A Rebellion in Dixie

“Why, Josiah, I am glad to see you,” said Leon, advancing and shaking hands with the man. “The rebels haven’t raided you yet? Look here, what is your name? I forgot to ask you when I was up to your house.”

“Giddings – Josiah Giddings,” answered the man. “No, the rebels have not raided me yet, but I am mighty dubious about them.”

“Well, I want to make you acquainted with my father,” said Leon. “He will give your wife protection at his house. We have a negro cabin there that is much more comfortable than the one you live in now, for it doesn’t leak. And there is plenty of pasturage there for your horse and cow.”

Leon drew up alongside of Giddings and in a few minutes his father came out. The introduction was given, and after a few commonplace remarks Mr. Sprague inquired how he liked the resolutions.

“They ain’t strong enough,” said Giddings. “If you had two brothers in jail waiting for their death-warrant, I reckon you would put in more language than you did.”

“Where is that?” inquired Mr. Knight, who came out just at that moment.

“Up in Tennessee mountains. My brothers were engaged in bridge burning, and now they have got to suffer death for it.”

Leon waited just long enough to see that Giddings was in a fair way to make the acquaintance of the principal men of the county, and then hastened out to find Tom Howe. After looking all about, he discovered him sitting under the shade of an oak eating a lunch.

“Hallo, Leon; have some,” was the way in which he greeted the new-comer. “It’s mighty good, I tell you – chicken and apple pie.”

“A person to look at your lunch wouldn’t think that we Union fellows would be so hard up for grub,” said Leon, seating himself on the ground by Tom’s side. “You heard what that man said, in reply to the enrolling officer, that if we got short of provisions we would steal them? But I want to talk to you about driving those rebels away from here.”

“I know one who will get out of the county with once telling,” said Tom.

“Who is it?”

“Carl Swayne.”

“That’s just the fellow I was thinking of,” said Leon, spitefully. “He told me the other day that if we ran into the swamp it would not take him long to show them where we were.”

“And he told me that he wished I had been smashed up in that jam while I was about it, for then there would be one Union man less in the world,” said Tom. “I’ll never forget him for that.”

“Well, you come around to the house early to-morrow morning, and we will go up and send him off. I see father is getting ready to go home, so I must go. So-long.”

Leon mounted his horse and started on a lope after his father, but when he came up with him he found him surrounded by a lot of men and boys who were talking loudly of the secession resolutions, finding no end of fault with the Confederate Government, and praising the Union.

“They won’t get me, no matter which way they turn,” said one of the men, who lived away off in the swamp. “I live two miles from everybody, and right there is where the fight is going to take place. The river in front of my house is so narrow that you can throw a stone across it anywhere, and for a mile above and below the house it spreads out into a swamp that they couldn’t get across to save their necks.”

“So you really think there is going to be a fight, do you?” inquired Mr. Sprague.

“Oh, sure. It’s just as that enrolling officer said. The Confederates ain’t a-going to leave us to be the black sheep in the flock. We are going to see some fun before we get through with this.”

That was the opinion of all the men, and they concluded, too, that the best place to hold the fight would be right there in front of this man’s house. “But I’ll tell you what’s a fact,” said Giddings, “you will have to look out for your wife and children. The rebels will make short work of them if they get hold of them.”

“The swamp is big,” said the man. “If they get out in there I will risk the rebels getting hold of them.”

Then men and boys dropped off one after the other when they came to the cross-roads that led to their homes, and by the time Mr. Sprague reached his home there were but few men besides Giddings left. The latter got off his horse at the gate and went in to take a view of the cabin in which Mr. Sprague told him he could live until the trouble was all over, and he straightway came to the conclusion that it was a much better house than the one he now occupied.

“You see there was nobody there to tell me that I could go into that house or I could stay out of it,” said Giddings. “It wasn’t occupied, and so I went into it, and sometimes when it rains you might just as well be outside. If it suits you, I will come here to-morrow.”

Mr. Sprague told him that the sooner he came the better; but Giddings declined an invitation to supper, because he knew his wife was waiting for him, so he got on his horse and rode off.

“It kinder runs in my mind that that man Giddings will be a good fellow to tie to,” said Mr. Sprague, as he drew his chair up to the table. “There’s no end to the way he hates the rebels, and it’s my opinion that when he shoots at them he will shoot to kill.”

“But do you really think there is going to be a fight?” inquired his wife. She asked this in a very indifferent manner, as if she did not care whether it came or not. She had got used to thinking of such things.

Mr. Sprague, by way of reply, told her all about the convention, and described to her the visit of the enrolling officers who had come up there to enlist men for the Confederate army.

