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Cakes made of sawdust; thunder on a clear day A Civil War-era childhood in Hardin County Most Tennessee residents have never heard of John Pitts, unless they happen to work for a certain law firm in Nashville. Born in Wayne County in 1849, Pitts' family moved to neighboring Hardin County when he was two years old. In his memoirs, he wrote about his childhood in Tennessee during the Civil War:
John Pitts, pictured here toward the end of a distinguished legal career in Nashville
"I recall the barbeques that were held in our county in 1861, for enlisting volunteers of the Confederate Army; the music of the bands, the long tables spread in the shade of the heavy timbers of the creek bottoms, the flaming patriotic addresses, the yellow stripes down the pants and on the shoulders of the soldiers in their gray uniforms, and the 'cockades' on their Napoleonic hats, and how these crude martial insignia stirred and intoxicated 'us boys,' and especially the girls and young ladies. And I must relate a humorous incident that occurred at one of these barbeques on Indian Creek. The tables were ornamented with enormous 'cakes,' made not to eat but for show only -- made of sawdust with just enough flour to hold the sawdust together, covered with a white coat of so-called 'icing,' surmounted by flags and dotted with brightly colored figures and emblems -- very showy indeed. It happened that after all the real eatables had been consumed, leaving these fine cakes intact, a belated old farmer arrived and asked one who appeared to be sort of a boss of the entertainment -- a waggish fellow -- for something to eat, and was given a slice from one of these ornamental cakes. After the old gentleman had munched on it for a few minutes, this wag asked him how he liked the cake. His reply was, 'Wall, I reckin it's all right, but if it warn't for the name o' the thing I'd jist as leave have a piece o' plain corn bread.'
A federal gunboat known as the Mendota during the Civil War PHOTO: Library of Congress "We lived at the time about five miles south of Clifton on the Tennessee River, and, as will be recalled by all then living or at all familiar with the history of the times, after the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, one branch of the Federal Army advanced up the Cumberland River upon Nashville, and the other up the Tennessee, by transports, to Pittsburg Landing, the scene of the Battle of Shiloh. This movement up the Tennessee River was in the early part of 1862. There was a large fleet of transports loaded with soldiers and their accounterments, accompanied or 'convoyed' by a number of wooden gunboats equipped with cannon. It was quite an imposing military array. The fleet had numerous military bands and several calliopes [see definition below].
A calliope (kuh-lahy-uh-pee) is a musical instrument consisting of steam whistles, activated by a keyboard. Here is a sketch of one. SOURCE: Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments "We had not finished picking cotton, and I distinctly remember that, one morning in February or March, 1862, we cotton-pickers were picking cotton on the south side of a ridge, opposite from the direction of Clifton, when we heard, as we thought, a band playing and approaching us from the direction of that place. We had heard nothing of the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson or the approach of the Federal Army. We dropped our baskets and ran to the top of the ridge, expecting to see the band which we had heard, but no band was in sight. We saw, however, in the distance, clouds of black smoke, and wondered what it could mean. We stood watching and waiting for perhaps an hour, but nothing more appeared, and we went back to work. Before the day was over we learned what had happened; the Federal Army, moving up the river, had burned the town of Clifton, and it was the calliopes on the boats in the river that we had heard.
This old postcard was found on the town of Clifton's website
"From that time to the close of the war, for much, though not all of the time, a Federal Garrison was stationed at Clifton, which foraged and scouted in the surrounding country, including the neighborhood in which we lived -- and here our troubles began. This scouting and foraging was confined to the daytime, as the country was filled with Confederate free-lancers, or 'gorillas' or 'bushwhackers,' as they were sometimes called -- armed Confederates not attached to the regular army; and there were, later, federals of the same stripe, whom we called 'tories,' and there were frequent clashes between these irregular 'soldiers of fortune,' and many plunderings of private homes by them and hangings of noncombatant old men to compel them to disclose and disgorge their money.
Pittsburg Landing, at the battlefield of Shiloh
"On Sunday morning, April 6th, a lot of us boys, cool as it was, were 'in swimming' in Hardin's Creek, when we heard what we first thought was thunder, though there were only a few fleecy clouds floating in the sky; very soon we became convinced that it was cannonading somewhere to the south of us -- we could not tell where. None of us, at that time, had ever been as far south as Savannah, even, our county seat, much less did we know of Pittsburg Landing or Shiloh Church, and we had no idea how far up the river the Federal gunboats had gone. The cannonading continued all day Sunday, and began again on Monday morning and continued through most of the forenoon. Still we knew nothing of what was going on, except that a great battle was waging somewhere. Late Monday evening, deserting Federal soldiers began to pass through our neighborhood who gave us our first information of the battle. They were on their way to their homes in the North. They reported that a great battle had been fought at Pittsburg Landing, and that the Federals had been 'whipped'; that Grant's army had been driven by the rebels into the river at Pittsburg Landing, and that they and many others had swum across the river to the east side, and were going home. They thought, and we believed, that the firing we heard on Monday was that of the rebels finishing up the job.
"But, alas, as we later learned, this was not so." John Pitts' memoirs were published in 1930 under the title Personal and Professional Reminiscences of an Old Lawyer. The Nashville law firm he founded is today known as Waller Lansden Dortch and Davis.
Click here to read more about the history of Clifton, Tennessee; here to read something else from Pitts' autobiography; and here to read about the Battle of Shiloh. |
—Philippa Thompson, Librarian, Gower Elementary School, Nashville"I use the website five or six times a day. It's a great source, and I'm amazed by the amount of information on it."