wed. Rained, Wrote to E.A. Holmes & Rich’d Examiner, Jno. D. Hall’s & Bro. W.H. Hall came, Mrs. Snapps & son of Blountsville stayed all night with us, Mail 9:35 am.

Mar 20 Thurs. Fair, Rainy afternoon, Mail train stalled here going west.

Mar 21 Fri. Cloudy, cool,

Mar 22, 23, 24 (No notation)

Mar 25 Tue. Fair, fine, Went to Jno. Byars, I took tea, Called at Col. Earnest T at Pro. Davis

Mar 26 Wed. Cloudy, snowy, cold, Rode to Glade Spg. Depot. Left before day. Took train for Dublin at Mt. Airy ssw Stuart. Buchanan & Co. (A.A. Stuart), C & F’s ______ debts @ 80C on the dollar. Took their check for $4,000 on Merchants Bank of Lynchburg. Remainder to be paid when accertained. At Dublin. Rode in Government wagon (Capt. Martin) to Giles. Stayed at Shannon’s

Mar 27 Thurs. Fair, fine, Rode in the wagon to Pearisburg, around there 2½ pm. Stayed there – sick

Mar 28 Fri. Fair, fine, Rode in Crump’s wagon to Mo. Wolf Creek. Met 45th Rgt. Stopped & stayed with A.C. Peters. Regt. Encamped South of Road in em______ _____ of Hale’s Mill. Col. Peters went at dark to meet Col. Jennifer at Adairs

Mar 29 Sat. Rained morning, I walked to canoe above falls, crossed and walked to Hobb’s where I was overtaken by J.D.J. & rode in wagon to Peters Town. _____ Chas Tiffany’s horse to Regiment again. After my pistol _____ along. Could not cross at Hobb’s on acct. of wind. Went up & crossed at Canoe again. On return met Elbert after me with horse at New River Pass. Rode to Mouth of Indian against dusk, Found J.D. Johnston there

Mar 30 Sun. Fair, fine, I rode up to Mrs. Robinson on Town Hill & cupped William for pneumonia. W.W. Crump, H. Crump & families dined on their way to N.C. as refugees.

Mar 31 Mon. Fair, fine, J.D.J & Elbert and I left at 11:00 am for Pearisburg. Stopped at Peters Town with Militia. Stopped also at Regt. Found M.P Crump at J.D.J.’s

97

APRIL

Apr 1 Tue. Fair, Left Pearisburg on my horse without a saddle for Dublin at 8:00 am. Got to Dublin 5½ ______ I.C. McDonald and paid him in C & S not. Check xx Stuart Buchanan & Co. $4.000. In room with Maj. McDonald

(Major John Chapman McDonald, a cousin, Captured and died at Elmyra prison, New York)

Apr 2 Wed. Cloudy, Left Dublin on train at 1:30 pm, Left my horse with _____ _____. Got home at 6:51 pm

Apr 3 Thurs. Fair, Walked to Daniel Sheffey & to _____ & Hanklo’s

Apr 4 Fri. Windy, rain, Letter from J.W. Sheffey

Apr 5 Sat. Rain & wind

Apr 6 Sun. Fair, fine, Went to Church College. Wiley preached to Hospital, Battle of Shiloh

Apr 7 Mon. Rain

Apr 8, 9 (No notation)

Apr 10 Thurs. Rain, Maj. McDonald came at 11:00 am. We visited Hospital & play__________

Apr 11 Fri. Fair, fine, Mrs. D. left on horse for Tazewell. Kizzie called on Mrs. Fornby

Apr 12 Sat. At home, Rev. C. Scott stayed all night

Apr 13 Sun. Rained, F. Kelly, Jeff Smythe, WCE & others here. R.N. Price preached College. Stott in evening at Antioch

Apr 14 Mon. At home

Apr 15 Tue. Fair, Geo. (negro) came from Dublin with my horse

Apr 16 Wed. Fair, warm, Put Geo.& Bev to cutting briars in Byars field

Apr 17 Thurs. Fair, fine, Walked to Glade Spring & met Heslip’s family at 6:25 pm, with negroes. Came down on train and got off at College

Apr 18 Fri. Fair, warm, Started Geo. To ploughing the Byar’s field. Heslip & I walked over ______ & looked at clover field of J.B. Smith which we rented to mow, Also came by a _____ _____ lad of Nyes.

98

Apr 19 Sat. Cloudy, showers, Capt. (Dr.) McComas killed at South Mills, N.C.

Apr 20 Sun. Easter, Rained, At home all day, Cold rain

Apr 21 Mon. Rain, cold rain, Set Geo. & Bev to ploughing & cutting briars

Apr 22 Tue. Rainy, cold, Mrs. Swingle’s team hauled load for J. Heslip & the negroes from Glade Spring Depot

Apr 23 Wed. Mr. Heslip & family moved over to Hankla house. Mr. Swingles wagon went for another load from Depot

Apr 24 Thurs. Fair, Mr. Ruckmon, Miss Mat Emory & Miss F.E. Buchanan spent day, Mose came with wagon & team

Apr 25 Fri. Rainy, cold all day

Apr 26 Sat. Coo, fair afternoon, McDonald came from Tazewell & stayed all night with us. Had Mose haul logs & planks.

Apr 27 Sun. Fair, fine, Went to Hospital Church, Rev. J.A. Davis, McD. Left for Abingdon

Apr 28, 29 (No notation)

Apr 30 Wed. Fair, Made garden

MAY

May 1 Thurs. Fair, Made garden

May 2 Fri. Made walk in garden, worked raspberries & made frame for Dahlias

May 3 Sat. Fair, Walked to J.N. Logan’s muster & back. Had lot ploughed

May 4 Sun. Rather rainy, Dinner at Heslip’s, Letter from Ma & J.D.J., Sent check to ICF & Co. in Abington by WCE. I went to his house. M.MFM _____ there & J.P. Hoyt

May 5 Mon. Rainy, rained all day, faired off in afternoon. Ma & Mary Fowler left Pearisburg

May 6 Tue. Fair, fine, Started to Pearisburg after Ma & Mary Fowler.

99

Stopped at Wytheville & saw I.C. McDonald, J.W. Witten, Dr. Estell & family. WPC, Col. D.J. Gillespie & con. We went to town & visited. Cox, ______. Paid McDonald $2000 for C&F, using $200 of Ma’s money. When train came from East, found Ma & Mary Fowler on board. I came back to Emory with them. Yankees Took Giles C.H.

May 7 Wed. Fair, fine, At home

May 8 Thurs. Went to see McKee’s place and to James Kelly. Allen & Elbert came up to Dublin

May 9 Fri. Fair, fine, Ma and I went to Heslip’s and to Byar’s field

May 10 Sat. Fair and fine all day, no rain at all, I took train , intending to go to Dublin. Train stopped with Marshall’s Brigade & went to Saltville. I came home. Yankees driven from Gile’s C.H. to Mo. Of East River.

May 11 Sun. Fair, fine, We all went to College Church, Longley preached. Put 5 cows in E.E. Wiley’s pasture

May 12 Mon. Fair, fine, I went to Dublin& brought Ma’s trunk

May 13 Tue. Showery in afternoon, Paid I.C. McDonald At Boyd Hotel $335.56 cash and paper on notes due him from C&F.

May 14 Wed. Fair, fine, Stayed at store

May 15 Thurs. Rainy, At store

May 16 Fri. Fair, At home

May 17 Sat. Fair, fine, Trustees of College met. Sowed early turnips& late cabbage, replaced watermelons

May 18 Sun. Fair, Went to Church Hospital, J.K. Cattlett, Rev.

May 19 Mon. (No notation)

May 20 Tue. Sent Harve to work for Pro. Davis

May 21 Wed. Thunder showers in evening, Mrs. Adams came & stayed all night. Letters from EFC, J.D.J & A. Fowler

100

May 22 Thurs. Fair, hot, Election. Agreed with A.R. Malicote, for him to takeover 358 sheep & 5 lambs to keep 12 Mo. He to take ½ of the 5 lambs of this Spring & ½ fleece & increase for raising them

May 23 Fri. Fair, fine, Sent 35 sheep & 5 lambs to A.R. Malicote to keep

May 24 Sat. Rainy all day, Went with Ma to Quarles & from there to Cedarville, bought hat for 37.3/4 ________ Domestic from Browning. Mrs. Tobias Smythe died at 11:30 am

May 25 Sun. Fair, fine, Attended with Kizzie & Mary F, the funeral of Mrs. T. Smythe. E.E. Wiley

May 26 Mon. Fair, D.M. Stuart looked at my horse, Got 36 Bu. Wheat A. Burton

May 27 Tue. Fair, fine, Had Richard Rose & George & my cow put on E.E. Wiley’s pasture

May 28 Wed Rainy, fine noon, Went to College to get Cutting knife, and there to see David Sheffy, Sick, Stayed to dinner

May 29 Thurs. Fair, fine

May 30 Fri. Went to Sheffey’s property & selected location for C______, Spinkled in evening

May 31 Sat. Fair, fine, Went to Nance’s store at _______. Had cabin raised for us & Sheffey, Battle near Richmond

JUNE

Jun 1 Sun. Heard A.M. Everhart at college, Dan Sheffy stayed with us all day. Sprnkled rain in evening. Battle near Richmond renewed.

Jun 2 Mon. 1/2 fair and pleasant, Went with Ma to Byars field & quarter, thnce I went to Snay’s store

Jun 3 Tue. Rained all day, Sold horse Richard to Jno. Hamilla for 150.00

Jun 4 Wed. Fair, rain at night, No mail from East. Conscripts notified

Jun 5, 6, 7, (No notation)

Jun 8 Sun. Fair, cool, Went to Hospital, Preaching – Pro. Davis

101

Jun 9 Mon. Fair, Went to Sheffy’s, M. Beatie& Glade Springs. Bought 50 Bu. Wheat of Mr. Beatie @ $1.25

Jun 10 Tue. Rainy, cold, Went with Mag. Wiley, Jennie _______ Ed L., Miss Bibb, Mary & Kizzie to Jas. Kelly’s field for strawberries. Went to Js. Kelly & home. All got very wet & cold

Jun 11 Wed. Cold, fair, Ma &” I went by Heslip’s to Dr. Hutton’s& spent day

Jun 12 Thurs. Mose, Geo & Jno came from Giles with 40 hogs, 2 oxen, - bull and cow, calf. Cost of trip $14.00

Jun 13 Fri. Fair, Kizzie & I went to Smythe’s field ____ Gathered a bucket of strawberries. Sent hogs to Malacote & put cow & 2 oxen in Dr. Wiley’s pasture & put bull in permanently

Jun 14 Sat. 82, very hot, Mrs Wiley & Mrs. Longley& Mrs. B. spent evening

Jun 15 Sun. Fair, hot, very hot, D. Sheffy spent evening, J.W. McWitten dined with us

Jun 16 Mon. Cool, fair

Jun 17 Tue. Fair, hot, Went to A. Orr & bought $225 of goods, S.P. Pearis came

Jun 18 Wed. Cloudy, rain, I took Ma & Nannie Belle in buggy to Glade Springs Depot & back by Orr’s after goods bought yesterday – caught in rain as we came home

Jun 19 Thurs. Cloudy, Went in buggy with SPP to Strawberry patch

Jun 20 Fri. Fair, Went in buggy with SP”P to B.P. Smiths sale. Sent by J.S. Vail to pay out my note in N.W. Bank, Jeffersonville - $300.00. Mose started with horses to meet Ma at Dublin. Horse to go to Mo. Indian

Jun 21 Sat. Fine, WPM went to renting of McKee place.

Jun 22 Sun. Fair, fine, J.S. Kennedy& J.S. Adams dined with us. Adams preached hospital, W. C Ed - Monson married. Ma & S.P. Pearis started for Giles & Ma with Patrick

(Patrick was a slave)

Jun 23 Mon. Fir, hot, At store

102

Jun 24 Tue. Went down and dined with Pro Peters at Sheffey’s

Jun 25 Wed. Fair, fine, Great battle before Richmond begun by Stonewall Jackson on the enemy’s right wing

Jun 26 Thurs. Fair, fine, Went in buggy with Kizzie & Mollie to Mrs. Smythe & spent day. T.A.A came & Miss A. Smith there. THE ENEMY ARE OUTWITTED & BEATEN

Jun 27 Fri. Fair, fine, Rec’d news of great engagement near Richmond. The enemy flee ingloriously shame & confusion overwhelm them and the brave Confederates pay their part of their great debt.

Jun 28 Sat. Great battle near Richmond. Had garden ploughed & cabbage hills made. Commenced cutting hay in Col. Peter’s lots

Jun 29 Sun. Fair, Went to Church – College - Haskins, When I returned, found Nannie Belle very sick.

Jun 30 Mon. Went after Dr. Hutton – Not at home. Nannie Belle very sick. Dr. came in evening, Gave Colomel & Ipecac. Great battle near Richmond

JULY

Jul 1 Tue. Fair, rained all afternoon and night, Great battle near Richmond

Jul 2 Wed. Rained all day. McClellan’s great retreat commenced a week

ago 7 kept up disastrously until today. Is now become a desperate rout of fleeing fugitives. May GOD complete his misfortune!

Jul 3 Thurs. Fair, hot, At store all day. Nannie Belle still very unwell

Jul 4 Fri. Fair, fine, Ma left Giles for Mo. Of Indian to attend to the harvest.

Worked at Quarterly return, Gathered raspberries. Nannie Belle better

Jul 5 Sat. Fair, fine, Went SW to Byars field with J.P Dickenson & gathered bushel of raspberries.

Jul 6 Sun. Fair, fine, Went to church - Catlett, D. Sheffey came in evening

Jul 7 Mon. Fair, fine, Sent Bev to W.P.M’s & Croorbest

Jul 8 Tue. Fair, fine, Sent Bev to WPM to harvest, At store alone

103

Jul 9 Wed. Sent Ma’s wool (7 packages) to Clapp’s machine by J.L. Smythe, in over wagon

Jul 10 Thurs. Rainy, very wet, WPM left on train by Lynchburg

Jul 11 Fri. Very wet

Jul 12 Sat. Fair, fine, worked in garden, framed grapes

Jul 13 Sun. Fair, fine, Went to Church Hospital - Kennedy

Jul 14 Mon. Fair, hot, Miss Swingles & Gile Forenger took tea

Jul 15 Tue. Fair, fine, Storm in evening, R. B. Edmonson died.

Jul 16 Wed. Fair, hot, Matthew Aiken came before breakfast

Jul 17 Thurs. Hot, rather cloudy, M. Aiken went to Saltville. Took cows from E.E. Wley’s and put in E. Longley’s pasture

Jul 18 Fri. Rainy all last night & this morning, James D. Johnston came last night and this morning. We went to College & Hospital, graveyard and by College

Jul 19 Sat. Fair, Sold white cow & calf of her’s to A. Beatie for 40 bushels of wheat in late September, Took this cow out of Longley’s pasture. In evening, JDJ & I went in buggy to field & by Heslip’s & WW _____ home, W.P. Minor came home for _____Homage

Jul 20 Sun. Fair, hot, cloudy at intervals, JDJ & I went in buggy with Nannie Belle to Mr. W.P. Milnor’s

Jul 21 Mon. Fair, hot, Went with JDJ in buggy to J.C Hopes & down ”Hog” thief by hopes wheat field via Cedarville & Mrs. Smith (where we stopped) & home

Jul 22 Tue. Fair, hot, JD Johnston started home. J.E. Chapman & son,will come in buggy

Jul 23 Wed. Rained

Jul 24 Thurs. Thurs. Fair, hot, Commenced mowing meadow next to store

Jul 25 Fri. Fair, hot, Got 50 bu.s of wheat at 9/ of I. A. Davis – paid him $75.00

104

Jul 26 Sat. Rainy, I E. Chapman left for home, Kizzie with college & I. Davis, Kizzie, M & I went to Hesliss

Jul 27 Sun Fair, pleasant

Jul 28 Mon. Fair, hot, Started in company with Jno. H Anderson Son the after goods at 6 pm. Got to Jonesboro, Tn. At 12 mid-N. Went to M. Aikens

Jul 29 Tue. Very hot, Visited (on foot) with M. Aiken & Jno. H. Anderson, Posey Matthews & Mrs. Barclay & Mrs. Aiken

Jul 30 Wed. Rainy, Left Jonesboro at 9 am, on accommodation train, Got to Knoxville at 9 pm& put up at Bell House (Jno. C. Higganbotham along) Got lodging at private house & were up all night too – Tortured by innumerable bed bugs

Jul 31 Thurs. Rainy, Saw & shook hands with Col. Jno. H. Morgan, the Ky. Hero. Foundhim the finest model of a gentleman & a soldier. Left Knoxville at 10 am. Dined at Mouse Creek and got to Dalton, Ga. At dark. Train from Chattanooga failing. Put up at Henderson House

AUGUST

Aug 1 Fri. Showery, Meeting 6 trains of Bragg’s troops at _____, Ga. We were delayed & had no time for dinner at Big Shanty. Got to Atlanta about 4:00 pm. Put up at Washington Hall. J.C. Higganbotham left at 2 o’clock in night for Mobile

Aug 2 Sat. Fair and very hot, Left Atlanta at 6 am, Breakfast at Stone Mountain, dinner at Thompson. Got to Augusta, Ga. At 5:00 pm. Stopped at Southern States Hotel, room 3. Bought 3 hats

Aug 3 Sun. Fair, hot, Walked over into Hamburg, S.C., Attended St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Aug 4 Mon. Fair, hot, Bought 4/4 Bdls sheeting, Bro. sugar, coffee, Boots, Dry goods, Hats, Shoes, etc. Weather very warm. Saw 10 of the crew of the Merrimac – Virginia. Jno. C. Higganbotham again joined us, having ret’d from Montgomery, Ala.

