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Title: Campfire and Battlefield
An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War
Author: Rossiter Johnson
Release Date: December 22, 2014 [eBook #47746]
Language: English
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[Frontispiece: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. (From
a war-time photograph.)]
CAMPFIRE AND BATTLEFIELD
An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great
Civil War
BY
ROSSITER JOHNSON
JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL.D., GEN. J. T. MORGAN, GEN. O. O. HOWARD
GEN. SELDEN CONNOR, HENRY W. B. HOWARD, GEN. JOHN B. GORDON
Art Editors Frank Beard, George Spiel
[Illustration]
New York
Copyright, 1894, by
Bryan, Taylor & Company,
61 East Ninth Street
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY EVENTS.
CHAPTER II.
PREPARATION FOR CONFLICT.
CHAPTER III.
THE BEGINNING OF BLOODSHED.
CHAPTER IV.
BORDER STATES AND FOREIGN RELATIONS.
CHAPTER V.
ARMY ORGANIZATION NORTH AND SOUTH.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.
CHAPTER VII.
EFFECTS OF THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRST UNION VICTORIES.
CHAPTER IX.
THE "MONITOR" AND THE "MERRIMAC."
CHAPTER X.
THE CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CAMPAIGN OF SHILOH.
CHAPTER XII.
MINOR ENGAGEMENTS OF THE FIRST YEAR.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN.
CHAPTER XIV.
POPE'S CAMPAIGN.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ANTIETAM CAMPAIGN.
CHAPTER XVI.
EMANCIPATION.
CHAPTER XVII.
BURNSIDE'S CAMPAIGN.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WAR IN THE WEST.
CHAPTER XIX.
MINOR EVENTS OF THE SECOND YEAR.
CHAPTER XX.
EMPLOYMENT OF COLORED SOLDIERS.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHANCELLORSVILLE.
CHAPTER XXII.
GETTYSBURG.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE DRAFT RIOTS.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE SIEGE OF CHARLESTON.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CHATTANOOGA CAMPAIGN AND BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BLACK CHAPTER.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE SANITARY AND CHRISTIAN COMMISSIONS.
CHAPTER XXX.
MINOR EVENTS OF THE THIRD YEAR.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE CONFEDERATE CRUISERS.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PRELIMINARY OPERATIONS IN THE WEST.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN.
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE BATTLE OF MOBILE BAY.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE ADVANCE ON PETERSBURG.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
WASHINGTON IN DANGER.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SHERIDAN IN THE SHENANDOAH.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
CHAPTER XL.
THE NATIONAL FINANCES.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE MARCH TO THE SEA.
CHAPTER XLII.
MINOR EVENTS OF THE FOURTH YEAR.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE FINAL BATTLES.
CHAPTER XLIV.
PEACE.
INDEX.
{4} [Illustration: FORT SUMTER. BEFORE THE BOMBARDMENT.]
[Illustration: FORT SUMTER. IN 1865--AFTER ITS REDUCTION BY GENERAL
GILLMORE.]
{5} [Illustration: DEFENCES OF WASHINGTON--HEAVY ARTILLERY.]
CAMPFIRE AND BATTLEFIELD.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY EVENTS.
CAUSES OF THE WAR--SLAVERY, STATE RIGHTS, SECTIONAL FEELING--JOHN
BROWN--ELECTION OF LINCOLN--SECESSION OF SOUTHERN STATES--"SHOOT HIM
ON THE SPOT"--PENSACOLA--MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON--SUMTER OCCUPIED--THE
"STAR OF THE WEST"--SUMTER BOMBARDED AND EVACUATED--THE CALL TO ARMS.
On the 9th of January, 1861, the _Star of the West_, a vessel which
the United States Government had sent to convey supplies to Fort
Sumter, was fired on by batteries on Morris Island, in Charleston
Harbor, South Carolina, and was compelled to withdraw.
The bombardment of Fort Sumter began on April 12th, the fort was
surrendered on the 13th and evacuated on the 14th. On April 19th the
Sixth Massachusetts regiment, which had been summoned to the defence
of the national capital, was attacked, _en route_, in the streets of
Baltimore.
Meanwhile, several Southern States had passed ordinances seceding from
the Union, and had formed a new union called the Confederate States of
America. Many Government forts, arsenals, and navy yards had been
seized by the new Confederacy; and by midsummer a bloody civil war was
in progress, which for four years absorbed the energies of the whole
American people.
[Illustration: RIVER GUNBOAT (A CONVERTED NEW YORK FERRYBOAT).]
What were the causes of this civil war?
The underlying, fundamental cause was African slavery--the
determination of the South to perpetuate and extend it, and the
determination of the people of the North to limit or abolish it.
Originally existing in all the colonies, slavery had been gradually
abolished in the Northern States, and was excluded from the new States
that came into the Union from the Northwestern Territory. The
unprofitableness of slave labor might, in time, have resulted in its
abolition in the South; but the invention, at the close of the last
century, of Eli Whitney's cotton-gin, transformed the raising of
cotton from an almost profitless to the most profitable of the staple
industries, and as a result of it the American plantations produced
seven-eighths of all the cotton of the world. African labor was
necessary to it, and the system of slavery became a fixed and
deep-rooted system in the South.
{6} [Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET. WILLIAM H.
SEWARD, Secretary of State. SALMON P. CHASE, Secretary of the Treasury.
EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War. GIDEON WELLES, Secretary of the
Navy. MONTGOMERY BLAIR, Postmaster-General. CALEB B. SMITH, Secretary
of the Interior. EDWARD BATES, Attorney-General.]
The self-interest thus established led the South, in the face of
Northern opposition to slavery which might make an independent
government necessary to them, to insist on the sovereignty of the
individual States, involving the right to secede from the Union. The
Constitution adopted in 1789 did not determine the question as to
whether the sovereignty of the States or that of {7} the central
government was paramount, but left it open, to be interpreted
according to the interests involved, and to be settled in the end by
an appeal to the sword. In the earlier history of the country the
doctrine of State sovereignty was most advocated in New England; but
with the rise of the tariff, which favored the manufacturing East at
the expense of the agricultural South, New England passed to the
advocacy of national sovereignty, while the people of the South took
up the doctrine of State Rights, determined to act on it should a
separation seem to be necessary to their independence of action on the
issue of slavery.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT ANDERSON.]
[Illustration: FORT MOULTRIE, CHARLESTON, WITH FORT SUMTER IN THE
DISTANCE.]
[Illustration: SIEGE GUN BEARING ON SUMTER. (Showing carriage rendered
useless before Confederate Evacuation, 1864.)]
From this time onward there was constant danger that the slavery
question would so imbitter the politics and legislation of the country
as to bring about disunion. The danger was imminent at the time of the
Missouri agitation of 1820-21, but was temporarily averted by the
Missouri Compromise. The Nullification Acts of South Carolina
indicated the intention of the South to stand on their State
sovereignty when it suited them. The annexation of Texas enlarged the
domain of slavery and made the issue a vital one. The aggressiveness
of the South appeared in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in
1854; and the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, giving the slaveholder the
right to hold his slaves in a free State, aroused to indignant and
determined opposition the anti-slavery sentiment of the North. The
expression in this decision, that the negro had "no rights which the
white man was bound to respect," brought squarely before the people
the issue of manhood liberty, and afforded a text for preaching
effectively the gospel of universal freedom.
The absence of intercourse between the North and the South, and their
radically different systems of civilization, made them like two
different peoples, estranged, jealous and suspicious. The publication
of sectional books fostered animosities and perpetuated misjudgments
and misunderstandings; and the interested influence of demagogues,
whose purposes would be furthered by sectional hatred, kept alive and
intensified the sectional differences.
There was little feeling of fraternity, then, to stand in the way when
the issues involved seemed to require the arbitrament of war, and it
was as enemies rather than as quarrelling brothers, that the men of
the North and the South rallied to their respective standards.
* * * * *
{8} [Illustration: INTERIOR OF FORT SUMTER AFTER THE BOMBARDMENT IN
1863--FROM GOVERNMENT PHOTOGRAPH. (Presented to participants in Sumter
Celebration, April 14, 1865.)]
An episode which occurred about a year before the war, which was
inherently of minor importance, brought to the surface the bitter
feeling which was preparing the way for the fraternal strife. John
Brown, an enthusiastic abolitionist, a man of undoubted courage, but
possessing poor judgment, and who had been very prominent in a
struggle to make Kansas a free State, in 1859 collected a small
company, and, invading the State of Virginia, seized the United States
Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. His expectation was that the blacks would
flock to his standard, and that, arming them from the arsenal, he
could lead a servile insurrection which would result in ending
slavery. His project, which was quixotic in the extreme, lacking all
justification of possible success, failed miserably, and Brown was
hung as a criminal. At the South, his action was taken as an
indication of what the abolitionists would do if they secured control
of the Government, and the secessionist sentiment was greatly
stimulated by his attempt. At the North he became a martyr to the
cause of freedom; and although the leaders would not at first call the
war for the Union an anti-slavery war, the people knew it was an
anti-slavery war, and old {9} John Brown's wraith hung over every
Southern battlefield. The song,
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on."
became a battle-cry, sung at every public meeting, sending recruits to
the front, and making the echoes ring around the army campfires.
So long as the Democratic party, which was in political alliance with
the South, retained control of the Federal Government, there was
neither motive nor excuse for secession or rebellion. Had the Free
Soil Party elected Frémont in 1856, war would have come then. When the
election of 1860, through Democratic dissension and adherence to
several candidates, resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln, the
candidate of the Free Soilers, the die was cast, and the South
prepared for the struggle it was about to precipitate.
* * * * *
The day after the election, on November 7th, 1860, the Palmetto flag,
the ensign of the State of South Carolina, was raised at Charleston,
replacing the American flag. High officials in the Government, in
sympathy with the Southern cause, had stripped the Northern arsenals
of arms and ammunition and had sent them to Southern posts. The little
standing army had been so disposed as to leave the city of Washington
defenceless, except for a few hundred marines and half a hundred men
of ordnance. The outgoing Administration was leaving the national
treasury bankrupt, and permitted hostile preparations to go on
unchecked, and hostile demonstrations to be made without interference.
So little did the people of the North realize that war was impending,
that Southern agents found no difficulty in making purchases of
military supplies from Northern manufacturers. Except for the
purchases made by Raphael Semmes in New England, the Confederacy would
have begun the war without percussion caps, which were not
manufactured at the South. With every advantage thrown at the outset
in favor of the South and against the North, the struggle began.
[Illustration: CHARLESTON HARBOR.]
[Illustration: THE PALMETTO FLAG.]
[Illustration: THE CONFEDERATE FLAG.]
The Southern leaders had been secretly preparing for a long time.
During the summer and fall of 1860, John B. Floyd, the Secretary of
War, had been sending war material South, and he continued his
pernicious activity until, in December, complicity in the theft of
some bonds rendered his resignation necessary. About the same time the
Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, the Secretary of the Interior,
Jacob Thompson, and the Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, withdrew from
the cabinet. On the election of Lincoln, treasonable preparations
became more open and more general. These were aided by President
Buchanan's message to Congress expressing doubt of the constitutional
power of the Government to take offensive action against a State. On
December 20, an ordinance of secession was passed by the South
Carolina Legislature; and following this example, Mississippi,
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Virginia seceded in
the order named. Virginia held on till the last; and while a popular
vote was pending, to accept or reject the action of the Legislature,
the seat of government of the Confederate States, established in
February at Montgomery, Ala., was removed to Richmond, the capital of
Virginia. Governor Letcher turned over to the Confederates the entire
military force and equipment of the State, which passed out of the
Union without waiting for the verdict of the people. This State was
well punished by becoming the centre of the conflict for four years,
and by political dismemberment, loyal West Virginia being separated
from the original commonwealth and admitted to the Union during the
war.
During the fall and winter of 1860-61, the Southern leaders committed
many acts of treasonable aggression. They seized United States
property, acting under the authority of their States, until the
formation of the Confederacy, when the central government became their
authority. In some of these cases the Federal custodians of the
property yielded it in recognition of the right of the State to take
it. In some cases they abandoned it, hopeless of being able to hold it
against the armed forces that threatened it, and doubtful of support
from the Buchanan Administration at Washington. But there were noble
exceptions, and brave officers held to their trusts, and either
preserved them to the United States Government or released them only
when overpowered.
In December, 1860, the rebels seized Castle Pinckney and {10} Fort
Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, the arsenal at Charleston, and the
revenue cutter _William Aiken_; in January, the arsenals at Mount
Vernon, Ala., Apalachicola, Fla., Baton Rouge, La., Augusta, Ga., and
many forts, hospitals, etc., in Southern ports. By February they had
gained such assurance of not being molested in their seizures of
Government property, that everything within their reach was taken with
impunity. So many of the officers in active service were in sympathy
with the South, that it frequently required only a demand for the
surrender of a vessel or a fort--sometimes not even that--to secure
it. One of these attempted seizures gave rise to an official utterance
that did much to cheer the Northern heart. John A. Dix, who in
January, 1861, succeeded Cobb as Secretary of the Treasury, sent W. H.
Jones, a Treasury clerk, to New Orleans, to save to the Government
certain revenue cutters in Southern ports. Jones telegraphed the
secretary that the captain of the cutter _McClelland_ refused to give
her up, and Dix thereupon sent the following memorable despatch:
"Tell Lieutenant Caldwell to arrest Captain Breshwood, assume command
of the cutter, and obey the order I gave through you. If Captain
Breshwood, after arrest, undertakes to interfere with the command of
the cutter, tell Lieutenant Caldwell to consider him as a mutineer and
treat him accordingly. If any one attempts to haul down the American
flag, shoot him on the spot."
These determined words were among the few that were uttered by
Northern officials that gave the friends of the Union any hope of
leadership against the aggression of the seceding States; and they
passed among the proverbial expressions of the war, to live as long as
American history.
[Illustration: A SUMTER CASEMATE DURING THE BOMBARDMENT.]
The firmness of Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer had prevented the surrender
of Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico,
when it was demanded with some show of force, in January, 1861.
Meanwhile, an event was preparing, in which the loyalty, courage, and
promptness of a United States officer was to bring to an issue the
question of "bloodless secession" or war. The seizures of Government
property here and there had excited indignation in the loyal North,
but no general, effective sentiment of opposition. But at the shot
that was fired at Sumter, the North burst into a flame of patriotic,
quenchless fury, which did not subside until it had been atoned for on
many a battlefield, and the Confederate "stars and bars" fell, never
to rise again.
Lieutenant-Colonel Gardner had been in command at Charleston Harbor,
S. C., and when he saw the secessionists preparing to seize the forts
there, so early as November, 1860, he applied to Washington for
reinforcements. Upon this, at the request of Southern members of
Congress, Secretary of War Floyd removed him, and sent in his place
Major Robert Anderson, evidently supposing that that officer's
Kentucky origin would render him faithful to the Southern cause. But
his fidelity to the old flag resulted in one of the most dramatic
episodes of the war.
On reaching his headquarters at Fort Moultrie, Major Anderson at once
applied for improvements, which the Secretary of War was now willing
and even eager to make, and he appropriated large sums for the
improvement of both Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter, but would not
increase the garrison or the ammunition. It soon became apparent that
against a hostile attack Fort {11} Moultrie could not be held, as it
was commanded from the house-tops on Sullivan's Island, near by, and
Major Anderson decided to move his garrison across the harbor to Fort
Sumter, which, unlike Moultrie, was unapproachable by land. The
secessionists in Charleston were active and watched suspiciously every
movement made by the military, and the latter were constantly on guard
to prevent surprise and capture of the fort. The preparations for
removal to Sumter were made with the greatest caution. So well had
Major Anderson kept his purpose secret, that his second in command,
Captain Abner Doubleday, was informed of it only when ordered to have
his company ready to go to Fort Sumter in twenty minutes. The families
of the officers were sent to Fort Johnson, opposite Charleston, whence
they were afterward taken North.
For the ostensible purpose of removing these non-combatants to a place
of safety--a step to which the now well-organized South Carolina
militia could make no objection--Anderson's quartermaster, Lieutenant
Hall, had chartered three schooners and some barges, which were
ultimately used to transport supplies from Moultrie to Sumter. Laden
with these supplies, the transports started for Fort Johnson, and
there awaited the signal gun which was to direct them to land at
Sumter. The guns of Moultrie were trained to bear on the route across
the harbor, to be used defensively in case the movement was detected
and interfered with.
The preparations completed, at sunset on December 26, the troops, who
had equipped themselves in the twenty minutes allowed them, were
silently marched out of Fort Moultrie and passed through the little
village of Moultrieville, which lay between the fort and the point of
embarkation. The march was fortunately made without observation, and
the men took their places in rowboats which promptly started on their
momentous voyage. After several narrow escapes from being stopped by
the omnipresent guard boats, which were deceived into supposing the
troop boats to contain only laborers in charge of officers, the party
reached Fort Sumter. Here they found crowds of laborers, who were at
work, at the Government's expense, preparing Sumter to be handed over
to the Southern league. These men, most of them from Baltimore, were
nearly all secessionists, and had already refused to man the fort as
soldiers for its defence. They showed some opposition to the landing
of the troops, but were promptly driven inside the fort at the point
of the bayonet, and were presently shipped on board the supply
schooners and sent ashore, where they communicated to the secession
authorities the news of Major Anderson's clever ruse. The signal gun
was fired from Sumter, the supplies were landed, and Fort Sumter was
in the hands of the loyal men who were to immortalize their names by
their heroic defence of it.
[Illustration: MAJOR ANDERSON AND OFFICERS DEFENDING FORT SUMTER.
Capt. T. Seymour. 1st Lieut. G. W. Snyder. 1st Lieut. J. C. Davis. 2d
Lieut. R. K. Meade. 1st Lieut. T. Talbot. Capt. A. Doubleday. Major R.
Anderson. Surg. S. W. Crawford. Capt. J. G. Foster.]
[Illustration: GUSTAVUS V. FOX, Commanding the Relief Expedition to
Fort Sumter; afterward Assistant Secretary of the Navy.]
Sixty-one artillerymen and thirteen musicians, under command of seven
or eight officers, constituted the slender garrison. Many of these
officers subsequently rose to distinction in the service of their
country, in which some of them died. Major Anderson became a
major-general and served for a while in his native Kentucky, but was
soon compelled by failing health to retire. Captains Abner Doubleday,
John G. Foster and Truman Seymour, Lieut. Jefferson C. Davis and Dr.
S. Wiley Crawford, the surgeon, became major-generals, and were in
service throughout the war; Lieut. Norman J. Hall became colonel of
the Seventh Michigan Volunteers, and was thrice brevetted in the
regular army for gallantry, especially at Gettysburg; Lieuts. George
W. Snyder and Theodore Talbot received promotion, but died early in
the war; and Edward Moale, a civilian clerk who rendered great
assistance, afterward received a commission in the regular army. One
only of the defenders of Sumter afterward joined the Confederacy; this
was Lieut. Richard K. Meade, who yielded to the tremendous social and
family {12} pressure that carried so many reluctant men to the wrong
side when the war began. Commissioned in the rebel army, he died in
1862.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT, Commanding U. S.
Army, 1861.]
At noon on December 27, Major Anderson solemnized his occupancy of
Sumter by formally raising the flag of his country, with prayer by the
chaplain, Rev. Matthias Harris, and military ceremonies.
The sight of the national ensign on Sumter was quickly observed from a
troop ship in the harbor, which hastened to the city with the news,
not only that Anderson had moved from Moultrie to Sumter, but also
that he was heavily reinforced, the sixty soldiers thronging the
parapet making so good a show as to give the impression of a much
larger number. At this news Charleston was thrown into a ferment of
rage and excitement. South Carolina troops were at once sent, on
December 27, to take possession of Castle Pinckney, the seizure of
which was perhaps the first overt act of war on the part of the
secessionists. This was followed by the rebel occupation of Forts
Moultrie and Johnson, which were gotten into readiness for action, and
shore batteries, some of them iron clad, were planted near Moultrie
and on Cummings Point, an extremity of Morris Island near to Sumter;
so that by the time the preparations were completed, Anderson's
gallant little band was effectively covered on four different sides.
But the rebels were not relying wholly on measures for reducing Sumter
in order to secure it. It was diplomacy rather than war which they
expected would place in their hands all the government property in
Charleston Harbor. On the very day of Anderson's strategic move across
the harbor, three commissioners arrived in Washington for the purpose
of negotiating for the peaceable surrender to South Carolina of all
the forts and establishments. But the telegraphic news, which reached
Washington with the commissioners, that the loyal Anderson was doing
his part, met with such patriotic response in the North as effectively
to interfere with the commissioners' plans. What Buchanan might have
released to them under other circumstances, he could not give them
after Major Anderson had taken steps to protect his trust.
Once within the fort, the Sumter garrison set vigorously to work to
put it in a defensive condition. The Government work on the fort was
not completed, and had the Southerners attacked it at once, as they
would have done but for the expectation that the President would order
Anderson to return to Moultrie, they could easily have captured it by
assault. But they still hoped for "bloodless secession," and deferred
offensive action. There were no flanking defences for the fort, and no
fire-proof quarters for the officers. There was a great quantity of
combustible material in the wooden quarters, which ultimately
terminated the defence; for the garrison was rather smoked out by
fire, than either starved out or reduced by shot and shell. The
engineer officers were driven to all sorts of expedients to make the
fort tenable, because there was very little material there out of
which to make proper military defences. The workmen had left in the
interior of the unfinished fort a confused mass of building material,
unmounted guns, gun-carriages, derricks, blocks and tackle. Only two
tiers of the fort were in condition for the mounting of heavy
artillery--the upper and lower tiers. Although the garrison was
severely taxed in performing the excessive guard duty required by
their perilous situation, they yet accomplished an enormous amount of
work--mounting guns with improvised tackle; carrying by hand to the
upper tier shot weighing nearly one hundred and thirty pounds each;
protecting the casemates with flag-stones; rigging ten-inch columbiads
as mortars in the parade grounds within the fort, to fire on Morris
Island; and making their quarters as comfortable as the circumstances
admitted. The guns of the fort were carefully aimed at the various
objects to be fired at, and the proper elevation marked on each, to
avoid errors in aiming when the smoke of action should refract the
light.
To guard against a simultaneous attack from many sides, against which
sixty men could make only a feeble defence, mines were planted under
the wharf where a landing was most feasible, to blow it up at the
proper time. Piles of paving stones with charges of powder under them,
to scatter them as deadly missiles among an attacking party, were
placed on the esplanade. Metal-lined boxes were placed on the parapet
on all sides of the fort, from which musketry-fire and hand-grenades
could be thrown down on the invaders directly beneath. Barrels filled
{13} with broken stone, with charges of powder at the centre, were
prepared to roll down to the water's edge and there burst. A trial of
this device was observed by the rebels, who inferred from it that
Sumter was bristling with "infernal machines" and had better be dealt
with at long range.
[Illustration: HARPER'S FERRY.]
The discomforts and sufferings of the garrison were very great.
Quarters were lacking in accommodations; rations were short, and fuel
was scanty in midwinter. The transition from the position of friends
to that of foes was not immediate, but gradual. After the move to
Sumter, the men were still permitted to do their marketing in
Charleston; for all that Anderson had then done was to make a
displeasing change of base in a harbor where he commanded, and could
go where he pleased. Presently market privileges were restricted, and
then prohibited altogether; and even when, under the expectation of
action at Washington satisfactory to the South, the authorities
relaxed their prohibition, the secessionist marketmen would sell
nothing to go to the fort. Constant work on salt pork, with limited
necessaries and an entire absence of luxuries, made the condition of
the garrison very hard, and their conduct worthy of the highest
praise.
Anderson has been criticised for permitting the secessionists to build
and arm batteries all around him, and coolly take possession of
Government property, without his firing a shot to prevent it, as he
could easily have done, since the guns of Sumter commanded the
waterways all over the harbor. But it is easier now to see what should
have been done than it was then to see what should be done. Anderson
did not even know that he would be supported by his own Government, in
case he took the offensive; and the reluctance to begin hostilities
was something he shared with the leaders on both sides, even
down to the time of Lincoln's inaugural, in which the President
said to the people of the South: "In your hands, my dissatisfied
fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil
war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict
without being yourselves the aggressors." The fact of Anderson's
Southern birth, while it did not interfere with his loyalty, did make
him reluctant to precipitate a struggle which he prayed and hoped
might be averted. Had the issue of war been declared at the time,
freeing him to do what he could, he could have saved Sumter. As it
was, the preparations for reducing Sumter went on unmolested.
Instead of yielding to the demand of the South Carolina {14}
commissioners for Anderson's return to Moultrie, President Buchanan
permitted the organization of an expedition for the relief of Sumter.
But instead of sending down a war vessel, a merchant steamer was sent
with recruits from Governor's Island, New York. The _Star of the West_
arrived off Charleston January 9, and as soon as she attempted to
enter the harbor, she was fired on from batteries on Morris Island.
Approaching nearer, and coming within gun-shot of Moultrie, she was
again fired on. At Sumter, the long roll was beaten and the guns
manned, but Anderson would not permit the rebel fire to be returned.
The _Star of the West_ withdrew and returned to New York. Explanations
were demanded by Anderson, with the result of sending Lieutenant
Talbot to Washington with a full statement of the affair, there to
await instructions. The tacit truce thus established enabled the
preparation of Sumter to be completed, but the rebel batteries also
were advanced.
Then began a series of demands from Charleston for the surrender of
the fort. The secessionists argued with Anderson as to the
hopelessness of his case, with the Washington Government going to
pieces, and the South determined to have the fort and exterminate the
garrison; and still another commission was sent to Washington, to
secure there a settlement of the question, which was invariably
referred back to Anderson's judgment.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. DIX.]
[Illustration: GENERAL DIX'S FAMOUS DESPATCH.]
The winter was passed in this sort of diplomacy and in intense
activity, within the fort and around it. The garrison shared the
general encouragement drawn from the accessions to the cabinet of
strong and loyal men, such as John A. Dix and Joseph Holt, to replace
the secessionists who had resigned. The Charleston people continued
their loud demands for an attack on Sumter. The affair of the _Star of
the West_, and the organization of the Confederate Government in
February, had greatly stimulated the war spirit of the North, and it
was felt that the crisis was approaching. Charleston people began to
feel the effects of blockading their own channel with sunken ships,
for their commerce all went to other ports.
With the inauguration of Lincoln on March 4, the South learned that
they had to deal with an Administration which, however forbearing, was
firm as a rock. Indications of a vigorous policy were slow in reaching
the anxious garrison of Sumter, for the new President was surrounded
with spies, and every order or private despatch was quickly repeated
throughout the South, which made him cautious. But the fact that he
had determined to reinforce Sumter, and to insist on its defence, did
soon become known, both at the fort and in Charleston; and on April 6,
Lieutenant Talbot was sent on from Washington to notify Governor
Pickens to that effect. This information, received at Charleston April
8, was telegraphed to the Confederate Government at Montgomery, and on
the 10th General Beauregard received orders from the rebel Secretary
of War to open fire at once on Sumter.
Instantly there was renewed activity everywhere. The garrison,
inspired by the prospect of an end to their long and wearisome
waiting, were in high spirits. The Confederates suddenly removed a
house near Moultrie, disclosing behind it a formidable masked battery
which effectually enfiladed the barbette guns at Sumter, which,
although the heaviest there were, had to be abandoned. On the
afternoon of the 11th, officers came from Beauregard to demand the
surrender of the fort, which they learned would have to yield soon for
lack of provisions. At {15} three A.M. of the 12th, General Beauregard
sent word that he would open fire in one hour.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL P. G. T. BEAUREGARD, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN.]
He kept his word. At four o'clock the first gun of the war was fired
from the Cummings Point battery on Morris Island, aimed by the
venerable Edmund Ruffin, of Virginia, one of the fathers of secession.
It was a good shot, the shell penetrating the masonry of the fort and
bursting inside. At this signal, instantly the batteries opened on all
sides, and the firing became an almost continuous roar.
But, as yet, Sumter made no reply. The artillery duel was not to be a
matter of hours, and there was no hurry. Breakfast was served to
officers and men, and was eaten amid a continual peppering of the fort
with balls and shells from columbiads and mortars. After this
refreshment the men were told off into firing parties, and the first
detachment was marched to the casemates, where Capt. Abner Doubleday
aimed the first gun fired on the Union side against the Southern
Confederacy. It was fired appropriately against the Cummings Point
battery which had begun the hostilities; and it struck its mark, but
did no damage. The heaviest guns in Sumter being useless, the fort was
at a disadvantage throughout the fight, from the lightness of its
metal. Notwithstanding Major Anderson's orders that the barbette guns
should be abandoned, Sergeant John Carmody, disappointed at the
effects produced by the fire of the fort, stole out and fired, one
after another, the heavy barbette battery guns. Roughly aimed, they
did little mischief; but they scared the enemy, who brought all their
weight to bear now on this battery. Captains Doubleday and Seymour
directed the firing from Sumter, and were assisted by Lieut. J. C.
Davis and Surgeon Crawford, who, having no sick in hospital,
volunteered his active services, and hammered away on Fort Moultrie.
By the middle of the morning the vessels of the relieving fleet, sent
in pursuance of Lincoln's promise, were sighted outside the bar.
Salutes were exchanged, but it was impossible for the vessels to enter
the unknown, unmarked channel. This expedition was commanded by Capt.
Gustavus V. Fox, afterward Assistant Secretary of the Navy, who had
fitted it out with the coöperation of patriotic civilians--G. W.
Blunt, William H. Aspinwall, Russell Sturgis, and others. The vessels
arriving on the morning of April 12th were the war ship _Pawnee_,
under Commodore Rowan, and the transports _Baltic_ and _Harriet Lane_.
The _Pocahontas_, Captain Gillis, arrived on the 13th. Knowing in
advance the impossibility of entering the harbor with these vessels, a
number of launches had been brought, with the intention of running in
the reinforcements in these, under cover of night and protected by the
guns of Sumter. Except for the delay of the _Pocahontas_, which
carried the launches, this would have been attempted on the night of
the 12th, when the garrison anxiously expected the new arrivals.
Postponed until the 13th, it was then too late, as by that time Sumter
had been surrendered.
The expectation of these reinforcements, the fear of a night {16}
assault by the enemy, and the difficulty of deciding whether any boats
that might approach would contain friends to be welcomed or enemies to
be repulsed, made the night of the 12th a most anxious one for the
garrison. But neither friends nor enemies appeared, and after a
breakfast of pork and water, on the morning of the 13th, a momentous
day's fighting began.
[Illustration: AN ALEXANDRIA ANTE-BELLUM RELIC.]
By nine o'clock in the morning fire broke out in the officers'
quarters, and it was learned that the hostile batteries were firing
red-hot shot. Discovering the flames, the enemy redoubled their
firing. It was impossible, even were it desirable, to save the wooden
quarters, and, after one or two attempts to quench the flames, they
were allowed to burn. Precautions were taken to secure the powder
magazines from danger by cutting away the woodwork and spreading wet
blankets. Many barrels of powder were rolled out for use. But finally
a shot struck the door of the magazine and locked it fast, cutting off
further supplies of ammunition. Powder that could not be protected was
thrown overboard, but some of it lodging at the base of the fort was
ignited by the enemy's shot, and exploded, blowing a heavy gun at the
nearest embrasure out of battery. A trench was dug in front of the
magazine, and filled with water.
So many of the men were required to attend to these precautions, that
the firing from Sumter slackened up almost to cessation, leading the
enemy to think they had given up. The fire became intense, driving
some of the men outside the fort for air, until the thick-falling
missiles drove them in again; and, combined with the bursting shells,
all this produced a scene that was terrific. As the fire subsided for
want of fuel to burn, the {17} damage was disclosed. A tower at an
angle of the fort, in which shells had been stored, had been entirely
shattered by the bursting of the shells. The wooden gates at the
entrance to the fort were burned through, leaving the way open for
assault, and other entrances were now opened in the same way.
Shortly after noon the flag was shot away from its staff. A tremendous
amount of ammunition had been wasted by the rebels in the ambitious
effort to lower the flag, and at last it was successful. But the
exultation of the enemy was cut short by the plucky action of Peter
Hart, a servant, who had been allowed to join Major Anderson at the
fort on condition that he should remain a non-combatant. Making a
temporary flagstaff of a spar, he nailed the flag to it and tied it
firmly to the gun-carriages on the parapet, accomplishing his feat
under the concentrated fire with which the enemy sought to prevent it.
Supposing the fall of the flag to have been a token of surrender,
ex-Senator Wigfall, of Texas, made his appearance at the fort about
two P.M., announced himself as an aid to General Beauregard, and
requested an interview with Major Anderson. He begged that the
bloodshed might cease, and was told that there had been none at
Sumter. He offered Anderson honorable terms of evacuation, and then
withdrew.
At Wigfall's request, a white flag had been displayed during his
presence at the fort, and the firing ceased. Observing this, General
Beauregard sent a boat containing Colonels Chestnut, Lee, and Pryor,
and Captain Miles, to inquire whether he surrendered. A long parley
ensued, during which these officers said that Wigfall had not been in
communication with Beauregard; upon which Major Anderson said, "Very
well, gentlemen, you can return to your batteries," and announced that
he would run up his flag and renew his fire. But at their request he
agreed to delay this until they could see General Beauregard, and they
withdrew.
That evening, another boat-load of officers came, bringing
Beauregard's confirmation of the terms of evacuation that had been
discussed with Wigfall, although permission to salute the United
States flag was granted with much hesitation. It was then arranged
that Anderson should leave Fort Sumter on the following day, taking
all his men and arms and personal baggage, and saluting the flag.
Early on the morning of Sunday, April 14, all was made ready for the
departure. The firing of the salute was a matter of some danger, as
there was so much fire still about the fort that it was risky to lay
ammunition down, and sparks of fire floated in the air. Fifty guns
were fired before the flag was lowered. In reloading one of them, some
spark that had lodged in the piece prematurely discharged it,
instantly killing the gunner, Daniel Hough. The fire from the muzzle
dropping on the cartridges piled below exploded those also, seriously
injuring five other men. This was the only life lost at Sumter, and
the first life lost in the war; and, with the exception of one man
wounded by a bursting shell, these wounded men received the only
casualties of the brave little garrison that defended Fort Sumter.
The men were formed in company, banners were flung to the breeze, the
drums beat "Yankee Doodle," and the order was given to march through
the charred gateway to the transport that lay at the dock in readiness
to carry them to the _Baltic_, on which they sailed to New York.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, C. S. A.]
When they reached their destination, they were lionized by their
enthusiastic countrymen. Steam whistles and cheers greeted their
passage through the harbor; comforts, long a stranger to them, awaited
them at Fort Hamilton, where they were greeted in the name of a
grateful people by the people's spokesman, Henry Ward Beecher; and the
newspapers sang their praises in one harmonious chorus.
When Fort Sumter was evacuated, it presented very much the exterior
appearance that it did before the bombardment--a few {18} holes
knocked in the masonry were all that the comparatively light artillery
then brought to bear on it could accomplish. Occupied by the
Confederates after the evacuation, it remained in their hands until
the end of the war. When, in 1863, General Q. A. Gillmore bombarded
Charleston, Fort Sumter was reduced to a pile of bricks and mortar;
but such a quantity of cannonballs and shells were poured into its
débris as to form an almost solid mass of iron, practically
impregnable. Sumter never was reduced by artillery fire, and fell into
Federal hands again only when Charleston fell before Sherman's march
to the sea.
On the conglomerate pile which constituted the ruins of the fort, a
dramatic scene of poetic justice occurred on April 14, 1865, the
fourth anniversary of the evacuation of Sumter. An expedition was sent
by the Government to Charleston Harbor to celebrate the recapture by
replacing the national flag on Fort Sumter. The ship _Arago_ bore the
officials in charge of the ceremony, and many invited guests, among
whom were William Lloyd Garrison and the English George Thompson,
leading abolitionists. A patriotic oration was pronounced by Henry
Ward Beecher; and by the hand of Anderson, now major-general, the same
flag which he had lowered in 1861 was drawn to the peak of the
flagstaff, while Sumter's guns and those of every battery in the
harbor that had fired on that flag fired a national salute of one
hundred guns. The flag was riddled with holes, but, as the orator of
the day pointed out, as symbolic of the preserved Union, not a single
star had been shot away. Peter Hart, the brave man who had reset the
flag during the bombardment, was present; and the Rev. Mr. Harris, who
read prayers at the first raising, pronounced the benediction on the
resurrection of the ensign of the nation.
The shot that was fired on Sumter was the signal for a nation to rise
in arms. That Sunday on which Sumter was evacuated was a memorable day
to all who witnessed the intense excitement, the patriotic fury of a
patient people roused to white-hot indignation. As on a gala day, the
American flag suddenly appeared on every public building and from
innumerable private residences. Crowds surged through the streets,
seeking news and conference. The national flag was thrown to the
breeze from nearly every court-house, school-house, college, hotel,
engine-house, railway station and public building, from the spires of
many churches, and from the windows of innumerable private residences.
The fife and drum were heard in the streets, and recruiting offices
were opened in vacant stores or in tents hastily pitched in the public
squares. All sorts and conditions of men left their business and
stepped into the ranks, and in a few days the Government was offered
several times as many troops as had been called for. Boys of fifteen
sat down and wept because they were not permitted to go, but here and
there one dried his tears when he was told that he might be a drummer
or an officer's servant. Attentions between young people were suddenly
ripened into engagements, and engagements of long date were hastily
finished in marriages; for the boys were going, and the girls were
proud to have them go, and wanted to send them off in good spirits.
Everybody seemed anxious to put forth some expression of loyalty to
the national government and the starry flag. In the Ohio senate, on
Friday, the 12th, a senator announced that "the secessionists are
bombarding Fort Sumter." "Glory to God!" exclaimed a woman in the
gallery, breaking the solemn silence which briefly followed the
announcement. This was Abby Kelly Foster, an active abolitionist, who
discerned that at last the final appeal had been taken on the slavery
question--the appeal to the sword--from the triumphant issue of which
would come the freedom for which she and her associates had contended,
and which they believed could come in no other way.
[Illustration: "WAR GOVERNORS" OF THE NORTHERN STATES.]
On Monday, April 15, President Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five
thousand militia from the several States "to suppress this combination
against the laws, and to cause the laws to be duly executed."
The response to this call was immediate, and within the week some of
the troops thus summoned were in Washington.
While forts and arsenals were being seized by the Confederates all
over the South, while batteries to reduce Fort Sumter were being
constructed and armed, what had been doing at Washington city, the
capital of the nation?
{19}
CHAPTER II.
PREPARATION FOR CONFLICT.
DEFENCELESS CONDITION OF WASHINGTON--SECESSION SYMPATHIZERS IN
OFFICE--VOLUNTEERS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA--COL. CHARLES P.
STONE--PROTECTION OF PUBLIC OFFICES AND GUARDING OF
COMMUNICATIONS--UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE--RESPONSE OF THE MILITIA--THE
SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS IN BALTIMORE--THE NEW YORK SEVENTH REACHES
WASHINGTON--DEATH OF COLONEL ELLSWORTH--SOUTHERN MILITARY
AGGRESSION--HARPER'S FERRY CAPTURED--GOSPORT NAVY YARD BURNED AND
EVACUATED.
During the interval between the election and the inauguration of
President Lincoln, a very alarming condition of affairs existed at the
national capital. The administration was in the hands of men who, even
those who were not actively disloyal, were not Republicans, and did
not desire to assume responsibility for the crisis which the
Republican success at the polls had precipitated.
[Illustration: ON THE MARCH.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: RETURN FROM SKIRMISHING.]
The Government service was honeycombed with secession sentiment, which
extended from cabinet officers down to department clerks. Always
essentially a city of Southern sympathies, Washington was filled with
the advocates of State Rights. The retiring Democratic President,
James Buchanan, in addition to a perhaps not unnatural timidity in the
face of impending war and a reluctance to embroil his administration
in affairs which it properly belonged to the incoming administration
to settle, was also torn with conflicting opinions as to the
constitutional questions involved, especially as to his power to
coerce a sovereign State. Turning to his cabinet for advice, he was
easily led to do the things that simplified the Southern preparations
to leave the Union.
{20} It has been told that the regular army troops had been sent away
from Washington, leaving a mere handful of marines on duty there. It
became a problem for loyal men to devise means for the maintenance of
order at the seat of Government. It being the policy of the Government
at that time to do nothing to provoke hostilities, it was deemed
unwise to bring regular troops openly into Washington. There was no
regularly organized militia there; only a few independent companies of
doubtful, or unascertained, loyalty.
The aged Gen. Winfield Scott was in command of the army in 1860, and
appreciating that trouble would come either from continued
acquiescence in the aggressions of the South or from a show of force,
he advised the President to quietly enroll the loyal people of the
District of Columbia for the guardianship of the capital. For this
duty he called in Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point and a
veteran of the Mexican war, who was made Inspector-General of the
District of Columbia, with the rank of colonel.
Colonel Stone took measures to ascertain the sentiments of the
existing independent military companies. With admirable diplomacy he
disarmed such of them as were found to be disloyal. Some of them he
found to be in excellent condition of drill and equipment, by
connivance of the Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, and they were well
aware that it was their destiny to help defend the South against the
"coercion" of the Yankees. Opposition from the War Department to
Colonel Stone's measures ceased with Floyd's resignation, and under
the new Secretary of War, Joseph Holt (afterward Lincoln's
Attorney-General), he was able to enroll in a few weeks thirty-three
companies of infantry volunteers and two troops of cavalry, under
trustworthy leaders. These were recruited from neighborhoods, from
among artisans, and from fire companies. All this was done with the
discretion required by the strained condition of public feeling, which
was such that, as General Scott said to Colonel Stone, "a dog-fight
might cause the gutters of the capital to run with blood." As the time
for Lincoln's inauguration approached, it became safe to move more
openly; and by the 4th of March a company of sappers and miners and a
battery had been brought down from West Point, while thirty new
companies had been added to the volunteer force of the District.
[Illustration: WASH-DAY IN CAMP--GUARDING THE SUPPLY TRAIN.]
{21} [Illustration: LAST MOMENTS OF JOHN BROWN.
John Brown of Ossawatomie, spake on his dying day:
"I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in slavery's pay,
But let some poor slave-mother, whom I have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows stair, put up a prayer for me!"
John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die:
And lo! a poor slave-mother, with her little child, pressed nigh;
Then the bold blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew
mild,
As he stooped between the crowding ranks, and kissed the negro's
child!
J. G. Whittier.]
In the first enthusiasm over the dramatic incidents attending the
beginning of hostilities, the great services rendered by these troops
were overlooked by the public. Abraham Lincoln's journey to Washington
was beset with such danger that the last stage of it was made
secretly, in advance of the published programme, and there was great
rejoicing when it was announced that the President was "safe in
Washington." He could not have been safe there except for the {22}
presence of Colonel Stone's volunteers. Trouble was apprehended at his
inauguration. But the dispositions made by Colonel Stone secured peace
and quiet for that ceremonial in a city teeming with traitors and
would-be assassins. The advance to Washington of the troops called out
by Lincoln's proclamation of April 15 was opposed in Maryland,
regiments were attacked in the streets of Baltimore, and communicating
railroad bridges were burned in order that no more troops for the
subjugation of the South might pass through that border city. The
South was flocking to arms, stimulated by the desire of seizing
Washington. To a delegation that called on the President to protest
against the passage of troops through Baltimore, Mr. Lincoln summed up
the situation by saying: "I _must_ have troops for the defence of the
capital. The Carolinians are marching across Virginia to seize the
capital and hang me. What am I to do? I _must_ have troops, I say; and
as they can neither crawl under Maryland nor fly over it, they must
come across it."
During all this troubled time the District volunteers were the only
reliance for the security of the public property, for guarding the
approaches to the city, and for keeping open the communications for
the entrance of the coming troops. They were among the first to be
mustered into the United States service, and among the first to
advance into Virginia.
[Illustration: LONG BRIDGE--OVER THE POTOMAC, AT WASHINGTON. The
planks were laid loose on the beams, and at night they were taken up,
so that the bridge could not be crossed by the Confederate cavalry
that hovered about the capital.]
To secure the public buildings against a rising among the
secessionists living in Washington, the volunteer companies and the
regular army batteries were conveniently posted, the bridges and
highways leading to the city were guarded, and signals were arranged
for the concentration at any given point of the eight thousand men who
now constituted the garrison of the capital. Provisions were collected
and stored, many of them in the Capitol building, and, to such extent
as the force warranted, Washington was considered secure unless a
Southern army was marched against it. And this impending danger was
daily increasing. On April 17, Jefferson Davis, the President of the
Confederacy, had called for thirty-two thousand troops, and had
offered letters of marque to vessels to attack American commerce. The
arrival of the militia called out by President Lincoln's proclamation
was anxiously awaited.
* * * * *
Almost before the boom of the guns that were fired on Sumter had
ceased, military preparations were actively under way in nearly every
city and village in the North. The uniformed {23} militia regiments
were promptly filled up to their full numbers by new enlistments. Home
Guards were organized in country towns, to defend their homes should
the war be waged in the North, and to man afresh, when necessary, the
companies already sent out. To fife and drum, the ununiformed farmers
marched up and down the village green, temporarily armed with
shot-guns and smooth-bore rifles, acquiring proficiency in "Hardee's
Tactics" under the direction of old militia officers who had shone
resplendent on former "training days." Neither custom nor regulations
prescribing any particular uniforms, the greatest variety of fancy was
shown in the equipment of the volunteers. Some adopted the zouave
uniform, which had become popular through the then recent war between
France and Austria and the memories of Magenta and Solferino.
Garibaldi was a popular hero of the day, and the red shirts of his
trusty men were another of the uniforms particularly favored. The war
enthusiasm extended to the women and children, and sewing circles were
organized for the making of many useful, and also many useless,
articles for camp and hospital. The "havelocks"--a cap-cover and cape
combined--however useful in India, were not wanted in America. Later,
when there were sick and wounded to be cared for, these organizations
of women were of inestimable service in preparing lint, bandages, and
delicacies for the hospitals.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL MONTGOMERY C. MEIGS.]
[Illustration: MAJ.-GEN. JOHN E. WOOL.]
[Illustration: OLD CAPITOL PRISON, WASHINGTON, D. C.]
Prompt to discern the coming appeal to arms, John A. Andrew, the
famous "war governor" of Massachusetts, had begun to recruit, arm, and
equip his State militia as early as February, 1860, and by the time
the call for troops came he had thirteen thousand men ready, not only
to go to the front, but to furnish their own camp equipage and
rations. Of these, nearly four thousand responded to the first call
for three-months' volunteers. The first regiment to start for
Washington was the Sixth Militia, Col. Edward F. Jones, which left
Boston on April 17, only three days after the fall of Sumter. The
passage of the train bearing this regiment was one long ovation from
Boston to Philadelphia. At the latter city, as at New York, the men
were received with enthusiastic hospitality, welcomed, fed, and plied
with good things for their already overstocked haversacks; and it
began to seem as though war were one continuous picnic. At least until
the defence of Washington should begin, they were under no
apprehension of trouble, until, on approaching Baltimore, on April 19,
the anniversary of the Revolutionary battle of Lexington, the officers
were warned that the passage of the regiment through that city would
be forcibly opposed by a mob, which was already collected and marching
about the city, following a secession flag. Colonel Jones ordered
ammunition to be distributed, and, passing through the cars in person,
he warned the men that they were to pay no attention to abuse or even
missiles, and that, if it became necessary for them to fire on the
mob, they would receive orders to that effect from their commandants.
The passage of trains through Baltimore at that period was by horse
power across the city, from one depot to another. The horses being
quickly attached as soon as the locomotive was taken off, cars
carrying about two-thirds of the regiment were driven rapidly over the
route; but to intercept the remaining four companies the mob
barricaded the tracks, and it became necessary for these to abandon
the cars and cover the remaining distance on foot. At once they became
the target for showers of stones thrown by the mob, and in order to
lessen the need of armed resistance, the officers gave the order to
proceed at the double-quick. It was a mistake, but a common one when
citizen soldiers are dealing with a mob; the most merciful as well as
the wisest course being to scatter the mob promptly by a warning,
followed by the promised volley. The mob thought they had the troops
on the run, and were encouraged to believe that they either dared not
shoot or that they were without ammunition. The missiles were followed
with pistol shots, at which one soldier fell dead. Then the order to
fire was given to the troops, and several of the crowd, rioters and
spectators, fell. The mayor of Baltimore joined the officers at the
head of the column, to give his authority to its progress, and also to
tell the officers to {24} defend themselves. Instead of being faced
about to confront the mob, the troops were marched steadily forward,
turning about as they advanced and delivering a desultory fire, which,
however, did not deter the mob from continuing its attack. At last,
Marshal Kane, of the Baltimore police, interposed with a company of
policemen between the rear of troops and the rioters, formed a line,
and ordered the mob back on penalty of a pistol volley. This was so
effective as to practically end the affair, and without further
serious disturbance the detachment joined their comrades at the Camden
station, and boarded the train that took them to Washington. The
regiment's loss was four killed and thirty-six wounded. The men were
furious over the affair, and it required all the authority of the
colonel to keep them from leaving the cars and taking vengeance on
Baltimore for the death of their comrades. Arrived at Washington, the
first regiment to come in response to the call of the President, they
were quartered in the Senate Chamber.
[Illustration: EPISCOPAL CHURCH, ALEXANDRIA, VA. General George
Washington and General Robert Lee attended this church.]
[Illustration: PROVOST-MARSHAL'S OFFICE, ALEXANDRIA, VA.]
After this incident, the mayor and police of Baltimore, who had done
their duty handsomely, with the approval of the governor destroyed the
tracks and railway bridges leading into the city, that there might be
no repetition of such scenes; and the troops that followed--the
Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania (which, unarmed, had reached Baltimore
with the Sixth Massachusetts, but had to turn back), the Eighth
Massachusetts under Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, and the famous Seventh
New York--had to reach Washington by way of Annapolis. The Seventh,
under Colonel Lefferts, was the first home regiment to leave New York
City, and nothing could exceed the enthusiasm of the demonstrations
that accompanied its march down Broadway. To greet its passage out of
the city to the front, all business was suspended, and the population
turned _en masse_ into the streets. Boxes of cigars and other luxuries
were thrust into the hands of the men as they passed down Broadway in
a triumphal march such as has never been surpassed in the annals of
the city. There was a certain dramatic element, new at the time, and
scarcely repeated during the war, in this departure of a regiment
composed literally of the flower of a great and wealthy city,
representing its best elements, social and commercial. When General
(then Major) McDowell mustered them in at Washington, he said to one
of the captains: "You have a company of officers, not privates;" and
out of the less than one thousand men composing this command, over six
hundred, mostly privates, afterward became officers in the Union army.
Among these were such names as Abram Duryea, who organized "Duryea's
Zouaves;" Egbert L. Viele, Noah L. Farnam, Edward L. Molineux,
Alexander Shaler, Louis Fitzgerald, Philip Schuyler, FitzJames
O'Brien; Robert G. Shaw, who fell at Fort Wagner, leading to the
assault his Massachusetts regiment, which was the first colored
regiment to be organized under State authority; and Theodore Winthrop,
whose death at Big Bethel, as a brave officer and man of letters, was
one of the conspicuous casualties of the early days of the war.
These troops were taken on transports from Philadelphia to Annapolis,
another town of {25} Southern sympathies, where, except for the
hospitality of the United States Naval Academy, they were most
unwelcome. From that point they made their way, at first by train, and
then, being obstructed by the destruction of railroads and railroad
bridges, by forced marches, until they reached Annapolis Junction,
where they were met by a regiment sent out from Washington to meet
them, and thence proceeded by rail again. The strict discipline of
Colonel Lefferts, to which they owed their successful pioneer work in
opening the way to the capital, took them in review past President
Lincoln at the White House before they breakfasted, and they had no
let-up on the hardship of their service until they were quartered in
the House of Representatives, where they were subsequently sworn into
the service of the Government.
This episode is worth recounting, since it was the determined advance
of these troops--the Eighth Massachusetts, under Colonel Hinks,
accompanying them--in spite of rumors of a large secessionist force
between them and Washington, that made access to the seat of
government practicable for the regiments that promptly followed them,
including more men from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the First
Rhode Island, the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Seventy-first New York,
the latter regiments reaching Annapolis before the Seventh New York
and Eighth Massachusetts left, thus keeping the way open. Had the
rumored fifteen thousand rebels actually lain between Annapolis and
Washington, it would have gone hard with the Government and the
fortunes of the Union.
Troops continued to pour into Washington, until it really became an
embarrassment to know what to do with them. They "bunked" all over the
city, were quartered so far as practicable in the Government
buildings, and made the national capital festive with the pranks in
which they let off the animal spirits they carried into the grand
picnic they seemed to have started on. Among them, a regiment of
Zouaves, recruited from the New York Fire Department by Col. Elmer E.
Ellsworth, was conspicuous. They were the last of the old-time
"toughs," and they made things lively in the capital. They swarmed
over the Capitol building, scaling its walls and running about its
cornices in true fire-laddie fashion, and once they rendered a
distinct service to the city of Washington by saving a burning
building adjoining Willard's Hotel, displaying a reckless daring that
gave the District firemen some new ideas.
[Illustration: COLONEL ELMER E. ELLSWORTH.]
[Illustration: MARSHALL HOUSE, ALEXANDRIA. Where Colonel Ellsworth was
killed.]
[Illustration: THE DEATH OF ELLSWORTH.]
{26} [Illustration: JEFFERSON DAVIS AND HIS CABINET. JUDAH P.
BENJAMIN, Attorney-General--War--State. JOHN H. REAGAN,
Postmaster-General. STEPHEN R. MALLORY, Secretary of the Navy.
CHRISTOPHER G. MEMMINGER, Secretary of the Treasury. ROBERT TOOMBS,
Secretary of State. LEROY P. WALKER, Secretary of War.]
Ellsworth had attracted much attention in 1860 by the admirable work
of a company of Chicago Zouaves, with which he had given exhibition
drills in the East, and he was early commissioned a second lieutenant
in the regular army. But he resigned this position in order to
organize the Fire Zouaves, which he marched down Broadway under escort
of the Fire Department, and entered upon active service only to
sacrifice his life at the very beginning in a needless but tragic
manner. As soon as troops arrived in Washington in sufficient numbers,
the Government determined to make Washington secure by seizing its
outposts. Among these were Arlington Heights, across the Potomac, on
the "sacred soil of Virginia," of which this occupation was termed the
first "invasion." Ellsworth's regiment occupied the city of
Alexandria; and then, discovering a secession flag flying from the
Marshall House, the colonel mounted to the roof in person and tore the
flag down. Descending, he was met at the foot of the stairs by
Jackson, the proprietor of the hotel, who shot him dead with a
shot-gun. Ellsworth's death was promptly avenged by Private Francis E.
Brownell, who had accompanied him, and who put a bullet through
Jackson's head; but, as the first death of an officer, it created
wide-spread excitement {27} throughout the North, not excelled by that
over the Massachusetts men who fell in Baltimore, and royal honors
were shown to his remains. They lay in state in the White House, where
he had been a great favorite with the President, and were conveyed to
their last resting-place with every military distinction. Perhaps this
incident, more than any that had yet occurred, brought home to the
people of the North the reality of the war that was upon them. But it
only stimulated recruiting; the death of Ellsworth weighing far less
with the generous patriotism of the young men who filled up regiment
after regiment, than the glory of Ellsworth, and the honor of Private
Brownell.
* * * * *
While the levies were coming into Washington, the Southern leaders had
not been idle. Response to Jefferson Davis's call for troops was
general all over the States, and the week that intervened between
Sumter and the riot in Baltimore was a busy one. In Virginia, the
Governor took into his own hands measures for the defence of his
State. As early as April 15 he caused a number of militia officers to
be summoned to Richmond, and he placed in their hands the execution of
a movement to capture the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, at
the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. Proceeding with a
small command through an unfriendly country, these officers, among
whom was the afterward famous Confederate general, John D. Imboden,
reached their destination in the gray of the early morning of April
18, the day after the Virginia Legislature had passed the ordinance of
secession. Instead of the resistance they had looked forward to on
information that a Massachusetts regiment was guarding Harper's Ferry,
they were welcomed with the sight of buildings in flames, which told
them, only too truly, that the United States garrison had abandoned
the place on their approach, and had set fire to the arsenal and
stores to save them from falling into the hands of the Confederates.
[Illustration: JEFFERSON DAVIS'S RESIDENCE IN RICHMOND.]
Early warning of the attempted seizure of Harper's Ferry had been
confided to a messenger who had volunteered to acquaint the Government
with the impending peril, and word was sent that heavy reinforcements
alone would save this property to the United States. But in those
formative days, when many earnest men hesitated between loyalty to the
Union and loyalty to their State, when officers like Lee abandoned the
old service with reluctance under a sense of paramount duty to their
State, a man who was loyal one day would conclude overnight to secede
with his State. And from some such cause as this, or through fear of
the consequences, the messenger never delivered the message to the War
Department, and the reinforcements, though anxiously expected, never
came. The arsenal had been left in charge of Lieut. Roger Jones, who
had been ordered to Harper's Ferry from Carlisle Barracks, Penn., with
a small force of forty-five men. Hearing nothing from Washington in
response to his request for aid, he made up his mind on the evening of
April 17, that the only course open to him was to save his garrison by
retreat, and destroy the property thus abandoned. This determination
was confirmed by the news brought to him, by a former superintendent
of the arsenal, of the coming of the Virginia troops. Although this
same man had loyally reported, so long before as January, that an
attempt might be made, he now told the workmen engaged at the arsenal
that within twenty-four hours the arsenal would be in the hands of the
Virginia forces, and advised them to protect the property, cast their
lot with the secessionists, and insure to themselves a continuance of
work under the new régime.
Lieutenant Jones immediately made secret preparations. He had trains
of powder laid through the buildings, and when the force of thirteen
hundred Virginians had approached to within a mile of the arsenal, at
nine o'clock on the evening of April 17, the torch was applied, and
the flames ran through the works, which were quickly burning. Some of
the powder trains had been wet by the Southern sympathizers among the
workmen, but the result was a practical destruction of nearly all that
would have been valuable as munitions of war. The powder that was
stored in the buildings exploded from time to time, effectually
preventing serious efforts to put out the fire. The garrison was
withdrawn {28} across the Potomac and marched back to Carlisle. When
the Virginians came up the next morning, they found only the burning
arsenal buildings to greet them.
Enough property was rescued from the destruction to make the capture a
useful one to the Confederates, however; and the possession of
Harper's Ferry gave them command of an important line of communication
with Washington, by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Anticipating the
use of this line for the transportation of Western troops to
Washington, Gen. Kenton Harper, commanding the Virginians, stopped the
first train through; but his only capture was the person of Gen.
William S. Harney, of the regular army, who was on his way to
Washington to resign his commission rather than engage in the civil
war. He was made a prisoner and sent to Richmond, whence he was
allowed to proceed on his errand. General Harney did not resign, but
was presently sent to Missouri to command the Department of the West.
But his conciliating method of dealing with the enemy, together with
his uncertain loyalty, caused him to be relieved very soon. The
strategic value of Harper's Ferry was developed under Col. Thomas J.
Jackson (afterward the celebrated "Stonewall"), who was made colonel
commandant of all the Virginia forces, superseding all the previously
existing militia generals. Robert E. Lee had been given the general
command of the State troops, with Jackson as his executive officer,
and by a legislative ordinance every militia officer above the grade
of captain had been relegated to private life unless reappointed by
the governor under the new dispensation.
[Illustration: THE CAPITOL AT RICHMOND.]
The bridge at Point of Rocks, a few miles down the Potomac toward
Washington, was seized and fortified against a possible attack by
General Butler, who was near Baltimore; and by a clever _ruse_ a great
number of trains on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad were "bagged," and
the cars and engines side-tracked into Strasburg, greatly facilitating
the Confederate train service in Virginia. Horses and supplies were
secured from the neighboring country, and when Gen. Joseph E. Johnston
superseded Jackson a month later at Harper's Ferry, the Confederates
were in good shape to confront an advance on their position from
Maryland or Pennsylvania, or to send reinforcements, as they did, when
the first considerable struggle of the war came at Bull Run, fifty
miles south of them.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS, Vice-President C. S. A.]
Another destruction of Government property by Government officers,
about this time, most unnecessary and unfortunate, deprived the Navy
Department of ships and material that would have been incalculably
precious, and furnished the Confederates with three ships, one of
which, the _Merrimac_, was to be heard from later in a signal manner.
At the Gosport Navy Yard, opposite Norfolk, Va., there were, besides
many munitions of war, no less than eleven fine war ships, a majority
of which were armed and ready for sea. The Government made prompt
preparations to secure these after the fall of Sumter; and but for the
delay of the commandant, Commodore Charles S. McCauley, in executing
his orders, a number of the vessels, with stores, armament, and crews,
would have been withdrawn into safe waters. But under the influence of
his junior officers, most of whom subsequently joined the Confederacy,
he deferred action until better prepared. This delay was fatal; for on
April 18 he suddenly was confronted by a hostile force, though small
in numbers, under General Taliaferro, which had seized Norfolk and
threatened the navy yard. The {29} action of the latter in waiting one
day for expected reinforcements from Richmond, and Commodore
McCauley's promise not to move a vessel or fire a shot except in
defence, gave the Union commander time to do what he could to destroy
the property in his charge; and on April 20 he scuttled every ship in
the harbor, sinking them just before the arrival of Capt. Hiram
Paulding in the _Pawnee_ with orders to relieve McCauley, and to save
or destroy the property. Seeing that it would be possible for the
enemy to raise the sunken vessels, and that after the ships had been
rendered useless he could not hold the place with his small force,
Paulding decided to complete the work of destruction as far as
possible, and told off his men in detachments for this duty. Ships,
ship-houses, barracks, wharves, were at the signal (a rocket) set
ablaze, and the display was magnificent as pyrotechnics, and
discouraging to the enemy, which had expected to secure a ready-made
navy for the taking of it. When to the roar of the flames was added
the boom of the loaded guns as the fire reached them, the effect was
tremendous. Under cover of all this, the _Pawnee_ drew out of the
harbor, accompanied by the steam-tug _Yankee_ towing the _Cumberland_,
which alone of the fleet had not been scuttled, and bearing the loyal
garrison and crews. In the haste with which the work of destruction
had been undertaken, the result was incomplete. The mine under the
dry-dock did not explode; and that most useful appliance, together
with many shops, cannon, and provisions, was secured by the
Confederates, who also succeeded in raising and using three of the
sunken and partially burned vessels--the _Merrimac_, _Raritan_, and
_Plymouth_, under the guns of the first of which, from behind its
armored sides, the _Cumberland_ afterward came to grief in Hampton
Roads.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant
Adjutant-General.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL CHARLES P. STONE.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM S. HARNEY.]
CHAPTER III.
THE BEGINNING OF BLOODSHED.
LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS--THE STRUGGLE FOR VIRGINIA--OPPOSING VIEWS
EXPRESSED BY ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS--THE SLAVE-TRADE OF
VIRGINIA--VIRGINIA DRAGOONED--THE FIRST CALL FOR TROOPS--LINCOLN'S
FAITH IN THE PEOPLE--ORIGIN OF THE WORD "COPPERHEAD."
Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address was one of the ablest state papers
recorded in American history. It argued the question of secession in
all its aspects--the constitutional right, the reality of the
grievance, the sufficiency of the remedy--and so far as law and logic
went, it left the secessionists little or nothing to stand on. But
neither law nor logic could change in a single day the pre-determined
purpose of a powerful combination, or allay the passions that had been
roused by years of resentful debate. Some of its sentences read like
maxims for statesmen: "The central idea of secession is the essence of
anarchy." "Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make
laws?" "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate
justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the
world?" With all its conciliatory messages it expressed a firm and
unalterable purpose to maintain the Union at every hazard. "I
consider," he said, "that, in view of the Constitution and the laws,
the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take
care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the
laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this
I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so
far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people,
shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner
direct the contrary." And in closing he said: "In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous
issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have
no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath
registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I have the most
solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.... We are not enemies,
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained,
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the
better angels of our nature."
