3, Memphis woman arrested in Virginia suspected of spying for the Union

The Richmond Enquirer states that a lady who gave her name as Mrs. Mary Ann Keith, of Memphis, was arrested in Lynchburg on Wednesday. When arrested she was rigged out in a full suit of soldiers' clothes, and had registered her name at the Piedmont House as Lieutenant Buford. She declared that she was all right on the southern question, and scouted the idea of being a spy. She said her reason for dressing in soldier clothes was, that she had determined to fight the battles of her country, and thought such disguise more likely to enable her to accomplish her object. She was sent on to Richmond for a further hearing.

Memphis Daily Appeal, October 3, 1861.

3, Knoxville paper mill

Home Made Letter Paper.—We have seen a fine specimen of letter paper made at the new paper mill established at Knoxville , Tenn. , which is very creditable to the manufacturers. Whatever may be the great detriment to our country in the way of commerce, occasioned by the present war, there is no denying that so far as manufactures are concerned, it is doing more to call forth the enterprise and energy of our people than whole years would have done under the system of dependence upon the North, which had already made us too subservient and dependant upon their people. 

Daily Constitutionalist [AUGUSTA, GA], October 3, 1861.

 

 

        3, Affair near La Fayette

OCTOBER 3, 1862.-Affair near La Fayette Landing, Tenn.

Report of Col. William W. Lowe, Fifth Iowa Cavalry.

FORT HENRY, October 5, 1862.

SIR: A scouting party from my command, under Maj. Brackett, Fifth Iowa Cavalry, when beyond La Fayette, during the night of the 3d instant, were fired upon by rebels and 1 man killed; the fire was returned, and 1 rebel lieutenant named Maddern killed. The rebels fled in confusion, but could not be followed owing to dense fog.

W. W. LOWE, Col., Comdg.

OR, Ser. I, Vol. 17, pt. I, p. 150.

        3, Unsuccessful guerrilla attack on a passenger train near Bethel

BETHEL, TENN., October 3, 1862.

Maj.-Gen. GRANT:

Passenger train back here; freight train supposed safe through. Three hundred rebels came in to the railroad; freight got by them; rebels then took up rail and cut telegraph; our force, Seventeenth Wisconsin, ran them off. No killed reported as yet.

I. N. HAYNIE, Col., &c.

OR, Ser. I, Vol. 17, pt. II, p. 257.

 

 

        3, "Our 'Native Women;'" A Nashville editor's opinion of a Chicago war correspondent's story about Tennessee women

Mr. B. F. Taylor, the correspondent of the Chicago Journal with Rosecrans' army, writes on the 16th ult. as follows:

Picture a human female in a dress hanging limp, with the look and grace of a dishcloth on a fork, and resembling in tint the inky map of the benighted portions of the globe; an unmarried female with the modest of a cow, a piece of tobacco in her mouth, and two batches of children at her heels, and you have the counterfeit presentment of several I have seen. They infest quartermasters, commissaries, commandants of posts; their hungry looks attest the nature of their errand, and their incessant "I've cum for Sikh's you've got." always meets a response in the shape of "hard tack" and bacon from our large hearted Uncle Samuel's locomotive pantries. The men are with the Rebel armies, and the women are starving. All through this valley, the miserable inhabitants have no prospect of food for the coming winter but the bounty of the Government. These people are free to talk and "allow" that the "Yanks" are not the terrible Huns they had fancied them, if any thing so light-footed as fancy can be predicated upon so lifeless as these poor creatures. They all indulge, when they can, in the practice of so many disgusting pictures, have been made-the practice called "dipping." Take a little stem of althea, chew it into a bit of a brook at one end, dip it in snuff, sweep your mouth out with it, and leave the handle sticking out of one corner. Like a broom in a mop pail, and remember all the while that it is a woman's mouth, and you have as much of the fashion as I propose to describe. Just here and now, tobacco, and not cotton, is king. Negroes will sing, dance, or cry for it, and the sifting of a soldier's pocket are eagerly scraped up by the natives and the little brooms speedily 'raise a dust' in it.

We have seen a number of just such caricatures as this of the women of Tennessee. These writers possess "a lively imagination," and do not fail to bring all its qualities into request when writing about our "native women." These writers cannot find one in a thousand of all the women they have seen in Tennessee that, by the greatest stretch of "fancy," would be recognized as the original of the description we have quoted. Such caricatures may please the rabble, but they must surely disgust the sensible portion of the readers of the journals in which they appear.

Nashville Dispatch, October 3, 1863.

        3, "Horrible State of Affairs in West Tennessee."

From the Memphis Bulletin of Sept. 26

From a number of letters just received from prominent citizens of Henry and the surrounding counties in this State, and especially one from a well-informed gentleman residing at Paducah, Ky., we have statements of the outrages committed by guerrillas in those parts, well calculate to arouse the fiercest passions of wrath and revenge. No less than thirty citizens from Henry county, Tenn., are now at Paducah, fugitives from rebel violence. Among them are various persons known in Memphis, of whom we name John. W. Nance, John Cooney, Jr., J.P. Dunlap, B. Polard, T. Cowan, H. P. Howard and George Billings. These report the land full of guerrilla bands. Murray county, Kentucky, was visited September 18th, by a gang of 100 of these miscreants, but whom several stores were pillaged. Troops are on the move from Paducah to redress these outrages, but the mischief done is irremediable.

This is the second or third raid into Henry county since the 1st of September, and the unfortunate citizens who devotion to the Union flag has rendered them obnoxious to the Rebels, or who are singled out as victims to the conscriptions for the Confederate army, have often fled before them.

Carter Foster was killed by the guerrillas at Conyersville at their last visit to that place. He was murdered after his surrender. Many persons from Henry and Weakley counties have recently been conscripted; among them we name James Snider, Joseph Spence, John Booth and Thomas Snow.

A more desolate country than Henry county, as described by our informant, can scarcely be imagine. "The inhabitants are absolutely ruined. Many have left-many more are preparing to go. In the county site [sic] Paris, there will soon be no one left to tell the tale of its former beauty, wealth and prosperity." The writer adds: "I would to God my family were in the wilds of Africa, rather than in that abandoned and desolate region!"

Nashville Dispatch, October 3, 1863.

 

 

        3, Correspondence relative to railroad destruction by Forrest, Carter's Creek to Spring Hill

COLUMBIA, October 3, 1864.

Maj. POLK:

Forrest passed through Mount Pleasant this morning. He paroled all his prisoners. Their report is that he was moving on Northwestern railroad. About five miles of railroad is destroyed between Carter's Creek and Spring Hill, including three small bridges. Have a force repairing, and it can be finished this week. Forrest lost 6 killed here yesterday. We had no loss. Can hear of no rebels near us. Nothing from below. The railroad is probably damaged near Culleoka.

WM. B. SIPES, Col.

OR, Ser. I, Vol. 39, pt.II, p. 59

 

 

 

James B. Jones, Jr.

Public Historian

Tennessee Historical Commission

2941 Lebanon Road

Nashville, TN  37214

(615)-770-1090 ext. 123456

(615)-532-1549  FAX