A Year in the South (28 page)

However welcome and necessary the help from the two older boys, it entailed a financial sacrifice that the family could not afford. Every day Harry and Allan spent at home was a day they earned no wages. Not only that, but Cornelia's own income was abruptly cut off by her infirmity. Until she healed considerably, she was unable to continue giving drawing lessons.
40

Even as she recovered from her injury, she slipped further into depression. The family's store of food was nearly exhausted, and there was little money to buy more and none to pay the cook. The house rent was overdue and the landlord was losing patience. There were also doctor bills to pay, and, with fall approaching, the family would need to lay in a supply of firewood for heating. On top of all that, Mrs. Dailey moved away, leaving Cornelia “forlorn and undone,” with “no one … to whom I could confide any part of my misery.” Things had seemed bleak before, but now they seemed hopeless.
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One day toward the end of summer she hit rock bottom. As she sat at the dinner table staring at the usual fare of bean soup and bread that she had grown thoroughly sick of, she “was seized with utter despair. I felt that God had forsaken us.” She left the table, lay down on the sofa, and remained there for hours, overwhelmed with “unbelief and hopelessness.” Horrible thoughts came to her, thoughts she could not suppress. “I desired at that moment to be done with life, for no one seemed to care for us, whether we lived or died.” It was all she could do to keep from falling on her knees and uttering “the impious prayer that God would destroy us.”
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Her deep faith soon reasserted itself. She remembered “the goodness my God had shown me in the former dark hours I had passed through … [and] with that remembrance came the resolve, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.'” Before the day was done, she had climbed from her pit of despair.
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The experience frightened her badly, nonetheless. Fearing more “attacks of the Tempter,” she vowed to keep herself so busy that she could not “dwell in thought for a moment on my own miseries.” As soon as she was able, she resumed her tutoring. Harry and Allan returned to work, too, and the restoration of the family's income, although more a trickle than a stream, helped boost Cornelia's spirits. And then one day she unexpectedly received a package from some old friends in Winchester, gifts of clothing: underwear for her, shoes and frocks for Nelly. It cheered her to be reminded that she had “friends who had not forgotten me.”
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As summer ended, she thought of the season ahead. Autumn had always been for her a time of joy and peace, when she would take long walks in the countryside, relishing the mellow sunlight and the crisp air. She did not anticipate such joy and peace this autumn, however. Despite her resolve, she could not wholly banish the dark visions from her mind. “[A]lways the thought of the desolation of our penniless home was before me, and my heart ached.”
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JOHN ROBERTSON

June of 1865 was warmer than usual in east Tennessee. The heat, and the thin haze that always came with it in that part of the country, seemed more like July or August weather. Had John Robertson not firmly renounced the habit of cursing that he had picked up in the army, he would now have been damning the heat, and damning the bad luck that made it necessary for him to sweat each day in the fields. Uncle Allen was still sick, cousin Jacob was still confined to bed with a broken thigh, and the younger son was too little to help, so the farm work now fell to John. The books he had borrowed to help him prepare for the Methodist ministry sat unopened in his room.
1

These June days were long as well as hot. Any farmer who was not at work by five in the morning, when the sun was already over the horizon, and not still working fourteen hours later, was considered no-account. Those hours were filled with toil, for if the corn plants were not diligently tended they would be choked by weeds. And the weeds were relentless: the row of corn that was hoed or plowed one day would be overrun again a few days later. The farmers all looked forward to the laying-by in late summer, when the corn would be tall and strong enough to survive on its own and the weeds could be ignored.
2

Even with all the demands of field labor, however, John found time to visit Tennie. Her mother's farm adjoined Uncle Allen's, so it took John only a few minutes to walk over; often he would eat his midday meal there. Tennie's mother, the widow Robertson, always made him welcome, and when he joined the family at the table, she insisted he say grace.
3

Toward the end of the month, John volunteered to do some work at Tennie's place, figuring it was a good excuse to spend more time there. Mrs. Robertson had a twelve-acre field of wheat that was ready to be harvested and had hired a man to do it. John joined him in the field early on the morning of June 26 and the two went to work. Slowly they waded through the golden expanse of ripe wheat, sweeping their cradles in a wide arc from right to left, and laying the sheaves on the ground to be gathered later. John was an old hand at this kind of work, for his father had raised wheat during the years John was growing up in Greene County.
4

His companion in the field was a recently returned Confederate soldier named McPherson. He was a young man, but the war had taken a toll on him and, as John observed, “he could not stand hard work.” By ten o'clock it was already blistering hot, and poor McPherson was suffering. He stripped down to his underwear and kept going until one, when his cradle broke. He then put on his clothes and left, telling John he was going home to get another cradle. “[T]hat was the last I saw of him.”
5

John kept working, but not too hard. He had no intention of charging Mrs. Robertson for his labor and thus felt no obligation to exert himself. “I was in the house about as much of my time as I was in the field,” he wrote. “Tennie was good company and I would rather be pestering her than cutting wheat.” It took him days to finish the job.
6

The only thing besides Tennie to which John gladly devoted time during these summer weeks was the Sunday school at Blue Springs Church. He was especially excited about the grand ceremony that the congregation decided to stage to celebrate the success of the school. He was appointed to the committee that planned the occasion, and he took the responsibility seriously. Sunday, July 2, was the day designated, and it turned out to be a beautiful day. The event began in the morning with a procession: John, Tennie, and the other officers and teachers of the school were in front, followed by the students, and then everyone else who wanted to take part. The choir lined up, too. Once assembled, they all marched solemnly down the road away from the church for half a mile, then turned around and marched back, circled twice around the church, and finally filed inside and seated themselves. Several speakers were to address the crowd, one of them being John himself. While the others were speaking, John passed among the pews collecting donations for the school library.
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An unpleasant incident marred the occasion. One of the speakers, a minister named Bever, was a unionist who decided to take this opportunity to express his feelings on “the war question,” as John termed it. “This spoiled our Celebration. Many left the house while he was speaking; when I got up [to speak] many of them returned.” Put “in a bad humor” by the Reverend Bever's indiscretion, John cut his own address short.
8