{30} [Illustration: SHERMAN AND HIS GENERALS. Oliver O. Howard. John
A. Logan. William B. Hazen. William T. Sherman. Jeff. C. Davis. Henry
W. Slocum. J. A. Mower.]
No such address had ever come from the lips of a {31} President
before. Pierce and Buchanan had scolded the abolitionists like
partisans; Lincoln talked to the secessionists like a brother. The
loyal people throughout the country received the address with
satisfaction. The secessionists bitterly denounced it. Overlooking all
its pacific declarations, and keeping out of sight the fact that a
majority of the Congress just chosen was politically opposed to the
President, they appealed to the Southern people to say whether they
would "submit to abolition rule," and whether they were going to look
on and "see gallant little South Carolina crushed under the heel of
despotism."
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT'S BODYGUARD.]
[Illustration: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT, WITH GENERALS RAWLINS AND
BOWERS.]
In spite of all such appeals, there was still a strong Union sentiment
at the South. This sentiment was admirably expressed by Hon. Alexander
H. Stephens in a speech delivered on November 14, 1860, in the
following words: "This step of secession, once taken, can never be
recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must
follow will rest on the convention for all time.... What reasons can
you give the nations of the earth to justify it? What right has the
North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What
justice has been denied? And what claim founded in justice and right
has been withheld? Can either of you to-day name one governmental act
of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the Government of
Washington, of which the South has the right to complain? I challenge
the answer.... I declare here, as I have often done before, and which
has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots
in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest
Government--the most equal in its rights, the most just in its
decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most inspiring in
its principles to elevate the race of men--that the sun of heaven ever
shone upon. Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a Government as
this, under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a
century, in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a {32}
nation, our domestic safety while the elements of peril are around us,
with peace and tranquillity accompanied with unbounded prosperity and
rights unassailed--is the height of madness, folly and wickedness, to
which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote." In a speech by Mr.
Stephens delivered in Savannah, March 22, 1861, he expressed entirely
different views; in expounding the new constitution, he said: "The
prevailing idea entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the
leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution
was, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws
of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and
politically.... Our new Government is founded upon exactly the
opposite idea. Its foundation was laid, and its corner-stone rests,
upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man,
that slavery, in subordination to the superior race, is his natural
and normal condition." Seven slave States had gone out, but eight
remained, and the anxiety of the secessionists was to secure these at
once, or most of them, before the excitement cooled. The great prize
was Virginia, both because of her own power and resources, and because
her accession to the Confederacy would necessarily bring North
Carolina also. Her governor, John Letcher, professed to be a Unionist;
but his conduct after the ordinance of secession had been passed
appears to prove that this profession was insincere. In electing
delegates to a convention to consider the question of secession, the
Unionists cast a majority of sixty thousand votes; and on the 4th of
April, when President Lincoln had been in office a month, that
convention refused, by a vote of eighty-nine to forty-five, to pass an
ordinance of secession. The leading revolutionists of the cotton
States were becoming uneasy. Said Mr. Gilchrist, of Alabama, to the
Confederate Secretary of War: "You must sprinkle blood in the faces of
the people! If you delay two months, Alabama stays in the Union!"
Hence the attack on Fort Sumter, out of which the garrison were in
peril of being driven by starvation. This certainly had a great
popular effect in the South as well as in the North; but Virginia's
choice appears to have been determined by a measure that was less
spectacular and more coldly significant. The Confederate Constitution
provided that Congress should have the power to "prohibit the
introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory
not belonging to, this Confederacy," and at the time when Virginia's
fate was in the balance it was reported that such an act had been
passed by the Congress at Montgomery.[1] When Virginia heard this,
like the young man in Scripture, she went away sorrowful; for in that
line of trade she had great possessions. The cultivation of land by
slave labor had long since ceased to be profitable in the border
States--or at least it was far less profitable than raising slaves for
the cotton States--and the acquisition of new territory in Texas had
enormously increased the demand. The {33} greatest part of this
business (sometimes estimated as high as one-half) was Virginia's. It
was called "the vigintal crop," as the blacks were ready for market
and at their highest value about the age of twenty. As it was an
ordinary business of bargain and sale, no statistics were kept; but
the lowest estimate of the annual value of the trade in the Old
Dominion placed it in the tens of millions of dollars. President Dew,
of William and Mary College, in his celebrated pamphlet, wrote:
"Virginia is, in fact, a negro-raising State for other States." The
New York _Journal of Commerce_ of October 12, 1835, contained a letter
from a Virginian (vouched for by the editor) in which it was asserted
that twenty thousand slaves had been driven south from that State that
year. In 1836 the Wheeling (Va.) _Times_ estimated the number of
slaves exported from that State during the preceding year at forty
thousand, valued at twenty-four million dollars. The Baltimore
_Register_ in 1846 said: "Dealing in slaves has become a large
business; establishments are made in several places in Maryland and
Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle." The Richmond
_Examiner_, before the war, said: "Upon an inside estimate, they [the
slaves of Virginia] yield in gross surplus produce, from sales of
negroes to go south, ten million dollars." In the United States
Senate, just before the war, Hon. Alfred Iverson, of Georgia, replying
to Mr. Powell, of Virginia, said Virginia was deeply interested in
secession: for if the cotton States seceded, Virginia would find no
market for her slaves, without which that State would be ruined.
[Footnote 1: It is now impossible to prove positively that such a law
was actually passed; for the officially printed volume of "Statutes at
Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of
America" (Richmond, 1861) was evidently mutilated before being placed
in the hands of the compositor. The Acts are numbered, but here and
there numbers are missing, and in some of the later Acts there are
allusions to previous Acts that cannot be found in the book. It is
known that on the 6th of March, 1861, the Judiciary Committee was
instructed to inquire into the expediency of such prohibition, and it
seems a fair conjecture that one of the missing numbers was an Act of
this character. In a later edition (1864) the numbering is made
consecutive, but the missing matter is not restored.]
[Illustration: THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT ATTACKED IN THE
STREETS OF BALTIMORE, APRIL 19, 1861.]
[Illustration: DEPARTURE OF THE SEVENTH REGIMENT FROM NEW YORK CITY,
APRIL 19, 1861.]
[Illustration: COLONEL MARSHALL LEFFERTS, Commanding Seventh
Regiment.]
{34} [Illustration: ON PICKET. (Showing photographer's outfit.)]
After Sumter had been fired on, and the Confederate Congress had
forbidden this traffic to outsiders, the Virginia Convention again
took up the ordinance of secession (April 17) and passed it in secret
session by a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five. It was not to take
effect till approved by the people; but the day fixed for their voting
upon it was six weeks distant, the last Thursday in May. Long before
that date, Governor Letcher, without waiting for the verdict of the
people, turned over the entire military force and equipment of the
State to the Confederate authorities, and the seat of the Confederate
Government was removed from Montgomery to Richmond. David G. Farragut,
afterwards the famous admiral, who was in Norfolk, Virginia, at the
time, anxiously watching the course of events, {35} declared that the
State "had been dragooned out of the Union," and he refused to be
dragooned with her. But Robert E. Lee and other prominent Virginians
resigned their commissions in the United States service to enter that
of their States or of the Confederacy, and the soil of Virginia was
overrun by soldiers from the cotton States. Any other result than a
vote for secession was therefore impossible. Arkansas followed with a
similar ordinance on the 6th of May, and North Carolina on the 21st,
neither being submitted to a popular vote. Kentucky refused to secede.
For Tennessee and Missouri there was a prolonged struggle.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOSEPH G. TOTTEN, Chief of Engineers.]
[Illustration: GENERAL ABRAM DURYEA.]
[Illustration: GENERAL ALEXANDER SHALER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR THEODORE WINTHROP. Killed at Big Bethel.]
When Fort Sumter was surrendered, the Confederates had already
acquired possession of Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in Charleston
Harbor, Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Fort Morgan at the entrance of
Mobile Bay, Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans, the
navy-yard and Forts McRae and Barrancas at Pensacola, the arsenals at
Mount Vernon, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark., and the New Orleans Mint.
The largest force of United States regulars was that in Texas, under
command of Gen. David E. Twiggs, who surrendered it in February, and
turned over to the insurgents one million two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars' worth of military property.
On the day when Sumter fell, President Lincoln penned a proclamation,
issued the next day (Monday, April 15), which declared "that the laws
of the United States have been for some time past, and now are,
opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary
course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals
by law," and called for militia from the several States of the Union
to the number of seventy-five thousand. It also called a special
session of Congress, to convene on July 4. He appealed "to all loyal
citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the
honor, the integrity, and existence of our National Union, and the
perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long
enough endured."
With regard to the reception of this celebrated proclamation in the
South, Alexander H. Stephens writes as follows, in his History of the
war: "The effect of this upon the public mind of the Southern States
cannot be described or even estimated. Up to this time, a majority, I
think, of even those who favored the policy of secession had done so
under the belief and conviction that it was the surest way of securing
a redress of grievances, and of bringing the Federal Government back
to Constitutional principles. This proclamation dispelled all such
hopes. It showed that the party in power intended nothing short of
complete centralization. The principles actuating the Washington
authorities were those aiming at consolidated power; while the
principles controlling the action of the Montgomery authorities were
those which enlisted devotion and attachment to the Federative system
as established by the Fathers in 1778 and 1787. In short, the cause of
the Confederates was States Sovereignty, or the sovereign right of
local self-government on the part of the States severally. The cause
of their assailants involved the overthrow of this entire fabric, and
the erection of a centralized empire in its stead."
The effect of this proclamation in the North has already been referred
to. Mr. Lincoln's faith in the people had always been strong; but the
response to this proclamation was probably a surprise even to him, as
it certainly was to the secessionists, who had assured the Southern
people that the Yankees would not fight. The whole North was thrilled
with military ardor, and moved almost as one man. The papers were
lively with great head-lines and double-leaded editorials; and the
local poet filled the spare space--when there was any--with his
glowing patriotic effusions. The closing passage of Longfellow's
"Building of the Ship," written a dozen years before, beginning:
"Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"
{36} was in constant demand, and was recited effectively by nearly
every orator that addressed a war meeting.
Eminent men of all parties and all professions spoke out for the
Union. Stephen A. Douglas, who had long been Lincoln's rival, and had
opposed the policy of coercion, went to the White House the day before
Sumter fell, had a long interview with the President, and promised a
hearty support of the Administration, which was immediately
telegraphed over the country, and had a powerful effect. Ex-President
Pierce (who had made the direful prediction of blood in Northern
streets), ex-President Buchanan (who had failed to find any authority
for coercion), Gen. Lewis Cass (a Democratic partisan since the war of
1812), Archbishop Hughes (the highest dignitary of the Roman Catholic
Church in America), and numerous others, all "came out for the Union,"
as the phrase went. The greater portion of the Democratic party, which
had opposed Lincoln's election, also, as individuals, sustained the
Administration in its determination not to permit a division of the
country. These were known as "war Democrats," while those that opposed
and reviled the Government were called "Copperheads," in allusion to
the snake of that name. Some of the bolder ones attempted to take the
edge off the sarcasm by cutting the head of Liberty out of a copper
cent and wearing it as a scarf-pin; but all they could say was quickly
drowned in the general clamor.
Town halls, schoolhouses, academies, and even churches were turned
into temporary barracks. Village greens and city squares were occupied
every day by platoons of men, most of them not yet uniformed, marching
and wheeling and countermarching, and being drilled in the manual of
arms by officers that knew just a little more than they did, by virtue
of having bought a handbook of tactics the day before, and sat up all
night to study it. There was great scarcity of arms. One regiment was
looking dubiously at some ancient muskets that had just been placed in
their hands, when the colonel came up and with grim humor assured them
that he had seen those weapons used in the Mexican War, and more men
were killed in front of them than behind them. The boys had great
respect for the colonel, but they wanted to be excused from believing
his story.
[Illustration: BURNING OF GOSPORT NAVY YARD, NORFOLK, VA., APRIL 21,
1861.]
[Illustration: BURNING OF THE UNITED STATES ARSENAL AT HARPER'S FERRY,
VA., APRIL 18, 1861.]
CHAPTER IV.
BORDER STATES AND FOREIGN RELATIONS.
GOVERNORS OF CERTAIN STATES REFUSE TROOPS--THE GOVERNOR OF MISSOURI
DISLOYAL--EVENTS IN ST. LOUIS--LOYALTY OF GERMANS--BATTLE AT
CARTHAGE--THE STRUGGLE FOR KENTUCKY, MARYLAND AND TENNESSEE--ACTIONS
IN WEST VIRGINIA--BATTLE OF RICH MOUNTAIN--BATTLE OF BIG
BETHEL--HARPER'S FERRY.
The disposition of the border slave States was one of the most
difficult problems with which the Government had to deal. When the
President issued his call for seventy-five thousand men, the Governors
of Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as those of North
Carolina and Virginia, returned positive refusals. The Governor of
Missouri answered: "It is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary,
inhuman, diabolical, and cannot {37} be complied with." The Governor
of Kentucky said: "Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked
purpose of subduing her sister Southern States." The Governor of
Tennessee: "Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but
fifty thousand, if necessary, for the defence of our rights and those
of our brethren." The Governor of North Carolina: "I can be no party
to this wicked violation of the laws of the country and to this war
upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North
Carolina." The Governor of Virginia: "The militia of Virginia will not
be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose
as they have in view." Every one of these governors was a
secessionist, with a strong and aggressive party at his back; and yet
in each of these States the secessionists were in a minority. It was a
serious matter to increase the hostility that beset the National arms
on what in another war would have been called neutral ground, and it
was also a serious matter to leave the Union element in the
northernmost slave States without a powerful support and protection.
The problem was worked out differently in each of the States.
[Illustration: A BATTERY ON DRILL.]
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING LOYAL AND SECEDING STATES.]
At the winter session of the Missouri Legislature an act had been
passed that placed the city of St. Louis under the control of police
commissioners to be appointed by the Governor, Claiborne F. Jackson.
Four of his appointees were secessionists, and three of these were
leaders of bodies of "minutemen," half-secret armed organizations. The
mayor of the city, who {38} was also one of the commissioners, was
known as a "conditional Union man." Other acts showed plainly the bent
of the Legislature. One made it treason to speak against the authority
of the Governor, and gave him enlarged powers, while another
appropriated three million dollars for military purposes, taking the
entire school fund for the year, and the accumulations that were to
have paid the July interest on the public debt.
[Illustration: RECRUITS TO THE FRONT.]
A State convention called to consider the question of secession met in
February, and proved to be overwhelmingly in favor of Missouri's
remaining in the Union, though it also expressed a general sympathy
with slavery, assumed that the South had wrongs, deprecated the
employment of military force on either side, and repeated the
suggestion that had been made many times in other quarters for a
national convention to amend the Constitution so as to satisfy
everybody. The State convention made its report in March, and
adjourned till December.
This proceeding appeared to be a great disappointment to Governor
Jackson; but he failed to take from it any hint to give up his purpose
of getting the State out of the Union. On the contrary, he proceeded
to try what he could do with the powers at his command. He called an
extra session of the Legislature, to convene May 2d, for the purpose
of "adopting measures to place the State in a proper attitude of
defence," and he called out the militia on the 3d of May, to go into
encampment for six days. There was a large store of arms (more than
twenty thousand stand) in the St. Louis arsenal; but while he was
devising a method and a pretext for seizing them, the greater part of
them were suddenly removed, by order from Washington, to Springfield,
Illinois. The captain that had them in charge took them on a steamer
to Alton, and there called the citizens together by ringing a
fire-alarm, told them what he had, and asked their assistance in
transferring the cargo to a train for Springfield, as he expected
pursuit by a force of secessionists. The many hands that make light
work were not wanting, and the train very soon rolled away with its
precious freight. The Governor applied to the Confederate Government
for assistance, and a quantity of arms and ammunition, including
several field-guns, was sent to him in boxes marked "marble." He also
ordered a general of the State militia to establish a camp of
instruction near the city, and gathered there such volunteer companies
as were organized and armed.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN NATHANIEL LYON. (Afterwards
Brigadier-General.)]
[Illustration: A VILLAGE COMPANY ON PARADE.]
General Scott had anticipated all this by sending reinforcements to
the little company that held the arsenal, and with them Capt.
Nathaniel Lyon, of the regular army, a man that lacked no element of
skill, courage, or patriotism necessary for the crisis. The force was
also increased by several regiments of loyal home guards, organized
mainly by the exertions of Francis P. Blair, Jr., and mustered into
the service of the United States. When the character and purpose of
the force that was being concentrated by Jackson became sufficiently
evident--from the fact that the streets in the camp were named for
prominent Confederate leaders, and other indications--Lyon determined
upon prompt and decisive action. This was the more important since the
United States arsenal at Liberty had been robbed, and secession troops
were being drilled at St. Joseph. With a battalion of regulars and six
regiments of the home guard, he marched out in the afternoon of May
10th, surrounded the camp, and trained six pieces of artillery on it,
and then demanded an immediate surrender, with no terms but a promise
of proper treatment as prisoners of war. The astonished commander, a
recreant West Pointer, surrendered promptly; and he and his brigade
were disarmed {39} and taken into the city. All the "marble" that had
come up from Baton Rouge and been hauled out to the camp only two days
before was captured and removed to the arsenal, becoming once more the
property of the United States.
The outward march had attracted attention, crowds had gathered along
the route, and when Lyon's command were returning with their prisoners
they had to pass through a throng of people, among whom were not a few
that were striving to create a riot. The outbreak came at length;
stones were thrown at the troops and pistol-shots fired into the
ranks, when one regiment levelled their muskets and poured a volley or
two into the crowd. Three or four soldiers and about twenty citizens
were killed in this beginning of the conflict at the West. William T.
Sherman (the now famous general), walking out with his little son that
afternoon, found himself for the first time under fire, and lay down
in a gully while the bullets cut the twigs of the trees above him.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE AT PHILIPPI, JUNE 3, 1861.]
[Illustration: GENERAL B. F. KELLEY.]
Two days later, Gen. William S. Harney arrived in St. Louis and
assumed command of the United States forces. He was a veteran of long
experience; but ex-Governor Sterling Price, commanding the State
forces, entrapped him into a truce that tied his hands, while it left
Jackson and Price practically at liberty to pursue their plans for
secession. Thereupon the Government removed him, repudiated the truce,
and gave the command to Lyon, now made a brigadier-general. After an
interview with Lyon in St. Louis (June 11), in which they found it
impossible to deceive or swerve him, Price and Jackson went to the
capital, Jefferson City, burning railway bridges behind them, and the
Governor immediately issued a proclamation declaring that the State
had been invaded by United States forces, and calling out fifty
thousand of the militia to repel the invasion. Its closing passage is
a fair specimen of many proclamations and appeals that were issued
that spring and summer: "Your first allegiance is due to your own
State, and you are under no obligation whatever to obey the
unconstitutional edicts of the military despotism which has introduced
itself at Washington, nor submit to the infamous and degrading sway of
its wicked minions in this State. No brave-hearted Missourian will
obey the one or submit to the other. Rise, then, and drive out
ignominiously the invaders who have dared to desecrate the soil which
your labors have made fruitful and which is consecrated by your
homes."
{40} [Illustration: A BOMB PROOF.]
The very next day Lyon had an expedition in motion, which reached
Jefferson City on the 15th, took possession of the place, and raised
the National flag over the Capitol. At his approach the Governor fled,
carrying with him the great seal of the State. Learning that he was
with Price, gathering a force at Booneville, fifty miles farther up
Missouri {41} River, Lyon at once reëmbarked the greater part of his
command, arrived at Booneville on the morning of the 17th, fought and
routed the force there, and captured their guns and supplies. The
Governor was now a mere fugitive; and the State convention, assembling
again in July, declared the State offices vacant, nullified the
secession work of the Legislature, and made Hamilton R. Gamble, a
Union man, provisional Governor. Among the citizens whose prompt
personal efforts were conspicuous on the Union side were John M.
Schofield and Francis P. Blair, Jr. (afterward Generals), B. Gratz
Brown (afterward candidate for Vice-President), Rev. Galusha Anderson
(afterward President of Chicago University), William McPherson, and
Clinton B. Fisk (afterward founder of Fisk University at Nashville).
The puzzling part of the difficulty in Missouri was now over, for the
contest was well defined. Most of the people in the northern part of
the State, and most of the population of St. Louis (especially the
Germans), were loyal to the National Government; but the secessionists
were strong in its southern part, where Price succeeded in organizing
a considerable force, which was joined by men from Arkansas and Texas,
under Gens. Ben. McCulloch and Gideon J. Pillow. Gen. Franz Sigel was
sent against them, and at Carthage (July 5) with twelve hundred men
encountered five thousand and inflicted a heavy loss upon them, though
he was obliged to retreat. His soldierly qualities in this and other
actions gave him one of the sudden reputations that were made in the
first year of the war, but obscured by the greater events that
followed. His hilarious popularity was expressed in the common
greeting: "You fights mit Sigel? Den you trinks mit me!" Lyon,
marching from Springfield, Mo., defeated McCulloch at Dug Spring, and
a week later (August 10) attacked him again at Wilson's Creek, though
McCulloch had been heavily reinforced. The national troops,
outnumbered three to one, were defeated; and Lyon, who had been twice
wounded early in the action, was shot dead while leading a regiment in
a desperate charge. Major S. D. Sturgis conducted the retreat, and
this ended the campaign. It was found that General Lyon, who was a
bachelor, had bequeathed all he possessed (about thirty thousand
dollars) to the United States Government, to be used for war purposes.
[Illustration: CARING FOR THE DEAD AND WOUNDED.]
{42} [Illustration: BATTLE OF WILSON'S CREEK, NEAR SPRINGFIELD, MO.,
AUGUST 10, 1861.]
In the days when personal leadership was more than it can ever be
again, while South Carolina was listening to the teachings of John C.
Calhoun, which led her to try the experiment of secession, Kentucky
was following Henry Clay, who, though a slaveholder, was a strong
Unionist. The practical effect was seen when the crisis came, after he
had been in his grave nine years. Governor Beriah Magoffin convened
the Legislature in January, 1861, and asked it to organize the
militia, buy muskets, and put the State in a condition of armed
neutrality; all of which it refused to do. After the fall of Fort
Sumter he called the Legislature together again, evidently hoping that
the popular excitement would bring them over to his scheme. But the
utmost that could be accomplished was the passage of a resolution by
the lower house (May 16) declaring that Kentucky should occupy "a
position of strict neutrality," and approving his refusal to furnish
troops for the national army. Thereupon he issued a proclamation (May
20) in which he "notified and warned all other States, separate or
united, especially the United and Confederate States, that I solemnly
forbid any movement upon Kentucky soil." But two days later the
Legislature repudiated this interpretation of neutrality, and passed a
series of acts intended to prevent any scheme of secession that might
be formed. It appropriated one million dollars for arms and
ammunition, but placed the disbursement of the money and control of
the arms in the hands of commissioners that were all Union men. It
amended the militia law so as to require the State Guards to take an
oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and finally the
Senate passed a resolution declaring that "Kentucky will not sever
connection with the National Government, nor take up arms with either
belligerent party." Lovell H. Rousseau (afterward a gallant general in
the national service), speaking in his place in the Senate, said: "The
politicians are having their day; the people will yet have theirs. I
have an abiding confidence in the right, and I know that this
secession movement is all wrong. There is not a single substantial
reason for it; our Government had never oppressed us with a feather's
weight." The Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge and other prominent citizens
took a similar stand; and a new Legislature, chosen in August,
presented a Union majority of three to one. As a last resort, Governor
Magoffin addressed a letter to President Lincoln, requesting that
Kentucky's neutrality be respected and the national forces removed
from the State. Mr. Lincoln, in refusing his request, courteously
reminded him that the force consisted exclusively of Kentuckians, and
told him that he had not met any Kentuckian, except himself and the
messengers that brought his letter, who wanted it removed. To
strengthen the first argument, Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame,
who was a citizen of Kentucky, was made a general and given the
command in the State in September. Two months later, a secession
convention met at Russellville, in the southern part of the State,
organized a provisional government, and sent a full delegation to the
Confederate Congress at Richmond, who found no difficulty in being
{43} admitted to seats in that body. Being now firmly supported by the
new Legislature, the National Government began to arrest prominent
Kentuckians who still advocated secession, whereupon others, including
ex-Vice-President John C. Breckinridge, fled southward and entered the
service of the Confederacy. Kentucky as a State was saved to the
Union, but the line of separation was drawn between her citizens, and
she contributed to the ranks of both the great contending armies.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL BENJAMIN F. BUTLER AND STAFF.]
Like the governor of Kentucky, Gov. Thomas H. Hicks, of Maryland, had
at first protested against the passage of troops, had dreamed of
making the State neutral, and had even gone so far as to suggest to
the Administration that the British Minister at Washington be asked to
mediate between it and the Confederates. But, unlike Governor
Magoffin, he ultimately came out in favor of the Union. The
Legislature would not adopt an ordinance of secession, nor call a
convention for that purpose; but it passed a bill establishing a board
of public safety, giving it extraordinary authority over the military
powers of the State, and appointed as such board six secessionists and
the governor. A tremendous pressure was brought to bear upon the
State. One of her poets, in a ringing rhyme to a popular air, told her
that the despot's heel was on her shore, and predicted that she would
speedily "spurn the Northern scum," while the Vice-President of the
Confederacy felt so sure of her acquisition that in a speech (April
30) he triumphantly announced that she "had resolved, to a man, to
stand by the South." But Reverdy Johnson and other prominent
Marylanders were quite as bold and active for the national cause. A
popular Union Convention was held in Baltimore; General Butler with
his troops restored the broken communications and held the important
centres; and under a suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_ some of
the more violent secessionists were imprisoned. The release of the
citizens was demanded by Chief-Justice Taney, of the United States
Supreme Court, who declared that the President had no right to suspend
the writ; but his demand was refused. In May the Governor called for
four regiments of volunteers to fill the requisition of the National
Government, but requested that they might be assigned to duty in the
State. So Maryland remained in the Union, though a considerable number
of her citizens entered the ranks of the Confederate army.
In the mountainous regions of western North Carolina and eastern
Tennessee, where few slaves were held, there was a strong Union
element. In other portions of those States there were many
enthusiastic secessionists. But in each State there was a majority
against disunion. North Carolina voted on the question of calling a
convention to consider the subject, and by a small majority decided
for "no convention." Tennessee, on a similar vote, showed a majority
of fifty thousand against calling a convention. After the fall of
Sumter Gov. John W. Ellis, of North Carolina, seized the branch mint
at Charlotte and the arsenal at Fayetteville, and called an extra
session of the Legislature. This Legislature authorized him to tender
the military resources of the State to the Confederate Government, and
called a convention to meet May 20th, which passed an ordinance {44}
of secession by a unanimous vote. The conservative or Union party of
Tennessee issued an address on the 18th of April, in which they
declared their approval of the Governor's refusal to furnish troops
for the national defence, and condemned both secession and coercion,
holding that Tennessee should take an independent attitude. This, with
the excitement of the time, was enough for the Legislature. In secret
session it authorized Gov. Isham G. Harris, who was a strong
secessionist, to enter into a military league with the Confederate
Government, which he immediately did. It also passed an ordinance of
secession, to be submitted to a popular vote on the 8th of June.
Before that day came, the State was in the possession of Confederate
soldiers, and a majority of over fifty thousand was obtained for
secession. East Tennessee had voted heavily against the ordinance; and
a convention held at Greenville, June 17, wherein thirty-one of the
eastern counties were represented, declared, for certain plainly
specified reasons, that it "did not regard the result of the election
as expressive of the will of a majority of the freemen of Tennessee."
Later, the people of those counties asked to be separated peaceably
from the rest of the State and allowed to remain in the Union; but the
Confederate authorities did not recognize the principle of secession
from secession, and the people of that region were subjected to a
bloody and relentless persecution, before which many of them fled from
their homes. The most prominent of the Unionists were Andrew Johnson
and the Rev. William G. Brownlow.
[Illustration: COMMISSARY QUARTERS.]
[Illustration: CULINARY DEPARTMENT.]
That portion of the Old Dominion which lay west of the Alleghany
Mountains held in 1860 but one-twelfth as many slaves in proportion to
its white population as the remainder of the State. And when Virginia
passed her ordinance of secession, all but nine of the fifty-five
votes against it were cast by delegates from the mountainous western
counties. The people of these counties, having little interest in
slavery and its products, and great interests in iron, coal and
lumber, the market for which was in the free States, while their
streams flowed into the Ohio, naturally objected to being dragged into
the Confederacy. Like the people of East Tennessee, they wanted to
secede from secession, and one of their delegates actually proposed it
in the convention. In less than a month (May 13) after the passage of
the ordinance, a Union convention was held at Wheeling, in which
twenty-five of the western counties were represented; and ten days
later, when the election was held, these people voted against
seceding. The State authorities sent recruiting officers over the
mountains, but they had little success. Some forces were gathered,
under the direction of Gen. Robert E. Lee and under the immediate
command of Colonel Porterfield, who began burning the bridges {45} on
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Meanwhile Capt. George B. McClellan
had been made a general and placed in command of Ohio troops. With
four regiments he crossed the Ohio on the 26th and went in pursuit of
the enemy. His movement at first was retarded by the burned bridges;
but these were repaired, large reinforcements were brought over, and
in small but brilliant engagements--at Philippi and at Rich
Mountain--he completely routed the Confederates.
At Philippi the Confederates were completely surprised by Colonels
Kelley and Dumont, and beat so hasty a retreat that the affair
received the local name of the "Philippi races." The victory at Rich
Mountain was the first instance of the capture by either side of a
military position regularly approached and defended. A pass over this
mountain was regarded as so important that all the Confederate troops
that could be spared were sent to defend it, under command of Gen.
Robert S. Garnett with Colonel Pegram to assist him. The position was
so strong that a front attack was avoided, and its speedy capture
resulted from a flank attack skilfully planned and successfully
executed by Gen. W. S. Rosecrans. On the retreat up the Cheat River
Valley General Garnett was killed, and Pegram, with a considerable
number of his men, surrendered to McClellan.
The importance of this affair at Rich Mountain was really slight,
notwithstanding it was successful in securing to the Union army a
footing on this frontier that was not afterward seriously disturbed.
But the significance of the action of July 11, and the campaign which
it terminated, lies in the instant popularity and prominence it gave
to General McClellan. He reported the victory in a Napoleonic
despatch, announcing the annihilation of "two armies, commanded by
educated and experienced soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses
fortified at their leisure;" and concluding, "Our success is complete,
and secession is killed in this country." McClellan's failure to
accomplish more in this campaign has been indicated by military
critics, but at the time nothing obscured the brilliancy of the
victory. The people took his own estimate of it, and "Little Mac," the
young Napoleon, became a popular hero. The Government also took his
view of it; and after the defeat at Bull Run, a few days later, he was
given the command of the Army of the Potomac, and in the autumn
succeeded to the command of the Armies of the United States.
Delegates from the counties west of the Alleghanies met at Wheeling
(June 11), pronounced the acts of the Richmond convention null and
void, declared all the State offices vacant, and reorganized the
Government, with Francis H. Pierpont as governor. A legislature,
consisting of members that had been chosen on the 23d of May, met at
Wheeling on the 1st of July, and on the 9th it elected two United
States senators. The new State of Kanawha was formally declared
created in August. Its constitution was ratified by the people in May,
1862, and in December of that year it was admitted into the Union.
But, meanwhile, its original and appropriate name had been exchanged
for that of West Virginia.
The victory at Rich Mountain, announced in McClellan's triumphant and
resounding words, came in good time to arrest the depression caused by
an unfortunate affair of a few weeks before, at Big Bethel, on June
10th; though the popular clamor for aggressive warfare did not cease,
but was even now driving the army into a premature advance on Manassas
and the battle of Bull Run, for which the preparations were
inadequate.
[Illustration: GENERAL BEN McCULLOCH, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: GENERAL J. B. MAGRUDER, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: GENERAL STERLING PRICE, C. S. A.]
{46} [Illustration: BATTLE OF BIG BETHEL, VIRGINIA, JUNE 10, 1861.]
Big Bethel has been called the first battle of the war, though it was
subsequent to the affair of the "Philippi races," and at a later day
would not have been called a battle at all. But among its few
casualties there were numbered the deaths of Major Theodore Winthrop
and the youthful Lieut. John T. Greble, and the painful impression
caused by these losses converted the affair into a tragic national
calamity. The movement was a conception of Gen. B. F. Butler's, who
commanded at Fortress Monroe. Annoyed by the aggressions of a body of
Confederates, under General Magruder, encamped at Little Bethel, eight
miles north of Newport News, he sent an expedition to capture them. It
consisted of Col. Abram Duryea's Fifth New York Zouaves, with
Lieut.-Col. (afterward General) Gouverneur K. Warren second in command
(the Confederates greatly feared these "red-legged devils," as they
dubbed them), Col. Frederick Townsend's Third New York, Colonel
Bendix's Seventh New York Volunteers, the First and Second New York,
and detachments from other regiments, with two field-pieces worked by
regulars under Lieutenant Greble; Gen. E. W. Pierce in command.
Duryea's Zouaves were sent forward to attack from the rear; but a
dreadful mistake of identity led Bendix's men to fire into Townsend's
regiment, as these commands approached each other, which brought
Duryea back to participate in the supposed engagement in his rear, and
destroyed the chance of surprising the rebel camp. The {47}
Confederates abandoned Little Bethel, and took a strong position at
Big Bethel, where they easily repulsed the attack that was made, and
pursued the retreating Unionists until checked by the Second New York
Regiment.
An important preliminary to the battle of Bull Run was the operations
about Harper's Ferry in June and July, resulting, as they did, in the
release from that point of a strong Confederate reinforcement, which
joined Beauregard at Bull Run at a critical time, and turned the
fortunes of the day against the Union army.
Harper's Ferry, as we have seen, had been occupied by a Confederate
force under Stonewall Jackson, who became subordinate to the superior
rank of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston when that officer arrived on the
scene. On both sides a sentimental importance was given to the
occupation of Harper's Ferry, which was not warranted by its
significance as a military stronghold. It did, indeed, afford a
control of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, so long as the position
could be maintained. But it derived its importance in the public mind
from the fact that it had been chosen by John Brown as the scene of
his projected negro uprising in 1859, and was presumed from that to be
a natural fortress, a sort of Gibraltar, which, once gained, could be
held forever by a small though determined body of men. The Confederate
Government and military staff at Richmond so regarded it, and they
warned General Johnston that he must realize, in defending it, that
its abandonment would be depressing to the cause of the South. General
Patterson, whose army gathered in Pennsylvania was to attack it,
impressed on the War Department the paramount importance of a victory,
and predicted that the first great battle of the war, the results of
which would be decisive in the contest, would be fought at Harper's
Ferry. He begged for the means of success, and offered his life as the
price of a failure on his part. The Washington authorities, though
they did not exact the penalty, took him at his word as to the men and
means required, and furnished him with between eighteen and twenty-two
thousand men (variously estimated), sending him such commanders as
Major-General Sandford, of New York (who generously waived his
superior rank, and accepted a subordinate position), Fitz John Porter,
George Cadwalader, Charles P. Stone, and others. Both sides, then,
prepared for action at Harper's Ferry, as for a mighty struggle over
an important strategic position.
The Confederates were the first to realize that this was an error.
However desirable it might be to hold Harper's Ferry as the key to the
Baltimore and Ohio, and to Maryland, General Johnston quickly
discovered that, while it was secure enough against an attack in
front, across the Potomac, it was an easy capture for a superior force
that should cross the river above or below it, and attack it from the
Virginia side. For its defence, his force of six thousand five hundred
men would not suffice against Patterson's twenty thousand, and he
requested permission to withdraw to Winchester, twenty miles to the
southwest. This suggestion was most unpalatable to the Confederate
authorities, who understood well that the popular interpretation of
the movement would be detrimental to the cause. But the fear that
McClellan would join Patterson from West Virginia, and that the loss
of an army of six thousand five hundred would be even more depressing
than a retreat, they reluctantly consented to Johnston's plan. He
destroyed everything at Harper's Ferry that could be destroyed, on
June 13th and 14th; and when Patterson, after repeated promptings from
Washington, arrived there on the 15th, he found no determined enemy
and no mighty battle awaiting him, but only the barren victory of an
unopposed occupation of a ruined and deserted camp.
[Illustration: A RAILROAD BATTERY.]
CHAPTER V.
ARMY ORGANIZATION NORTH AND SOUTH.
CONFEDERATE ADVANTAGES--THE LEADING GENERAL OFFICERS--GRADUATES OF
WEST POINT JOIN THE CONFEDERACY--CAPITAL REMOVED FROM
MONTGOMERY--PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S CALL FOR SOLDIERS AND
SAILORS--SOUTHERN PRIVATEERS--"ON TO RICHMOND!"
Although up to this time no important engagements between the troops
had taken place, the war was actually begun. The Sumter affair had
been the signal for both sides to throw away subterfuge and disguise,
and it became thenceforth an open struggle for military advantage. The
South no longer pleaded State rights, but military necessity, for
seizing such Government posts and property as were within reach; the
North no longer acted under the restraint of hesitation to commit an
open breach, for the peace was broken irrevocably, and whatever it was
possible to do, in the way of defence or offence, was now become
politic.
The two contending powers were entering on the struggle under very
different conditions and with unequal advantages. Before taking up the
military operations which ensued, it will be interesting to look at
these conditions.
On both sides there were many experienced army and navy officers, who
had seen service, had been educated at the United States Military and
Naval Academies, and had either remained {48} in the service or,
having withdrawn to civil life, were prompt to offer their swords to
the side to which they adhered. Assuming the number and quality of
these officers to have been equally divided, there were several
respects in which the Confederates had the advantage in their
preliminary organization, apart from the studied care with which
disloyal cabinet officers had scattered the Federal regular army and
had stripped Northern posts of supplies and of trustworthy
commandants. President Lincoln came on from his Western home without
knowledge of war, acquaintance with military men, or familiarity with
military matters, and was immediately plunged into emergencies
requiring in the Executive an intimate knowledge of all three. He
became the titular commander-in-chief of an army already officered,
but not only ignorant as to whether he had the right man in the right
place, but powerless to make changes even had he known what changes to
make, by reason of the law and the traditions governing the
_personnel_ of the service, in which promotion and personal relations
were fixed and established. He found a military establishment that had
been running on a peace footing for more than a decade and was not
readily adaptable to war conditions; and officers in high command,
who, as their States seceded, followed them out of the Union, carrying
with them the latest official secrets and leaving behind them
vacancies which red-tape and tradition, and not the free choice of the
commander-in-chief, were to fill. His near advisers, particularly
those in whose hands were the details of military administration, were
scarcely better informed than himself, possessing political shrewdness
and undoubted loyalty, but none of the professional knowledge of which
he stood so sorely in need.
The President of the Southern Confederacy, on the other hand, was
Jefferson Davis, a man whose personal instrumentality in bringing
about the rebellion gave him both knowledge and authority; an educated
soldier and veteran of the Mexican war, in which he held a high
command; familiar, through long service as Secretary of War and on the
Senate Military Committee, not only with all the details of military
administration, but with the points of strength and weakness in the
military establishment of the enemy he was about to grapple with.
Placed at the head of a new government, with neither army nor navy,
nor law nor tradition for their control, he was free to exercise his
superior knowledge of military matters for the best possible use of
the men at his command in organizing his military establishment. None
of the political conditions surrounding him forced on President Davis
the appointment of political generals--an unavoidable evil which long
postponed the effectiveness of President Lincoln's army
administration. Whatever his judgment, guided by his professional
military experience, approved of, he was free to do. It was President
Lincoln's difficult task to learn something about military matters
himself, and then to untie or cut the Gordian knot of hampering
conditions; and if, in doing this, an occasional injustice was done to
an individual officer, it is a cause for wonder far less significant
than that by the exercise of his extraordinary faculty of common-sense
he progressed as rapidly as he did toward the right way of
accomplishing the ends he had in view.
[Illustration: FRANCIS H. PIERPONT, Governor of West Virginia.]
[Illustration: CAMP OF THE FORTY-FOURTH NEW YORK INFANTRY, NEAR
ALEXANDRIA, VA.]
The beginning of trouble in 1861 found the administration of the War
Department in the hands of Secretary Joseph Holt, who had succeeded
the secessionist Floyd, and was in turn succeeded by Simon Cameron,
the war secretary of Lincoln's first cabinet, who remained there until
the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton, the great "war secretary" of the
remaining years of the struggle. Cameron was a shrewd politician, but
was uninformed on military matters, for advice on which President
Lincoln relied principally on other members of the cabinet and on
General Scott. The cabinet of 1861 contained also John A. Dix, in the
Treasury--whence issued his celebrated "shoot him on the spot" {49}
despatch--who took a general's commission when he retired in favor of
Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury during most of the war.
Gideon Welles was Secretary of the Navy.
Among the staff officers of the army were Lorenzo Thomas,
Adjutant-General; E. D. Townsend, who as Assistant Adjutant-General
was identified with this important office throughout the war;
Montgomery C. Meigs, Quartermaster-General; and Joseph G. Totten,
Chief of Engineers.
The general in command of the army was Winfield Scott, whose conduct
of the Mexican war had made him a conspicuous military and political
figure, an able officer and a most loyal Unionist, but already
suffering from the infirmities of age, which soon compelled him to
relinquish to younger hands the command of the army. But until after
the battle of Bull Run, his was the directing mind. His immediate
subordinates were Brig.-Gens. John E. Wool, also a veteran in service;
William S. Harney, whose reluctance to take part in civil war soon
terminated his usefulness; and David E. Twiggs, who surrendered his
command to the Confederates in Texas, and going with the South, was
replaced by Edwin V. Sumner.
The command of the main Union force, organized from the volunteers who
were pouring into Washington, devolved on Irvin McDowell, a major in
the regular army, now promoted to be brigadier-general, who
established his headquarters at Alexandria, across the Potomac from
Washington, there directing the defence of the capital, and thence
advancing to Bull Run. In this command he succeeded Gen. Joseph K. F.
Mansfield. Under him, during this campaign, were many officers who
rose to eminence during the war. His corps commanders at Bull Run were
Gens. Daniel Tyler, David Hunter, Samuel P. Heintzelman, Theodore
Runyon, and D. S. Miles; and among the brigade commanders were Gens.
Erasmus D. Keyes, Robert C. Schenck, William T. Sherman, Israel B.
Richardson, Andrew Porter, Ambrose E. Burnside, William B. Franklin,
Oliver O. Howard, Louis Blenker, and Thomas A. Davies. Threatening the
approach to Richmond from the lower Chesapeake, was Gen. Benjamin F.
Butler, at Fortress Monroe.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL W. B. FRANKLIN.]
[Illustration: GENERAL DAVID HUNTER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH K. F. MANSFIELD.]
[Illustration: GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS.]
[Illustration: GENERAL SAMUEL P. HEINTZELMAN.]
Among the Confederate generals who prepared to defend Virginia, were
Robert E. Lee, then in command of the Virginia State troops, Samuel
Cooper, Joseph E. Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, James Longstreet,
Jubal A. Early, Richard S. Ewell, Thomas J. ("Stonewall") Jackson,
Robert S. Garnett, John C. Pegram, Benjamin Huger, John B. Magruder,
and others.
The seventy-five thousand troops called for in President Lincoln's
proclamation of April 15th, were three-months men. On the 3d of May,
1861, he issued another proclamation, calling for forty-two thousand
volunteers for three years, and authorizing the raising of ten new
regiments for the regular army. He also called for eighteen thousand
volunteer seamen for the navy. The ports of the Southern coasts had
been already (April 19th) declared in a state of blockade, and it was
not only desirable but absolutely necessary to make the blockade
effectual. The Confederate Government had issued letters of marque for
privateers almost from the first; and its Congress had authorized the
raising of an army of one hundred thousand volunteers for one year.
When Congress convened on the 4th of July, President Lincoln asked for
four hundred thousand men and four hundred million dollars, to
suppress the insurrection; and in response he was authorized to call
for five hundred thousand men and spend five hundred million dollars.
What he had already done was approved and declared valid; and on the
15th of July the House of Representatives, with but five dissenting
votes, passed a resolution (introduced by John A. McClernand, a
Democrat) pledging any amount of money and any number of men that
might be necessary to restore the authority of the National
Government.
The seat of the Confederate Government was removed from Montgomery,
Ala., to Richmond, Va., on the 20th of May.
{50} [Illustration: BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY 21, 1861.]
{51} [Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL McDOWELL AND STAFF.]
CHAPTER VI.
THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.
THE ADVANCE INTO VIRGINIA--FORTIFICATIONS ON THE POTOMAC--POPULAR
DEMAND FOR OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS--CONFEDERATES FORTIFY MANASSAS
JUNCTION--THEIR LINE OF DEFENCE AT BULL RUN--McDOWELL'S DEPARTURE FOR
BULL RUN--A CHANGE OF PLAN--FIGHTING AT BLACKBURN'S FORD--DETOUR FROM
CENTREVILLE AND FLANK ATTACK FROM SUDLEY FORD--UNION SUCCESS IN THE
MORNING--DISASTROUS BATTLE OF THE AFTERNOON--LOSS OF THE BATTERIES--A
REAR ATTACK--DISORDER AND RETREAT--RESULTS OF THE BATTLE.
The first serious collision of the opposing armies occurred at Bull
Run, in Virginia, on July 18 and 21, 1861. It was a battle between raw
troops on both sides, and at a later period in the war a few well-led
veterans might have turned it at almost any time into a victory for
the losers and a defeat for those who won it. It developed the
strength and weakness of the men, the commanders, and the organization
of the army. It opened the eyes of the North to what was before them
in this conflict, and it gave {52} pause to military operations for a
better preparation. Up to Bull Run, the war might have been terminated
by a single great battle. After it, the struggle was certain to be a
long one.
[Illustration: FAIRFAX COURT-HOUSE.]
Up to May 24th, the Union troops had been kept strictly on the
Washington side of the Potomac. On that date, Gen. Joseph K. F.
Mansfield sent three columns of troops across the river into Virginia,
to drive back the Confederate pickets which were within sight of the
capital. From Washington to Alexandria, a few miles down the river, a
line of fortifications was established, which, with the approaches to
Washington from Maryland in Union control, seemed to assure the safety
of the city.
Troops from all the loyal States had continued to arrive at
Washington. The ninety thousand men who had responded to the first
call of the President had enlisted for three months. While these
troops predominated in the service it was not the expectation of
General Scott to undertake any serious operations. He proposed to
utilize these for the defence of Washington; the garrisoning of
Fortress Monroe, with possibly the recovery of the Norfolk Navy Yard;
the reinforcement of Patterson at Harper's Ferry and of McClellan in
the Shenandoah; and the control of the border States. When the half
million of three-years men called out in May and July should be
equipped with the half billion of dollars voted by Congress, and
instructed and drilled during a summer encampment, larger military
operations were to ensue; but not before.
But after the mishap to Butler's men at Big Bethel, and the ambushing
of a troop train at Vienna, near Washington, there was a public demand
for some kind of vigorous action which should retrieve the national
honor, tarnished and unavenged since Sumter, and should justify the
military establishment, which to the non-military mind seemed already
enormous. Brigadiers and gold lace and regiments playing "high jinks"
in their camps convenient to the attractions of Washington became a
by-word, and "On to Richmond!" became the cry of those who wanted to
see some fighting, now there was an army, and wanted to see secession
rebuked and rebellion nipped in the bud. Under the stimulus of this
public demand, which, however erroneous from a military point of view,
could not be ignored, a forward movement was decided on.
The Confederate forces were established on what was known as the
"Alexandria line," with its base at Manassas Junction, about thirty
miles east of Alexandria. Early in June, General Beauregard, still
wearing the laurels of his Sumter victory, was sent in person to
command, relieving the Confederate General Bonham. Manassas Junction
stood on a high plateau, dropping off toward the east into the valley
of the little stream called Bull Run, running from northwest to
southeast some three miles distant. The Confederates had begun to
intrench and fortify this elevated position; but Beauregard's quick
and educated military judgment at once decided that a better defence
could be made by moving his line forward to Bull Run, where the stream
afforded a natural barrier, except at certain fords, where his men
could be posted more effectively. Here he established himself, the
right of his line being at Union Mills Ford, nearly due east from
Manassas, and his left just above Stone Bridge, by which Bull Run is
crossed on the Warrenton Turnpike leading from {53} Centreville to
Gainesville. His commanders (after Johnston's arrival), from left to
right, were: Ewell, supported by Holmes; Jones and Longstreet,
supported by Early; Bonham, supported by Jackson; Cocke, supported by
Bee, each guarding a ford; and, at Stone Bridge, Evans. The Bull Run
line of defence requiring a larger force, Beauregard was liberally
reinforced from Richmond, so that his army numbered nearly twenty-two
thousand men and twenty-nine guns, before he was joined by Johnston
with about eight thousand men and twenty-eight guns.
Against this force advanced General McDowell, who had succeeded
Mansfield in command of operations south of the Potomac, with
something less than twenty-nine thousand men and forty-nine guns. With
his army under the commanders already named, he was ready and started
from Washington on July 16th, within a week of the date he had
planned, notwithstanding the slow operations of the Government's
military machinery, rusted by long disuse and not as yet in smooth
working order. The departure of his column was a strange spectacle.
The novelty of warfare and the general impression that the war was to
be ended with one grand, brilliant stroke--an impression largely
derived from the confidence at headquarters that the expedition would
be successful--turned the march into a sort of festive picnic.
Citizens accompanied the column on foot; Congressmen, newspaper
correspondents, sightseers, went along in carriages. There was a
tremendous turnout of non-combatants, eager to see the finishing
stroke to the rebellion. These were destined to share in the general
rout that followed and to come pouring back into the security of
Washington, all mixed in with the disorganized and flying troops. One
member of Congress, John A. Logan, of Illinois, a veteran of the
Mexican War, followed the army from the House of Representatives,
armed with a musket, and began as a civilian a participation in the
four years' fighting that brought him high rank, great honor, and a
distinguished reputation.
[Illustration: UNITED STATES MILITARY RAILROAD, BULL RUN.]
[Illustration: GENERAL AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE.]
[Illustration: GENERAL LOUIS BLENKER.]
On July 18th the army arrived in front of the enemy at Bull Run. An
army of seasoned campaigners, accustomed to self-denial, would have
done better, for they would not have stopped along the way to pick
blackberries and change stale water for fresh in their canteens at
every wayside well and spring. The plan agreed upon by Generals Scott
and McDowell had been for an attempt to turn the enemy's right from
the south; and to conceal his purpose McDowell ordered an advance,
directly along the Warrenton Turnpike, on Centreville, as though that
were to be his point of attack. But Washington was full of Confederate
spies, and Beauregard was well informed as to what to expect. Tyler,
whose division led the way, found Centreville evacuated and the enemy
strongly posted along Bull Run, as he could see from his elevated
position at Centreville, looking across the Bull Run valley with
Manassas looming up beyond. It was McDowell's intention that Tyler
should limit himself to making the feint on Centreville, without
bringing on any engagement, while diverging to the left behind him the
main army attacked Beauregard's right. But neither Tyler nor his men
were as yet schooled to find an enemy flying before their advance and
not yearn to be after them for a fight. Discovering the position of
the enemy across the stream at Blackburn's and Mitchell's fords, he
brought up some field pieces and sent forward his skirmishers; and as
the enemy continued to retire before his successive increase of both
troops and artillery, he presently found that the reconnoissance he
had been ordered to make had assumed the proportions of a small
engagement with the brigades of Bonham, Longstreet, and Early, which
he drove back in confusion, with a loss of about sixty men on each
side.
After this engagement, McDowell abandoned his attack from the south in
favor of a flank attack from the north, where the roads were better.
His {54} army was now concentrated at Centreville, whither the
commanders had been attracted by the sound of the engagement at
Blackburn's Ford, and there he divulged to his commanders the new plan
of attack. Richardson's brigade was continued at Blackburn's Ford to
keep up the appearance of an attack in front, and the next two days,
Friday and Saturday, July 19th and 20th, were occupied in looking for
an undefended crossing of Bull Run north of the Confederate line, in
resting the men, and provisioning them from the supply trains, which
were slow in reaching the rendezvous at Centreville.
[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO BULL RUN.]
The engineers reported late on Saturday, the 20th, a practicable
crossing of the stream at Sudley Ford, accessible by a detour of five
or six miles around a bend of Bull Run turning sharply from the west.
McDowell determined to send Hunter's and Heintzelman's divisions to
make this flank movement over a route which took them north, then
west, and brought them upon the enemy's left, as they crossed Bull Run
at Sudley Ford and moved due south by the Sudley Road toward Manassas.
Meanwhile Tyler was ordered to proceed from Centreville to the Stone
Bridge at Bull Run, there to feign attack until he heard Hunter and
Heintzelman engaged, when he would cross and join their attack on the
Confederate left, or push on to Gainesville, west of Bull Run, and
head off Johnston, who McDowell was certain was coming from
Winchester, with or without "Patterson on his heels," as General Scott
had promised.
But during McDowell's enforced two days of inactivity at Centreville
there had been portentous happenings within the Confederate lines.
Johnston had already left Winchester on the 18th; one detachment of
his army had joined Beauregard on the morning of the 20th; Johnston in
person arrived at noon with a second detachment, and the remainder of
his force arrived on the 21st in time to take part in the battle, the
brunt of which was borne by Johnston's army, which McDowell had hoped
not to meet at all! Johnston, as the ranking officer, assumed command,
and he and Beauregard turned their attention to defending themselves
against the attack now initiated by McDowell.
Hunter and Heintzelman, whose brigades were {55} commanded by Cols.
Andrew Porter, Ambrose E. Burnside, W. B. Franklin, Orlando B.
Willcox, and Oliver O. Howard, reached Sudley Ford after an
unexpectedly long march, and crossed it unopposed about nine in the
morning. Tyler, who had been expected to hold the Confederate Evans at
Stone Bridge by a sharp attack, betrayed the incidental character of
his demonstration by the feebleness of his operations; and Evans,
suspecting from this an attack from some other direction, was soon
rendered certain of it by the clouds of dust which he saw toward the
north. Immediately, of his own motion and in the absence of orders
from his superiors, he informed his neighboring commander, Cocke, of
his intention, and leaving only a few companies to deceive Tyler at
Stone Bridge, he turned his command to the rear and marched it to a
strong position on Young's Branch, where he faced the enemy
approaching from his left. This action has commended itself to
military critics as the finest tactical movement of the entire battle.
Evans was even momentarily successful in repulsing the troops of
Burnside's brigade, which he pursued for a short distance. At the
outset, General Hunter was severely wounded. Porter came to Burnside's
support, and Bee and Bartow, of Johnston's army, aligned their
brigades with that of Evans. There was sharp fighting for two hours;
but the arrival of fresh supports for Burnside and Porter, including
Sykes' regiment of regulars and the regular batteries of Griffin and
Ricketts, and the extension of the Union line by Heintzelman's
division beyond the Sudley Road, proved too much for the Confederates,
who retreated downhill out of the Young's Branch valley before a Union
charge down the Sudley Road. But they had checked the advance long
enough for Johnston to order a general movement to strengthen the new
line of defence which was then formed on a hill half a mile south of
Young's Branch, under the direction of Jackson, who with his own
brigade of Johnston's army met and rallied the retreating
Confederates. It was right here that Stonewall Jackson acquired his
_sobriquet_. To encourage his own men to stop and rally, Bee called
out to them: "Look at Jackson's brigade! It stands there like a stone
wall." And Jackson never was called by his own name again, but only
"Stonewall." Tyler did send Keyes' and W. T. Sherman's brigades across
Bull Run by the ford above Stone Bridge in time to join in the
pursuit, Sherman pushing toward Hunter and Keyes remaining near Bull
Run; but Schenck's brigade he did not send across at all.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: GENERAL JAMES LONGSTREET, C. S. A.]
As a result of the morning's fighting the whole Union line was pushed
forward past the Warrenton Turnpike, extending from Keyes' position on
Bull Run to where Porter and Willcox were posted, west of the Sudley
Road. The Union troops felt not only that they had the advantage, but
that they had won the battle; and this confidence, added to the fact
that they were weary with marching and fighting, prepared them ill to
meet the really serious work of the day, which was still before them.
{56} [Illustration: INTERIOR OF CONFEDERATE FORTIFICATION.]
{57} [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT PATTERSON.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL E. B. TYLER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES GRIFFIN.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL O. O. HOWARD.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES B. RICKETTS.]
Johnston and Beauregard came up in person to superintend the
dispositions for defence. The line was formed on the edge of a
semicircular piece of woods, with the concave side toward the Union
advance, on an elevation some distance south of the first position.
The Confederate artillery commanded both the Warrenton Turnpike and
the Sudley Road (the latter passing through the woods), and the
plateau between them was subject to a cross fire. Across this plateau
the Union advance had to be made, and it was made under great
disadvantages. His effective fighting force reduced by casualties, by
the retirement of Burnside's brigade after a hard morning's fighting,
and by the separation from the main army of Keyes' brigade, which made
an ineffectual attempt to cross Young's Branch and get at the enemy's
right, McDowell was no longer superior in numbers, as in the morning.
His weary men had not only to fight, but to advance on an enemy in
position--to advance over open ground on an enemy concealed in the
woods, invisible even while their sharpshooters picked off his gunners
at their batteries. The formation of the ground gave him no
comprehensive view of the whole field, except such as he got by going
to the top of the Henry house, opposite the Confederate centre; nor
could his subordinate commanders see what the others were doing, and
there was a good deal of independence of action among the Union troops
throughout the remainder of the day.
For his afternoon attack on the new Confederate position McDowell had
under his immediate control the brigades of Andrew Porter, Franklin,
Willcox, and Sherman, with Howard in reserve, back of the Warrenton
Turnpike. These commands were not available up to their full strength,
for they included a good many regiments and companies that had lost
their organization. From their sheltered positions along the sunken
turnpike and the valley of Young's Branch he brought them forward for
an attack on the centre and left of the enemy. With splendid courage
they advanced over the open ground and made a succession of determined
assaults, which carried a portion of the position attacked. About the
middle of the afternoon the regular batteries of Captains Griffin and
Ricketts were brought forward to a position near the Henry house. But
though their effectiveness from this point was greatly increased, so
also was their danger; and after long and courageous fighting by both
infantry and artillery, it was the conflict that surged about these
guns that finally gave the victory to the Confederates.
{58} [Illustration: STONE HOUSE, WARRENTON TURNPIKE, BULL RUN.]
[Illustration: THE NEW HENRY HOUSE, BULL RUN. Showing the Union
monument of the first battle.]
Two regiments had been detailed to support the batteries, but the
inexperience of these regiments was such that they were of little
service. The batteries had scarcely taken up their advanced position
when the gunners began to drop one by one under the fire of
sharpshooters concealed in the woods before them. Sticking pluckily to
their work, the artillerymen did effective firing, but presently the
temptation to secure guns so inefficiently protected by supporting
infantry proved strong enough to bring Confederate regiments out from
the cover of the woods; and keeping out of the {59} line of fire, they
stole nearer and nearer to the batteries. A Confederate cavalry charge
scattered one of the supporting regiments, and a volley from a
Confederate regiment, that had gotten up to within seventy yards, sent
the other off in confused retreat. So close an approach had been
permitted by Captain Griffin under the mistaken impression,
communicated to him by the chief of artillery, that the troops
approaching so steadily were his own supports. He realized his error
too late; and when a volley of musketry had taken off nearly every one
of his gunners, had killed Lieutenant Ramsay, and seriously wounded
Captain Ricketts, the Confederates rushed in and captured the guns.
[Illustration: STAND OF THE UNION TROOPS AT THE HENRY HOUSE.]
Then ensued a series of captures and recaptures of these same guns,
first by one side and then by the other. At the same time there was a
general fight all along the line of battle, which did not dislodge the
Confederates while it wore out the Union troops. They lacked both the
experience and the discipline necessary to keep them together after a
repulse. The men lost track of their companies, regiments, brigades,
officers, in the confusion, and little by little the army became
disorganized, and that at a time when there was still remaining among
them both strength and courage enough to have won after all. It has
been said that at one time there were twelve thousand individual
soldiers wandering about the field of battle who did not know "where
they belonged." The strong individuality of the early recruits of the
war was in a measure accountable for this. They had not as yet become
machines, as good soldiers must be. "They were not soldiers," said one
officer, "but citizens--independent sovereigns--in uniform." It was
impossible, of course, to get strong, concerted action out of such a
mass-meeting of individual patriots; and the constant disintegration
of regiments and brigades gradually reduced the effectiveness of
McDowell's army.
Meanwhile the Confederate reinforcements from the lower fords were
arriving. The remainder of Johnston's army from Winchester had already
arrived; and though the Union army did not know that they had been
fighting the biggest half of Johnston's army all day, they realized
that they were dealing with Johnston now. During the fight of the day
the Union right wing had faced around almost to the east, and the
combined attack of the new Johnston brigades and Early's
reinforcements from the fords was delivered almost squarely on the
rear of its right flank.
A blow so strong and from such an unexpected quarter had a serious
effect on the troops that received it. But not as yet was the
conviction of defeat general in the Union army. The contest had been
waged with such varying results in different parts of the field, one
side successful here, another there, and again and again the local
advantage turning the other way under some bold movement of an
individual command, that neither army realized the full significance
of what had happened. The Unionists had begun the afternoon's work
{60} under the impression that the victory was already theirs and that
they had only to push on and secure the fruits of it. In some parts of
the field their successes were such that it seemed as though the
Confederate line was breaking. Many of the Confederates had the same
idea of it, and Jefferson Davis, coming up from Manassas on his way
from Richmond, full of anxiety for the result, found the roads almost
impassable by reason of crowds of Confederates escaping to the rear.
His heart sank within him. "Battles are not won," he remarked, "where
two or three unhurt men are seen leading away one that is wounded."
But he continued on, only to find that the field from which his men
were retreating had been already won, and that McDowell's army were in
full retreat.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL JUBAL A. EARLY, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL BARNARD E. BEE, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE HENRY HOUSE.]
McDowell himself did not know how the retreat had begun. He had not
ordered it, for he inferred from the lull in the fighting that his
enemy was giving way. But it had dawned on the men, first that their
victory was in doubt, then that the Confederates had a fighting
chance, and finally that the battle was lost; and by a sort of common
consent they began to make their way to the rear in retreat. A curious
thing happened which dashed McDowell's hope of making a stand at Stone
Bridge. Although the Warrenton Turnpike was open, and Stone Bridge had
been freed from the obstructing abattis of trees, offering a straight
road from the battlefield to the rendezvous at Centreville, the troops
all withdrew from the field by the same directions from which they had
approached it in the morning. And so, while the brigades near the
Stone Bridge and the ford above it crossed directly over Bull Run, the
commands which had made the long detour in the morning made the same
detour in retreat, adding many miles to the route they had to travel
to reach Centreville.
McDowell accepted the situation, and made careful dispositions to
protect the rear of his retreating army. Stuart's pursuing cavalry
found a steady line of defence which they could not break. The
rearmost brigades were in such good order that the Confederate
infantry dared not strike them. The way over the Stone Bridge was well
covered by the reserves east of Bull Run, under Blenker. But now
occurred an incident that greatly retarded the orderly retreat and
broke it into confusion.
There had been some fighting during the day between the reserves left
east of Bull Run and Confederate troops who sallied out from the lower
fords. As a result of this a Confederate battery had been posted on an
elevation commanding the Warrenton {61} Turnpike where it crossed Cub
Run, a little stream between Bull Run and Centreville, on a suspension
bridge. When the retreating brigades which had made the long detour
from Sudley Ford reached this bridge they were met with a shower of
fire from this battery. Finally, the horses attached to a wagon were
killed, and the wagon was overturned right on the bridge, completely
obstructing it. The remainder of the wagon train was reduced to ruin,
and the thirteen guns which had been brought safely out of the battle
were captured. A panic ensued. Horses were cut from wagons, even from
ambulances bearing wounded men, and ridden off. Even while McDowell
and his officers were deliberating as to the expediency of making a
stand at Centreville, the disorganized men took the decision into
their own hands and made a bee-line for Washington.
Portions of the army, however, maintained their organization, and
partly successful attempts were made to stop the flight. The
Confederates had but little cavalry, and were in no condition to
pursue. There was a black-horse regiment from Louisiana that undertook
it, but came upon the New York Fire Zouaves, and in a bloody fight
lost heavily. The retreat was well conducted; but this was due largely
to the fact that the Confederates were too exhausted and too fearful
to continue the pursuit. It is not to be denied that on both sides, in
the battle of Bull Run, there was displayed much bravery, and not a
little skill. Never before, perhaps, was such fighting done by
comparatively raw and inexperienced men.
