Colonel William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston : His Service in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States.

[496] property of all sorts, and receiving delegations of public functionaries and private citizens who were crowding round him for advice under the changed state of affairs. He received Generals Floyd and Pillow with the greatest courtesy, and made the former commandant of the post at Nashville. The excitement and confusion continued, and on Monday night an immense mob blocked up the street in front of his headquarters; one of them, seeming to be half drunk, mounting the steps, and exclaiming, “We have come to demand of our generals whether they intend to fight for us or not;” and, turning to the crowd, he continued: “Yes, fellow-citizens, we have a right to know whether our generals are going to fight for us or intend abandoning us and our wives and children to the enemy. We will force them to tell us.” A wild shout of approval was the response from the mob. Generals Floyd, Hardee, and myself, had to make speeches to them before they could be induced to disperse, and abandon their futile effort to extort a disclosure of plans. It was considerably after midnight before we got clear of them. Dissatisfaction was general. Its mutterings, already heard, began to break out in denunciations. The demagogues took up the cry, and hounded each other and the people on in hunting down a victim. The public press was loaded with abuse. The very Government was denounced for intrusting the public safety to hands so feeble. The Lower House of Congress appointed a select committee to inquire into the conduct of the war in the Western Department. The Senators and Representatives from Tennessee, with the exception of Judge Swann, waited upon the President, saying, “We come in the name of the people to demand the removal of Sidney Johnston from command, because he is no general.” The President replied: “Gentlemen, I know Sidney Johnston well. If he is not a general, we had better give up the war, for we have no general.”

Nashville had acquired, during the progress of the war, a high degree of importance. It was the capital of the rich, populous, and martial State of Tennessee. As the base of Bowling Green, as a depot of supplies for the armies of the East as well as of the West, as a manufactory of ordnance and army stores, as a place of refuge for thousands of Kentuckians and Tennesseeans, and as the rendezvous for volunteers for the front, it had come to be looked upon in the West as Richmond was an the East. Its original population of some 30,000 had probably been doubled, and, from a rather provincial and Union-loving town, it had become a centre of furious political agitation. The people were warlike and energetic in character, and circumstances had produced in them a blind and overweening confidence. It has been seen how impossible it was to obtain labor in order to provide defenses for the city. Even when General Johnston's army was found retiring upon Nashville, the good news from Donelson kept the public mind in a state of unnatural elation. Even as late as February 15th he found that the measures he had taken to obstruct by a raft the Cumberland River, which was falling, were thwarted by the dead weight of popular opposition, directed by the “river-men,” who as a class resisted it. Reverse seemed impossible. When, therefore, the blow fell, the revulsion of feeling produced