This was one of the few times “the war question” had intruded into John's little corner of Roane County since he had moved there the previous fall. The neighborhood's unionists and secessionists generally tried to get along with each other. Not all east Tennessee districts were so harmonious. Many were deeply divided, and some were so riven by hostility that they were dangerous places to live—especially for rebels, who were heavily outnumbered in all but a few parts of the region. The wave of prosecutions, ostracism, intimidation, and violence set in motion by embittered unionists against their rebel neighbors during the spring showed no sign of slackening in the summer. Many of its victims were now leaving east Tennessee, seeking sanctuary in other regions.
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Some were fleeing to middle or west Tennessee, where rebels predominated. But no part of Tennessee was completely comfortable for rebels, for the state government was controlled by unionists of the most unforgiving sort, chief among them Governor Brownlow. Most of the former Confederate states were now being politically reconstructed under President Johnson's authority, and thanks to his lenient policy of amnesty and pardon they would soon be back in rebel hands. Not so Tennessee: its government had been restored in the last weeks of the war, and the rebels had been allowed no part in it.
10

Governor Brownlow now proceeded to ensure that his enemies would remain powerless. In June, at his behest, the legislature passed a law that barred anyone from voting who had not been a loyal unionist from the beginning of the war to the end. Brownlow justified it with the fierce and uncompromising rhetoric that was his trademark. Rebels were “traitors,” he declared, and being stripped of their political rights was the least they deserved. He recounted the suffering of unionists under the Confederate regime, and their continuing persecution in areas where they were a minority. Justice for these victims, he said, as well as their safety and the safety of the Union itself, demanded that the “bloody hands” of the rebels be kept from the ballot box. “[T]he spirit of Rebellion … still exists and must be defeated.”
11

Like every other rebel in Tennessee, John Robertson detested Brownlow—“the
basest of all wretches,
” he called him. The voting law was of no direct concern to him, however, for he was not much interested in politics and was too young to vote anyway. But there was another effort under way at Brownlow's instigation, this one outside the realm of government, which could well affect John's future.
12

Brownlow was an ordained Methodist minister. Although he had long ago given up circuit-riding in favor of journalism and politics, he had remained active in the Southern Methodist Church. When secession and war came, he had publicly condemned the ministers of his faith who sided with the Confederacy, and when the Holston Conference—the governing body of the church in east Tennessee—formally endorsed the rebel cause and expelled a number of unionist ministers, Brownlow vowed revenge.
13

Now he had the power to make good on his vow. His plan was to reorganize the Holston Conference as a thoroughly unionist body, align it with the Northern Methodist Church, seize all property held by the conference, and expel the rebel ministers. On June 1, a group of unionist Methodists assembled in the town of Athens and, with Brownlow's blessing, took the first steps. Declaring themselves the legitimate Holston Conference, they resolved that “those who entered into the late rebellion and imbibed the spirit thereof, are guilty of a crime sufficient to exclude them from the kingdom of grace and glory, and must not be admitted into this Conference, save upon full confession and thorough repentance.”
14

East Tennessee's rebel Methodists, especially those of the cloth, thus faced an uncertain future. John Robertson would have to reckon with this turmoil in his church. There was nothing he could do about it for now, however. Even if he could soon get back to his books, his ordination would be years away. And besides, there was something much more pressing on his mind.

His anxiety about Tennie had by now rendered him utterly miserable. “I could not sleep,” he wrote. “Sometimes when in her company, I had hope and thought she loved me; but at other times I had doubts.” He could resolve this agonizing uncertainty at any time by declaring his love and asking for her hand. But he was afraid to, for rejection would bring only greater misery.
15

By July he had decided he could go on no longer. He would confront his beloved and accept his fate. Late in the afternoon of July 9, he walked over to Tennie's. “I made my way very slowly,” he recalled, “as with a weary step.” She met him at the door with a smile, as always, and they seated themselves in the usual place, close together on the little front porch. To John's great relief, Mrs. Robertson went off to call on some sick neighbors. He liked her, but wanted no interruptions this day. For two hours he and Tennie sat, but John was unusually quiet. Several times she asked him “what was the matter, or, if I was sick; why I talked so little, and why so sad.”
16

It was sundown when at last he mustered his courage, took her hand in his, and said the words he had prepared:

“Tennie, I have one request to make of you, and I hope God may help you to decide for your own good. It will not take me long to make it, and it is this: Will you consent to be my wife? to share both my joys and sorrows through life? I love you, and you only do I love. I promi[s]e before God to ever strive to make you happy. This is all any man can promi[s]e, and I make the request and promi[s]e from my heart.”
17

As he spoke the final words, she gripped his hand tightly and laid her head against his chest. But before she could reply, he told her she must wait. He had taken her by surprise, and thought it only right to give her time to think. He would return in six days, he said, and hear her answer. They said good night, and he walked home in the twilight.
18

He spent those six days cutting grass in Uncle Allen's meadow and gathering it into a haystack. He was only a little less miserable than before. Tennie's unspoken response to his proposal had given him hope, but still he feared that her answer would be no. He could think about little else, and the days passed with excruciating slowness.
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