It was a motley crowd that thronged the highway to the capital.
Intermixed were soldiers and civilians, privates and members of
Congress, worn-out volunteers and panic-stricken non-combatants,
"red-legged-devil" Zouaves, gray-coated Westerners, and regular army
blue-coats. They pressed right on, fearing the pursuit which,
unaccountably, did not follow. Some of the men since morning had
marched twenty-five miles, from Centreville and back, and that night
they marched twenty miles more to Washington.
All the next day the defeated army straggled into Washington
city--bedraggled, foot-sore, wounded, hungry, wet through with the
drizzling rain, exhausted. The citizens turned out to receive and
succor them, and the city became a vast soup-house and hospital. On
the streets, in the shelter of house-areas, under stoops, men dropped
down and slept.
[Illustration: FORT LINCOLN, WASHINGTON, D. C.]
{62}
CHAPTER VII.
EFFECTS OF THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.
PARALYSIS OF THE UNION CAUSE--FORTIFYING THE APPROACHES TO THE
CAPITAL--WHY THE CONFEDERATES DID NOT ATTEMPT THE CAPTURE OF
WASHINGTON--EFFECT OF UNION DEFEAT IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE--SLIDELL AND
MASON--CAPTURE OF THE "TRENT"--HENRY WARD BEECHER IN ENGLAND--SYMPATHY
OF THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT FOR THE NORTH.
The battle of Bull Run was undertaken with precipitation, fought with
much valor on both sides, and terminated with present ruin to the
Federal cause. For the moment the Union seemed to stagger under the
blow. On the Confederate side there was corresponding exultation; a
spirit of defiance flamed up throughout the South.
It is in the nature of things that the initial battle of a war
consolidates and crystallizes the sentiments of both the contestants.
After Bull Run there was no further hope of peaceable adjustment, but
only an increasing and settled purpose to fight out with the sword the
great issue which was dividing the Union. For a brief season after the
battle there was a paralysis of the Union cause. It was as much as the
authorities at Washington could do to make themselves secure against
further disaster. Indeed, the Potomac River now gave positive comfort
to the Government, since it furnished in some measure a natural
barrier to the northward progress of the exultant Confederates.
Immediate steps were taken to fortify the approaches to the capital;
but while this work was in progress the Government seemed to stand,
like an alarmed sentry, on the Long Bridge of the Potomac.
[Illustration: EXAMINING PASSES AT THE GEORGETOWN FERRY.]
[Illustration: FORT IN FRONT OF WASHINGTON.]
In the South as well as in the North there was much surprise that the
Confederates did not pursue the routed Union forces at the battle of
Bull Run and capture Washington. Perhaps Gen. Joseph E. Johnston is
the best witness on this subject on the Southern side. He says: "All
the military conditions, we knew, forbade an attempt on Washington.
The Confederate army was more disorganized by victory than that of the
United States by defeat. The Southern volunteers believed that the
objects of the war had been accomplished by their victory, and that
they had achieved all their country required of them. Many, therefore,
in ignorance of their military obligations, left the army--not to
return.... Exaggerated ideas of the victory, prevailing among our
troops, cost us more than the Federal army lost by defeat." In writing
this passage General Johnston probably took no account of the effect
produced in Europe. The early narratives sent there, in which the
panic of retreat was made the principal figure, gave the impression
that the result arose from constitutional cowardice in Northern men
and invincible courage in Southerners. They also gave the impression
that the Confederates were altogether superior in generalship; and the
effect was deep and long-enduring. The most notable of these was by a
correspondent of the London _Times_, who had apparently been sent
across the Atlantic for the express purpose of writing down the
Republic, writing up the South, and enlisting the sympathies of
Englishmen for the rebellion. In his second letter from Charleston
(April 30, 1861) he had written that men of all classes in South
Carolina declared to him: "If we could only get one of the royal race
of England to rule over us, we should be content." "The New Englander
must have something to persecute; and as he has hunted down all his
Indians, burnt all his witches, persecuted all his opponents to the
death, he invented abolitionism {63} as the sole resource left to him
for the gratification of his favorite passion. Next to this motive
principle is his desire to make money dishonestly, trickily, meanly,
and shabbily. He has acted on it in all his relations with the South,
and has cheated and plundered her in all his dealings, by villanous
tariffs." Many an Englishman, counting his worthless Confederate
bonds, and trying to hope that he will yet receive something for them,
knows he would never have made that investment but for such writing as
this, and the accounts from the same pen of the battle of Bull Run.
At the North the spectacle of McDowell's army streaming back in
disorder to the national capital produced first a shock of surprise,
then a sense of disgrace, and then a calm determination to begin the
war over again. It was well expressed by a Methodist minister at a
camp-meeting in Illinois, the Rev. Henry Cox. The news of the battle
came while he was preaching, and he closed his sermon with the words:
"Brethren, we'd better adjourn this camp-meeting and go home and
drill."
The effect of this over-discussed battle upon the more confident and
boastful of the Southerners was perhaps fairly expressed by an
editorial utterance of one of their journals, the Louisville, Ky.,
_Courier_: "As our Norman kinsmen in England, always a minority, have
ruled their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present
day, so have we, the 'slave oligarchs,' governed the Yankees till
within a twelvemonth. We framed the Constitution, for seventy years
moulded the policy of the government, and placed our own men, or
'Northern men with Southern principles,' in power. On the 6th of
November, 1860, the Puritans emancipated themselves, and are now in
violent insurrection against their former owners. This insane holiday
freak will not last long, however; for, dastards in fight and
incapable of self-government, they will inevitably again fall under
the control of a superior race. A few more Bull Run thrashings will
bring them once more under the yoke, as docile as the most loyal of
our Ethiopian chattels."
[Illustration: THE "SAN JACINTO" STOPPING THE "TRENT."]
{64} [Illustration: FORTIFICATION IN FRONT OF WASHINGTON.]
France and England had made all haste to recognize the Confederates as
belligerents, but had not granted them recognition as an established
nation, and never did. There was a constant fear, however, that they
would; and the Confederate Government did its utmost to bring about
such recognition. Messrs. James M. Mason, of Virginia, and John
Slidell, of Louisiana, were sent out by that Government, as duly
accredited ministers to London and Paris, in 1861. They escaped the
blockaders at Charleston, reached Havana, and there embarked on the
British mail steamer _Trent_ for Europe. But Capt. Charles Wilkes (who
had commanded the celebrated exploring expedition in Antarctic waters
twenty years before) was on the watch for them with the United States
steam frigate _San Jacinto_, overhauled the _Trent_ in the Bahama
Channel (November 8), took off the Confederate commissioners, and
allowed the steamer to proceed on her way. He carried his prisoners to
Boston, and they were incarcerated in Fort Warren. This action, for
which Wilkes {65} received the thanks of Congress, was denounced as an
outrage on British neutrality. The entire British public bristled up
as one lion, and their Government demanded an apology and the
liberation of the prisoners. The American public was unable to see any
way out of the dilemma, and was considering whether it would choose
humiliation or a foreign war, when our Secretary of State, William H.
Seward, solved the problem in a masterly manner. In his formal reply
he discussed the whole question with great ability, showing that such
detention of a vessel was justified by the laws of war, and there were
innumerable British precedents for it; that Captain Wilkes conducted
the search in a proper manner; that the commissioners were contraband
of war; and that the commander of the _Trent_ knew they were
contraband of war when he took them as passengers. But as Wilkes had
failed to complete the transaction in a legal manner by bringing the
_Trent_ into port for adjudication in a prize court, it must be
repudiated. In other words, by his consideration for the interests and
convenience of innocent persons, he had lost his prize. In summing up,
Mr. Seward said: "If I declare this case in favor of my own
Government, I must disavow its most cherished principles, and reverse
and forever abandon its most essential policy.... We are asked to do
to the British nation just what we have always insisted all nations
ought to do to us." The commissioners were released, and sailed for
England in January; but the purpose of their mission had been
practically thwarted. This was a remarkable instance of eating one's
cake and keeping it at the same time.
[Illustration: CHARLES A. DANA, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR.]
[Illustration: JAMES MURRAY MASON.]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)]
[Illustration: JOHN SLIDELL.]
But though danger of intervention was thus for the time averted, and
the relations between the British Government and our own remained
nominally friendly, so far as moral influence and bitterness of
feeling could go the Republic had no more determined enemies in the
cotton States than in the heart of England. The aristocratic classes
rejoiced at anything that threatened to destroy democratic government
or make its stability doubtful. They confidently expected to see our
country fall into a state of anarchy like that experienced so often by
the Spanish-American republics, and were willing to do everything they
safely could do to bring it about. The foremost English journals had
been predicting such a disaster ever since the beginning of the
century, had announced it as in progress when a British force burned
Washington in 1814, and now were surer of it than ever. Almost our
only friends of the London press were the _Daily News_ and _Weekly
Spectator_. The commercial classes, in a country that had fought so
many commercial wars, were of course delighted at the crippling of a
commercial rival whom they had so long hated and feared, no matter
what it might cost in the shedding of blood and the destruction of
social order. Among the working classes, though they suffered heavily
when the supply of cotton was diminished, we had many firm and devoted
friends, who saw and felt, however imperfectly, that the cause of free
labor was their own cause, no matter on which side of the Atlantic the
battlefield might lie.
To those who had for years endured the taunts of Englishmen who
pointed to American slavery and its tolerance in the American
Constitution, while they boasted that no slave could breathe on
British soil, it was a strange sight, when our country was at war over
the question, to see almost everything that had power {66} and
influence in England arrayed on the side of the slaveholders. A few
famous Englishmen--notably John Bright and Goldwin Smith--were true to
the cause of liberty, and did much to instruct the laboring classes as
to the real nature and significance of the conflict. Henry Ward
Beecher, then at the height of his powers, went to England and
addressed large audiences, enlightening them as to the real nature of
American affairs, concerning which most of them were grossly ignorant,
and produced an effect that was probably never surpassed by any
orator. The Canadians, with the usual narrowness of provincials, blind
to their own ultimate interests, were in the main more bitterly
hostile than the mother country.
Louis Napoleon, then the despotic ruler of France, was unfriendly to
the United States, and did his utmost to persuade the English
Government to unite with him in a scheme of intervention that would
probably have secured the division of the country. How far his plans
went beyond that result, can only be conjectured; but while the war
was still in progress (1864) he threw a French force into Mexico, and
established there an ephemeral empire with an Austrian archduke at its
head. That the possession of Mexico alone was not his object, is
suggested by the fact that, when the rebellion was subdued and the
secession cause extinct, he withdrew his troops from Mexico and left
the archduke to the fate of other filibusters.
The Russian Government was friendly to the United States throughout
the struggle. The imperial manifesto for the abolition of serfdom in
Russia was issued on March 3, 1861, the day before President Lincoln
was inaugurated, and this perhaps created a special bond of sympathy.
[Illustration: FORT MONROE.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL BENJAMIN F. BUTLER.]
[Illustration: COMMODORE S. H. STRINGHAM. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)]
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRST UNION VICTORIES.
FEDERAL NAVY--BLOCKADE-RUNNING--BALLS, POWDER, AND EQUIPMENTS BROUGHT
FROM ENGLAND FOR CONFEDERATES--THE FIRST HATTERAS EXPEDITION--CAPTURE
OF FORT HATTERAS AND FORT CLARK--CAPTURE OF HILTON HEAD AND PORT
ROYAL--GENERAL BURNSIDE'S EXPEDITION TO ROANOKE ISLAND--FEDERAL
VICTORY AT MILL SPRINGS, KY.--CAPTURE OF FORT HENRY BY FEDERAL FORCES
UNDER GENERAL GRANT--FALL OF FORT DONELSON--BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE.
When the war began, the greater part of the small navy of the United
States was in distant waters--off the coast of Africa, in the
Mediterranean, on the Asiatic station--and for some of the ships to
receive the news and return, many months were required. Twelve vessels
were at home--four in Northern and eight in Southern ports. The navy,
like the army, lost many Southern officers by resignation or
dismissal. About three hundred who had been educated {67} for its
service went over to the Confederacy; but none of them took with them
the vessels they had commanded. The Government bought all sorts of
merchant craft, mounting guns on some and fitting up others as
transports, and had gunboats built on ninety-day contracts. It was a
most miscellaneous fleet, whose principal strength consisted in the
weakness of its adversary. The first purpose was to complete the
blockade of Southern ports. Throughout the war this was never made so
perfect that no vessels could pass through; but it was gradually
rendered more and more effective. The task was simplified as the land
forces, little by little, obtained control of the shore, when a few
vessels could maintain an effective blockade from within. But an
exterior blockade of a port in the hands of the enemy required a large
fleet, operating beyond the range of the enemy's fire from the shore,
in a line so extended as to offer occasional opportunities for the
blockade-runners to slip past. But blockade-running became exceedingly
dangerous. Large numbers of the vessels engaged in it were captured or
driven ashore and wrecked. The profit on a single cargo that passed
either way in safety was very great, and special vessels for
blockade-running were built in England. The Confederate Government
enacted a law providing that a certain portion of every cargo thus
brought into its ports must consist of arms or ammunition, otherwise
vessel and all would be confiscated. This insured a constant supply;
and though the Southern soldier was often barefoot and ragged, and
sometimes hungry, he never lacked for the most improved weapons that
English arsenals could produce, nor was he ever defeated for want of
powder. A very large part of the bullets that destroyed the lives and
limbs of National troops were cast in England and brought over the sea
in blockade-runners. Clothing and equipments, too, for the Confederate
armies came from the same source. Often when a burial party went out,
after a battle, as they turned over one after another of the enemy's
slain and saw the name of a Birmingham manufacturer stamped upon his
buttons, it seemed that they must have been fighting a foreign foe. To
pay for these things, the Confederates sent out cotton, tobacco, rice,
and the naval stores produced by North Carolina forests. It was
obvious from the first that any movement that would shut off a part of
this trade, or render it more hazardous, would strike a blow at the
insurrection. Furthermore, Confederate privateers were already out,
and before the first expedition sailed sixteen captured merchantmen
had been taken into the ports of North Carolina.
[Illustration: ON BOARD THE FIRST BLOCKADE-RUNNER CAPTURED.]
Vessels could enter Pamlico or Albemarle Sound by any one of several
inlets, and then make the port of Newbern, Washington, or Plymouth;
and the first of several naval and military expeditions was fitted out
for the purpose of closing the most useful of these openings, Hatteras
Inlet, thirteen miles south of Cape Hatteras. Two forts had been
erected on the point at the northern side of this inlet, and the
project was to capture {68} them; but, so new was everybody to the art
of war, it was not at first intended to garrison and hold them.
The expedition, which originated with the Navy Department, was fitted
out in Hampton Roads, near Fortress Monroe, and was commanded by
Flag-officer Silas H. Stringham. It numbered ten vessels, all told,
carrying one hundred and fifty-eight guns. Two were transport
steamers, having on board about nine hundred troops commanded by Gen.
Benjamin F. Butler, and two were schooners carrying iron surf-boats.
It sailed on the 26th of August, 1861, with sealed orders, arrived at
its destination before sunset, and anchored off the bar. Early the
next morning an attempt was made to land the troops through the surf,
at a point three miles from the inlet, whence they might attack the
forts in the rear. But it was not very successful. The heavy surf
dashed the clumsy iron boats upon the shore, drenching the men,
wetting the powder, and endangering everything. About one-third of the
troops, however, were landed, with two field-guns, and remained there
under protection of the fire from the ships. The forts were garrisoned
by about six hundred men, and mounted twenty-five guns; but they were
not very strong, and their bomb-proofs were not constructed properly.
Stringham's flag-ship, the frigate _Minnesota_, led off in the attack,
followed by the _Susquehanna_ and _Wabash_, and the guns of the
smaller fort were soon silenced. The frigates were at such a distance
that they could drop shells into it with their pivot-guns, while the
shot from the fort could not reach them. Afterward the larger work,
Fort Hatteras, was bombarded, but with no practical effect, though the
firing was kept up till sunset. But meanwhile the troops that had
landed through the surf had taken possession of the smaller work, Fort
Clark. They also threw up a small earthwork, and with their
field-pieces fired upon some Confederate vessels that were in the
Sound. The next morning (the 28th) the frigates anchored within reach
of Fort Hatteras, and began a deliberate and steady bombardment. As
before, the shot from the fort fell short of the ships, and neither
could that from the smooth-bore broadside guns reach the fort; but the
pivot-guns and the rifled pieces of one vessel wrought great havoc.
One plunging shell went down through a ventilator and narrowly missed
exploding the magazine. At the end of three hours the fort
surrendered. Its defenders, who were commanded by Samuel Barron,
formerly of the United States navy, had suffered a loss of about fifty
in killed and wounded. They had been reinforced in the night, but a
steamer was seen taking away a load of troops just before the
surrender. The seven hundred prisoners were sent on board the
flag-ship and carried to New York. The victors had not lost a man.
There had been some intention of destroying the forts and blocking up
the channels of the inlet; but it was determined instead to leave a
garrison and establish a coaling station for the blockading fleet. Two
of the frigates remained in the Sound, and within a fortnight half a
dozen blockade-runners entered the inlet and were captured.
[Illustration: LAND FORCES STORMING THE FORTIFICATIONS AT FORT CLARK.
(Two views.)]
{69} [Illustration: FORTS HATTERAS AND CLARK, N. C., CAPTURED ON THE
29th OF AUGUST, 1861.]
[Illustration: GUNBOAT "MENDOTA."]
[Illustration: COMMANDER C. R. P. RODGERS. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)]
[Illustration: COMMANDER JOHN RODGERS. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)]
A much larger expedition sailed from Hampton Roads on one of the last
days of October. It consisted of more than fifty vessels--frigates,
gunboats, transports, tugs, steam ferry-boats, and schooners--carrying
twenty-two thousand men. The fleet was commanded by Flag-officer
Samuel F. Du Pont, the troops by Gen. Thomas W. Sherman (who must not
be confounded with Gen. William T. Sherman, famous for his march to
the sea). The expedition had been two months in preparation, and
though it sailed with sealed orders, and every effort had been made to
keep its destination secret, the information leaked out as usual, and
while it was on its way the Confederate Secretary of War telegraphed
to the Governor of South Carolina and the commander at Hilton Head
where to expect it. Bull's Bay, St. Helena, Port Royal, and Fernandina
had all been discussed, and the final choice fell upon Port Royal.
{70} [Illustration: BOMBARDMENT OF FORT WALKER, HILTON HEAD, PORT
ROYAL HARBOR, S. C., BY UNITED STATES FLEET, NOVEMBER 7, 1861.]
A tremendous gale was encountered on the passage; the fleet was
scattered, one {71} transport was completely wrecked, with a loss of
seven lives, one gunboat was obliged to throw her broadside battery
overboard, a transport threw over her cargo, and one store-ship was
lost. When the storm was over, only a single gunboat was in sight from
the flag-ship. But the fleet slowly came together again, and was
joined by some of the frigates that were blockading Charleston Harbor,
these being relieved by others that had come down for the purpose.
They arrived off the entrance to Port Royal harbor on the 5th and 6th
of November. This entrance was protected by two earthworks--Fort
Walker on Hilton Head (the south side), and Fort Beauregard on St.
Helena Island (the north side). These forts were about two and a half
miles apart, and were garrisoned by South Carolina troops, commanded
by Generals Drayton and Ripley. A brother of General Drayton commanded
a vessel in the attacking fleet.
On the morning of the 7th the order of battle was formed. The bar was
ten miles out from the entrance, and careful soundings had been made
by two gunboats, under the fire of three Confederate vessels that ran
out from the harbor. The main column consisted of ten vessels, led by
the flag-ship _Wabash_, and was ordered to attack Fort Walker. Another
column of four vessels was ordered to fire upon Fort Beauregard, pass
in, and attack the Confederate craft. All were under way soon after
breakfast, and were favored by a tranquil sea. The main column, a
ship's length apart, steamed in steadily at the rate of six miles an
hour, passing Fort Walker at a distance of eight hundred yards, and
delivering a fire of shells and rifled shot. Every gun in the fort
that could be brought to bear was worked as rapidly as possible, in a
gallant defence. After the line had passed the fort, it turned and
steamed out again, passing this time within six hundred yards, and
delivering fire from the guns on the other side of the vessels. Three
times they thus went around in a long ellipse, each time keeping the
fort under fire for about twenty minutes. Then the _Bienville_, which
had the heaviest guns, and was commanded by Captain Steadman, a South
Carolinian, sailed in closer yet, and delivered a fire that dismounted
several guns and wrought dreadful havoc. Meanwhile two or three
gunboats had taken a position from which they enfiladed the work, and
the flag-ship came to a stand at short range and pounded away
steadily. This was more than anything at that stage of the war could
endure, and from the mast-head the troops were seen streaming out of
the fort and across Hilton Head Island as if in panic. A flag of truce
was sent on shore, but there was no one to receive it, and soon after
two o'clock the National colors were floating over the fort. The
flanking column of vessels had attacked Fort Beauregard; and when the
commander of that work saw that Fort Walker was abandoned by its
defenders, he also retreated with his force. The Confederate vessels
escaped by running up a shallow inlet. The loss in the fleet was eight
men killed and twenty-three wounded; that of the Confederates, as
reported by their commander, was eleven killed and fifty-two wounded
or missing. General Sherman said: "Many bodies were buried in the
fort, and twenty or thirty were found half a mile distant." The road
across Hilton Head Island to a wharf whence the retreating troops were
taken to the mainland was strewn with arms and accoutrements, and two
howitzers were abandoned. The surgeon of the fort had been killed by a
shell and buried by a falling parapet. The troops were debarked and
took possession of both forts, repaired and strengthened the works,
formed an intrenched camp, and thus gave the Government a permanent
foothold on the soil of South Carolina.
[Illustration: MAP OF HILTON HEAD, SHOWING ITS TOPOGRAPHY.]
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL S. F. DU PONT.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL T. W. SHERMAN.]
Roanoke Island, N. C., lies between Roanoke Sound and Croatan Sound,
through which the channels lead to Albemarle Sound, giving access to
the interior of the State. This island, therefore, was fortified by
the Confederates, in order to command these approaches. The island is
about as large as that which is occupied by New York City--ten miles
long, and somewhat over two miles wide. In January, 1862, an
expedition was fitted out to capture it, and the command was given to
Gen. {72} Ambrose E. Burnside, who had about fifteen thousand men,
with a battery of six guns, carried on forty transports. The naval
part of the expedition, consisting of twenty-eight vessels, none of
them very large, carrying half a hundred guns, was under the immediate
command of Capt. Louis M. Goldsborough. Among his subordinate officers
were Stephen C. Rowan and John L. Worden. Burnside's three brigade
commanders--all of whom rose to eminence before the war was over--were
John G. Foster, Jesse L. Reno, and John G. Parke.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL T. F. DRAYTON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE.]
The expedition sailed from Hampton Roads on January 11, and almost
immediately encountered a terrific storm, by which the fleet was far
scattered, some of the vessels being carried out to sea and others
driven ashore. Five were wrecked, and a considerable number of men
were lost. By the 28th, all that had weathered the gale passed through
Hatteras Inlet into the sounds. The fortifications on the island
mounted forty guns; and in Croatan Sound a Confederate naval force of
eight vessels lay behind a line of obstructions across the channel.
On February 7th, the National gunboats, advancing in three columns,
shelled Fort Bartow--the principal fortification, on the west side of
the island--and the Confederate gunboats. The latter were soon driven
off, and in four hours the fort was silenced. The transports landed
the troops on the west side of the island, two miles south of the
fort, and in the morning of the 8th they began their march to the
interior, which was made difficult and disagreeable by swamps and a
lack of roads, and by a cold storm. On the 9th, the Confederate
skirmishers were driven in, and the main line was assaulted, first
with artillery, and then by the infantry. The Confederate left wing
was turned; and when the national troops had nearly exhausted their
ammunition they made a brilliant bayonet charge, led by Hawkins's New
York zouave regiment, and stormed the works, which were hastily
abandoned by the Confederates, who attempted to reach the northeast
shore and cross to Nag's Head, but more than two thousand of them were
captured. Fort Bartow still held out, but it was soon taken, its
garrison surrendering. In this action the national loss was two
hundred and thirty-five men killed or wounded in the army, and
twenty-five in the navy.
On the 10th, a part of the fleet, under Captain Rowan, pursued the
Confederate fleet up Albemarle Sound, and after a short engagement
defeated it. The Confederates set fire to their vessels and deserted
them, destroying all but one, which was captured. Rowan then took
possession of Elizabeth City and Edenton. The flying Confederates had
set fire to the former; but Rowan's men, with the help of the colored
people who remained, put out the fire and saved the city.
In this naval battle one of the first medals of honor won in the war
was earned by a sailor named John Davis. A shell thrown by the
Confederates entered one of the vessels and set fire to it. This was
near the magazine, and there was an open barrel of powder from which
Davis was serving a gun. He at once sat down on the barrel, and
remained there covering it until the fire was put out.
General Burnside next planned an expedition in the opposite direction,
to attack Newbern. His forces, numbering about eight thousand men,
sailed from Hatteras Inlet in the morning of March 12th, and that
evening landed within eighteen miles of Newbern. The next day they
marched toward the city, while the gunboats ascended the river and
shelled such fortifications and Confederate troops as could be seen.
The roads were miry, and the progress of the troops was slow. After
removing elaborate obstructions and torpedoes from the channel, the
fleet reached and silenced the forts near the city. The land forces
then came up and attacked the Confederates, who were about five
thousand strong and were commanded by General Branch. After hard
fighting, the works were carried, and the enemy fled. They burned the
railroad bridge over the Trent River, and set fire to the city; but
the sailors succeeded in extinguishing the flames in time to save the
greater part of the town. Burnside's loss in this battle was about
five hundred and fifty killed or wounded; that of the Confederates,
including prisoners, was about the same. Fifty-two guns and two
steamers were captured.
Ten days later, Beaufort, N. C., and Morehead City were occupied by
the National troops without opposition. Burnside's army was now broken
up into comparatively small bodies, holding the various places that
had been taken, which greatly diminished the facilities for
blockade-running on the North Carolina coast.
The year 1862 opened with indications of lively and decisive {73} work
west of the mountains, and many movements were made that cannot be
detailed here. One of the most gallant was in the region of the Big
Sandy River in eastern Kentucky, where Humphrey Marshall had gathered
a Confederate force of about two thousand five hundred (mostly
Kentuckians) at Paintville. Col. James A. Garfield (afterward
President), in command of one thousand eight hundred infantry and
three hundred cavalry, drove him out of Paintville, pursued him beyond
Prestonburg, came up with him at noon of January 10th, and fought him
till night, when Marshall retreated under cover of the darkness,
leaving his dead on the field.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JESSE L. RENO.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN G. PARKE.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN G. FOSTER.]
[Illustration: VICE-ADMIRAL S. C. ROWAN.]
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL LOUIS M. GOLDSBOROUGH.]
In the autumn of 1861 a Confederate force, under Gen. Felix K.
Zollicoffer, had been pushed forward by way of Knoxville to eastern
Kentucky, but was defeated at Camp Wildcat, October 21st, by seven
thousand men under General Schoepff, and fell back to Mill Springs at
the head of steamboat navigation on the Cumberland. Zollicoffer soon
crossed to the northern bank, and fortified a position at Beech Grove,
in the angle between the river and Fishing Creek. The National forces
in the vicinity were commanded by Gen. George H. Thomas, who watched
Zollicoffer so closely that when the latter was told by his superiors
he should not have crossed the river, he could only answer that it was
now too late to return. As Zollicoffer was only a journalist, with
more zeal than military knowledge, Gen. George B. Crittenden was sent
to supersede him. Thomas was slowly advancing, through rainy weather,
over heavy roads, to drive this force out of the State, and had
reached Logan's Cross-roads, within ten miles of the Confederate camp,
when Crittenden determined to move out and attack him. The battle
began early on the morning of January 19, 1862. Thomas was on the
alert, and when his outposts were driven in he rapidly brought up one
detachment after another and threw them into line. The attack was
directed mainly against the National left, where the fighting was
obstinate and bloody, much of the firing being at very close quarters.
Here Zollicoffer, thinking the Fourth Kentucky was a Confederate
regiment firing upon its friends, rode forward to correct the supposed
mistake, and was shot dead by its colonel, Speed S. Fry. When, at
length, the right of the Confederate line had been pressed back and
broken, a steady fire having been kept up on the centre, the Ninth
Ohio Regiment made a bayonet charge on its left flank, and the whole
line was broken and routed. The Confederates took refuge in their
intrenchments, where Thomas swiftly pursued and closely invested them,
expecting to capture them all the next morning. But in the night they
managed to cross the river, leaving behind their wounded, twelve guns,
all their horses, mules, and wagons, and a large amount of stores. In
the further retreat two of the Confederate regiments disbanded and
scattered to their homes, while a large number from other regiments
deserted individually. The National loss in killed and wounded was two
hundred and forty-six; that of the Confederates, four hundred and
seventy-one. Thomas received the thanks of the President for his
victory. This action is variously called the Battle of Fishing Creek
and the Battle of Mill Springs.
{74} [Illustration: BURNSIDE'S EXPEDITION OFF FORT MONROE.]
When Gen. Henry W. Halleck was placed in command of the Department of
Missouri, in November, 1861, he divided it into districts, giving to
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant the District of Cairo, {75} which included
Southern Illinois, the counties of Missouri south of Cape Girardeau,
and all of Kentucky that lies west of Cumberland River. Where the
Tennessee and the Cumberland enter Kentucky from the south they are
about ten miles apart, and here the Confederates had erected two
considerable works to command the rivers--Fort Henry on the east bank
of the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson on the west bank of the
Cumberland. They had also fortified the high bluffs at Columbus, on
the Mississippi, twenty miles below the mouth of the Ohio, and Bowling
Green, on the Big Barren. The general purpose was to establish a
military frontier with a strong line of defence from the Alleghany
Mountains to the Mississippi.
[Illustration: THE BURNSIDE EXPEDITION CROSSING HATTERAS BAR.]
[Illustration: ROANOKE ISLAND, N. C., AND CONFEDERATE FORTS.]
A fleet of iron-clad gunboats had been prepared by the United States
Government for service on the Western rivers, some of them being built
new, while others were altered freight-boats.
After a reconnoissance in force by Gen. C. F. Smith, General Grant
asked Halleck's permission to capture Fort Henry, and, after
considerable delay, received it on the 30th of January. That work was
garrisoned by three thousand men under Gen. Lloyd Tilghman. Its
position was strong, the ravines through which little tributaries
reached the river being filled with slashed timber and rifle-pits, and
swampy ground rendering approach from {76} the land side difficult.
But the work itself was rather poorly built, bags of sand being
largely used instead of a solid earth embankment.
On the morning of February 2d the fleet of four iron-clad and two
wooden gunboats, commanded by Flag-officer Andrew H. Foote, left
Cairo, steamed up the Ohio to Paducah, thence up the Tennessee, and by
daylight the next morning were within sight of the fort. Grant's land
force was to coöperate by an attack in the rear, but it did not arrive
in time. The gunboats moved up to within six hundred yards, and opened
a bombardment, to which the guns of the fort immediately responded,
and the firing was kept up for an hour. The _Essex_ received a shot in
her boiler, by which many men were wounded or scalded, including Capt.
William D. Porter, son of Commodore David Porter who had won fame in
another _Essex_ in the war of 1812-15. Otherwise the fleet, though
struck many times, was not seriously injured. On the other hand, the
fire from the gunboats knocked the sand-bags about, dismounted seven
guns, brought down the flagstaff, and, together with the bursting of a
rifled gun in the fort, created a panic. All but about one hundred of
the garrison fled, leaving General Tilghman with the sick and a single
company of artillerists; and, after serving a gun with his own hands
as long as possible, he ran up a white flag and surrendered. The
regret of the victors at the escape of the garrison was more than
counterbalanced by their gratification at the behavior of the gunboats
in their first serious trial. After the surrender, three of the
gunboats proceeded up the Tennessee River to the head of navigation,
destroyed the railroad bridge, and captured a large amount of stores.
[Illustration: SIEGE TRAIN, HILTON HEAD.]
[Illustration: SMITH'S PLANTATION, PORT ROYAL.]
[Illustration: PREPARING COTTON FOR GIN.]
[Illustration: BURNING OF AMERICAN MERCHANTMAN "HARRY BIRCH" IN
BRITISH CHANNEL, BY CONFEDERATE STEAMER "NASHVILLE."]
In consequence of the battle of Mill Springs and the fall of Fort
Henry, the Confederate Gen. Simon B. Buckner, who was at Bowling Green
with about ten thousand men, abandoned that place and joined his
forces to those in Fort Donelson. Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel, by a forced
march, promptly took possession of Bowling Green with National troops;
and General Grant immediately made dispositions for the capture of
Fort Donelson. This work, situated at a bend of the river, was on high
ground, enclosed about a hundred acres, and had also a strong
water-battery on the lower river {77} front. The land side was
protected by slashed timber and rifle-pits, as well as by the
naturally broken ground. The gunboats went down the Tennessee and up
the Cumberland, and with them a portion of Grant's force to be used in
attacking the water front. The fort contained about twenty thousand
men, commanded by Gen. John B. Floyd, who had been President
Buchanan's Secretary of War. Grant's main force left the neighborhood
of Fort Henry on the morning of February 12th, a portion marching
straight on Fort Donelson, while the remainder made a slight detour to
the south, to come up on the right, strike the Confederate left, and
prevent escape in that direction. They chose positions around the fort
unmolested that afternoon, and the next morning the fighting began.
After an artillery duel, an attempt was made to storm the works near
the centre of the line, but it was a failure and entailed severe loss.
The gunboats and the troops with them had not yet come up, and the
attack was suspended for the day. A cold storm set in, with sleet and
snow, and the assailants spent the night without shelter and with
scant rations, while a large part of the defenders, being in the
trenches, were equally exposed.
[Illustration: A FEDERAL CAVALRY CHARGE.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL FELIX K. ZOLLICOFFER, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: COLONEL SPEED S. FRY. (Afterward Brigadier-General.)]
Next morning the fleet appeared, landed the troops and supplies three
miles below the fort, and then moved up to attack the batteries. These
were not so easily disposed of as Fort Henry had been. It was a
desperate fight. The plunging shot from the fort struck the gunboats
in their most vulnerable part, and made ugly wounds. But they stood to
the work manfully, and had silenced one battery when the steering
apparatus of two of the gunboats was shot away, while a gun on another
had burst and the flag-officer was wounded. The flag-ship had been
struck fifty-nine times, and the others from twenty to forty, when
they all dropped down the stream and out of the fight. They had lost
fifty-four men killed or wounded. But the naval attack had served to
prevent an immediate sortie, and so perhaps ultimately saved the
victory for Grant.
That night a council of war was held within the fort, and it was
determined to attack the besiegers in the morning with the entire
force, in hopes either to defeat them completely or at least to turn
back their right wing, and thus open a way for retreat toward the
south. The fighting began early in the morning. Grant's right wing,
all but surprised, was pressed heavily and borne back, the enemy
passing through and plundering McClernand's camps. Buckner sallied out
and attacked on the left with much less vigor and with no success but
as a diversion, and the fighting extended all along the line, while
the Confederate cavalry were endeavoring to gain the National rear.
Grant was imperturbable through it all, and when he saw that the
attack had reached its height, he ordered a counter attack and
recovery of the lost ground on the right, which was executed by the
division of Lew Wallace, while that of C. F. Smith stormed the works
on the left. Smith rode beside the color-bearer, and, in the face of a
murderous fire that struck down four hundred men, his troops rushed
forward over every obstruction, brought up field guns and enfiladed
the works, drove out the defenders, and took possession.
{78} [Illustration: BATTLE OF MILL SPRINGS, LOGAN CROSS ROADS,
KENTUCKY, JANUARY 19, 1862.]
Another bitterly cold night followed, but Grant improved the time to
move up reinforcements to the positions he had gained, while the
wounded were looked after as well as circumstances would permit.
Within the fort another council of war was held. Floyd declared it
would not do for him to fall into the {79} hands of the Government, as
he was accused of defrauding it while in office. So he turned over the
command to Gen. Gideon J. Pillow. But that general said he also had
strong reasons for not wanting to be a prisoner, so he turned it over
to Gen. Simon B. Buckner. With as many of their men as could be taken
on two small steamers, Floyd and Pillow embarked in the darkness and
went up the river to Nashville. The cavalry, under Gen. N. B. Forrest,
also escaped, and a considerable number of men from all the commands
managed to steal away unobserved. In the morning Buckner hung out a
white flag, and sent a letter to Grant, proposing that commissioners
be appointed to arrange terms of capitulation. Grant's answer not only
made him famous, but gave an impetus and direction to the whole war:
"No terms other than an unconditional and immediate surrender can be
accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Buckner, in
a petulant and ill-considered note, at once surrendered the fort and
his entire command. This numbered about fourteen thousand men; and
four hundred that were sent to reinforce him were also captured.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY W. HALLECK.]
[Illustration: COLONEL JAMES A. GARFIELD. (Afterward Major-General.)]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL C. F. SMITH.]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN CUSTER, U. S. A., AND LIEUTENANT WASHINGTON, A
CONFEDERATE PRISONER.]
General Pillow estimated the Confederate loss in killed and wounded at
two thousand. No undisputed figures are attainable on either side.
Grant began the siege with about fifteen thousand men, which
reinforcements had increased to twenty-seven thousand at the time of
the surrender. His losses were about two thousand, and many of the
wounded had perished of cold. The long, artificial line of defence,
from the mountains to the Mississippi, was now swept away, and the
Confederates abandoned Nashville, to which Grant might have advanced
immediately, had he not been forbidden by Halleck.
When the news was flashed through the loyal States, and bulletins were
posted up with enumeration of prisoners, guns, and small arms
captured, salutes were fired, joy-bells were rung, flags were
displayed, and people asked one another, "Who is this Grant, and where
did he come from?"--for they saw that a new genius had suddenly risen
upon the earth.
Both before and after the defeat and death of General Lyon at Wilson's
Creek (August, 1861), there was irregular and predatory warfare in
Missouri. Especially in the western part of the State half-organized
bands of men would come into existence, sometimes make long marches,
and on the approach of a strong enemy disappear, some scattering to
their homes and others making their way to and joining the bodies of
regular troops. In Missouri and northern Arkansas guerilla warfare was
extensively carried on for more than a year. Many terrible stories are
told of the vengeful spirit with which both sides in this warfare were
actuated. It is quite possible these stories were exaggerated, but it
is certain that many cold-blooded murders were committed. Very few of
the guerillas were Unionists.
Gen. John C. Frémont, who commanded the department, believing that
Price was near Springfield, gave orders for the concentration at that
place of all the National forces in Missouri. But Price was not there,
and in November Frémont was superseded by General Halleck, some of
whose subordinate commanders, especially Gen. John Pope, made rapid
movements and did good service in capturing newly recruited regiments
that were on their way to join Price.
Late in December Gen. Samuel R. Curtis took command of twelve thousand
National troops at Rolla, and advanced against Price, who retreated
before him to the {80} northwestern corner of Arkansas, where his
force was joined by that of General McCulloch, and together they took
up a position in the Boston Mountains. Curtis crossed the line into
Arkansas, chose a strong place on Pea Ridge, in the Ozark Mountains,
intrenched, and awaited attack. Because of serious disagreements
between Price and McCulloch, Gen. Earl Van Dorn, who ranked them both,
was sent to take command of the Confederate force, arriving late in
January. There is no authentic statement as to the size of his army.
He himself declared that he had but fourteen thousand men, while no
other estimate gave fewer than twice that number. Among them was a
large body of Cherokee Indians, recruited for the Confederate service
by Albert Pike, who thirty years before had won reputation as a poet.
On March 5, 1862, Van Dorn moved to attack Curtis, who knew of his
coming and formed his line on the bluffs along Sugar Creek, facing
southward. His divisions were commanded by Gens. Franz Sigel and
Alexander S. Asboth and Cols. Jefferson C. Davis and Eugene A. Carr,
and he had somewhat more than ten thousand men in line, with
forty-eight guns. The Confederates, finding the position too strong in
front, made a night march to the west, with the intention of striking
the Nationals on the right flank. But Curtis discovered their movement
at dawn, promptly faced his line to the right about, and executed a
grand left wheel. His army was looking westward toward the approaching
foe, Carr's division being on the right, then Davis, then Asboth, and
Sigel on the left. But they were not fairly in position when the blow
fell. Carr was struck most heavily, and, though reinforced from time
to time, was driven back a mile in the course of the day. Davis,
opposed to the corps of McCulloch, was more successful; that general
was killed, and his troops were driven from the field. In the night
Curtis re-formed and strengthened his lines, and in the morning the
battle was renewed. This day Sigel executed some brilliant and
characteristic manoeuvres. To bring his division into its place on the
left wing, he pushed a battery forward, and while it was firing
rapidly its infantry supports were brought up to it by a right wheel;
this movement was repeated with another battery and its supports to
the left of the first, and again, till the whole division had come
into line, pressing back the enemy's right. Sigel was now so far
advanced that Curtis's whole line made a curve, enclosing the enemy,
and by a heavy concentrated artillery fire the Confederates were soon
driven to the shelter of the ravines, and finally put to rout. The
National loss in this action--killed, wounded, and missing--was over
thirteen hundred, Carr and Asboth being among the wounded. The
Confederate loss is unknown. Generals McCulloch and McIntosh were
killed, and Generals Price and Slack wounded. Owing to the nature of
the ground, any effective pursuit of Van Dorn's broken forces was
impracticable.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN B. FLOYD, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIMON B. BUCKNER, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL G. J. PILLOW, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL BUSHROD JOHNSON, C. S. A.]
The Confederate Government had made a treaty with some of the tribes
in the Indian Territory, and had taken into its service more than four
thousand Indians, whom the stories of Bull Run and Wilson's Creek had
apparently impressed with the belief that they would have little to do
but scalp the wounded and rob the dead. At Pea Ridge these red men
exhibited their old-time terror of artillery, and though they took a
few scalps they were so disgusted at being asked to face half a
hundred well-served cannon that they were almost useless to their
allies, and thenceforth they took no further part in the war. It is a
notable fact that in the wars on this continent the Indians have only
been employed on the losing side. In the French and English struggle
for the country, which ended in 1763, the French had the friendship of
many of the tribes, and employed them against the English settlers and
soldiers, but the French were conquered nevertheless. In the
Revolution and the war of 1812, the British employed them to some
extent against the Americans, but the Americans were victorious. In
the great Rebellion, the Confederate Government {81} attempted to use
them as allies in the West and Southwest, and in that very section the
Confederate cause was first defeated. All of which appears to show
that though savages may add to the horrors of war, they cannot
determine its results for civilized people; nor can irresponsible
guerilla bands, of which there were many at the West, nearly all in
the service of the Confederacy.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SAMUEL R. CURTIS.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL EARL VAN DORN, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL A. ASBOTH.]
[Illustration: BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE, MARCH 6, 1862.]
"At the close of Mr. Buchanan's administration nearly all the United
States Indian agents in the Indian Territory were secessionists, and
the moment the Southern States commenced passing ordinances of
secession, these men exerted their influence to get the five tribes
committed to the Confederate cause. Occupying territory south of the
Arkansas River, and having the secessionists of Arkansas on the east
and those of Texas on the south for neighbors, the Choctaws and
Chickasaws offered no decided opposition to the scheme. With the
Cherokees, the most powerful and most civilized tribes of the Indian
Territory, it was different. Their chief, John Ross, was opposed to
hasty action, and at first favored neutrality, and in the summer of
1861 issued a proclamation enjoining his people to observe a strictly
neutral attitude during the war between the United States and the
Southern States. In June, 1861, Albert Pike, a commissioner of the
Confederate States, and Gen. Ben. McCulloch, commanding the
Confederate forces in Western Arkansas and the Department of Indian
Territory, visited Chief Ross, with the view of having him make a
treaty with the Confederacy. But he declined to make a treaty, and in
the conference expressed himself as wishing to occupy, if possible, a
neutral position during the war. A majority of the Cherokees, nearly
all of whom were full-bloods, were known as Pin Indians, and were
opposed to the South." (_Battles and Leaders_, Vol. I., pp. 335-336.)
After the battle of Wilson's Creek had been fought, General Lyon
killed, and the Union army defeated, Chief Ross was easily convinced
that the South would succeed, and entered into a treaty with the
Confederate authorities.
{82} [Illustration: GALLANT CHARGE ON OUTWORKS OF FORT DONELSON,
FEBRUARY 13, 1862.]
{83}
CHAPTER IX.
THE "MONITOR" AND THE "MERRIMAC."
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE "MONITOR" AND "MERRIMAC"--EFFECT UPON NAVAL
ARMAMENTS OF THE WORLD--IDEA OF REVOLVING TOWER NOT ORIGINAL WITH
ERICSSON--DESTRUCTION OF THE "CUMBERLAND"--PUBLIC EXCITEMENT AT
PROSPECT OF AN ATTACK ON WASHINGTON--THE "MONITOR" SAILS FROM NEW YORK
HARBOR MARCH 6TH--GREAT NAVAL BATTLE IN HAMPTON ROADS.
While the great naval expedition was approaching New Orleans, the
waters of Hampton Roads, from which it had sailed, were the scene of a
battle that revolutionized the naval armaments of the world. When at
the outbreak of the war the navy yard at Norfolk, Va., was abandoned,
with an attempt at its destruction, the steam frigate _Merrimac_ was
set on fire at the wharf. Her upper works were burned, and her hull
sunk. There had been long hesitation about removing any of the
valuable property from this navy yard, because the action of Virginia
was uncertain, and it was hoped that a mark of confidence in her
people would tend to keep her in the Union. The day that Sumter was
fired upon, peremptory orders had been issued for the removal of the
_Merrimac_ to Philadelphia, and steam was raised and every preparation
made for her sailing. But the officer in command, for some unexplained
reason, would not permit her to move, and two days later she was
burned. Within two months the Confederates were at work upon her. They
raised the hull, repaired the machinery, and covered it with a steep
roof of wrought iron five inches thick, with a lining of oak seven
inches thick. The sides were also plated with iron, and the bow was
armed with an iron ram, something like a huge ploughshare. In the
water she had the appearance of a house submerged to the eaves, with
an immense gun looking out at each of ten dormer windows.
[Illustration: THE FRIGATE "CUMBERLAND" RAMMED BY THE "MERRIMAC."]
But all this could not be done in a day, especially where skilled
workmen were scarce, and it was March, 1862, before she was ready for
action. The command was given to Franklin Buchanan, who had resigned a
commission in the United States navy. On the 8th of March, accompanied
by two gunboats, she went out to raise the blockade of James and
Elizabeth Rivers by destroying the wooden war vessels in Hampton
Roads. Her first victim was the frigate _Cumberland_, which gave her a
{84} broadside that would have riddled a wooden vessel through and
through. Some of the shot entered her open ports, killed or wounded
nineteen men, and broke two of her guns; but all that struck the armor
bounded off like peas. Rifled shot from the _Merrimac_ raked the
_Cumberland_, and then she ran into her so that her iron prow cut a
great gash in the side. The _Cumberland_ at once began to settle; but
the crew stood by their guns, firing broadside after broadside without
producing any impression on the iron monster, and received in return
shells and solid shot that made sickening havoc. The commander,
Lieutenant Morris, refused to surrender; and at the end of forty-five
minutes, when the water was at the gun-deck, the crew leaped overboard
and with the help of the boats got ashore, while the frigate heeled
over and sank to the bottom. Her topmasts projected above the surface
and her flag was flying. While this was going on, three Confederate
steamers came down and attacked the _Congress_ with such effect that
her commander tried to run her ashore. Having finished the
_Cumberland_, the _Merrimac_ came up and opened a deliberate attack on
the _Congress_, and finally set her on fire, when the crew escaped in
their boats. She burned for several hours, and in the night blew up.
Of the other National vessels in the Roads, one got aground in water
too shallow for the _Merrimac_ to approach her, and the others were
not drawn into the fight.
The next morning the _Merrimac_ came down again from Norfolk to finish
up the fleet in Hampton Roads, and after that--to do various
unheard-of things. The more sanguine expected her to go at once to
Philadelphia, New York, and other seaboard cities of the North, and
either bombard them or lay them under heavy contribution. The National
Administration entertained a corresponding apprehension, and expected
to see the _Merrimac_ ascend the Potomac and attack Washington first.
A part of these expectations were well founded, and the rest were such
exaggerations as commonly arise from ignorance. The _Merrimac_ could
not have reached New York or Philadelphia, because she was not a
sea-going vessel. With skilful management and good luck, she might
have ascended the Potomac to Washington, but she would have had to run
the gantlet of numerous dangers. There is a place in the Potomac
called "the kettle-bottoms," where a great many conical mounds,
composed of sand and oyster-shells, rise from the channel till their
peaks are within a few feet of the surface; and their positions were
so imperfectly known at this time that the National vessels frequently
ran aground upon them. Several devices were in waiting to make trouble
for the iron-clad champion at this point, perhaps the most dangerous
of which was that prepared by Captain Love, commanding an armed
tugboat. He procured a seine three-quarters of a mile long, took off
its floats, and stretched it across the channel in such a way that the
_Merrimac_ could hardly have passed over it without fouling her
propeller, which would have rendered her helpless.
[Illustration: JOHN ERICSSON. Inventor of the "Monitor."]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT G. U. MORRIS. Commander of the
"Cumberland."]
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL J. SMITH. Commander at the Washington Navy
Yard.]
But the dangerous enemy was destined to be disposed of in a more novel
and dramatic way. In August, 1861, the Navy Department had advertised
for plans for steam batteries, to be iron-clad and capable of fighting
the _Merrimac_ and other similar armored vessels that the Confederates
were known to be constructing. The plan adopted was that presented by
Capt. John Ericsson. Its essential features were an iron-clad hull,
with an "overhang" to protect the machinery, all of which was below
the waterline, surmounted by a round revolving tower or turret, in
which were two heavy guns. The idea of a revolving tower was not
Ericsson's; it had been put forth by several inventors, especially by
Abraham Bloodgood in 1807. But this special adaptation of it, with the
application of steam power, was his. The vessel was built in Brooklyn,
and was launched January 30, 1862, one hundred days after the laying
of the keel. She was named _Monitor_, for the obvious significance of
the word. The extreme length of her upper hull was one hundred and
seventy-two feet, with a breadth of forty-one feet, while her lower
hull was one hundred and twenty-two feet long and thirty-four feet
broad. Her depth was eleven feet, and when loaded she drew ten feet of
water, her deck thus rising but a single foot above the surface. The
turret was twenty feet in diameter and nine feet high. The only
conspicuous object on the deck, besides the turret, was a pilot-house
about five feet square and four feet high. This was built of solid
wrought-iron beams, nine by twelve inches, laid {85} one upon another
and bolted together. At a point near the top a slight crack was left
between the beams all round, through which the commander and the pilot
could see what was going on outside and get their bearings. The guns
threw solid shot eleven inches in diameter. The advantage of
presenting so small a surface as a target for the enemy, having all
the machinery beyond reach of any hostile shot, carrying two large
guns, and being able to revolve the turret that contained them, so as
to bring them to bear in any direction and keep the ports turned away
from danger except at the moment of firing, is apparent.
This novel war-machine sailed from the harbor of New York on March 6,
in command of Lieut. John L. Worden, destined for Hampton Roads. She
was hardly out at sea when orders came changing her destination to
Washington; but fortunately she could not be reached, although a swift
tugboat was sent after her. She had a rough passage of three days, the
perils of which were largely increased by the fact that her crew did
not as yet understand all her peculiarities. They neglected to stop
the hawse-hole where the anchor-chain passed out, and large quantities
of water came in there, besides what poured down the low smoke-stacks
when the waves broke over her.
Outriding all dangers, she arrived in Hampton Roads on Saturday
evening, March 8, where the mournful condition of things did not
diminish the dispiriting effect of the voyage upon her crew. The
_Cumberland_ was sunk, the _Congress_ was burning, the _Minnesota_ was
aground, and everybody was dismayed. But Worden seems to have had no
lack of confidence in his vessel and his crew. He took on a volunteer
pilot, and promptly in the morning went out to his work. He first
drove away the wooden vessels that were making for the helpless
_Minnesota_, and then steered straight for the _Merrimac_, which was
now coming down the channel.
The Confederates had known about the building of the _Monitor_ (which
they called the _Ericsson_), just as the authorities at Washington had
known all about the _Merrimac_. When their men first saw her, they
described her as "a cheese-box on a raft," and were surprised at her
apparently diminutive size. Buchanan had been seriously wounded in the
action of the previous day, and the Confederate iron-clad was now
commanded by Lieutenant Jones.
Worden stationed himself in the pilot-house, with the pilot and a
quartermaster to man the wheel, while his executive officer, Lieut.
Samuel D. Greene, was in the turret, commanding the guns, which were
worked by chief engineer Stimers and sixteen men. The total number of
men in the _Monitor_ was fifty-seven; the _Merrimac_ had about three
hundred.
[Illustration: BATTLE BETWEEN THE "MONITOR" AND "MERRIMAC," HAMPTON
ROADS, VIRGINIA, MARCH 9, 1862.]
{86} [Illustration: THE FIGHT OF THE "MONITOR" AND "MERRIMAC," HAMPTON
ROADS. FEDERAL FLEET IN THE FOREGROUND.]
The _Merrimac_ began firing as soon as the two iron-clads were within
long range of each other, but Worden reserved his fire for short
range. Then the battle was fairly open, the National vessel firing
solid shot, about one in eight minutes, while the Confederates used
shells exclusively and fired much more rapidly. The shells struck the
turret and made numerous scars, but inflicted no serious damage,
except occasionally when a man was leaning against the side at the
moment of impact and was injured by the concussion. Worden had his
eyes at the sight-hole when a shell struck it and exploded,
temporarily blinding him, and injuring him so severely that he turned
over the command to Lieutenant Greene and took no further part in the
action. Each vessel attempted to ram the other, but always without
success. Once when the _Monitor_ made a dash at the {87} _Merrimac's_
stern, to disable her steering-gear, the two guns were discharged at
once at a distance of only a few yards. The two ponderous shots,
striking close together, crushed in the iron plates several inches,
and produced a concussion that knocked over the entire crews of the
after guns and caused many of them to bleed at the nose and ears. The
officers of the _Monitor_ had received peremptory orders to use but
fifteen pounds of powder at a charge. Experts say that if they had
used the normal charge of thirty pounds their shots would undoubtedly
have penetrated the _Merrimac_ and either sunk her or compelled her
surrender. The _Monitor_ had an advantage in the fact that she drew
but half as much water as the _Merrimac_ and could move with much
greater celerity. The fight continued for about four hours, and the
Confederate iron-clad then returned to Norfolk, and she never came
down to fight again till the 11th of April, when no battle took place
because both vessels had orders to remain on the defensive, each
Government being afraid to risk the loss of its only iron-clad in
those waters. The indentations on the _Monitor_ showed that she had
been struck twenty-two times, but she was not in any way disabled.
Twenty of her shots struck the _Merrimac_, some of which smashed the
outer layers of iron plates. It was claimed that the _Merrimac_ would
have sunk the _Monitor_ by ramming, had she not lost her iron prow
when she rammed the _Cumberland_ the day before; but a description of
the prow, which was only of cast iron and not very large, makes this
at least doubtful.
Just what damage the _Merrimac_ received in the fight is not known.
But it was observed that she went into it with her bow up and her
stern down, and went out with her bow down and her stern up; that on
withdrawing she was at once surrounded by four tugs, into which her
men immediately jumped; and she went into the dry-dock for repairs.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN L. WORDEN. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)
Commanding the "Monitor."]
[Illustration: COMMANDER FRANKLIN BUCHANAN, C. S. N. Commanding the
"Merrimac."]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT S. DANA GREENE. Executive Officer of the
"Monitor."]
The significance of the battle was not so much in its immediate result
as in its effect upon all naval armaments, and because of this it
attracted world-wide attention. The London _Times_ declared: "There is
not now a ship in the English navy, apart from these two [the
_Warrior_ and the _Ironside_], that it would not be madness to trust
to an engagement with that little _Monitor_." The United States
Government ordered the building of more monitors, some with two
turrets, and they did excellent service, notably in the battle of
Mobile Bay.
In May, when Norfolk was captured, an attempt was made to take the
_Merrimac_ up the James River; but she got aground, and was finally
abandoned and blown up. When the Confederates refitted her they
rechristened her _Virginia_, but the original name sticks to her in
history. In December of that year the _Monitor_ attempted to go to
Beaufort, N. C., towed by a steamer; but she foundered in a gale off
Cape Hatteras and went to the bottom, carrying with her a dozen of the
crew.
[Illustration]
{88} [Illustration: LOSS OF THE "MONITOR" IN A STORM OFF CAPE
HATTERAS, DECEMBER 30, 1862.--GALLANT EFFORTS TO RESCUE THE CREW.]
CHAPTER X.
THE CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS.
NEW ORLEANS THE LARGEST SOUTHERN CITY--FORTS ON THE MISSISSIPPI--CAPT.
DAVID G. FARRAGUT CHOSEN COMMANDER--GEN. BENJAMIN F. BUTLER IN COMMAND
OF LAND FORCES--TERRIFIC BOMBARDMENT OF THE FORTS--CUTTING THE CHAIN
ACROSS THE MISSISSIPPI--THE GREAT NAVAL BATTLE IN THE NIGHT--ALL THE
FORTS AND THE CONFEDERATE FLEET CAPTURED BY FARRAGUT--SURRENDER OF NEW
ORLEANS--GENERAL BUTLER'S CELEBRATED "WOMAN ORDER."
The Crescent City was by far the largest and richest in the
Confederacy. In 1860 it had a population of nearly one hundred and
seventy thousand, while Richmond, Mobile, and Charleston together had
fewer than two-thirds as many. In 1860-61 it shipped twenty-five
million dollars' worth of sugar and ninety-two million dollars' worth
of cotton, its export trade in these articles being larger than that
of any other city in the world. Moreover, its strategic value in that
war was greater than that of any other point in the Southern States.
The many mouths of the Mississippi, and the frequency of violent gales
in the Gulf, rendered it difficult to blockade commerce between that
great river and the ocean; but the possession of this lowest
commercial point on the stream would shut it off effectively, and
would go far toward securing possession all the way to Cairo. This
would cut the Confederacy in two, and make it difficult to bring
supplies from Texas and Arkansas to feed the armies in Tennessee and
Virginia. Moreover, a great city is in itself a serious loss to one
belligerent and a capital prize to the other.
As soon as it became evident that war was being waged against the
United States in dead earnest, and that it was likely to be prolonged,
these considerations presented themselves to the Government, and a
plan was matured for capture of the largest city in the territory of
the insurgents.
{89} [Illustration: PANORAMIC VIEW OF NEW ORLEANS--FEDERAL FLEET AT
ANCHOR IN THE RIVER.]
The defences of New Orleans against an enemy approaching from the sea
consisted of two forts, on either side of the stream, {90} thirty
miles above the head of the five great passes through which it flows
to the Gulf. The smaller, Fort St. Philip, on the left bank, was of
earth and brick, with flanking batteries, and all its guns were _en
barbette_--on the top, in plain sight. These numbered about forty.
Fort Jackson, on the right bank, mounted seventy-five guns, fourteen
of which were in bomb-proof casemates. Both of these works had been
built by the United States Government. They were now garrisoned by
about one thousand five hundred Confederate soldiers, commanded by
Gen. Johnson K. Duncan. Above them lay a Confederate fleet of fifteen
vessels, including an iron-clad ram and a large floating battery that
was covered with railroad iron. Just below the forts a heavy chain was
stretched across the river--perhaps suggested by the similar device
employed to keep the British from sailing up the Hudson during the
Revolutionary war. And it had a similar experience; for, at first
supported by a row of enormous logs, it was swept away by the next
freshet. The logs were then replaced by hulks anchored at intervals
across the stream, and the chain ran over their decks, while its ends
were fastened to great trees. One thing more completed the
defence--two hundred sharp-shooters patrolled the banks between the
forts and the head of the passes, to give warning of an approaching
foe and fire at any one that might be seen on the decks.
[Illustration: FROM PENSACOLA TO THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI.]
The idea at Washington, probably originated by Commander (now Admiral)
David D. Porter, was that the forts could be reduced by raining into
them a sufficient shower of enormous shells, to be thrown high into
the air, come down almost perpendicularly, and explode on striking.
Accordingly, the first care was to make the mortars and shells, and
provide the craft to carry them. Twenty-one mortars were cast, which
were mounted on twenty-one schooners. They threw shells thirteen
inches in diameter, weighing two hundred and eighty-five pounds; and
when one of them was discharged, the concussion of the atmosphere was
so great that no man could stand close by without being literally
deafened. Platforms projecting beyond the decks were therefore
provided, for the gunners to step out upon just before firing.
[Illustration: COMMANDER DAVID D. PORTER. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)]
The remainder of the fleet, as finally made up, consisted of six
sloops-of-war, sixteen gunboats, and five other vessels, besides
transports carrying fifteen thousand troops commanded by Gen. B. F.
Butler. The whole number of guns was over two hundred. The flagship
_Hartford_ was a wooden steam sloop-of-war, one thousand tons' burden,
with a length of two hundred and twenty-five feet, and a breadth of
forty-four feet. She carried twenty-two nine-inch guns, two
twenty-pounder Parrott guns, and a rifled gun on the forecastle, while
her fore and main tops were furnished with howitzers and surrounded
with boiler iron to protect the gunners. The _Brooklyn_, _Richmond_,
_Pensacola_, _Portsmouth_, and _Oneida_ were similar to the
_Hartford_. The _Colorado_ was larger. The _Mississippi_ was a large
side-wheel steamer.
This was the most powerful expedition that had ever sailed under the
American flag, and the man that was chosen to command it, Capt. David
G. Farragut, was as unknown to the public as Ulysses S. Grant had
been. But he was not unknown to his fellow-officers. Farragut was now
sixty years of age, being one of the oldest men that took part in the
war, and he had been in the navy half a century. He sailed the Pacific
with Commodore Porter years before Grant and Sherman were born, and
participated in the bloody encounter of the _Essex_ and _Phoebe_ in
the harbor of Valparaiso. He was {91} especially familiar with the
Gulf of Mexico, and had pursued pirates through its waters and hunted
and fought them on its islands. There was nothing to be done on
shipboard that he could not do to perfection, and he could have filled
the place of any man in the fleet--except perhaps the surgeon's. He
was born in Tennessee, and married twice in Virginia; and if there had
been a peaceable separation he would probably have made his home in
the South. He was at Norfolk, waiting orders, when Virginia seceded,
but he considered that his first duty was to the National Government,
which had educated him for its service and given him rank and
employment. When he said that "Virginia had been dragooned out of the
Union," and that he thought the President was justified in calling for
troops after the firing on Sumter, he was told by his angry neighbors
that a person holding such sentiments could not live in Norfolk. "Very
well, then," said he, "I can live somewhere else." So he made his way
North with his little family, and informed the Government that he was
ready and anxious for any service that might be assigned to him.
This was in April, 1861; but it was not till January, 1862, that he
was appointed to command the New Orleans expedition and the Western
gulf blockading squadron. He sailed from Hampton Roads February 2, in
the flag-ship _Hartford_. Some sentences from the sailing-orders
addressed to him by the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, are
significant and suggestive. "As you have expressed yourself perfectly
satisfied with the force given to you, and as many more powerful
vessels will be added before you can commence operations, the
department and the country require of you success.... There are other
operations of minor importance which will commend themselves to your
judgment and skill, but which must not be allowed to interfere with
the great object in view, the certain capture of the city of New
Orleans.... Destroy the armed barriers which these deluded people have
raised up against the power of the United States Government, and shoot
down those who war against the Union; but cultivate with cordiality
the first returning reason which is sure to follow your success." In a
single respect Farragut was not satisfied with his fleet. He had no
faith in the mortars, and would rather have gone without them; but
they had been ordered before he was consulted, and were under the
command of his personal friend Porter. Perhaps his distrust of them
arose from his knowledge that, in 1815, a British fleet had
unavailingly thrown a thousand shells into a fort at this very turn of
the river where he was now to make the attack.
The mortar schooners were to rendezvous first at Key West, and sail
then for Ship Island, off Lake Borgne, where the transports were to
take the troops and the war-vessels were to meet as soon as possible.