Aug 5 Tue. Very pleasant, Bought Drury stationary, Queensware Candies, Fell in with Mr. Moore from Bonsacks Va., Finished buying goods

Aug 6 Wed. Fair, hot, Left Augusta at 7½ am, Dined at Social Circle, I got to Atlanta 5;10 pm, Put up at Washington Hall

105

Aug 7 Thurs. Fair, hot, Stayed in Atlanta. Bought knives, pins, toys & I left for home at 7½ pm, Stayed awake all night

Aug 8 Fri. Fair, hot, Arrived at Cleveland, Tenn at day break, hoped on and took breakfast at Mouse Creek, Bought basket of apples from blind man, 7:54 arrived at Knoxville at 12 noon, Hoped on and took dinnerat Mossy Creek at 1, Arrived at Jonesboro at bedtime. Supper house – Did not eat, Saw M. Aiken, Got to Bristol at 11 pm. Stopped at Lancaster House.

Aug 9 Sat. Fair & hot, Left Goodson at 41/2 am. Got home at 6:12 am. Met Mary Fowler on platform starting to Marion in company with Miss Hull. Battle of Cedar Creek

Aug 10 Sun. Fair & hot, Stayed at home. Called in evening to see Heslips, child with scarlet fever

Aug 11 Mon. Fair, hot, Went in buggy with Nannie Belle and Kizzie to Glade Springs Depot. Found some of our goods there, Confederate prisoners returned. Took our stock out of E. Longley’s pasture & put in Pro, Davis’ wele field which I bought at $120.00

Aug 12 Tue. Fair & hot, Went with wagon to Depot for goods. Came home on freight.

Aug 13 Wed. Fair & hot, Mr. & Mrs. Jno. Byars & Miss Hull came to see us and trade.

Aug 14 Thurs. Fair & hot, At store all day

Aug 15 Fri. Fair & hot, Mollie F. & Vic Hull came on train from Marion

Aug 16 Sat. Fair & hot, very busy selling goods rec. by freight train

Aug 17 Sun. Fair, Wrote IEC, At home all day, Mary & Vic Hull went to P. Smith’s & back

Aug 18 Mon. Fair, cool, Milnor at home unwell. Very busy all day

Aug 19 Tue. Fair, cool, Sold goods all day. I.E. Chapman came on train from Glade Springs on his way south to buy goods from _____ and in company with W. Spotts

Aug 20 Wed. Fair & cool, IEC stayed all day & left in evening on train to Augusta, Ga. ICF & Co. sent by for some goods ___ ___ sent

106

Aug 21 Thurs. Rainy afternoon

Aug 22 Fri. Fair, hot, In afternoon sent Heslip by Cedarville to Mr. Clarke for Dr. Hutton to see Kizzie & I went for Dr. “Pepper. Saw Dr. Rice

Aug 23 Sat. Fair, Milnor home, Ann sick, Mary Fowler came home from White Top

Aug 24 Sun. Cool & cloudy, Home all day, Wrote to Ma & _____Inter Browne & M. Aiken

Aug 25 Mon. Cool & fair, Sold goods all day, Cash sales $105. Heslip went to Malacotes- bought hat of M. Holley $7.50

Aug 26 Tue. Fair & pleasant, Sold goods all day. Cash $136.00, Milnor’s family here

Aug 27 Wed. Fair & warm, Sold goods all day alone. Cash $128.00

Aug. 28 Thurs. Fair & warm, Milnor here, Sold goods all day, Cash $80.50

Aug 29 Fri. Fair, warm, Sold Jacob Morrell & Lady their bill of sugar $140.50. They paid it with the $140.00 been sent along. J.H. Nett passed in train

Aug 30 Sat. Fair, hot, Very busy selling goods all day. Mollie helped me sell silk goods. Combined armies of Pope & McClellan & Burnside defeated by the Confederates under Lee, Jackson, Hill & Longstreet, in view of which the 18th of Oct. is appointed a day of Prayer and Praise. J.H. Nett & T Taubion came

Aug 31 Sun. Cloudy & cool, J.H. Nett with me all day

SEPTEMBER

Sep 1 Mon. Rained, Went in buggy with J.H. Mett & J.L. Buchanan

Sep 2 Tue. Fair, fine, J.H. Nett went to Saltville & back. Read news of Victory of 30th

Sep 3 Wed. Fair & fine, J.H. Net stayed all day. Sold and packed goods for him &159.00, He and Mary Fowler left for Tenn. At night on cars

Sep 4 Thurs. Fair, fine, Sold goods all day. Our army crossed the Potomac.

107

Sep 5 Fri. Fair & fine, Mrs. Jane Clark’s sale, Sold goods all day long

Sep 6 Sat. Fair, Sold goods, Wrote to Ma, Aiken, IEC – Saltville Depot Agt., B.F. Tutt Hamilton McKlery & Joyner, Aug, & Atlanta, Ga.

Sep 7 Sun. Fair, warm, W.W. Neal came on mail train from Bristol at 1:45 am, After breakfast to Saltville

Sep 8 Mon. Fair, hot, Rev. W.W. Neal ret. From Saltville, Dined with us & left on train for Bristol

Sep 9 Tue. Fair, hot, Sold goods all days. Heard of advance of our army on Thursday last night – Maryland

Sep 10 Wed. Fair & hot, Packed soap to send off. Letter from J.D.J., A.F. & Ma, News of the fall of Covington & Newport

Sep 11 Thurs. Fair & hot, Rev. Dr. Pitts preached at College at 11AM

Sep 12 Fri. Dr. Rained, Determined to start to Charleston, S.C., Wrote Neal & Cormann

Sep 13 Sat Fair, fine, Left on evening train for Charleston, SC for goods. Saw M.S. Comann in Bristol & got passport to Knoxville

Sep 14 Sun. Fair, warm with showers in evening, Stopped 18 minutes in Knoxville & had passport approved to go to Charleston, SC. Baggage Master sent my trunk to Chattanooga instead of Dalton. Dined at Morse Creek. Stopped at Henderson Hotel in Dalton to await my trunk.

Sep 15 Mon. Cloudy all day, NO trunk came from Chattanooga for me. Dined at Big Shanty, got to Atlanta, Called on White & Powers, Delivered letters for soldiers. Left Atlanta for Augusta at 7 1/2 pm

Sep 16 Tue. Fair, hot, Got to Augusta at 5 ½ am. Breakfast at Planter’s Hotel. Left Augusta for Charleston at 7. Made acquaintance of Robert Tyler, son of ex-President, Jno. Tyler. Got to Charleston at 3 ½ pm – room 44 at Charleston Hotel. Bought trunk, $6.00, 2 shirts @ $6.00, 4 collars @ 50c, Looked at cargo of goods at R.A. Pringles & Co.

Sep 17 Wed. Fair & hot, Attended auction at RAP & Co. In afternoon visited Mills House Hotel, Saw Gen. Beauregard and looked at fortifications in harbor, Saw Fort Sumpter, Moulrie, Johnson, Pinkney etc

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Sep 18 Thurs. Fair, hot, Left Charleston at 7 am, Got to Augusta, Planter’s Ho. At 3 ½ pm. National Thanksgiving

Sep 19 Fri. Fair, hot, Bought 2 bales sheeting at auction @ 57 7/8 - $103.00, 1000 sugar 55, 1 tierce rice 5.61, wares $105, drugs, etc. In room 48 with Mr. Taylor of Danville, Va.

Sep 20 Sat. Cloudy, cool, Sun Melon at Union Point. Left Augusta in rain at 7 am. Dined at Social Circle (Monkeys), Got to Atlanta at 5 ½. Bought shoes at Derricks, Canty of Jack Bryson & Co. Called at J. White & Partners, Raining, Left Atlanta 7 ½ pm, traveled all night & got to Cleveland, Tenn. at day break

Sep 21 Sun. Fair, hot, Breakfast at Mouse Creek, Got to Knoxville at 12 pm. Stopped at Laman Ho. Visited with Mr. Hock Senior, member, the Wharf, Brownlow’s office, 1 Main St.

Sep 22 Mon. Fair, hot, Bought goods of J.A. Ray & Co.. Left about 12 noon on Cars for Bristol. My trunk came up from train from Chattanooga. Traveled in company with Mr. Engles – Dined at Mossy Creek. Stopped at 9 pm for few minutes at M. Aiken’s in Jonesboro. Got to Bristol at 11 pm

Sep 23 Tue. Fair, hot, Left Bristol 12 midnight & got home at 1:47 am

Sep 24 Wed. Fair, hot, Rode up from College in D.M. Stuart’s carriage Stayed at store all day

Sep 25 Thurs. Fair, hot, At store

Sep 26 Fri. Fair, hot, At store

Sep 27 Sat. Fair, hot,

Sep 28 Sun. Fair, hot, At home

Sep 29 Mon. Fair, hot Went with Mose in wagon to Aff Beatie’s for 40 bu. Wheat for cow & calf. Could only get 20 Bus. He recesing to comply further because wheat advanced. In afternoon went with wagon to Glade Springs Depot for goods, Came home on train

Sep 30 Tue. Fair, hot, At store

OCTOBER

Oct 1 Wed. Fair, hot, At store

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Oct 2 Thurs. Fair hot,

Oct 3 Fri. Fair, hot, At home

Oct 4 Sat. Fair, hot, At home

Oct 5 Sun. Fair, hot, We went in buggy to church at Smyth’s. Kennedy preached, Dined at Jno. J. Smythe’s, Miss Jane Kelly, Mrs. Hagy & Mrs. Holly there

Oct 6 Mon. Fair, hot, Got ready to go to Jonesboro, Tenn. Had P. Kelly, Wheat, both from Mr Swingle’s, Kizzie, I, Nannie Belle, left at 6:47 for Jonesboro, Tenn. Got to Jonesboro1:47 next morning

Oct 7 Tue. Fair, hot, Found M. Aiken gone to Murfreesboro. Will Aiken at home - sick. Brown Aiken left for Army by same train we came on

Oct 8 Wed. Fair, hot, Mrs. Fanny Matthews called on us, Matthew Aiken returned from Murfreesboro at 8 ½ pm. Spent evening at Pose Matthews – Kizzie stayed all night. I stayed at M. Aiken’s

Oct 9 Thurs. Fair & hot, We spent day with M. Aiken’s shop. At Wm. Barclays, Came to M. Aiken’s evening. Bought H7L sugar of Murray 50; bought 50 _____ 100

Oct 10 Fri. Cloudy, rained afternoon, All spent day at Robert Aiken’s. Kizzie & the children with Mrs. Matthews, stayed all night there. I and M. Aiken walked over to town after dark

Oct 11 Sat. I left on train at 8 ½ pm for Bristol. Got there at 11 ½ pm. Put up at Lancaster Hotel

Oct 12 Sun. Cloudy, rained, cold, Dined at Comann’s & took tea at W.W. Neels. Saw W.H. Parrish, Paid 33.18 for our goods in Town Depot. Met Kizzie on the train at midnight & took Va. Cars for home. Got home 1:47 am.

Oct 13 Mon. (No notation)

Oct 14 Tue. (No notation)

Oct 15 Wed. M. Aiken came on train at 1:07 am. Stayed all day, Got letter from J.D.J. as to illness of E.W. Chanceaulone’s

Oct 16 Thurs. Fair, Pleasant, M. Aiken and I left on train at 1:47 am for

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Pearisburg. Got off Christiansburg, walked up to town& back. Governor Tetcker and Senator Preston came on the train, Seicter on his way to Saltville – we took hack to Blacksburg (drunk at Yellow Sulphur), Dined at Mrs. Henderson. Hired Mr. Bowman to take us in old hack as far as Chapman’s Ferry. Stayed all night in Newport. Saw James Mason

Oct 17 Fri. Fair, fine, From Newport to Chapman’s Ferry in hack, thence walked to Pearisburg on foot. Met Dr. Johnston & Lady, dined at James D. Johnston & went to E.W. Chanceaulone’s and found him very low of Dyptheria. He died after great suffering exactly at midnight – a very triumphant death

(Dr. Joston is presumed, to be Harvevey Green Johnston living on Main Street in Pearisburg, brother of James D. Johnston. His lady was Carrie Snidow Johnston)

Oct 18 Sat. Fair, fine, Saw Gen. Loring on his way from Kanawha Valley to Richmond. Had E. W. Chanceaulone grave dug next to his father in-law’s. In digging it found remains of a small coffin. Sent word to Ma to come up on Monday. I.E. Chapman came at 3 o’clock pm

Oct 19 Sun. Fair, fine, Rev. Jacob Douthat preached funeral in Methodist Church. “ The Last Enemy That Shall Be Conquered is Death” Bro. Chnceaulone - buried with Masonic honors at 3 o’clock pm. A. Mahood acting as Master. Rev. See as Chaplain.

Oct 20 Mon. Fair & cool, Ma came up in carriage, I brought some prints of Lewis Shanklin.

Oct 21 Tue. Fair, fine, J.D. Johnston and I went to Perry Hale’s on Wolf Creek. Crossed on our return at Johnston’s Ferry and went to Ch, J. Johnston’s to see Jno. Deak. Got home after dark.

Oct 22 Wed. Fair, fine, Ma, Mary & I left Pearisburg at 7 AM & got to Dublin at 12 noon. Wm Estell came to depot to see us. Left Dublin about 1:00 pm & got to Emory 6:45 pm

Oct 23 Thurs. Fair, fine, At home

Oct 24 Fri. Fair, fine, At store – At Return

Oct 25 Sat. Fair, At PO Return. In fare at T.W. Truitts

Oct 26 Sun. Cold, sleet & snow, At home

Oct 27 Mon. Snow, 8 inches deep, At home, Mailed P.O. Return to Department

Oct 28 Tue. Snow yet here

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Oct 29 Wed. Fair, 29 degrees, J.D. Johnston came on train at 6:45 pm

Oct 30 Thurs. Fair, fine, JDJ & I gathered chestnuts at DCD

Oct 31 Fri. Fair & fine, Kizzie & Nannie Belle left at 2 am with JDJ & wife for Giles

NOVEMBER

Nov 1 Sat. Fair, fine, At home

Nov 2 Sun. Sunny, fair, Went with Ma to College Church – Davis preached

Nov 3 Mon. Fair, At store

Nov 4 Tue. Rained, At store

Nov 5 Wed. Cloudy, At store

Nov 6 Thurs. Cold, fair, At store

Nov 7 Fri. Cold, cloudy, Left home at 6 am on foot for Saltville. At Glade Springs took train at 8:00 am, At Saltville @ 9:00, Dined with W.A. Stuart, Left Saltville 5:00 pm, Got to Glade Springs at 6 pm – Home at 6:45

Nov 8 Sat. Cold & cloudy, Wrote John H. Anderson changing his rent credit from $46.73 to $32.53. See daybook, I.C. Fowler & Co.

