lot, the owner furnishing teams, tools and reasonable supplies during the working months and dividing the crop equally at the end of the year, the working party to pay the cost of supplies out of their half of the

crop.

The by-product of the cotton and the seed had increased the value of the crop far beyond what it was worth before the war, and a great responsibility had been taken from the planters. The general feeling was that they and the country were approaching a better condition of things that they ever expected.

Mrs. Campbell sent out her invitations for Thursday afternoon. Here I had the pleasure of meeting a number of my former acquaintances, among whom was the handsome black-eyed widow who came on horseback to get through my lines long ago. She was as bright as ever, although a little more robust. She had married again and now was the wife of Colonel Collier, the well known editor of the Nashville American, and was on a visit to her friends in Florence.

Referring to her mother who had died some years before, she said,

"Mother was an old-fashioned Presbyterian and believed firmly in special Providence. She often gave an instance in which you figured that once when we were living alone on the plantation, two rough looking strangers came to the house looking for something to eat, which we gave them. They then demanded money. We told them we had none. They became very abusive, ransacked the house, opened the

drawers, taking anything they wanted.

While they

were upstairs, two soldiers rode up and asked if this was where Mrs. Collier lived, saying they belonged to the 9th Ohio Cavalry and that Colonel Hamilton had sent them as guards to our house. The men upstairs heard them; they jumped from an upper window and broke for the woods in too big a hurry. to take anything with them. Mother always believed that God put it into the mind of Colonel Hamilton to send those guards at that time."

I met her older sister and her husband, Captain Simpson, who was a quartermaster in the regiment across the river when I visited the mother and sisters and they proposed a union supper at which we should meet and hold a conference with a view of closing the war. The captain was at this time a leading lawyer of the county and an elder in the Presbyterian church.

Florence had long been the seat of a female seminary. But this had been closed during the war, after which it had been re-opened. One of the teachers was a guest at Mrs. Campbell's dinner.

After the dinner she took a seat beside me and said she wanted to tell me how much she felt she was

indebted to me. "I am, as you were told, from the North." "My home is in Troy, New York. After the war closed it was decided to re-open the seminary here. I saw an advertisement in one of our Northern papers for a superintendent to take charge of it. As I had some experience in that line and had a desire to try the South for a while, I answered the

advertisement, which resulted in my employment with one assistant.

"The school was opened. Girls from the town and vicinity came. As schools had been disorganized during the war I found them quite deficient in scholarship, but filled with a bitter hatred of the Yankees, and I think I would have given up the school in disgust had it not been for you and your Yankee regiment. For with all their bitterness it was the fashion to speak well of you. So I took heart and with a good deal of patience and forbearance I have succeeded in causing them to concede that there are 'others' entitled to fair treatment, and I now have a good school and plenty of good friends here."

The company spent the afternoon as a "Committee of the Whole" discussing the war and its results. A number of young people were there under the lead of Mrs. Campbell's young son, a very bright boy of twelve years, who insisted that I should tell some Yankee stories. I told him I would if he would tell some Johnnie stories. He said he would, and the contest was quite amusing. At its close he said with a laugh,

"I have just been thinking how you and I could make lots of money, Colonel."

"How?" said I.

"Why by getting up a show and going around telling war stories."

"That is a capital idea," said I. "You certainly are a born Yankee."

CHAPTER 28.

Recent Correspondence.

(From Florence, Alabama, Times.)

The following letter kindly shown us by Mrs. W. P. Campbell, will recall to the older citizens of Florence an interesting period of the war between the states, when the Federals occupied this territory.

Colonel Hamilton is recollected as a humane commander, a true soldier, who never forgot that he was making war on soldiers only, and not on citizens; and who won the respect and esteem of even his enemies by his high-minded, soldierly bearing. Twenty-five years later Colonel Hamilton visited Florence, when he was cordially entertained by those from whom he had received consideration in the trying times of war.

The letter was dated at Columbus, Ohio, May 26, 1913, and was addressed to the postmaster at Florence. It is as follows:

"DEAR SIR: I write to make inquiry about some of the old citizens of Florence and vicinity.

"In the spring of 1864, I, with the Ninth O. V. Cavalry. of which I was Colonel, was stationed about a month near Martin's Cotton Mills on Cypress Creek, within two miles of Florence with orders from General Sherman to guard the Tennessee River against the enemy who had captured part

of a scouting force of my regiment one night two weeks before while encamped on the Jack Peters' plantation below

town.

"My orders were to prevent further raids in that locality and to exhaust the resources which had been furnishing supplies for General Forrest and his men. While here I made the acquaintance of the families of W. H. Key, Captain Coffee, Mrs. Collier, Governor Patton and others. On my second visit, 25 years afterwards, I had the pleasure of meeting a number of old friends and quite a number of new ones, among whom were the ex-Confederate Dr. J. C. Conner, who married Mr. Key's oldest daughter; Captain Campbell, who married the daughter of Captain Coffee; and Captain Patton, son of Governor Patton.

"Since the war I have spent a good deal of my active life in the South, and I am writing at the request of my old comrades, my 'recollections of a cavalryman during the Civil War. My command met the soldiers of the South more than sixty times under fire, and I can frankly say, with no disgrace on either side. But I have always felt that, after all, the greatest good I accomplished for our common country was in the bloodless campaign around Florence in the spring of 1864.

"I write, therefore, to ask if you will kindly hand this letter to any of the last three gentlemen named who may be within reach, as I would prize a letter from any, of them at this time. "Yours very truly,

"(Signed) W. D. HAMILTON."

I received in answer to my letter a charming note from Mrs. Campbell who was hostess at the dinner given me nearly twenty-five years ago, and my partner in the hat business fifty years ago; also a letter from the Captain in which he told me that Captain Patton