A considerable portion of March was gone before enough of the fleet
had reached the rendezvous to begin operations. The first difficulty
was to get into the river. The Eads jetties did not then exist, and
the shifting mud-banks made constant soundings necessary for large
vessels. The mortar schooners went in by Pass à l'Outre without
difficulty; but to get the _Brooklyn_, _Mississippi_, and _Pensacola_
over the bar at Southwest Pass required immense labor, and occupied
two or three weeks. The _Mississippi_ was dragged over with her keel
ploughing a furrow a foot deep in the river bottom, and the _Colorado_
could not be taken over at all.
[Illustration: INGENIOUS METHOD OF DISGUISING COMMANDER PORTER'S
MORTAR FLOTILLA.]
The masts of the mortar schooners were dressed off with bushes, to
render them indistinguishable from the trees on shore near the forts.
The schooners were then towed up to a point within range, and moored
where the woods hid them, so that they could not be seen from the
forts. Lieut. F. H. Gerdes of the Coast Survey had made a careful map
of that part of the river and its banks, and elaborate calculations by
which the mortars were to be fired with a computed aim, none of the
gunners being able to see what they fired at. They opened fire on
April {92} 18, and kept up the bombardment steadily for six days and
nights. Six thousand enormous shells--eight hundred tons of iron--were
thrown high into the air, and fell in and around the forts. For nearly
a week the garrison saw one of Porter's aërolites dropping upon them
every minute and a half. They demolished buildings, they tore up the
ground, they cut the levee and let in water, and they killed and
mangled men; but they did not render the forts untenable nor silence
their guns. The return fire sank one of the mortar boats and disabled
a steamer. Within the forts about fifty men were killed or
wounded--one for every sixteen tons of iron thrown.
[Illustration: SHIP ISLAND.]
While the fleet was awaiting the progress of this bombardment, a new
danger appeared. The Confederates had prepared several flat-boats
loaded with dry wood smeared with tar and turpentine; and they now set
fire to them one after another, and let them float down the stream.
But Farragut sent out boats' crews to meet them, who grappled them
with hooks, and either towed them ashore or conducted them past the
fleet, and let them float down through the passes and out to sea.
In his General Orders, Farragut gave so many minute directions that it
would seem as if he must have anticipated every possible contingency.
Thus: "Trim your vessel a few inches by the head [that is, place the
contents so that she will sink a little deeper at the bow than at the
stern], so that if she touches the bottom she will not swing head down
the river." "Have light Jacob-ladders made, to throw over the side for
the use of the carpenters in stopping shot-holes, who are to be
supplied with pieces of inch-board, lined with felt, and ordinary
nails." "Have a kedge in the mizzen chains on the quarter, with a
hawser bent and leading through in the stern chock, ready for any
emergency; also grapnels in boats, ready to tow off fire-ships." "Have
many tubs of water about the decks, both for extinguishing fire and
for drinking." "You will have a spare hawser ready, and when ordered
to take in tow your next astern do so, keeping the hawser slack so
long as the ship can maintain her own position, having a care not to
foul the propeller." It was this minute knowledge and forethought,
quite as much as his courage and determination, that insured his
success. In addition to his own suggestions he called upon his men to
exercise their wits for the occasion, and the crews originated many
wise precautions. As the attack was to be in the night, they painted
the decks white to enable them to find things. They got out all the
spare chains, and hung them up and down the sides of the vessels at
the places where they would protect the machinery from the enemy's
shot. Farragut's plan was to run by the forts, damaging them as much
as possible by a rapid fire as he passed, then destroy or capture the
Confederate fleet, and proceed up the river and lay the city under his
guns.
The time fixed upon for starting was just before moonrise (3:30
o'clock) in the morning of April 24. On the night of the 20th two
gunboats went up the river, and a boat's crew from one of them, under
Lieut. Charles H. B. Caldwell, boarded one of the hulks and cut the
chain, under a heavy fire, making an opening sufficient for the fleet
to pass through. Near midnight of the 23d the lieutenant went up again
in a gunboat, to make sure that the passage was still open, and this
time the enemy not only fired on him, but sent down blazing rafts and
lighted enormous piles of wood that they had prepared near the ends of
the chain. The question of moonrise was no longer of the slightest
importance, since it was as light as day for miles around. Two red
lanterns displayed at the peak of the flag-ship at two o'clock gave
the signal for action, and at half-past three the whole fleet was in
motion.
The sloop _Portsmouth_, and Porter's gunboats moved up to a {93} point
where they could engage the water-battery of Fort Jackson while the
fleet was going by. The first division of eight vessels, commanded by
Capt. Theodorus Bailey, who was almost as old and as salt as Farragut,
passed through the opening in deliberate fashion, unmindful of a fire
from Fort Jackson, ran over to the east bank, and poured grape and
canister into Fort St. Philip as they sailed by, and ten minutes
afterward found themselves engaged at close quarters with eleven
Confederate vessels. Bailey's flag-ship, the _Cayuga_, was attacked by
three at once, all trying to board her. He sent an eleven-inch shot
through one of them, and she ran aground and burst into a blaze. With
the swivel gun on his forecastle he drove off the second; and he was
preparing to board the third when the _Oneida_ and _Varuna_ came to
his assistance. The _Oneida_ ran at full speed into one Confederate
vessel, cutting it nearly in two, and in an instant making it a
shapeless wreck. She fired into others, and then went to the
assistance of the _Varuna_, which had been attacked by two, rammed by
both of them, and was now at the shore, where she sank in a few
minutes. But she had done effective work before she perished,
crippling one enemy so that she surrendered to the _Oneida_, driving
another ashore, and exploding a shell in the boiler of a third. The
_Pensacola_ steamed slowly by the forts, doing great execution with
her rifled guns, and in turn sustaining the heaviest loss in the
fleet--thirty-seven men. In an open field men can dodge a cannon-ball;
but when it comes bouncing in at a port-hole unannounced, it sometimes
destroys a whole gun's-crew in the twinkling of an eye. In such an
action men are under the highest possible excitement; every nerve is
awake, and every muscle tense; and when a ball strikes one it
completely shatters him, as if he were made of glass, and the shreds
are scattered over the ship. The _Mississippi_ sailed up in handsome
style, encountered the Confederate ram _Manassas_, and received a blow
that disabled her machinery. But in turn she riddled the ram and set
it on fire, so that it drifted away and blew up. The other vessels of
this division, with various fortune, passed the forts and participated
in the naval battle.
The second division consisted of three sloops of war, the flag-ship
leading. The _Hartford_ received and returned a heavy fire from the
forts, got aground on a shoal while trying to avoid a fire-raft, and a
few minutes later had another raft pushed against her, which set her
on fire. A portion of the crew was detailed to extinguish the flames,
and all the while her guns were loaded and fired as steadily as if
nothing had happened. Presently she was got afloat again, and
proceeded up the river, when, suddenly, through the smoke, as it was
lighted by the flashes of the guns, she saw a steamer filled with men
bearing down upon her, probably with the intention of carrying her by
boarding. But a ready gun planted a huge shell in the mysterious
stranger, which exploded, and she disappeared--going to the bottom,
for aught that anybody knew. The _Brooklyn_, after getting out of her
course and running upon one of the hulks, finally got through, met a
large Confederate steamer, and gave it a broadside that set it on
fire, and then poured such a rain of shot into St. Philip that the
bastions were cleared in a minute, and in the flashes the gunners
could be seen running to shelter. A Confederate gunboat that attacked
her received eleven shells from her, all of which exploded, and it
then ran ashore in flames. The _Richmond_ sailed through steadily and
worked her guns regularly, meeting with small loss, because she was
more completely provided with splinter-nettings than her consorts, as
well as because she came after them.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN DAVID G. FARRAGUT. (Afterward Admiral.)]
[Illustration: COMMANDER C. S. BOGGS. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN THEODORUS BAILEY. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)]
{94} [Illustration: PASSAGE OF THE SECOND DIVISION OF THE FEDERAL
SQUADRON BY FORTS JACKSON AND ST. PHILIP.]
{95} The third division consisted of six gunboats. Two of them became
entangled among the hulks, and failed to pass. Another received a shot
in her boiler, which compelled her to drop down stream and out of the
fight. The other three went through in gallant style, both suffering
and inflicting considerable loss from continuous firing, and burned
two steamboats and drove another ashore before they came up with the
advance divisions of the fleet. The entire loss had been thirty-seven
killed and one hundred and forty-seven wounded.
Captain Bailey, in the _Cayuga_, still keeping the lead, found a
regiment encamped at Quarantine Station, and compelled its surrender.
On the morning of the 25th the Chalmette batteries, three miles below
the city, were silenced by a fire from the sloops, and a little later
the city itself was at the mercy of their guns. At noon Captain
Bailey, accompanied only by Lieut. George H. Perkins, with a flag of
truce, went ashore, passed through an excited crowd that apparently
only needed a word to be turned into a mob, and demanded of the Mayor
that the city be surrendered unconditionally and the Louisiana State
flag at once hauled down from the staff on the City Hall. Bailey
raised the stars and stripes over the Mint; but the Mayor at first
refused to strike his colors, and set out upon an elaborate course of
letter-writing, which was of no consequence except as it furnished
another instance of the fatuity that grasps at a shadow after the
substance is gone.
[Illustration: CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS.]
A letter written by Lieutenant Perkins at the time gives a vivid
description of this incident, which is interesting in that it exhibits
the effect upon the first people of the South who realized the
possibility of their being conquered. "Among the crowd were many women
and children, and the women were shaking rebel flags and being rude
and noisy. As we advanced, the mob followed us in a very excited
state. They gave three cheers for Jeff Davis and Beauregard, and three
groans for Lincoln. Then they began to throw things at us, and shout,
'Hang them! Hang them!' We reached the City Hall in safety, and there
found the Mayor and Council. They seemed in a very solemn state of
mind; though I must say, from what they said, they did not impress me
as having much mind about anything. The Mayor said he had nothing to
do with the city, as it was under martial law, and we were obliged to
wait till General Lovell could arrive. In about half an hour this
gentleman appeared. He was very pompous in his manner, and silly and
airy in his remarks. He had about fifteen thousand troops under his
command, and said he would 'never surrender,' but would withdraw his
troops from the city as soon as possible, when the city would fall
into the hands of the Mayor, and he could do as he pleased with it.
The mob outside had by this {96} time become perfectly infuriated.
They kicked at the doors, and swore they would have us out and hang
us. Every person about us who had any sense of responsibility was
frightened for our safety. As soon as the mob found out that General
Lovell was not going to surrender, they swore they would have us out
any way; but Pierre Soule and some others went out and made speeches
to them, and kept them on one side of the building, while we went out
at the other end and were driven to the wharf in a close carriage. The
Mayor told the Flag-officer this morning that the city was in the
hands of the mob, and was at our mercy, and that he might blow it up
or do with it as he chose."
[Illustration: OLD CITY HALL, NEW ORLEANS, WHERE THE SURRENDER OF THE
CITY WAS DEMANDED.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL MANSFIELD LOVELL, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: THOS. O. MOORE, GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA.]
On the night of the 24th, by order of the authorities in the city, the
torch was applied to everything, except buildings, that could be of
use to the victors. Fifteen thousand bales of cotton, heaps of coal
and wood, dry-docks, a dozen steamboats and as many cotton-ships, and
an unfinished ironclad ram were all burned. Barrels were rolled out
and broken open, the levee ran with molasses, and the poor people
carried away the sugar in their baskets and aprons. The Governor
called upon the people of the State to burn their cotton, and two
hundred and fifty thousand bales were destroyed.
Butler had witnessed the passage of the forts, and he now hurried over
his troops and invested St. Philip on the land side, while Porter sent
some of his mortar-boats to a bay in the rear of Fort Jackson, and in
a few days both works were surrendered. Farragut sent two hundred and
fifty marines into the city to take formal possession and guard the
public buildings. Butler arrived there with his forces on the 1st of
May, and it was then turned over to him, and it remained in Federal
possession throughout the war. His administration of the captured
city, from May to December, was the subject of much angry controversy;
but no one denies that he reduced its turbulence to order, made it
cleaner than it had ever been before, and averted a pestilence. He
also caused provisions to be issued regularly to many of the needy
inhabitants.
The most famous incident of his administration was what became known
as "the woman order." Many of the women of New Orleans, even while
they were living on food issued to them by the National commissary,
took every possible pains to flaunt their disloyalty and to express
contempt for the wearers of the blue uniform. If an officer entered a
street car, all the women would immediately leave it. If a detachment
of soldiers passed through a residence street, many windows were
thrown open and "Dixie" or the "Bonny Blue Flag" was loudly played on
the piano. If the women met an individual soldier on the sidewalk,
they drew their skirts closely around them and passed at its extreme
edge. And all the while they took every opportunity to display small
rebel flags on their bosoms and to proclaim loudly that their city was
"captured but not conquered." These things were borne with patience;
but when one woman, enraged at the imperturbable calmness of the
city's captors, stepped up to two officers in the street and spat in
their faces, General Butler judged that the time for putting a stop to
such proceedings had come. Accordingly, he issued General Orders No.
28, which read thus:
"As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject
to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New
Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous noninterference and
courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female
shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any
officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and
held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her
avocation."
This immediately produced two effects. It put an end to the
annoyances, and it raised an uproar of denunciation based upon the
assumption that the commanding officer had ordered his soldiers to
insult and assault the ladies of New Orleans. Of course no such thing
was intended, or could be implied from any proper construction of the
words of the order; but in war, as in politics, it is sometimes
considered good strategy to misrepresent an opponent. However honest
any Confederate {97} citizen or editor may have been in his
misconstruction of it, no soldier misunderstood it, and no incivility
was offered to the women who were thus subdued by the wit and moral
courage of perhaps the most successful man that ever undertook the
task of ruling a turbulent city.
One other incident attested the firmness of General Butler's purpose,
and assured the citizens of the presence of a power that was not to be
trifled with. After Farragut had captured the city and raised the
National colors over the Mint, four men were seen to ascend to the
roof and tear down the flag, and it was only by a lucky accident that
the gunners of the fleet were prevented from instantly discharging a
broadside into the streets. The act was exploited in the New Orleans
papers, which ostentatiously published the names of the four men and
praised their gallantry. General Butler caused the leader of the four,
a gambler, to be arrested and tried by a court-martial. He was
sentenced to death, and in spite of every solicitation the General
refused to pardon him. He was hanged in the presence of an immense
crowd of citizens, the gallows being a beam run out from one of the
windows of the highest story of the Mint building.
[Illustration: GROUP OF SAILORS ON A GUNBOAT.]
[Illustration: GENERAL BUTLER'S HEADQUARTERS, NEW ORLEANS.]
At the first news of this achievement the people of the North hardly
appreciated what had been accomplished; many of their newspapers told
them that the fleet "had only run by the forts." But as they gradually
learned the particulars, and saw that in fighting obstructions,
fire-rafts, forts, rams, and fleet, and conquering them all, Farragut
had done what neither Nelson nor any other great admiral had ever done
before, they felt that the country had produced a worthy companion for
the victor of Donelson, and was equal to all emergencies, afloat or
ashore.
{98} [Illustration: CAPTURE OF ISLAND No. 10, DURING A VIOLENT
HURRICANE, APRIL 1, 1862.]
{99}
CHAPTER XI.
THE CAMPAIGN OF SHILOH.
OPERATIONS AT ISLAND NO. 10 AND NEW MADRID--NAVAL BATTLE ON THE
MISSISSIPPI--THE BLOODIEST BATTLE WEST OF THE
ALLEGHANIES--COMMENCEMENT OF BATTLE OF SHILOH, SUNDAY, APRIL 6,
1862--TERRIBLE LOSSES ON BOTH SIDES--TRAGIC DEATH OF GENERAL ALBERT
SIDNEY JOHNSTON--GENERALS WALLACE, HINDMAN, AND GLADDEN
KILLED--GENERAL GRANT LEADING A REGIMENT--PUBLIC MISUNDERSTANDING
REGARDING THIS GREAT BATTLE--INTERESTING INCIDENTS OF THE FIGHT--FATE
OF CONFEDERACY DETERMINED AT SHILOH.
When the first line that the Confederates had attempted to establish
from the mountains to the Mississippi was broken by the battle of Mill
Springs and the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, their forces at
Columbus were withdrawn down the river to the historic latitude of 36°
30'. Here the Mississippi makes a great sigmoid curve. In the first
bend is Island No. 10 (the islands are numbered from the mouth of the
Ohio southward); and at the second bend, on the Missouri side, is New
Madrid. Both of these places were fortified, under the direction of
Gen. Leonidas Polk, who had been Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal
diocese of Louisiana for twenty years before the war, but entered the
military service to give the Confederacy the benefit of his West Point
education. A floating dock was brought up from New Orleans, converted
into a floating battery, and anchored near the island; and there were
also eight gunboats commanded by Commodore George N. Hollins. The
works on the island were supplemented by batteries on the Tennessee
shore, back of which were impassable swamps. Thus the Mississippi was
sealed, and a position established for the left (or western extremity)
of a new line of defence.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTING MILITARY ROAD THROUGH SWAMP.]
Early in March, 1862, a National army commanded by Gen. John Pope
moved down the west bank of the Mississippi against the position at
New Madrid. A reconnoissance in force demonstrated that the place
could be carried by storm, but could not be held, since the
Confederate gunboats were able (the river being then at high water) to
enfilade both the works and the approaches. General Pope went into
camp two miles from the river, and sent to Cairo for siege-guns,
meanwhile sending three regiments and a battery, under Gen. J. B.
Plummer, around to a point below New Madrid, where in the night they
sunk trenches for the field-guns and placed sharp-shooters at the edge
of the bank, and next day opened a troublesome fire on the passing
gunboats and transports. Four guns were forwarded promptly from Cairo,
being taken across the Mississippi and over a long stretch of swampy
ground where a road had been hastily prepared for the purpose, and
arriving at dusk on the 12th. That night Pope's forces crowded back
the Confederate pickets, dug trenches, and placed the guns in
position. The enemy's first intimation of what was going on was
obtained from a bombardment that opened at daylight. The firing was
kept up through the day, and some damage was inflicted on both sides;
but the next night, in the midst of a heavy storm, New Madrid was
evacuated. The National forces took possession, and immediately
changed the positions of the guns so as to command the river. On the
16th five Confederate gunboats attacked these batteries; but after one
boat had been sunk and some of the others damaged, they drew off. On
the 16th and 17th the National fleet of gunboats, under Commodore
Andrew H. Foote, engaged the batteries on Island No. 10, and a hundred
heavy guns were in action at once. The ramparts in some places had
been weakened by the wash of the river, and the great balls went right
through them. But the artillerymen stood to their work manfully, many
of them in water ankle deep; and though enormous shells exploded
within the forts, and one gun burst and another was dismounted, the
works were not reduced. A gun that burst in the fleet killed or
wounded fourteen men. The attack was renewed from day to day, and one
of the batteries was cleared of troops, but with no decisive effect.
At the suggestion of Gen. Schuyler Hamilton, a canal was cut across
the peninsula formed by the bend of the river above New Madrid. This
task was confided to a regiment of engineers commanded by Col. Josiah
W. Bissell, and was completed in nineteen days. The course was
somewhat tortuous, and the whole length of the canal was twelve miles.
Half of the distance lay through a thick forest standing in deep
water; but by an ingenious contrivance the trunks of the trees were
sawed off four and a half feet below the surface, and a channel fifty
feet wide and four feet deep was secured, through which transports
could be passed.
On the night of April 4th the gunboat _Carondelet_, Commander Henry
Walke, ran down past the batteries of Island No. 10, escaping serious
damage, and in the night of the 6th the _Pittsburg_ performed the same
feat. With the help of these to silence the batteries on the opposite
shore, Pope crossed in force on the 7th, and moved rapidly down the
little peninsula. The {100} greater part of the Confederate troops
that had been holding the island now attempted to escape southward,
but were caught between Pope's army and an impassable swamp, and
surrendered. General Pope's captures in the entire campaign were three
generals, two hundred and seventy-three officers, and six thousand
seven hundred men, besides one hundred and fifty-eight guns, seven
thousand muskets, one gunboat, a floating battery, six steamers, and a
considerable quantity of stores.
[Illustration: SURRENDER OF CONFEDERATE FORCES AFTER RETREAT FROM
ISLAND No. 10.]
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL ANDREW H. FOOTE.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL LEONIDAS POLK, C. S. A.]
On the very day of this bloodless victory, a little log church in
southwestern Tennessee gave name to the bloodiest battle that has been
fought west of the Alleghanies--Chickamauga being rather _in_ the
mountains. At Corinth, in northern Mississippi, the Memphis and
Charleston Railroad crosses the Mobile and Ohio. This gave that point
great strategic importance, and it was fortified accordingly and held
by a large Confederate force, which was commanded by Gen. Albert
Sidney Johnston (who must not be confounded with the Confederate Gen.
Joseph E. Johnston). His lieutenants were Gens. G. T. Beauregard,
Braxton Bragg, and William J. Hardee. General Grant, who had nearly
forty thousand men under his command, and was about to be joined by
Gen. Don Carlos Buell coming from Nashville with as many more,
proposed to move against Corinth and capture the place.
On Sunday, April 6th, Grant's main force was at Pittsburg Landing, on
the west bank of the Tennessee, twenty miles north of Corinth. One
division, under Gen. Lew Wallace, was at Crump's Landing, five miles
farther north. The advance division of Buell's army had reached the
river, opposite the landings, and the remainder was a march behind.
For some days Johnston had been moving northward to attack Grant, and
there had been skirmishing between the outposts. Early on the morning
of the 6th he came within striking distance, and made a sudden and
heavy attack. Grant's line was about two miles long, the left resting
on Lick Creek, an impassable stream that flows into the Tennessee
above Pittsburg Landing, and the right on Owl Creek, which flows in
below. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss's division was on the left, Gen. John
A. McClernand's in the centre, and Gen. William T. Sherman's on the
right. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut's was in reserve on the left, and Gen.
C. F. Smith's (now commanded by W. H. L. Wallace) on the right. There
were no {101} intrenchments. The ground was undulating, with patches
of woods alternating with cleared fields, some of which were under
cultivation and others abandoned and overgrown with bushes. A ridge,
on which stood Shiloh church, formed an important key-point in
Sherman's front.
General Grant, in his headquarters at Savannah, down the river, heard
the firing while he was at breakfast, and hurried up to Pittsburg
Landing. He had expected to be attacked, if at all, at Crump's
Landing, and he now ordered Lew Wallace, with his five thousand men,
to leave that place and march at once to the right of the line at
Shiloh; but Wallace took the wrong road, and did not arrive till dark.
Neither did Gen. William Nelson's advance division of General Buell's
army cross the river till evening.
The attack began at daybreak, and was made with tremendous force and
in full confidence of success. The nature of the ground made
regularity of movement impossible, and the battle was rather a series
of assaults by separate columns, now at one part of the line and now
at another, which were kept up all day with wonderful persistence.
Probably no army ever went into action with more perfect confidence in
itself and its leaders than Johnston's. Beauregard had told them they
should sleep that night in the camps of the enemy, and they did. He
also told them that he would water his horse in the Tennessee, but he
did not. The heaviest attacks fell upon Sherman and McClernand, whose
men stood up to the work with unflinching courage and disputed every
inch of ground. But they were driven back by overwhelming numbers,
which the Confederate commanders poured upon them without the
slightest regard to losses. The Sixth Mississippi regiment lost three
hundred men out of its total of four hundred and twenty-five, and the
Eighteenth Louisiana lost two hundred and seven. Sherman's men lost
their camps in the morning, and retired upon one new line of defence
after another, till they had been crowded back more than a mile; but
all the while they clung to the road and bridge by which they were
expecting Lew Wallace to come to their assistance. General Grant says
of an open field on this part of the line, over which repeated charges
were made, that it was "so covered with dead that it would have been
possible to walk across the clearing in any direction, stepping on
dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground. On our side National
and Confederate troops were mingled together in about equal
proportions; but on the remainder of the field nearly all were
Confederates. On one part, which had evidently not been ploughed for
several years, bushes had grown up, some to the height of eight or ten
feet. Not one of these was left standing unpierced by bullets. The
smaller ones were all cut down."
Many of the troops were under fire for the first time; but Sherman's
wonderful military genius largely made up for this deficiency. One
bullet struck Sherman in the hand, another grazed his shoulder,
another went through his hat, and several of his horses were killed. A
bullet struck and shattered the scabbard of General Grant's sword.
Gen. W. H. L. Wallace was mortally wounded. On the other side, Gens.
Adley H. Gladden and Thomas C. Hindman were killed; at about half-past
two o'clock General Johnston, placing himself at the head of a brigade
that was reluctant to attempt another charge, was struck in the leg by
a minie-ball. The wound need not have been mortal; but he would not
leave the field, and after a time bled to death. The command then
devolved upon General Beauregard.
In the afternoon a gap occurred between General Prentiss's division
and the rest of the line, and the Confederates were prompt to take
advantage of it. Rushing with a heavy force through this gap, and at
the same time attacking his left, they doubled up both flanks, and
captured that general and two thousand two hundred of his men. On this
part of the field the day was saved by Col. J. D. Webster, of General
Grant's staff, who rapidly got twenty guns into position and checked
the Confederate advance. They then attempted to come in on the extreme
left, along the river, by crossing a ravine. But more guns were
brought up, and placed on a ridge that commanded this ravine, and at
the same time the gunboats _Tyler_ and _Lexington_ moved up to a point
opposite and enfiladed it with their fire. The result to the
Confederates was nothing but a useless display of valor and a heavy
loss.
[Illustration: A FEDERAL GUNBOAT.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL GEORGE W. CULLUM.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SCHUYLER HAMILTON.]
{102} [Illustration: FINAL STAND OF THE ARMY OF GENERAL GRANT, APRIL
6, 1862, NEAR PITTSBURG LANDING.]
The uneven texture of Grant's army had been shown when two green
colonels led their green regiments from the field at the first fire;
and the {103} stragglers and deserters, having no opportunity to
scatter over the country, necessarily huddled themselves together
under the bank of the river at the landing, where they presented a
pitiful appearance. General Grant says there were nearly five thousand
of them. There was about an equal number of deserters and stragglers
from Johnston's army; but the nature of the ground was not such as to
concentrate them where the eye could take them all in at one grand
review. With the exception of the break when Prentiss was captured,
Grant's line of battle was maintained all day, though it was steadily
forced back and thirty guns were lost.
Beauregard discontinued the attack at nightfall, when his right was
repelled at the ravine, intending to renew it and finish the victory
in the morning. He knew that Buell was expected, but did not know that
he was so near.
Lew Wallace was now in position on the right, and Nelson on the left,
and all night long the boats were plying back and forth across the
Tennessee, bringing over Buell's army. A fire in the woods, which
sprang up about dusk, threatened to add to the horrors by roasting
many of the wounded alive; but a merciful rain extinguished it, and
the two armies lay out that night in the storm. A portion of the
Confederates were sheltered by the captured tents, but on the other
hand they were annoyed by the shells constantly thrown among them by
the gunboats.
At daylight Grant assumed the offensive, the fresh troops on his right
and left moving first to the attack. Beauregard now knew that Buell
had arrived, and he must have known also that there could be but one
result; yet he made a stubborn fight, mainly for the purpose of
holding the road that ran by Shiloh church, by which alone he could
conduct an orderly retreat. The complete upsetting of the Confederate
plans, caused by the death of Johnston, the arrival of Buell, and
Grant's promptness in assuming the offensive, is curiously suggested
by a passage in the report of one of the Confederate brigade
commanders: "I was ordered by General Ruggles to form on the extreme
left, and rest my left on Owl Creek. While proceeding to execute this
order, I was ordered to move by the rear of the main line to support
the extreme right of General Hardee's line. Having taken my position
to support General Hardee's right, I was again ordered by General
Beauregard to advance and occupy the crest of a ridge in the edge of
an old field. My line was just formed in this position when General
Polk ordered me forward to support his line. When moving to the
support of General Polk, an order reached me from General Beauregard
to report to him with my command at his headquarters."
[Illustration: SHILOH LOG CHAPEL, WHERE THE BATTLE OF SHILOH
COMMENCED, APRIL 6, 1862.]
The fighting was of the same general description as on the previous
day, except that the advantage was now with the National troops.
Sherman was ordered to advance his command and recapture his camps. As
these were about Shiloh church, and that was the point that Beauregard
was most anxious to hold, the struggle there was intense and bloody.
About the same time, early in the afternoon, Grant and Beauregard did
the same thing: each led a charge by two regiments that had lost their
commanders. Beauregard's charge was not successful; Grant's was, and
the two regiments that he launched with a cheer against the
Confederate line broke it, and began the rout. {104} Beauregard posted
a rear guard in a strong position, and withdrew his army, leaving his
dead on the field, while Grant captured about as many guns on the
second day as he had lost on the first. There was no serious attempt
at pursuit, owing mainly to the heavy rain and the condition of the
roads. The losses on both sides had been enormous. On the National
side the official figures are: 1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, 2,885
missing; total, 13,047. On the Confederate side they are: 1,728
killed, 8,012 wounded, 957 missing; total, 10,699. General Grant says:
"This estimate must be incorrect. We buried, by actual count, more of
the enemy's dead in front of the divisions of McClernand and Sherman
alone than are here reported, and four thousand was the estimate of
the burial parties for the whole field." At all events, the loss was
large enough to gratify the ill-wishers of the American people, who
were looking on with grim satisfaction to see them destroy one
another. The losses were the same, in round numbers, as at the
historic battle of Blenheim, though the number of men engaged was
fewer by one-fourth. If we should read in to-morrow's paper that by
some disaster every man, woman, and child in the city of Concord,
N. H., had been either killed or injured, and in the next day's paper
that the same thing had happened in Montgomery, Ala., the loss of life
and limb would only equal what took place on the mournful field of
Shiloh.
[Illustration: GENERAL ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: GENERAL BRAXTON BRAGG, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL DON CARLOS BUELL.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL LEW WALLACE.]
General Grant, in the first article that he ever wrote for
publication, remarks that "the battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing,
has been perhaps less understood, or, to state the case more
accurately, more persistently misunderstood, than any other engagement
between National and Confederate troops during the entire rebellion.
Correct reports of the battle have been published, but all of these
appeared long subsequent to the close of the rebellion, and after
public opinion had been most erroneously formed." No battle is ever
fought that it is not for somebody's interest to misrepresent. In the
case of Shiloh there were peculiar and complicated reasons both for
intentional misrepresentation and for innocent error. The plans of the
commanders on both sides were to some extent thwarted and changed by
unexpected events. One commander was killed on the first day, and his
admirers naturally speculate upon the different results that might
have been attained if he had lived. The ground was so broken as to
divide the engagement practically into several separate actions, and
what was true of one might not be true of another. The peculiarity of
the position also brought together in one place, under the river-bank,
all who from fright or demoralization fled to the rear of the National
army, which produced upon those who saw them an effect altogether
different from that of the usual retreating and straggling across the
whole breadth of a battle line. Then there was the circumstance of
Buell's army coming up at the end of the first day, and not coming up
before that, which could hardly fail to give rise to somewhat of
jealousy and recrimination. And finally this action encounters to an
unusual extent that criticism which reads by the light of
after-events, but forgets that this was wanting to the actors whom it
criticises.
The point on which popular opinion was perhaps most widely and
persistently wrong was, that the defeat of the first day arose from
the fact that Grant's army was completely surprised. Public opinion,
throughout the war, was formed in advance of the official reports of
generals in three ways. There were many press correspondents with
every army, and the main purpose of most of them was to construct an
interesting story and get it into print as soon as possible. The
National Government adopted the wise policy of giving the armies in
the field such mail facilities as would keep the soldiers in close
touch with their homes, and they wrote millions of letters every year.
All that a soldier needed was some scrap of paper and some sort of pen
or pencil. If he happened to have no postage stamp, he had only to
mark his missive "Soldier's letter," and it would be carried in the
mails to its destination, and the postage collected on delivery. After
a battle every surviving soldier was especially anxious to let his
family know that he had escaped any casualty, and he naturally filled
up his letter with such particulars as had most impressed him in that
small part of the field that he had seen, and sometimes with such
exaggerated accounts as in the first excitement had reached {105} him
from other parts. Finally, the journalists were not few who assumed to
be accomplished strategists, and talked learnedly in their editorial
columns of the errors of generals and the way that battles should have
been fought. And some of them had political reasons for writing up
certain generals and writing down certain others.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING ROADS AND POSITION OF CAMPS BEFORE AND
DURING THE BATTLE OF SHILOH.]
A good instance of innocent misapprehension is probably furnished in
what Lieutenant-Colonel Graves, of the Twelfth Michigan, wrote: "On
Saturday General Prentiss's division was reviewed. After the review
Major Powell, of the Twenty-fifth Missouri, came to me and said he saw
Butternuts [Confederate soldiers] looking through the underbrush at
the parade--about a dozen. Upon the representation of Major Powell and
myself, General Prentiss ordered out one company of the Twelfth
Michigan as an advance picket. About 8.30 o'clock Captain Johnson
reported from the front that he could see long lines of campfires,
hear bugle sounds and drums, which I reported to General Prentiss, and
he remarked that the company would be taken if left there; that it was
merely a reconnoissance of the enemy in force, and ordered the company
in. About ten o'clock I went with Captain Johnson to the tent of
General Prentiss, and the captain told him what he saw. The general
remarked that we need not be alarmed, that everything was all right.
To me it did not appear all right. Major Powell, myself, and several
other officers went to the headquarters of Colonel Peabody, commanding
our brigade, and related to him what had transpired. He ordered out
two companies from the Twelfth Michigan and two from the Twenty-fifth
Missouri, under command of Major Powell. About three o'clock in the
morning the advance of the enemy came up with this body of men, who
fought them till daylight, gradually falling back till they met their
regiments, which had advanced about fifty rods. There the regiments
met the enemy, and fought till overpowered, when we fell back to our
color line and re-formed. General Prentiss was so loath to believe
that the enemy was in force, that our division was not organized for
defence, but each regiment acted upon its own hook, so far as I was
able to observe. The point I wish to make is this: that, had it not
been for these four companies which were sent out by Colonel Peabody,
our whole division would have been taken in their tents, and the day
would have been lost. I shall always think that Colonel Peabody saved
the battle of Shiloh."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM J. HARDEE, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL S. A. HURLBUT.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL B. M. PRENTISS.]
{106} [Illustration: ADVANCE OF THE FEDERAL TROOPS ON CORINTH--GENERAL
HURLBUT'S DIVISION FORCING THEIR WAY THROUGH THE MUD.]
{107} [Illustration: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT.]
Such was the testimony and opinion, undoubtedly honest, of an officer
of a green regiment which there for the first time participated in a
battle. The truth was, the generals of the National forces were not
ignorant of the near approach of the enemy. Reconnoissances,
especially in Sherman's front, had shown that. They were only waiting
for all their forces to come up to make an attack themselves, and when
Buell arrived they did make that attack and were successful. General
Prentiss's division, so far from being unorganized, kept its lines,
received the shock of battle, and stood up manfully to the work before
it until the divisions on both sides of it drew back, leaving its
flanks exposed, when the Confederates poured through the gaps, struck
it on both flanks at once, and captured a large part of it. On the
ground along its line and in its front more men were struck down in an
hour than on any other spot of equal extent, in the same time, in the
whole war.
The Confederates were successful on the first day, not because of any
surprise, but simply because they had the greater number of men and
persistently hurled them, regardless of cost, against the National
lines. There was also one other reason, which would not have existed
later in the war. After the first year no army would occupy any
position on the field without intrenching. The soldiers on both sides
learned how, in a little while, to throw up a simple breastwork of
earth that would stop a large proportion of the bullets that an enemy
might fire at them. Grant's army at Shiloh had its flanks well
protected by impassable streams, and if it had had a simple breastwork
along its front, such as could have been constructed in an hour, the
first day's disaster might have been averted. As it was, the men
fought in the open field, with no protection but the occasional
shelter of a tree trunk, and at one point a slightly sunken road. The
habit of Grant's mind was such that he always thought of his army as
assuming the offensive and hence having no use for intrenchments, and
his green regiments did not yet appreciate the power of the spade.
Shiloh was a severe lesson to them all.
[Illustration: A FIELD HOSPITAL.]
Some of the most interesting incidents of the battle are given by Col.
Douglas Putnam, Jr., of the Ninety-second Ohio Infantry, in a paper
read before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion: "With the consent
of General Grant, I was permitted to accompany him to the field as a
volunteer aid. As we approached Crump's Landing, where the division of
Gen. Lew Wallace was stationed, the boat was rounded in and the
engines stopped. General Wallace, then standing on the bank, said, 'My
division is in line, waiting for orders.' Grant's reply was, that as
soon as he got to Pittsburg Landing and learned where the attack was,
he would send him orders.... After getting a horse, I started with
Rawlins to find General Grant; and to my inquiry as to where we would
likely find him, Rawlins's reply, characteristic of the man, was,
'We'll find him where the firing is heaviest.' As we proceeded, we met
the increasing signs of battle, while the dropping of the bullets
about us, on the leaves, led me in my inexperience to ask if it were
not raining, to which Rawlins tersely said, 'Those are bullets,
Douglas.' When, on meeting a horse through which a cannon-ball had
gone, walking along with protruding bowels, I asked permission to
shoot him and end his misery, Rawlins said, 'He belongs to the
quartermaster's department; better let them attend to it.' We soon
found General Grant. He was sending his aids in different directions,
as occasion made it necessary, and he himself visited his division
commanders one by one. He wore his full uniform, with the
major-general's buff sash, which made him very conspicuous both to our
own men and to those of the enemy. Lieut.-Col. J. B. McPherson, acting
chief of staff, remonstrated with him, as did also Rawlins, for so
unnecessarily exposing himself, as he went just in the rear of our
line of battle; but he said he wanted to see and know what was going
on. About eleven o'clock he met General Sherman on what was called
Sherman's drill-ground, near the old peach orchard. The meeting was
attended with but few words. Sherman's stock had become pulled around
until the part that should have been in front rested under one of his
ears, while his whole appearance indicated hard and earnest work. The
bullets were plenteous here. Sherman told Grant how many horses he had
had killed {108} under him, showing him also the marks of bullets in
his clothing. When Grant left Sherman, I think I was the only aid with
him. Riding toward the right, the General saw a body of troops coming
up from the direction of Crump's Landing, and exclaimed with great
delight and satisfaction, 'Now we are all right, all right--there's
Wallace.' He was of course mistaken, as the troops he saw were not
those he so earnestly looked for, and of whose assistance he was
beginning to feel the need. About two o'clock, at one point were
gathered General Grant and several of his staff. The group consisted
of Grant, McPherson, Rawlins, Webster, and others. This evidently drew
the attention of the enemy, and they received rather more than a due
share of the fire. Colonel McPherson's horse having been shot under
him, I gave him mine, and under directions went to the river on foot.
The space under the bank was literally packed by thousands, I suppose,
of men who had from inexperience and fright 'lost their grip,' or were
both mentally and physically, as we say, let down--however, only
temporarily. To them it seemed that the day was lost, that the deluge
was upon them. The Tennessee River in front, swamps to the right and
swamps to the left, they could go no farther, and there lay down and
waited. I remember well seeing a mounted officer, carrying a United
States flag, riding back and forth on top of the bank, pleading and
entreating in this wise: 'Men, for God's sake, for your country's
sake, for your own sake, come up here, form a line, and make one more
stand.' The appeal fell on listless ears. No one seemed to respond,
and the only reply I heard was some one saying, 'That man talks well,
don't he?' But eighteen hours afterward these same men had come to
themselves, were refreshed by meeting other troops, and assured that
all was not lost, that there was something still left to fight for,
and helped also by the magic touch of the elbow, they did valiant
service. A group of officers was gathered around General Grant about
dusk, at a smouldering fire of hay just on the top of the grade. The
rain was falling, atmosphere murky, and ground covered with mud and
water. Colonel McPherson rode up, and Grant said, 'Well, Mac, how is
it?' He gave him a report of the condition as it seemed to him, which
was, in short, that at least one-third of his army was _hors de
combat_, and the rest much disheartened. To this the General made no
reply, and McPherson continued, 'Well, General Grant, under this
condition of affairs, what do you propose to do, sir? Shall I make
preparations for retreat?' The reply came quick and short: 'Retreat?
No! I propose to attack at daylight, and whip them.'"
The same writer tells of a conversation that he held with General
Beauregard some years after the war. "To my query that it had always
been a mystery why he stopped the battle when he did Sunday night,
when the advantage, on the whole, seemed to be with him, and when he
had an hour or more of daylight, General Beauregard replied that there
were two reasons: first, his men were, as he put it, 'out of hand,'
had been fighting since early morn, were worn out, and also
demoralized by the flush of victory in gathering the stores and
sutlers' supplies found in our camps. As one man said, 'You fellows
went to war with cheese, pigs' feet, dates, pickles--things we rebs
had forgotten the sight of.' 'In the second place,' he said, 'I
thought I had General Grant just where I wanted him, and could finish
him up in the morning.'"
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JONES M. WITHERS, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS L. CRITTENDEN.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. McCLERNAND.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. CRITTENDEN, C. S. A.]
After the battle, General Halleck took command in person, and
proceeded to lay siege to Corinth, to capture it by regular
approaches. Both he and Beauregard were reinforced, till each had
about one hundred thousand men. Halleck gradually closed in about the
place, till in the night of May 29th Beauregard evacuated it, and on
the morning of the 30th Sherman's soldiers entered the town.
Some military critics hold that the fate of the Confederacy was
determined on the field of Shiloh. They point out the fact that after
that battle there was nothing to prevent the National armies at the
West from going all the way to the Gulf, or--as they ultimately
did--to the sea. In homely phrase, the back door of the Confederacy
was broken down, and, however stubbornly the front door in Virginia
might be defended, it was only a question of time when some great
army, coming in by the rear, should cut off the supplies of the troops
that held Richmond, and compel their surrender. Those who are disposed
to give history a romantic turn narrow it down to the death of General
Johnston, declaring that in his fall the possibility of Southern
independence was lost, and if he had lived the result would have been
reversed. General Grant appears to dispose of their theory when he
points out the fact that Johnston was killed while {109} leading a
forlorn hope, and remarks that there is no victory for anybody till
the battle is ended, and the battle of Shiloh was not ended till the
close of the second day. But, indeed, there is no reason why the fatal
moment should not be carried back to the time when the line of defence
from the mountains to the Mississippi was broken through at Mill
Spring and Fort Donelson, or even to the time when the Confederates,
because of Kentucky's refusal to leave the Union, were prevented from
establishing their frontier at the Ohio. The reason why progress in
conquering the Confederacy was more rapid at the West than at the East
is not to be found so much in any difference in men as in topography.
At the West, the armies moving southward followed the courses of the
rivers, and their opponents were obliged to maintain artificial lines
of defence; but the Eastern armies were called upon to cross the
streams and attack natural lines of defence.
Back of all this, in the logic of the struggle, is the fact that no
defensive attitude can be maintained permanently. The belligerent that
cannot prevent his own territory from becoming the seat of war must
ultimately surrender his cause, no matter how valiant his individual
soldiers may be, or how costly he may make it for the invader; or, to
state it affirmatively, a belligerent that can carry the war into the
enemy's country, and keep it there, will ultimately succeed. In most
wars, the side on whose soil the battles were fought has been the
losing side; and this is an important lesson to bear in mind when it
becomes necessary to determine the great moral question of
responsibility for prolonging a hopeless contest.
CHAPTER XII.
MINOR ENGAGEMENTS OF THE FIRST YEAR.
LARGE NUMBER OF BATTLES FOUGHT DURING THE WAR--DISASTER AT BALL'S
BLUFF ON THE POTOMAC--SMALL ENGAGEMENTS AT EDWARDS FERRY, VA.--BATTLES
AT FALLING WATERS AND BUNKER HILL, VA.--BATTLE AT HARPER'S
FERRY--GALLANT BAYONET CHARGE AT DRANESVILLE, VA.--OPERATIONS IN WEST
VIRGINIA UNDER GENERAL McCLELLAN--BATTLES AT ROMNEY AND
BARBOURSVILLE--EFFORTS TO INDUCE KENTUCKY TO SECEDE--CAMP WILD
CAT--ENGAGEMENTS AT HODGESVILLE AND MUNFORDVILLE AND
SACRAMENTO--REASONS WHY MISSOURI DID NOT SECEDE--ENGAGEMENTS AT
CHARLESTON, LEXINGTON, AND OTHER PLACES IN THAT STATE--A BRILLIANT
CHARGE BY GENERAL FRÉMONT'S BODY GUARD UNDER ZAGONYI--INDIVIDUAL
HEROISM--BATTLE OF BELMONT--VAST EXTENT OF TERRITORY COVERED BY WAR
OPERATIONS.
The enormous number of engagements in the civil war, the extent of
country over which they were spread, and the magnitude of many of
them, have sunk into comparative insignificance many that otherwise
would have become historic. The action at Lexington, Mass., in 1775,
was nothing whatever in comparison with any one of the several actions
at Lexington, Mo., in 1861; yet every schoolboy is familiarized with
the one, and many well-read people have scarcely heard of the other.
The casualties in the battle of Harlem Heights, N. Y., numbered almost
exactly the same as those in the battle of Bolivar Heights, Va.; but
no historian of the Revolution would fail to give a full account of
the former, while one might read a very fair history of the civil war
and find no mention whatever of the latter. In the writing of any
history that is not a mere chronicle, it is necessary to observe
proportion and perspective; but we may turn aside a little from the
main course of our narrative, to recall some of the forgotten actions,
in obscure hamlets and at the crossings of sylvan streams, where for a
few men and those who were dear to them the call of duty was as stern
and the realities of war as relentless as for the thousands at
Gettysburg or Chickamauga.
[Illustration: DELIVERING DAILY PAPERS.]
In the State of Virginia, the most disastrous of these minor
engagements in 1861 was at Ball's Bluff, on the Potomac, about
thirty-five miles above Washington. It has been known also as the
battle of Edwards Ferry, Harrison's Island, and Leesburg. At this
point there is an island in the river, and opposite, on the Virginia
side, the bank rises in a bold bluff seventy feet high. A division of
National troops, commanded by Gen. Charles P. Stone, was on the
Maryland side, observing the crossings of the river in the vicinity. A
Confederate force of unknown strength was known to be at Leesburg,
about five miles from the river. McCall's division was at Dranesville,
farther toward Washington, reconnoitring and endeavoring to draw out
the enemy. At a suggestion of General McClellan to General Stone, that
some demonstration on his part might assist McCall, General Stone
began a movement that developed into a battle. On the 21st of October
he ordered a portion of his command to cross at the island and at
Conrad's Ferry, just above. They were Massachusetts troops under Col.
Charles Devens, the New York Forty-second (Tammany) regiment, Col.
Edward D. Baker's Seventy-first Pennsylvania (called the California
regiment), and a Rhode Island battery, in all about two thousand men.
The means of crossing--two or three boats--were very inadequate for an
advance, and nothing at all for a retreat. Several hours were spent in
getting one scow from the canal into the river, and the whole movement
was so slow that the Confederates had ample opportunity to learn
exactly what was going on and prepare to meet the movement. The
battery was dragged up the bluff with great labor. At the top the
troops found themselves in an open field of about eight acres,
surrounded by woods. Colonel Baker was made commander of all the
forces that crossed.
{110} The enemy soon appeared, and before the battery had fired more
than half a dozen rounds the Confederate sharp-shooters, posted on a
hill at the left, within easy range, disabled so many of the gunners
that the pieces became useless. Then there was an attack by a heavy
force of infantry in front, which, firing from the woods, cut down
Baker's men with comparative safety. The National troops stood their
ground for two hours and returned the fire as effectively as they
could; but the enemy seemed to increase in number, and grew constantly
bolder. About six o'clock, wrote Capt. Francis G. Young, "a rebel
officer, riding a white horse, came out of the woods and beckoned to
us to come forward. Colonel Baker thought it was General Johnston, and
that the enemy would meet us in open fight. Part of our column
charged, Baker cheering us on, when a tremendous onset was made by the
rebels. One man rode forward, presented a revolver at Baker, and fired
all its charges at him. Our gallant leader fell, and at the same
moment all our lines were driven back by the overwhelming force
opposed to them. But Captain Beiral, with his company, fought his way
back to Colonel Baker's body, rescued it, brought it along to me, and
then a general retreat commenced. It was _sauve qui peut_. I got the
colonel's body to the island before the worst of the rout, and then,
looking to the Virginia shore, saw such a spectacle as no tongue can
describe. Our entire forces were retreating--tumbling, rolling,
leaping down the steep heights; the enemy following them murdering and
taking prisoners. Colonel Devens left his command and swam the river
on horseback. The one boat in the Virginia channel was speedily filled
and sunk. A thousand men thronged the farther bank. Muskets, coats,
and everything were thrown aside, and all were desperately trying to
escape. Hundreds plunged into the rapid current, and the shrieks of
the drowning added to the horror of sounds and sights. The enemy kept
up their fire from the cliff above. A captain of the Fifteenth
Massachusetts at one moment charged gallantly up the hill, leading two
companies, who still had their arms, against the pursuing foe. A
moment later, and the same officer, perceiving the hopelessness of the
situation, waved a white handkerchief and surrendered the main body of
his command."
Gen. Edward W. Hinks (at that time colonel of the Nineteenth
Massachusetts Regiment), who arrived and took command just after the
action, wrote in his report: "The means of transportation, for advance
in support or for a retreat, were criminally deficient--especially
when we consider the facility for creating proper means for such
purposes at our disposal. The place for landing on the Virginia shore
was most unfortunately selected, being at a point where the shore rose
with great abruptness and was entirely studded with trees, being
perfectly impassable to artillery or infantry in line. The entire
island was also commanded by the enemy's artillery and rifles. Within
half a mile, upon either side of the points selected, a landing could
have been effected where we could have been placed upon equal terms
with the enemy, if it was necessary to effect a landing from the
island."
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES DEVENS.]
[Illustration: COLONEL EDWARD D. BAKER.]
[Illustration: BATTERY WAITING FOR ORDERS.]
The losses in this action were about a hundred and fifty killed, about
two hundred and fifty wounded, and about five hundred captured.
Colonel Baker was a lawyer by profession, had been a friend of
Lincoln's in Springfield, Ill., had lived in California, then removed
to Oregon, and was elected United States senator from that State just
before the war began. He was greatly {111} beloved as a man; but
though he was brave and patriotic, and had commanded a brigade in the
Mexican war, it was evident, from his conduct of the Ball's Bluff
affair, that he had little military skill.
[Illustration: AN INCIDENT OF CAMP LIFE--CARD-PLAYING.]
Among the other minor engagements was one at Edwards Ferry, Va., June
17th, in which three hundred Pennsylvanians, under Captain Gardner,
were attacked by a Confederate force that tried to take possession of
the ferry. After a fight of three hours the assailants were driven off
with a loss of about thirty men. Captain Gardner lost four.
On July 2d there was an engagement of six hours' duration at Falling
Waters, Va., between the brigades of Abercrombie, Thomas, and Negley,
and a Confederate force under General Jackson. It was a stubborn
fight. The Confederates, who had four regiments of infantry and one of
cavalry, with four guns, at length retreated slowly, having lost about
ninety men. The National loss was thirteen.
At Bunker Hill, near Martinsburg, on July 15th, General Patterson's
division, being on the march, was attacked by a body of about six
hundred cavalry, led by Colonel Stuart. When the cavalry charged, the
National infantry opened their lines and disclosed a battery, which
poured rapid discharges of shells and grape shot into the
Confederates, and put them to rout. The Federal cavalry then came up
and pursued the fugitives two miles.
{112} [Illustration: BATTLE OF MUMFORDSVILLE, KENTUCKY, SEPTEMBER 14,
1862.]
In October the Thirteenth Massachusetts Regiment crossed the Potomac
at Harper's Ferry, to seize a large quantity of wheat that was stored
there for the Confederate Government. A day or two later they were
reënforced by three companies of the Third Wisconsin Regiment, four of
the Twenty-eighth Pennsylvania, and sections of a New York and a Rhode
Island battery. The guns were placed to command approaches of the
town, pickets were thrown out, and the wheat was removed. On the 16th
the pickets on Bolivar Heights, west of the town, were driven in, and
this was followed by an attack from a Confederate force, consisting of
three regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and seven pieces of
artillery. Gen. John W. Geary, commanding the National forces, placed
one company for the defence of the fords of the Shenandoah, and with
the remaining troops met the attack. Three successive charges by the
cavalry were repelled; then a rifled gun was brought across the river
and directed its fire upon the Confederate battery; and at the same
time Geary advanced his right flank, turned the enemy's left, and
gained a portion of Bolivar Heights. He then ordered a general forward
movement, gained the entire Heights, and drove the enemy across the
valley toward Halltown. From lack of cavalry he was unable to pursue;
but he planted guns on Bolivar Heights, and soon silenced the
Confederate guns on London Heights. Before recrossing the Potomac the
troops burned the iron foundry at Shenandoah City. In this action the
National loss was four killed, seven wounded, and two captured. The
Confederate loss was not ascertained, but it was supposed to be
somewhat over a hundred men, besides one gun and a large quantity of
ammunition. A member of the Massachusetts regiment, in giving an
account of this action, wrote: "There were many side scenes. Stimpson
had a hand-to-hand fight with one of the cavalry, whom he bayoneted,
illustrating the bayonet drill in which the company had been
exercised. Corporal Marshall was chased by a mounted officer while he
was assisting one of the wounded Wisconsin boys off. He turned and
shot {113} his pursuer through the breast. The officer proved to be
Colonel Ashby, commander of the rebels, which accounted for the lull
in the battle. We have since learned that he was not killed."
[Illustration: FEDERAL TROOPS FORAGING.]
On December 20th Gen. E. O. C. Ord, commanding a brigade, moved
westward along the chain-bridge road, toward Dranesville, for the
purpose of making a reconnoissance and gathering forage. Near
Dranesville, when returning, he was attacked by a Confederate force
consisting of five regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, with a
battery. The attack came from the south and struck his right flank.
Changing front so as to face the enemy, he found advantageous ground
for receiving battle, and placed his artillery so as to enfilade the
Centreville road on which the enemy's battery was posted. Leaving his
cavalry in the shelter of a wooded hill, he got his infantry well in
hand and moved steadily forward on the enemy. His guns were handled
with skill, and soon exploded a Confederate caisson and drove off the
battery. Then he made a bayonet charge, before which the Confederate
infantry fled, leaving on the field their dead and wounded, and a
large quantity of equipments. His loss was seven killed and sixty
wounded. The Confederate loss was about a hundred.
That portion of Virginia west of the Alleghanies (now West Virginia)
never was essentially a slaveholding region. The number of slaves held
there was very small, as it always must be in a mountainous country;
and the interests of the people, with their iron mines, their coal
mines, and their forests of valuable timber, and their streams flowing
into the Ohio, were allied much more closely with those of the free
States than with those of the tide-water portion of their own State.
When, therefore, at the beginning of the war, before the people of
Virginia had voted on the question of adopting or rejecting the
ordinance of secession as passed by their convention, troops from the
cotton States were poured into that State to secure it for the
Confederacy, they found no such welcome west of the mountains as east
of them; and the task of driving them out from the valleys of the
Kanawha and the Monongahela was easy in comparison with the work that
lay before the National armies on the Potomac and the James.
Major-Gen. George B. McClellan, then in his thirty-fifth year, crossed
the Ohio with a small army in May, and won several victories that for
the time cleared West Virginia of Confederate troops, gained him a
vote of thanks in Congress, and made for him a sudden reputation,
which resulted in his being called to the head of the army after the
disaster at Bull Run. Some of the battles in West Virginia, including
Philippi, Cheat River, and Rich Mountain, have already been described.
An account of other minor engagements in that State is given in this
chapter.
There were several small actions at Romney, in Virginia, the most
considerable of which took place on October 26th. General Kelly, with
twenty-five hundred men, marched on that place from the west, while
Col. Thomas Johns, with seven hundred, approached it from the north.
Five miles from Romney, Kelly drove in the Confederate outposts, and
nearer the town he met the enemy drawn up in a commanding position,
with a rifled twelve-pounder on a hill. They also had intrenchments
commanding the bridge. After some artillery firing, Kelly's cavalry
forded the river, while his infantry charged across the bridge,
whereupon the Confederates retreated precipitately toward Winchester.
Kelly captured four hundred prisoners, two hundred horses, three
wagon-loads of new rifles, and a large lot of camp equipage. The
losses in killed and wounded were small. In this action a Captain
Butterfield, of an Ohio regiment, was mounted on an old team horse,
which became unmanageable and persisted in getting in front of the
field gun that had just been brought up. This embarrassed the gunners,
who were ready and anxious to make a telling shot, and finally the
captain shouted: "Never mind the old horse, boys. Blaze away!" The
shot was then made, which drove off a Confederate battery; and a few
minutes later, when the charge was ordered, the old horse, with his
tail scorched, wheeled into line and participated in it.
At the same time when General McClellan was operating against the
Confederate forces in the northern part of West Virginia, Gen. Jacob
D. Cox commanded an expedition that marched from Guyandotte into the
valley of the Great Kanawha. His first action was at Barboursville,
which he captured. At Scarytown, on the river, a detachment of his
Ohio troops, commanded by Colonel Lowe, was defeated by a Confederate
force under Captain Patton, and lost nearly sixty men. Cox then
marched on Charleston, which was held by a force under General Wise.
But Wise retreated, crossed Gauley River and burned the bridge, and
continued his flight to Lewisburg. Here he was superseded by General
Floyd, who brought reinforcements. Floyd attacked the Seventh Ohio
Regiment at Cross Lanes, and defeated it, inflicting a loss of about
two hundred men. He then advanced to Carnifex Ferry, endeavoring to
flank Cox's force, when General Rosecrans, with ten thousand men, came
down from the northern part of the State. Floyd had a strong position
on Gauley River, and Rosecrans sent forward a force to reconnoitre.
The commander of this, General Benham, pushed it too boldly, and it
developed into an engagement (September {114} 10th), wherein he lost
about two hundred men, including Colonel Lowe and other valuable
officers. Rosecrans made preparations for giving battle in earnest
next day; but in the night Floyd retreated, leaving a large portion of
his baggage, and took a position thirty miles distant. Soon afterward
General Lee arrived with another force and took command of all the
Confederate troops, numbering now about twenty thousand, and then in
turn Rosecrans retreated. On the way, Lee had made a reconnoissance of
a position held by General Reynolds at Cheat Mountain (September
12th), and in the consequent skirmishing he lost about a hundred men,
including Col. John A. Washington, of his staff, who was killed.
Reynolds's loss was about the same, but Lee found his position too
strong to be taken. Early in November, Lee was called to Eastern
Virginia, and Rosecrans then planned an attack on Floyd; but it
miscarried through failure of the flank movement, which was intrusted
to General Benham. But Benham pursued the enemy for fifty miles,
defeated the rear guard of cavalry, and killed its leader. On December
12th, General Milroy, who had succeeded General Reynolds, advanced
against the Confederates at Buffalo Mountain; but his attack was badly
managed, and failed. He was then attacked, in turn, but the enemy had
no better success. Three or four hundred men were disabled in these
engagements. On the last day of the year Milroy sent eight hundred men
of the Twenty-fifth Ohio Regiment, under Major Webster, against a
Confederate camp at Huntersville. They drove away the Confederates,
burned six buildings filled with provisions, and returned without
loss.
Through the natural impulses of a large majority of her people, and
their material interests, aided by these military operations, small as
they were in detail, West Virginia was by this time secured to the
Union, and would probably have remained in it even if the war had
terminated otherwise.
There never was any serious danger that Kentucky would secede, though
her governor refused troops to the National Government and pretended
to assume a position of neutrality. Such a position being essentially
impossible, such of the young men of that State as believed in the
institution of slavery went largely into the Confederate army, while a
greater number entered the National service and were among its best
soldiers. The Confederate Government was very loath to give up
Kentucky, admitted a delegation of Kentucky secessionists to seats in
its Congress, and made several attempts to invade the State and occupy
it by armed force. The more important actions that were fought there
are narrated elsewhere. A few of the minor ones must be mentioned
here.
To protect the loyal mountaineers in the eastern part of the State, a
fortified camp, called Camp Wild Cat, was established on the road
leading to Cumberland Gap. It was at the top of a high cliff,
overlooking the road, and was commanded by a heavily-wooded hill a few
hundred yards distant. The force there was commanded by Gen. Albin
Schoepff. A force of over seven thousand Confederates, commanded by
General Zollicoffer, marched upon this camp and attacked it on the
same day that the battle of Ball's Bluff was fought, October 21st. The
camp had been held by but one Kentucky regiment; but on the approach
of the enemy it was reinforced by the Fourteenth and Seventeenth Ohio,
the Thirty-third Indiana, and Stannard's battery. After a fight with a
battalion of Kentucky cavalry, the Confederate infantry charged up the
hill and were met by a withering fire, which drove them back. They
advanced again, getting within a few yards of the log breastwork,
placed their caps on their bayonets and shouted that they were Union
men. This gave them a chance to fire a volley at close range; but it
was answered so immediately and so effectively that they broke and
fled down the hill. Then the artillery was brought into play and
hastened their flight, besides thwarting an attack that had been made
by a detachment on the flank. In the afternoon the attempt was
repeated, by two detachments directed simultaneously against the
flanks of the position; but it was defeated in much the same way that
the morning attack had been. Zollicoffer then drew off his forces, and
that night their campfires could be seen far down the valley. The
National loss was about thirty men, that of the Confederates was
estimated at nearly three hundred.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JACOB D. COX.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD W. HINKS.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM S. ROSECRANS.]
Two days later there were sharp actions at West Liberty and {115}
Hodgesville. A regiment of infantry and a company of cavalry, with one
gun, marched thirty-five miles between half-past two and half-past
nine P.M., in constant rain, making several fords, one of which,
across the Licking, was waist deep. The object was to drive the
Confederates out of West Liberty and take possession of the town. In
this they were successful, with but one man wounded. The Confederates
lost twenty, and half a dozen Union men who had been held as prisoners
were released. The greatest benefit resulting from the action was the
confidence that it gave to the Unionists in that region. One
correspondent wrote: "The people had been taught that the Union
soldiers would be guilty of most awful atrocities. Several women made
their appearance on Thursday, trembling with cold and fear, and said
that they had remained in the woods all night after the fight. The
poor creatures had been told that the Abolition troops rejoiced to
kill Southern babies, and were in the habit of carrying little
children about on their bayonets in the towns which they took; and
this was actually believed." A detachment of the Sixth Indiana
Regiment made a sudden attack on a Confederate camp near Hodgesville,
and after a short, sharp fight drove off the enemy, killing or
wounding eight of them, and captured many horses and wagons and a
large quantity of powder.
Near Munfordville, on December 17th, a portion of the Thirty-second
Indiana Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Trebra, was attacked by two
regiments of infantry, a regiment of cavalry, and a battery. They
maintained a spirited defence until they were reinforced, and then
continued the fight till it ended in the retreat of the enemy. General
Buell said in his report: "The attack of the enemy was mainly with his
cavalry and artillery. Our troops fought as skirmishers, rallying
rapidly into squares when charged by the cavalry--sometimes even
defending themselves singly and killing their assailants with the
bayonet." The National loss was eight killed and ten wounded; the
Confederate, thirty-three killed (including Colonel Terry, commanding)
and fifty wounded. A Confederate account said: "All in all, this is
one of the most desperate fights of the war. It was hand to hand from
first to last. No men could have fought more desperately than the
enemy. The Rangers were equally reckless. Colonel Terry, always in the
front, discovered a nest of five of the enemy. He leaped in his
saddle, waved his hat, and said, 'Come on, boys! Here's another bird's
nest.' He fired and killed two of them. The other three fired at him
simultaneously. One shot killed his charger; another shot killed him.
He fell headlong from his horse without a moan or a groan. At the same
time, Paulding Anderson and Dr. Cowan rode up and despatched the
remaining three of the enemy. When Colonel Terry's fall was announced
it at once prostrated his men with grief. The fight ended here." This
action is also known by the name of Rowlett's Station and
Woodsonville.
On December 28th a small detachment of cavalry, led by Major Murray,
left camp near Calhoun, Ky., for a scout across Green River. Near
Sacramento they were surprised and attacked by seven hundred cavalry
under Colonel Forrest. They sustained an almost hand-to-hand fight for
half an hour, and then, as their ammunition was exhausted, retreated.