THIS DIARY BOOK ENDS HERE

PART VI

Bristol News Editorials

The first year, 1868

I.C. Fowler, Senior Editor

In Book Form

Presented to Mrs. Theresa Rita Springer,

great granddaughter of I.C. Fowler

Compiled by Tom Mitoraj

September 20, 2020

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Friday, August 14th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial

For President Horatio Seymour, for VP General Frank Blair.

We have consented to assume the editorial control of the Bristol News. The time is come when we are willing to speak through the press. One-third of a decade has expired since the late war between those whom we were taught to believe God had joined together. the Radical party had been in power and we have had no peace beneath Radical rule. After the awful carnage which began on the Plain of Manassas and ended on the hills of Appomattox, we entertained the generous hope that Southern silence was becoming. We could not dishonor our dead by saying we had been wrong nor abase ourselves by professing to believe it. We cannot consent to appear with important clamor on our lips while there were manacles on our hands. Our armies have made a gallant and glorious resistance and yielded only to means and numbers. The course of good taste and wise discretion seemed plain to us. We would join in making no course of good taste and wise discretion seemed plain to us. We would join in making no demand, which we had acknowledged we had no power to enforce but would trust and test the magnanimity of the victors. Besides our own convictions, we had the lofty examples of Jefferson Davis and Robert E Lee. These great men of whom the world is scarcely more than worthy had gone off - the one to prison, the other to retirement, and were as mute as we guardian angels at the Tomb of Jackson. Though the heavens are yet dark, with scenes and circumstances are changed. After a course of prevarication and treachery, the legislative branch of the government has claimed as its sole prerogative all the powers of the other two and no successful attempt has been made to arrest the usurpation. Ruin has been sown among the dragon's teeth which were previously scattered around our fireside and our tombs, and we have kept faith under the double castigation. And now we have the ultimatum of voting our own degradation or bear the bayonet thrust still longer.

We were promised cannon ruts on Southern soil which would be visible to and terrify our children then unborn but with the terror of beholding them. We were promised a restored and beneficent union. We have those ghastly scars in our fields and on our plains and our children have beheld them and asked their wondering questions of the cause, and some of us have lived to tell them the unintelligible story of glory and shame and passion and endurance of faith and treachery. Our arms have been gathered to northern arsenals and the federal dead to their splendid mausoleums under the national wing. Many of ours are scattered where the bittern sounds his lonely drum and we have been execrated for depositing above them The frail but beautiful flowers of the field.

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At length, it has pleased the God of all the earth to divide the sentiment of the North with regard to us. A mighty portion of that people have said that the red flag of battle shall be folded away. They have met in the great metropolis of the New World and invited us to aid them in rebuilding the waste places of our beautiful land and in stopping the mad waves of revolution with its progenitors had failed to arrest. Heretofore we have refused all connections with the press. Now we have consented to join the party who have said we shall not be destroyed, and who have prayed that we may meet them around the national altar and swear that the starry edifice of our republic shall not fall. We do today raise our own voice and behalf of our own homes, our dead and our living, and we indulge with pleasing hope that when we cease alike our advocacy of political virtue and our war upon unclean beasts in Radical power, we may behold once more a united and great people, who though they have lost their liberties, shall have recovered them and who, reposing in the grand equipoise of adjusted national power, shall yet feel grateful to Jehovah that while they were true to themselves, they were not unmindful of the misfortune of a feeble race, once their slaves.

We shall advocate consolidation into one great line of several railroads now used as links in the chain of connection between Norfolk and the trade west and south of Virginia. In the success of that measure, we will realize for both Virginia and Tennessee, the complete development of those advantages which we have seen so all auspiciously commenced under the able management of Gen. Mahone.

We will then by every means at our power, seek to promote the speedy completion of the Virginia and Kentucky Railroad. The only line now wanting to bring through our country is the great commerce of the Ohio Valley.

We propose to advocate the whole agricultural and industrial interests of our common country and we would be false to ourselves if we could for a moment forget that Virginia and Tennessee are too intimately associated by a common ancestry, by a connected system of internal improvements and in all the appliances of Southern life to identify ourselves exclusively with each other. The young city of Bristol belongs to both of these great states and from them both it must draw its prosperity and to them both dispense its benefits.

We shall hope for a long and pleasant connection with the readers of the “News”.

I. C. Fowler

E. Fowler

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August 21, 1868

Bristol News Editorial

Before the subject of a consolidation of the Virginia Tennessee Railroad with the Southside and Petersburg and Norfolk railroads was agitated. The stock of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad was worth from $0.32 to $0.33 in the dollar. When the subject to consolidation was being urged upon the stockholders of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and before the legislature, it was asserted, persistently asserted, that consolidation would greatly enhance the value of the stock of the road.

What was the result?

Upon the election of Gen. Mahone as president of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company which election was claimed by his friends as a virtual consolidation of the railroads in question, the stock of the road was down to $15 per share. What was the cause of this rate decline?

We give our opinion and answer: it was the want of confidence in Gen. Mahone's ability to manage the road on the part of capitalists, or it was a purpose on the part of our friends of consolidation to destroy the value of the stock and buy it up at a nominal price and thus perpetuate their control of the road. Either horn of the dilemma may be taken.

We merely allude to the subject to elicit the attention of the stockholders to the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company.: Abingdon, Virginian.

We clip the above from the Abingdon Virginian, and we behold in it evidence positive that the anti-consolidation party are whetting their blades for another contest for possession of the Virginia and Tennessee railroad. We had really hoped that the triumphant administration of Gen. Mahone, incomplete in its development though it be, had already satisfied every reasonable mind and that henceforth those who could not assent to the theory of consolidation would cheerfully acknowledge its practical workings as a success. We should be pleased to work in harmony with our neighbors on all questions of public policy. But if the battle of consolidation is to be refought, we must make up our minds to be found on opposite sides, and we are certainly content that while it pleases him to represent the past administration, we shall be among those who represent the present one. We engage to meet the issue. We deny the answer of the Virginian to its own theory and hence deny the dilemma. We maintain that any decline in the price of the stock was due to the revolutionary action of a part of the opposition who boasted openly that if Gen. Mahone was elected he would never run the road. This boast was followed by a military edict to the effect that his election would not be permitted.

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After the election of Gen. Mahone, some of them cried “Never, never!” to his proposition for the union of effort and went home boasting that they would use their influence to have the roads sued on every dollar it owed. And when finally, the road was turned over to the management of the new president, it had not wood enough to run the trains for 30 days and that wood was green and unfit for use. Coal had to be procured at Clinton, Tennessee, and mixed with it before it could be rendered efficient. We charge too, that the exhibit made of the condition of the road and the finances misled the public in making an estimate of its real condition. Witness the following which we copy from the report of President Owen, October 4, 1867. “During the past year, 70 miles of the road have been ballasted with a broken stone one foot deep, having now about 25 miles to be ballasted.”

This would have made one of the finest roadbeds on the continent. It was an item of intelligence of which even we feel proud. Judge of the disappointment of the stockholders when they looked and found it out in a report for November 11th, 1867, the floating debt of the company is shown to be $369,297.37, of which some $72,800 “is due to individual hands, etc”. Now we have high authority for stating that besides the amount due at the last change of its administration in the shape of unpaid interest on bonds, the road was actually left in debt to the tune of $501,000, and of this enormous amount, over $121,000 stood in the form of paymaster's checks for labor running as far back as May 1865. Yet, at the close of the war, they were in debt as shown by their own books only about $16,000.

Now between this last report and our understanding of the state of affairs when the road actually changed hands, there is a discrepancy so large as to be detrimental to the claim for executive ability as a setup by its friends for the party opposed to consolidation.

How much lower future developments may run the stock of the road? We shall not now speculate upon. For the present we desist and if in attempting to state facts we have erred to the detriment of any party, we ask our neighbors to correct us.

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August 28, 1868

Bristol News Editorial

We believe it was in the city of Lucknow in which the English garrison was shut up by the Sepoy Rebellion. Relief was expected, but the siege lasted long. No help came. The men were worn, fatigued, emaciated by hunger, and their own numbers reduced by disease. Hope long deferred, had made the heart sick and they began to embrace the horrible alternative of surrender. When lo! The martial music of Gen. Campbell’s forces was heard in the distance and soon the inspiring air was distinguished, and it swelled upon the glad breeze. “The Campbells are coming. Oh ho! Oh ho!”

Onward Pressed the weary host; soon their banners pictured against the sky, the red symbol of England's power. That power which explores the world to avenge one wrong child and when they came, the besiegers were scattered before their glittering blades like pestilence before the hoar frost. With nerve and muscle brought to hope’s high pitch the famished sons of Albion climbed the ramparts and leapt into the arms of their deliverers.

How like the garrison of Lucknow are the people of Virginia today? One after another, the strongholds of Tennessee, the Carolinas, the Empire State of Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida have fallen before the mad sirocco of Radicalism. Around the foundation of our state temple, the angry surge beats. And we are, to all intents, besieged by an enemy who knows no virtue and no pity or godlike attribute of mercy it loathes as it does the Pearl of Justice. It has tasted the blood of power and we cannot appease it. It has rioted upon spoil and being drunk with excess, it stops its ears to the voice of prayer and would spit upon that blue robe of omnipotence it calls heaven. They have violated and defiled the virtue of our sister states and left them uncovered to the gaze of mankind. We are truly helpless in ourselves. Our altars are in the dust and the foul things of the pit have crawled across our doorsteps and left the slime of their dishonor in our homes. The evil spirit of discord between races which had been socially adjusted and were happy tells by its turbulence where they have been. But the awful decree of impotence and exhaustion confronts us. We have called for friends and the echo of their cannon alone replied. No compassionate Levite turned aside from the world's highway to assist us. Unless deliverance can come from without, we have no hope. But the nations of the world saw Carthage destroyed and looked on in curious wonder when the Son of God was crucified. They saw the dying agony of Poland and beheld the tortured death of Hungary and schooled in the memory of tradition, they have curiously looked upon the evil which we have suffered and by their acquiescence failed to acquit themselves of those great wrongs with which radicals of all ages have piled the tract of time.

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But at last, we have hope. The bright banner of Seymour is seen streaming over the hills of New York. The bugle notes of Blair echo in the vast plains of Missouri, a mighty host, which no man can now number is marching to save alike its own honor and the liberties of a surrendered people. A revolution, like unto a mighty east wind and born of God had grown from an incipient sea. We cannot date until it had broken up the great deep of northern apathy, and shaken the very throne of their power. On the page of American Civil contests, no sudden uprising of a people has ever promised to be so sweeping in its triumph. It behooves our people to be circumspect in their demeanor as the hour of their deliverance draws nigh. Let there be no premature demonstrations of joy. Let us look on the approach of the victorious Democratic multitude with the calm dignity of conscience, and rectitude. Nor would we too eagerly acknowledge and participate in the farce of asserting our rights to partial suffrage, which is worthless to us. We can certainly accept the privilege of resisting to the last efficient man. The foul affront offered us in the proposed constitution. But a defiant and self-asserted suffrage on the third day of next November would damage the prospects of our friends, and be placing ourselves in a false attitude. We should deprecate such a step. The responsibility of success rest upon the true people of the North, and well are they promising to acquit themselves nobly? And when that good hour shall come, one of our most painful but solemn duties will be to hurl into the pit of scorn the microscopic vermin are begotten and the dead carcass of Southern liberty and hatched in the foul air of Radical ascendancy. We must perform the duty with alacrity but with shame - shame that they had their origin on southern soil.

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September 4, 1868

Bristol News Editorial

It seems to have been widely decreed that great historians shall appear only after the lapse of many years. As yet, America has produced no son worthy to stand in the lofty niche beside Roland and Hume and Macaulay, to trace the record of her past for the warning and encouragement of her children living and unborn. Irving and Prescott have chosen to deal in the shadowy knighthood of the Moorish and Spanish races and have leapt to the pale and prosy pen of Bancroft. The deeds of the proud race which took from the wilds of the 16th century the lovely sights on which they have built their homes and cities. Thus far he has done little more than aggregate and material which is drudgery to read. And in that impatience always indicative of moderate minds, betrays partisanship for the present which he would fain conceal for the past.

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Nervous under the retirement of his field, he has betrayed a childish dissatisfaction with the tardy honors to which he has inspired and clamored for the narrow and unstable distinction of the politician. Oblivious of the fact that a people can write their own history on their own hills, and repudiate its compilation at the hands of a Parvenu, he has wasted years of a life he might have made useful and failed to reflect honor on the country which produced him, has one no chaplet of renown for himself. For a base subservient to the passions of a national hour, the cold but slow hand of retribution has nailed him on the wheel of time, where the events he would record whirling beyond his visual powers, leaving him to behold only those mighty spirits who tower in the past for their obedience to laws. He had not the capacity to obey. In his proclivity he had reached scarcely more than the opening of the first revolution when the God of Nations, who makes history faster than Mr. Bancroft can write it terminated our short career of ease and glory by the opening of a second one; and while it pleased Him to bestow upon us the Rachel of Peace at the close of seven years of defensive labor, it also pleased Him to give to Mr. Bancroft that “strong delusion” by which he saw peace as the reward of four years of aggression. Having in his trudging come up to the footprints of Washington and the luster of Mount Vernon, his eye was suddenly ravaged by the cheap tinsel which glistened on the plume of Grant from the time it left Fever River, in 1862, until it was thrown into the perilous eminence which had its climax at Richmond in 1865.

The true historian trusts not himself in the stormy present, but waiting till the dust of time bespeaks the death of prejudice, goes patiently to labor among the moldy records of the dead, and lays them bare and bright to candid inspection. His is a work of self-denial. He goes behind the haunts of men and holds his solitary communion with the dead and the august presence of the temples whence hate and passion have flown, he cannot lie. Having left the gaze of envy, he cannot steal from the helpless trust so wholly committed to his honor. But it was consistent with the perverted taste of Mr. Bancroft that he should pause in his historic view before the shadow of Washington to cross the gulf of 90 years, that he, like the loathsome caterpillar, might crawl and glutton on the chaplet of Lee.

Yet, true history will assert its power, and though its march be leaden-footed as the slave, its coil will, like the great serpent of the Amazon s crush that which cannot live forever. There will yet come a day for America when they who may hold dear the memory of those men who would compel our union with them and then reject it, will nourish regret that they were ever born in a country so democratic as this; and some historians, equal to the task of calling to perpetual remembrance those men of Confederate glory so recently potent and now so silent, will, in his charity for mediocrity and presumption refuse to place Mr. Bancroft on the poignard of justice, that the world may give him the notoriety of proclaiming what he attempted and what he did not do.

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At length Gen. Lee has spoken. There is not a magnanimous soul in our land who will not acknowledge him to be the finest product of the present century. What his recent views were we were left alone to read in those hieroglyphics he has written with his sword on the fields of Virginia. The great minds of his own section had sought the counsel of him at Lexington, but he spake not of political events. One word from him would have been obeyed by the people who love and honor him. But the mailed hand of Northern predominance had been laid upon his lips and his silence enjoined the army of carping critics who read divine law in the New York Tribune, had attempted to obscure his great example by declaring him a churl. Calling on him through the brazen throat of a corrupted press to advocate the cause of Radical ascendency. They were amazed at his silence that they were not capacitated to understand or appreciate it. His arms had been bandaged down like that of an Egyptian mummy and yet they would slander him that he failed to bend the supple knee and beat the air with his tongue to the music of a mad multitude.

But the justice of heaven moves not, and as the scroll of time is steadily unrolled, it brings to view a tremendous gathering of the Northern men, who surfeited with Southern blood and alarmed at the magnitude of their own great evil, are calling the Southern rocks and mountains to resist the avalanche they have disengaged. They have beheld us like Samson sitting shorn and blind beneath the temple. And while they have sworn we shall never worship there, they fear our power to destroy them ii its ruins. High functionaries are dispatched who asked the great warrior in Virginia for counsel in the storm which threatens to engulf all on board. The hand which pressed the seal of silence is withdrawn, and the great man, who during the mighty revolution never did a mean or vindictive thing, has spoken to the assurance of his troubled country in that phase of peace which is more terrible than war.

