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| Gideon J. Pillow. |
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middling stature, with dark hair, and whiskers slightly sprinkled with white, apparently fifty years of age, was standing on a bale of cotton, haranguing the listeners:--“Every thing dear to you, fellow-citizens,” he exclaimed, “is in peril, and it is your duty to arm immediately in aid of the holy Southern cause.
The Northern Goths and Vandals — offscourings of the Yankee cities--two hundred thousand strong, are gathering north of the Ohio to invade your State, to liberate your slaves or incite them to insurrection, to ravish your daughters, to sack your cities and villages, to lay waste your plantations, to plunder and burn your dwellings, and to make you slaves to the vilest people on the face of the earth.”
He had spoken in this strain about three minutes, when the conductor's summons, “All aboard!”
dispersed the audience, and the speaker entered a car going westward to i Memphis.
The orator was General Gideon J. Pillow, who played an inglorious part in the war that ensued.
He had just come from the presence of Jefferson Davis at Montgomery.
Although his State (Tennessee) had lately, by an overwhelming vote, pronounced for Union, this weak but mischievous man, the owner of hundreds of acres of cotton lands in the Gulf and Trans-Mississippi States, and scores of slaves, was working with all his might, with the traitorous Governor of the Commonwealth
（Harris), to excite the people to revolt, by such false utterances as we have just noticed.1 He was ambitious of military fame, and had already, as we have observed, offered to Jefferson Davis the services of ten thousand Tennessee soldiers, without the least shadow of
1 On the day after his harangue at Grand Junction, Pillow was in Memphis, where he assumed the character of a military chief, and issued a sort of proclamation, dated April 20, in which he said:
All organized military companies of foot, cavalry, and artillery will be needed for the defense of the Southern States against invasion by the tyrant who has established a military despotism in the city of Washington. These forces will be received in companies, battalions, or regiments, as they may themselves organize, and will be received into the service of the Confederate States (for Tennessee has no other place of shelter in this hour of peril), and the officers commissioned with the rank of command with which they are tendered for the field. They will not be required for the defense of the Southern coast. Kentucky and Virginia will be the fields of conflict for the future. The city of Memphis is safe against the possibility of approach from the Gulf, and will be equally so by the construction of a battery of 24 and 32-pounders at Randolph, and the point indicated to the Committee of Safety, above the city. Such batteries, with the plunging fire, could sink any sized fleets of steamboats laden with Northern troops. If such batteries are promptly constructed, Memphis will never even be threatened. The object of seizing Cairo by the Lincoln Government (if it should be done, as I take it for granted it will) will be to cut off supplies of subsistence from the Northwest, to prevent the approach through the Ohio of Southern troops, and to cut off Missouri from Southern support; and when she is thus isolated, to invade and crush her. The safety of Missouri requires that she should seize and hold that position at whatever cost. Without it, she will soon cease to breathe the air of freedom. All the forces tendered from Tennessee, to the amount of fifty thousand men, will be received as they are fitted by their state of drill for the field. Sooner, they would not be efficient, and they will not be called into the service without proper provision for subsistence and the best arms within the resources of the government. The entire South must now unite and make common cause for its safety — no matter about the political relations of the States at present — else all will be crushed by the legion of Northern Goths and Vandals with which they are threatened. The revolution which is on us, and invasion which is at our doors, will unite the Southern States with or without formal ordinances of separation. I speak not without authority. I desire to receive official reports from all organized corps of the State--giving me the strength of the rank and file of each separate organization. These reports will reach me at Nashville.
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