[167] hundred and six of his neighbors into a company of Home Guards, and was elected their captain. They were pledged to resist all attacks on the person or property of any of their number, and met frequently in the woods in the vicinity of their homes. This organization secured Bible safety and free expression of opinion till long after Tennessee went out of the Union. In fact, he felt so secure that, in 1862-a year after the State seceded — under the protection of his band of Home Guards, he inaugurated and carried through a celebratior of the fourth of July at Richmond, Tennessee, under the very guns of a rebel regiment then forming in the town. An act of so much temerity naturally attracted the attention of the Confederate authorities, and not long afterward he was roused from his bed one morning, before daybreak, by three hundred armed men, who told him that he was a prisoner, and that all his property was confiscated to the Government. They at once enforced the “confiscation act ;” “and this,” he said, taking from his wallet a piece of soiled paper, “ara whot I hed ter 'tribute ter the dingnation consarn. It'r Sally's own handwrite, ana I knows ye loikes har, so ye kin hev it, fur it'll nuver be uv no manner uv account ter me.” The schedule is now before me, and I copy it verbatim: “14 men and wimmin” (Jake eluded the soldiers and escaped to the woods), “1600 barrils corn, 130 sheeps, 700 bushls wheat, 440 barley, 100 rye, 27 mules, 5 cowbrutes, 105 head hogs, 17 horses and mars, and all they cud tote beside.”
Wall, they tied me hand ana fut, “he continued;” ana toted me off ter the Military Commission sittina ter Chattanooga. I know'd whot thet meant — a short
