Their joy had an exultation which
seemed almost beyond the power of expression. Old men fell down
fainting and unconscious under the stress of their emotions as they
saw the flag at the head of the column and tried to cheer it! Women
wept with happiness as their husbands stepped out of the ranks of
the loyal Tennessee regiments when these came marching by the home.
[Footnote: Temple's East Tennessee and the Civil War, pp. 476, 478.
Humes's The Loyal Mountaineers, pp. 211, 218.] These men had
gathered in little recruiting camps on the mountain-sides and had
found their way to Kentucky, travelling by night and guided by the
pole-star, as the dark-skinned fugitives from bondage had used to
make their way to freedom. Their families had been marked as
traitors to the Confederacy, and had suffered sharpest privations
and cruel wrong on account of the absence of the husband and father,
the brother, or the son. Now it was all over, and a jubilee began in
those picturesque valleys in the mountains, which none can
understand who had not seen the former despair and the present
revulsion of happiness. The mountain coves and nooks far up toward
the Virginia line had been among the most intense in loyalty to the
nation.
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