It is impossible to reconcile the accounts of the losses; but it is
certain that Capt. A. G. Bacon was killed on the National side, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Meriwether of the Confederates. This closed the
first year's fighting in Kentucky.
[Illustration: REVIEW OF CONFEDERATE TROOPS EN ROUTE TO THE FRONT,
PASSING PULASKI MONUMENT, SAVANNAH, GA.]
{116} [Illustration: SIEGE OF LEXINGTON, MISSOURI.]
In Missouri there were special and strong reasons against secession.
Her slave population was comparatively small, and her soil and climate
were suited to crops that do not require negro labor. She was farthest
north of any slave State; and if she had joined the Confederacy, and
it had established itself, she would have been bordered on {117} three
sides by foreign territory, with nothing but a surveyed line for the
boundary on two of those sides. Moreover, there was a large German
element in her population, industrious, opposed to slavery, loving the
Union, and belonging, to a considerable extent, to the Republican
party. In the presidential election of 1860, 26,430 Republican votes
were cast in slave States (all in border States), and of these 17,028
were cast in Missouri. Delaware gave the next highest number--3,815.
Of 148,490 Democratic votes cast in Missouri, but 31,317 were for
Breckinridge, the extreme proslavery candidate. Nevertheless, the
secessionists made a strong effort to get Missouri out of the Union.
The methods pursued have been described in a previous chapter,
together with the results of the first fighting, and the defeat and
death of General Lyon in the battle of Wilson's Creek.
[Illustration: COLONEL JAMES A. MULLIGAN.]
[Illustration: BURYING THE DEAD.]
A Confederate force--or rather the materials for a force, for the men
were poorly equipped and hardly drilled at all--commanded by Colonel
Hunter, was gathered at Charleston, Mo., in August, encamped about the
court-house; and on the 19th Colonel Dougherty, of the Twenty-second
Illinois Regiment, set out to capture it. He arrived at Camp Lyon in
the evening with three hundred men, learned of the position of the
enemy, and said to Captain Abbott, who had made the reconnoissance:
"We are going to take Charleston to-night. You stay here and engage
the enemy till we come back." Then to his men: "Battalion, right face
forward, march!" As they neared the town, double quick was ordered,
and the two companies in the advance proceeded rapidly, but the
following ones became somehow separated. These two companies drove in
the pickets, followed them sharply, and charged into the town,
scattering the small detachment of raw cavalry. The second in command
then asked of Colonel Dougherty what should be done next. "Take the
court-house, or bust," he answered; and at once that building was
attacked. The Confederates fired from the windows; but the assailants
concentrated a destructive fire upon it, and then rushed in at the
doors. Some escaped through the windows, some were shot down while
attempting to do so, and many were captured. Later in the day a
company of Illinois cavalry pursued the retreating Confederates, and
captured forty more, with many horses. In this engagement
Lieutenant-Colonel Ransom had a personal encounter with a Confederate
officer, who rode up to him and called out: "What do you mean? You are
killing our own men."--"I know what I am doing," answered Ransom. "Who
are you?"--"I am for Jeff Davis," said the stranger. "Then you are the
man I am after," said Ransom, and they drew their pistols. The
Confederate fired first, and wounded Ransom in the arm, who then fired
and killed his antagonist. The National loss {118} was one killed and
four wounded. The Confederate loss was reported at forty killed;
number of wounded, unknown.
Late in August, when it was learned that a movement against Lexington,
on Missouri River, was about to be made by a strong Confederate force
under General Price, measures were taken to reinforce the small
garrison and prevent the place from falling into the hands of the
enemy. The Twenty-third Illinois Regiment, Col. James A. Mulligan,
which was called "the Irish Brigade," was ordered thither from
Jefferson City, and other reinforcements were promised. Mulligan, with
his command, set out at once, marched nine days, foraging on the
country, and on reaching Lexington found there a regiment of cavalry
and one of home guards. The next day the Thirteenth Missouri Regiment,
retreating from Warrensburg, joined them. This gave Mulligan a total
force of about two thousand eight hundred men, who had forty rounds of
ammunition, and he had seven field-guns and a small quantity of
provisions. He took possession of the hill east of the town, on which
stood the Masonic College, and proceeded to fortify. His lines
enclosed about eighteen acres, and he had put but half a day's work on
them when, in the evening of September 11th, the enemy appeared. In
the morning of the 12th the fighting began, when a part of Mulligan's
men drove back the enemy's advance and burned a bridge, which
compelled them to make a detour and approach the place by another
road. Again Mulligan sent out a detachment to check them while his
remaining force worked on the intrenchments, and there was brisk
fighting in the cemetery at the edge of the town. In the afternoon
there was a lively artillery duel, and the National forces held their
own, dismounting a Confederate gun, exploding a caisson, and causing
the enemy to withdraw at dusk to a camp two miles away. The next day
the garrison fitted up a small foundry, in which they cast shot for
their cannon, obtained powder and made cartridges, and continued the
work on the intrenchments. The great want was provisions and water. In
the next five days the Confederates were heavily reinforced, while the
little garrison looked in vain for the promised help.
On the 18th a determined attack in force was made. Colonel Mulligan
wrote: "They came as one dark moving mass, their guns beaming in the
sun, their banners waving, and their drums beating. Everywhere, as far
as we could see, were men, men, men, approaching grandly. Our spies
had brought intelligence and had all agreed that it was the intention
of the enemy to make a grand rush, overwhelm us, and bury us in the
trenches of Lexington." Mulligan's men sustained the shock bravely,
and the enemy met such a deadly fire that they could not get to the
works. But meanwhile they had interposed a force between the works and
the river, shutting off the supply of water, and they kept up a heavy
bombardment with sixteen pieces of artillery. They also took
possession of a large house outside the lines which was used as a
hospital, and filled it with sharp-shooters. Mulligan ordered two
companies--one of home guards and one from the Fourteenth Missouri--to
drive them out, but they refused to undertake so hazardous a task. He
then sent a company from his Irish regiment, who rushed gallantly
across the intervening space, burst in the doors, took possession of
the house, and (under an impression that the laws of war had been
violated in thus using a hospital for sharp-shooters) killed every
Confederate soldier caught inside. Two hours later the Confederates in
turn drove them out and again occupied the building. Firing was kept
up through the 19th; and on the 20th the besiegers obtained bales of
hemp, wet them, and rolling them along before them as a movable
breastwork, were enabled to approach the intrenchments. Bullets would
not go through these bales, and red-hot shot would not set them on
fire. Yet the fight still continued for some hours, until the
ammunition of the garrison was all but exhausted. For five days they
had had no water except as they could catch rain when it fell, the
provisions were eaten up, and there was no sign of the promised
reinforcements. There was nothing to do but surrender. Mulligan had
lost one hundred and fifty men killed or wounded; the Confederate
report acknowledged a loss of one hundred, which probably was far
short of the truth. A correspondent who was present wrote: "Hundreds
of the men who fought on the Confederate side were attached to no
command. They came in when they pleased, fought or not as they
pleased, left when ready, and if killed were buried on the spot--were
missed from no muster-roll, and hence would not be reckoned in the
aggregate loss. The Confederates vary in their statements. One said
they lost sixty killed; another said their loss was at least equal to
that of the Federals; while still another admitted to me that the
taking of the works cost them a thousand men. I saw one case that
shows the Confederate style of fighting. An old Texan, dressed in
buckskin and armed with a long rifle, used to go up to the works every
morning about seven o'clock, carrying his dinner in a tin pail. Taking
a good position, he banged away at the Federals till noon, then rested
an hour and ate his dinner, after which he resumed operations till six
P.M., when he returned home to supper and a night's sleep." The
privates of Mulligan's command were paroled, and the officers held as
prisoners.
In October the National troops stationed at Pilot Knob, Mo., commanded
by Col. J. B. Plummer, were ordered to march on Fredericktown and
attack a Confederate force there, two thousand strong, commanded by
Gen. Jeff. Thompson. They arrived at that place in the evening of the
21st, and found that it had just been evacuated. They consisted of
Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin troops, with cavalry and a battery,
and numbered about three thousand five hundred. Three thousand more,
commanded by Col. W. P. Carlin, marched from Cape Girardeau and joined
them at Fredericktown. About half of the entire force was then sent in
pursuit of the enemy, who was found just south of the town. An
engagement was at once begun with artillery, and then the Seventeenth
Illinois Regiment charged upon the Confederate battery and captured
one gun. Then followed a running fight that lasted four hours, the
Confederates stopping frequently to make a temporary stand and fire a
few rounds from their battery. As these positions were successively
charged or flanked, and attacked with artillery and musketry, they
retired from them. At five o'clock in the afternoon the pursuit was
discontinued, and the National forces returned to Fredericktown. They
had lost seven men killed and sixty wounded. They had captured two
field-pieces and taken sixty prisoners, and the next day they buried a
hundred and sixty Confederate dead. Among the enemy's killed was
Colonel Lowe, second in command.
A few days later there was a brilliant affair at Springfield, not far
from the scene of General Lyon's defeat and death in August. There was
a small, select cavalry organization known as General Frémont's
body-guard, commanded by Major Charles Zagonyi, a Hungarian, who had
seen service in Europe. On the 24th Zagonyi received orders to take a
part of his command, and Major White's battalion of prairie scouts,
and march on Springfield, fifty miles distant, with all possible
haste. It was supposed that the Confederate troops there numbered four
hundred. The {119} order was obeyed with alacrity, and early the next
day he neared the town. Here he captured half a dozen Confederate
soldiers of a foraging party, and from them and certain Unionists
among the inhabitants, he learned that the enemy in the town numbered
two thousand instead of four hundred. Undaunted by this, he resolved
to push forward. Some of the foraging party who escaped carried the
news of his approach, and the Confederates made quick dispositions to
receive him. Finding a regiment drawn up beside the road, he avoided
it by a detour and came in on another road, but here also the enemy
were ready for him. Placing his own command in the advance, with
himself at the head, he prepared to charge straight into the midst of
the enemy. For some unknown reason, White's command, instead of
following directly, counter-marched to the left, and Zagonyi with his
one hundred and sixty men went in alone. They began with a trot, and
soon increased the pace to a gallop, unmindful of the fire of
skirmishers in the woods, which emptied several of their saddles. The
enemy, infantry and cavalry, was drawn up in the form of a hollow
square, in an open field. Zagonyi's band rode down a lane, jumped a
brook, threw down a fence, and then charged right across the field
into the midst of their foes, spreading out fan-like as they neared
them, and using their pistols and sabres vigorously. The Confederate
cavalry gave way and scattered almost at once; the infantry stood a
little longer, and then retreated. Major White with his command came
up just in time to strike them in the flank, completing the rout. An
eye-witness wrote: "Some fled wildly toward the town, pursued by the
insatiate guards, who, overtaking them, either cut them down with
their sabres or levelled them with shots from their pistols. Some were
even chased through the streets of the city and then killed in
hand-to-hand encounters with their pursuers." Zagonyi raised the
National flag on the court-house, detailed a guard to attend to his
wounded, and then retired to Bolivar. His own account of the fight,
given in Mrs. Frémont's "Story of the Guard," is quaint and
interesting.
[Illustration: FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHMENTS AT PILOT KNOB, MO.]
{120} [Illustration: CHARGE OF FRÉMONT'S BODY-GUARD UNDER MAJOR
ZAGONYI, NEAR SPRINGFIELD, MO.]
[Illustration: PURSUIT OF THE ENEMY.]
[Illustration: MAJOR CHARLES ZAGONYI.]
"About four o'clock I arrived on the highest point on the Ozark
Mountains. Not seeing any sign of the enemy, I halted my command, made
them known that the enemy instead of four hundred is nineteen hundred.
But I promised them victory if they will be what I thought and
expected them to be. If any of them too much fatigued from the
fifty-six miles, or sick, or unwell, to step forward; but nobody was
worn out. (Instead of worn out, it is true that every eye was a fist
big.) I made them known that this day I want to fight the first and
the last hard battle, so that if they meet us again they shall know
with who they have to do and remember the Body-Guard. And ordered
quick march. Besides, I tell them, whatever we meet, to keep together
and look after me; would I fall, not to give up, but to avenge mine
death. To leave every ceremonious cuts away in the battlefield and use
only right cut and thrust. Being young, I thought they might be
confused in the different cuts, and the Hungarian hussars say, 'Never
defend yourselves--better make {121} your enemy defend himself and you
go in.' I just mention them that you know very well that I promised
you that I will lead you shortly to show that we are not a fancy and
only guard-doing-duty soldiers, but fighting men. My despatch meant
what I will do. In the hour I get the news my mind was settled. I say,
Thank God, if I am to fight, it is not four hundred! but nineteen
hundred! I halt my men again and say, 'Soldiers! When I was to recruit
you, I told you you was not parade soldiers, but for war. The enemy is
more than we. The enemy is two thousand, and we are but one hundred
and fifty. It is possible no man will come back. No man will go that
thinks the enemy too many. He can ride back. (I see by the glimpsing
of their eye they was mad to be chanced a coward.) The Guard that
follow me will take for battle-cry, "Frémont and the Union,"
and--CHARGE--!' Running down the lane between the cross-fire, the
First Company followed close, but the rest stopped for a couple
seconds. I had not wondered if none had come--young soldiers and such
a tremendous fire, bullets coming like a rain.
"As I arrived down on the creek I said aloud, 'If I could send
somebody back I would give my life for it. We are lost here if they
don't follow.' My Adjutant, Majthenyi, hearing, feared that he will be
sent back, jumped down from his horse and busy himself opening the
fence. I expected to find the enemy on the other end of Springfield,
but, unexpectedly coming out of the woods to an open place, I was
fired on in front of mine command. Halted for a minute, seeing that,
or a bold forward march under a cross-fire, or a doubtful retreat with
losing most of my men, I took the first and commanded 'March!' Under a
heavy cross-fire (in trot), down the little hill in the lane--two
hundred yards--to a creek, where I ordered the fence to be
opened--marched in my command--ordered them to form, and with the
war-cry of 'Frémont and the Union,' we made the attack. The First
Company, forty-seven strong, against five or six hundred infantry, and
the rest against the cavalry, was made so successfully, that, in three
minutes, the cavalry run in every direction, and the infantry
retreated in the thick wood, and their cavalry in every direction. The
infantry we were not able to follow in the woods, so that we turned
against the running cavalry. With those we had in different places,
and in differing numbers, attacked and dispersed--not only in one
place, but our men were so much emboldened, that twenty or thirty
attacked twenty, thirty times their numbers, and these single-handed
attacks, fighting here and there on their own hook, did us more harm
than their grand first attack. By them we lost our prisoners.
Single-handed they fought bravely, specially one--a lieutenant--who,
in a narrow lane, wanted to cut himself through about sixty of us,
running in that direction. But he was not able to go very far. Firing
two or three times, he ran against me, and put his revolver on my
side, but, through the movement of the horse, the shot passed behind
me. He was a perfect target--first cut down and after shot. He was a
brave man; for that reason I felt some pity to kill him. We went to
their encampment, but the ground was deserted, and we returned to the
Court-house, raised the company-flag, liberated prisoners, and
collected my forces together--which numbered not more, including
myself, than seventy men on horseback. The rest--without horses, or
wounded, and about thirty who had dispersed in pursuit of the enemy--I
could not gather up; and it was midnight before they reached me--and
some of them next day. I never was sick in my life, Madame, till what
time I find myself leaving Springfield, in the dark, with only
sixty-nine men and officers--I was the seventy. I was perfectly sick
and disheartened, so I could hardly sit in the saddle, to think of so
dear a victory. But it ended so that fifteen is dead--two died
after--ten prisoners, who was released, and of the wounded, not one
will lose a finger. In all seventeen lost.
"The bugler (Frenchman) I ordered him two three time to put his sword
away and take the bugle in his hand, that I shall be able to use him.
Hardly I took my eyes down, next minute I seen him, sword in the hand,
all bloody; and this he done two or three times. Finally, the mouth of
the bugle being shot away, the bugler had excuse for gratifying
himself in use of the sword. One had a beautiful wound through the
nose. 'My boy,' I told him, 'I would give any thing for that wound.'
After twenty-four hours it was beautiful--just the mark enough to show
a bullet has passed through; but, poor fellow, he cannot even show it.
It healed up so as to leave no mark at all. He {122} had also five on
his leg and shoulder, and the fifth wound he only found after six
days; he could not move easy, for that reason he was late to find
there was two wounds in the legs."
Early in November, General Grant was ordered to make demonstrations on
both sides of the Mississippi near Columbus, to prevent the
Confederates from sending reinforcements to General Price, in Southern
Missouri, and also to prevent them from interfering with the movements
of certain detachments of National troops. On the 6th he left Cairo
with three thousand men, on five steamers, convoyed by two gunboats,
and passed down the river to the vicinity of Columbus. To attack that
place would have been hopeless, as it was well fortified and strongly
garrisoned. He landed his troops on the Missouri side on the 7th, and
put them in motion toward Belmont, opposite Columbus, deploying
skirmishers and looking for the enemy. They had not gone far before
the enemy was encountered, and then it became a fight through the
woods from tree to tree. After two or three miles of this, they
arrived at a fortified camp surrounded with abatis. Grant's men
charged at once, succeeded in making their way through the
obstructions, and soon captured the camp with the artillery and some
prisoners. But most of the Confederates escaped and crossed the river
in their own boats, or took shelter under the bank. The usual result
of capturing a camp was soon seen. The victors laid down their arms
and devoted themselves to plundering, while some amused themselves
with the captured guns, firing at empty steamers. Meanwhile the
defeated men under the bank regained confidence and rallied, and two
steamers filled with Confederate soldiers were sent over from
Columbus; while the guns there, commanding the western bank, were
trained and fired upon the camp. To stop the plundering and bring his
men to order, Grant had the camp set on fire and then ordered a
retreat. The men formed rapidly, with deployed skirmishers, and
retired slowly to the boats, Grant himself being the last one to go on
board. Some of the wounded were taken on the transports, others were
left on the field. The National loss was 485; the Confederate loss was
642, including 175 carried off as prisoners. The Unionists also spiked
four guns and brought off two. Both sides claimed this action as a
victory--Grant, because he had accomplished the object for which he
set out, preventing reinforcements from being sent to Price; the
Confederates, because they were left in possession of the field. But
it was generally discussed as a disaster to the National arms. There
were many interesting incidents. One man who had both legs shot off
was found in the woods singing "The Star Spangled Banner." Another,
who was mortally wounded, had propped himself up against a tree and
thought to take a smoke. He was found dead with his pipe in one hand,
his knife in the other, and the tobacco on his breast. A Confederate
correspondent told this story: "When the two columns came face to
face, Colonel Walker's regiment was immediately opposed to the Seventh
Iowa, and David Vollmer, drawing the attention of a comrade to the
stars and stripes that floated over the enemy, avowed his intention of
capturing the colors or dying in the attempt. The charge was made, and
as the two columns came within a few yards of each other, Vollmer and
a young man named Lynch both made a rush for the colors; but Vollmer's
bayonet first pierced the breast of the color-bearer, and, grasping
the flag, he waved it over his head in triumph. At this moment he and
Lynch were both shot dead. Captain Armstrong stepped forth to capture
the colors, when he also fell, grasping the flagstaff." Another
correspondent wrote: "The Seventh Iowa suffered more severely than any
other regiment. It fought continually against fearful odds. Ever
pushing onward through the timber, on their hands and knees, they
crawled with their standard waving over them until they reached the
cornfield on the left of the enemy's encampment, where their cannon
was planted, and drove them from their guns, leaving them still
unmanned, knowing that other forces were following them up. Their
course was still onward until they entered on the camp-ground of the
foe and tore down the flag."
Besides those here described, there were many smaller engagements in
Missouri--at Piketon, Lancaster, Salem, Black Walnut Creek, Milford,
Hudson, and other places. There were also encounters in Florida, in
New Mexico, and in Texas; none of them being important, but all
together showing that the struggle begun this year had spread over a
vast territory and that a long and bloody war was before the people of
our country.
[Illustration: ABATIS.]
{123} [Illustration: "THE PICKET'S OFF DUTY FOREVER."]
WAR SONGS.
[Illustration]
It is probable that war songs are the oldest human compositions. In
every nation they have sprung into existence at the very dawning of
national life. The first Grecian poems of which we have any record are
war songs, chanted to inspire or maintain warlike enthusiasm. Not only
did they sing martial melodies as they attacked their enemies, but
when the conflict was over, and the victory won, they also sang
triumphal odes as they returned to camp. Martial odes that were sung
in Gaul by the conquering legions of Julius Cæsar have been handed
down to the present time. The student of the history and the
literature of Spain finds many traces of the war songs that the
all-conquering Romans sang as they marched over the mountains or
across the valleys of that then dependent nationality. And long before
the time of Cæsar, Servius Tullius ordered that two whole centuriæ
should consist of trumpeters, horn-blowers, etc., to sound the charge.
In these and subsequent ages, war songs were sung in chorus by a whole
army in advancing to the attack. If further proof of the antiquity of
military music were needed, a conclusive one is to be found in 2
Chronicles, xx. 21, where it is said that when Jehoshaphat went to
battle against the hosts of Ammon "he placed a choir of singers in
front of his army."
Wonderful indeed is the war song when studied as to its influence in
early times on history. By the power of arms, by the spirit of
conquest, did nations arise and continue to exist. The warrior made
the nation, and the poet sang and immortalized the warrior's fame; and
thus it came to pass that great honor was bestowed upon the poets.
Among old Arab tribes, fires were lighted and great rejoicings made by
their warriors {124} when a poet had manifested himself among them,
for in his songs they anticipated their own glory. In many ancient
countries, the bards that sang of battles were regarded as really
inspired, and their poetic productions were considered as the language
of the gods. Centuries passed before that admiration bestowed upon the
singer of war songs was impaired. The ancient literature of many
European countries presents numerous indications that the
warrior-poets were treated with great consideration; were forgiven by
their sovereigns for serious offences on condition that they write a
new war song, and were paid what would seem at this day enormous
prices for their compositions. It is related that on one occasion King
Athelstane, of the Anglo-Saxons, paid a poet sixteen ounces of pure
gold for a laudatory song. When the greater value of gold in that
distant age is considered, it is probable that no living poet is
better paid for his productions than was this old singer whose ballads
breathed of bloodshed and slaughter.
The marvellous influence of war songs over the ancient Norsemen is
difficult to understand. They were aroused to a high degree of
military enthusiasm, almost to madness, by the mere words of certain
songs. That it was this influence which frequently drove them onward
to great deeds, appears in every chapter of their life history. It was
the courage and frenzy aroused by Teutonic war songs that led to the
destruction of Rome, and shattered the civilization of southern
Europe.
That the influence of the war song over the minds and the hearts of
men did not terminate with the long ago past, is apparent to every
student of modern history. Garibaldi's warlike Hymn of the Italians,
the stirring "Marseillaise" of the light-hearted French, the vigorous
"Britannia" of the sturdy English, have inspired determination and
aroused courage on many a bloody battlefield. How frequently during
our own civil war was retreat checked, and the tide of battle turned,
by the singing of "We'll Rally round the Flag, Boys," started at the
opportune moment by some brave soldier with a vigorous and melodious
voice. It has been said that the Portuguese soldiers in Ceylon, at the
siege of Colombo, when pressed with misery and the pangs of hunger,
during their marches, derived not only consolation but also
encouragement from singing stanzas of their national song.
It is a singular fact that no great national hymn, and no war song
that arouses and cheers, was ever written by a distinguished poet. It
would seem that a National Hymn is the sort of material that cannot be
made to order. Not one of the best-known songs of our own civil
war--in the North or in the South--was written by an eminent poet.
Five of the greatest American poets were living during the great
conflict, and four of them gave expression to its military ardor,
determinate zeal, or pathos, but none of them so sung as to touch the
popular heart; that is to say, so as to secure the attention of those
who do not read poetry. The same is true of the composers of the
national anthems and great martial ballads of nearly every other
country. The thunder roar of the "Marseillaise," before which all the
other military songs of France are dull and weak, was produced by De
l'Isle, who lives in the memory of his countrymen and of the world for
this alone. The noble measures of "God Save the King" are not the work
of any one of the great British poets, but were probably written by
Henry Carey; but this is in dispute, and innumerable Englishmen sing
the anthem without even attempting to learn the name of the composer.
The Prussian National Anthem was not written by a Goethe, a Schiller,
or even a Köner. The name of the writer, Schneckenburger, would not be
found in books of reference had he not written "The Watch on the
Rhine." The favorite national song of the Italians, known as the
"Garibaldian Hymn," is the composition of Mercantini, of whom little
is known.
Our own country is especially fortunate in the quality of its great
national songs. "The Star Spangled Banner" breathes the loftiest and
purest patriotism. The English National Hymn is but a prayer for
blessings on the head of the king--the ruler. The "Marseillaise" is
calculated to arouse only the spirit of slaughter and bloodshed. Truer
than any of these to pure, lofty, and patriotic zeal is our own "Star
Spangled Banner."
From our Civil War we have received at least two war songs which,
simply as such, are fit to rank with the best of any country--"John
Brown's Body" and "Marching through Georgia." The greatest of the
Southern war lyrics--"My Maryland"--is equal to these as a powerful
lyric. It is said that fully two thousand poems and songs pertaining
to the war, both North and South, were written during the first year
of this conflict. But most of them are now wholly unknown, except to
the special student. Perhaps a score of compositions, the result of
the poetic outburst inspired by the Civil War, possess such merit that
they will survive through centuries as part of the literary heritage
of the nation. Of such we give in this collection about twenty that
seem to us the best and most popular.
[Illustration]
{125} NORTHERN SONGS.
TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP, THE BOYS ARE MARCHING.
This is one of the numerous war songs written by Mr. George F. Root.
Among his others are "Just before the Battle, Mother," and the
"Battle-Cry of Freedom." It is difficult to say which of these three
was the most popular. There was a touch of pathos in "Just before the
Battle, Mother," which made the words impressive and thrilling to the
hearts of men away from home and fireside. Many a brave soldier
considered death itself preferable to captivity and incarceration in
prison pens. How sad, then, must have been the lot of the soldiers who
sat in prison cells and heard the "tramp, tramp, tramp," of the
marching boys! Mr. Root was the composer as well as the author of the
three great songs mentioned above.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
In the prison cell I sit,
Thinking, mother dear, of you,
And our bright and happy home so far away;
And the tears they fill my eyes,
Spite of all that I can do,
Though I try to cheer my comrades and be gay.
CHORUS:
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching;
Cheer up, comrades, they will come,
And beneath the starry flag
We shall breathe the air again
Of the free-land in our own beloved home.
In the battle front we stood
When their fiercest charge they made,
And they swept us off a hundred men or more;
But before we reached their lines
They were beaten back dismayed,
And we heard the cry of vict'ry o'er and o'er.
So within the prison cell
We are waiting for the day
That shall come to open wide the iron door;
And the hollow eye grows bright,
And the poor heart almost gay,
As we think of seeing home and friends once more.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
{126} [Illustration]
ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC TO-NIGHT.
One cool September morning in 1861, a young woman living in Goshen,
Orange County, N. Y., read the familiar announcement from the seat of
war near Washington, "All quiet on the Potomac," to which was added in
smaller type, "A picket shot." These simple words were the inspiration
of a celebrated war song, which is as popular now as when it first
appeared. This song was first published in _Harper's Weekly_ for
November 30, 1861, and it has had many claimants; but after careful
investigation, there appears to be no reason whatever for disputing
the claim of Mrs. Ethel Lynn Beers. She died in Orange, N. J., October
10, 1879.
"All quiet along the Potomac," they say,
"Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing--a private or two now and then
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost--only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle."
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
Or the light of the watch-fire, are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh of the gentle night-wind
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping;
While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard, for the army is sleeping.
There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,
For their mother--may Heaven defend her!
The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,
That night, when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips--when low-murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken.
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place,
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree--
The footstep is lagging and weary;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shade of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle ... "Ha! Mary, good-by!"
The red life-blood is ebbing and plashing.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night;
No sound save the rush of the river;
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead--
The picket's off duty forever!
[Illustration]
{127} THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.
Perhaps the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe,
may be considered the most lofty in sentiment and the most elevated in
style of the martial songs of American patriotism. During the close of
the year 1861, Mrs. Howe with a party of friends visited Washington.
While there she attended a review of the Union troops on the Virginia
side of the Potomac and not far from the city. During her stay in camp
she witnessed a sudden and unexpected attack of the enemy. Thus she
had a glimpse of genuine warfare. On the ride back to the city the
party sang a number of war songs, including "John Brown's Body." One
of the party remarked that the tune was a grand one, and altogether
superior to the words of the song. Mrs. Howe responded to the effect
that she would endeavor to write other words that might be sung to
this stirring melody. That night, while she was lying in a dark room,
line after line and verse after verse of the "Battle Hymn of the
Republic" was composed. In this way every verse of the song was
carefully thought out. Then, springing from the bed, she found a pen
and piece of paper and wrote out the words of this rousing patriotic
hymn. It was often sung in the course of the war and under a great
variety of circumstances.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
stored;
He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I have read His righteous sentence in the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;"
Let the hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
WHEN THIS CRUEL WAR IS OVER.
With the English soldiers a popular song in war times is the well
known "Annie Laurie." It is said that during the Crimean War this
sentimental ditty was sung by the English forces more frequently than
any other melody. Several songs of similar sentimentality were famous
on both sides during the civil war. The boys in gray sang "Lorena" at
the very beginning of the war, and never stopped till the last musket
was stacked, and the last campfire cold. The boys in blue sang
"Mother, I've Come Home to Die," "Just before the Battle, Mother,"
"When this Cruel War is Over," and other songs of sentiment and
affection. "When this Cruel War is Over" was written by Charles C.
Sawyer, of Brooklyn, N. Y., and was published in the autumn of 1861.
More than one million copies of the song have been sold. Some of the
other compositions by Mr. Sawyer are "Swinging in the Lane" and
"Peeping through the Bars."
Dearest love, do you remember
When we last did meet,
How you told me that you loved me,
Kneeling at my feet?
Oh, how proud you stood before me,
In your suit of blue,
When you vowed to me and country
Ever to be true!
Weeping, sad and lonely,
Hopes and fears, how vain;
Yet praying
When this cruel war is over,
Praying that we meet again.
When the summer breeze is sighing
Mournfully along,
Or when autumn leaves are falling,
Sadly breathes the song.
Oft in dreams I see you lying
On the battle-plain,
Lonely, wounded, even dying,
Calling, but in vain.
If, amid the din of battle,
Nobly you should fall,
Far away from those who love you,
None to hear you call,
Who would whisper words of comfort?
Who would soothe your pain?
Ah, the many cruel fancies
Ever in my brain!
But our country called you, darling,
Angels cheer your way!
While our nation's sons are fighting,
We can only pray.
Nobly strike for God and liberty,
Let all nations see
How we love the starry banner,
Emblem of the free!
{128} WE ARE COMING, FATHER ABRAHAM.
In the dark days of 1862 President Lincoln issued a proclamation
asking for three hundred thousand volunteers to fill the stricken
ranks of the army, and to make the cry of "On to Richmond" an
accomplished fact. Immediately after this call, Mr. James Sloane
Gibbons, a native of Wilmington, Del., living in New York City, wrote:
"We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more."
This must have contributed largely to the accomplishment of the
military uprising which it relates. The stanzas were first published
anonymously in the New York _Evening Post_ of July 16, 1862. Owing to
this fact, perhaps, its authorship was at first attributed to William
C. Bryant. Mr. Gibbons joined the abolition movement when only twenty
years of age, and was for a time one of the editors of the
_Anti-Slavery Standard_. When the Emancipation Proclamation was
issued, he illuminated his residence in New York City. A short time
afterward, during the draft riots, he was mobbed, and only by the
assistance of friends was he able to save his life by escaping over
the roofs of adjoining houses to another street, where a friend had a
carriage waiting for him. He died October 17, 1892.
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore;
We leave our ploughs and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear;
We dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!
If you look across the hill-tops that meet the northern sky,
Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry;
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride;
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!
If you look all up our valleys where the growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer boys fast falling into line;
And children from their mother's knees are pulling at the weeds,
And learning how to reap and sow, against their country's needs;
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!
You have called us, and we're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide,
To lay us down, for Freedom's sake, our brothers' bones beside;
Or from foul treason's savage grasp to wrench the murderous blade,
And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade.
Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
{129} MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA.
All the great songs of the civil war, with one exception, were written
during the first year of the conflict. This exception is "Marching
through Georgia." It was written to commemorate one of the most
remarkable campaigns of the war. Now that the war has been over for
nearly thirty years, and the old soldier has no military duty more
serious than fighting his battles o'er again, "Marching through
Georgia" has become the song dearest to his heart. At the annual
encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic, and at numerous
meetings of the members of the Grand Army posts, the writer has heard
this sung more frequently than any other. The words were composed by
Mr. Henry C. Work, author of many well-known songs. Among the other
best known of his patriotic lyrics are "Grafted into the Army" and
"Kingdom Come." Mr. Work was born in Middletown, Conn., October 1,
1832. When he was very young his father removed to Illinois. He was an
inventor as well as a song writer, and among his successful inventions
are a knitting machine, a walking doll, and a rotary engine. He died
in Hartford, June 8, 1884.
Bring me the good old bugle, boys! we'll sing another song--
Sing it with that spirit that will start the world along--
Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia.
CHORUS:
"Hurrah, hurrah! we bring the Jubilee!
Hurrah, hurrah! the flag that makes you free!"
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
How the darkies shouted when they heard the joyful sound!
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found!
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground!
While we were marching through Georgia.
Yes, and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored flag they hadn't seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking out in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.
"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said, and 'twas a handsome boast;
Had they not forgotten, alas! to reckon with the host,
While we were marching through Georgia?
So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude--three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
{130} [Illustration: PRAYER IN "STONEWALL" JACKSON'S CAMP.]
{131} SOUTHERN SONGS.
DIXIE.
The tune "Dixie" was composed in 1859, by Mr. Dan D. Emmett, for
Bryant's Minstrels, then performing in New York City. It hit the taste
of the New York play-going public, and was adopted at once by various
bands of wandering minstrels, who sang it in all parts of the Union.
In 1860 it was first sung in New Orleans. In that city the tune was
harmonized, set to new words, and, without the authority of the
composer, was published. As from Boston "John Brown's Body" spread
through the North, so from New Orleans "Dixie" spread through the
South; and as Northern poets strove to find fitting words for the one,
so Southern poets wrote fiery lines to fill the measures of the other.
The only version possessing any literary merit is the one given in
this collection. It was written by Gen. Albert Pike, a native of
Massachusetts. In early life Mr. Pike moved to Little Rock, Ark.,
editing a paper and studying law in that city. He served in the
Mexican war with distinction, and on the breaking out of the Rebellion
enlisted on the Confederate side a force of Cherokee Indians, whom he
led at the battle of Pea Ridge. It is said that President Lincoln
requested a band in Washington to play "Dixie" in 1865, a short time
after the surrender of Appomattox, remarking "that, as we had captured
the rebel army, we had captured also the rebel tune."
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ALBERT PIKE, C. S. A.]
Southrons, hear your country call you!
Up, lest worse than death befall you!
To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!
Lo! all the beacon-fires are lighted--
Let hearts be now united.
To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
Hurrah! hurrah!
For Dixie's land we take our stand,
And live or die for Dixie!
To arms! To arms!
And conquer peace for Dixie!
To arms! To arms!
And conquer peace for Dixie!
Hear the Northern thunders mutter!
Northern flags in South winds flutter.
Send them back your fierce defiance;
Stamp upon the accursed alliance.
Fear no danger! Shun no labor!
Lift up rifle, pike, and sabre.
Shoulder pressing close to shoulder,
Let the odds make each heart bolder.
How the South's great heart rejoices
At your cannons' ringing voices!
For faith betrayed, and pledges broken,
Wrongs inflicted, insults spoken.
Strong as lions, swift as eagles,
Back to their kennels hunt these beagles!
Cut the unequal bonds asunder;
Let them hence each other plunder!
Swear upon your country's altar
Never to submit or falter,
Till the spoilers are defeated,
Till the Lord's work is completed.
Halt not till our Federation
Secures among earth's powers its station.
Then at peace, and crowned with glory,
Hear your children tell the story.
If the loved ones weep in sadness,
Victory soon shall bring them gladness,
Exultant pride soon banish sorrow,
Smiles chase tears away to-morrow.
MY MARYLAND.
"My Maryland" is regarded by some as the greatest song inspired by the
civil war, and if we consider these songs as poems it is the best. Its
burning lines, written early in 1861, helped to fire the Southern
heart. Its author, Mr. James Ryder Randall, is a native of Baltimore.
He was professor of English literature in Poydras College in
Louisiana, a short distance from New Orleans, and there in April,
1861, he read the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as
they passed through Baltimore. Naturally he was greatly excited on
reading this account, and it inspired the song, which was written
within twenty-four hours of the time he read of the assault. "My
Maryland" is one of a number of songs written by Mr. Randall, but none
of the others attained popularity. His "John Pelham," commonly called
"The Dead Cannonneer," is a much finer poem. After the war he became
editor of the _Constitutionalist_, published in Augusta, Ga., in which
city he still resides.
The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle-queen of yore,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Hark to an exiled son's appeal,
Maryland!
My Mother State, to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll's sacred trust,
Remember Howard's warlike thrust,
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold's spirit for the fray,
With Watson's blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Dear Mother, burst the tyrant's chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland! {132}
She meets her sisters on the plain,--
"_Sic semper!_" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,
Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
Maryland!
Come to thine own heroic throng
Stalking with Liberty along,
And chant thy dauntless slogan-song,
Maryland, my Maryland!
I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
For thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! there surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek,
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Thou wilt not yield the vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the shot, the blade, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland, my Maryland!
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb;
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum--
She breathes! She burns! She'll come! She'll come!
Maryland, my Maryland!
REBELS.
First published in the Atlanta _Confederacy_. The author is unknown.
Rebels! 'tis a holy name!
The name our fathers bore
When battling in the cause of Right,
Against the tyrant in his might,
In the dark days of yore.
Rebels! 'tis our family name!
Our father, Washington,
Was the arch-rebel in the fight,
And gave the name to us--a right
Of father unto son.
Rebels! 'tis our given name!
Our mother, Liberty,
Received the title with her fame,
In days of grief, of fear, and shame,
When at her breast were we.
Rebels! 'tis our sealed name!
A baptism of blood!
The war--ay, and the din of strife--
The fearful contest, life for life--
The mingled crimson flood.
Rebels! 'tis a patriot's name!
In struggles it was given;
We bore it then when tyrants raved,
And through their curses 'twas engraved
On the doomsday-book of heaven.
Rebels! 'tis our fighting name!
For peace rules o'er the land
Until they speak of craven woe,
Until our rights receive a blow
From foe's or brother's hand.
Rebels! 'tis our dying name!
For although life is dear,
Yet, freemen born and freemen bred,
We'd rather live as freemen dead,
Than live in slavish fear.
Then call us rebels, if you will--
We glory in the name;
For bending under unjust laws,
And swearing faith to an unjust cause,
We count a greater shame.
CALL ALL.
This Southern war song, which was first published in the Rockingham,
Va., _Register_ in 1861, became quite popular with the boys in gray.
It is published here because of its peculiarities rather than on
account of its literary merit.
Whoop! the Doodles have broken loose,
Roaring round like the very deuce!
Lice of Egypt, a hungry pack--
After 'em, boys, and drive 'em back.
Bull-dog, terrier, cur, and fice,
Back to the beggarly land of ice;
Worry 'em, bite 'em, scratch and tear
Everybody and everywhere.
Old Kentucky is caved from under,
Tennessee is split asunder,
Alabama awaits attack,
And Georgia bristles up her back.
Old John Brown is dead and gone!
Still his spirit is marching on--
Lantern-jawed, and legs, my boys,
Long as an ape's from Illinois!
Want a weapon? Gather a brick,
Club or cudgel, or stone or stick;
Anything with a blade or butt,
Anything that can cleave or cut;
Anything heavy, or hard, or keen--
Any sort of slaying machine!
Anything with a willing mind
And the steady arm of a man behind.
Want a weapon? Why, capture one!
Every Doodle has got a gun,
Belt, and bayonet, bright and new;
Kill a Doodle, and capture two!
Shoulder to shoulder, son and sire!
All, call all! to the feast of fire!
Mother and maiden, and child and slave,
A common triumph or a single grave.
{133} THE BLACK FLAG.
The raising of the black flag means death without quarter. It means
that prisoners taken should be slaughtered at once. It is contrary to
the spirit of modern warfare. General Sherman, in his celebrated
letter to the Mayor of Atlanta, says, "War is cruelty, and you cannot
refine it." War arouses the fiercest, most tiger-like passions of
mankind. Were it not so, the poet who wrote "The Mountain of the
Lovers" could never have written "The Black Flag." Paul Hamilton Hayne
was born in Charleston, S. C., in 1830. He abandoned the practice of
law for literary pursuits. He contributed to the _Southern Literary
Messenger_, and for a while edited the Charleston _Literary Gazette_.
He entered the Southern army at the outbreak of the civil war, and
served until obliged to resign by failing health. His house and all
his personal property were destroyed at the bombardment of Charleston.
He wrote extensively both in poetry and prose.
Like the roar of the wintry surges on a wild, tempestuous strand,
The voice of the maddened millions comes up from an outraged land;
For the cup of our woe runs over, and the day of our grace is past,
And Mercy has fled to the angels, and Hatred is king at last!
CHORUS:
Then up with the sable banner!
Let it thrill to the War God's breath,
For we march to the watchword--Vengeance!
And we follow the captain--Death!
In the gloom of the gory breaches, on the ramparts wrapped in flame,
'Mid the ruined homesteads, blackened by a hundred deeds of shame;
Wheresoever the vandals rally, and the bands of the alien meet,
We will crush the heads of the hydra with the stamp of our armed
feet.
They have taught us a fearful lesson! 'tis burned on our hearts in
fire,
And the souls of a host of heroes leap with a fierce desire;
And we swear by all that is sacred, and we swear by all that is
pure,
That the crafty and cruel dastards shall ravage our homes no more.
We will roll the billows or battle back, back on the braggart foe,
Till his leaguered and stricken cities shall quake with a coward's
throe;
They shall compass the awful meaning of the conflict their lust
begun,
When the Northland rings with wailing, and the grand old cause hath
won.
LORENA.
This doleful and pathetic song of affection was very popular among the
Confederate soldiers. It started at the start, and never stopped till
the last musket was stacked and the last camp-fire cold. It was,
without doubt, the song nearest the Confederate soldier's heart. It
was the "Annie Laurie" of the Confederate trenches.
"Each heart recalled a different name,
But all _sang_ 'Annie Laurie.'"
* * * * *
The years creep slowly by, Lorena,
The snow is on the grass again;
The sun's low down the sky, Lorena,
And frost gleams where the flowers have been.
But the _heart_ throbs on as warmly now
As when the summer days were nigh.
Oh! the sun can never dip so low
Adown _affection's_ cloudless sky.
One hundred months have passed, Lorena,
Since last I held that hand in mine;
I felt that pulse beat fast, Lorena,
But mine beat faster still than thine.
One hundred months! 'Twas flowery May,
When up the mountain slope we climbed,
To watch the dying of the day,
And hear the merry church bells chime.
We loved each other then, Lorena,
More than we ever dared to tell;
And what we might have been, Lorena,
Had but our loving prospered well--
But then, 'tis past, the years have flown;
I'll not call up their shadowy forms;
I'll say to them, "Lost years, sleep on--
Sleep on, nor heed life's pelting storms."
It matters little now, Lorena,
The past is the eternal past;
Our heads will soon lie low, Lorena,
Life's tide is ebbing out so fast.
But there's a future, oh! thank God--
Of life this is so small a part,
'Tis dust to dust beneath the sod;
But _there_, up _there_, 'tis _heart_ to _heart_.
[Illustration]
{134} OLD FOLKS AT HOME.
Mr. F. G. de Fontaine, a celebrated Southern war correspondent, writes
that the most popular songs with the soldiers of the Confederate
armies were negro melodies, such as "Old Folks at Home" and "My Old
Kentucky Home." This is our reason for publishing the pacific and
kindly words of the most celebrated negro melody, among songs that
breathe threatening and slaughter. It is not difficult to understand
why such songs were popular with men raised in the South. They would
bring forcibly to mind the distant home, and the dear associations of
early life on the old plantations. "Old Folks at Home" was written by
Stephen Collins Foster. He wrote between two and three hundred popular
songs--more than any other American. Among the most familiar of his
compositions are "Old Uncle Ned," "Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground,"
"Old Dog Tray," and "My Old Kentucky Home." Mr. Foster was finely
educated, was proficient in French and German, was an amateur painter
of ability, and a talented musician. It is said that he received
fifteen thousand dollars for "Old Folks at Home."
[Illustration: STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Way down upon de Swanee ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,
Dere's wha de old folks stay.
All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.
{135} CHORUS:
All de world am sad and dreary,
Ebrywhere I roam;
Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!
All round de little farm I wandered
When I was young;
Den many happy days I squandered,
Many de songs I sung.
When I was playing wid my brudder,
Happy was I;
Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
Dere let me live and die.
One little hut among de bushes,
One dat I love,
Still sadly to my mem'ry rushes,
No matter where I rove.
When will I see de bees a-humming
All round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo tumming,
Down in my good old home?
CHORUS:
All de world am sad and dreary,
Ebrywhere I roam;
Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
{136} THE BONNIE BLUE FLAG.
The most popular war songs of the South were "Dixie" and "The Bonnie
Blue Flag." Like "Dixie," the "Bonnie Blue Flag" began its popular
career in New Orleans. The words were written by an Irish comedian,
Mr. Harry McCarthy, and the song was first sung by his sister, Miss
Marion McCarthy, at the Variety Theatre in New Orleans in 1861. The
tune is an old and popular Irish melody, "The Irish Jaunting Car." It
is said that General Butler, when he was commander of the National
forces in New Orleans in 1862, made it very profitable by fining every
man, woman, or child, who sang, whistled, or played this tune on any
instrument, twenty-five dollars. It has also been said that he
arrested the publisher, destroyed the stock of sheet music, and fined
him five hundred dollars.
We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil,
Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil;
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far:
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
Hurrah! hurrah! for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star!
As long as the Union was faithful to her trust,
Like friends and like brothers, kind were we and just;
But now when Northern treachery attempts our rights to mar,
We hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
First, gallant South Carolina nobly made the stand;
Then came Alabama, who took her by the hand;
Next, quickly Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida--
All raised the flag, the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
Ye men of valor, gather round the banner of the right;
Texas and fair Louisiana join us in the fight.
Davis, our loved President, and Stephens, statesmen are;
Now rally round the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
And here's to brave Virginia! The Old Dominion State
With the young Confederacy at length has linked her fate.
Impelled by her example, now other States prepare
To hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
Then here's to our Confederacy! Strong we are and brave;
Like patriots of old we'll fight, our heritage to save;
And rather than submit to shame, to die we would prefer,
So cheer for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
Then cheer, boys, cheer, raise the joyous shout,
For Arkansas and North Carolina now have both gone out;
And let another rousing cheer for Tennessee be given,
The single star of the Bonnie Blue Flag has grown to be eleven.
Hurrah! hurrah! for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star!
NORTHERN SONGS.
JOHN BROWN'S BODY.
John Brown was hanged in December, 1859, and a little more than a year
after this time the celebrated marching-tune, "John Brown's Body,"
came into being. It is a singular fact that the composer of the
stirring and popular air of this song is unknown. Possibly it had no
composer, but, like Topsy, "it was not born, but just growed." This
seems to be the most reasonable theory of its origin. The words of the
song, as given in this collection, with the exception of the first
stanza, were written by Charles S. Hall, of Charlestown, Mass. "John
Brown's Body" was the most popular war song among the Northern
soldiers on the march and around the campfire. In fact, it became the
marching song of the armies of the Nation. It was equally popular in
the cities, villages, and homes of the North. The _Pall Mall Gazette_,
of October 14, 1865, said: "The street boys of London have decided in
favor of 'John Brown's Body' against 'My Maryland' and 'The Bonnie
Blue Flag.' The somewhat lugubrious refrain has excited their
admiration to a wonderful degree."
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave;
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave;
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave;
His soul is marching on.
Glory, halle--hallelujah! Glory, halle--hallelujah!
Glory, halle--hallelujah!
His soul is marching on!
He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord! (_thrice_.)
His soul is marching on!
John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back! (_thrice_.)
His soul is marching on!
His pet lambs will meet him on the way; (_thrice_.)
As they go marching on!
They will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree! (_thrice_.)
As they march along!
Now, three rousing cheers for the Union! (_thrice_.)
As we are marching on!
Glory; halle--hallelujah! Glory, halle--hallelujah!
Glory, halle--hallelujah!
Hip, hip, hip, hip, hurrah!
WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME.
Another army song that became almost as popular in England as in this
country is "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." It was written and
composed by Mr. Patrick S. Gilmore, leader of the celebrated Gilmore's
Band. The words do not amount to much, but the tune is of that
rollicking order which is very catching. Without doubt the author
built up the words of this song to suit the air, on the same principle
that in Georgia they build a chimney first and erect the house against
it. This rattling war song has kept its hold on the ears of the people
to the present time. Mr. Gilmore afterward composed an ambitious
national hymn which has never attained the popularity of his war song.
When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! hurrah!
We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
Hurrah! hurrah!
The men will cheer, the hays will shout,
The ladies they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
The men will cheer, the boys will shout,
The ladies they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
The old church-bell will peal with joy,
Hurrah! hurrah!
To welcome home our darling boy,
Hurrah! hurrah! {137}
The village lads and lasses say,
With roses they will strew the way;
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
Get ready for the jubilee,
Hurrah! hurrah!
We'll give the hero three times three,
Hurrah! hurrah!
The laurel wreath is ready now
To place upon his loyal brow;
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
Let love and friendship on that day,
Hurrah! hurrah!
Their choicest treasures then display,
Hurrah! hurrah!
And let each one perform some part,
To fill with joy the warrior's heart;
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
The men will cheer, the boys will shout,
The ladies they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
GRAFTED INTO THE ARMY.
BY HENRY C. WORK.
Our Jimmy has gone to live in a tent,
They have grafted him into the army;
He finally puckered up courage and went,
When they grafted him into the army.
I told them the child was too young--alas!
At the captain's forequarters they said he would pass--
They'd train him up well in the infantry class--
So they grafted him into the army.
CHORUS:
O Jimmy, farewell! Your brothers fell
Way down in Alabarmy;
I thought they would spare a lone widder's heir,
But they grafted him into the army.
Drest up in his unicorn--dear little chap!
They have grafted him into the army;
It seems but a day since he sot on my lap,
But they have grafted him into the army.
And these are the trousies he used to wear--
Them very same buttons--the patch and the tear--
But Uncle Sam gave him a bran new pair
When they grafted him into the army.
Now in my provisions I see him revealed--
They have grafted him into the army;
A picket beside the contented field,
They have grafted him into the army.
He looks kinder sickish--begins to cry--
A big volunteer standing right in his eye!
Oh, what if the duckie should up and die,
Now they've grafted him into the army!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
{138} THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM.
George F. Root was born in Sheffield, Mass., August 30, 1820, and he
was the founder of the music-publishing firm of Root & Cady. His
celebrated "Battle Cry of Freedom" was first sung by the Hutchinson
family at a mass meeting in New York City. It is said that during the
terrible fight in the Wilderness, on May 6, 1864, a brigade of the
Ninth Corps, having broken the enemy's line by an assault, became
exposed to a flank attack and was driven back in disorder with heavy
loss. They retreated but a few hundred yards, however, re-formed, and
again confronted the enemy. Just then some gallant fellows in the
ranks of the Forty-fifth Pennsylvania began to sing:
"We'll rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom."
The refrain was caught up instantly by the entire regiment and by the
Thirty-sixth Massachusetts, next in line. There the grim ranks stood
at bay in the deadly conflict. The air was filled with the smoke and
crackle of burning underbrush, the pitiful cries of the wounded, the
rattle of musketry, and shouts of men; but above all, over the
exultant yells of the enemy, rose the inspiring chorus:
"The Union forever, hurrah! boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitor, up with the star."
This song was often ordered to be sung as the men marched into action.
More than once its strains arose on the battlefield. With the humor
which never deserts the American, even amid the hardships of camp life
and the dangers of battle, the gentle lines of "Mary Had a Little
Lamb" were fitted to the tune of the "Battle Cry of Freedom," and many
a regiment shortened a weary march, or went gayly into action,
singing:
"Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom."
* * * * *
Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
We will rally from the hillside, we'll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
The Union forever, hurrah! boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitor, up with the star;
While we rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
We are springing to the call of our brothers gone before,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
We will welcome to our numbers the loyal true and brave,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
And although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
So we're springing to the call from the East and from the West,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
And we'll hurl the rebel crew from the land we love the best,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
The Union forever, hurrah! boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitor, up with the star;
While we rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
[Illustration]
{139} TENTING ON THE OLD CAMP-GROUND.
The author of "Tenting on the Old Camp-Ground" is Walter Kittridge,
who was born in the town of Merrimac, N. H., October 8, 1832. He was a
public singer and a composer, as well as a writer of popular songs and
ballads. In the first year of the civil war he published a small
original "Union Song-Book." In 1862 he was drafted, and while
preparing to go to the front he wrote in a few minutes both words and
music of "Tenting on the Old Camp-Ground." Like many other good things
in literature, this song was at first refused publication. But when it
was published, its sale reached hundreds of thousands of copies.
We're tenting to-night on the old camp-ground,
Give us a song to cheer
Our weary hearts, a song of home
And friends we love so dear.
CHORUS:
Many are the hearts that are weary to-night,
Wishing for the war to cease;
Many are the hearts looking for the right,
To see the dawn of peace;
Tenting to-night, tenting to-night,
Tenting on the old camp-ground.
We've been tenting to-night on the old camp-ground,
Thinking of the days gone by;
Of the loved ones at home, that gave us the hand,
And the tear that said, Good-by!
We are tired of war on the old camp-ground;
Many are dead and gone
Of the brave and true who've left their homes;
Others have been wounded long.
We've been fighting to-day on the old camp-ground;
Many are lying near;
Some are dead, and some are dying,
Many are in tears!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
{140}
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN.
COMMAND GIVEN TO McCLELLAN--HIS PLANS--APPOINTMENT OF SECRETARY
STANTON--ON THE PENINSULA--BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG--ON THE
CHICKAHOMINY--THE BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS--EFFECT OF THE SWAMPS--LEE IN
COMMAND--STUART'S RAID--NEAREST APPROACH TO RICHMOND--ACTION AT BEAVER
DAM CREEK--BATTLE OF GAINES'S MILLS--BATTLE OF SAVAGE'S
STATION--BATTLE OF CHARLES CITY CROSS-ROADS--BATTLE OF MALVERN
HILL--CRITICISMS OF PENINSULA CAMPAIGN.
Within twenty-four hours after the defeat of McDowell's army at Bull
Run (July 21, 1861), the Administration called to Washington the only
man that had thus far accomplished much or made any considerable
reputation in the field. This was Gen. George B. McClellan. He had
been graduated at West Point in 1846, standing second in his class,
and had gone at once into the Mexican war, in which he acquitted
himself with distinction. After that war the young captain was
employed in engineering work till 1855, when the Government sent him
to Europe to study the movements of the Crimean war. He wrote a report
of his observations, which was published under the title of "The
Armies of Europe," and in 1857 resigned his commission and became
chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad, and afterward
president of the St. Louis and Cincinnati. He had done good work in
Northwestern Virginia in the early summer, and now, at the age of
thirty-five, was commissioned major-general in the regular army of the
United States, and given command of all the troops about Washington.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN AND WIFE.]
For the work immediately in hand, this was probably the best selection
that could have been made. Washington needed to be fortified, and he
was a master of engineering; both the army that had just been
defeated, and the new recruits that were pouring in, needed
organization, and he proved preëminent as an organizer. Three months
after he took command of fifty thousand uniformed men at the capital,
he had an army of more than one hundred thousand, well organized in
regiments, brigades, and divisions, with the proper proportion of
artillery, with quartermaster and commissary departments going like
clockwork, and the whole fairly drilled and disciplined. Everybody
looked on with admiration, and the public impatience that had
precipitated the disastrous "On to Richmond" movement was now replaced
by a marvellous patience. The summer and autumn months went by, and no
movement was made; but McClellan, in taking command, had promised that
the war should be "short, sharp, and decisive," and the people
thought, if they only allowed him time enough to make thorough
preparation, his great army would at length swoop down upon the
Confederate capital and finish everything at one blow. At length,
however, they began to grow weary of the daily telegram, "All quiet
along the Potomac," and the monotonously repeated information that
"General McClellan rode out to Fairfax Court-House and back this
morning." The Confederacy was daily growing stronger; the Potomac was
being closed to navigation by the erection of hostile batteries on its
southern bank; the enemy's flag was flying within sight from the
capital, and the question of foreign interference was becoming
exceedingly grave. On the 1st of November General Scott, then
seventy-five years of age, retired, and McClellan succeeded him as
General-in-Chief of all the armies.
Soon after this his plans appear, from subsequent revelations, to have
undergone important modification. He had undoubtedly intended to
attack by moving straight out toward Manassas, where the army that had
won the battle of Bull Run was still encamped, and was still commanded
by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. He now began to think of moving against
Richmond by some more easterly route, discussing among others the
extreme easterly one that he finally took. But, whatever were his
thoughts and purposes, his army appeared to be taking root. The people
began to murmur, Congress began to question, and the President began
to argue and urge. All this did not signify; nothing could move
McClellan. He wanted to wait till he could leave {141} an enormous
garrison in the defences of Washington, place a strong corps of
observation along the Potomac, and then move out with a column of one
hundred and fifty thousand men against an army that he believed to be
as numerous as that, though in truth it was then less than half as
large. It is now known that, from the beginning to the end of his
career in that war, General McClellan constantly overestimated the
force opposed to him. On the 10th of January, 1862, the President held
a long consultation with Generals McDowell and Franklin and some
members of his cabinet. General McClellan was then confined to his bed
by an illness of a month's duration. At this consultation Mr. Lincoln
said, according to General McDowell's memorandum: "If something was
not soon done, the bottom would be out of the whole affair; and if
General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to
borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made to do
something."
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE SEAT OF WAR FROM HARPER'S FERRY TO
SUFFOLK, VA.]
{142} [Illustration: FOREIGN OFFICERS AND STAFF AT GENERAL McCLELLAN'S
HEADQUARTERS. Captain LeClerc. Comte de Paris. Captain Mohain. Duc de
Chartres. Prince de Joinville.]
Immediately upon McClellan's recovery, the President called him to a
similar council, and asked him to disclose his plan for {143} a
campaign, which he declined to do. Finally the President asked him if
he had fixed upon any particular time for setting out; and when he
said he had, Mr. Lincoln questioned him no further. A few days later,
in a letter to the President, he set forth his plan, which was to move
his army down the Potomac on transports, land it at or near Fort
Monroe, march up the peninsula between York and James rivers, and
attack the defences of Richmond on the north and east sides. The
President at first disapproved of this plan, largely for the reason
that it would require so much time in preparation; but when he found
that the highest officers in the army favored it, and considered the
probability that any general was likely to fail if sent to execute a
plan he did not originate or believe in, he finally gave it his
sanction, and once more set himself to the difficult task of inducing
McClellan to move at all. And yet the President himself still further
retarded the opening of the campaign by delaying the order to collect
the means of transportation. Meanwhile General Johnston quietly
removed his stores, and on the 8th of March evacuated Centreville and
Manassas, and placed his army before Richmond. This reconciled the
President to McClellan's plan of campaign, which he had never liked.
The order for the transportation of McClellan's army was issued on the
27th of February, and four hundred vessels were required; for there
were actually transported one hundred and twenty-one thousand men,
fourteen thousand animals, forty-four batteries, and all the necessary
ambulances and baggage-wagons, pontoons and telegraph material. Just
before the embarkation, the army was divided into four corps, the
commands of which were given to Generals McDowell, Edwin V. Sumner,
Samuel P. Heintzelman, and Erasmus D. Keyes. High authorities say this
was one of the causes of the failure of the campaign; for the army
should have been divided into corps long before, when McClellan could
have chosen his own lieutenants instead of having them chosen by the
President. General Hooker said it was impossible for him to succeed
with such corps commanders. But his near approach to success rather
discredits this criticism.
Another element of the highest importance had also entered into the
problem with which the nation was struggling. This was the appointment
(January 21, 1862) of Edwin M. Stanton to succeed Simon Cameron as
Secretary of War. Mr. Stanton, then forty-seven years of age, was a
lawyer by profession, a man of great intellect, unfailing nerve, and
tremendous energy. He had certain traits that often made him
personally disagreeable to his subordinates; but it was impossible to
doubt his thorough loyalty, and his determination to find or make a
way to bring the war to a successful close as speedily as possible,
without the slightest regard to the individual interests of himself or
anybody else. He was probably the ablest war minister that ever
lived--with the possible exception of Carnot, the man to whom Napoleon
said, "I have known you too late." It is indicative of Mr. Lincoln's
sagacity and freedom from prejudice, that his first meeting with Mr.
Stanton was when he went to Cincinnati, some years before the war, to
assist in trying an important case. He found Mr. Stanton in charge of
the case as senior counsel, and Stanton was so unendurably
disagreeable to him that he threw up the engagement and went home to
Springfield. Yet he afterward gave that man the most important place
in his cabinet, and found him its strongest member.
One division of the army embarked on the 17th of March, and the others
followed in quick succession. General McClellan reached Fort Monroe on
the 2d of April, by which time fifty-eight thousand men and one
hundred guns had arrived, and immediately moved with this force on
Yorktown, the place made famous by the surrender of Cornwallis eighty
years before. The Confederates had fortified this point, and thrown a
line of earthworks across the narrow peninsula to the deep water of
Warwick River. These works were held by General Magruder with thirteen
thousand effective men. General Johnston, who was in command of all
the troops around Richmond, says he had no expectation of doing more
than delaying McClellan at Yorktown till he could strengthen the
defences of the capital and collect more men; and that he thought his
adversary would use his transports to pass his army around that place
by water, after destroying the batteries, and land at some point
above.
McClellan, supposing that Johnston's entire army was in the defences
of Yorktown, sat down before the place and constructed siege works,
approaching the enemy by regular parallels. As the remaining divisions
of his army arrived at Fort Monroe, they were added to his besieging
force; but McDowell's entire corps and Blenker's division had been
detached at the last moment and retained at Washington, from fears on
the part of the Administration that the capital was not sufficiently
guarded, though McClellan had already left seventy thousand men there
or within call. The fears were increased by the threatening movements
of Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, where, however, he was
defeated by Gen. James Shields near Winchester, March 23.
General Johnston had to contend with precisely the same difficulty
that McClellan complained of. He wanted to bring together before
Richmond all the troops that were then at Norfolk and in the Carolinas
and Georgia, and with the large army thus formed suddenly attack
McClellan after he should have marched seventy-five miles up the
peninsula from his base at Fort Monroe. But in a council of war
General Lee and the Secretary of War opposed this plan, and Mr. Davis
adopted their views and rejected it. Johnston therefore undertook the
campaign with the army that he had, which he says consisted of fifty
thousand effective men.
