L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

At Nashville, he succeeded, of course with the permission of the Union authorities, in filling General Wheeler's order, and charged with such information as General Mitchell and Colonel Truesdail saw fit to impart, he took another trip to the rebel lines. Wheeler was at this time at Franklin, quartered in the court house. The goods and information were delivered, much to the gratification of the rebel general, who forthwith instructed him to return to Nashville for more information and late Northern papers. He was by this time so well known, and so highly esteemed by the rebels, that the cashier of the Franklin branch of the Planter's bank of Tennessee, entrusted to him the accounts and valuable papers of the branch bank to carry to the parent institution at Nashville. This duty he performed faithfully. On his way, he stopped at the house of one Prior Smith, a violent rebel, and extensive negro dealer. He was cordially received by Smith, who tried to interest him in the business of running off negro children from Nashville, to be sold south. Newcomer declined entering upon it; but Smith insisted, and gave him a letter of introduction to his “right bower,” in Nashville, who proved to be a Dr. Hudson, a man of wealth, who professed to be a Union man, but had long been considered suspicious. The Chief of Police, Colonel Truesdail, desired him now to spend some time in Nashville in developing the case of Dr. Hudson, but he deemed it necessary first, to return to Wheeler, and received permission to do so. At Franklin, he found that Wheeler had gone on to Shelbyville, and stopping with his friend Ratcliffe, the two wrote out the information he had received, and sealed it up with the papers in large (rebel) government envelopes,