Thus, is the unseen hand of providence shaping the diplomacy of events, and when the storm is highest and the elements of strife beyond all parallel in their turbulence, behold in the twinkling of an eye that ironclad and colossal figure that rose to typify Northern cupidity and New England hate, it turned, like Lot's wife, into a pillar of salt, which those same turbulent elements can beat and play upon till it crumble and leave only the barren waste where it stood, to remind a world that like Babel, it could multiply evil but cannot perpetuate it.

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September 11, 1868

Bristol News Editorial

The expulsion of the Negroes from the legislature of Georgia is calculated to teach an important lesson. It destroys the confidence of the Radical Party in its own scheme of reconstruction. It breaks up in an unsuspected quarter of a dark conspiracy which had Negro domination for its object and revolted at no means to accomplish it. It makes the Empire State the third in which the ends have failed from the very violence of the means. It endorses the verdict of Alabama and Mississippi that this country cannot be governed solely in the interest of the party at the expense of the Constitution. It shows again that even those elements of society which may be called together to feast upon the public plunder may be made speedily to respond to reason and to respect the common interest. In short, Radical ascendency over the white race over this continent can only be ephemeral.

On our first page, we gave prominence to the late correspondence between General Rosencrans on the part of the Northern people and Gen. Lee with other distinguished gentlemen of the Southern States. In importance, it is not subordinate to the correspondence which led to the surrender of the Southern armies. The famous and parabolic apple tree has borne nothing but bitter fruit since our great commander “put up his sword” beneath its branches in 1865. The connection, which was broken for four long years, has refused to heal externally while the irritation within was perpetuated. A second capitulation had been made and it was fitting that this time those men of able intellect and exalted virtue should come together around the sweet waters of the White Sulphur and ask every good heart in our land to aid them in casting overboard those bad passions and abandoned men heretofore so fruitful of evil. We would gladly concede the point that in this last attempt to bring into cooperative effort Northern magnanimity and Southern sincerity, those who have figured most conspicuously are representative men of their respective sections. Well might Gen. Lee have assumed to speak for the whole Southern heart, which palpitates affirmatively to every sentiment of that grand reply.

The mighty people dwelling north of the Potomac and the Ohio, who, for our conquest came down with Grant and overran the fields in the city of the South, have been called upon to cease an aggression which is no longer resisted. Many of their ablest men and most successful military leaders have asked them to meet us under the broad flag of a new union. In November, we will know whether the Northern Heart responds to this appeal as readily and generously as the Southern. If that response be affirmative, the noble mission of Gen. Rosencrans will have been crowned with success, and the grand circle of the Union will then close upon a great

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people made brighter by a costly and bloody struggle, and stronger in a friendship whose value was only appreciated when almost lost beyond recovery. But if this consummation, however, blessed in the hope, should be blasted and the execution, we look for dissolution, in some shape, to cast again its portentous shadow over our land. Then, in what quarter of the globe it may please God to allow us to re-erect the Temple of Civil Liberty we know not, but in obedience to a law that seems to have governed the old world from the days of Abraham until Macaulay wrote the history of the English race in that polished island of the coast of Western Europe, we may be led beyond the Mississippi and Rocky Mountains into the golden sands and balmy atmosphere of the Pacific and that favored clime we may find again an asylum for the soul disgusted with excess and learning courage from defeat, virtue from oppression, and faith in God from our final preservation, lay broad and deep the foundations of the dominion which shall overshadow the millions who people the Celestial Empire and end on the sacred plains of Shinar the pilgrimage of man.

The legislature of Tennessee is about at a deadlock. The bill passed by the House is beyond question the most high-handed piece of usurpation which has ever been attempted in the name of civil liberty in defiance of the Constitution of the United States and the state of Tennessee seems in the rabid world of political madness, to awaken but little alarm. The Radical policy appears, in the number and boldness of its usurpations, to have left human conscience but a ruin. Today, the people of America seem to find their typical representative in that unsuspecting individual who allowed a dead calm on the coast of Norway to tempt him into a search for that maelstrom. His alarm was greatest when he first began to circle slowly but surely around that vast but fearful outline beyond which nothing could go and hope to return. We have passed beyond the slow circles of reflection and reason. The awful world and roar of revolution have paralyzed the conservative functions of the mind. Prudence has given way to curiosity and alarm to wonder. Self-love seems to have perished, and we really revel in the doubtful ecstasy of amazement. The governor of Tennessee, like all other violent and erratic functionaries, has become the impersonation of defiance to all restraint. Two sources of hope yet remain, the Senate of the State and the National Executive. The former seems to eschew the extreme lawlessness of which it was begotten and had refused to assent to the bill passed by the House, and it has shown some respect to the restraints usually observed in legislation by declaring to allow the House to run riot over the wishes of the Senate as well as the people. The name of Mr. Ryder had been placed on the joint committee to Washington. The Senate had refused to allow his name to be withdrawn and the opinion of Mr. Singletary, the delegate from Carter. This gentleman found much fault with the gentleman from Shelby because he has been opposed to the

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impeachment of the president, had, on various occasions vindicated the course of Sen. Fowler and was opposed to the military bill of the present session. All of which the gentleman from Doe River pronounced a record

upon these questions with the Republican Party of Tennessee as black as hell.

This elegant and refined phraseology had the effect of bringing to his feet Mr. Ryder, who seems, notwithstanding his recent associations, to have retained some degree of self-respect, and he pronounced the first charge of a falsehood, pleading boastfully his guilt with regard to the last one. All of which was quietly pocketed by him of Doe River.

The President assures the good people of Tennessee that the national forces will be used to watch and restrain the Tennessee State Guard if the Senate should yield to the insane demand of the House. The whole people of our land should rise to thank Andrew Johnson, who claims that he hath left house and home and kindred and land for his own opinions, and of whom it is but just to say, whatever may have been his errors as Military Governor of Tennessee, that he can point to his course in the two loftiest positions in America, the Senate, and the Presidential mansion, and show that he left friends and kindred and party for what his enemies should concede to be an abiding love for law and the welfare of his country.

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September 18, 1868

Bristol News Editorial

The two houses of the Tennessee legislature have agreed on the bills which they were called together to pass. We publish them as sent to the governor for his signature. No apology is necessary for a large exclusion of other matters. If they can be made to prevail, all else is worthless. The mind reels and staggers in amazement at their contemplation in their unparalleled assumption of power. They must break down before that degree of popular indignation, which in all ages has unsettled kingdoms and changed the historic current of the mightiest nations. The military bill lays violent hands upon the great achievement of centuries – the pillar of our Constitution which forbids standing armies in times of peace. It makes it legal for a governor who may have a discontented and seditious band of followers in any county to inaugurate bloodshed and revolution in defiance of the vast number who support and uphold the state. It draws the blade of revolution across those costly pages written on the bloody plains of England in the 17th century and raised to the highest standard of human excellence in the American Revolution of the 18th. It gives that functionary the power, almost at will, to suspend the habeas corpus, the only barrier between the passion of the ruler and the enslavement and even death of

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the subject. It makes taxes unequal in the Commonwealth and finally, at its highest behest, it levels at a blow the barrier of common interest inside which all good citizens could meet to promote the glory of the state and incite those feelings of antagonism which will outlive the present generation.

The bill for the suppression of the Ku Klux Klan is a stab at civilization. If it could be enforced, it would destroy all government and the hopes and aspirations of men. As the culmination of passion and brutal malignity, it towers above the fragmentary history of Herod and of Nero. In abandonment of the low of virtue of self-love, which generates a fear of retribution, it is only equaled by the South Sea Islander, who eats his own offspring; and in that high daring which is the soul of depravity, its authors have dreamed of power while sitting on the necks of men, until they have assumed the prerogative of Heaven.

This bill attempts to bring every citizen to the low level of the Tennessee officer. Enclose every man with constabulary power, and attempts the impossible thing of bringing them to use their equality of authority in each other's arrest. It offers a high premium for false swearing, suborns, and ends of all lawlessness, and is a final affront to human virtue. It gives the citizen, without adequate restraint, the right to slay his fellow and in defiance of the fundamental law of the State and Union, makes his own power retroactive. It gives to one county officer the right to collect by summary means large amounts from another county; it clothes the Attorney General, under the stimulus of pecuniary gains to himself, with the power of proceeding against anyone in response to his own suspicion, and to molest by the prosecution of the traveler on his way across the commonwealth. It even claims the citizens of every country, on the globe as amenable to his process. The bill was passed to provoke revolution. It had violence and treachery for its means and bloodshed for its ends and has been passed with the depraved hope of electing Grant to the presidency in defiance of sober popular will. To accomplish this end and thus prolong their power, the perpetrators of this experiment have come in the garb of civil justice to light up the homes of their people with a conflagration and intended to fire a turbulent Northern heart for renewed aggression upon a fallen people. We counsel our friends in Tennessee to exhibit true courage by refusing to the limits of possibility, and resistance to this measure save through the military arm of the Federal Government. Defeat its object. Look to 3 November; there lies your defense. On that day erect high the banner of democracy and redeem our country from anarchy. Beasts of low but vicious instinct, revolt at the light, and the administration of Tennessee strong in the environs of its usurpation and base in its treachery to mankind, will skulk away from the Democratic sun in 1869.

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We know this act cannot be enforced if resisted. There are limits to human endurance and the low intellect and strong hand of the tyrant cannot work long for the fine machinery of Republican rule. These acts and the virtuous conscience of the people who trace their extraction from the noblest race of Europe and have had their education in America cannot consort together. These people must die or rectify the machinery of their government, and the issue cannot long be postponed. That issue is upon us and it seemed by a God, who though mercy may be his highest attribute, is slow to afflict but sure to punish.

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In point of infamy the militia bill, as passed by the Tennessee House towers beyond every means of comparison in American history. The strongest governments in Europe in the records of their present dynasties exhibit no parallel to it for iniquitous legislation. We must go far beyond and down into the infernal chambers of the Inquisition, whose dull fire still lights the human heart with horror, for we can find any approach to it in cold mendacity and infidelity to those lowest aspirations which have ranked our race above the beasts of the field for our present purpose it is of little moment that the Senate has, under absolute compulsion, repudiated some of its worst features. The great evil intent of one portion of our race on another paroled and helpless marks this black climax of all ungodliness which paralyzes every noble capacity of the mind. We have published elsewhere this bill as it passed by the House, in order to nail in the pillory of the public gaze the man who originated and matured it. We spread before the eyes of our own readers the vote by which it was passed in that body, and ask them to preserve it for reference. The changeless character of an Almighty God is a sufficient guarantee that a day will come when those affirmatively connected with it would give all their ill-gotten gains to blot it out like Banquo's ghost it will never go down but will live on in history as one of those landmarks in the annals of oppression which men may cease to fear, but never forget.

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September 25, 1868

Bristol News Editorial

The issue between the Abingdon Virginian and the National Union is a matter of grave public interest and we cannot consent to remain neutral in regard thereto. Properly narrowed down, the issue between the continuance of the administration of General Mahone as to the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the reverting of that great public improvement to the party having previous control of it, and to the latter alternative many besides ourselves cannot consent. The Virginian essays defense of Colonel Owen, and, after asserting that a unanimous vote of thanks, was tendered to that officer by the stockholders of the last meeting, charges the loss of the through mail to Gen. Mahone and then, strange to say, acquits him of all blame in the matter are charging it to the wind and water which he says rendered it “next to an impossibility for near two months to make time over the road.”

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That journal also charges that the “increase in tonnage and passengers over the road is attributable to the increased production in the country and the increased ability of the people to travel and not to Gen. Mahone's management.” It admits that Gen. Mahone pays promptly but credits that fact to Col. Owen (who to speak in general terms, has paid nothing promptly since the war) and the increased tonnage and travel. The length of the Virginian article prevents our from giving its view in full.

In refraining from any animadversion upon the management of the late President, the National Union has obeyed a feeling of delicacy which the friends of Gen. Mahone are proud to have been actuated by in their treatment of his railroad question. This good example seems, however, not to have been observed by the friends of Col. Owen, who persist in bringing him antagonistically forward as their beau ideal of a railroad president.

We much prefer that they would spare us the duty of making the only vindication of Gen. Mahone, which they thus make necessary. If, however, they persevere in this coercive policy, it will become the duty of the friends of the latter gentleman to make public much about the past administration of the road which they would rather allow to remain where it has heretofore been concealed from public criticism. We will state a few facts now, hoping that the matter may be allowed to rest.

First:, the complimentary note to Col, Owen, though nearly so, was not unanimous. It was, however, an olive branch gracefully tendered by the friends of Consolidation. As such they desired not its withdrawal, disliking to go behind it, even to defend Gen. Mahone. They prefer to rely upon the positive effects of his masterly administration. - too young to be complete but old enough to be triumphant. The apocryphal charge that he lost the through mail for two months because the weather rendered it “impossible to make time”, and the appeals to the records of the P.O. Department, result about this way: the records of the office here show that during the first eight months of 1867, Col. Owen lost 46 connections, and for the corresponding months of the present year, Gen. Mahone lost 36.

But we regard this as lowering the issue, and we prefer to go straight to the head of the nail to drive it. Col. Owen turned the road over to Gen. Mahone with an insufficiency of wood to run its trains one month. Yet he had recently abrogated contracts which were then unfinished for the delivery of wood. This was at the close of autumn when wood should have been procured for the entire winter's use. - In the treasury were $99.20 in

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money. Some of the engines and cars were under levy and in charge of the U.S. Government and advertised to be sold. - These precious legacies and a heavy list of bills payable were the inheritance of the new administration. Certainly, Gen. Mahone was not responsible for these deplorable results. In the dead of that bad winter, he went to work and procured large quantities of wood and green as it was, he introduced coal from Tennessee and was able to use it. Immediately the credit of the road revived under his management. The old debts were rapidly arranged. Prompt payments were for the first time made. Now as to the increased tonnage and travel during a year of almost famine in our land and of the greatest pecuniary dearth known since the war. We respond that it was a triumph of the principle of consolidation which the short line policy had never the capacity to develop. The tariff of freight under this policy has been adjusted so as to compel the freight from the great South West to pass through Virginia and has done much to ensure the triumph of that great plan of building up Virginian cities, in which we have rejoiced to have in other respects, the cooperation of the Virginian. Shall Virginia join hand-in-hand with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and say to Norfolk, or Richmond, or Petersburg, sit thou idly there till we make thine enemies thy footstool? If so, they will be rotting by the waves when their great and enterprising rival shall have grown in power till they will claim them as vassals to the car of their own mighty progress.

The “increased production” of the country is shown by reference to the books of the company at this place, in this way, viz: the amount of local freight for the month of August 1868 is at most no greater than for August 1867, and yet under the improved tariff of rates many articles, including grain of all kinds that were previously driven west and south, have been invited east and north. Yet the amount of through freight has been vastly increased and consolidation has won this great triumph and sustained the finances of the road. The administration of Col. Owens since the war must show an expenditure of near $1,250,000, a sum large enough to have built anew every bridge on the road - to have stocked it with new engines and cars and have relaid half of it with new rails and cross ties. Yet under that administration, its finances and credit went down-down until it was seriously feared it would be forced into bankruptcy. Under its present management, it has improved constantly in credit and power and so continues to do so. Arguments can go no further. We appeal to results and can show the figures.

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Henry Ward Beecher is a man of very positive intellectual force. The time during which men who have despised his doctrines have listened to his eloquence dates far back in the present century. Though born a fanatic, he was intellectually a giant. And while passion rode him on her hurricane, he was like a victim. Likewise of great mental vigor and spreading the large

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white sails of thought. He is often studied to be right into vast fields of exploration. During the adverse force which drove him and the frenzy which charmed him, he was as often found himself before one or both wonders in the field of physics in which men of ordinary mold could detect only the inscrutable yet despising the negative exterior of nature. He has crushed it and held up the pearl of truth to the disgust of snobs and the admiration of men. It is thus that a party which has often followed him as a wondrous leader has not infrequently spurned his conclusions. And while parties of opposite tendencies have used antagonizing means, they have at times accepted his achievements as triumphs. The truth may be accepted that no party can wholly appreciate a great genius and the one claiming to have nurtured Mr. Beecher must at last abandon him to those great restraints which being within himself are alone able to arrest him.

