aving as many of the stores as
was possible, giving the preference to ordnance stores. For this purpose
he ordered an impressment of transportation in Nashville and the
vicinity, making a clean sweep of every thing that ran on wheels. In
this manner some eighty or ninety vehicles were gotten together, with
teams, and as many loads of ordnance stores were saved for the army. He
issued orders that the citizens should be permitted to help themselves
to the remaining stores, and a promiscuous scramble for clothing,
blankets, meat, meal, and all sorts of quartermaster and commissary
stores, commenced and lasted three days. Occasionally, a half-drunken,
straggling soldier, would walk into the midst of the snatchers, with gun
on shoulder and pistol at his belt, and the citizens would stand back,
jackall like, until he had helped himself. Crowds would stand upon the
pavements underneath the tall buildings, upon the Court House Square,
while out of their fourth and fifth-story windows large bales of goods
were pitched, which would have crushed any one upon whom they had
fallen. Yet numbers would rush and fasten upon them, while other bales
were already in the air descending. Excitement and avarice seemed to
stimulate the people to preternatural strength. I saw an old woman,
whose appearance indicated the extremest decrepitude, staggering under a
load of meat which I would have hardly thought a quartermaster's mule
could carry. Twice during the first day of these scenes, orders were
received by a portion of Forrest's regiment, drawn up on the Square, to
stop the appropriation of stores by the citizens, and they accordingly
charged the crowd (deaf to any less forcible reason) with drawn sabers;
several men were wounded and trampled upon, but fortunately none were
killed. Nothing could have been more admirable than the fortitude,
patience and good sense which General Floyd displayed in his arduous and
unenviable task. He had, already, for ten days, endured great and
uninterrupted excitement and fatigue; without respite or rest, he was
called to this responsibility and duty. Those who have never witnessed
nor been placed in such situations, can not understand how they harass
the mind and try the temper.

General Floyd soon found that he could (with no exertion) maintain
perfect order, or rescue more than a fragment from the wreck, and he
bent all his energies to the task of repressing serious disorders,
preventing the worst outrages