Friday, April 18, 2014

April 19, 1864---The Yankee Lieutenant's Woman


APRIL 19, 1864:       

The Nashville Dispatch publishes two brief snippets of news about general war conditions in the city:

 The depots . . . were crowded with refugees and mechanics, the former from below [Southerners], and the latter from above [Northerners], and their destination respectively North and South. Several families of refugees, with an almost unlimited number of flaxen-haired children, left in the train for Louisville yesterday morning.

And on a somewhat lighter note:

Dame Rumor says that before the "snaik man sloped," [sic] a former Lieutenant in the Federal army eloped with the wife of a friend, leaving the disconsolate husband and interesting children to take care of themselves. What the said Lieutenant has done, or intends to do, with his own wife, the good dame is not advised, but promises developments in due course.

Unfortunately for those with salacious appetites, this juicy bit of entertaining, utterly meretricious gossip was all they got of the story. If anyone ever knew what became of the cuckold, the “interesting children,” the lovers, and the dashing ex-Lieutenant’s family, it is lost in the mists of history.   



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