On our first page will be found the remarkable letter from this remarkable man. It was drawn from him by the radical Party to promote radical ends. We give it to our readers as a Democratic document of high merit. It strikes a mortal blow at the power which in the autumn of 1865 rose and confronted with hostile intent the benign and wise policy of Andrew Johnson. It proves conclusively that the assent of Congress to the speedy restoration of the yielding states according to that plan, would long since have closed the bloodied fissure of our rupture over the bones of the dead. The good work accomplished would have made the glory of our latter house to be surpassed past the former. The prayer of every heart was sincere and bore healing in its wings. And if the good work had been allowed to prosper, our union today would have been only stronger by the memory of our painful separation.

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October 2nd, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial.

“The Way of the Transgressor is hard” and there is trouble in the Radical camp. That delectable ornament of the bench yelped Judge Hauk, is displeased at the nomination of Maynard and has determined to run for Congress independently of the voice of the convention. We like this discussion on the part of this creature who has been docked with the chief article talked about as Radical ermine. It seems that devils are necessary in the economy of God, but it is pleasant to see them resort to the profitable employment of attempting each other's destruction. Not that we hope for Houck's election. Oh no! Maynard has already had the honor of federal distinction and we should prefer no other similar experiment on the part of another. For when the vermin of the party are first admitted to power, there always followed an effort at tyranny and oppression in order to attract the public gaze. Now we have seen Houk -saw him here the day that Hon. E. Etheridge spoke, in the campaign of 1867. He spoke to a group of Negroes who were congregated around the grave of Gen. Shelby.

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saw him here the day that Hon. E. Etheridge spoke, in the campaign of 1867. He spoke to a group of Negroes who were congregated around the grave of Gen. Shelby. Around him sat a company of armed Tennessee State Guards, below him was the dust of a brave and venerated officer of the first revolution. Yet on that hallowed spot, he induced the Negroes to believe that if the Conservative Party were voted into power, their re-enslavement would be the first fruits of that legislation. He told them so emphatically and that the Conservatives would resist their voting but exhorted them to go to the polls armed, and if one of that party opposed to his voting to spill his heart's blood and that Governor Brownlow and the Radical Party of Tennessee would stand at their backs. Nice man to go to Congress; but we do not think there is much prospect of his getting there as Brownlow has put his foot on him, which he seems not to hesitate to do, after warming the little snake into existence.

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Direct trade convention at Norfolk.

Delegates to the above convention going and returning will be passed free of charge over the Virginia and Tennessee Southside, and the Norfolk and Petersburg railroads.

Delegates may go and return at will any time between the 11th and 20th of the month by the regular passenger trains of the line.

A special train will, however, be run over the whole line from Bristol to Norfolk by schedule hereafter to be published.

Many of our citizens - merchants and businessmen - are preparing to go to the convention and the city of Norfolk is preparing to receive them in a style that well becomes a people renowned for their hospitality and the good old times when Virginia was a state. Then Virginian and stranger were alike welcome to our family hearthstone and we are glad to see there is life in the old land yet.

We want every man who can to go and see the city that is destined to be one of the foremost of American cities with the finest harbor in the world. Let them taste the fish and oysters. Share the hospitality of her citizens, buy their goods, groceries, and furniture and return to their families and neighbors resolved to trade with Southern men, build up Southern cities and work for the future in the interest of direct trade.

Norfolk offers to duplicate any bill put up in New York or Philadelphia. Then why not trade with her and save her freight between the two cities?

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The Convention will do Norfolk and Virginia good. Then let us work with spirit and will, that we may prosper and our own children bless us.

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The Spanish insurrection continues to make headway. As yet, no important battle has been fought between the contending parties. But we may look for news of a more stirring and definite character. It is certain that many of the Seaport towns had declared for the insurgents and that a considerable part of the Spanish navy has joined the revolutionists. But the news received is so very meager that we must be content to await further details. The seat of the government is on the coast and most of our intelligence comes from that point and hence may safely conclude that coloring favorable to the government is given to it before reaching us. There seems to be a union between the Carlist Party and the progressives under the lead of Generals Espartero and Prim. Both were men of prominence and influence. But the former gives character chiefly to the revolution.

There seems to be a strong disposition to get rid of the Bourbons, though some favor The Duke of Montpersier, a son of the late King of France, as the future ruler of Spain. While the principal object of the insurgents is to rid their country of kings and queens.

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October 9th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial.

The Communications signed “Justice” in our last issue must not be understood as having received our endorsement. The members of the firm of Palmer, Stewart and Company at Saltville have been warm, personal friends of the writer since he made their acquaintance. And while we concede the right of criticism to others, we must testify boldly to their uniform courtesy and liberality in all our intercourse with them.

Within certain limits, it may be their good fortune to enjoy a practical monopoly, but to the price of foreign salt, they must come. And beyond it, they can never go. We would rejoice to see transportation arranged so as to reduce the price of salt by fair competition for it is a great staple. But we cannot see that salt within fair limits should not like all other articles, be amenable to the great law of supply and demand.

The writer lived with these gentlemen in 1862 and 63. He had extensive access to all of their books, papers, letters and private conversations, and he is compelled to testify that they uniformly and promptly rejected every proposition from whatever source looking to undue speculations or

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oppressive combinations as if he had aught to complain of it was that he, one of their employees, devoted to their interests, could get no pound of salt or other privileges which the most distant, unknown, and humble citizen could not have obtained.

Railroad consolidation. Saint Louis, September 15th – Gen. West, Sam Tate, Gen. Beauregard, Edgar Thompson, and other gentlemen have consummated a scheme for the consolidation of all the railroads connecting Paducah with New Orleans. Direct communication will be immediately established between Vincennes, Indiana, and Paducah. The movement is inaugurated by a Philadelphia capitalist with a view to controlling the southern trade.

Ah, there's the rub. He has heard the foolish adage “Fight the devil with fire” and would fight Virginia with consolidation. But the devil always conquers. And when the weapons are fire and if the people of Virginia are true to their interest, the aforesaid “Capitalist” will go down before Mahone.

We trust our readers see the point at last. The knife of consolidation in Virginia has drawn blood. Philadelphia howls first. We enjoy that howl. It is a death knell of outside domination in Virginia. In 1865, when our state was disposed to sleep after her long and unnatural trouble, there was one man who seemed to know no exhaustion - He was not unknown to fame, but despising the blazonry of the public trumpet and knowing the value of resistance when properly timed, he went necessarily to work at resuscitating the pulseless body of his mother state. There were other minds at work. They were outside Virginia and were only after the resuscitation of one limb of the state. The somnolent drug of bribery, however indirect, was rapidly accomplishing her commercial death. But that mind which knew but little slumber and no secession of effort applied to her its own magnetic impulse. At first there was little vital response foiled but defeated not. The year 1866 witnessed a powerful awakening among Virginians, and in 1867, consolidation had practically crossed the commonwealth and only paused on the Tennessee border to perfect the grand result thus far accomplished on the 14 instant the intellectual and energetic power of Virginia and Tennessee will be assembled in the city of Norfolk not to honor the intellect and will which from the incipiency of this great plan there in 1865 had been chiefly instrumental in drawing so much of the vast tonnage and travel of the Union over this line from that city to Bristol and Knoxville. But to inaugurate a plan which shall make the Atlantic Ocean a part of this line and render the busy marts of Western Europe tributary to the prosperity of Virginia and Tennessee. The work of consolidation is already ahead of public opinion as its triumphs are unfolded, the number of its converts is vastly multiplied and when its mighty results are all accomplished and relined from Norfolk to Mississippi is under one management then there will not be found in either state a score of adherents to the short line policy.

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Take the policy of the Knoxville Press and Herald and compel Gen. Mahone to build the Orange Road a part of its own track to connect it with the consolidated line, obstruct the avenues to Norfolk and direct trade to Baltimore and we will vouch for the abandonment of the project by the “Philadelphia Capitalist”.

From Nashville to Charleston, consolidation is the order of the day, and through freights pass between those cities without a change of cars. From Vincennes and Paducah to Mobile and New Orleans, it has stretched its mighty arms, and yet there are those yet in Virginia who would see this great principle abandon. We are glad to say they are few and becoming fewer. It is sweeping the country and Virginia must yield to its transcendent claims.

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October 16th, 1868

Bristol News Editorial

The fate of America will probably have been decided before this article shall have been read by our subscribers. On Tuesday the 13th Instant, elections were held in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Nebraska. If the result should assign any two of the first three to the Democracy, the election of Seymour may be regarded as certain. If but one of them should be won, the struggle may be regarded as yet unsettled. But if the election of Gen. Grant should be foreshadowed or assured, the people of the South who have been refused the privilege of separation and denied the right of reunion can only await and see how far the military chieftain will disappoint the wishes of the bloodied mob which nominated him, not because he was their choice but believing they could elect no one else. It is certain that Seymour would give peace and prosperity and good feeling to our whole people. Gen. Grant may aim to do justice, but in that event could not restore quiet to the country, for he would displease his party who would open at once upon him the same war they have been so long waging against Mr. Johnson. The Northern Democracy owed it to themselves to come voluntarily to the rescue of the country and it was incumbent on the people of the South to remain passive until a restoration should be effected. Many of our leaders have not done so. The Northern Democracy claimed the privilege of working this change in the policy of the government themselves, and of thus proving that while they fought us they did not hate us. Good taste and good judgment proclaimed that we should not accept in the strictly legal performance of our duties as subjects of the law, say they ought that would commit us as eager participants in this undertaking.

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It remains the work of last Tuesday to disclose whether Forrest, Hampton, Cobb, and others have so far injured the prospects of our friends that they cannot yet affect our rescue from ruin.

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The Abington Virginian has been sold to Rev. A. Doniphan agent for T. A. S. Doniphan of Louisiana for $3,500. The sale embraces the office material, subscription book, and goodwill possession given 1st November.

We learn from Messrs. Cole and Barr that while they are uncommitted as to the future, they do not contemplate returning to the field of journalism. 27 years ago they founded the Virginian and by their energy, integrity and ability have caused it to outlive every other similar enterprise in Southwest Virginia. In their hands, it had been an engine of power. And we state with pleasure, that it has been promotive of the moral and intellectual culture of a large section of our country. The blows of the Virginian in behalf of the completion of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad were powerfully efficient and while they have not been able to agree with us in the advocacy of its consolidation with other Virginia roads, yet a great deal is due them for their persistent labors and what they have always believed to be promoted of its interests. In parting with these gentlemen, the press of Virginia must acknowledge the high character of their labors and their valuable influence in the land. We wish them success in any new field where they may choose to labor. They are nature's noblemen, and many - Very many will, with us, look back with pleasing recollection to their long and able connection with the press, and regret that it has ended.

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One of the oldest of European dynasties is in ruins. The Spanish throne has been overturned by a revolution almost bloodless and enlisting perhaps more nearly the unanimous consent of the people than any other similar movement of modern times. The flight of Isabella to France. The organization of the provincial junta, and the restoration of perfect order and quiet throughout the realm, proclaimed the end of her reign. She is said to have been as destitute of personal attractions as she has shown herself wanting in both virtues and abilities which have adorned so many of those who have in the past made the name and glory of the Castilian crown familiar among the nations of the earth. Gonzalez Bravo. Her Prime Minister has by his extreme and oppressive measures, largely increased the discontent of her subjects until the various fragmentary, organized nations which heretofore have been arrayed against her United in their opposition and swept the last remnants of the Bourbon dynasty from power.

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The character of the new government is yet undetermined, but it is not unlikely that the Royalists and Republicans may be united in support of a government which, like that of England, shall embrace many of the virtues and avoid many of the follies and oppressions common to both systems. But whether the Royal Purple shall be discarded or retained, the present may be taken as a commencement of a new era in the history of that memorable empire, which in the past has reflected upon the world every shade of influence and character from glory to shame, from refinement and culture to bigotry and ignorance, from the broadest Catholicity league to the most depraved and bloodied intolerance, and from the discovery and conquest of the Western world to the imbecility which has rendered the court of the present fugitive Queen the mocking and scorn of Europe. To follow the thread of Spanish history back uncovers alike some of the brightest and many of the bloodiest pages of the time. It leads us to that period not far back in the midst of ages when her monarchs had developed for her a power which made her the terror of land and sea and which was finally broken only on the rock of her own access. She bears the opprobrium of that cruel record of Philip II, in his folly and power written on the low plains of Holland, which brought before the eyes of men the gifted lineage of the House of Orange and ended by breaking open the iron doors of the bloodiest inquisition in the history of man. While it was her destiny to shock mankind by her terrible persecutions, it was her chief glory to have reduced that polish and refined court at which Columbus knelt both before and after his discovery of the New World. The conquest of Mexico and Peru by the forces of the Spanish Empire has perhaps added but little to the fame of the conquerors or to the welfare of the vanished. But the result of these wars has left on perpetual record of folly and stupidity of attempting to carry the Gospel of Peace by military force among the people who may be opposed to it. The vindication of time points to the result of a face left to the voluntary work of the ministry in the Northern Hemisphere as contrasted with the vast and fertile fields of South America where the votaries of Spain have so often baptized to cross in the blood of the heathen. In multiplying the number of her conquests in the New World, she lost her hold of power and influence in the old. Today nor yesterday, neither the new nor the old governments have or had the power to hold the island of Cuba except by the protective jealousy of the more powerful nations who desire it. Wherever her conquering banner has gone, the seeds of instability have been sown. The gorgeous ruins of the Aztec empire still exist. Exalt the name of that semi-civilization which was displaced by Spanish cupidity. The splendor and riches of the Incas of Peru have been woven into the imperishable woof of song. But the rule of the Castilian had left no monument of greatness or glory in its stead. It would seem that this race of people had long since reached its culmination and that the grand apocalyptic changes which are to revolutionize the world and herald the millennium must be left to the mightiest people. The Anglo-Saxon race.

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Gen. Reynolds, commanding the state of Texas, has issued an order forbidding the Texans from holding an election for the presidential electors in November next, the last order of the president through Gen. Grant shows that that order is in direct violation of the law of Congress and quickly takes the wind out of Reynold’s sails. Another KKK outrage.

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October 28th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial

An estimable Man, a gentleman of our town, recently visited the Northern States and returned with a conviction that the sentiment of that region is unfriendly towards us. The result of the elections recently held there establishes the truth that the majority of the people there do really regard us as enemies. Then there is to be no voluntary national feeling between the two sections. Those people do demand our continued punishment. We must and shall be alienated from those exalted functions which cause a people to love their country. Domination and coercion are to be their privileges and submission of our virtue. History must record the fact that nothing short of our lands and our lives will appease those whom we have surrendered under their prolonged oppression. They will soon possess our homes, for they are being rapidly, though indirectly confiscated. How long will it be until A. T. Stewart can purchase every rood of South Carolina's fertile soil? It is easy to talk of exile, but it has never been successfully carried out by an oppressed people. A few of our people who have possessed means and intellectual distinctions have undertaken it. And one by one they have returned to tell that Americans cannot live beyond America. The only remedy that we can conceive is for the Southern states to abstain from any aggressive attitude in the readjustment of the states which should have followed the surrender, but is yet unaccomplished. Have we maintained our dignity in going to the rescue of the Northern democracy instead of awaiting our rescue at their hands? Nay, we have only fanned anew the flame that has well-nigh consumed us.