McClellan spent nearly a month before Yorktown, and when he was ready
to open fire with his siege guns and drive out the enemy, May 3d, he
found they had quietly departed, leaving "Quaker guns" (wooden logs on
wheels) in the embrasures. There was no delay in pursuit, and the
National advance came up with the Confederate rear guard near
Williamsburg, about twelve miles from Yorktown. Here, May 4th, brisk
skirmishing began, which gradually became heavier, till reinforcements
were hurried up on the one side, and sent back on the other, and the
skirmish was developed into a battle. The place had been well
fortified months before. The action on the morning of the 5th was
opened by the divisions of Generals Hooker and William F. Smith. They
attacked the strongest of the earthworks, pushed forward the
batteries, and silenced it. Hooker was then heavily attacked by
infantry, with a constant menace on his left wing. He sustained his
position alone nearly all day, though losing one thousand seven
hundred men and five guns, and was at length relieved by the arrival
of Gen. Philip Kearny's division. The delay was due mainly to the deep
mud caused by a heavy rain the night before. Later in the day,
Hancock's brigade made a wide circuit on the right, discovered some
unoccupied redoubts, and took possession of them. When the
Confederates advanced their left to the attack, they ran upon these
redoubts, which their commanding officers knew nothing about, and were
repelled with heavy loss. Hancock's one thousand six hundred men
suddenly burst over the crest of the works, and bore down {144} upon
the enemy with fixed bayonets, routing and scattering them. McClellan
brought up reinforcements, and in the night the Confederates in front
of him moved off to join their main army, leaving in Williamsburg four
hundred of their wounded, because they had no means of carrying them
away, but taking with them about that number of prisoners. The
National loss had been about two thousand two hundred, the Confederate
about one thousand eight hundred. This battle was fought within five
miles of the historic site of Jamestown, where the first permanent
English settlement in the United States had been made in 1607, and the
first cargo of slaves landed in 1619.
Gen. William B. Franklin's division of McDowell's corps had now been
sent to McClellan, and immediately after the battle of Williamsburg he
moved it on transports to White House, on the Pamunkey, where it
established a base of supplies. As soon as possible, also, the main
body of the army was marched from Williamsburg to White House,
reaching that place on the 16th of May. From this point he moved
westward toward Richmond, expecting to be joined by a column of forty
thousand men under McDowell, which was to move from Fredericksburg. On
reaching the Chickahominy, McClellan threw his left wing across that
stream, and sweeping around with his right fought small battles at
Mechanicsville and Hanover Junction, by which he cleared the way for
McDowell to join him. But at this critical point of time Stonewall
Jackson suddenly made another raid down the Shenandoah Valley, and
McDowell was called back to go in pursuit of him.
[Illustration: CAMP OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC AT CUMBERLAND LANDING.]
Johnston resolved to strike the detached left wing of the National
army, which had crossed the Chickahominy, and advanced to a point
within half a dozen miles of Richmond, and his purpose was seconded by
a heavy rain on the night of May 30th, which swelled the stream and
swept away some of the bridges, thus hindering reinforcement from the
other wing. The attack, May 31st, fell first upon Gen. Silas Casey's
division of Keyes's corps, which occupied some half-finished works. It
was bravely made and bravely resisted, and the Confederate suffered
heavy losses before these works, where they had almost surprised the
men with the shovels in their hands. But after a time a Confederate
force made a detour and gained a position in the rear of the redoubts,
when of course they could no longer be held. Reinforcements were very
slow in coming up, and Keyes's men had a long, hard struggle to hold
their line at all. They could not have done so if a part of Johnston's
plan had not miscarried. He intended to bring in a heavy flanking
force between them and the river, but was delayed several hours in
getting it in motion. Meanwhile McClellan ordered Sumner to cross the
river and join in the battle. Sumner had anticipated such an order as
soon as he {145} heard the firing, and when the order came it found
him with his corps in line, drawn out from camp, and ready to cross
instantly. He was the oldest officer there (sixty-six), and the most
energetic. There was but one bridge that could be used, many of the
supports of this were gone, the approaches were under water, and it
was almost a wreck. But he unhesitatingly pushed on his column. The
frail structure was steadied by the weight of the men; and though it
swayed and undulated with their movement and the rush of water, they
all crossed in safety.
[Illustration: NORTH BATTERY OF CONFEDERATES AT SHIPPING POINT,
POTOMAC RIVER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL E. W. GANTT, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL R. E. RODES, C. S. A.]
{146} [Illustration: REVIEW IN WASHINGTON, UNDER McCLELLAN, OF EIGHT
BATTERIES OF ARTILLERY AND THREE REGIMENTS OF CAVALRY, BY LINCOLN AND
HIS CABINET.]
Sumner was just in time to meet the flank attack, which was commanded
by Johnston in person. The successive charges of the Confederates were
all repelled, and at dusk a counter-charge cleared the ground in front
and drove off the last of them in confusion. In this fight General
Johnston received wounds that compelled him to retire from the field,
and laid him up for a long time. The battle--which is called both Fair
Oaks and Seven Pines--cost the National army over five thousand men,
and the Confederate nearly seven thousand. It was a more destructive
battle than any that, up to that time, the Eastern armies had fought.
A participant thus describes the after appearance of the field:
"Monday, June 2d, we visited the battlefield, and rode from place to
place on the scene of conflict. We have often wished that we could
efface from our memory the observations of that day. Details were
burying the dead in trenches or heaping the ground upon them where
they lay. The ground was saturated with gore; the intrenchments, the
slashing, the rifle-pits, the thicket, many of the tents, were filled
with dead. In the Fair Oaks farmhouse, the dead, the dying, and the
severely wounded lay together. Along the Williamsburg road, on each
side of it, was one long Confederate grave. An old barn, near where
the One Hundred and Fourth Pennsylvania volunteers first formed, was
filled with our dead and wounded; and farther to the right, near the
station, beside an old building, lay thirteen Michigan soldiers with
their blankets over them and their names pinned on their caps. Near
the railroad, by a {147} log house, the dead and wounded were packed
together. Both were motionless; but you could distinguish them by the
livid blackness of the dead. We could trace the path of our regiment,
from the wood-pile around by the intrenchments to its camp, by the
dead still unburied. Those that died immediately could not be touched,
but were covered with ground where they lay; the wounded, who crawled
or were carried to the barns, tents, and houses, and who died
subsequently, were buried in trenches. Our little tent was still
standing, though pierced by several bullets. Beside it lay two dead
men of the Ninety-eighth, whom we could not identify; for the sun,
rain, and wind had changed their countenances. On the bed lay a dead
Confederate. At the left of our camp, in the wood, where the
Eighty-first, Eighty-fifth, and Ninety-second New York volunteers and
Peck's brigade fought with Huger, the dead were promiscuously mixed
together, and lay in sickening and frightful proximity; strong and
weak, old and young, officer and private, horse and man--dead, or
wounded in the agonies of death, lay where they fell, and furnished,
excepting the swaths on the Williamsburg road, the darkest corner on
that day's panorama."
[Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN VISITING GENERAL McCLELLAN.]
[Illustration: COMTE DE PARIS. DUC DE CHARTRES.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL CHAS. H. VAN WYCK. (On General
McClellan's Staff.)]
[Illustration: COLONEL B. S. ALEXANDER (ENGINEER CORPS).]
[Illustration: TABBS HOUSE, YORKTOWN.]
[Illustration: CONTRABANDS--AT FOLLER'S HOUSE.]
[Illustration: CONWAY LANDING.]
{149} [Illustration: BATTERY No. 1 IN FRONT OF YORKTOWN. (Five
Views.)]
Col. William Kreutzer, of the Ninety-eighth New York Regiment, which
went into that battle with three hundred and eighty-five men, and lost
eighty-five, gives some interesting particulars of the action: "The
whole of Company A went to work on the road near the Grapevine bridge.
Details were made for men to make abatis and work on the breastworks.
Company A left its rifles in {148} camp, and lost them. When it
rejoined the regiment, on the 1st of June, it appeared like a company
of pioneers, or sappers and miners, carrying axes, shovels, and
picks.... Soon after one o'clock our pickets begin to come in sight,
retiring through the woods and slashing before the enemy. The skirmish
line of the enemy pursued them. We could see both parties jumping over
the logs and making their way through the brush and bushes, and hear
at intervals the sharp report of their rifles. A little later a dense
mass of men, about two rods wide, headed by half a dozen horsemen, is
seen marching toward us on the Williamsburg road. They move in quick
time, carry their arms on their shoulders, have flags and banners, and
drummers to beat the step. Our three batteries open simultaneously
with all their power. Our regiment pours its volleys into the slashing
and into the column as fast as it can load and fire. The One Hundred
and Fourth Pennsylvania volunteers aims at the column and at the
skirmishers approaching its right front and flank. Unlike us, that
regiment has no slashing in its front. The cleared field allowed the
enemy to concentrate his fire upon it; too near the approaching column
of attack, it interfered with the range and efficiency of our
batteries behind. Its position was unfortunate. As the light troops
pressed upon it, Colonel Davis ordered it to charge them at the
double-quick. The regiment rushed forward with spirit, jumped over a
rail fence in its front, with a shout and yell; but it was met so
{150} resolutely and with such a galling fire by the foe, that it fell
back in disorder, and did not appear on the field as an organization
again during the day. Colonel Davis was wounded, and his 'Ringgold
Regiment' fought its first battle as we have seen.
"The One Hundred and Fourth falling back, cleared the field opposite
the advancing column, and gave the Ninety-eighth better opportunity to
fire upon it as it moved deliberately on. The charging mass staggers,
stops, resumes its march again, breaks in two, fills up its gaps; but
sure and steady, with its flags and banners, it moves like the tramp
of fate. Thinned, scattered, broken, it passes our right, and presses
for the batteries. As it advances and passes, we pour our volleys into
it with no uncertain aim, no random fire. The gaps we make, the swaths
we mow, can be seen in the column, for we are only ten or fifteen rods
away. The men behind press on those before. The head finally reaches
the redoubt. One of the mounted leaders ascends the parapet and is
shot with a pistol by an artillery officer. The whole column, from the
fort back, severed, broken, staggers, sinks into the earth. The
rifle-pits, breast-works, and the Ninety-eighth have cleared the road.
"To this time the Ninety-eighth has not lost a man by the enemy; but
our batteries behind have killed and wounded of it half a score. There
is a lull in the battle; the coast looks clear; the foe may not appear
again. We look at the main road--it is one gray swath of men. Down
along the railroad by Fair Oaks station, we hear but a few reports.
Smith has had farther to march along the Nine-mile road, and has not
struck our right flank yet; on our left, Palmer has not been attacked;
Huger is not on time. Casey's division has driven back those of
Longstreet and Hill.... Our batteries open. High over our heads,
around us, beside us, the lead is whistling, and the iron is whizzing,
hissing, whirling. Every moment has a new terror, every instant a new
horror. Our men are falling fast. We leave the dead and the dying, and
send the wounded to the rear. Palmer's regiments have all fallen back;
the enemy is on our left and rear. Colonel Durkee tries to move the
regiment by the left flank back to the rifle-pits; a part only receive
the order. The enemy is getting so near, our experience in battle is
so limited, our drill is so imperfect, that many of us will not,
cannot, stand upon the order of our going. Durkee passes the
rifle-pits with what follows him, and goes to our old camp. The writer
rallies a part of the regiment around the flag at the half-deserted
intrenchments. There we use, officers and men, the sharp-shooter's
practice against the enemy. We can mark the effect of our fire; no
rifle was discharged in vain. Many of the men could pick a squirrel
from the tallest trees of Wayne and Franklin, and they load and fire
with infinite merriment and good-nature."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL W. B. FRANKLIN.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL O. H. HART.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL E. D. KEYES.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER.]
For some time after the battle of Fair Oaks, heavy rains made any
movement almost impossible for either of the armies that confronted
each other near Richmond. Gen. Alexander S. Webb says: "The ground,
which consisted of alternate layers of reddish clay and quicksand, had
turned into a vast swamp, and the guns in battery sank into the earth
by their own weight." McClellan kept his men at work, intrenching and
strengthening his position, while he himself seems to have been
constantly occupied in writing despatches to the President and the
Secretary of War, alternately promising an almost immediate advance on
Richmond, and calling for reinforcements. He wanted McDowell's corps
of forty thousand men, and the authorities wanted to give it to him if
it could be sent by way of Fredericksburg, and united with his right
wing in such a way as not to uncover Washington. But in one despatch
he declared he would rather not have it at all unless it could be
placed absolutely under his command. In several respects his position
was very bad. The Chickahominy was bordered by great swamps, whose
malarial influences robbed him of almost as many men as fell by the
bullets of the enemy. His base was at White House, on the Pamunkey;
and the line thence over which his supplies must come, instead of
being at right angles with the line of his front and covered by it,
was almost a prolongation of it. It was {151} impossible to maintain
permanent bridges over the Chickahominy, and a rain of two or three
days was liable at any time to swell the stream so as to sweep away
every means of crossing. He could threaten Richmond only by placing a
heavy force on the right bank of the river; he could render his own
communications secure only by keeping a large force on the left bank.
When it first occurred to him that his true base was on the James, or
how long he contemplated its removal thither, nobody knows; but he
received a startling lesson on the 12th of June, which seems to have
determined his apparently indeterminate mind.
When Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at Fair Oaks, the command
devolved upon Gen. G. W. Smith; but two days later Gen. Robert E. Lee
was given the command of the Confederate forces in Virginia, which he
retained continuously till his surrender brought the war to a close.
The plan that he had opposed, and caused Mr. Davis to reject, when
Johnston was in command--of bringing large bodies of troops from North
Carolina, Georgia, and the Shenandoah Valley, to form a massive army
and fall upon McClellan--he now adopted and proceeded at once to carry
out. Johnston enumerates reinforcements that were given him
aggregating fifty-three thousand men, and says he had then the largest
Confederate army that ever fought. The total number is given
officially at eighty thousand seven hundred and sixty-two. This
probably means the number of men actually carrying muskets, and
excludes all officers, teamsters, musicians, and mechanics; for the
Confederate returns were generally made in that way. McClellan's total
effective force, including every man that drew pay the last week in
June, was ninety-two thousand five hundred. His constant expectation
of reinforcements by way of Fredericksburg was largely, if not wholly,
what kept him in his false position, and it is fair to presume that
but for this he would have swung across the peninsula to the new base
on the James much sooner and under more favorable circumstances.
[Illustration: BATTERY No. 4 IN FRONT OF YORKTOWN. (Three Views.)]
Wishing to know the extent of McClellan's earthworks on the right
wing, Lee, on June 12th, sent a body of twelve hundred cavalry, with
two light guns, to reconnoitre. It was commanded by the dashing Gen.
J. E. B. Stuart, commonly called "Jeb Stuart," who used to dress in
gay costume, with yellow sash and black plume, wore gold spurs, and
rode a white horse. He was only ordered to go as far as Hanover Old
Church; but at that point he had a fight with a small body of cavalry,
and as he supposed dispositions would be made to cut him off, instead
of returning he kept on and made the entire circuit of McClellan's
army, rebuilding a bridge to cross the lower Chickahominy, and reached
Richmond in safety. The actual amount of damage that he had done was
small; but the raid alarmed the National commander for the safety of
his communications, and was probably what determined him to change his
base. In this expedition Stuart lost but one man. In the encounter at
Hanover Old Church a charge was led by the Confederate Captain Latane
and received by a detachment commanded by Captain Royall. The two
captains {152} fought hand to hand, and Latane was shot dead, while
Royall received severe sabre wounds.
[Illustration: QUAKER GUNS.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL E. V. SUMNER.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAMES SHIELDS.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SILAS CASEY.]
Stonewall Jackson, if not Lee's ablest lieutenant, was certainly his
swiftest, and the one that threw the most uncertainty into the game by
his rapid movements and unexpected appearances. At a later stage of
the war his erratic strategy, if persisted in, would probably have
brought his famous corps of "foot cavalry" (as they were called from
their quick marches) to sudden destruction. An opponent like Sheridan,
who knew how to be swift, brilliant, and audacious, without
transgressing the fundamental rules of warfare, would have been likely
to finish him at a blow. But Jackson did not live to meet such an
opponent. At this time the bugbears that haunt imaginations not inured
to war were still in force, and the massive thimble-rigging by which
he was made to appear before Richmond, and presto! sweeping down the
Shenandoah Valley, served to paralyze large forces that might have
been added to McClellan's army.
The topography of Virginia is favorable to an army menacing
Washington, and unfavorable to one menacing Richmond. The fertile
valley of the Shenandoah was inviting ground for soldiers. A
Confederate force advancing down the valley came at every step nearer
to the National capital, while a National force advancing up the
valley was carried at every step farther away from the Confederate
capital. The Confederates made much of this advantage, and the
authorities at Washington were in constant fear of the capture of that
city.
{153} [Illustration: BURNING OF STORES AND MUNITIONS OF WAR AT WHITE
HOUSE, VA.--DEPARTURE OF THE FEDERAL FLOTILLA FOR THE JAMES RIVER.]
Soon after Stuart's raid, Lee began to make his dispositions to attack
McClellan and drive him from the peninsula. He wrote to Jackson:
"Unless McClellan can be driven out of his intrenchments, he will move
by positions, under cover of his {154} heavy guns, within shelling
distance of Richmond." To convey the impression that Jackson was to
move in force down the valley, Lee drew two brigades from his own
army, placed them on the cars in Richmond in plain sight of some
prisoners that were about to be exchanged, and sent them off to
Jackson. Of course the released prisoners carried home the news. But
Jackson returned with these reinforcements and Ewell's division of his
corps, joined Lee, and on the 25th of June concerted a plan for
immediate attack. Secretary Stanton appears to have been the only one
that saw through the game; for he telegraphed to McClellan that while
neither Banks nor McDowell nor Frémont could ascertain anything about
Jackson's movements, his own belief was that he was going to Richmond.
Yet the impression was not strong enough in the mind of the Secretary
of War (or else the Secretary could not have his own way) to induce
the appropriate counter-move of immediately sending McDowell's whole
corps to McClellan. McCall's division of that corps, however, had been
forwarded, and on the 18th took a strong position on McClellan's
extreme right, near Mechanicsville.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS.]
[Illustration: PROFESSOR T. S. C. LOWE, BALLOONIST.]
Admiral Phelps, of the navy, then a lieutenant commanding the gunboat
_Corwin_, and serving in the waters about the peninsula, writes:
"About ten o'clock one evening my emissary notified me that a certain
man, who had caused much trouble, would leave Centreville about
midnight, in a buggy, with letters for 'Queen Caroline' and Richmond,
in violation of orders. Soon after daylight the following morning both
man and mail were in my possession. Only one letter in the package was
of any value (the others were sent to their destination), and that
one--written by an adjutant-general in the Confederate army, informing
his father that, 'on a certain night,' mentioning the date, 'one
hundred thousand men from Beauregard's army at Shiloh would be in
Richmond, after detaching thirty thousand to reinforce Stonewall
Jackson, who was doing for the enemy in the mountains'--was placed in
General McClellan's hands about five P.M. the following day by one of
his aids, to whose care I had intrusted it."
On the 25th McClellan had pushed back the Confederates on his left,
taken a new position there, and advanced his outposts to a point only
four miles from Richmond. But he began his movements too late, for the
Confederates were already in motion. Leaving about thirty thousand men
in the immediate defences of Richmond, Lee crossed the Chickahominy
with about thirty-five thousand under Generals A. P. Hill, D. H. Hill,
and Longstreet, intending to join Jackson's {155} twenty-five
thousand, and with this enormous force make a sudden attack on the
twenty thousand National troops that were on the north side of the
river, commanded by Gen. Fitz-John Porter, destroy them before help
could reach them, and seize McClellan's communications with his base.
Jackson, who was to have appeared on the field at sunrise of the 26th,
was for once behind time. The other Confederate commanders became
nervous and impatient; for if the movement were known to McClellan, he
could, with a little boldness and some fighting, have captured
Richmond that day. Indeed, the inhabitants of the city expected
nothing else, and it is said that the archives of the Confederate
Government were all packed and ready for instant removal. At midday
Gen. A. P. Hill's corps drove the small National force out of
Mechanicsville, and advanced to McCall's strong position on Beaver Dam
Creek. This they dared not attack in front; but they made desperate
attempts on both flanks, and the result was an afternoon of fruitless
fighting, in which they were literally mown down by the well-served
artillery, and lost upward of three thousand men, while McCall
maintained his position at every point and lost fewer than three
hundred.
[Illustration: ST. PETER'S CHURCH, NEAR WHITE HOUSE. (George
Washington was married in this church.)]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. J. PETTIGREW, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL BENJAMIN HUGER, C. S. A.]
That night, in pursuance of the plan for a change of base, the heavy
guns that had thwarted Lee in his first attack were carried across the
Chickahominy, together with a large part of the baggage train. On the
morning of the 27th Porter fell back somewhat to a position on a range
of low hills, where he could keep the enemy in check till the stores
were removed to the other side of the river, which was now his only
object. McClellan sent him five thousand more men in the course of the
day, being afraid to send any greater number, because he believed that
the bulk of the Confederate army was in the defences on his left, and
a show of activity there still further deceived them.
On the morning of the 27th Porter had eighteen thousand infantry, two
thousand five hundred artillerymen, and a small force of cavalry, with
which to meet the attack of at least fifty-five thousand. Longstreet
and the Hills had followed the retreat closely, but, warned by the
experience of the day before, were not willing to attack until Jackson
should join them. The fighting began about two o'clock in the
afternoon, when A. P. Hill assaulted the centre of Porter's position,
and in a two hours' struggle was driven back with heavy loss. Two
attacks on the right met with no better success. The effect on the new
troops that had been hurried up from the coast was complete
demoralization. The Confederate General Whiting says in his report:
"Men were leaving the field in every direction, and in great disorder.
Two regiments, one from South Carolina and one from Louisiana, were
actually marching back from the fire. Men were skulking from the front
in a shameful manner."
But at length Jackson's men arrived, and a determined effort was made
on all parts of the line at once. Even then it seemed for a time as if
victory might rest with the little army on the hills; and in all
probability it would, if they had had such intrenchments as the men
afterward learned how to construct very quickly; but their breastworks
were only such as could be made from hastily felled trees, a few
rails, and heaps of knap-sacks. The Confederates had the advantage of
thick woods in which to form and advance. As they emerged and came on
in heavy masses, with the Confederate yell, they were answered by the
Union cheer. Volley responded to volley, guns were taken and re-taken,
{156} and cannoneers that remained after the infantry supports retired
were shot down; but it was not till sunset that the National line was
fairly disrupted, at the left centre, when the whole gave way and
slowly retired. Two regiments were captured, and twenty-two guns fell
into the hands of the enemy. In the night Porter crossed the river
with his remaining force, and destroyed the bridges. This was called
by the Confederates the battle of the Chickahominy; but it takes its
better known name from two mills (Gaines's) near the scene of action.
The total National loss was six thousand men. The Confederate loss was
never properly ascertained, which renders it probable that it was much
larger. Some of the wounded lay on the field four days uncared for.
This action is sometimes called the first battle of Cold Harbor. The
armies under Grant and Lee fought on the same ground two years later.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF MALVERN HILL--LEE'S ATTACK.]
Lee and Jackson believed that they had been fighting the whole of
McClellan's forces, and another mistake that they made secured the
safety of that army. They took it for granted that the National
commander, driven from his base at White House, would retreat down the
peninsula, taking the same route by which he had come. Consequently
they remained with their large force on the left bank of the
Chickahominy, and even advanced some distance down the stream, which
gave McClellan twenty-four hours of precious time to get through the
swamp roads with his immense trains. He had five thousand loaded
wagons, and two thousand five hundred head of cattle. Gen. Silas
Casey's division, in charge of the stores at White House, loaded all
they could upon transports, and destroyed the remainder. Trains of
cars filled with supplies were put under full speed and run off the
tracks into the river. Hundreds of tons of ammunition, and millions of
rations, were burned or otherwise destroyed.
{157} [Illustration: BATTLE OF CHARLES CITY CROSS-ROADS, JUNE 30,
1862.]
Rear Admiral Thomas S. Phelps, United States Navy, gives a vivid
description of the scene when the transports and other vessels fled
down the river in panic: "Harassing the enemy and protecting the
worthy fully occupied my time until the afternoon of June 27, 1862,
when Quartermaster-General Ingalls came down the river on a boat
provided especially for his use, and after directing an assistant to
abandon the Point, immediately continued on his way to Yorktown. Soon
afterward the Pamunkey, as far as the eye could reach, appeared
crowded with a confused mass of side-wheel boats, propellers, brigs,
and schooners, and as they dashed past my vessel there appeared to be
as complete a stampede as it has ever been my misfortune to witness.
In answer to the hail, 'What is the trouble?' I was greeted with, 'The
rebels are coming! The whole country is full of them; go to the
mast-head and you will see thousands of them!' Eliciting nothing
further of a satisfactory nature, and seeing nothing but empty fields,
I directed a count to be made of the fleeing vessels, and by evening's
dusk six hundred {158} and eighty were reported as having passed, not
counting several schooners left behind, which on touching the bottom
had been abandoned, their crews escaping to more fortunate
companions." On the following day the gunboats returned to West Point,
towing the derelict schooners which they had floated, and also the
half of a regiment which in the hurry of the previous day had been
forgotten and left behind. At the last moment Casey embarked his men,
and with what he had been able to save steamed down the Pamunkey and
York Rivers, and up the James to the new base. At the close of a long
despatch to the Secretary of War, on the 28th, General McClellan said:
"If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to
you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to
sacrifice this army."
When Gen. John B. Magruder, who had been left in the defences of
Richmond, found that the National army was retreating to the James, he
moved out to attack it, and struck the rear guard at Allen's farm. His
men made three assaults, and were three times repelled. Magruder
complained that he lost a victory here because Lee had left him but
thirteen thousand men.
The National troops fell back to Savage's Station, where later in the
day Magruder attacked them again. He had a rifled cannon mounted on a
platform car, with which he expected to do great execution. But there
was an ample force to oppose him, and it stood unmoved by his
successive charges. About sunset he advanced his whole line with a
desperate rush in the face of a continuous fire of cannon and
musketry, but it was of no avail, and half an hour later his own line
was broken by a counter charge that closed the battle. He admitted a
loss of four thousand men. Sumner and Franklin, at a cost of three
thousand, had thus maintained the approach to the single road through
White Oak Swamp, by which they were to follow the body of the army
that had already passed. But it was found necessary to burn another
immense quantity of food and clothing that could not be removed, and
to leave behind two thousand five hundred sick and wounded men.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL A. P. HILL, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAS. E. RAINS, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL D. H. HILL, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL J. E. B. STUART, C. S. A.]
Jackson, after spending a day in building bridges, crossed the
Chickahominy and attempted to follow McClellan's rear guard through
White Oak Swamp; but when he got to the other side he found a
necessary bridge destroyed and National batteries commanding its site,
so that it was impossible for his forces to emerge from the swamp. But
meanwhile Hill and Longstreet had crossed the river farther up stream,
marched around the swamp, and struck the retreating army near Charles
City Cross-Roads, on the 30th. There was terrific fighting all the
afternoon. There were brave charges and bloody repulses, masses of men
moving up steadily in the face of batteries that tore great gaps
through them at every discharge, crossed bayonets, and clubbed
muskets. Only on that part of the line held by McCall did the
Confederates, with all their daring, succeed in breaking through.
McCall, in his report, describes the successful charge: "A most
determined charge was made on Randol's battery by a full brigade,
advancing in wedge shape, without order, but in perfect recklessness.
Somewhat similar charges had been previously made on Cooper's and
Kern's batteries by single regiments, without success, they having
recoiled before the storm of canister hurled against them. A like
result was anticipated by Randol's battery, and the Fourth Regiment
was requested not to fire until the battery had done with them. Its
gallant commander did not doubt his ability to repel the attack, and
his guns did indeed mow down the advancing host; but still the gaps
were closed, and the enemy came in upon a run to the very muzzles of
his guns. It was a perfect torrent of men, and they were in his
battery before the guns could be removed." General McCall himself,
endeavoring to rally his men at this point, was captured and carried
off to Richmond. In Kearney's front a similar charge was made three
times; but every time a steady musketry fire drove back the enemy that
had closed up its gaps made by the artillery. Darkness put an end to
the fighting, and that night McClellan's army continued its retreat to
Malvern Hill, where {159} his advance guard had taken up the strongest
position he had yet occupied. The battle just described has several
names--Glendale, Frazier's Farm, Charles City Cross-Roads, Newmarket,
Nelson's Farm. McClellan here lost ten guns. The losses in men cannot
be known exactly, as the reports group the losses of several days
together. Longstreet and the two Hills reported a loss of twelve
thousand four hundred and fifty-eight in the fighting from the 27th to
the 30th.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN G. BARNARD.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. J. ABERCROMBIE.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL HENRY M. NAGLEE.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL L. C. HUNT.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL INNIS N. PALMER.]
The last stand made by McClellan for delivering battle was at Malvern
Hill. This is a plateau near Turkey Bend of James River, having an
elevation of sixty feet, and an extent of about a mile and a half in
one direction and a mile in the other. It is so bordered by streams
and swamps as to leave no practicable approach except by the narrow
northwest face. Here McClellan had his entire army in position when
his pursuers came up. It was disposed in the form of a semicircle,
with the right wing "refused" (swung back) and prolonged to Haxall's
Landing, on the James. His position was peculiarly favorable for the
use of artillery, and his whole front bristled with it. There were no
intrenchments to speak of, but the natural inequalities of the ground
afforded considerable shelter for the men and guns. It was as complete
a trap as could be set for an army, and Lee walked straight into it.
Under ordinary circumstances, both commander and men would properly
hesitate to attack an enemy so posted. But to the confidence with
which the Southerners began the war was now added the peculiar elation
produced by a week's pursuit of a retreating army; and apparently it
did not occur to them that they were all mortal.
In the first contact seven thousand Confederates, with six guns,
struck the left of the position. They boldly advanced their artillery
to within eight hundred yards of the cliff; but before they could get
at work, a fire of twenty or thirty guns was concentrated upon their
battery, which knocked it to pieces in a few minutes; and at the same
time some huge shells from a gunboat fell among a small detachment of
cavalry, threw it into confusion, and turned it back upon the
infantry, breaking up the whole attack.
Lee was not ready to assault with his whole army till the afternoon of
July 1st. An artillery duel was kept up during the forenoon, but the
Confederate commander did not succeed in destroying the National
batteries, as he hoped to: on the contrary, he saw his own disabled,
one after another. The signal for the infantry attack was to be the
usual yell, raised by Armistead's division on the right and taken up
by the successive divisions along the line. But the Confederate line
was separated by thick woods; there was long waiting for the signal;
some of the generals thought they heard it, and some advanced without
hearing it. The consequence was a series of separate attacks, some of
them repeated three or four times, and every time a concentrated fire
on the attacking column and a bloody repulse. The men themselves began
to see the hopelessness of it, while their officers were still urging
them to renewed efforts. "Come on, come on, my men," said one
Confederate colonel, with the grim humor of a soldier; "do you want to
live forever?" There were some brief counter-charges, in one of which
the colors were taken from a North Carolina regiment; but in general
the National troops only maintained their ground, and though fighting
was kept up till nine o'clock in the evening, the line--as {160}
General Webb, then assistant chief of artillery, tells us--was never
for one instant broken or the guns in danger. This battle cost Lee
five thousand men, and at its close he gave up the pursuit. The
National loss was less than one-third as great. That night McClellan
withdrew his army to Harrison's Landing, on the James, where he had
fixed his base of supplies and where the gunboats could protect his
position. This retreat is known as the Seven Days, and the losses are
figured up at fifteen thousand two hundred and forty-nine on the
National side, and somewhat over nineteen thousand on the Confederate.
[Illustration: GRAPEVINE BRIDGE.]
From that time there was an angry controversy as to the military
abilities of General McClellan and the responsibility for the failure
of the campaign, and partisanship was never more violent than over
this question. The General had won the highest personal regard of his
soldiers, and they were mostly unwilling or unable to look at the
matter in the cold light of the criticism that simply asks, What was
required? and What was accomplished? The truth appears to be, that
General McClellan, like most men, possessed some virtues and lacked
others. He organized a great army, and to the end of its days it felt
the benefit of the discipline with which he endowed it. But with that
army in hand he did not secure the purpose of its creation. He was an
accomplished engineer, and a gigantic adjutant, but hardly the general
to be sent against an army that could move and a commander that could
think. There can be no doubt that the Administration was over-anxious
about the movements in the Shenandoah, and should have sent McDowell's
corps to McClellan at once; but neither can there be much doubt that
if Little Mac, the Young Napoleon, as he was fondly called, had been a
general of the highest order, he would have destroyed Lee's army and
captured the Confederate capital with the ample forces that he had. It
was not General McClellan alone that was in a false position when his
army was astride the Chickahominy, but the Administration and the
people of the loyal States as well. Their grand strategy was radically
vicious, for they stood astride of the great central question of the
war itself.
{161} [Illustration: GENERAL McCLELLAN'S ARMY BETWEEN BIG BETHEL AND
YORKTOWN.]
To a student of the art of war, this disastrous campaign and the many
criticisms that it evoked are exceedingly interesting. Nearly every
military problem was in some way presented in it. Two or three
quotations from the best sources will indicate its importance and the
complicated questions that it involved. General McClellan himself says
in his report: "It may be asked why, after the concentration of our
forces on the right bank of the Chickahominy, with a large part of the
enemy drawn away from Richmond, upon the opposite side, I did not,
instead of striking for James River fifteen miles below that place, at
once march directly on Richmond. It will be remembered that at this
juncture the enemy was on our rear, and there was every reason {162}
to believe that he would sever our communications with our supply
depot at the White House. We had on hand but a limited amount of
rations, and if we had advanced directly on Richmond it would have
required considerable time to carry the strong works around that
place, during which our men would have been destitute of food; and
even if Richmond had fallen before our arms, the enemy could still
have occupied our supply communications between that place and the
gunboats, and turned their disaster into victory. If, on the other
hand, the enemy had concentrated all his forces at Richmond during the
progress of our attack, and we had been defeated, we must in all
probability have lost our trains before reaching the flotilla. The
battles which continued day after day in the progress of our flank
movement to the James, with the exception of the one at Gaines's Mill,
were successes to our arms, and the closing engagement at Malvern Hill
was the most decisive of all."
One of General McClellan's severest critics, Gen. John G. Barnard, in
an elaborate review of the campaign, wrote: "It was a blunder
unparalleled to expose Porter's corps to fight a battle by itself on
the 27th against overwhelming forces of the enemy. With perfect ease
that corps might have been brought over on the night of the 26th, and,
if nothing more brilliant could have been thought of, the movement to
the James might have been in full tide of execution on the 27th. A
more propitious moment could not have been chosen, for, besides
Jackson's own forces, A. P. Hill's and Longstreet's corps were on the
left bank of the Chickahominy on the night of the 26th. Such a
movement need not have been discovered to the enemy till far enough
advanced to insure success. At any rate, he could have done no better
in preventing it than he actually did afterward.... He has spent weeks
in building bridges which establish a close connection between the
wings of his army, and then fights a great battle with a smaller
fraction of his army than when he had a single available bridge, and
that remote. He, with great labor, constructs 'defensive works' in
order that he 'may bring the greatest possible numbers into action,'
and again exhibits his ability to utilize his means by keeping
sixty-five thousand men idle behind them, while thirty-five thousand,
unaided by 'defensive works' of any kind, fight the bulk of his
adversary's forces, and are, of course, overwhelmed by 'superior
numbers.' We believe there were few commanding officers of the Army of
the Potomac who did not expect to be led offensively against the enemy
on the 26th or 27th. Had such a movement been made, it is not
improbable that, if energetically led, we should have gone into
Richmond. Jackson and A. P. Hill could not have got back in time to
succor Magruder's command, if measures of most obvious propriety had
been taken to prevent them. We might have beaten or driven Magruder's
twenty-five thousand men and entered Richmond, and then, reinforced by
the great moral acquisition of strength this success would have given,
have fought Lee and reëstablished our communications. At any rate,
something of this kind was worth trying.... Our army is now
concentrated on the James; but we have another day's fighting before
us, and this day we may expect the concentrated attack of Lee's whole
army. We know not at what hour it will come--possibly late, for it
requires time to find out our new position and to bring together the
attacking columns--yet we know not when it will come. Where, this day,
is the commanding general? Off, with Captain Rodgers, to select 'the
final positions of the army and its depots.' He does not tell us that
it was on a gunboat, and that this day not even 'signals' would keep
him in communication with his army, for his journey was ten or fifteen
miles down the river; and he was thus absent till late in the
afternoon. This is the first time we ever had reason to believe that
the highest and first duty of a general, on the day of battle, was
separating himself from his army to reconnoitre a place of retreat!...
If the enemy had two hundred thousand men, it was to be seriously
apprehended that, leaving fifty thousand behind the 'strong works' of
Richmond, he would march at once with one hundred and fifty thousand
men on Washington. Why should he not? General McClellan and his
eulogists have held up as highly meritorious strategy the leaving of
Washington defended by less than fifty thousand men, with the enemy in
its front estimated to be one hundred and twenty thousand to one
hundred and fifty thousand strong, and moving off to take an eccentric
line of operations against Richmond; and now the reverse case is
presented, but with an important difference. The enemy at Manassas, on
learning General McClellan's movement, could either fly to the defence
of Richmond or attack Washington. General McClellan says that this
latter course was not to be feared. McClellan on the James, on
learning that Lee with one hundred and fifty thousand men is marching
on Washington, can only attack Richmond; by no possibility can he fly
to the defence of Washington. Besides, he is inferior in numbers
(according to his own estimate) even to Lee's marching army. Here, in
a nutshell, is the demonstration of the folly of the grand strategic
movement on Richmond, as given by its own projector."
An English military critic thus analyzes the great campaign: "As
regards the value of the plan, in a merely military point of view,
three faults may be enumerated: It was too rash; it violated the
principles of war; its application was too timid. (1) An army of one
hundred and thirty thousand volunteers should not be moved about as if
it were a single division. (2) The choice of Fort Monroe as a
secondary basis involved the necessity of leaving Washington, or the
fixed basis, to be threatened, morally at least, by the enemy. The
communications also between these two places were open to an attack
from the _Merrimac_, an iron-plated ship, which lay at Norfolk, on the
south side of Hampton Roads. The first movement to Fort Monroe was the
stride of a giant. The second, in the direction of Richmond, was that
of a dwarf. When the army arrived in front of the lines at Yorktown,
it numbered, probably, one hundred thousand men, and here there was no
timid President to interfere with the command; nevertheless, McClellan
suffered himself to be stopped in the middle of an offensive campaign
by Magruder and twelve thousand men.... The hour of his arrival in
front of the lines should have been the hour of his attack upon them.
Two overwhelming masses, to which life and energy had been
communicated, should have been hurled on separate points. Magruder not
only defeated but destroyed! The _morale_ of the Federal army raised!
The result of the campaign, although it might not have been decisive,
would have been more honorable."
On the Confederate side the criticism was almost as severe, because,
while claiming the result of the six days as a Confederate success, it
was also claimed that the campaign should have resulted in the
complete destruction of McClellan's army.
The use of balloons for reconnoitring the enemy's position formed a
picturesque feature of this campaign. T. S. C. Lowe, J. H. Stiner, and
other aëronauts were at the National headquarters with their balloons,
and several officers of high rank accompanied them in numerous
ascents. But it seems to have been demonstrated that the balloon was
of little practical value.
{163}
CHAPTER XIV.
POPE'S CAMPAIGN.
FORMATION OF THE ARMY OF VIRGINIA--HALLECK MADE
GENERAL-IN-CHIEF--McCLELLAN LEAVES THE PENINSULA--BATTLE OF CEDAR
MOUNTAIN--POPE AND LEE MANOEUVRE--BATTLE OF GROVETON--THE SECOND BULL
RUN--BATTLE OF CHANTILLY--THE PORTER DISPUTE--GENERAL GRANT'S
OPINION--COMPLICATED MOVEMENTS OF THE CAMPAIGN--INTERESTING INCIDENTS.
While McClellan was before Richmond, it was determined to consolidate
in one command the corps of Banks, Frémont, and McDowell, which were
moving about in an independent and ineffectual way between Washington
and the Shenandoah Valley. Gen. John Pope, who had won considerable
reputation by his capture of Island No. 10, was called from the West
and given command (June 26, 1862) of the new organization, which was
called the Army of Virginia. Frémont declined to serve under a
commander who had once been his subordinate, and consequently his
corps was given to General Sigel. General Pope, on taking command of
this force, which numbered all told about thirty-eight thousand men,
and also of the troops in the fortifications around Washington, had
the bad taste to issue a general order that had three capital defects:
it boasted of his own prowess at the West, it underrated his enemy,
and it contained a bit of sarcasm pointed at General McClellan, the
commander of the army with which his own was to coöperate. Pope says,
in his report, that he wrote a cordial letter to McClellan, asking for
his views as to the best plan of campaign, and offering to render him
any needed assistance; and that he received but a cold and indefinite
reply. It is likely enough that a courteous man and careful soldier
like McClellan would be in no mood to fall in with the suggestions of
a commander that entered upon his work with a gratuitous piece of
bombast, and seemed to have no conception of the serious nature of the
task. When it became evident that these two commanders could not act
sufficiently in harmony, the President called Gen. Henry W. Halleck
from the West to be General-in-Chief, with headquarters at Washington,
and command them both. Halleck had perhaps more military learning than
any other man in the country, and his patriotic intentions were
unquestionably good; but in practical warfare he proved to be little
more than a great obstructor. He had been the bane of the Western
armies, preventing them from following up their victories, and had
almost driven Grant out of the service; and from the day he took
command at Washington (July 12) the troubles in the East became more
complicated than ever.
McClellan held a strong position at Harrison's Landing, where, if he
accomplished nothing else, he was a standing menace to Richmond, so
that Lee dared not withdraw his army from its defence. He wanted to be
heavily reinforced, cross the James, and strike at Richmond's southern
communications, just as Grant actually did two years later; and he was
promised reinforcements from the troops of Burnside and Hunter, on the
coast of North and South Carolina. Lee's anxiety was to get McClellan
off from the peninsula, so that he could strike out toward Washington.
He first sent a detachment to bombard McClellan's camp from the
opposite side of the James; but McClellan crossed the river with a
sufficient force and easily swept it out of the way. Then Lee sent
Jackson to make a demonstration against Pope, holding the main body of
his army ready to follow as soon as some erratic and energetic
movements of Jackson had caused a sufficient alarm at Washington to
determine the withdrawal of McClellan. The unwitting Halleck was all
too swift to coöperate with his enemy, and had already determined upon
that withdrawal. Burnside's troops, coming up on transports, were not
even landed, but were forwarded up the Potomac and sent to Pope.
McClellan marched his army to Fort Monroe, and there embarked it by
divisions for the same destination.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN POPE.]
Pope's intention was to push southward, strike Lee's western and
northwestern communications, and cut them off from the Shenandoah
Valley. He first ordered Banks (July 14) to push his whole cavalry
force to Gordonsville, and destroy the railroads and bridges in that
vicinity. But the cavalry commander, General Hatch, took with him
infantry, artillery, and a wagon train, and consequently did not move
at cavalry speed. Before he could get to Gordonsville, Jackson's
advance reached it, and his movement was frustrated. He was relieved
of his command, and it was given to Gen. John Buford, an able cavalry
leader.
As soon as Jackson came in contact with Pope's advance, he called upon
Lee for reinforcements, and promptly received them. On the 8th of
August he crossed the Rapidan, and moved toward Culpeper. Pope, who
had but recently taken the field in person, having remained in
Washington till July 29th, attempted to concentrate the corps of Banks
and Sigel at Culpeper. Banks arrived there promptly on the 8th; but
Sigel sent a note from Sperryville in the afternoon, asking by what
road he should march. "As there was but one road between those two
points," {164} says Pope, "and that a broad stone turnpike, I was at a
loss to understand how General Sigel could entertain any doubt as to
the road by which he should march." On the morning of the 9th Banks's
corps went out alone to meet the enemy at Cedar Mountain. Banks had
eight thousand men (Pope says he had supposed that corps numbered
fourteen thousand), and attacked an enemy twice as strong. He first
struck Jackson's right wing, and afterward furiously attacked the
left, rolled up the flank, opened a fire in the rear, and threw
Jackson's whole line into confusion. It was as if the two commanders
had changed characters, and Banks had suddenly assumed the part that,
according to the popular idea, Jackson was always supposed to play. If
Sigel had only known what road to take, that might have been the last
of Jackson. But Banks's force had become somewhat broken in its
advance through the woods, and at the same time the Confederates were
reinforced, so that Jackson was able to rally his men and check the
movement. Banks in turn was forced back a short distance, where he
took up a strong position.
Sigel's corps arrived in the evening, relieved Banks's corps, and made
immediate preparations for a renewal of the fight in the morning. The
dead were buried, the wounded carried forth, and through the night
trains were moving and everything being put in readiness, but at
daylight it was discovered that the enemy had fallen back two miles to
a new position. Partly because of the strong position held by each,
and partly because of the very hot weather, there was little further
disposition to renew the fight, and two days later Jackson fell still
further back to Gordonsville. In this action, which for the numbers
engaged was one of the fiercest and most rapid of the war, the
Confederates lost about thirteen hundred men and the National army
about eighteen hundred. "Besides which," says General Pope, "fully one
thousand men straggled back to Culpeper Court House and beyond, and
never entirely returned to their commands." On the other hand, the
cavalry under Buford and Bayard pursued the enemy and captured many
stragglers. The Confederate Gen. Charles S. Winder was struck by a
shell and killed while leading his division.
[Illustration: POPE'S BAGGAGE-TRAIN IN THE MUD.]
[Illustration: VIEW IN CULPEPER.]
Immediately after this action the cavalry resumed its former position
along the Rapidan from Raccoon Ford to the mountains. On the 14th of
August General Pope was reinforced by eight thousand men under General
Reno, whereupon he pushed his whole force forward toward the Rapidan,
and took up a position with his right on Robertson's River, his centre
on the slopes of Cedar Mountain and his left near Raccoon Ford. From
this point he sent out cavalry expeditions to destroy the enemy's
communications with Richmond, and one of these captured General
Stuart's adjutant, with a letter from Lee to General Stuart, dated
August 15th, which to a large extent revealed Lee's plans. The
incident that resulted in this important capture is thus related by
Stuart's biographer, Major H. B. McClellan: "Stuart reached
Verdiersville on the evening of the 17th, and hearing nothing from
Fitz Lee, sent his adjutant, Major Norman R. Fitz Hugh, to meet him
and ascertain his position. A body of the enemy's cavalry had,
however, started on a reconnoissance on the previous day, and in the
darkness of the night Major Fitz Hugh rode into this party and was
captured. On his person was found an autograph letter from the
commanding general to Stuart which disclosed to General Pope the
design of turning his left flank. The fact that Fitz Hugh did not
return aroused no apprehension, and Stuart and his staff imprudently
passed the night on the porch of an old house on the Plank Road. At
daybreak he was aroused by the noise of approaching horsemen, and
sending Mosby and Gibson, two of his aides, to ascertain who was
coming, he himself walked out to the front gate, bareheaded, to greet
Fitz Lee, as he supposed. The result did not justify his expectations.
In another instant pistol shots were heard, and Mosby and Gibson were
seen running back, pursued by a party of the enemy. Stuart, Von
Borcke, and Dabney had their horses inside of the inclosure of the
yard. Von Borcke gained the gate and the {165} road, and escaped
unhurt after a long and hard run. Stuart and Dabney were compelled to
leap the yard fence and take across the fields to the nearest woods.
They were pursued but a short distance. Returning to a post of
observation, Stuart saw the enemy depart in triumph with his hat and
cloak, which he had been compelled to leave on the porch where he had
slept. He bore this mortification with good nature. In a letter of
about that date he writes: 'I am greeted on all sides with
congratulations and "Where's your hat?" I intend to make the Yankees
pay for that hat.' And Pope did cancel the debt a few nights afterward
at Catlett's Station."
[Illustration: HENRY AND ROBINSON HOUSES, BULL RUN. (From photograph
taken in 1884.)]
[Illustration: CONFEDERATE DEAD LAID OUT FOR BURIAL.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL G. W. C. LEE. GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE,
C. S. A. COLONEL WALTER TAYLOR.]
[Illustration: JOHN LETCHER. Governor of Virginia.]
The captured despatch revealed to Pope the fact that Lee intended to
fall upon him with his entire army and crush him before he could be
reinforced from the Army of the Potomac. Pope says: "I held on to my
position, thus far to the front, for the purpose of affording all time
possible for the arrival of the Army of the Potomac at Acquia and
Alexandria, and to embarrass and delay the movements of the enemy as
far as practicable. On the 18th of August it became apparent to me
that this advanced position, with the small force under my command,
was no longer tenable in the face of the overwhelming forces of the
enemy. I determined, accordingly, to withdraw behind the Rappahannock
with all speed, and, as I had been instructed, to defend, as far as
practicable, the line of that river. I directed Major-General Reno to
send back his trains, on the morning of the 18th, by the way of
Stevensburg, to Kelly's or Burnett's Ford, and, as soon as the trains
had gotten several hours in advance, to follow them with his whole
corps, and take post behind the Rappahannock, {166} leaving all his
cavalry in the neighborhood of Raccoon Ford to cover this movement.
General Banks's corps, which had been ordered, on the 12th, to take
position at Culpeper Court House, I directed, with its trains
preceding it, to cross the Rappahannock at the point where the Orange
and Alexandria railroad crosses that river. General McDowell's train
was ordered to pursue the same route, while the train of General Sigel
was directed through Jefferson, to cross the Rappahannock at Warrenton
Sulphur Springs. So soon as these trains had been sufficiently
advanced, McDowell's corps was directed to take the route from
Culpeper to Rappahannock Ford, whilst General Sigel, who was on the
right and front, was instructed to follow the movements of his train
to Sulphur Springs. These movements were executed during the day and
night of the 18th, and the day of the 19th, by which time the whole
army, with its trains, had safely recrossed the Rappahannock and was
posted behind that stream, with its left at Kelly's Ford and its right
about three miles above Rappahannock Station." The Confederates
followed rapidly, and on the 20th confronted Pope at Kelly's Ford, but
with the river between. For two days they made strenuous efforts to
cross, but a powerful artillery fire, which was kept up continuously
for seven or eight miles along the river, made any crossing in force
impossible. Lee therefore sent Jackson to make a flank march westward
along that stream, cross it at Sulphur Springs, and come down upon
Pope's right. But when Jackson arrived at the crossing, he found a
heavy force occupying Sulphur Springs and ready to meet him. Meanwhile
Gen. James E. B. Stuart, with fifteen hundred cavalrymen, in the dark
and stormy night of August 22d, had ridden around to the rear of
Pope's position, to cut the railroad. He struck Pope's headquarters at
Catlett's Station, captured three hundred prisoners and all the
personal baggage and papers of the commander, and got back in safety.
These papers informed Lee of Pope's plans and dispositions.
Jackson, being thwarted at Sulphur Springs, moved still farther up the
south bank of the Rappahannock, crossed the headwaters, and turned
Pope's right. He passed through Thoroughfare Gap in the Bull Run
Mountains on the 26th, destroyed Bristoe Station on the Orange and
Alexandria railroad, and sent out Stuart to Manassas Junction, where
prisoners were taken and a large amount of commissary stores fell into
his hands.
Pope knew exactly the size of Jackson's force, and the direction it
had taken in its flank march; for Col. J. S. Clark, of Banks's staff,
had spent a day where he had a plain view of the enemy's moving
columns, and carefully counted the regiments and batteries. But from
this point the National commander, who had hitherto done reasonably
well, seemed suddenly to become bewildered.
He explains in his report that his force was too small to enable him
to extend his right any further without too greatly weakening his
line, and says he telegraphed the facts repeatedly to Washington,
saying that he could not extend further West without losing his
connections with Fredericksburg. He declares he was assured on the
21st, that if he could hold the line of the river two days longer he
should be heavily reinforced, but that this promise was not kept, the
only troops that were added to his army during the next four days
being seven thousand men under Generals Reynolds and Kearny.
[Illustration: THE SEAT OF MILITARY OPERATIONS IN AUGUST AND
SEPTEMBER, 1862.]
Lee, whose grand strategy was correct, had here blundered seriously in
his manoeuvres, dividing his army so that the two parts were not
within supporting distance of each other, and the united enemy was
between. An ordinarily good general, standing in Pope's boots, would
naturally have fallen in force upon Jackson, and could have completely
destroyed or captured him. But Pope out-blundered Lee, and gave the
victory to the Confederates.
He began by sending forty thousand men under McDowell, on the 27th,
toward Thoroughfare Gap, to occupy the road by which Lee with
Longstreet's division was marching to join Jackson; and at the same
time he moved with the remainder of his army to strike Jackson at
Bristoe Station. This was a good beginning, but was immediately ruined
by his own lack of steadiness. The advance guard had an engagement at
that place {167} with Jackson's rear guard, while his main body
retired to Manassas Junction. Pope became elated at the prospect of a
great success, and ordered a retrograde movement by McDowell, telling
him to march eastward on the 28th, adding: "If you will march promptly
and rapidly at the earliest dawn upon Manassas Junction, we shall bag
the whole crowd." McDowell obeyed, the way was thus left open for
Jackson to move out to meet his friends, and Jackson promptly took
advantage of the opportunity and planted himself on the high land
around Groveton, near the battlefield of Bull Run. Here King's
division of McDowell's corps came suddenly in contact with the enemy,
and a sharp fight, with severe loss on either side, ensued. Among the
Confederate wounded was Gen. Richard S. Ewell, one of their best
commanders, who lost a leg. In the night, King's men fell back to
Manassas; and Ricketts's division, which McDowell had left to delay
Longstreet when he should attempt to pass through Thoroughfare Gap,
was also retired.
All apprehensions on the part of the lucky Jackson were now at an end.
His enemies had removed every obstruction, and he was in possession of
the Warrenton Turnpike, the road by which Longstreet was to join him.
The cut of an abandoned railroad formed a strong, ready-made
intrenchment, and along this he placed his troops, his right flank
being on the turnpike and his left at Sudley Mill.
[Illustration: DAM ACROSS BULL RUN, NEAR BLACKBURN'S FORD.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL HERMANN HAUPT.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL GEO. H. GORDON.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL GEO. W. GILL.]
General Pope says of his forces at this time: "From the 18th of August
until the morning of the 27th the troops under my command had been
continuously marching and fighting night and day, and during the whole
of that time there was scarcely an interval of an hour without the
roar of artillery. The men had had little sleep, were greatly worn
down with fatigue, had had little time to get proper food or to eat
it, had been engaged in constant battles and skirmishes, and had
performed services laborious, dangerous, and excessive beyond any
previous experience in this country. As was to be expected under such
circumstances, the numbers of the army under my command have been
greatly reduced by deaths, by wounds, by sickness, and by fatigue, so
that on the morning of the 27th of August I estimated my whole
effective force (and I {168} think the estimate was large) as follows:
Sigel's corps, nine thousand men; Banks's corps, five thousand men;
McDowell's corps, including Reynolds's division, fifteen thousand five
hundred men; Reno's corps, seven thousand men; the corps of
Heintzelman and Porter (the freshest by far in that army), about
eighteen thousand men--making in all fifty-four thousand five hundred
men. Our cavalry numbered on paper about four thousand men; but their
horses were completely broken down, and there were not five hundred
men, all told, capable of doing such service as should be expected
from cavalry. The corps of Heintzelman had reached Warrenton Junction,
but it was without wagons, without artillery, with only forty rounds
of ammunition to the man, and without even horses for the general and
field officers. The corps of Porter had also reached Warrenton
Junction with a very small supply of provisions, and but forty rounds
of ammunition for each man."
Longstreet reached the field in the forenoon of the 29th, and took
position at Jackson's right, on the other side of the turnpike,
covering also the Manassas Gap railroad. He was confronted by Fitz
John Porter's corps. McDowell says he ordered Porter to move out and
attack Longstreet; Porter says he ordered him simply to hold the
ground where he was. At three o'clock in the afternoon Pope ordered
Hooker to attack Jackson directly in front. Hooker, who was never
loath to fight where there was a prospect of success, remonstrated;
but Pope insisted, and the attack was made. Hooker's men charged with
the bayonet, had a terrific hand-to-hand fight in the cut, and
actually ruptured Jackson's seemingly impregnable line; but
reinforcements were brought up, and the assailants were at length
driven back. Kearny's division was sent to support Hooker, but too
late, and it also was repelled. An hour or two later, Pope, who did
not know that Longstreet had arrived on the field, sent orders to Fitz
John Porter to attack Jackson's right, supposing that was the right of
the whole Confederate line. There is a dispute as to the hour at which
this order reached Porter. But it was impossible for him to obey it,
since he could not move upon Jackson's flank without exposing his own
flank to Longstreet. About six o'clock, when he imagined Porter's
attack must have begun, Pope ordered another attack on the Confederate
left. It was gallantly made, and in the first rush was successful.
Jackson's extreme left was doubled up and broken by Kearny's men, who
seized the cut and held it for a time. At this point a Confederate
regiment that had exhausted its ammunition fought with stones. There
were plenty of fragments of rock at hand, and several men were killed
by them. Again the Confederates, undisturbed on their right, hurried
across reinforcements to their imperilled left; and Kearny's division,
too small to hold what it had gained, was driven back. This day's
action is properly called the battle of Groveton.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL FRANZ SIGEL.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL FITZ JOHN PORTER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP KEARNY.]
Pope's forces had been considerably cut up and scattered, but he got
them together that night, re-formed his lines, and prepared to renew
the attack the next day. Lee at the same time drew back his left
somewhat, advanced and strengthened his right, and prepared to take
the offensive. Each intended to attack the other's left flank.
When Pope moved out the next day (August 30th) to strike Lee's left,
and found it withdrawn, he imagined that the enemy was in retreat, and
immediately ordered McDowell to follow it up and "press the enemy
vigorously the whole day." Porter's corps--the advance of McDowell's
force--had no sooner begun this movement than it struck the foe in a
strong position, and was subjected to a heavy artillery fire. Then a
cloud of dust was seen to the south, and it was evident that Lee was
pushing a force around on the flank. McDowell sent Reynolds to meet
and check it. Porter then attempted to obey his orders. He advanced
against Jackson's right in charge after charge, but was met by a fire
that repelled him every time with bloody loss. Moreover, Longstreet
found an eminence that commanded a part of his line, promptly took
advantage of it by placing a battery there, and threw in an enfilading
fire. It was impossible for anything to withstand this, and Porter's
corps in a few minutes fell back defeated. The whole Confederate line
was {169} advanced, and an attempt was made, by still further
extending their right, to cut off retreat; but key-points were firmly
held by Warren's brigade and the brigades of Meade and Seymour, and
the army was withdrawn in order from the field whence it had retired
so precipitously a year before. After dark it crossed the stone bridge
over Bull Run, and encamped on the heights around Centreville.
The corps of Sumner and Franklin here joined Pope, and the whole army
fell back still further, taking a position around Fairfax Court House
and Germantown. Lee meanwhile ordered Jackson to make another of the
flank marches that he was so fond of, with a view of striking Pope's
right and perhaps interrupting his communication with Washington. It
was the evening of September 1st when he fell heavily upon Pope's
flank. He was stoutly resisted, and finally repelled by the commands
of Hooker and Reno, and a part of those of McDowell and Kearny.
General Stevens, of Reno's corps, was killed, and his men, having used
up their ammunition, fell back. General Kearny sent Birney's brigade
into the gap, and brought up a battery. He then rode forward to
reconnoitre, came suddenly upon a squad of Confederates, and in
attempting to ride away was shot dead. Kearny was one of the most
experienced and efficient soldiers in the service. He had lost an arm
in the Mexican war, was with Napoleon III. at Solferino and Magenta,
and had just passed through the peninsula campaign with McClellan.
[Illustration: MILL AND HOTEL AT SUDLEY SPRINGS.]
[Illustration: MAP OF SECOND BATTLE OF BULL RUN, SHOWING IMPORTANT
POSITIONS OCCUPIED FROM AUGUST 27th TO SEPTEMBER 1st.]
Lee made no further attempt upon Pope's army, and on September 2d, by
Halleck's orders, it was withdrawn to the fortifications of
Washington, where it was merged in the Army of the Potomac. In this
campaign, both the numbers engaged on either side and the respective
losses are in dispute, and the exact truth never will be known. Lee
claimed that he had captured nine thousand prisoners and thirty guns,
and it is probable that Pope's total loss numbered at least fifteen
thousand. Pope maintained that he would have won the battle of
Groveton and made a successful campaign if General Porter had obeyed
his orders. Porter, for this supposed disobedience, was
court-martialed in January, 1863, and was condemned and dismissed from
the service, and forever disqualified from holding any office of
trust or profit under the Government of the United States. Thousands
of pages have been written and printed to prove or {170} disprove
his innocence, and the evidence has been reviewed again and again.
It appears to be established at last that he did not disobey
any order that it was possible for him to obey, and that he was
blameless--except, perhaps, in having exhibited a spirit of personal
hostility to General Pope, who was then his superior officer. A bill
to relieve him of the penalty was passed by the Forty-sixth Congress,
but was vetoed by President Arthur. Substantially the same bill was
passed in 1886 and was signed by President Cleveland. It restored him
to his place as colonel in the regular army, and retired him with that
rank, but with no compensation for the intervening years.
[Illustration: SECOND BATTLE OF BULL RUN. (From a war-time sketch.)]
General Grant, reviewing the case in 1882, came to the conclusion that
Porter was innocent, and gave his reasons for it in a magazine
article, significantly remarking that "if he was guilty, the
punishment awarded was not commensurate with the offence committed."
But some other military authorities still believe that his sentence
was just. Grant seems to make the question perfectly clear by drawing
two simple diagrams. This, he says, is what Pope supposed to be the
position of the armies when he ordered Porter to attack:
JACKSON
================
===================== ================
PORTER POPE
But this is what the situation really was:
LONGSTREET JACKSON
===================== ================
===================== ================
PORTER POPE
The movements of this campaign were more complicated than those of any
other during the war, and it appears to have been {171} carried on
with less of definite plan and connected purpose on either side. It is
not probable that its merits, if it had any merits, will ever be
satisfactorily agreed upon. On the part of Pope's army, whether by his
fault or not, it was a disastrous failure. On the part of Lee's, while
it resulted in tactical successes, it did not seriously menace the
safety of Washington, and it led him on to his first great failure in
an attempted invasion of the North. It is only fair to give General
Pope's last word on the subject, which we quote from his article in
"Battles and Leaders of the Civil War." "At no time could I have hoped
to fight a successful battle with the superior forces of the enemy
which confronted me, and which were able at any time to out-flank and
bear my small army to the dust. It was only by constant movement,
incessant watchfulness, and hazardous skirmishes and battles, that the
forces under my command were saved from destruction, and that the
enemy was embarrassed and delayed in his advance until the army of
General McClellan was at length assembled for the defence of
Washington. I did hope that in the course of these operations the
enemy might commit some imprudence, or leave some opening of which I
could take such advantage as to gain at least a partial success. This
opportunity was presented by the advance of Jackson on Manassas
Junction; but although the best dispositions possible in my view were
made, the object was frustrated by causes which could not have been
foreseen, and which perhaps are not yet completely known to the
country."
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE STONE BRIDGE ON THE WARRENTON TURNPIKE.
(From a War Department photograph.)]
From Capt. Henry N. Blake, of the Eleventh Massachusetts regiment, we
have these interesting incidents of the campaign:
"Matches were very scarce upon this campaign, and a private who
intended to light one gave public notice to the crowd, who surrounded
him with slips of paper and pipes in their hands. Some soldiers were
in a destitute condition, and suffered from blistered feet, as they
had no shoes, and others required a pair of pants or a blouse; but all
gladly pursued Jackson, and his capture {172} was considered a certain
event. The column cheered General Pope when he rode along, accompanied
by a vast body-guard, and he responded: 'I am glad to see you in such
good spirits to-day.' ... The stream was forded, and the graves and
bones of the dead, the rusty fragments of iron, and the weather-beaten
_débris_ of that contest reminded the men that they were again in the
midst of the familiar scenes of the first battle of Bull Run. The
cannonading was brisk at intervals during the day. Large tracts of the
field were black and smoking from the effect of the burning grass
which the shells ignited, and a small force was occasionally engaged
upon the right, but there was no general conflict. The brigade took
the position assigned to it, upon a slope of a hill, to support a
battery which was attached to Sigel's corps, and no infantry was
visible in any direction, although the land was open and objects
within the distance of half a mile were readily seen. There was no
firing, with the exception of the time when the troops debouched from
the road in the morning, and the soldiers rested until four P.M. At
this moment the enemy opened with solid shot upon the battery, which
did not discharge one piece in response. The drivers mounted their
horses; all rushed pell-mell through the ranks of the fearless and
enraged support, and did not halt within the range of the artillery
from which they had so cowardly fled. A member of the staff, dressed
like an officer of the day, immediately arrived and gave a verbal
order to the brigade commander, after which the regiments were formed
and marched, unmindful of the cannon-balls, toward the right of the
line, and halted in the border of a thick forest in which many
skirmishes had taken place. 'What does the general want me to do now?'
