“Our citizens, who had been accustomed to meet and treat the negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked to encounter them in towns and villages, and on the public roads, by scores and hundreds and thousands, wearing Federal uniforms, and bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets. They often recognized among them those who had once been their own servants. They were jostled from the sidewalks by dusky guards marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude and sullen tones by negro sentinels, in strong contrast with the kind and fraternal hail of the old sentinels in threadbare gray or dilapidated homespun. The ladies of villages so guarded, ceased to appear on the streets, and it was with much reluctance that the citizens of the surrounding country went to the towns on imperative errands. All felt the quartering of negro guards among them to be a deliberate, wanton, cruel act of insult and oppression. Their hearts sickened under what they deemed an outrageous exercise of tyranny. They would have received white troops, not indeed with rejoicing, but with kindness, satisfaction, and respect; but when they saw their own slaves freed, armed, and put on guard over them, they treated all hope of Federal magnanimity or justice as an idle dream.” CHAPTER XLII. Memphis—Out from the Reconstructed. Of the trip between Jackson, Mississippi, and Grand Junction, Tennessee, I only remember a dismal night of thumpings over broken rails, and lurches and contortions of the cars, as if we were really trying in our motion to imitate the course of the rails the Yankee raiders had twisted. At one point all were waked up, hurried out into the mud of a forlorn little village, and informed that, some way or another, they must get over the burnt bridge to the train half a mile on the other side. Clambering over cotton bales into the cars of the new train, we found everybody who preceded us shivering with cold. The freight cars attached to the train were loaded with cotton, it seemed; and orders had been given to extinguish all fires in the passenger cars, lest the sparks might set fire to it! Finally, an hour or two before daybreak, the conductor discharged his passengers in the mud at Grand Junction, much as a cartman would shoot out his load of rubbish. In the darkness no depot was to be seen; and, at any rate, every passenger was compelled to watch his baggage, as there was nobody to attend to it. Fortunately some one had matches. A fire was soon started on the ground, and the railroad company’s pile of lumber was made to furnish fuel. Seated around that fire on their trunks, in the cold night air, and half-blinded by the smoke, were ladies who, before the war, had been among the wealthiest and haughtiest in the South. Some of them were going to Texas to hide their poverty. It was nearly three hours before the train for Memphis took us up.