Today we are in the false attitude of martyrs clamoring with the executioner. It is strange that when our third-rate but most conspicuous military leaders demand a leading plank in the Democratic platform and give color to the nomination themselves that it should be rejected by a large portion of both people who claim that we are conquered? Our enemies claim, and with some show of truth, that Blair is the candidate of the Southern States, and Blair is the Jonah who is rocking our troubled soil with the violence of the euroclydon at this good hour. But what shall be done? Abandon the contest? Nay, it is even too late to change that now. Nor do we consider all is lost. But we do say that our people should be remanded to that silent dignity which has been so grievously wanting in the past. What good is it that Hill and Cobb have won Georgia and lost Ohio? Better the latter had died sooner and that the former had obeyed his involuntary

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quiet. We have other opinions which are not the fruit of the Ides of October, but which for prudential reasons we shall not now say. The field may yet, and we hope will, be won by the Northern men who are not demonical with the taste of Southern blood but we have none but a negative part to play in the contest. Decency, good taste, judgment and that much misunderstood good word policy demand it. We have followed Forrest and Hamilton to New York and low the result!

“There ye wise Chief, behold your light, your star.

Ye would be dupes and victims and ye are.”

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The despotism of West Virginia is, if possible, meaner than that of Tennessee; but there is this difference: In East Tennessee, The Radical party possesses both government and preponderance in numbers. They have, therefore the benefits of both the official power and physical force. In West Virginia, they have the former only and when persons are threatened with mob rule after robbery through their corrupt courts, it cannot be executed while they possess the low craving for office. They also possess the beastly instinct of self-preservation and they do not attempt physical violence. There are limits to the decorous forbearance of gentlemen, and we owe it to that portion of the world not yet depraved to say, that of all classes with whom it has been our good fortune to meet, the office bestowing an office holding class of West Virginia is the meanest and most infamous. If there be one spot on Earth where the force of Radical inequity thrust is rooted with more facility than all other localities, it is in the unclean clay of those poor fools, who there dream that the curse of Heaven against them is repealed and that they must live forever, and as usual, the most cowardly and most cruel among them are apostate rebels and whose rapid descent in treachery and falsehood the devils of Tophet look up and clapped their hot hands in mimicry of joy. To those remarks, there are a few exceptions, but they prove the rule. Read, we ask you, the article from the Greenbriar Independent, on our first page.

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The past folly of Southern leaders and the recent folly of Northern Democrats have almost assured the triumph of Gen. Grant. The election of Seymour is yet possible, but the present divided policy and confessed dismay of his leading friend certainly will render that result in probable. The success of the Radical party has been assured by their own shrewdness and our own stupidity. Our people have clamored for participation in the process of reconstruction when if they had remained decently and dignifiedly passive, the magnanimous portion of the northern people could have affected our restoration to the Union. Our enemies, to secure their success, conceded something to public sentiment.

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They cast overboard Butler, Summer, Wade, and Sheridan and nominated Grant on whom but for his betrayal of the president, the country could have united. If elected, he will have a clear field if he chose. His only pledges are in his letter of acceptance, which was evidently worded with the utmost degree of caution. He endorses the resolutions of the “Chicago Convention” but says not one word about the platform. On his broad ground, he has the power and the opportunity to satisfy the country and restore the republic, and it behooves the Southern people to withdraw from every semblance of aggressive participation in the readjustment of our lost power, And quietly await a result. They have no power otherwise to control to their own advantage. Follow the exalted example of Davis, Lee, Wise and others over-boarded with our self-assertive leaders, but let us preserve always our honor.

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The result of the October election is a mixed one. The majorities in Pennsylvania 10,000. Ohio 50,000. Indiana 1,000. Nebraska, 2,000 are all in favor of the Radical party. Yet there have been very heavy Democratic gains in all of them. If the party can be united and determined for the next 10 or 15 days, we believe the race can yet be won by the country. We are frank to avow that we do not look for the exercise of a sufficient amount of good sense and wise discretion to achieve this desirable possibility. The old line of fatuity seems to work. The New York World has advised the mad project of a change of candidates and the National Intelligence joins in the delirious demand. Nearly every other functionary of the party press is against the measure. This division is of itself enough to demoralize public confidence in the result.

The democracy had gained nine members of Congress and this should inspire every patriot in the land with hope and determination sufficient to hush the dissension and go on to the final conflict of November 3rd.

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Dr. H. T. Helmbold, on the day after the recent Northern election gave, to be used towards the success of Seymour and Blair, $40,000 cash. This magnificent donation does not look much like the doctor had given up the struggle as hopeless.

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The Richmond Enquirer and Examiner writes its disapproval across the political character of John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts. This brilliant and wise statement has evinced a little too much of the progressive and practical in his recent speeches in the Carolinas to suit the views of that distinguished journal, which in June last made the unwise and premature boast that there was but one Chase man in Virginia. The course of the

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Inquirer and Examiner commands at all times our high respect, does not in all instances elicit the acquiescence of our judgment. We wish our party could now realize a good many things to which it seems deaf.

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As to whether Virginia shall vote on the third day of November next, our people seem to be divided. The Lynchburg Virginian after having urged the matter affirmatively, now advised that as her vote cannot be of any practical use it shall not be cast. But is it a matter of merely of policy whether the voice of Virginia is permitted expression? We rather opine there is both policy and principle involved. This is a struggle between the people of the North as to which party shall control Southern influence, which if fully felt is effectually only a balance of power between them; and we claim it is one which they must settle between themselves. It is again demonstrated that any participation on our part in the great controversy over our case results to our detriment. Samson waited until his hair grew before he resisted again.

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October 30, 1868

Bristow News Editorial

Since the Knoxville Press and Herald threw up the sponge on the very first crude telegram from the October election, that journal has kept pretty generally a column for railroad matters gifted with clairvoyant powers, he saw men, not as trees walking but “revolving around Gen. Mahone.” They were something like satellites, the editor thinks, and as he dislikes satellites, he has but a restrained admiration for the object of their orbital devotion. He fires a blank cartridge at Mahone, believing he is an excellent railroad man, but not quite good enough for the Press and Herald. Two charges are made against that official. First, that he did take off the extra passenger trains and secondly, that he has not built a portion of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad for Mr. Barbour. The first charge is effectually answered in the article viz: it did not pay; and as the V.&T., Railroad lost $36,000 last year by running the extra passenger train during the month of September of this year. The revenues from passengers are $10,000 in excess of the corresponding month of last year and the excess of revenues from this source during the whole of this year will show the wisdom of taking off the extra passenger train and of keeping it off.

As to the second charge, the V.& T. Railroad was built prior to the building of the O. & A. Railroad and we presume the bare statement of the case is enough to convince reasonable minds that Mr. Barbour should complete his own arrangements and perfect his own connections.

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On 26th March, General Mahone wrote to Mr. Barbour proposing to cooperate with him and making the connection “upon the route heretofore projected on the part of your (his) road “and added “If you should conclude to adopt the proposed scheme, we are ready to determine the terms upon which your company shall occupy such part of our V.& T. Railroad Company's lands as is contemplated by the plan and the terms upon which the passenger shed which it embraces should be constructed on joint account of the three roads. And we should be glad to know within what time you would propose to execute your part of the work.” On the other hand, if the plan is not acceptable, I would desire to know what other plan, if any, your company designed to carry out for the consummation of the primary object. To which Mr. Barber replied “In your communication, you treat the matter of a connection at Lynchburg exclusively as bearing upon the passenger business. For this last object alone, our company could not undertake to incur such large expenditures. It will therefore be seen that the matter of the connection and the freight policy which may be established between the two roads are connected and must shape the final conclusions of our company.”

Mr. Barbour here goes further than the Press and Herald and opens up again the old dispute about the tonnage on freight. We propose now to give the editors themselves a few revelations about Gen. Mahone, promising that if they would re-evolve a little more about that gentleman and a little less around Mr. Calloway. They would nonetheless be informed in matters pertaining to Virginia railroading. We publish for their benefit a portion of the letter from that gentleman addressed under the date of April 30th to Messrs. Tate, Galloway, and Branner. And we bespeak for them, after its careful reading, a better understanding of the matter. We have not desired to make any aggressive war upon Tennessee railroad matters. But the Press and Herald seem so well informed upon them that we may have to ask him some questions concerning them. The short line policy has been tried and has accomplished much, but not near enough. We desire consolidation have a fair showing. Gen. Mahone is the head and front of the system. Strike him down and the measure dies. Hold up his hands and give him a clear field and he will convert even the Press and Herald, who is as yet only almost persuaded. We ask some questions of our contemporary touching the local interests of Tennessee in railroad matters and may yet do so. Can the Press and Herald tell why a certain “fast freight line” fell through? We pause for an answer.

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Reverend C.P. Rodefer preached yesterday the convention sermon. It was a discourse of very unusual ability, subject to the apostolic succession.

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Assuming the election of Gen. Grant is as conceded, the entire kernel of Radical editors from the New York Tribune down to the small pica sheets embellished with cuts of Zingary bitters and Foutze Horse Powders are yelling in the public ear the prediction that very soon the Democratic press will become fulsome and disgusting in its laudations of their victorious leader. All very right! Now we, after suggesting that “there is many a slip between the cup and the lip,” predict that if the vile slanders they have heaped upon a prostrate foe should prevail and Gen. Grant attains the presidential eminence in less than one year the same journals will try to hound him down with the stereotyped cry of “rebel”, “traitor”, “ingrate” and other elegant but perverted expressions. They know that Grant is not their representative man, that they could not elect one who is, and now they are but endeavoring to commit him to their wolfish and brutal program. Spot them and remember. But go and vote for Seymour.

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The Press and Herald and the Abingdon Virginian are warring upon Gen. Mahone for some reason unintelligible to us. They are dreadfully solicitous of the welfare of the Orange Road.

“So it but flourish and grow fair, all else to them is smoke in the air.”

How a Tennessean, and much more a “Virginian” can so reason and so right is as impenetrable as marble. We commend to their earnest attention the following excerpts from a letter of April 30th, 1868, from Gen. Mahone to Messrs. Tate, Calloway and Branner, the Athens Post, too, thinks the author of the letter a pretty sharp sort of man, but hardly as much so as he should be. - Maybe friend Ivens may also be benefited by its perusal. We hazard but little in saying it emanated from the clearest head and strongest will in Virginia.

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November 6th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial.

Information wanted - the junior editor of this paper, Mr. E Fowler, was last heard from in Baltimore on 21st October. He is long since overdoing Bristol and we will be thankful for any information concerning his whereabouts and welfare. He is expected to visit next the city of Philadelphia.

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Quiet reigned through the length and breadth of Virginia on Tuesday last, the federal government has not yet lived a century and yet America has presented the spectacle of electing a President by a part of the people for the whole country.

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Alas, civil liberty is dead. Born and rocked in the cradle of revolution, the fair child of Western Europe has torn from its banner the proud inscription that “resistance to tyrants as obedience to God,” the mighty charm which drew to our shores, the noblest spirits of the world is broken. The embryo element of destruction which mocks at man's chimera seems to have landed with the Pilgrims and growing mightily as the storm has in the hour when we had said “soul take thine ease,” smitten down the height bright genius of our prosperity. Today we are a moral and civil ruin. In that bright past which we neglected to improve. We were taught that tyranny had become a fable. That despot had, like Lucifer, been hurled into the bottomless pit of retribution. Today our convictions are undone. The power to rule which had dwelt in the people had been by them, voluntarily surrendered and cannot be regained. The “divine right” of the few has been asserted and the many are enslaved. The conviction that our hills were thrones and are peasant's kings have fled like the rainbow. Fret on now ye fugitives of the royal lineage of ’76; clanking chains and groaning and wait for your lost scepters! Yes, dream and think and whisper of revolt. Alas, go and ask Kossuth and Larmartine, and that poor fool Garibaldi, if popular power once lost was ever regained. Our leaders have lost their virtue, and the people, their vigilance. The public conscience is dead. Today we may publish in the News the sad story of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, of execution by a military tribunal and yet excite no alarm. The people read that the executive of Tennessee refuses to order an election of judges for the Supreme Court and usurps the power of appointing them. That he holds the elective franchise of every man in the state in the hollow of his hand and uses that as he wishes. And they stare in reply at will. Brownlow was the Son of God, a sad page of journalism is crowded with details of female virtue outraged by Negroes licensed in their carnival of crime by the fiends whose ruthless yet public indignation is scarcely stirred. Europe had its fields of blood, its inquisitions, and centuries of tyranny, and America, having sown the wind, must reap the whirlwind.

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Our first page will be found a communication criticizing the course of Mr. George R. Barr of the Abingdon, Virginian, with regard to consolidation. The author has reasons that are satisfactory to him for thus specifically dealing with the junior editor of that journal. If the Virginian has passed from the control of Mr. Barr, he is already aware that he has access to our columns. As a personal friend of the editors of the News, it has always afforded us pleasure to serve him, and in case his own journal has changed hands as was expected, our columns are due him by courtesy. It is, however, our hope that after the approaching election consolidation will have been placed on so permanent a basis that even a foeman like Mr. Barr will behold its great merits and no longer believe it is his duty to resist it.

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Et Tu, Brute? - Houk is doomed to misfortune. Maynard has beaten him something less than a million of votes. When he was here, he told the Negroes that the conservatives would resist their voting, but to go to the polls armed and if a conservative made any opposition to them to spill his heart's blood and Governor Brownlow and the Radical party of Tennessee would stand at their backs. Now on Tuesday last, Jim Johnson, a Negro of Knoxville, was mobbed by the Radicals because he voted for Houk, who now is at Jim Johnson's back? Alas, the Republicans are as ungrateful as the republics.

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November 13th, 1868.

Bristow News Editorial.

Look Out for the X-mark.

The expiration of subscriptions will be indicated by an X mark and if the news is not desired longer by the party so notify. We shall expect to be apprised of the fact.

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The opposition to the indefatigable and incorruptible officer, Gen. Mahone, is assuring the most stupendous proportions which its paucity of numbers will admit. The final struggle for consolidation comes next week. If Gen. Mohone be reelected, the measure soars above every other policy in Virginia. He defeated - and the good results of the present year are ruined. Let every man from Southwest Virginia who can command a vote, see that it is represented on next Tuesday.

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The Richmond Dispatch throws to the breeze the banner of Consolidation and comes forward in the advocacy of Gen. Mahone. Such an ascension tells with mighty force against the Disjunctives. The Dispatch is among the very ablest papers in Virginia. We are proud of that journal’s support. One by one, the most influential journals of the South are denouncing the disjointed policy. That good Tennessee paper The Athens Post is on the way already. He is almost persuaded and we greet him in advance, for he is a host.

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The Press and Herald says it has no objection to Gen. Mahone - appreciates him fully and rates him very highly, provided he confines himself to Virginia, that it is only when he meddles with Tennessee matters that it objects. Why, neighbor? How long since you wanted him to build a part of the Orange Railroad for Mr. Barbour?

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The grand engagement for the immortal interests of Virginia takes place in Lynchburg on Tuesday next. Let every lover of her welfare who can command a vote for Mahone be there on that day. The opponents of Consolidation have become the opponents of the gentleman, and they have rallied to their standard every influence they can, not confining themselves to Virginia and Virginians. To Brownlow. They have called, “Save us or we perish”’, to the governor of Georgia. They have cried, “Come over into Virginia and help us.” To the sagacious and dangerous Garrett of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, they have screamed. “Come thou and rule over us and we will serve thee,“ but as for the son of the Old Dominion, we will not have him”. They have bowed down too, at the altar of obstruction to trade and sworn that Virginians shall not rule the railroad interests of Virginia. Do Brownlow and Bulloch and Garrett bear about their bodies the remarks of suffering on behalf of this Commonwealth? Did a drop of their blood ever pulsate with one holy thrill of devotion to the advancement of her interest? Shall we bow down in that abasement which cries, great is Garrett of the Baltimorians? They are not satisfied with invoking the evil spirits that they may sun themselves within their presence, but they have appealed to local prejudices to accomplish their purposes. Unmindful of the vastly increased prosperity of the road, they have called upon the citizens of Lynchburg to rise up and say that while it pours its wealth into the lap of Baltimore, it shall pause and pay tribute to the Hill City. We shall be most grievously disappointed at that proud tribunal before which this issue comes shall decide it against Virginia, for we shall have counted badly if the clear mind, unwearied nerve, and patriotic devotion of Mahone do not defeat by a mighty majority the ill-thought of opposition now working so desperately against the Consolidation that there should be opposition to the great measure is not the wonder, but that some few good men are found there. Many of that class have already cast in their lot with the triumphant administration now in power – another year and all worth having will be with us.

