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Page 47
An incident which occurred about the 20th of June, both endangered
my escape and yet put me upon the way of its accomplishment. I rode
my pet Selim into the village of McMinnville, a few miles from the
place of my sojourn, to obtain information as to the proximity of
the Federal forces, and, if possible, devise a plan of getting
within their lines without exciting suspicion. As Selim stood at the
hotel, to the amazement of every one, General Dumont's cavalry
galloped into town, and one of the troopers taking a fancy to my
horse, led him off without my knowledge, and certainly without my
consent. My only consolation was, that my noble Selim was now to do
service in the loyal ranks. My best wish for my good steed is, that
he may carry some brave United States officer over the last
prostrate foe of this ever-glorious Union.
The cavalry left the town in a few hours, after erecting a
flag-staff and giving the Stars and Stripes to the breeze. Within a
few days a squad of Morgan's cavalry came in, cut down the staff,
and one of them rolling up the flag and strapping it behind his
saddle, left word where General Dumont could see the flag if he
chose to call.
I left soon after the Federals did, but in an opposite direction,
with my final plan perfected. Spending two or three days more with
my kind friends on the farm, I saddled my remaining horse, and
telling the family I might not return for some time, I rode through
McMinnville, and then direct for Murfreesboro, at that time in
possession of the Union forces. When hailed by the pickets, a mile
from the town, I told them I wished to see the officer in command.
They directed me where to find him, and allowed me to advance. They
knew far less of Southern cunning than I did, or they would not have
allowed me to ride into the town without a guard. When I found the
officer, I stated that some Federal cavalry had taken my horse in
McMinnville a few days ago, and I wished to recover him. He told me
he could give me no authority to secure my horse, unless I would
take the oath of allegiance to the United States. To this I made no
special objection. With a seeming hesitation, that I might wake up
no suspicion of being different from the masses of farmers in that
region, and yet with a joy that was almost too great to be
concealed, I solemnly subscribed the following oath:
"I, A---- B----, solemnly swear, without any mental reservation or
evasion, that I will support the Constitution of the United States
and the laws made in pursuance thereof; and that I will not take up
arms against the United States, or give aid or comfort, or furnish
information, directly or indirectly, to any person or persons
belonging to any of the so-styled Confederate States who are now or
may be in rebellion against the United States. So help me God."
The other side of the paper contained a military pass, by authority
of Lieutenant-colonel J.G. Parkhurst, Military Governor of
Murfreesboro. I regarded myself as free from any possible
obligation to the Confederates when discharged from their service on
account of my wounds at Corinth. In voluntarily taking this oath, I
trust I had some just sense of its awful solemnity, for I have never
been able to look upon the appeal to God in this judicial form as a
light matter. How good men can, satisfy their consciences for the
deliberate violation of the oaths which so many of them have
deliberately taken to support the Constitution of the United States,
I know not. I know what they say in self-defence, for I have often
listened to their special pleading. The [Greek: pr�ton pseudos], as
my good Professor Owen of the Free Academy would term it--the
foundation falsehood--of the whole Secession movement, is the
doctrine of State Rights, as held by the South. "I owe _allegiance_
to my State, and, when it commands, _obedience_ to the United
States." This idea has complete possession of the leading minds, and
a belief in it accounts for the conduct of many noble men, who
resisted Secession resolutely until their State was carried for the
Rebellion. Whenever a State act was passed they yielded, and the
people were a unit.
In addition to this fundamental error, they aver that they are
engaged in a revolution, not a rebellion; and that the right of
revolution is conceded, even by the North, now endeavoring to force
them back into an oppressive and hated union; and that if we justify
our fathers in forswearing allegiance to the British crown, we
should not condemn the South in refusing obedience to a Union
already dissolved. If this were as good an argument as it is a
fallacious one, ignoring as it does the total dissimilarity in the
two cases, and assuming falsely that the Union is already dissolved,
it fails to justify the individual oath-breaking of many of the
leaders in the revolt. They swore to support the Constitution of the
United States at the very time they were meaning to destroy it. Some
of them took the oath as Cabinet officers and members of Congress,
that they might have the better opportunity to overthrow the
government. The truth must be admitted--and here lies the darkest
blot upon the characters of the arch-conspirators--they know not
the sanctity of an oath, nor regard its solemn pledges and
imprecations. They have shown, it has been eloquently said, the
utmost recklessness respecting the oath of allegiance to the nation.
Men who sneered at the North as teaching a higher law to God which
should be paramount to all terrene statutes, have been themselves
among the first to hold the supreme law of the land and their oath
of fealty and loyalty to that land, abrogated by the lower law of
State claims and State interests. It could not be sin in the man of
the North, if God and his country ever clashed, to say, that well as
he loved his country, he loved his God yet more. But what plea shall
shield the sin which claims to love one's own petty State better
than either country or God? They have virtually tunneled and
honey-combed into ruin the fundamental obligations of the citizen.
Jesuitism had made itself a name of reproach by the doctrine of
mental reservation, under which the Jesuit held himself absolved
from oaths of true witness-bearing, which he at any time had taken
to the nation and to God, if the truth to be told harmed the
interests of his own order, whose interests he must shield by a
silent reservation. The lesser caste, the ecclesiastical clique,
thus was held paramount to the entire nation; and oaths of fidelity
to the religious order, a mere handful of God's creatures, rode over
the rights of the God whose name had been invoked to witness
truth-telling, and over the rights of God's whole race of mankind,
to have the truth told in their courts by those who had solemnly
proclaimed and deliberately sworn that they would tell and were
telling it. The State loyalty as being a mental reservation evermore
to abrogate the oath of National loyalty:--what is it but a modern
reproduction of the old Jesuit portent?
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