That there were many individual cases of brutality, there can be no doubt, and that slavery as an institution of human government is wrong, no right-thinking man can deny; but in all the records of mankind there is nothing that parallels the conditions and practices which governed that slavery, now forever banished from the industries of our beloved country and expunged from its Constitution. The gentleness and sympathy of the masters of Dixie and the faithfulness and loyalty of the black slaves should be jealously written into an impartial history of that South that was, but is no more. They are the incontrovertible evidences of the greatness of our people who inherited the dark burden of human bondage from another age and who were innocent heirs to the sunny lands of cotton and cane, on which alone, of all our wide country, this shackled, tropical race could labor with profit to their owners. During those awful years when every Southern home was the probable stage of a tragedy it was not uncommon to see only the mistress of a plantation left with her children in the care of her slaves, who stood by her and respected and protected her through every danger. After the army left Sulphur Trestle, General Forrest gave his attention to the destruction of forts and blockhouses up and down the Memphis and Charleston and the Louisville and Nashville Railroads. While thus engaged, we threatened Pulaski, Tenn., sufficiently to hold a large Union force there behind breastworks, so that they did not attempt to interfere with our raids. To hold the Union garrison at Huntsville, Ala., on the Memphis and Charleston, within its works, we threatened it with the division of General Buford. The one unfortunate feature of our continued successes was that we could not save and put to use the vast amount of stores captured on these raids, in view of the sore need of them among all the armies of the Confederacy. Our mission was to hit as the lightning strikes--to wreck and terrify and then disappear. Our enemy had no cavalry force in this theater of the war that could cope with us, and his slow-moving infantry and artillery found us a moving target, too swift and restless for their sluggish aim. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XXIV FOURTH INVASION OF WEST TENNESSEE Soon after the close of the Middle Tennessee raids we began our fourth invasion of West Tennessee, which section had already yielded to us so bountifully of the sinews of war in men and equipment. The Union commanders were yet unable to solve the mystery of Forrest’s ability to descend unseen upon their strongholds and escape unhurt with all the spoils of war and leaving destruction in his tracks. Their shrewdest tacticians had failed to trap him, and their overwhelming armies could not crush him.