We presume that the Saint Louis Times is inspired by Southern feelings. It certainly betrays Southern weakness. It gives birth to a rumor that Gen. Grant has expressed to a friend a purpose to give Gen. Lee a position in his cabinet. Such speculations are at variance alike with good taste and sound reason. The appointment would be violative of the wishes of Gen. Lee and the duties of the President-elect. Northern sentiment would revolt at it and Southern modesty should reject it. If the public has any power to probe the commendable reticence of Gen. Grant, it is only with the dispassionate blade of cool judgment. Certainly, the Democratic press has no right to make suggestions or attempt to influence the approaching administration. It may be that God who has punished but not abandoned us, has blinded us so that he may reverse our folly and lead us whence we have fallen. Surely, we should now know that the carnal Northern heart is enmity against

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Southern decorum. To expect Gen. Grant to affront that feeling is to ask that he shall emasculate his administration by imitating our own indiscretion. Our attitude toward him should be one of quiet dignity, not unmixed with faith. If he shall spurn and discard the iniquitous impudence of radical dictation, and the effrontery of Democratic advice and shall pursue virtuously that reticence which, having become his loftiest ornament, speaks only through actions and results he may calm into baffled wonder the passions of the hour and restore the popular mind to reason.

Thus viewing the unequal elements of strength which, by their anomalous combination have thrown him to the apex of power. We are justified in arguing that he will do nothing to inflame still further the one with madness nor the other with revenge. That he shall disregard totally that sentiment from which he was not unwilling to evoke. A nomination is not to be expected, and as little are we justified in believing that he shall by calling within the purview of his advisory council the mad extremist of radicalism, repulsed that powerful conservative defection which alone gave value to his nomination. Sumner and Butler and Forney no more than Hampton and Forrest and Hill, comport with his present position, for they would insult opposite extremes. It is, however, due to Gen. Grant no less than ourselves, that we should banish at once that distrust which so much the flow of sublime courage, and standing in that attitude in which alone we can meet around him those moderate men who have supported him, be prepared to act our great part in the reconciliation and reconstruction of our unhappy country. Extreme men are no longer fit nor entitled to rule us. If the Democratic party be prepared to concede something to the strong logic of events, we believe it will be met by the new administration. For the present, let us hold in abeyance much of that preference which we can never gratify unaided and we shall fill our good destiny of becoming once more potent or give way to that mightier and coming organization which embracing the virtuous and wise within its folds, shall open our eyes to the truth that “That the powers that be are ordained of God.”

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November 20th, 1868

Bristol News Editorial.

The blunders of the Democrat Party and the North are only equaled by the stupidity of the Conservative Party in the South. Wade, Hampton and Forrest instead of cultivating their cotton fields with that becoming silence of which the noble Lee is an example occupied seats in the New York Convention and Hampton even took part in framing the platform. Not content with making themselves conspicuous upon that occasion, they made speeches, wrote letters, talked with reporters and were handed about from one radical sheet to another as the representatives of South Carolina and of Fort Pillow.

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Our enemies were thus supplied from our own camp with those weapons with which of all others, they most preferred to fight us. When they wrote letters to explain their position, did they expect, other than misrepresentation? Experience has proven that they had no right to expect anything else.

Yes, we in Virginia propose to learn nothing from the past. Throughout the State, we find men who occupy positions of prominence under the Confederate government, offering themselves as candidates for Federal offices. Men who were prominent under the United States government and who took the oath of office and again filled positions of prominence and trust under the Confederate government are now ready to run for Congress, when they and their constituents know they cannot take the oath of office and even if they were admitted, could neither command influence nor respect.

We are compelled to think the nomination of Confederate generals as unwise and impolitic. If Forrest or Mosby should be sent to Congress, does anyone suppose they would be admitted? Certainly not. Then why send them or anyone else who has held a position of prominence?

The Conservative Party in Virginia is without a recognized leader and it is time we were preparing for action. Old fogies who cannot accommodate themselves to the altered condition of the country must go overboard. Younger men against whom no charge save that of Rebel (and they are called all Rebels) can be brought, must come forward and redeem the country. There is no lack of material. There are men of ability who never attained prominence in the “Lost Cause” and who are and were true to the South in her darkest days. Let them be brought out. And where ex-Confederates of distinction are candidates for Federal office let them retire. When the State has been restored to a position in the Union, when peace and harmony reign they shall not be forgotten. Then those deep-seated passions will in a measure have subsided and they can with greater dignity to themselves and honor to their country, step forward and represent her in the councils of the nation.

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The stockholders of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad assembled at noon on Tuesday last in the Masonic Hall, Lynchburg. The meeting was called to order by Hon. Fayette McMullin, who placed the nomination for the chair-manship the Hon. Thomas S. Bocock Being unanimously elected, the chairman was conducted to the stand by Thomas Branch of Richmond, C.W. Stathan of Lynchburg and William K Heiskell, of Washington County. Colonel G.W. Hughes, N. M. Osburn and George W. Morgan were appointed secretaries on the motion of I. C.. Fowler. Col. A. Fulkerson, Dr. R H. Clement and Dr. D. A. Langhorne were appointed to a committee for the examination of proxies.

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By way of economizing time, the interval required for the report of the Committee on the process was used for the reading by Gen. Mahone of his report. The reading of his masterly and convincing document occupied one hour and 40 minutes and was listened to by all parties with the utmost eagerness. Quite a number of disjunctives were amazed at the untenable ground they had previously occupied and gave in their adhesion to the present administration. A few of them beholding the horrors of the inevitable death to their policy resolved to die with it, and wore home long faces of disappointment, muttering the incomprehensible language of discontent and believing that Garrett and Barbour are rather poor leaders.

At the evening session after the report of the Committee on Proxies, a feeble attempt at delay and obstruction was made by J. Langhorne. His plan was at once torn to shreds by the clear analytic mind of the chairman and the meeting at once proceeded to the re-election of General Mahon. F. B. Hunt and J. F. Slaughter were unanimously re-elected as directors on the part of the stockholders.

A resolution was passed pledging the influence and efforts of the friends of the road to the speedy completion of the Virginia and Kentucky Railroad.

On the motion of Thomas Branch, a resolution was adopted requesting the officers of the road to abstain as far as possible from running freight trains on the Sabbath.

Thus closed the deliberations of one of the most important meetings ever held in the history of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. It passed its verdict upon one year's trial of consolidation. That verdict was a flash of light to many minds. The short line policy is dead in Virginia. Money has been defeated by the genius of Mahone, and now we go on in the work of regenerating our state. Perish She who throws a stone in her way.

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Mr. Thomas Branch, of Richmond, has entitled himself to the thanks of every good man in Virginia for his resolution before the stockholders meeting against the running of freight trains on the Sabbath. The remarks of Mr. Wayne, of Norfolk, were at least the conception of bad taste. That independence(?) which sneers at God's highest commandment, may exalt in some portions of Virginia the golden calf of its idolatry, but we were glad that it excited but feeble response on the occasion alluded to. The idea which revolted at the Union of Church and State has driven to a blind conclusion those feeble minds which had their highest development in the flesh.

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They may vainly imagine that we have a good government which, from having filled the measure of earthly glory, bore final witness of the awful fall of man, is yet too free to lean upon the divine providence which permits not the fate of Sodom to overtake it yet remind them that no officer of our land was ever permitted to assume his trust without placing his hand upon the Holy Evangelist and swearing before God that his trust shall not be betrayed. The Lord of Hosts is acknowledged in our fundamental law. Strike out that bright hue and we fall and bury with us the record of the proudest race of men.

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Friday, November 27th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial.

The Abington Virginian copies our articles having reference to the invocation of the disjunctives to Brownlow and Bullock for aid in the war on Gen. Mahone and pleasantly remarks as follows:

We copy the above from the Bristol News of the 13th merely for a little amusement. May we not put an invocation in the mouth of our brethren of the News and say “Gov”. Wells, save us or we are gone. Oh! Mr. Mosby, save us or we perish. Oh! Mr. Smith, as you have come into Virginia, do “help us” and Oh!, Mr. Jackson, “Come thou” and help Gen. Mahone that he may rule over us and we will serve thee.

What has the News to say now about invoking foreign influence in the election of President of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company?

Now we remark that the above could only be the point in case we had endeavored to defeat the desires of the Virginians and had sought to use outside influence to promote foreign interests by defeating those of Virginia. It is notoriously true that a most overwhelming majority of the private stockholders of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad have for over 12 months preferred Gen. Mahone and Consolidation to all other men and measures. The preference must either be secured or defeated by the vote of the state proxies. The News has always desired that the state vote should be cast in the interest of Virginia. For Gen. Mahone, the Disjunctives have desired that any influence able to accomplish it should throw this vote in favor of Garrett and of Baltimore. We are sorry that our friends of the Virginian are allied with a party whose leaders have endeavored by money to defeat the will of our people. Since the able and elaborate report of Gen. Mahone, we think there is room enough for them to stand on our platform and hope they will follow the good example of several distinguished citizens of Abington who were so much pleased with the exhibit of last year. that they promptly came over to Consolidation.

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Col. George E Grisham of the Jonesboro Flag and for some time past, clerk of the House of Delegates, Nashville, had been by a very large vote elected to the Office of Public Printer by the Tennessee Legislature. We understand this as a triumph of the native over the imported loyalist. (We don't use the term carpetbagger) and we congratulate Col. Grisham on his elevation to so honorable and lucrative a position. There are many other handsome things we feel inclined to say but dismiss for fear our friend may think them the result of that “flexibility” which he believed would follow the election of Gen. Grant. The Colonel is very courteous and kind towards us and we are glad of his success.

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The new State proxies for the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad are Messrs. Mosby of Bedford, G. D. Smith of Marion, and J. W. Jackson, said to be of Bristol. The latter gentleman, we believe, hailed from Petersburg, but had been more or less in our town in the produce trade. At the time of his appointment, he was in Atlanta and the vote of the State was cast by Messrs. Mosby and Smith for Gen. Mahone. They are all Radicals and friends of Governor Wells. But we must say one word for them and the Radical party in Virginia, viz: that for infusing life and enterprise into our torpid Commonwealth and for enlarged and liberal views of our state policy, they are far ahead of the old Democratic Party. Pierpoint may be cited as a notable instance.

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The death of H. Rives Pollard is suggestive of a lesson. Current history should be instructive and this event but teaches that a violent man must come to violent ends. We may indulge the regret that he should have provoked the crime of his own assassination, but charity should not fail to discover the fact that he belonged to a class who have wrought irreparable injury to our people and that, however true, he may have felt to the holiest impulses of an overwrought nature. Yet he was wholly without that prudence which achieves the greatest good from the lessons of adversity. As editor of the Southern Opinion, he was pleased when he has not benefited and it must be said of him, though dead, because it is due to the living that for the sake of that peace we so much longed for, it might have been better that he never lived at all. Yet, we would rebuke but kindly the empty tenement of his erring spirit and indulge the hope that God may have for him a more befitting and congenial duty than kindling the bad passions of an evil and gainsaying age.

EDITOR’S NOTE Re; H. Rives Pollard

Terrible Tragedy

November 25, 1868

The Richmond Dispatch

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At about 10 o'clock yesterday morning H. Rives Pollard, the widely-known editor of the Southern Opinion , a weekly newspaper published in Richmond, was shot down in the street and almost instantly killed. Mr. Pollard resided about one mile from the city on the Grove road. Yesterday morning he and his associate editor, Mr. J. Marshall Hanna, left the house in the country at a little after 9 o'clock. They were driven to town in a light vehicle, which conveyed them to the office of the Opinion, on the corner of Fourteenth and Main Streets. Turning from Main into Fourteenth Street the vehicle stopped, and the two gentlemen alighted. Mr. Pollard walked leisurely toward the Fourteenth Street entrance to the cilice, while Mr. Hanna remained behind to give some directions to the driver. Mr. Pollard had taken but a step or two, and Mr. Hanna had turned to join him, when a loud report was heard, find almost instantaneously Mr. Pollard fell flat upon his face, uttering only a groan of pain. He seemed to be dead. Mr. Hanna, expecting another shot, and looking around to see whence the first came, drew his pistol almost involuntarily. But the work of the unseen foe was completed. Several police officers and detectives who were standing not far off ran immediately to the spot, some to the assistance of the wounded man, and others to apprehend his assailant. The first, with the aid of bystanders, turned over the body and saw that the flame of life was still flickering, they lifted the body and made their way upstairs, but before half a dozen steps were taken there was a convulsive shudder, an expression of agony overspread the face, and H. Rives Pollard was dead. THE REMAINS LAID OUT. Upon a mattress in the editorial room, the dead body was laid out. His fall upon the pavement had inflicted a severe and ghastly wound upon the forehead, and at first, it was thought that this was the wound that caused his death. In a moment, however, the coat and shirt were torn open, exposing an orifice on the right side of the neck, from which the warm blood was welling. One buckshot had lodged here, six were found in the right shoulder, one passed through the heart, and two were picked out of other parts of the body. The face wore the pallor of death itself and was besprinkled with the dust that it had kissed. The lips were open just enough to reveal the clenched teeth, but the expression of pain had fled with the spirit of the man. AN ARREST. Meantime, in the street, the excitement was intense. With swift wings, the news had been spread through the city, and every foot was turned toward the scene of the tragedy until the crowd was several hundred in number. Surmising that the shot had been fired from an upper window of the building opposite, the lower part of which is occupied by W. B. Isaacs & Co., Detectives Craddock and Knox were in a few moments upstairs. The latter knocked at the first door he came to, and beat upon it again and again, but there was no response. Then he ran through the passage to another door, but it was looked. But there was a voice from within. " Is that you, Bob ?" asked the person within in clear, steady tones. " Yes." "All right, then," was the rejoinder, " but you'll have to break the door open. -It is locked, and I haven't the key." The panels yielded to the sturdy blows from the detective's fist. With a crash they were broken, and through the hole thus made Mr. Craddock sprang into the room. There stood Mr. James Grant, one pistol in hand; another on the table. He was a little pale but smiling, and he said loud enough to be heard without the room, " I only ask for protection, Here is my pistol; there is another on the table." The weapons were taken by the officers, and Mr. Grant, without any show of resistance on his part, was arrested and carried to the lower police station, to answer for the killing of Hi. Rives Pollard.

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December 4th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial.

The statement by a Knoxville paper said it was in accordance with the expressed wish of the stockholders of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad that Col. Thomas H. Galloway was elected as president of that road is not warranted by the facts as we have them.

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There were two tickets voted for and at the head of each stood the name of Col Jaques. It was fairly understood that he was being voted for in the election of the directory. Accordingly, the new board unanimously elected him to the presidency as we announced in our last week's issue, and the position was immediately declined by that gentleman. There was then but one more step remaining to consummate the plan of which the friends of Col. Jaques were in blissful ignorance, viz: the election of Col. Galloway. This step was promptly taken and that gentleman now represents consolidation and Tennessee, being the president of both roads leading from Bristol to Chattanooga. Mr. R. C. Jackson being his superintendent.

Of the two tickets, it is proper to state that the one advanced in the interest of Mr. Galloway was about to carry by a large majority when Col. Jaques, who is a very heavy stockholder, stepped forward and departed from the prevailing ticket just sufficiently to secure the election of Mr. Joseph R. Anderson of Bristol as one of the board of directors. This matter of Mr. Anderson’s election is peculiarly gratifying to our people, who certainly deserved a representation upon that board but have heretofore been without it. The friends of Col. Jaques recognize his right to decline the presidency of the Tennessee Road or any other position, but there are many of them who at least regret that they were misled into believing that he deserved the position and would surely accept it. As far as Mr. Calloway represents the great principles of Southern consolidation. There will be a few progressive minds found unwilling to accept his elevation to the distinguished position he now holds. But if it shall be found that he seeks to revert the great line of road from Chattanooga to Lynchburg into a feeder city for the city of Baltimore, he will find many who will regret the success of his mysterious election and who will yet rise and confront him without antagonism which may be yet more fear than is now respected.

To this subject, we find we may have occasion to refer more than once again.

An intelligent explanation of the results of Knoxville may yet be made, but there are many who believe that Col. Jaques alone can make it.