“Did they get any?” inquired Mrs. Sprague.

“Not much. There were a thousand men there under arms, and that is rather more than two men want to handle. They know all about our plans, for Knight showed them the resolutions. Of course, they are going back to their headquarters, and are going to make a fuss about it.”

“I tell you it won’t be long now before we shall see some Confederate soldiers up here, and I wonder if I dare shoot at any of them?” said Leon. “If they will let me alone I believe I’ll let them alone.”

“How about those rebels that we are going to drive away from here to-morrow?” asked his father. “I think I have heard you say something pretty rough against Carl Swayne.”

“Well, that’s a different matter. Carl won’t let me alone, and I am determined that hereafter I am going to live in peace. He told Tom Howe that he wished he had been jammed up in that log heap, and I don’t like to have people talk that way.”

Early the next morning Mr. Sprague’s family were up and stirring. Leon was surprised when he looked at his father. There was a determined expression on his face, and the boy became aware that he was about to engage in an enterprise that promised at some future time to bring him no end of trouble. Leon took his cue from it, and from that time he was not so joyous as he had been. He took his revolver out, shot it at a mark, and then proceeded to load it very carefully. There was only a man and a boy and two women in the family he intended to send out of the county, and Leon could not understand that determined look on his father’s face. When he sat down at the breakfast-table he asked him about it.

“Father, you seem to think you are going to have a handful in sending that Swayne family away from among their friends,” said he. “What do you look for?”

“I don’t look for anything now,” said Mr. Sprague. “There will be a time when they will come back. Old man Swayne is a fighter, and it will stand us well in hand to get rid of him entirely.”

The conversation was dropped there, and they ate breakfast in silence. Before it was fairly ended the five men on whom Mr. Sprague was depending to assist him stepped up on the porch and came into the house. They were all invited to sit down and take another breakfast, but all declined, having broken their fast several hours before.

“You see, Mrs. Sprague, we got an order from the Secretary of War, and we’ve got to be on hand,” said one of the men. “It would not do to go back on anything he tells us.”

“I don’t know what they put me in for that office for,” said Mr. Sprague. “I don’t see that I have got anything to do.”

“Well, wait until it comes to fighting, and then you will find plenty to do. Now if you are all ready we’ll go on,” said the man, forgetting that he was giving orders to his superior officer. “We can’t get rid of that Swayne family any too quick. They’re all the time boasting and bragging of what they intend to do, and now we will give them a chance.”

Leon found opportunity to kiss his mother good-bye, and when he went out on the porch, where Tom Howe was sitting and waiting for him, they fell in behind the men, who shouldered their rifles and marched at a brisk pace toward Mr. Swayne’s house. There was no attempt at military movement, for there was not one in the party who knew anything about it, but they went ahead just as if they were going hog-hunting in the woods. In due time they came to a cross-roads which led down to Swayne’s house, and here they stopped, for there was something that drew their attention and angered them not a little. Before they left Ellisville, on the day of the convention, Mr. Knight had given several copies of the resolutions to men living in different parts of the county, with the request that they should nail them up on trees (there was no printing-press in the county), in order to give those who were not there timely notice of what they had done. The man who served this notice performed his duty, for the tacks were in the tree plain enough, but it hadn’t been able to do much good. The notice had been torn down and the pieces scattered about on the ground.

“Well, I do think in my soul!” began one of the men, “he wasn’t going to let anybody see it, was he?”

“Look here,” exclaimed Leon, who had grown wonderfully sharp sighted of late; “I know who did it. It was that miserable Carl Swayne. Do you not see his footprints here in the dust?”

“That’s so. Now what shall we do with him? Sprague, you are Secretary of War, and you ought to be able to say what shall be done with him. Knight never thought yesterday, when he gave out those resolutions, that somebody would go to work and pull them down.”

Meanwhile Leon had been busy gathering up the torn fragments of the resolution that were scattered around. When he got them together he compared them and saw they were all there.

“I’ll fix him,” said he. “And I’ll make him so sorry that he ever tore this down that he’ll go by a resolution the next time he sees it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll make him write it over again and come here and put it up,” said Leon, savagely.

“That’s the idea,” said Tom Howe. “He pulled it down, and of course he must put it up. I’ll be close at your heels when you are doing it.”

Mr. Sprague said nothing, but Leon noticed that the look on his face got deeper than ever. He led the way at increased speed toward Swayne’s house, and in a few minutes turned through the carriageway and saw Mr. Swayne and his nephew, Carl, sitting on the front porch. They evidently grew alarmed at seeing them, for they arose from their chairs and held on to the backs of them.