Did
she remain loyal, or did she secede, that was equally her fate.
The day before I entered Kentucky a battle was fought in that State,
which gave to the Northern arms their first actual victory. It was
at a place called Mill Spring, near Somerset, toward the south of
the State. General Zollicoffer, with a Confederate army numbering,
it was supposed, some eight thousand men, had advanced upon a
smaller Federal force, commanded by General Thomas, and had been
himself killed, while his army was cut to pieces and dispersed; the
cannon of the Confederates were taken, and their camp seized and
destroyed. Their rout was complete; but in this instance again the
advancing party had been beaten, as had, I believe, been the case in
all the actions hitherto fought throughout the war. Here, however,
had been an actual victory, and, it was not surprising that in
Kentucky loyal men should rejoice greatly, and begin to hope that
the Confederates would be beaten out of the State. Unfortunately,
however, General Zollicoffer's army had only been an offshoot from
the main rebel army in Kentucky. Buell, commanding the Federal
troops at Louisville, and Sydney Johnston, the Confederate general,
at Bowling Green, as yet remained opposite to each other, and the
work was still to be done.
I visited the little towns of Lexington and Frankfort, in Kentucky.
At the former I found in the hotel to which I went seventy-five
teamsters belonging to the army. They were hanging about the great
hall when I entered, and clustering round the stove in the middle of
the chamber; a dirty, rough, quaint set of men, clothed in a
wonderful variety of garbs, but not disorderly or loud. The
landlord apologized for their presence, alleging that other
accommodation could not be found for them in the town. He received,
he said, a dollar a day for feeding them, and for supplying them
with a place in which they could lie down. It did not pay him, but
what could he do? Such an apology from an American landlord was in
itself a surprising fact. Such high functionaries are, as a rule,
men inclined to tell a traveler that if he does not like the guests
among whom he finds himself, he may go elsewhere. But this landlord
had as yet filled the place for not more than two or three weeks,
and was unused to the dignity of his position. While I was at
supper, the seventy-five teamsters were summoned into the common
eating-room by a loud gong, and sat down to their meal at the public
table. They were very dirty; I doubt whether I ever saw dirtier
men; but they were orderly and well behaved, and but for their
extreme dirt might have passed as the ordinary occupants of a well-
filled hotel in the West. Such men, in the States, are less clumsy
with their knives and forks, less astray in an unused position, more
intelligent in adapting themselves to a new life than are Englishmen
of the same rank.
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