General Grover asked the aide who again rode up to the brigade. 'Go
into the woods and charge,' was the answer. 'Where is my support?' the
commander wisely inquired, for there were no troops near the position.
'It is coming.' After waiting fifteen minutes for this body to appear,
the officer returned and said that 'the general was much displeased'
because the charge had not been made, and the order was at once
issued: 'Fix bayonets.' Each man was inspired by these magical words;
great enthusiasm arose when this command was 'passed' from company to
company, and the soldiers, led by their brave general, advanced upon a
hidden foe through tangled woods which constantly interfered with the
formation of the ranks. 'Colonel, do you know what we are going to
charge on?' a private inquired. 'Yes; a good dinner.' The rebel
skirmishers were driven in upon their reserve behind the bank of an
unfinished railroad, and detachments from {173} five brigades were
massed in three lines, under the command of Ewell, to resist the onset
of the inferior force that menaced them. The awful volleys did not
impede the storming party that pressed on over the bodies of the dead
and dying; while the thousands of bullets which flew through the air
seemed to create a breeze that made the leaves upon the trees rustle,
and a shower of small boughs and twigs fell upon the ground. The balls
penetrated the barrels and shattered the stocks of many muskets; but
the soldiers who carried them picked up those that had been dropped
upon the ground by helpless comrades, and allowed no slight accident
of this character to interrupt them in the noble work. The railroad
bank was gained, and the column with cheers passed over it, and
advanced over the groups of the slain and mangled rebels who had
rolled down the declivity when they lost their strength. The second
line was broken; both were scattered through the woods, and victory
appeared to be certain until the last support, that had rested upon
their breasts on the ground, suddenly rose up and delivered a
destructive volley which forced the brigade, that had already lost
more than one-third of its number in killed and wounded, to retreat.
Ewell, suffering from his shattered knee, was borne to the rear in a
blanket, and his leg was amputated. The horse of General Grover was
shot upon the railroad bank while he was encouraging the men to go
forward, and he had barely time to dismount before the animal, mad
with pain, dashed into the ranks of the enemy. The woods always
concealed the movements of the troops, and at one point a portion of
the foe fell back while the others remained. The forces sometimes met
face to face, and the bayonet and sword--weapons that do not pierce
soldiers in nine-tenths of the battles that are fought--were used with
deadly effect in several instances. A corporal exclaimed in the din of
this combat, 'Dish ish no place for de mens,' and fled to the rear
with the speed of the mythical Flying Dutchman. In one company of the
regiment a son was killed by the side of his father, who continued to
perform his duty with the firmness of a stoic, and remarked to his
amazed comrades, in a tone which showed how a strong patriotic ardor
can triumph over the deepest emotion of affection: 'I had rather see
him shot dead as he was than see him run away.' ... The victors
rallied the fugitives after this repulse, and their superior force
enabled them to assault in front and upon both flanks the line which
had been contracted by the severe losses in the charge, and the
brigade fell back to the first position under a fire of grape and
canister which was added to the musketry. The regimental flag was torn
from the staff by unfriendly limbs in passing through the forest, and
the eagle that surmounted it was cut off in the contest. The commander
of the color-company saved these precious emblems, and earnestly
shouted, when the lines were re-formed: 'Eleventh, rally round the
pole!' which was then, if possible, more honored than when it was
bedecked in folds of bunting. General Grover, who displayed the
gallantry throughout this action that he had exhibited upon the
peninsula, waved his hat upon the point of his sword to animate his
brigade and prepare for a renewal of the fight. Many were scarcely
able to speak on account of hoarseness caused by intense cheering, and
some officers blistered the palms of their hands by waving swords when
they charged with their commands."
[Illustration: GATHERING UP DÉBRIS OF POPE'S RETREAT AFTER THE SECOND
BATTLE OF BULL RUN. (From a War Department photograph.)]
[Illustration: GENERAL HANCOCK AND FRIENDS. (From a war-time
photograph.)]
{174} [Illustration: HARPER'S FERRY IN POSSESSION OF THE CONFEDERATE
FORCES.]
{175}
CHAPTER XV.
THE ANTIETAM CAMPAIGN.
CONFEDERATE ADVANCE INTO MARYLAND--THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC SENT
AGAINST THEM--LEE'S PLANS LEARNED FROM A LOST DESPATCH--CAPTURE OF
HARPER'S FERRY--BATTLE OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN--BATTLE OF ANTIETAM--TERRIFIC
FIGHTING AT THE DUNKERS' CHURCH AND THE SUNKEN ROAD--PORTER'S
INACTION--FIGHTING AT THE BRIDGE--GENERAL CONDUCT OF THE BATTLE--THE
RESULTS.
After his success in the second battle of Manassas, and the retirement
of Pope's army to the defences of Washington (September 2, 1862),
General Lee pushed northward into Maryland with his whole army. His
advance arrived at Frederick City on the 8th, and from his camp near
that place he issued a proclamation to the people of Maryland, in
which he recited the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the
National Government, and told them "the people of the South have long
wished to aid you in throwing off this foreign yoke, to enable you
again to enjoy the inalienable rights of freemen and restore the
independence and sovereignty of your State." At the same time he
opened recruiting-offices, and appointed a provost-marshal of
Frederick. The reader of the classics will perhaps be reminded of the
shrewd advice that Demosthenes gave the Athenians, when he counselled
them not to ask the assistance of the Thebans against Philip of
Macedon, but to bring about an alliance by offering to help them
against him. But the Confederate chieftain was sadly disappointed in
the effect of his proclamation and his presence. When his army marched
into the State singing "My Maryland," they were received with closed
doors, drawn blinds, and the silence of a graveyard. In Frederick all
the places of business were shut. The Marylanders did not flock to his
recruiting-offices to the extent of more than two or three hundred,
while on the other hand he lost many times that number from
straggling, as he says in his report. Several reasons have been
assigned for the failure of the people to respond to his appeal, in
each of which there is probably some truth. One was, that it had
always been easy enough for Marylanders to go to the Confederate
armies, and those of them that wished to enlist there had done so
already. Another--and probably the principal one--was, that Maryland
was largely true to the Union, especially in the western counties; and
she furnished many excellent soldiers to its armies--almost fifty
thousand. Another was, that the appearance of the Southern veterans
was not calculated either to entice the men or to arouse the
enthusiasm of the women. The Confederate General Jones says: "Never
had the army been so dirty, ragged, and ill-provided for as on this
march." General Lee complained especially of their want of shoes. It
is difficult to understand why an army that claimed to have captured
such immense supplies late in August should have been so destitute
early in September.
[Illustration: AWAITING THE CHARGE.]
On the 2d of September the President went to General McClellan's house
in Washington, asked him to take command again of the Army of the
Potomac, in which Pope's army had now been merged, and verbally
authorized him to do so at once. The first thing that McClellan wanted
was withdrawal of Miles's force, eleven thousand men, from Harper's
Ferry--where, he said, it was useless and helpless--and its addition
to his own force. All authorities agree that in this he was obviously
and unquestionably right, for Harper's Ferry had no strategic value
whatever; but the marplot hand of Halleck intervened, and Miles was
ordered to hold the place. Halleck's principal reason appeared to be a
reluctance to abandon a place where so much expense had been laid out.
Miles, a worthy subordinate for such a chief, interpreted Halleck's
orders with absolute literalness, and remained in the town, instead of
holding it by placing his force on the heights that command it.
As soon as it was known that Lee was in Maryland, McClellan set his
army in motion northward, to cover Washington and Baltimore and find
an opportunity for a decisive battle. He arrived with his advance in
Frederick on the 12th, and met with a reception in striking contrast
to that accorded the army that had left the town two days before.
Nearly every house displayed the National flag, the streets were
thronged with people, all the business places were open, and everybody
welcomed the Boys in Blue.
But this flattering reception was not the best fortune that befell the
Union army in Frederick. On his arrival in the town, General McClellan
came into possession of a copy of General Lee's order, dated three
days before, in which the whole campaign was laid out. By this order,
Jackson was directed to march through Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac,
capture the force at Martinsburg, and assist in the capture of that at
Harper's Ferry; Longstreet was directed to halt at Boonsborough with
the trains; McLaws was to march to Harper's Ferry, take possession of
the heights commanding it, and capture the force there as speedily as
possible; Walker was {176} to invest that place from the other side
and assist McLaws; D. H. Hill's division was to form the rear guard.
All the forces were to be united again at Boonsborough or Hagerstown.
General Lee had taken it for granted that Martinsburg and Harper's
Ferry would be evacuated at his approach (as they should have been);
and when he found they were not, he had so far changed or suspended
the plan with which he set out as to send back a large part of his
army to capture those places and not leave a hostile force in his
rear.
On the approach of Jackson's corps General White evacuated
Martinsburg, and with his garrison of two thousand men joined Miles at
Harper's Ferry. That town, in the fork of the Potomac and Shenandoah
rivers, can be bombarded with the greatest ease from the heights on
the opposite sides of those streams. Miles, instead of taking
possession of the heights with all his men, sent a feeble detachment
to those on the north side of the Potomac, and stupidly remained in
the trap with the rest. McLaws sent a heavy force to climb the
mountain at a point three or four miles north, whence it marched along
the crest through the woods, and attacked three or four regiments that
Miles had posted there. This force was soon driven away, while Jackson
was approaching the town from the other side, and a bombardment the
next day compelled a surrender when Jackson was about to attack.
General Miles was mortally wounded by one of the last shots. About
eleven thousand men were included in the capitulation, with
seventy-three guns and a considerable amount of camp equipage. A body
of two thousand cavalry, commanded by Colonel Davis, had been with
Miles, but had escaped the night before, crossed the Potomac, and by
morning reached Greencastle, Pa. On the way they captured Longstreet's
ammunition train of fifty wagons. Jackson, leaving the arrangements
for the surrender to A. P. Hill, hurried with the greater part of his
force to rejoin Lee, and reached Sharpsburg on the morning of the
16th.
[Illustration: THE TWENTY-SECOND NEW YORK NEAR HARPER'S FERRY.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. C. KELTON.
(Adjutant-General to General Halleck.)]
The range known as the South Mountain, which is a continuation of the
Blue Ridge north of the Potomac, is about a thousand feet high. The
two principal gaps are Turner's and Crampton's, each about four
hundred feet high, with the hills towering six hundred feet above it.
When McClellan learned the plans of the Confederate commander, he set
his army in motion to thwart them. He ordered Franklin's corps to pass
through Crampton's Gap and press on to relieve Harper's Ferry; the
corps of Reno and Hooker, under command of Burnside, he moved to
Turner's Gap. The movement was quick for McClellan, but not quite
quick enough for the emergency. He might have passed through the Gaps
on the 13th with little or no opposition, and would then have had his
whole army between Lee's divided forces, and could hardly have failed
to defeat them disastrously and perhaps conclusively. But he did not
arrive at the passes till the morning of the 14th; and by that time
Lee had learned of his movement and recalled Hill and Longstreet, from
Boonsborough and beyond, to defend Turner's Gap, while he ordered
McLaws to look out for Crampton's.
Turner's Gap was flanked by two old roads that crossed the mountain a
mile north and south of it; and using these, and scrambling up from
rock to rock, the National troops worked their way slowly to the
crests, opposed at every step by the Confederate riflemen behind the
trees and ledges. Reno assaulted the southern crest, and Hooker the
northern, while Gibbon's brigade gradually pushed along up the
turnpike into the Gap itself. Reno was opposed by the Confederate
brigade of Garland, and both these commanders were killed. There was
stubborn and bloody fighting all day, with the Union forces slowly but
constantly gaining ground, and at dark the field was won. The
Confederates withdrew during the night, and in the morning the
victorious columns passed through to the western side of the mountain.
This battle cost McClellan fifteen hundred men, killed or wounded.
Among the wounded was the lieutenant-colonel in command of the
Twenty-third Ohio regiment--Rutherford B. Hayes, afterward
President--who was struck in the arm by a rifle-ball. The Confederate
loss in killed and wounded was about fifteen hundred, and in addition
fifteen hundred were made prisoners. The fight at Crampton's Gap--to
defend which McLaws had sent back a part of his force from Harper's
Ferry--was quite similar to that at Turner's, and had a similar
result. Franklin reached the crests after a fight of three hours,
losing five hundred and thirty-two men, inflicting an equal loss upon
the enemy, and capturing four hundred prisoners, one gun, and three
battle-flags. These two actions (fought September 14, 1862) {177} are
generally designated as the battle of South Mountain, but are
sometimes called the battle of Boonsborough. In that the enemy was
driven away, the ground held, and the passes used, it was a victory,
and a brilliant one, for McClellan. But in that Lee, by delaying the
advance of his enemy a whole day, thereby gained time to bring
together his own scattered forces, it was strategically a victory,
though a costly one, for him. But then again it might be argued that
if Lee could have kept the four thousand good troops that McClellan
deprived him of at South Mountain, it might have fared better with him
in the struggle at Antietam three days later.
When Lee retired his left wing from Turner's Gap, he withdrew across
the Antietam, and took up a position on high ground between that
stream and the village of Sharpsburg. His right, under McLaws, after
detaining Franklin till Harper's Ferry was surrendered, crossed the
Potomac at that place, recrossed it at Shepherdstown, and came
promptly into position. Lee now had his army together and strongly
posted. But it had been so reduced by losses in battle and straggling,
that it numbered but little over forty thousand combatants. The effect
upon the army itself of invading a rich country with troops so poorly
supplied had probably not been anticipated. Lee complained bitterly
that his army was "ruined by straggling," and General Hill wrote in
his report: "Had all our stragglers been up, McClellan's army would
have been completely crushed or annihilated. Thousands of thievish
poltroons had kept away from sheer cowardice." General Hill, in his
anger, probably overestimates the effect; for McClellan had somewhat
over seventy thousand men, and though he used but little more than
half of them in his attacks, there is no reason to suppose he would
not have used them all in a defence. The men that Lee did have,
however, were those exclusively that had been able to stand the hard
marching and resist the temptation to straggle, and were consequently
the flower of his army; and they now awaited, in a chosen position, a
battle that they knew would be decisive of the campaign, if not of the
war.
The ground occupied by the Confederate army, with one flank resting on
the Potomac, and the other on the Antietam, which flowed in front, was
advantageous. The creek was crossed by four stone bridges and a ford,
and all except the northernmost bridge were strongly guarded. The land
was occupied by meadows, cornfields, and patches of forest, and was
much broken by outcropping ledges. McClellan only reconnoitred the
position on the 15th. On the 16th he developed his plan of attack,
which was simply to throw his right wing across the Antietam by the
upper and unguarded bridge, assail the Confederate left, and when this
had sufficiently engaged the enemy's attention and drawn his strength
to that flank, to force the bridges and cross with his left and
centre. Indeed, this was obviously almost the only practicable plan.
All day long an artillery duel was kept up, in which, as General Hill
says, the Confederate batteries proved no match for their opponents.
It was late in the afternoon when Hooker's corps crossed by the upper
bridge, advanced through the woods, and struck the left flank, which
was held by two brigades of Hood's men. Scarcely more than a skirmish
ensued, when darkness came on, and the lines rested for the night
where they were. If Lee could have been in any doubt before, he was
now told plainly what was to be the form of the contest, and he had
all night to make his dispositions for it. The only change he thought
it necessary to make was to put Jackson's fresh troops in the position
on his left. Before morning McClellan sent Mansfield's corps across
the Antietam to join Hooker, and had Sumner's in readiness to follow
at an early hour. Meanwhile, all but two thousand of Lee's forces had
come up. So the 17th of September dawned in that peaceful little
corner of the world with everything in readiness for a great struggle
in which there could be no surprises, and which was to be scarcely
anything more than wounds for wounds and death for death.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL HOWELL COBB, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN G. WALKER, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL LAFAYETTE McLAWS, C. S. A.]
In the vicinity of the little Dunker church, the road running
northward from Sharpsburg to Hagerstown was bordered on both sides by
woods, and in these woods the battle began when Hooker assaulted
Jackson at sunrise. There was hard fighting for an hour, during which
Jackson's lines were not only heavily pressed by Hooker in front, but
at length enfiladed by a fire from the batteries on the eastern side
of the Antietam. This broke them and drove them back; but when Hooker
attempted {178} to advance his lines far enough to hold the road and
seize the woods west of it, he in turn was met by fresh masses of
troops and a heavy artillery fire, and was checked. Mansfield's corps
was moving up to his support when its commander was mortally wounded.
Nevertheless it moved on, got a position in the woods west of the
road, and held it, though at heavy cost. At this moment General Hooker
was seriously wounded and borne from the field, while Sumner crossed
the stream and came up with his corps. His men drove back the defeated
divisions of the enemy without much difficulty, and occupied the
ground around the church. His whole line was advancing to apparent
victory, when two fresh divisions were brought over from the
Confederate right, and were immediately thrust into a wide gap in
Sumner's line. Sedgwick, whose division formed the right of the line,
was thus flanked on his left, and was easily driven back out of the
woods, across the clearing, and into the eastern woods, after which
the Confederates retired to their own position. Fighting of this sort
went on all the forenoon, one of the episodes being a race between the
Fifth New Hampshire Regiment and a Confederate force for a commanding
point of ground, the two marching in parallel lines and firing at each
other as they went along. The New Hampshire men got there first, and,
assisted by the Eighty-first Pennsylvania Regiment, from that eminence
threw a destructive fire into the ranks of the regiment they had
out-run. The fighting around the Dunker church was so fierce, and so
much artillery fire was concentrated upon that spot, that when the
woods were cut down, years afterward, and the logs sent to a saw-mill,
the saws were completely torn to pieces by the metal that had
penetrated the wood and been overgrown.
A short distance south and east of the Dunker church there was a
slightly sunken road which crossed the Confederate line at one point
and was parallel with it for a certain distance at other points. A
strong Confederate force was posted in this sunken road, and when the
National troops approached it there was destructive work on both
sides; but the heaviest loss here fell upon the Confederates, because
some batteries on the high ground east of the Antietam enfiladed
portions of the road. This sunken road, which was henceforth called
Bloody Lane, has made some confusion in many accounts of the battle,
which is explained by the fact that it is not a straight road, but is
made up of several parts running at different angles.
While this great struggle was in progress on McClellan's right, his
centre and left, under Porter and Burnside, did not make any movement
to assist. Porter's inaction is explained by the fact that his troops
were kept as the reserves, which McClellan refused to send forward
even when portions of his line were most urgently calling for
assistance. He and Porter agreed in clinging to the idea that the
reserves must under no circumstances be pushed forward to take part in
the actual battle. This conduct was in marked contrast to that of the
Confederate commander, who in this action had no reserves whatever.
[Illustration: THE CHARGE ACROSS THE BURNSIDE BRIDGE.]
{179} [Illustration: MAP OF THE BATTLE OF THE ANTIETAM, 16th & 17th
Sept., 1862.]
At noon Franklin arrived from Crampton's Gap, and was sent over to
help Hooker and Sumner, being just in time to check a new advance by
more troops brought over from the Confederate right.
At seven o'clock in the morning Burnside was ordered to have his corps
in readiness for carrying the bridge in his front, crossing the
stream, and attacking the Confederate right, which order he promptly
obeyed. An hour later the order for this movement was issued by
McClellan, but it did not reach Burnside till nine o'clock. The task
before him was more difficult than his commander realized or than
would be supposed from most descriptions of the action. The bridge is
of stone, having three arches, with low stone parapets, and not very
wide. On the eastern side of the stream, where Burnside's corps was,
the land is comparatively low. The road that crosses the bridge, when
it reaches the western bank has to turn immediately at a right angle
and run nearly parallel with the stream, because the land there is
high and overhangs it. As a matter of course, the bridge was commanded
by Confederate guns advantageously placed on the heights. The problem
before Burnside was therefore exceedingly difficult, and the
achievement expected of him certain in any case to be costly. The task
of first crossing the bridge fell upon Crook's brigade, which moved
forward, mistook its way, and struck the stream some distance above
the bridge, where it immediately found itself under a heavy fire. Then
the Second Maryland and Sixth New Hampshire regiments were ordered to
charge at the double quick and carry the bridge. But the fire that
swept it was more than they could stand, and they were obliged to
retire unsuccessful. Then another attempt was made by a new storming
party, consisting of the Fifty-first New York and Fifty-first
Pennsylvania regiments, led by Col. Robert B. Potter and Col. John F.
Hartranft. By this time two heavy guns had been got into position
where they could play upon the Confederates who defended the bridge,
and with this protection and assistance the two regiments just named
succeeded in crossing it and driving away the immediate opposing
force, and were immediately followed by Sturgis's division and Crook's
brigade. The fighting at the bridge cost Burnside about five hundred
men. The Fifty-first New York lost eighty-seven, and the Fifty-first
Pennsylvania one hundred and twenty. At the same time other troops
crossed by a ford below the bridge, which had to be searched for, but
was at length found. These operations occupied four hours, being
completed about one o'clock P.M. Could they have been accomplished in
an hour or two, the destruction or capture of Lee's army must have
resulted. But by the time that Burnside had crossed the stream,
captured a battery, and occupied the heights overlooking Sharpsburg,
the fighting on McClellan's right was over. This left Lee at liberty
to strengthen his imperilled right by bringing troops across the short
interior line from his left, which he promptly did. At the same time
the last division of his forces (A. P. Hill's), two thousand strong,
arrived from Harper's Ferry; and these fresh men, together with those
brought over from the left, assumed the offensive, drove Burnside from
the crest, and retook the battery.
* * * * *
Here ended the battle; not because the day was closed or any apparent
victory had been achieved, but because both sides had been so severely
punished that neither was inclined to resume the fight. Every man of
Lee's force had been actively engaged, but not more than two-thirds of
McClellan's. The reason why the Confederate army was not annihilated
or captured must be plain to any intelligent reader. It was not
because Lee, with his army divided for three days in presence of his
enemy, had not invited destruction; nor because the seventy thousand,
acting in concert, could not have overwhelmed the forty thousand even
when they were united. It was not for any lack of courage, or men, or
arms, or opportunity, or daylight. It was simply because the attack
was made in driblets, instead of by heavy masses on both wings
simultaneously; so that at any point of actual contact Lee was almost
always able to present as strong a force as that which assailed him.
In a letter written to General Franklin the evening before the battle
of South Mountain, General McClellan, having then received the lost
despatch that revealed Lee's plans and situation, set forth with much
particularity his {180} purposes for the next few days, and summed up
by saying: "My general idea is to cut the enemy in two and beat him in
detail." No plan could have been better or more scientific; but
curiously enough, when it came to actual battle General McClellan's
conduct was the exact opposite of this. By unnecessary and
unaccountable delays he first gave the enemy time to concentrate his
forces, and then made his attacks piecemeal, so that the enemy could
fight _him_ in detail.
Whatever had been the straggling on the march, none of the commanders
complained of any flinching after the fight began. They saw veterans
taking, relinquishing, and retaking ground that was soaked with blood
and covered with dead; and they saw green regiments "go to their
graves like beds." There had been a call for more troops by the
National Administration after the battles on the peninsula, which was
responded to with the greatest alacrity, men of all classes rushing to
the recruiting-offices to enroll themselves. It was a common thing for
a regiment of a thousand men to be raised, equipped, and sent to the
front in two or three weeks. Some of those new regiments were suddenly
introduced to the realities of war at Antietam, and suffered
frightfully. For example, the Sixteenth Connecticut, which there fired
its muskets for the first time, went in with 940 men, and lost 432. On
the other side, Lawton's Confederate brigade went in with 1,150 men,
and lost 554, including five out of its six regimental commanders,
while Hays's lost 323 out of 550, including every regimental commander
and all the staff officers. An officer of the Fiftieth Georgia
Regiment said in a published letter: "The Fiftieth were posted in a
narrow path, washed out into a regular gully, and were fired into by
the enemy from the front, rear, and left flank. The men stood their
ground nobly, returning their fire until nearly two-thirds of their
number lay dead or wounded in that lane. Out of 210 carried into the
fight, over 125 were killed and wounded in less than twenty minutes.
The slaughter was horrible! When ordered to retreat, I could hardly
extricate myself from the dead and wounded around me. A man could have
walked from the head of our line to the foot on their bodies. The
survivors of the regiment retreated very orderly back to where General
Anderson's brigade rested. The brigade suffered terribly. James's
South Carolina battalion was nearly annihilated. The Fiftieth Georgia
lost nearly all their commissioned officers." The First South Carolina
Regiment, which went into the fight with 106 men, had but fifteen men
and one officer when it was over. A Confederate battery, being largely
disabled by the work of sharp-shooters, was worked for a time, at the
crisis of the fight, by General Longstreet and members of his staff
acting as gunners. Three generals on each side were killed. Those on
the National side were Generals Joseph K. Mansfield, Israel B.
Richardson, and Isaac P. Rodman; those on the Confederate side were
Generals George B. Anderson, L. O'B. Branch, and William E. Starke.
The wounded generals included on the one side Hooker, Sedgwick, Dana,
Crawford, and Meagher; on the other side, R. H. Anderson, Wright,
Lawton, Armistead, Ripley, Ransom, Rhodes, Gregg, and Toombs.
General McClellan reported his entire loss at 12,469, of whom 2,010
were killed. General Lee reported his total loss in the Maryland
battles as 1,567 killed and 8,724 wounded, saying nothing of the
missing; but the figures given by his division commanders foot up
1,842 killed, 9,399 wounded, and 2,292 missing--total, 13,533. If
McClellan's report is correct, even this statement falls short of the
truth. He says: "About 2,700 of the enemy's dead were counted and
buried upon the battlefield of Antietam. A portion of their dead had
been previously buried by the enemy." If the wounded were in the usual
proportion, this would indicate Confederate casualties to the extent
of at least 15,000 on that field alone. But whatever the exact number
may have been, the battle was bloody enough to produce mourning and
lamentation from Maine to Louisiana. It was the bloodiest day's work
of the whole war. The battles of Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg,
Chickamauga, the Wilderness, and Spottsylvania were each more costly,
but none of them was fought in a single day.
Nothing was done on the 18th, and when McClellan determined to renew
the attack on the 19th he found that his enemy had withdrawn from the
field and crossed to Virginia by the ford at Shepherdstown. The
National commander reported the capture of more than six thousand
prisoners, thirteen guns, and thirty-nine battle-flags, and that he
had not lost a gun or a color. As he was also in possession of the
field, where the enemy left all their dead and two thousand of their
wounded, and had rendered Lee's invasion fruitless of anything but the
prisoners carried off from Harper's Ferry, the victory was his.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN GIBBON.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL MARSENA R. PATRICK.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL G. W. MORELL.]
[Illustration]
{181} [Illustration: THE PRIMARY CAUSES OF THE WAR--THE NEGRO AND
COTTON.]
CHAPTER XVI.
EMANCIPATION.
_This Chapter is illustrated with portraits of early abolitionists,
and Virginia officials at the time of the celebrated John Brown Raid._
LINCOLN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY--McCLELLAN'S ATTITUDE--THE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S ATTITUDE--PREDICTIONS BY THE POETS--SLAVES DECLARED
CONTRABAND--ACTION OF FRÉMONT--HUNTER'S PROCLAMATION--BLACKS FIRST
ENLISTED--DIVISION OF SENTIMENT IN THE ARMY--MARYLAND ABOLISHES
SLAVERY--THE PRESIDENT AND HORACE GREELEY CORRESPOND ON THE
SUBJECT--EMANCIPATION PROCLAIMED--AUTUMN ELECTIONS--ABOLITION OF
SLAVERY IN DELAWARE, KENTUCKY, AND MISSOURI--THE FINAL
PROCLAMATION--THE RIGHT OF THE PRESIDENT TO DECLARE THE SLAVES FREE.
The war had now (September, 1862) been in progress almost a year and a
half; and nearly twenty thousand men had been shot dead on the
battlefield, and upward of eighty thousand wounded, while an unknown
number had died of disease contracted {182} in the service, or been
carried away into captivity. The money that had been spent by the
United States Government alone amounted to about one billion dollars.
All this time there was not an intelligent man in the country but knew
the cause of the war, and yet more than a hundred thousand American
citizens were killed or mangled before a single blow was delivered
directly at that cause. General Frémont had aimed at it; General
Hunter had aimed at it; but in each case the arm was struck up by the
Administration. One would naturally suppose, from the thoroughness
with which the slavery question had been discussed for thirty years,
that when the time came for action there would be little doubt or
hesitation on either side. On the Confederate side there was neither
doubt nor hesitation. On the National side there was both doubt and
hesitation, and it took a long time to arrive at a determination to
destroy slavery in order to preserve the Union. The old habit of
compromise and conciliation half paralyzed the arm of war, and
thousands of well-meaning citizens were unable to comprehend the fact
that we were dealing with a question that it was useless to compromise
and a force that it was impossible to conciliate.
Mr. Lincoln had hated slavery ever since, when a young man, he made a
trip on a flat-boat to New Orleans, and there saw it in some of its
more hideous aspects. That he realized its nature and force as an
organized institution and a power in politics, appears from one of his
celebrated speeches, delivered in 1858, wherein he declared that as a
house divided against itself cannot stand, so our Government could not
endure permanently half slave and half free. "Either the opponents of
slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the
public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it
shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North
as well as South." Why, then, hating slavery personally, and
understanding it politically, and knowing it to be the cause of the
war, did he not sooner declare it abolished?
On the one hand, he was not, like some of our chief magistrates, under
the impression that he had been placed in office to carry out
irresponsibly a personal policy of his own; and, on the other, he was
shrewd enough to know that it would be as futile for a President to
place himself far in advance of his people on a great question, as for
a general to precede his troops on the battlefield. Hence he turned
over and over, and presented again and again, the idea that the war
might be stopped and the question settled by paying for the slaves and
liberating them. It looked like a very simple calculation to figure
out the cost of purchased emancipation and compare it with the
probable cost of the war. The comparison seemed to present an
unanswerable argument, and in the end the money cost of the war was
more than one thousand dollars for every slave emancipated, while in
the most profitable days of the institution the blacks, young and old
together, had not been worth half that price. The fallacy of the
argument lay in its blindness to the fact that the Confederates were
not fighting to retain possession of their actual slaves, but to
perpetuate the institution itself. The unthrift of slavery as an
economic system had been many times demonstrated, notably in Helper's
"Impending Crisis," but these demonstrations, instead of inducing the
slaveholders to seek to get rid of it on the best attainable terms,
appeared only to excite their anger. And it ought to have been seen
that a proud people with arms in their hands, either flushed with
victory or confident in their own prowess, no matter where their real
interests may lie, can never be reasoned with except through the
syllogisms of lead and steel. Perhaps Mr. Lincoln did know it, but was
waiting for his people to find it out.
[Illustration: JOHN BROWN.]
The Louisville (Ky.) _Courier_, in a paragraph quoted on page 63 of
this volume, had told a great deal of bitter and shameful truth; but
when it entered upon the prophecy that the North would soon resume the
yoke of the slaveholders, it was not so happy. And yet it had strong
grounds for its confident prediction. Not only had a great Peace
Convention been held in February, 1861, which strove to prevent
secession by offering new guaranties for the protection of slavery,
but the chief anxiety of a large number of Northern citizens and
officers in the military service appeared to be to manifest their
desire that the institution should not be harmed.
The most eminent of the Federal generals, McClellan, when he first
took the field in West Virginia, issued a proclamation to the
Unionists, in which he said: "Notwithstanding all that has been said
by the traitors to induce you to believe our advent among you will be
signalized by an interference with your slaves, understand one thing
clearly: not only will we abstain from all such interference, but we
will, on the contrary, with an iron hand crush any attempt at
insurrection on their part." In pursuance of this, he returned to
their owners all slaves that escaped and sought refuge within his
lines. It was an every-day occurrence for slaveholders who were in
active rebellion against the Government that he was serving, to come
into his camps under flag of truce and demand and receive their
runaway slaves. The Hutchinsons, a family of popular singers, by
permission of the Secretary of War, visited his camp in the winter of
1861-62, to sing to the soldiers. But when the general found them
singing some stanzas of Whittier's that spoke of slavery as a curse to
be abolished, he forthwith issued an order that their pass should be
revoked and they should not sing any more to the troops. And even
after his retreat on the peninsula, McClellan wrote a long letter of
advice to the President, in the course of which he said: "Neither
confiscation of {183} property ... nor forcible abolition of slavery
should be contemplated for a moment.... Military power should not be
allowed to interfere with the relations of servitude, either by
supporting or impairing the authority of the master, except for
repressing disorder."
[Illustration: ANDREW HUNTER. Prosecuting Attorney at the trial of
John Brown.]
[Illustration: HON. H. A. WISE. Governor of Virginia.]
[Illustration: COLONEL ROBERT E. LEE. Commanding Virginia troops that
captured John Brown.]
In all this General McClellan was only clinging blindly and
tenaciously to the idea that had underlain the whole administration of
the government while it was in the hands of his party: that the
perpetuation of slavery, whether against political opposition or
against the growth of civilization and the logic of political economy,
was the first purpose of the Constitution and the most imperative duty
of the Government. Democratic politicians had never formulated this
rule, but Democratic Presidents had always followed it. President Polk
had obeyed it when with one hand he secured the slave State of Texas
at the cost of the Mexican War, and with the other relinquished to
Great Britain the portion of Oregon north of the forty-ninth parallel,
but for which we should now possess every harbor on the Pacific coast.
President Pierce had obeyed it when he sent troops to Kansas to assist
the invaders from Missouri and overawe the free-State settlers.
President Buchanan had obeyed it when he vetoed the Homestead Bill,
which would have accelerated the development of the northern
Territories into States. And innumerable other instances might be
cited. The existence of this party in the North was the most serious
embarrassment with which the Administration had to contend in the
conduct of the war--not even excepting the border States. As
individuals, its members were undoubtedly loyal to the Constitution
and Government as they understood them, though they wofully
misunderstood them. As a party, it was placed in a singular dilemma.
It did not want the Union dissolved; for without the vote of the slave
States it would be in a hopeless minority in Congress and at every
Presidential election; but neither did it wish to see its strongest
cohesive element overthrown, or its natural leaders defeated and
exiled. What it wanted was "the Union as it was," and for this it
continued to clamor long after it had become as plain as daylight that
the Union as it was could never again exist. Whenever the National
armies met with a reverse, if an election was pending, this party was
the gainer thereby; if they won a victory, it became weaker. Whenever
a new measure was proposed, Congress and the President were obliged to
consider not only what would be its legitimate effect, but whether in
any way the Democratic press could use it as a weapon against them.
Hence the idea of emancipation, though not altogether slow in
conception--for many of the ablest minds had leaped at it from the
beginning--was tardy in execution.
{184} [Illustration: ORIGIN OF THE WORDS, "CONTRABAND OF WAR," APPLIED
TO SLAVES--FIRST USED BY GENERAL BUTLER.]
As early as 1836 John Quincy Adams, speaking in Congress, had said:
"From the instant that your slaveholding States become the theatre of
war, from that instant the war-powers of the Constitution extend to
interference with the institution of slavery in every way in which it
can be interfered with." And in 1842 he had expressed the idea more
strongly and fully: "Whether the war be civil, servile, or foreign, I
lay this down as the law of nations--I say that the military authority
takes for the time the place of all municipal institutions, slavery
among the rest. Under that state of things, so far from its being true
that the States where slavery exists have the exclusive management of
the subject, not only the President of the United States, but the
commander of the army has power to order the universal emancipation of
the slaves." The poets, wiser than the politicians, had long foretold
the great struggle and its results. James Russell Lowell, before he
was thirty years of age, wrote:
"Out from the land of bondage 'tis decreed our slaves shall go,
And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh;
If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore,
Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore."
Twenty years later he saw his prediction fulfilled. But generally the
anticipation was that the institution would be extinguished through a
general rising of the slaves themselves. Thus Henry W. Longfellow
wrote in 1841: {185}
"There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,
Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel,
Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
And shake the pillars of this commonweal,
Till the vast temple of our liberties
A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies."
It seems a singular fact that throughout the war there was no
insurrection of the slaves. They were all anxious enough for liberty,
and ran away from bondage whenever they could; but, except by regular
enlistment in the National army, there never was any movement among
them to assist in the emancipation of their race.
The first refusal to return fugitive slaves was made as early as May
26, 1861, by Gen. B. F. Butler, commanding at Fort Monroe. Three
slaves, who had belonged to Colonel Mallory, commanding the
Confederate forces near Hampton, came within Butler's lines that day,
saying they had run away because they were about to be sent South.
Colonel Mallory sent by flag of truce to claim their rendition under
the Fugitive Slave Law, but was informed by General Butler, that, as
slaves could be made very useful to a belligerent in working on
fortifications and other labor, they were contraband of war, like lead
or powder or any other war material, and therefore could not and would
not be delivered up. He offered, however, to return these three if
Colonel Mallory would come to his headquarters and take an oath to
obey the laws of the United States. This declaration--at once a
witticism, a correct legal point, and sound common sense--was the
first practical blow that was struck at the institution; and it gave
us a new word, for from that time fugitive slaves were commonly spoken
of as "contrabands." They came into the National camps by thousands,
and commanding officers and correspondents frequently questioned the
more intelligent of them, in the hope of eliciting valuable
information as to the movements of the enemy; but so many apocryphal
stories were thus originated that at length "intelligent contraband"
became solely a term of derision.
The next step was the passage of a law by Congress (approved August 6,
1861), wherein it was enacted that property, including slaves,
actually employed in the service of the rebellion with the knowledge
and consent of the owner, should be confiscated, and might be seized
by the National forces wherever found. But it cautiously provided that
slaves thus confiscated were not to be manumitted at once, but to be
held subject to some future decision of the United States courts or
action of Congress.
Gen. John C. Frémont, the first Republican candidate for the
Presidency (1856), who has had a romantic life, and in whose
administration, instead of Lincoln's, the war would have occurred if
he had been elected, was in Europe in 1861, and did the Government a
timely service in the purchase of arms. Hastening home, he was made a
major-general, and given command in Missouri. On the 30th of August he
issued a proclamation placing the whole State under martial law,
confiscating the property of all citizens who should take up arms
against the United States, or assist its enemies by burning bridges,
cutting wires, etc., and adding, "their slaves, if any they have, are
hereby declared free men." The President called General Frémont's
attention to the fact that the clause relating to slaves was not in
conformity with the act of Congress, and requested him to modify it;
to which Frémont replied by asking for an open order to that
effect--in plain words, that the President should modify it himself,
which Mr. Lincoln did.
On the 6th of March, 1862, the President, in a special message to
Congress, recommended the adoption of a joint resolution to the effect
that the United States ought to coöperate with, and render pecuniary
aid to, any State that should enter upon a gradual abolition of
slavery; and Congress passed such a resolution by a large majority.
Gen. David Hunter, who commanded the National forces on the coast of
South Carolina, with headquarters at Hilton Head, issued a general
order on April 12, 1862, that all slaves in Fort Pulaski and on
Cockspur Island should be confiscated and thenceforth free. On the 9th
of May he issued another order, wherein, after mentioning that the
three States in his department--Georgia, Florida, and South
Carolina--had been declared under martial law, he proceeded to say:
"Slavery and martial law, in a free country, are altogether
incompatible. The persons in these three States heretofore held as
slaves are therefore declared forever free." On the 19th of the same
month the President issued a proclamation annulling General Hunter's
order, and adding that the question of emancipation was one that he
reserved to himself and could not feel justified in leaving to the
decision of commanders in the field. General Hunter also organized a
regiment of black troops, designated as the First South Carolina
Volunteers, which was the first body of negro soldiers mustered into
the National service during the war. This proceeding, which now seems
the most natural and sensible thing the general could have done,
created serious alarm in Congress. A representative from Kentucky
introduced a resolution asking for information concerning the
"regiment of fugitive slaves," and the Secretary of War referred the
inquiry to General Hunter, who promptly answered: "No regiment of
fugitive slaves has been or is being organized in this department.
There is, however, a fine regiment of persons whose late masters are
fugitive rebels, men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the
National flag, leaving their servants behind them to shift as best
they can for themselves. In the absence of any fugitive-master law,
the deserted slaves would be wholly without remedy, had not their
crime of treason given the slaves the right to pursue, capture, and
bring back these persons of whose protection they have been so
suddenly bereft."
Frémont's and Hunter's attempts at emancipation created a great
excitement, the Democratic journals declaring that the struggle was
being "turned into an abolition war," and many Union men in the border
States expressing the gravest apprehensions as to the consequences.
The commanders were by no means of one mind on the subject. Gen.
Thomas Williams, commanding in the Department of the Gulf, ordered
that all fugitive slaves should be expelled from his camps and sent
beyond the lines; and Col. Halbert E. Paine, of the Fourth Wisconsin
Regiment, who refused to obey the order, on the ground that it was a
"violation of law for the purpose of returning fugitives to rebels,"
was deprived of his command and placed under arrest. Col. Daniel R.
Anthony, of the Seventh Kansas Regiment, serving in Tennessee, ordered
that men coming in and demanding the privilege of searching for
fugitive slaves should be turned out of the camp, and that no officer
or soldier in his regiment should engage in the arrest and delivery of
fugitives to their masters; and for this Colonel Anthony received from
his superior officer the same treatment that had been accorded to
Colonel Paine. The division of sentiment ran through the entire army.
Soldiers that would rob a granary, or cut down trees, or reduce fences
to firewood, without the slightest compunction, still recognized {186}
the ancient taboo, and expressed the nicest scruples in regard to
property in slaves.
On the 14th of July the President recommended to Congress the passage
of a bill for the payment, in United States interest-bearing bonds, to
any State that should abolish slavery, of an amount equal to the value
of all slaves within its borders according to the census of 1860; and
at the same time he asked the Congressional representatives of the
border States to use their influence with their constituents to bring
about such action in those States. The answer was not very favorable;
but Maryland did abolish slavery before the close of the war, in
October, 1864. On the very day in which the popular vote of that State
decided to adopt a new constitution without slavery, October 12th,
died Roger B. Taney, a native of Maryland, Chief Justice of the United
States Supreme Court, who had been appointed by the first distinctly
pro-slavery President, and from that bench had handed down the
Dred-Scott decision, which was calculated to render forever impossible
any amelioration of the condition of the negro race.
On July 22, 1862, all the National commanders were ordered to employ
as many negroes as could be used advantageously for military and naval
purposes, paying them for their labor and keeping a record as to their
ownership, "as a basis on which compensation could be made in proper
cases."
[Illustration: HORACE GREELEY.]
[Illustration: REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER.]
Thus events were creeping along toward a true statement of the great
problem, without which it could never be solved, when Horace Greeley,
through the columns of his _Tribune_, addressed an open letter to the
President (August 19), entitling it "The Prayer of Twenty Millions."
It exhorted Mr. Lincoln, not to general emancipation, but to such an
execution of the existing laws as would free immense numbers of slaves
belonging to men in arms against the Government. It was impassioned
and powerful; a single passage will show its character: "On the face
of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested,
determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel
that all attempts to put down the rebellion, and at the same time
uphold its exciting cause, are preposterous and futile; that the
rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if
slavery were left in full vigor; that army officers who remain to this
day devoted to slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union;
and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and
deepened peril to the Union."
Any one less a genius than Mr. Lincoln would have found it difficult
to answer Mr. Greeley at all, and his answer was not one in the sense
of being a refutation, but it exhibited his view of the question, and
is perhaps as fine a piece of literature as was ever penned by any one
in an official capacity: "If there be perceptible in it [Mr. Greeley's
letter] an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to
an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right.... As to
the policy I 'seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have not meant to
leave any one in doubt.... My paramount object is to save the Union,
and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union
without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by
freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing
some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. I have here
stated my purpose according to my views of official duty; and I intend
no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men
everywhere could be free."
[Illustration: JAMES G. BIRNEY.]
[Illustration: THE SALE OF A SLAVE.]
In truth, the President was already contemplating emancipation as a
war measure, and about this time he prepared his preliminary
proclamation; but he did not wish to issue it till it could follow a
triumph of the National arms. Pope's defeat in Virginia in August set
it back; but McClellan's success at Antietam, though not the decisive
victory that was wanted, appeared to be as good an opportunity as was
likely soon to present itself, and five days later (September 22,
1862) the proclamation was issued. It declared that the President
would, {187} at the next session, renew his suggestion to Congress of
pecuniary aid to the States disposed to abolish slavery gradually or
otherwise, and gave notice that on the 1st of January, 1863, he would
declare forever free all persons held as slaves within any State, or
designated part of a State, the people whereof should then be in
rebellion against the United States. On that day he issued the final
and decisive proclamation, as promised, in which he also announced
that black men would be received into the military and naval service
of the United States, as follows:
* * * * *
"Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our
Lord 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United
States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
"'That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, all
persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State,
the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United
States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the
Executive Government of the United States, including the military and
naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of
such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or
any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.'
"'That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by
proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in
which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion
against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people
thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the
Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections
wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have
participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing
testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the
people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.'
"Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army
and navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion
against the authority and government of the United States, and as a
fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on
this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do,
publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the
day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts
of States wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in
rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:
"Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard,
Plaquemine, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension,
Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans,
including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the
forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the
counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York,
Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of {189} Norfolk and
Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are, for the present, left
precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
"And, by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order
and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated
States and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free; and
that the Executive Government of the United States, including the
military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain
the freedom of said persons.
"And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain
from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend
to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for
reasonable wages.
"And I further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable
condition, will be received into the armed service of the United
States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and
to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the
considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty
God.
"In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and caused the
seal of the United States to be affixed.
(L.S.) "Done at the city of Washington, this first day of January, in
the year of our Lord 1863, and of the Independence of the United
States the 87th.
"By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
"WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."
* * * * *
{188} [Illustration: THE BROKEN SHACKLES. ALLEGORICAL PICTURE, FROM AN
ORIGINAL DRAWING BY JAMES E. TAYLOR.]
The immediate effect of this action was what had been expected. The
friends of liberty, and supporters of the Administration generally,
rejoiced at it, believing that the true line of combat had been drawn
at last. Robert Dale Owen probably expressed the opinion of most of
them when he wrote, "The true and fit question is whether, without a
flagrant violation of official duty, the President had the right to
refrain from doing it." The effect in Europe is said to have been
decisive of the question whether the Confederacy should be recognized
as an established nation; but as to this there is some uncertainty. It
is certain, however, that much friendship for the Union was won in
England, where it had been withheld on account of our attitude on the
slavery question. In Manchester, December 31, a mass-meeting of
factory operatives was held, and resolutions of sympathy with the
Union, and an address to President Lincoln, were voted. The full
significance of this can only be understood when it is remembered that
these men were largely out of work for want of the cotton that the
blockade prevented the South from exporting. The Confederate journals
chose to interpret the proclamation as nothing more than an attempt to
excite a servile insurrection. The Democratic editors of the North
assailed Mr. Lincoln with every verbal weapon of which they were
masters, though these had been somewhat blunted by previous use, for
he had already been freely called a usurper, a despot, a destroyer of
the Constitution, and a keeper of Bastiles. They declared with horror
(doubtless in some cases perfectly sincere) that the proclamation had
changed the whole character of the war. And this was true, though not
in the sense in which they meant it. When begun, it was a war for a
temporary peace; the proclamation converted it into a war for a
permanent peace. But the autumn elections showed how near Mr. Lincoln
came to being ahead of his people after all; for they went largely
against the Administration, and even in the States that the Democrats
did not carry there was a falling off in the Republican majorities;
though the result was partly due to the failure of the peninsula
campaign, and the escape of Lee's army after Antietam. Yet this did
not shake the great emancipator's faith in the justice and wisdom of
what he had done. He said on New Year's evening to a knot of callers:
"The signature looks a little tremulous, for my hand was tired, but my
resolution was firm. I told them in September, if they did not return
to their allegiance and cease murdering our soldiers, I would strike
at this pillar of their strength. And now the promise shall be kept,
and not one word of it will I ever recall."
[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.]
[Illustration: CHARLES SUMNER.]
If we wonder at the slowness with which that great struggle arrived at
its true theme and issue, we shall do well to note that it has a close
parallel in our own history. The first battle of the Revolution was
fought in April, 1775, but the Declaration of Independence was not
made till July, 1776--a period of nearly fifteen months. The first
battle in the war of secession took place in April, 1861, and the
Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September, 1862--seventeen
{190} months. In the one case, as in the other, the interval was
filled with doubt, hesitation, and divided counsels; and Lincoln's
reluctance finds its match in Washington's confession that when he
took command of the army (after Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill
had been fought) he still abhorred the idea of independence. And
again, as the great Proclamation was preceded by the attempts of
Frémont and Hunter, so the great Declaration had been preceded by
those of Mendon, Mass., Chester, Penn., and Mecklenburg, N. C., which
anticipated its essential propositions by two or three years. A period
of fifteen or seventeen months, however slow for an individual, is
perhaps for an entire people as rapid development of a radical purpose
as we could have any reason to expect.
In the District of Columbia there were three thousand slaves at the
time the war began. In December, 1861, Henry Wilson, senator from
Massachusetts, afterward Vice-President, introduced in the Senate a
bill for the immediate emancipation of these slaves, with a provision
for paying to such owners as were loyal an average compensation of
three hundred dollars for each slave. The bill was opposed violently
by senators and representatives from Kentucky and Maryland, and by
some others, conspicuous among whom was Mr. Vallandigham.
Nevertheless, it passed both houses, and the President signed it April
16, 1862.
In Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri slavery continued until it was
abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the National Constitution,
which in December, 1865, was declared ratified by three-fourths of the
States, and consequently a part of the fundamental law of the land.
[Illustration: WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON AND DAUGHTER.]
[Illustration: WENDELL PHILLIPS.]
[Illustration: HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.]
[Illustration: JOHN G. WHITTIER.]
The President's right to proclaim the slaves free, as a war measure,
was questioned not only by his violent political opponents, but also
by a considerable number who were friendly to him, or at least to the
cause of the Union, but whose knowledge of international law and war
powers was limited. Among these were Congressman Crittenden and
Wickliffe, of Kentucky, who were stanch supporters of the Union, and
Mr. Wickliffe offered resolutions declaring that the President has no
right whatever to interfere with slavery even during a rebellion. The
whole subject was treated in a masterly way by the Hon. William
Whiting in his book entitled "War Powers under the Constitution of the
United States." He says: "The liberation of slaves is looked upon as a
means of embarrassing or weakening the enemy, or of strengthening the
military power of our army. If slaves be treated as contraband of war,
on the ground that they may be used by their masters to aid in
prosecuting war, as employees upon military works, {191} or as
laborers furnishing by their industry the means of carrying on
hostilities; or if they be treated as, in law, belligerents, following
the legal condition of their owners; or if they be deemed loyal
subjects having a just claim upon the Government to be released from
their obligations to give aid and service to disloyal and belligerent
masters, in order that they may be free to perform their higher duty
of allegiance and loyalty to the United States; or if they be regarded
as subjects of the United States, liable to do military duty; or if
they be made citizens of the United States, and soldiers; or if the
authority of the masters over their slaves is the means of aiding and
comforting the enemy, or of throwing impediments in the way of the
Government, or depriving it of such aid and assistance, in successful
prosecution of the war, as slaves would and could afford if released
from the control of the enemy; or if releasing the slaves would
embarrass the enemy, and make it more difficult for them to collect
and maintain large armies; in either of these cases, the taking away
of these slaves from the 'aid and service' of the enemy, and putting
them to the aid and service of the United States, is justifiable as an
act of war. The ordinary way of depriving the enemy of slaves is by
declaring emancipation."
He then cites abundant precedents and authorities from British,
French, South American, and other sources, one of the most striking of
which is this quotation from Thomas Jefferson's letter to Dr. Gordon,
complaining of the injury done to his estates by Cornwallis: "He
destroyed all my growing crops and tobacco; he burned all my barns,
containing the same articles of last year. Having first taken what
corn he wanted, he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of
cattle, sheep, and hogs for the sustenance of his army, and carried
off all the horses capable of service. He carried off also about
thirty slaves. Had this been to give them freedom, he would have done
right. From an estimate made at the time on the best information I
could collect, I suppose the State of Virginia lost, under Lord
Cornwallis's hands, that year, about thirty thousand slaves." Whiting
says in conclusion: "It has thus been proved, by the law and usage of
modern civilized nations, confirmed by the judgment of eminent
statesmen, and by the former practice of this Government, that the
President, as commander-in-chief, has the authority, as an act of war,
to liberate the slaves of the enemy; that the United States have in
former times sanctioned the liberation of slaves--even of loyal
citizens--by military commanders, in time of war, without compensation
therefor, and have deemed slaves captured in war from belligerent
subjects as entitled to their freedom."
CHAPTER XVII.
BURNSIDE'S CAMPAIGN.
McCLELLAN'S INACTION--VISIT AND LETTERS OF LINCOLN TO HIM--SUPERSEDED
BY BURNSIDE--THE POSITION AT FREDERICKSBURG--ATTACK UPON THE
HEIGHTS--THE RESULT--GENERAL BURNSIDE'S LACK OF JUDGMENT--PRESIDENT
LINCOLN'S NATURAL APTITUDE FOR STRATEGY--BRAVERY OF THE
SOLDIERS--THRILLING INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE--GALLANTRY OF THE IRISH
BRIGADE.
After the battle of the Antietam, Lee withdrew to the neighborhood of
Winchester, where he was reinforced, till at the end of a month he had
about sixty-eight thousand men. McClellan followed as far as the
Potomac, and there seemed to plant his army, as if he expected it to
sprout and increase itself like a field of corn. Ten days after he
defeated Lee on the Antietam, he wrote to the President that he
intended to stay where he was, and attack the enemy if they attempted
to recross into Maryland! At the same time, he constantly called for
unlimited reinforcements, and declared that, even if the city of
Washington should be captured, it would not be a disaster so serious
as the defeat of his army. Apparently it did not occur to General
McClellan that these two contingencies were logically the same. For if
Lee could have defeated that army, he could then have marched into
Washington; or if he could have captured Washington without fighting
the army whose business it was to defend it, the army would thereby be
substantially defeated.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE AND STAFF.]
On the 1st of October the President visited General McClellan at his
headquarters, and made himself acquainted with the condition of the
army. Five days later he ordered McClellan to {192} "cross the
Potomac, and give battle to the enemy, or drive him south." The
despatch added, "Your army must move now, while the roads are good. If
you cross the river between the enemy and Washington, and cover the
latter by your operation, you can be reinforced with thirty thousand
men." Nevertheless, McClellan did not stir. Instead of obeying the
order, he inquired what sort of troops they were that would be sent to
him, and how many tents he could have, and said his army could not
move without fresh supplies of shoes and clothing. While he was thus
paltering, the Confederate General Stuart, who had ridden around his
army on the peninsula, with a small body of cavalry rode entirely
around it again, eluding all efforts for his capture. On the 13th the
President wrote a long, friendly letter to General McClellan, in which
he gave him much excellent advice that he, as a trained soldier, ought
not to have needed. A sentence or two will suggest the drift of it:
"Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you cannot do what the
enemy is constantly doing? ... In coming to us, he [the enemy] tenders
us an advantage which we should not waive. We should not so operate as
to merely drive him away.... It is all easy if our troops march as
well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it." The
letter had outlined a plan of campaign, but it closed with the words,
characteristic of Lincoln's modesty in military matters, "This letter
is in no sense an order." Twelve days more of fine weather were
frittered away in renewed complaints, and such inquiries as whether
the President wished him to move at once or wait for fresh horses, for
the general said his horses were fatigued and had sore tongue. Here
the President began to show some impatience, and wrote: "Will you
pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the
battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?" The general replied that
they had been scouting, picketing, and making reconnoissances, and
that the President had done injustice to the cavalry. Whereupon Mr.
Lincoln wrote again: "Most certainly I intend no injustice to any, and
if I have done any I deeply regret it. To be told, after more than
five weeks' total inaction of the army, and during which period we had
sent to that army every fresh horse we possibly could, amounting in
the whole to 7,918, that the cavalry horses were too much fatigued to
move, presented a very cheerless, almost hopeless, prospect for the
future, and it may have forced something of impatience into my
despatches." That day, October 26, McClellan began to cross the
Potomac; but it was ten days (partly owing to heavy rains) before his
army was all on the south side of the river, and meanwhile he had
brought up new questions for discussion and invented new excuses for
delay. He wanted to know to what extent the line of the Potomac was to
be guarded; he wanted to leave strong garrisons at certain points, to
prevent the army he was driving southward before him from rushing
northward into Maryland again; he discussed the position of General
Bragg's (Confederate) army, which was four hundred miles away beyond
the mountains; he said the old regiments of his command must be filled
up with recruits before they could go into action.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN NEWTON.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL E. V. SUMNER.]
[Illustration: CONFEDERATE SHARP-SHOOTERS ON THE HEIGHTS OF
FREDERICKSBURG.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL J. J. BARTLETT.]
McClellan was a sore puzzle to the people of the loyal States. But
large numbers of his men still believed in him, and--as is usual in
such cases--intensified their personal devotion in proportion as the
distrust of the people at large was increased. After crossing the
Potomac, he left a corps at Harper's Ferry, and was moving southward
on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, while Lee moved in the same
direction on the western {193} side, when, on November 7, the
President solved the riddle that had vexed the country, by relieving
him of the command.
The successor of General McClellan was Ambrose E. Burnside, then in
his thirty-ninth year, who was graduated at West Point fifteen years
before, had commanded cavalry during the Mexican war, had invented a
breech-loading rifle which was commercially unsuccessful, and at the
breaking out of the rebellion was treasurer of the Illinois Central
Railroad. When the First Rhode Island Regiment went to Washington,
four days after the President's first call for troops, Burnside was
its colonel. He commanded a brigade at the first battle of Bull Run;
led an expedition that captured Roanoke Island, New Berne, and
Beaufort, N. C., in January, 1862; and commanded one wing of
McClellan's army at South Mountain and Antietam. Whether he was
blameworthy for not crossing the Antietam early in the day and
effecting a crushing defeat of Lee's army, is a disputed question. It
might be worth while to discuss it, were it not that he afterward
accepted a heavier responsibility and incurred a more serious
accusation. The command of the Army of the Potomac had been offered to
him twice before, but he had refused it, saying that he "was not
competent to command such a large army." When the order came relieving
McClellan and appointing him, he consulted with that general and with
his staff officers, making the same objection; but they took the
ground that as a soldier he was bound to obey without question, and so
he accepted the place, as he says, "in the midst of a violent
snow-storm, with the army in a position that I knew little of." These
two generals were warm personal friends, and McClellan remained a few
days to put Burnside in possession, as far as possible, of the
essential facts in relation to the position and condition of the
forces.
[Illustration: ATTACK ON FREDERICKSBURG, DECEMBER, 1862.]
{194} [Illustration: THE STONE WALL UNDER MARYE'S HEIGHTS. (From a War
Department photograph.)]
At this time the right wing of Lee's army, under Longstreet, was near
Culpeper, and the left, under Jackson, was in the Shenandoah Valley.
Their separation was such that it would require two days for one to
march to the other. McClellan said he intended to endeavor to get
between them and either beat them in detail or force them to unite as
far south as Gordonsville. Burnside not only did not continue this
plan, but gave up the idea that the Confederate army was his true
objective, assumed the city of Richmond to be such, and set out for
that place by way of the north bank of the Rappahannock and the city
of Fredericksburg, after consuming ten days in reorganizing his army
into three grand divisions, under Sumner, Hooker, and Franklin. On the
15th of November he began the march from Warrenton; the head of his
first column reached Falmouth on the 17th, and by the 20th the whole
army was there. By some blunder (it is uncertain whose) the pontoon
train that was to have met the army at this point, and afforded an
immediate crossing of the river, did not arrive till a week later; and
by this time Lee, who chose to cover his own capital and cross the
path of his enemy, rather than strike at his communications, had
placed his army on the heights south and west of Fredericksburg, and
at once began to fortify them. His line was about five and a half
miles long, and was as strong as a good natural {195} position,
earthworks, and an abundance of artillery could make it. He could not
prevent Burnside from crossing the river; for the heights on the left
bank rose close to the stream, commanding the intermediate plain, and
on these heights Burnside had one hundred and forty-seven guns. What
with waiting for the pontoons and establishing his base of supplies at
Acquia Creek, it was the 10th of December before the National
commander was ready to attempt the passage of the stream. He planned
to lay down five bridges--three opposite the city and the others two
miles below--and depended upon his artillery to protect the engineers.
Before daybreak on the morning of the 11th, in a thick fog, the work
was begun; but the bridges had not spanned more than half the distance
when the sun had risen and the fog lifted sufficiently to reveal what
was going on. A detachment of Mississippi riflemen had been posted in
cellars, behind stone walls, and at every point where a man could be
sheltered on the south bank; and now the incessant crack of their
weapons was heard, picking off the men that were laying the bridges.
One after another of the blue-coats reeled with a bullet in his brain,
fell into the water, and was carried down by the current, till the
losses were so serious that it was impossible to continue the work. At
the lower bridges the sharp-shooters, who there had no shelter but
rifle-pits in the open field, were dislodged after a time, and by noon
those bridges were completed. But along the front of the town they had
better shelter, the National guns could not be depressed enough to
shell them, and the work on the three upper bridges came to a
standstill. Burnside tried bombarding the town, threw seventy tons of
iron into it, and set it on fire; but still the sharp-shooters clung
to their hiding places, and when the engineers tried to renew their
task on the bridges, under cover of the bombardment, they were
destroyed by the same murderous fire.
At last General Hunt, chief of artillery, suggested a solution
of the difficulty. Three regiments that volunteered for the
service--the Seventh Michigan, and the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Massachusetts--crossed the river in pontoon boats, under the fire of
the sharp-shooters, landed quickly, and drove them out of their
fastness, capturing a hundred of them, while the remainder escaped to
the hills. The bridges were then completed, and the crossing was
begun; but it was evening of the 12th before the entire army was on
the Fredericksburg side of the river.
On the morning of the 13th Burnside was ready to attack, and Lee was
more than ready to be attacked. He had concentrated his whole army on
the fortified heights, Longstreet's corps forming his left wing and
Jackson's his right, with every gun in position, and every man ready
and knowing what to expect. The weak point of the line, if it had any,
was on the right, where the ground was not so high, and there was
plenty of room for the deployment of the attacking force. Here
Franklin commanded, with about half of the National army; and here,
according to Burnside's first plan, the principal assault was to be
made. But there appears to have been a sudden and unaccountable change
in the plan; and when the hour for action arrived Franklin was ordered
to send forward a division or two, and hold the remainder of his force
ready for "a rapid movement down the old Richmond road," while Sumner
on the right was ordered to send out two divisions to seize the
heights back of the city. Exactly what Burnside expected to do next,
if these movements had been successful, nobody appears to know.
The division chosen to lead Franklin's attack was Meade's. This
advanced rapidly, preceded by a heavy skirmish line, while his
batteries firing over the heads of the troops shelled the heights
vigorously. Meade's men crossed the railroad under heavy fire, that
had been withheld till they were within close range, penetrated
between two divisions of the first Confederate line, doubling back the
flanks of both and taking many prisoners and some battle-flags, scaled
the heights, and came upon the second line. By this time the momentum
of the attack was spent, and the fire of the second line, delivered on
the flanks as well as in front, drove them back. The divisions of
Gibbon and Doubleday had followed in support, which relieved the
pressure upon Meade; and when all three were returning unsuccessful
and in considerable confusion, Birney's moved out and stopped the
pursuing enemy.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL RICHARD H. ANDERSON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL CADMUS M. WILCOX, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT RANSOM, JR., C. S. A.]
Sumner's attack was made with the divisions of French and Hancock,
which moved through the town and deployed in columns under the fire of
the Confederate batteries. This was very destructive, but was not the
deadliest thing that the men had to meet. Marye's Hill was skirted
near its base by an old sunken road, at the outer edge of which was a
stone wall; and in this road were two brigades of Confederate
infantry. It could hardly be seen, at a little distance, that there
was a road at all. When French's charging columns had rushed across
the open ground under the artillery fire that ploughed through and
through their ranks, they suddenly confronted a sheet of flame and
lead from the rifles in the sunken road. The Confederates here were so
{196} numerous that each one at the wall had two or three behind to
load muskets and hand them to him, while he had only to lay them flat
across the wall and fire them as rapidly as possible, exposing
scarcely more than his head. Nearly half of French's men were shot
down, and the remainder fell back. Hancock's five thousand charged in
the same manner, and some of them approached within twenty yards of
the wall; but within a quarter of an hour they also fell back a part
of the distance, leaving two thousand of their number on the field.