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On our first page will be found extracts from a very recent letter from Senator Fowler to the Hon. H. S. Foote, whose reply we have not room for. We regret that our space is insufficient for the whole of his very important correspondence. It bears directly and practically upon the great question which must soon be settled and which concerns the vital interests of the Southern people. The views of Senator Fowler are those of an enlightened and generous Radical and we believe they are identical with those of the chief Justice Chase.

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They advocate our immediate restoration to the Union upon the principle of universal amnesty and universal suffrage. This is probably the best basis of settlement we will ever get and it is required of us by the dominant and conquering party. We believe that as a subjugated people we will have to consent to it. And if so, the question arises whether it is wise for us to resist it any longer. We think not. And with Mr. Fowler, we believe that our prompt and graceful surrender to these terms will, by its results soon convince us of the folly of our past efforts to obtain mitigation at the hands of the Northern Democracy who cannot assist us but for selfish motives would never have attempted it.

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The Virginia and Kentucky Railroad has too much vitality to die of poverty. We have a ray of light upon the subject and we give it to our readers Today. The report to the city of Louisville, Kentucky by its delegation to the Norfolk Convention gives this great enterprise the prominence which its dependent importance demands. We publish a larger portion of it on our first page. It will be apparent that Kentucky will extend her road to Cumberland Gap because ours must and shall be built. The backbone of foreign dictation in our railroad affairs has been broken in Virginia. The people and our officials have said the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad shall not prevent the building of our road from Bristol to Cumberland Gap. But we have legislation on anew upon our consolidation bill, and then we will begin again the abandoned work upon the Kentucky road. It is said the legislature of Tennessee will make during its present session the appropriation for the building of a railroad from Johnson to intersect with the Virginia and Kentucky road and Moccasin Gap.

Mr. Welch has made an efficient delegate for Sullivan County and we do not think he will fail in this instance. We do not see but that the project will be to our advantage.

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December 11th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial.

“To be or not to be, that is the question” with Bristol if Gabriel's trumpet could only be divested of the compulsory character, which by common consent will be its chief attribute. It is believed the people in Bristol will refuse to answer its call should they live to see that eventful day. To say that in this our people resemble their antediluvian ancestry is to be content with the lowest standards of comparison that history affords for the flood swept them away when they were found ministering to their animal appetites. The men of Nineveh, that proud city, saved themselves by procrastinated repentance. But we say to the ambitious and pretentious town in which we have cast our lot that when the terminus of the Norfolk and Great Western Railroad shall have been fixed at Abington or Glade Springs, none of that futile agony which wrings its hands in the idle air will avail for us.

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That result will assuredly drag after it the fruit of that pleasant dream which has located here the terminus of the Kentucky road that at this very important day is not entirely cast, should be a source of gratification to us, but the now great probability that we will lose the termini of both these great predestined highways should cause us to come together unmasked for consultation on the subject. We have but little hope our people will do so. Be it so we tell them emphatically we are in immediate danger unless we come together and show what we are willing to do. The bright dream of our future will disappear like the fabled mushroom which rotted down the same night in which it grew.

Col. Flournoy, the distinguished president of the N.&G.W. Railroad, had about 40 hearers when he visited our town on the third instance. Yet we had long notice of his coming. Very many of our principal businesses, and businessmen were at home in a stones-throw contending for matters on which they have lost more money than they ever made. Now let us take the view that it is the absence of the Kentucky road that has made and will continue to make our town prosper. Will sending it to another point cure that which we would rather not endure or let it tap the Virginia and Tennessee Road at a point east of here and Bristol will collapse with a thunder which our people will heed and then they can just pack up and go away. The wagons of the West will most assuredly seek other markets and we will have no compensating features. But suppose we extend a friendly and generous welcome to the rail line to Norfolk. Then we secure beyond peradventure the terminus of both it and the Kentucky road and we have at once Bristol as the point at which the immense machine shops for the accommodation of both lines for there is no Knoxville or Lynchburg to compete for it. The road from Johnson’s to North Carolina will then find its only natural terminus here also. Now show us a place on the globe which is the terminus of five great railroads which has not speedily become a great city. We challenge an instance. Let us meet like men away with such trifling with our vital interest. We can now lay here the foundation of a great and prosperous city. The initiatory steps are ours if we take them not. We deserve commercial death and will assuredly receive it.

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Not satisfied. The Bristol News doesn't seem to like the way things were done up at the railroad convention. It says Capt. Jaques was unanimously elected and yet intimates that it wasn't intended he should be elected at all. It thinks there's a cat in the meal. In fact, the somewhat “obfuscated” Press and Herald.

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For all which we had the word of the Press and Herald, who, anticipating some defense, would be necessary, volunteered the assertion that the election of Col. Calloway was fairly understood. When the directors were being voted for.

Now that journal, it would seem, was ignorant of the fact that even the form of Col. Jaques' election was gone through with which, according to all the forms of reasoning known to us, proves beyond all manner of a doubt that Col. Calloway’s election was not fairly understood beforehand. The truth is the Press and Herald very inadvertently let the cat out of the meal, in full view of all its readers. It kindly offers us some mysterious advice for the latter part of which we have not the shrewdness to comprehend. Maybe our readers can. So here it is.

We would advise our friends to keep cool and persevere in the construction of the Virginia and Kentucky road. That is about as feasible an enterprise as that of trying to comprehend the working of all other things at once.

Well, now, in case we do not, what does the Press and Herald propose to do about it?

The Bristol News appears to have gotten at least one eye open and concedes to the Republicans of Virginia some enterprise and business capacity. If nothing more. Marion Record

We have both. We have had both eyes open upon the editor of the record for some time but cannot see him oftener than once in a fortnight or three weeks.

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Expatriated. Col. Jay Powell having become disgusted with his country as left the northern Hemisphere passed beyond the torrid zone and proposes never to return. He sends his regards to Governor Brownlow and proposes to write to Colonel John of the same household.

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December 18th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial

Mr. E A. Pollard, as a candidate for public sympathy, appears at the oar of criticism in the double row of the vindicator of his brother and the calumniator of Mr. Davis. He has issued a Memorial number of the Southern Opinion which he assures the many victims of that journal shall be its last. If he could have it said that his last good work of love was his worst, his name might be written as immortal. Unfortunately, it is, perhaps, of all his

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public acts, the best. Unmitigated as was the provocation, an enlightened public has placed the brand of Cain upon the brow of Grant. but it must likewise go into that history which will far outlive the “Lost Cause” that he who smote his injurer with buckshot from a third-story window was taught his first great lesson in iniquity by the brother of his victim. Who among us remembers not that his loftiest devotion to the Confederate government was enmity to its head? How dark is that page of a life by memory shunned, in which he wrote that second volume, stabbing the name of that great prisoner while he was being ironed in Fortress Monroe? There was a time and it was recent when it had the doubtful apology of being the nearest approach to fame, of which its author was capable. But when that restive spirit which seemed to scorn that with his love, left the ink and stain of malignity on the tomb of Jackson, it stirred with consciences and souls of men.

He has sneered at the exiled leader’s last attempts to earn his bread in a foreign land and stopped not to assault with the forked tongue of virulence the name of Mrs. Davis. The Boabdil of the discontented, spurning the past and despising the present, may, like this scuttle-fish, attempt to defile the social element in which he moves. But there is a mighty host yet living who though he may not because of his own exhalations respect it yet watch the oblivion which pursues him and they will regret that H. Rives Pollard, though not blameless, has not had the public sympathy more than the public prejudice. The man who smote both names be honored but could not protect It was ill-selected as the one to bring to rectitude the public sentiment at the death of his brother. Better had he gone and washed in the pool of Siloam and come with the penitential face before the exalted court whose “opinion” will not be discontinued while nations rise and fall in the world.

Hunnicutt is no more. He came like an evil shadow and continued not. He came unto Radicals who were not his own and were rejected by them. While Confederate glory flashed over the fields of Virginia, there were none so Confederate as he. And when the twilight of capitalism dimmed the bright saltier on the battle flag of Lee, he fell down before the brazen Goddess of Northern numbers and cried great is the star-spangled banner. From the day when on the streets of Fredericksburg, he feigned a willingness to wash his treason in the blood of his accusers, down to the one in which he was kicked from his last refuge among men he has been a filthy and loathsome deception, having been all things except virtue. He has touched at last that downward grade in public opinion, whence not one of its victims can ever return. We would be false to those lessons which experience burns into the human heart were we to foster one sympathetic offspring of this last lesson of untruth. Nay, we are well warranted in believing that into that particolored leprous heart which in a climax of falsehood, begat the New Nation

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all the generous fires of fidelity have gone out never to be renewed entering. Entering the holy avenues of life by that side door made memorable by the intrusion of Judas borne with of men until he was glad to claim as his nativity the state of South Carolina, which he had maligned. He has finally fled from the gaze of the world which without pursuing him, will yet watch with curious gaze his accustomed return along the limited circle of his evil life and crush him with that scorn in which every iniquity cannot live.

And before the Ides of March, Virginia will again be in the Union - there to remain forever! The keystone of the structure. State Journal.

Then we have had no keystone and no arch and no union for the many years; for how can the union stand without an arch and how can there be an arch without a keystone? And how can there be a keystone when the State Journal decides there is no Virginia? Now we can't understand this theory because it is a rebel one and if the rebellion be true then loyalty is a liar. But we know that loyalty wears the purple of success and before it, the gray of treason was down. Maybe that Underwood has just plucked the keystone out in the Sally Anderson case. He certainly has reverted matters to their original chaos. Unless Gen. Stoneman shall decree, that order shall reign in Virginia for yet a while.

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We have seen “more light” on the Virginia and Kentucky Railroad. The following extract from the speech made by Gen. Mahone on his re-election to the presidency of the South Side Railroad will place the great enterprise in its actual bearing before our readers. This distinguished gentleman who always weighs his words, says in the most positive manner that the Kentucky road will be built soon after the consolidation of the three roads from Bristol to Norfolk. We feel sure that the next session of the Virginia Legislature will pass such a bill as will enable the Friends of Consolidation to consummate that measure.

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Gen. Stoneman can do justice in the matter of the stay-law without the heavens falling. However, here is the manner of doing it. Allow the stay-law to expire but permit no forced sales of property for old debts unless the property shall bring its price value. This will allow the creditor to bid in the property at appraisal. He will thus be protected and the debtor saved from ruin. How can Gen. Stoneman do less? Shall something be taken for not? Otherwise, ruin must come down like night upon Virginia!

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We have very important information touching the Virginia and Kentucky

Railroad. If the people of Bristol and of Lee and Scott desire this great work, they can have it. But they must very soon act upon the manor or they will lose it. We have this from the highest source and the assist at present for the want of space.

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The Enquirer urges our acceptance of the Alexandria Constitution. The culprit urged the hangman to adjust the rope under his arms. He thought it would be less uncomfortable.

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December 25th, 1868.

Bristol News Editorial.

Today we celebrate the mightiest event of time. It dates back to the time when God changed his purposes toward men. So wonderful was the story of God dwelling in the flesh. The marriage of heaven's High King with the seed of Adam that angels desire to look into it. Man alone has dared to disbelieve it. Yet the ruin of Eden was wrought in the manger of Judea. The work of 40 centuries has been fruitless and affecting man's return. But this offspring of the root of Jesse the Scion of Jewish lineage, so took root and flourished in the Gentile world that every child of the family of man may eat of its fruit and live. For cross has become an emblem of life and of power. Its missionaries bearing the Pentecostal commissions have carried it over the plains of Europe and of Asia, up the vast rivers and mountains of the New World about the islands of the deep, and now stands ready to overflow with its talismanic power, the shadowy despotism of Africa. Strange that the land of refuge for the babe who Herod sought should be the last in yielding to the faith. Yet that same Jesus who united the power to punish with the capacity to suffer has filled the homes and temples of the persecuting Israelites with the sensual and brutal devotees of the Ottoman Empire.

The awful darkness of the ninth hour seems to have been strangely pre-figurative of the Night of Ages, which has overshadowed Jerusalem. That awful power which shook from their tombs the Jewish dead and sent them walking among the centurions of Pilate has torn to dust the beautiful temple and made government and religion strangers in the accursed land. For the Cross had become an eternal meteoric splendor flashing into the dark corners of heathenism to the end of the earth. We have had war, pestilence, and famine. Nations have risen against nations. Kingdoms have grown resplendent and have gone out in the world. The pride and pomp of learning and power have almost made the circuit of the globe. But the end is not yet a wicked and gainsaying people have grown wild with confidence and iniquitous in unbelief. But the curse of Cain has not yet again overtaken

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them. The bow of promise and the Cross of Christ still carry about us the magic power of our preservation. Thrones and scepters have crumbled and gone to dust. Islands have sunk and arisen in the mighty deep; stars have shot from their equipoise in space; some of the planets have gone out in their fiery track about the sun, but the Cross brighter than the sun and mightier than the tempest still blazes on the page of time the glory of the Babe of Bethlehem.

Its inception witnessed the overthrow of that line of power which had its origin in the House of Abraham. For the 12 years of Alexander had been ended, but it found the crown of the Empire on the head of Caesar. Rome was still glittering like a palace of the sky, but it lived to see the glory of Rome in ruins. It's solid. It saw the beginning and ending of the bloodied Inquisition of, Spain, and still, it lived. It lived and flourished despite the power of France and the fury of Aragon. And when the power and dominion of the world had centered in the British throne, it took the wings of the morning and overran the Western world. Yet, in the deep purposes of God, it had allowed iniquity to flourish. But that power which wrote its anathemas against the authors of offenses, has left its terrors in the human heart. Declining the vain challenge of human argument it unfurled the banner of faith and we were staggered with amazement - amazement at our folly and unbelief. It opens heaven to the deep vision of the soul and compels our assent. And ask us whence and what is man. And we are silent. Today its heralds are battling with the Jews and the Greeks. It assails alike the Turk on the Bosphorus and the Idolater in Delphi, the pagan in the fairyland of China, and the Eskimo in the snows of Greenland. The gold of Ophir may have been dissipated, but it has been found in the sands of Ethiopia and thither goes the Cross of Jerusalem. It has flourished amid the desolation of the plague and triumphed among the poor. Thence observing the avenue, the fortune it has climbed, the giddy eminence of thrones and swayed the power of princes and kings. It wielded the mild scepter of Constantine and had molded for centuries the destinies of England. And still, it lives - lives and shapes the ends of all things. Vain man today charmed with lilly-tomorrow beneath the sod! He sees the gay butterfly but forgets the worm, dreads the grave, and shudders at the shroud. Longs for glory, but disbelieves the story of the Cross. Blessed is the hand that breaks his house of clay. Wondrous is that love which pursues and pities and pardons him and then unveils to his enraptured eye the splendor and the rest of Heaven.

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EDITOR’S NOTE:

The subject of a good many of the above editorials was General William Mahone.

Following is a very brief biography

Source: WWW.Brittanica.com

In the postwar years, Mahone founded the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio Railroad, which, before it failed, served his business interests in Norfolk and Southside Virginia. In 1881, he was elected to the United States Senate as a member of the Readjuster Party, an unlikely coalition of poor whites and African Americans interested in repudiating a portion of the massive state debt and, in so doing, restoring social services such as free public education. One of the most successful biracial political coalitions in the New South, the Readjusters held power until 1886, when Mahone lost his Senate seat. A gubernatorial bid in 1889 failed, and Mahone died in Washington, D.C., in 1895.

THE END

With his right hand in his jacket, Confederate General William Mahone strikes a Napoleonic pose in this Civil War–era photograph. About five-and-a-half feet tall, and weighing around one hundred pounds, Mahone was "as small and lean as a starvation year," in historian Douglas Southall Freeman's memorable description. Born in Monroe, Southampton County, Virginia, in 1826, Mahone graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1847. After teaching for several years, he worked as a civil engineer with the railroads, and, in 1860, he became the president of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad.

After the war began "Little Billy" Mahone accepted a commission in the Confederate army and he distinguished himself at the Battle of the Crater (1864), leading a successful counterattack. In the wake of the battle, he was promoted to the rank of major general. During the war he was also elected to the Confederate Senate, serving largely in absentia from 1863 until 1865 for the state of Virginia.