Three other divisions advanced to the attack, but with no better
result; and all of them remained in a position where they were just
out of reach of the rifles in the sunken road, but were still played
upon by the Confederate artillery.
Burnside now grew frantic, and ordered Hooker to attack. That officer
moved out with three divisions, made a reconnoissance, and went back
to tell Burnside it was useless and persuade him to give up the
attempt. But the commander insisted, and so Hooker's four thousand
rushed forward with fixed bayonets, and presently came back like the
rest, leaving seventeen hundred dead or wounded on the field.
The entire National loss in this battle was twelve thousand six
hundred and fifty-three in killed, wounded, or missing, though some of
the missing afterward rejoined their commands. Hancock's division lost
one hundred and fifty-six officers, and one of his regiments lost
two-thirds of its men. The Confederate loss was five thousand three
hundred and seventy-seven. Four brigadier-generals were killed in this
battle; on the National side, Generals George D. Bayard and Conrad F.
Jackson; on the Confederate, Generals Thomas R. R. Cobb and Maxcy
Gregg. In the night the Union troops brought in their wounded and
buried some of their dead. Severe as his losses had been, Burnside
planned to make a fresh attempt the next day, with the Ninth Corps
(his old command), which he proposed to lead in person; but General
Sumner dissuaded him, though with difficulty. In the night of the
15th, in the midst of a storm, the army was withdrawn to the north
bank of the Rappahannock, and the sorry campaign was ended.
If it had been at all necessary to prove the courage and discipline of
the National troops, Fredericksburg proved it abundantly. There were
few among them that December morning who did not look upon it as
hopeless to assault those fortified slopes; yet they obeyed their
orders, and moved out to the work as if they expected victory,
suffering such frightful losses as bodies of troops are seldom called
upon to endure, and retiring with little disorder and no panic. The
English correspondent of the London _Times_, writing from Lee's
headquarters, exultingly predicted the speedy decline and fall of the
American Republic. If he had been shrewd enough to see what was
indicated, rather than what he hoped for, he would have written that
with such courage and discipline as the Army of the Potomac had
displayed, and superior resources, the final victory was certain to be
theirs, however they might first suffer from incompetent commanders;
that the Republic that had set such an army in the field, and had the
material for several more, was likely to contain somewhere a general
worthy to lead it, and was not likely to be overthrown by any
insurrection of a minority of its people.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL T. F. MEAGHER.]
[Illustration: COLONEL ROBERT NUGENT. (Afterward Brevet
Brigadier-General.)]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL G. A. DE RUSSEY.]
There never was any question of the gallantry or patriotism of General
Burnside, but his woful lack of judgment in the conduct of the battle
of Fredericksburg (or perhaps it should be said, in fighting a battle
at that point at all) has ever remained inexplicable. His own attempt
to explain it, in his official report, is brief, and is at least manly
in the frankness with which he puts the entire blame upon himself. He
wrote: "During my preparations for crossing at the place I had first
selected, I discovered that the enemy had thrown a large portion of
his force down the river and elsewhere, thus weakening his defences in
front, and also thought I discovered that he did not anticipate the
crossing of our whole force at Fredericksburg; and I hoped by rapidly
throwing the whole command over at that place to {197} separate, by a
vigorous attack, the forces of the enemy on the river below from the
forces behind and on the crest in the rear of the town, in which case
we could fight him with great advantage in our favor. To do this we
had to gain a height on the extreme right of the crest, which height
commanded a new road lately made by the enemy for purposes of more
rapid communication along his lines, which point gained, his positions
along the crest would have been scarcely tenable, and he could have
been driven from them easily by an attack on his front in connection
with a movement in the rear of the crest.... Failing in accomplishing
the main object, we remained in order of battle two days--long enough
to decide that the enemy would not come out of his strongholds to
fight us with infantry--after which we recrossed to this side of the
river unmolested, without the loss of men or property. As the day
broke, our long lines of troops were seen marching to their different
positions as if going on parade--not the least demoralization or
disorganization existed. To the brave officers and soldiers who
accomplished the feat of thus recrossing the river in the face of the
enemy, I owe everything. For the failure in the attack I am
responsible, as the extreme gallantry, courage, and endurance shown by
them was never exceeded, and would have carried the points had it been
possible. The fact that I decided to move from Warrenton on to this
line rather against the opinion of the President, Secretary of War,
and yourself, and that you left the whole movement in my hands,
without giving me orders, makes me the only one responsible."
When Burnside's plan was submitted to the President and General
Halleck, there was considerable opposition to it, and when finally
Halleck informed Burnside that the President consented to that plan,
he added significantly: "He thinks it will succeed if you move
rapidly; otherwise not." Though Mr. Lincoln was not a soldier, his
natural aptitude for strategy has been much discussed, and it is
therefore interesting to remember this saving clause in his consent to
the experiment of Fredericksburg. How near the National troops, with
all their terrible disadvantages, came to piercing the lines of the
enemy on Marye's Hill, we know from the testimony of General
Longstreet, who says: "General Lee became uneasy when he saw the
attacks so promptly renewed and pushed forward with such persistence,
and feared the Federals might break through our lines. After the third
charge he said to me, 'General, they are massing very heavily, and
will break your line, I am afraid.'" Longstreet represents himself as
having no such fears whatever, but it further appears from his
testimony that when in the night they captured an officer on whom they
found an order for renewal of the battle the next day, General Lee
immediately gave orders for the construction of a new line of
rifle-pits and the placing of more guns in position.
General Lee, instead of following up his good fortune by counter
attack, went off to Richmond to suggest other operations. No such
fierce criticism for not reaping the fruits of victories has ever been
expended upon him as some of the National commanders have had to
endure for this fault, though many of his and their opportunities were
closely parallel. In Richmond he was told by Mr. Davis that the
Administration considered the war virtually over, but he knew better.
[Illustration: RELIEF FOR THE WOUNDED.]
[Illustration: A HASTY MEAL.]
[Illustration: ZOUAVE COLOR-BEARER AT FREDERICKSBURG.]
The story of the battle, so far as its strictly military aspect is
concerned, is extremely simple, and makes but a short though dreadful
chapter in the history of the great struggle. But it was full of
incidents, though mostly of the mournful kind, and the reader would
fail to get any adequate conception of what was done and suffered on
that field without some accounts written at the time by participants.
General Meagher, commanding the Irish brigade, made an interesting
report, in which he pictured graphically the manner in which that
organization went into the action and the treatment that it received.
A few extracts will include the most interesting passages. "The
brigade never was in finer spirits and condition. The arms and
accoutrements were in perfect order. The required amount of ammunition
was on hand. Both officers and men were comfortably clad, and it would
be difficult to say whether those who were to lead or those who were
to follow were the better prepared or the more eager to discharge
their duty. A few minutes {198} after four o'clock P.M., word was
conveyed to me that a gallant body of volunteers had crossed the river
in boats and taken possession of the city of Fredericksburg.
Immediately on the receipt of this news, an order reached me from
Brigadier-General Hancock to move forward the brigade and take up a
position closer to the river. In this new position we remained all
night. At seven o'clock the following morning we were under arms, and
in less than two hours the head of the brigade presented itself on the
opposite bank of the river. Passing along the edge of the river to the
lower bridge, the brigade halted, countermarched, stacked arms, and in
this position, ankle-deep in mud, and with little or nothing to
contribute to their comfort, in complete subordination and good heart,
awaited further orders. An order promulgated by Major-General Couch,
commanding the corps, prohibited fires after nightfall. This order was
uncomplainingly and manfully obeyed by the brigade. Officers and men
lay down and slept that night in the mud and frost, and without a
murmur, with heroic hearts, composed themselves as best they could for
the eventualities of the coming day. A little before eight o'clock
A.M., Saturday, the 13th inst., we received orders to fall in and
prepare instantly to take the field. The brigade being in line, I
addressed, separately, to each regiment a few words, reminding it of
its duty, and exhorting it to acquit itself of that duty bravely and
nobly to the last. Immediately after, the column swept up the street
toward the scene of action, headed by Col. Robert Nugent, of the
Sixty-ninth, and his veteran regiment--every officer and man of the
brigade wearing a sprig of evergreen in his hat, in memory of the land
of his birth. The advance was firmly and brilliantly made through this
street under a continuous discharge of shot and shell, several men
falling from the effects of both. Even whilst I was addressing the
Sixty-ninth, which was on the right of the brigade, three men of the
Sixty-third were knocked over, and before I had spoken my last words
of encouragement the mangled remains of the poor fellows--mere masses
of torn flesh and rags--were borne along the line to the hospital of
French's division. Emerging from the street, having nothing whatever
to protect it, the brigade encountered the full force and fury of the
enemy's fire, and, unable to resist or reply to it, had to push on to
the mill-race, which may be described as the first of the hostile
{199} defences. Crossing this mill-race by means of a single bridge,
the brigade, diverging to the right, had to deploy into line of
battle. This movement necessarily took some time to execute. The
Sixty-ninth, under Colonel Nugent, being on the right, had to stand
its ground until the rest of the brigade came up and formed. I myself,
accompanied by Lieutenant Emmet of my staff, crossed the mill-race on
foot from the head of the street through which the column had
debouched. Trudging up the ploughed field as well as my lameness would
permit me, to the muddy crest along which the brigade was to form in
line of battle, I reached the fence on which the right of the
Sixty-ninth rested. I directed Colonel Nugent to throw out two
companies of his regiment as skirmishers on the right flank. This
order was being carried out, when the other regiments of the brigade,
coming up with a brisk step and deploying in line of battle, drew down
upon themselves a terrific fire. Nevertheless the line was beautifully
and rapidly formed, and boldly advanced, Colonel Nugent leading on the
right, Col. Patrick Kelly, commanding the Eighty-eighth, being next in
line, both displaying a courageous soldiership which I have no words,
even with all my partiality for them, adequately to describe. Thus
formed, under the unabating tempest and deluge of shot and shell, the
Irish brigade advanced against the rifle-pits, the breastworks, and
batteries of the enemy.... The next day, a little after sunrise, every
officer and man of the brigade able again to take the field, by order
of Brigadier-General Hancock, recrossed to Fredericksburg and took up
the same position, on the street nearest the river, which we had
occupied previous to the advance, prepared and eager, notwithstanding
their exhausted numbers and condition, to support the Ninth Corps in
the renewal of the assault of the previous day, that renewal having
been determined on by the general-in-chief. Of the one thousand two
hundred I had led into action the day before, two hundred and eighty
only appeared on that ground that morning. This remnant of the Irish
brigade, still full of heart, still wearing the evergreen, inspired by
a glowing sense of duty, sorrowful for their comrades, but emboldened
and elated by the thought that they had fallen with the proud bravery
they did--this noble little remnant awaited the order that was once
more to precipitate them against the batteries of the enemy."
Gen. Aaron F. Stevens (afterward member of Congress), who at that time
commanded the Thirteenth New Hampshire Regiment, made an interesting
report, in the course of which he said: "Just after dark we moved to
the river, and crossed without opposition the pontoon-bridge near the
lower end of the city. My regiment took up its position for the night
in Caroline Street, one of the principal streets of the city, and
threw out two companies as pickets toward the enemy. At an early hour
on Saturday morning, the eventful and disastrous day of the battle, we
took up our position with the brigade under the hill on the bank of
the river, just below the bridge which we crossed on Thursday night.
Here we remained under arms the entire day, our position being about a
mile distant from the line of the enemy's batteries. Occasionally,
during the day, fragments of shell from his guns reached us or passed
over us, falling in the river and beyond, doing but little damage. One
of our own guns, however, on the opposite bank of the river, which
threw shells over us toward the enemy, was so unfortunately handled as
to kill two men and wound several others in our brigade. As yet all
the accounts which I have seen or read, from Union or rebel sources,
approach not in delineation the truthful and terrible panorama of that
bloody day. Twice during the day I rode up Caroline Street to the
centre of the city toward the point where our brave legions were
struggling against the terrible combination of the enemy's artillery
and infantry, whose unremitting fire shook the earth and filled the
plain in rear of the city with the deadly missiles of war. I saw the
struggling hosts of freedom stretched along the plain, their ranks
ploughed by the merciless fire of the foe. I saw the dead and wounded,
among them some of New Hampshire's gallant sons, borne back on the
shoulders of their comrades in battle, and laid tenderly down in the
hospitals prepared for their reception, in the houses on either side
of the street as far as human habitations extended. I listened to the
roar of battle and the groans of the wounded and dying. I saw in the
crowded hospitals the desolation of war; but I heard from our brave
soldiers no note of triumph, no word of encouragement, no syllable of
hope that for us a field was to be won. In the stubborn, unyielding
resistance of the enemy I could see no point of pressure likely to
yield to the repeated assaults of our brave soldiers, and so I
returned to my command to wait patiently for the hour when we might be
called to share in the duty and danger of our brave brethren engaged
in the contest. By stepping forward to the brow of the hill which
covered us, a distance of ten yards, we were in full view of the rebel
stronghold--the batteries along the crest of the ridge called
Stansbury Hill and skirting Hazel Run. For three-fourths of an hour
before we were ordered into action, I stood in front of my regiment on
the brow of the hill and watched the fire of the rebel batteries as
they poured shot and shell from sixteen different points upon our
devoted men on the plains below. It was a sight magnificently
terrible. Every discharge of enemy's artillery and every explosion of
his shells were visible in the dusky twilight of that smoke-crowned
hill. There his direct and enfilading batteries, with the vividness,
intensity, and almost the rapidity, of lightning, hurled the
messengers of death in the midst of our brave ranks, vainly struggling
through the murderous fire to gain the hills and the guns of the
enemy. Nor was it any straggling or ill-directed fire. The arrangement
of the enemy's guns was such that they could pour their concentrated
and incessant fire upon any point occupied by our assailing troops,
and all of them were plied with the greatest skill and animation.
During all this time the rattle of musketry was incessant.
"About sunset there was a pause in the cannonading and musketry, and
orders came for our brigade to fall in. Silently but unflinchingly the
men moved out from under their cover, and, when they reached the
ground, quickened their pace to a run. As the head of the column came
in sight of the enemy, at a distance of about three-fourths of a mile
from their batteries, when close to Slaughter's house, it was saluted
with a shower of shell from the enemy's guns on the crest of the hill.
It moved on by the flank down the hill into the plain beyond, crossing
a small stream which passes through the city and empties into Hazel
Run, then over another hill to the line of railroad. We moved at so
rapid a pace that many of the men relieved themselves of their
blankets and haversacks, and in some instances of their great-coats,
which in most cases were lost. By counter-march, we extended our line
along the railroad, the right resting toward the city, and the left
near Hazel Run. The words, 'Forward, charge!' ran along the lines. The
men sprang forward, and moved at a run, crossed the railroad into a
low muddy swamp on the left, which reaches down to Hazel Run, the
right moving over higher and less muddy ground, all the time the
batteries of the enemy concentrating their terrible fire and {200}
pouring it upon the advancing lines. Suddenly the cannonading and
musketry of the enemy ceased. The shouts of our men also were hushed,
and nothing was heard along the line save the command: 'Forward,
men--steady--close up.' In this way we moved forward, until within
about twenty yards of the celebrated stone wall. Before we reached the
point of which I have been speaking, we came to an irregular ravine or
gully, into which, in the darkness of night, the lines plunged, but
immediately gained the opposite side, and were advancing along the
level ground toward the stone wall. Behind that wall, and in
rifle-pits on its flanks, were posted the enemy's infantry--according
to their statements--four ranks deep; and on the hill, a few yards
above, lay in ominous silence their death-dealing artillery. It was
while we were moving steadily forward that, with one startling crash,
with one simultaneous sheet of fire and flame, they hurled on our
advancing lines the whole terrible force of their infantry and
artillery. The powder from their musketry burned in our very faces,
and the breath of their artillery was hot upon our cheeks. The 'leaden
rain and iron hail' in an instant forced back the advancing lines upon
those who were close to them in the rear; and before the men could be
rallied to renew the charge, the lines had been hurled back by the
irresistible fire of the enemy to the cover of the ravine or gully
which they had just passed. The enemy swept the ground with his guns,
killing and wounding many--our men in the meantime keeping up a
spirited fire upon the unseen foe."
[Illustration: MARCHING THROUGH TENNESSEE.]
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT DIRECTING THE DISPOSITION OF TROOPS.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
WAR IN THE WEST.
CONSCRIPTION ACT PASSED BY CONFEDERATE CONGRESS--GENERAL BRAGGS'S
OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY AND EAST TENNESSEE--BATTLE OF
PERRYVILLE--GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE CONFEDERATE CHARGE--BATTLE OF
IUKA--BATTLE OF STONE RIVER, OR MURFREESBORO'--ESTRANGEMENT BETWEEN
GRANT AND ROSECRANS--BATTLE OF CORINTH--CONFEDERATE RETREAT--HEAVY
LOSSES ON BOTH SIDES.
The Confederate Congress in 1862 passed a sweeping conscription act,
forcing into the ranks every man of military age. Even boys of sixteen
were taken out of school and sent to camps of instruction. This
largely increased their forces in the field, and at the West
especially they exhibited a corresponding activity. General
Beauregard, whose health had failed, was succeeded by Gen. Braxton
Bragg, a man of more energy than ability, who, with forty thousand
men, marched northward into eastern Kentucky, defeating a National
force near Richmond, and another at Munfordville. He then assumed that
Kentucky was a State of the Confederacy, appointed a provisional
governor, forced {201} Kentuckians into his army, and robbed the
farmers not only of their stock and provisions, but of their wagons
for carrying away the plunder, paying them in worthless Confederate
money. He carried with him twenty thousand muskets, expecting to find
that number of Kentuckians who would enroll themselves in his command;
but he confessed afterward that he did not even secure enough recruits
to take up the arms that fell from the hands of his dead and wounded.
With the supplies collected by his army of "liberators," as he called
them, in a wagon-train said to have been forty miles long, he was
moving slowly back into Tennessee, when General Buell, with about
fifty-eight thousand men (one-third of them new recruits), marched in
pursuit.
Bragg turned and gave battle at Perryville (October 8), and the fight
lasted nearly all day. At some points it was desperate, with
hand-to-hand fighting, and troops charging upon batteries where the
gunners stood to their pieces and blew them from the very muzzles. The
National left, composed entirely of raw troops, was crushed by a heavy
onset; but the next portion of the line, commanded by Gen. Philip H.
Sheridan, not only held its ground and repelled the assault, but
followed up the retiring enemy with a counter attack. Gooding's
brigade (National) lost five hundred and forty-nine men out of
fourteen hundred and twenty-three, and its commander became a
prisoner. When night fell, the Confederates had been repelled at all
points, and a portion of them had been driven through Perryville,
losing many wagons and prisoners. Buell prepared to attack at
daylight, but found that Bragg had moved off in the night with his
whole army, continuing his retreat to East Tennessee, leaving a
thousand of his wounded on the ground. He also abandoned twelve
hundred of his men in hospital at Harrodsburg, with large quantities
of his plunder, some of which he burned, and made all haste to get
away. Buell reported his loss in the battle as forty-three hundred and
forty-eight, which included Gens. James S. Jackson and William R.
Terrill killed. Bragg's loss was probably larger, though he gave
considerably smaller figures.
The battle of Perryville is more noteworthy for its fierce fighting
and numerous instances of determined gallantry than for any importance
in its bearing on the campaign. It was especially notable for the work
of the artillery, and the struggles to capture or preserve the various
batteries. One National battery of eight guns was commanded by Capt.
Charles C. Parsons, and the Confederates making a fierce charge upon
it captured seven of the pieces, but not without the most desperate
hand-to-hand fighting, in the course of which Parsons at one time was
lying on his back under the guns and firing his revolver at the
assailants. Sixteen years afterward this man, who in the meantime had
become a clergyman, sacrificed his life in attending to the victims of
yellow fever on the Mississippi. When Sheridan was heavily pressed by
the enemy and his right was in special danger, the brigade of Colonel
Carlin was sent to his relief. Carlin's men, reaching the brow of a
hill, discovered the advancing enemy, and immediately charged at the
double quick with such impetuosity that they not only drove back the
Confederates, but passed entirely through their lines where they were
in momentary danger of being captured _en masse_. But, during the
confusion which they caused, they skilfully fell back, carrying with
them a heavily loaded ammunition train which they had captured with
its guard. Pinney's Fifth Wisconsin battery was worked to its utmost
capacity for three hours without supports, and withstood several
charges, piling its front with the bodies of the slain. In the Third
Ohio Regiment six color sergeants were shot in succession, but the
flag was never allowed to touch the earth. That regiment lost two
hundred out of five hundred men. A correspondent of the _Cincinnati
Gazette_, who was on the field, thus relates one of the many
interesting incidents of the battle: "The Tenth Ohio were lying upon
their faces to the left of the Third, near the summit of the same
hill, and upon the other side of a lane. The retreat of the Third Ohio
and Fifteenth Kentucky had left the right wing of the Tenth uncovered,
and a whole brigade of the enemy, forming in mass, advanced toward
them over the ground of such a nature that if the Tenth did not
receive warning from some source the rebel column would be upon them,
and annihilate them before they could rise from their faces and change
front. Colonel Lytle was expecting the enemy to appear in his front,
over the crest of the hill, and had intended to have the gallant Tenth
charge them with the bayonet. And they still lay upon their faces
while the enemy was advancing upon their flank, stealthily as a cat
steals upon her prey. Nearer and nearer they come. Great heavens! Will
no one tell the Tenth of their fearful peril? Where is the eagle eye
which ought to overlook the field and send swift-footed couriers to
save this illustrious band from destruction? Alas, there is none! The
heroes of Carnifex are doomed. The mass of Confederates, which a
rising ground just to the right of the tent has hitherto concealed
from view, rush upon the hapless regiment, and from the distance of a
hundred yards pour into it an annihilating fire even while the men are
still upon their faces. Overwhelmed and confounded, they leap to their
feet and vainly endeavor to change front to meet the enemy. It is
impossible to do it beneath that withering, murderous fire; and for
the first time in its history the Tenth Regiment turns its back upon
the enemy. They will not run; they only walk away, and they are mowed
down by scores as they go. The noble, gifted, generous Lytle was
pierced with bullets and fell where the storm was fiercest. One of his
sergeants lifted him in his arms, and was endeavoring to carry him
from the field. 'You may do some good yet,' said the hero; 'I can do
no more; let me die here.' He was left there, and fell into the hands
of the enemy."
{202} [Illustration: BATTLE OF STONE RIVER--THE DECISIVE CHARGE OF THE
FEDERAL TROOPS ACROSS THE RIVER.]
On hearing of this disaster to the Tenth Ohio Regiment, which formed
the right of Lytle's Seventeenth Brigade, General Rousseau immediately
rode to the scene of it. He says in his report: "Whilst near the
Fifteenth Kentucky, I saw a heavy force of the enemy advancing upon
our right, the same that had turned Lytle's right flank. It was moving
steadily up in full view of where General Gilbert's army corps had
been during the day, the left flank of which was not more than four
hundred yards from it. On approaching, the Fifteenth Kentucky, though
broken and shattered, rose to its feet and cheered, and as one man
moved to the top of the hill where it could see the enemy, and I
ordered it to lie down. I then rode up to Loomis's battery, and
directed him to open upon the enemy. He replied he was ordered by
General McCook to reserve what ammunition he had for close work.
Pointing to the enemy advancing, I said it was close enough, and would
be closer in a moment. He at once opened fire with alacrity, and made
fearful havoc upon the ranks of the enemy. It was admirably done, but
the enemy moved straight ahead. His ranks were raked by the battery,
and terribly thinned by the musketry of the Seventeenth Brigade; but
he scarcely faltered, and finally, hearing that reinforcements were
approaching, the brigade was ordered to retire and give place to them,
which it did in good order. The reinforcements {203} were from
Mitchell's division, as I understood, and were Pea Ridge men. I wish I
knew who commanded the brigade, that I might do him justice; I can
only say that the brigade moved directly into the fight, like true
soldiers, and opened a terrific fire and drove back the enemy. After
repulsing the enemy, they retired a few hundred yards into a piece of
woods to encamp in, and during the night the enemy advanced his
pickets in the woods on our left front and captured a good many of our
men who went there believing we still held the woods."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN.]
[Illustration: COLONEL WILLIAM P. CARLIN. (Afterward Brevet
Major-General.)]
General Halleck, at Washington, now planned for Buell's army a
campaign in East Tennessee; but as that was more than two hundred
miles away, and the communications were not provided for, Buell
declined to execute it. For this reason, and also on the ground that
if he had moved more rapidly and struck more vigorously he might have
destroyed Bragg's army, he was removed from command, and Gen. William
S. Rosecrans succeeded him.
In September, when Bragg had first moved northward, a Confederate army
of about forty thousand men, under Generals Price and Van Dorn, had
crossed from Arkansas into Mississippi with the purpose of capturing
Grant's position at Corinth, and thus breaking the National line of
defence and coöperating with Bragg. Price seized Iuka, southeast of
Corinth, and Grant sent out against him a force under Rosecrans,
consisting of about nine thousand men, which included the divisions of
Gens. David S. Stanley and Charles S. Hamilton, and the cavalry under
Col. John K. Mizner. It was Grant's intention that while this force
moved toward Iuka from the south, Gen. E. O. C. Ord's command,
consisting of eight thousand men, should move upon it from the west.
There are two roads running south from Iuka, about two miles apart,
and Grant intended that Rosecrans should approach by both of these
roads, so as to cut off the enemy's retreat. But Rosecrans marched
only by the westernmost road, leaving the eastern, known as the Fulton
road, open. Hamilton's division was in advance, and at four o'clock in
the afternoon, at a point two miles from Iuka, the head of his column,
ascending a long hill, found the enemy deployed across the road and in
the woods a few hundred yards beyond its crest. Hamilton had thrown
out a heavy skirmish line, which for four or five miles had kept up a
running fight with sharp-shooters. The enemy, in force, occupied a
strong line along a deep ravine, from which they moved forward to
attack as soon as Hamilton's men appeared on the crest. Hamilton
himself, being close to the skirmish line, saw the situation with its
dangers and its advantages, and made haste to prepare for what was
coming. He deployed his infantry along the crest, got a battery into
position under heavy fire where it could command the road in front,
placed every regiment personally, and gave each regimental commander
orders to hold his ground at all hazards. As the remainder of his
forces came up, he placed them so as to extend his flanks and prevent
them from being turned. But while he was doing this, the enemy was
advancing and the battle was becoming very serious. The enemy came on
in heavy masses against his centre, charging steadily up to his guns,
which fired canister into them at short range, until nearly every man
and horse in the battery was disabled, and it was captured. Brig.-Gen.
Jeremiah C. Sullivan then gathered a portion of the right wing, which
had been thrown into some disorder, and retook the battery, driving
the Confederates back to their line; but rallying in turn they
captured it a second time, and a second time it was recaptured.
General Stanley's division was now brought up to the assistance of
Hamilton's, and the Confederates were driven back once more. They then
made an attempt by {204} marching through a ravine to fall upon the
National left in heavy force; but their movement was discovered, and
the Tenth Iowa Regiment, together with part of a battery, met them
with such a reception that they quickly withdrew. The front on which
the troops could be deployed was not long enough to permit more than
three thousand men of the Nationals to be in action at once; but along
this line the fighting was kept up until dark, when the enemy retired,
and in the morning, when Rosecrans prepared to attack him, it was
found that he was gone. The losses in the National army in this battle
were 141 killed, 613 wounded, and 36 missing. On the Confederate side,
where not many more men could be engaged at once than on the National,
the losses were reported as 85 killed, 410 wounded, and 40 missing,
the killed including Brig.-Gen. Henry Little. But these figures are
probably altogether too small. General Hamilton reported that 263
Confederates were buried on the field.
General Rosecrans, in a congratulatory order to his troops a few days
later, said: "You may well be proud of the battle of Iuka. On the 18th
you concentrated at Jacinto; on the 19th you marched twenty miles,
driving in the rebel outposts for the last eight; reached the front of
Price's army, advantageously posted in unknown woods, and opened the
action by four P.M. On a narrow front, intersected by ravines and
covered by dense undergrowths, with a single battery, Hamilton's
division went into action against the combined rebel hosts. On that
unequal ground, which permitted the enemy to outnumber them three to
one, they fought a glorious battle, mowing down the rebel hordes,
until, night closing in, they rested on their arms on the
battleground, from which the enemy retired during the night, leaving
us masters of the field. The general commanding bears cheerful
testimony to the fiery alacrity with which the troops of Stanley's
division moved up, cheering, to support the third division, and took
their places to give them an opportunity to replenish their
ammunition; and to the magnificent fighting of the Eleventh Missouri
under the gallant Mower. To all the regiments who participated in the
fight, he presents congratulations on their bravery and good conduct.
He deems it an especial duty to signalize the Forty-eighth Indiana,
which, posted on the left, held its ground until the brave Eddy fell,
and a whole brigade of Texans came in through a ravine on the little
band, and even then only yielded a hundred yards until relieved. The
Sixteenth Iowa, amid the roar of battle, the rush of wounded artillery
horses, the charge of the rebel brigade, and a storm of grape,
canister, and musketry, stood like a rock, holding the centre; while
the glorious Fifth Iowa, under the brave and distinguished Matthias,
sustained by Boomer with part of his noble little Twenty-sixth
Missouri, bore the thrice defeated charges and cross-fires of the
rebel left and centre with a valor and determination seldom equalled,
never excelled, by the most veteran soldiery.... The unexpected
accident which alone prevented us from cutting off the retreat and
capturing Price and his army only shows how much success depends on
Him in whose hands are the accidents as well as the laws of life."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM S. ROSECRANS.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN PEGRAM, C. S. A.]
As the conduct of this battle began a series of causes that resulted
in an unfortunate estrangement between Grant and Rosecrans, the
bitterness of which was exhibited by the latter in his place in
Congress even when Grant was in his dying days, it is interesting to
note what Grant says of it. In his official report, written the day
after the battle, he said: "I cannot speak too highly of the energy
and skill displayed by General Rosecrans in the attack, and of the
endurance of the troops under him." In his "Memoirs" he wrote:
"General Rosecrans had previously had his headquarters at Iuka. While
there he had a most excellent map prepared, showing all the roads and
streams in the surrounding country. He was also personally familiar
with the ground, so that I deferred very much to him in my plans for
the approach.... Ord was on the northwest, and even if a rebel
movement had been possible in that direction it could have brought
only temporary relief, for it would have carried Price's army to the
rear of the National forces and isolated it from all support. It
looked to me that, if Price would remain in Iuka until we could get
there, his annihilation was inevitable. On the morning of the 18th of
September General Ord moved by rail to Burnsville, and there left the
cars and moved to perform his part of the programme. He was to get as
near the enemy as possible during the day and intrench himself so as
to hold his position until the next morning. Rosecrans was to be up by
the morning of the 19th on the two roads, and the attack was to be
from all three quarters simultaneously.... I remained at Burnsville
with a detachment of nine hundred men from Ord's command and
communicated with my two wings by courier. Ord met the advance of the
enemy soon after leaving Burnsville. Quite a sharp engagement ensued,
but he drove the rebels back with considerable loss, including one
general officer killed. He maintained his position and was ready to
attack by daylight the next morning. I was very much disappointed at
receiving a despatch from Rosecrans after midnight from Jacinto,
twenty miles from Iuka, saying that some of his command had been
delayed, and that the rear of his column was not yet up as far as
Jacinto. He said, however, that he would still be at Iuka by two
o'clock the next day. I did not believe this possible, because of the
distance and condition of the roads. I immediately sent Ord a copy of
Rosecrans's despatch and ordered him to {205} be in readiness to
attack the moment he heard the sound of guns to the south or
southeast. During the 19th the wind blew in the wrong direction to
transmit sound, either toward the point where Ord was or to Burnsville
where I remained. [This appears to be the 'unexpected accident' to
which General Rosecrans refers in his congratulatory order.] A couple
of hours before dark, on the 19th, Rosecrans arrived with the head of
his column at Barnets. He here turned north without sending any troops
to the Fulton road. While still moving in column up the Jacinto road,
he met a force of the enemy and had his advance badly beaten and
driven back upon the main road. In this short engagement his loss was
considerable for the number engaged, and one battery was taken from
him. The wind was still blowing hard, and in the wrong direction to
transmit sound toward either Ord or me. Neither he nor I nor any one
in either command heard a gun that was fired upon the battlefield.
After the engagement Rosecrans sent me a despatch announcing the
result. The courier bearing the message was compelled to move west
nearly to Jacinto before he found a road leading to Burnsville. This
made it a late hour of the night before I learned of the battle that
had taken place during the afternoon. I at once notified Ord of the
fact and ordered him to attack early in the morning. The next morning
Rosecrans himself renewed the attack and went into Iuka with but
little resistance. Ord also went in according to orders, without
hearing a gun from the south of the town, but supposing the troops
coming from the southwest must be up before that time. Rosecrans,
however, had put no troops upon the Fulton road, and the enemy had
taken advantage of this neglect and retreated by that road during the
night. I rode into town and found that the enemy was not being pursued
even by the cavalry. I ordered pursuit by the whole of Rosecrans's
command, and went on with him a few miles in person. He followed only
a few miles after I left him, and then went into camp, and the pursuit
was continued no further. I was disappointed at the result of the
battle of Iuka, but I had so high an opinion of General Rosecrans that
I found no fault at the time." General Grant says that the plan of the
battle, which included the occupation of the Fulton road, was
suggested by Rosecrans himself.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ROBERT B. MITCHELL.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ALEXANDER McDOWELL McCOOK.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL LOVELL H. ROUSSEAU.]
[Illustration: LOOMIS'S BATTERY IN ACTION.]
A Confederate soldier, who participated in the engagement, gave a
graphic account of it in a letter, a few extracts from which are
interesting and suggestive. "I wrote you a short communication from
Iuka, announcing its peaceable capture on the 4th, by the army under
General Price. I believe I was a little congratulatory in my remarks,
and spread out on the rich fruits of the bloodless capture. Indeed, it
was a sight to gladden the heart of a poor soldier whose only diet for
some time had been unsalted beef and white leather hoe-cake--the
stacks of cheese, crackers, preserves, mackerel, coffee, and other
good things that line the shelves of the sutlers' shops, and fill the
commissary stores of the Yankee army. But, alas! The good {206} things
which should have been distributed to the brave men who won them were
held in reserve for what purpose I know not, unless to sweeten the
teeth of those higher in authority (whilst the men were fed on husks),
and I suppose were devoured by the flames on the day of our retreat.
We held peaceable possession of Iuka one day, and on the next day were
alarmed by the booming of cannon, and called out to spend the evening
in battle array in the woods. How on earth, with the woods full of our
cavalry, they could have approached so near our lines, is a mystery!
They had planted a battery sufficiently near to shell General Price's
headquarters, and were cracking away at the Third Brigade in line of
battle under General Herbert when our brigade (the Fourth) came up at
a double quick and formed on their left. And then for two hours and
fifteen minutes was kept up the most terrific fire of musketry that
ever dinned my ears. There was one continuous roar of small arms,
while grape and canister howled in fearful concert above our heads and
through our ranks. General Little, our division commander, whose
bravery and kindness had endeared him to the men under his command,
was shot through the head early in the action, and fell from his horse
dead. He was sitting by General Price and conversing with him at the
time. The Third Brigade was in the hottest of the fire. They charged
and took the battery, which was doing so much damage, after a
desperate struggle, piling the ground with dead. The Third Louisiana
Regiment, of this brigade, entered the fight with two hundred and
thirty-eight men, and lost one hundred and eight in killed and
wounded. The Third Texas fared about as badly. The troops against
which we were contending were Western men, the battery manned by Iowa
troops, who fought bravely and well. I know this, that the events of
that evening have considerably increased my appetite for peace, and if
the Yankees will not shoot at us any more I shall be perfectly
satisfied to let them alone. All night could be heard the groans of
the wounded and dying of both armies, forming a sequel of horror and
agony to the deadly struggle over which night had kindly thrown its
mantle. Saddest of all, our dead were left unburied, and many of the
wounded on the battlefield to be taken in charge by the enemy....
During the entire retreat we lost but four or five wagons, which broke
down on the road and were left. Acts of vandalism disgraceful to the
army were, however, perpetrated along the road, which made me blush to
own such men as my countrymen. Cornfields were laid waste,
potato-patches robbed, barn-yards and smoke-houses despoiled, hogs
killed, and all kinds of outrages perpetrated in broad daylight and in
full view of officers. I doubted, on the march up and on the retreat,
whether I was in an army of brave men fighting for their country, or
merely following a band of armed marauders who are as terrible to
their friends as foes. The settlements through which we passed were
made to pay heavy tribute to the rapacity of our soldiers. This
plunder, too, was without excuse, for rations were regularly issued
every night."
Early in October the combined forces of Price and Van Dorn attempted
the capture of Corinth, which had been abandoned by Beauregard in May,
and from that time had been held by Grant's forces. Grant was now in
Jackson, Tenn., where he had been ordered to make his headquarters,
and Rosecrans was in immediate command at Corinth with about twenty
thousand men. The place was especially tempting to the Confederates
because of the enormous amount of supplies in store there, and also
for other reasons, which are well stated in Van Dorn's report made
after the battle: "Surveying the whole field of operations before me,
the conclusion forced itself irresistibly upon my mind, that the
taking of Corinth was a condition precedent to the accomplishment of
anything of importance in West Tennessee. To take Memphis would be to
destroy an immense amount of property without any adequate military
advantage, even admitting that it could be held without heavy guns
against the enemy's gun and mortar boats. The line of fortifications
around Bolivar is intersected by the Hatchie River, rendering it
impossible to take the place by quick assault. It was clear to my mind
that if a successful attack could be made upon Corinth from the west
and northwest, the forces there driven back on the Tennessee and cut
off, Bolivar and Jackson would easily fall, and then, upon the arrival
of the exchanged prisoners of war (about nine thousand), West
Tennessee would soon be in our possession, and communication with
General Bragg effected through middle Tennessee. I determined to
attempt Corinth. I had a reasonable hope of success. Field returns at
Ripley showed my strength to be about twenty-two thousand men.
Rosecrans at Corinth had about fifteen thousand, with about eight
thousand additional men at outposts from twelve to fifteen miles
distant. I might surprise him and carry the place before these troops
could be brought in. It was necessary that this blow should be sudden
and decisive. The troops were in fine spirits, and the whole Army of
West Tennessee seemed eager to emulate the armies of the Potomac and
Kentucky. No army ever marched to battle with prouder steps, more
hopeful countenances, or with more courage, than marched the Army of
West Tennessee out of Ripley on the morning of September 29th, on its
way to Corinth."
Rosecrans had several days' notice of the attack, and had placed the
main body of the troops in an inner line of intrenchments nearer the
town than the old Confederate fortifications. Skirmishing began on the
3d of October, when the Confederates approached from the north and
west. The skirmishers were soon driven in, and the advance troops,
under McArthur and Oliver, made a more determined resistance than
Rosecrans had intended; his idea in thrusting them forward being that
they should merely develop the enemy's purpose, find out what point he
intended to attack, and then fall back on the main body. In the
afternoon this advanced detachment had been pushed back to the main
line, and there the fighting became very obstinate and bloody. General
Hamilton's division was on the right, Davies's next, Stanley's in
reserve, and McKean on the left. The force of the first heavy blow
fell upon McKean and Davies. As the Confederates overlapped Davies a
little on his right, General Rosecrans ordered Hamilton to move up his
left and connect with Davies, then to swing his right around the
enemy's left and get in his rear. Hamilton asked for more definite
instructions than he had received verbally from the staff officer, and
Rosecrans sent him a written order, which he received at five o'clock.
Hamilton says: "A simple order to attack the enemy in flank could have
reached me by courier from General Rosecrans any time after two P.M.
in fifteen minutes. I construed it [the written order] as an order for
attack, and at once proceeded to carry it out." A somewhat similar
misunderstanding arose between General Hamilton and his brigade
commanders, in consequence of which Buford's brigade went astray and a
precious hour was lost. During that time the battle was apparently
going in favor of the Confederates, although they were purchasing
their advantages at heavy cost. Each commander believed that if he
could have had an hour more of {207} sunlight the victory would have
been his that day. In the evening Rosecrans assembled his division
commanders and made his dispositions for a renewal of the battle on
the morrow.
At half-past four o'clock in the morning the Confederates opened the
fight with their artillery, to which that of Rosecrans promptly
replied, and extended their infantry lines farther to the north of the
town. Here, on their extreme left, they formed behind a low hill, and
then suddenly advanced in line of battle only three hundred yards
distant from the National intrenchments. They were soon subjected to a
cross-fire from the batteries, their line was broken, and only
fragments of it reached the edge of the town, from which they were
soon driven away by the reserves. Rosecrans then sent forward one of
Hamilton's brigades to attack the broken enemy, which prevented them
from re-forming and drove them into the woods. At the most advanced
point of the National line, which was a small work called Battery
Robinett, the heaviest fighting of the day took place. Here for more
than two hours the roar of artillery and small arms was incessant and
the smoke was in thick clouds. Through this heavy smoke the
Confederates made three determined charges upon Battery Robinett, and
the troops on either side of it, all of which were repelled. The heavy
assaulting columns were raked through and through by the shot, but
they persistently closed up and moved forward until, in one instance,
a colonel carrying the colors actually planted them on the edge of the
ditch, and then was immediately shot. After this the Confederates gave
up the fight and slowly withdrew. At sunset General McPherson arrived
from Jackson with reinforcements for the Nationals, and General
Hurlbut was on the way with more. General Rosecrans says: "Our pursuit
of the enemy was immediate and vigorous, but the darkness of the night
and the roughness of the country, covered with woods and thickets,
made movement impracticable by night, and slow and difficult by day.
General McPherson's brigade of fresh troops with a battery was ordered
to start at daylight and follow the enemy over the Chewalla road, and
Stanley's and Davies's divisions to support him. McArthur, with all of
McKean's division except Crocker's brigade, and with a good battery
and a battalion of cavalry, took the route south of the railroad
toward Pocahontas; McKean followed on this route with the rest of his
division and Ingersoll's cavalry; Hamilton followed McKean with his
entire force." But General Grant says in his "Memoirs": "General
Rosecrans, however, failed to follow up the victory, although I had
given specific orders in advance of the battle for him to pursue the
moment the enemy was repelled. He did not do so, and I repeated the
order after the battle. In the first order he was notified that the
force of four thousand men which was going to his assistance would be
in great peril if the enemy was not pursued. General Ord had joined
Hurlbut on the 4th, and, being senior, took command of his troops.
This force encountered the head of Van Dorn's retreating column just
as it was crossing the Hatchie by a bridge some ten miles out from
Corinth. The bottom land here was swampy and bad for the operations of
troops, making a good place to get an enemy into. Ord attacked the
troops that had crossed the bridge and drove them back in a panic.
Many were killed, and others were drowned by being pushed off the
bridge in their hurried retreat. Ord followed, and met the main force.
He was too weak in numbers to assault, but he held the bridge and
compelled the enemy to resume his retreat by another bridge higher up
the stream. Ord was wounded in this engagement, and the command
devolved on Hurlbut. Rosecrans did not start in pursuit till the
morning of the 5th, and then took the wrong road. Moving in the
enemy's country, he travelled with a wagon train to carry his
provisions and munitions of war. His march was therefore slower than
that of the enemy, who was moving toward his supplies. Two or three
hours' pursuit on the day of battle, without anything except what the
men carried on their persons, would have been worth more than any
pursuit commenced the next day could have possibly been. Even when he
did start, if Rosecrans had followed the route taken by the enemy, he
would have come upon Van Dorn in a swamp, with a stream in front and
Ord holding the only bridge; but he took the road leading north and
toward Chewalla instead of west, and, after having marched as far as
the enemy had moved to {209} get to the Hatchie, he was as far from
battle as when he started. Hurlbut had not the numbers to meet any
such force as Van Dorn's if they had been in any mood for fighting,
and he might have been in great peril. I now regarded the time to
accomplish anything by pursuit as past, and after Rosecrans reached
Jonesboro' I ordered him to return."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD O. C. ORD AND STAFF.]
{208} [Illustration: THE PURSUIT. (FROM A PAINTING BY WILLIAM T.
TREGO.)]
[Illustration: CHARGE OF THE FEDERALS AT CORINTH.]
General Grant considered that General Rosecrans had made the same
serious mistake twice, at Iuka and at Corinth; and for this reason
Rosecrans was soon relieved from further service in that department.
The Confederate authorities also were dissatisfied with their general,
for they accounted the defeat at Corinth a heavy disaster, and Van
Dorn was soon superseded by Gen. John C. Pemberton.
Rosecrans superseded Buell October 24th, when his army--thenceforth
called the Army of the Cumberland--was at Bowling Green, slowly
pursuing Bragg. Rosecrans sent a portion of it to the relief of
Nashville, which was besieged by a Confederate force, and employed the
remainder in repairing the railroad from Louisville, over which his
supplies must come. This done, about the end of November he united his
forces at Nashville. At the same time Bragg was ordered to move
forward again, and went as far as Murfreesboro', forty miles from
Nashville, where he fortified a strong position on Stone River, a
shallow stream fordable at nearly all points. There was high festivity
among the secessionists in Murfreesboro' that winter, for Bragg had
brought much plunder from Kentucky. No one dreamed that Rosecrans
would attack the place before spring, and several roving bands of
guerilla cavalry were very active, and performed some exciting if not
important exploits. The leader of one of these, John H. Morgan, was
married in Murfreesboro', the ceremony being performed by Bishop and
Gen. Leonidas Polk, and Jefferson Davis being present. It is said that
the floor was carpeted with a United States flag, on which the company
danced, to signify that they had put its authority under their feet.
The revelry was rudely interrupted when Rosecrans, leaving Nashville
with forty-three thousand men, in a rain-storm, the day after
Christmas, encamped on the 30th within sight of Bragg's intrenchments.
A correspondent of the Louisville _Journal_, who went over the ground
at the time and witnessed the battle, gave a careful description of
its peculiarities, which is necessary to a complete understanding of
the action: "As the road from Nashville to Murfreesboro' approaches
the latter place, it suddenly finds itself parallel to Stone River.
The stream flowing east crosses the road a mile this [west] side of
Murfreesboro'. Abruptly changing its course, it flows north along the
road, and not more than four hundred yards distant, for more than two
miles. It is a considerable stream, but fordable in many places at low
water. The narrow tongue of land between the turnpike road and the
river is divided by the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, which,
running down the centre of the wedge-like tract, bisects the turnpike
half a mile this side of where the latter crosses the river. {210}
Just in rear of the spot where the third milestone from Murfreesboro'
stands, the turnpike and railroad--at that point about sixty yards
apart--run through a slight cut, and this a few rods farther on is
succeeded by a slight fill. The result is to convert both railroad and
turnpike for a distance of two or three hundred yards into a natural
rifle-pit. On each side of the road at this point there are open
fields. That on the left extends to a curtain of timber which fringes
the river, and also half a mile to the front along the road, where it
gives place to an oak wood of no great density or extent. To the left
and front, however, it opens out into a large open plain, which flanks
the wood just mentioned, and extends up the river in the direction of
Murfreesboro' for a mile. In the field on the left of the railroad
there is a hill of no great height sloping down to the railroad and
commanding all the ground to the front and right. It was here that
Guenther's and Loomis's batteries were posted in the terrible conflict
of Wednesday. The open field on the right of the turnpike road, three
hundred yards wide, is bounded on the west by an almost impenetrable
cedar forest. Just in rear of the forest, and marking its extreme
northern limit, is a long, narrow opening, containing about ten acres.
There is a swell in the field on the right of the road, corresponding
with the one on the left. The crest of this hill is curiously concave.
From its beginning point at the corner of the cedars, the northern end
of the crest curves back upon itself, so that after fortifying the
front of the position it renders the right flank well-nigh
impregnable."
Rosecrans intended to attack the next day; but Bragg anticipated him,
crossed the river before sunrise, concealed by a thick fog, reached
the woods on the right of the National line, and burst out upon the
bank in overwhelming force. McCook's command, on the extreme right,
was crumbled and thrown back, losing several guns and many prisoners.
Sheridan's command, next in line, made a stubborn fight till its
ammunition was nearly exhausted, and then slowly retired. General
Thomas's command, which formed the centre, now held the enemy back
till Rosecrans established a new line, nearly at right angles to the
first, with artillery advantageously posted, when Thomas fell back to
this and maintained his ground. Through the forenoon the Confederates
had seemed to have everything their own way, and they had inflicted
grievous loss upon Rosecrans, besides sending their restless cavalry
to annoy his army in the rear. But here, as usual, the tide was
turned. The first impetuous rush of the Southern soldier had spent
itself, and the superior staying qualities of his Northern opponent
began to tell. Bragg hurled his men again and again upon the new line;
but as they left the cedar thickets and charged across the open field
they were mercilessly swept down by artillery and musketry fire, and
every effort was fruitless. Even when seven thousand fresh men were
drawn over from Bragg's right and thrown against the National centre,
the result was still the same. The day ended with Rosecrans immovable
in his position; but he had been driven from half of the ground that
he held in the morning, and had lost twenty-eight guns and many men,
while the enemy's cavalry was upon his communications. Finding that he
had ammunition enough for another battle, he determined to remain
where he was and sustain another assault. His men slept on their arms
that night, and the next day there was no evidence of any disposition
on either side to attack. Both sides were correcting their lines,
constructing rifle-pits, caring for their wounded, and preparing for a
renewal of the fight.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES B. McPHERSON.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL FRANK C. ARMSTRONG, C. S. A.]
This came on the second day of the new year, when there was some
desultory fighting, and Rosecrans advanced a division across the
stream to strike at Bragg's communications. Breckenridge's command was
sent to attack this division, and drove it back to the river, when
Breckenridge suddenly found himself subjected to a terrible artillery
fire, and lost two thousand men in twenty minutes. Following this, a
charge by National infantry drove him back with a loss of four guns
and many prisoners, and this ended the great battle of Stone River, or
Murfreesboro'. After the repulse of Breckenridge, Rosecrans advanced
his left again, and that night occupied with some of his batteries
high ground, from which Murfreesboro' could be shelled. The next day
there was a heavy rain-storm, and in the ensuing night the Confederate
army quietly retreated, leaving Murfreesboro' to its fate. Rosecrans
reported his loss in killed and wounded as eight thousand seven
hundred and seventy-eight, {211} and in prisoners as somewhat fewer
than twenty-eight hundred. Bragg acknowledged a loss of over ten
thousand, and claimed that he had taken over six thousand prisoners.
The number of men engaged on the National side was about forty-three
thousand, and on the Confederate about thirty-eight thousand,
according to the reports, which are not always reliable.
The losses on the National side included Brig.-Gens. Joshua W. Sill
and Edward N. Kirk among the killed, while on the Confederate side
Brig.-Gens. James E. Rains and Roger W. Hanson were killed.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN H. MORGAN, C. S. A., AND WIFE.]
[Illustration: MAP OF THE BATTLEFIELDS OF STONE RIVER, OR
MURFREESBORO'.]
The incidents of this great and complicated battle were very numerous,
and have been related at great length by different correspondents and
participants. The cavalry fighting that preceded the infantry
engagement was severe, and in some respects brilliant. This arm of the
service was commanded on the National side by Gen. David S. Stanley,
and on the Confederate by Gen. Joseph Wheeler. Col. R. H. G. Minty,
commanding the First Brigade of the National cavalry, says in his
account of the first day's battle: "Crossing Overall's Creek, I took
up position parallel to and about three-quarters of a mile from the
Murfreesboro' and Nashville pike; the Fourth Michigan forming a line
of dismounted skirmishers close to the edge of the woods. My entire
force at this time numbered nine hundred and fifty men. The enemy
advanced rapidly with twenty-five hundred cavalry, mounted and
dismounted, and three pieces of artillery. They drove back the Fourth
Michigan, and then attacked the Seventh Pennsylvania with great fury,
but met with a determined resistance. I went forward to the line of
dismounted skirmishers, and endeavored to move them to the right to
strengthen the Seventh Pennsylvania; but the moment the right of the
line showed itself from behind the fence where they were posted, the
whole of the enemy's fire was directed on it, turning it completely
round. At this moment the Fifteenth Pennsylvania gave way and
retreated rapidly, leaving the battalion of the Seventh Pennsylvania
no alternative but to retreat. I fell back a couple of fields and
re-formed in the rear of a rising ground. The rebel cavalry followed
us up promptly into the open ground, and now menaced us with three
strong lines. General Stanley ordered a charge, and he himself led two
companies of the Fourth Michigan, with about fifty men of the
Fifteenth Pennsylvania, against the line in front of our left. He
routed the enemy, and captured one stand of colors. At the same time I
charged the first line in our front with the Fourth Michigan and First
Tennessee, and drove them from the field. The second line was formed
on the far side of a lane with a partially destroyed fence on each
side, and still stood their ground. I reformed my men and again
charged. The enemy again broke and were driven from the field in the
wildest confusion."
A correspondent of the Cincinnati _Commercial_, in an account of the
battle written on the field, says: "Colonel Innes with the Ninth
Michigan engineers, posted at La Vergne to protect the road, had just
been reinforced by several companies of the Tenth Ohio, when Wheeler's
cavalry brigade made a strong dash at that position. Colonel Innes had
protected himself by a stockade of brush, and fought securely. The
enemy charged several times with great fury, but were murderously
repulsed. About fifty rebels were dismounted, and nearly a hundred of
the horses were killed. Wheeler finally withdrew, and sent in a flag
of truce demanding surrender. Colonel Innes replied, 'We don't
surrender much.' Wheeler then asked permission to bury his dead, which
was granted.... General Rosecrans, as usual, was in the midst of the
fray, directing the movement of troops and the range of batteries."
Some of the things that soldiers have to endure, which are not often
mentioned among the stirring events of the field, are indicated in the
report of Col. Jason Marsh of the Seventy-fourth Illinois Regiment. He
says: "My command was formed in line of battle close behind a narrow
strip of cedar thicket, nearly covering our front, and skirting a
strip of open level ground about twenty rods wide to the cornfield
occupied by the enemy's pickets. Being thus satisfied of the close
proximity of the enemy in strong force, and apprehending an attack at
any moment, I deemed it {212} necessary to use the utmost precaution
against surprise, and, in addition to general instructions to bivouac
without fires, and to maintain a cautious, quiet vigilance, I ordered
my command to stack arms, and each man to rest at the butt of his
musket without using his shelter tent. Although the night was dark,
chilly, and somewhat rainy, and the men cold, wet, weary, and hungry,
I deemed it objectionable to use their shelter tents, not only because
of the hindrance in case of a sudden attack, but even in a dark night
they would be some guide to the enemy to trace our line. At a little
before four o'clock A.M., our men were quietly waked up, formed into
line, and remained standing at their arms until moved by subsequent
orders. As soon as it became sufficiently light to observe objects at
a distance, I could plainly discern the enemy moving in three heavy
columns across my front, one column striking out of the cornfield and
moving defiantly along the edge of the open ground not more than
eighty rods from my line. It was plainly to be seen that the fire of
my skirmishers took effect in their ranks, and in emptying their
saddles; to which, however, the enemy seemed to pay no attention."
Some of the most stubborn fighting of the day was done by Palmer's
division, and especially by Hazen's brigade of that division, on the
National left, in the angle between the railroad and the turnpike.
When the right of Rosecrans's army had been driven back, heavy columns
of the Confederates were directed against the exposed flank of his
left, which was also subjected to a fierce artillery fire. Palmer's
men formed along the railroad and in the woods to the right of the
pike, with Cruft's brigade nearest to the enemy, and several batteries
were hastily brought up to check the advancing tide. The Confederates
moved steadily onward, apparently sure of a victory, overpowered Cruft
and drove him back, and were still advancing against Hazen, some of
whose regiments had expended their ammunition and were simply waiting
with fixed bayonets, when Grose's brigade came to the relief of Hazen,
and all stood firm and met the enemy with a terrific and unceasing
fire of musketry, to which Parsons's remarkable battery added a rain
of shells and canister. The ranks of the Confederates were thinned so
rapidly that one regiment after another gave up and fell back, until a
single regiment was left advancing and came within three hundred yards
of the National line. At this point, when every one of its officers
and half its men had been struck down, the remainder threw themselves
flat upon the ground, and were unable either to go forward any farther
or to retreat. In the afternoon the Confederates made two more similar
attempts, but were met in the same way and achieved no success.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL D. S. STANLEY.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER, C. S. A.]
Rousseau's division, which had been held in reserve, was brought into
action when the fight became critical, and performed some of the most
gallant work of the day. A participant has given a vivid description
of some of the scenes in Rousseau's front: "The broken and dispirited
battalions of our right wing, retreating by the flank, were pouring
out of the cornfields and through the skirts of the woods, while from
the far end of the field rose the indescribable crackle and slowly
curling smoke of the enemy's fire. The line of fire now grew rapidly
nearer and nearer, seeming to close in slowly, but with fatal
certainty, around our front and flank; and presently the long gray
lines of the enemy, three or four deep, could be seen through the
cornstalks vomiting flame on the retreating host. The right of
Rousseau's division opened its lines and let our brave but unfortunate
columns pass through. The gallant and invincible legion came through
in this way with fearfully decimated ranks, drawing away by hand two
pieces of our artillery. When all the horses belonging to the battery,
and all the other guns, had been disabled, the brave boys refused to
leave these two behind, and drew them two miles through fields and
thickets to a place of safety. It was a most touching sight to see
these brave men, in that perilous hour, flocking around Rousseau like
children, with acclamations of delight, and every token of love, as
soon as they recognized him, embracing his horse, his legs, his
clothes. Flying back to the open ground which was now to be the scene
of so terrific a conflict, Rousseau galloped rapidly across it, and
read with a single eagle glance all of its advantages. Guenther's and
Loomis's batteries were ordered to take position on the hill on the
left of the railroad, and Stokes's Chicago battery, which had got with
our division, was placed there also. History furnishes but few
spectacles to be compared with that which now ensued. The rebels
pressed up to the edge of the cedar forest and swarmed out into the
open field. I saw the first few gray suits that dotted the dark green
line of the cedars with their contrasted color thicken into a line of
battle, and the bright glitter of their steel flashed like an endless
chain of lightning amid the thick and heavy green of the thicket. This
I saw before our fire, opening on them around the whole extent of our
line, engirdled them with a belt of flame and smoke. After that I saw
them no more, nor will any human eye ever see them more. Guenther,
Loomis, and Stokes, with peal after peal, too rapid to be counted,
mowed them down with double-shotted canister; the left of our line of
infantry poured a {213} continuous sheet of flame into their front,
while the right of our line, posted in its remarkable position by the
genius of Rousseau, enveloped their left flank and swept their entire
line with an enfilading fire. Thick smoke settled down upon the scene;
the rim of the hill on which our batteries stood seemed to be
surrounded by a wall of living fire; the turnpike road and the crest
of the hill on the right were wrapped in an unending blaze; flames
seemed to leap out of the earth and dance through the air. No troops
on earth could withstand such a fire as that. One regiment of rebels,
the boldest of their line, advanced to within seventy-five yards of
our line, but there it was blown out of existence. It was utterly
destroyed; and the rest of the rebel line, broken and decimated, fled
like sheep into the depths of the woods. The terrific firing ceased,
the smoke quickly rolled away, and the sun shone out bright and clear
on the scene that was lately so shrouded in smoke and mortal gloom.
How still everything was! Everybody seemed to be holding his breath.
As soon as the firing ceased, General Rousseau and his staff galloped
forward to the ground the rebels had advanced over. Their dead lay
there in frightful heaps, some with the life-blood not yet all flowed
from their mortal wounds, some propped upon their elbows and gasping
their last. The flag of the Arkansas regiment lay there on the ground
beside its dead bearer. Every depression in the field was full of
wounded, who had crawled thither to screen themselves from the fire,
and a large number of prisoners came out of a little copse in the
middle of the field and surrendered themselves to General Rousseau in
person. Among them was one captain. They were all that were left alive
of the bold Arkansas regiment that had undertaken to charge our line."
[Illustration: BURYING A COMRADE.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ROBERT B. VANCE, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE, C. S. A.]
There was great disappointment and dissatisfaction among the
secessionists at the failure of Lee's invasion of Maryland and Bragg's
of Kentucky. Pollard, the Southern historian, wrote, "No subject was
at once more dispiriting and perplexing to the South than the cautious
and unmanly reception given to our armies both in Kentucky and
Maryland." They seemed unable to comprehend how there could be such a
thing as a slave State that did not want to break up the Union.
Pollard, in his account of the response of the people of Maryland to
Lee's proclamation, says, "Instead of the twenty or thirty thousand
recruits which he had believed he would obtain on the soil of
Maryland, he found the people content to gaze with wonder on his
ragged and poorly equipped army, but with little disposition to join
his ranks."
{214} [Illustration: DELAWARE INDIANS ACTING AS SCOUTS FOR THE FEDERAL
ARMY IN THE WEST.]
{215} [Illustration: A SUTLER'S CABIN.]
CHAPTER XIX.
MINOR EVENTS OF THE SECOND YEAR.
LARGE ARMIES IN THE FIELD--BOMBARDMENT AND CAPTURE OF FORT
PULASKI--BATTLE OF BLUE'S GAP, VA.--MARCHING OVER THE SNOW--OPERATIONS
IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY--BATTLES OF WINCHESTER AND McDOWELL--CAPTURE
OF NORFOLK, VA., BY GEN. JOHN E. WOOL--WEST VIRGINIA CLEAR OF
CONFEDERATES--FIGHTING WITH BUSHWHACKERS--OPERATIONS UNDER GENERAL
BURNSIDE ON THE NORTH CAROLINA COAST--UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE
CHARLESTON--ENGAGEMENTS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY--GUERILLA RAID UNDER THE
COMMAND OF GEN. JOHN H. MORGAN--EAST TENNESSEEANS LOYAL TO THE
UNION--OPERATIONS IN EAST TENNESSEE UNDER GENERAL NEGLEY AND COLONEL
BUFORD--RAPID AND DARING RAIDS BY GENERAL FOREST--BATTLES AROUND
NASHVILLE--FIGHTING GUERILLAS IN MISSOURI--FIGHTING IN NEW
MEXICO--INDIAN OPERATIONS IN THE NORTHWEST.
In the second year of the war, though the struggle did not then
culminate, some of the largest armies were gathered and some of the
greatest battles fought. At the East, McClellan made his Peninsula
campaign with Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, and the Seven Days, and Pope
his short and unfortunate campaign known as the Second Bull Run,
followed by the moderate victory of Antietam and the horror of
Fredericksburg. At the West, with smaller armies, the results were
more brilliant and satisfactory. Grant had electrified the country
when he captured Fort Donelson and received the first surrender of a
Confederate army; and this was followed in April by the battle of
Shiloh, which was a reverse on the first day and a victory on the
second, and still later by the capture of Corinth. Thomas had gained
his first victory at Mill Springs, and Buell had fought the fierce
battle of Perryville, where the genius of Sheridan first shone forth.
Two great and novel naval engagements had taken place--the fight of
the iron-clads in Hampton Roads, and Farragut's passage of the forts
and capture of New Orleans. Amid all this there were hundreds of minor
engagements, subsidiary expeditions and skirmishes, all costing
something in destruction of life and property. Some of them were
properly a portion of the great campaigns; others were separate
actions, and still others were merely raids of Confederate guerillas,
which had become very numerous, especially at the West. This chapter
will be devoted to brief accounts of the more important and
interesting of these, generally omitting those occurring {216} in the
course and as a part of any great campaign. While they had little to
do with the results of the struggle, some account of them is necessary
to any adequate idea of the condition of the country and the
sufferings of that generation of our people.
On the 6th of January a force of about 2,500, principally Ohio and
Indiana troops, was sent out by General Kelly, under command of
Colonel Dunning, to attack a Confederate force of about 1,800 men
strongly posted at Blue's Gap, near Romney, Va. They marched over the
snow in a brilliant moonlight night, and as they neared the Gap fired
upon a small detachment that was attempting to destroy the bridge over
the stream that runs through it. The Gap is a natural opening between
high hills with very precipitous sides, and was defended with two
howitzers and rifle-pits. There were also entrenchments on the hills.
The Fourth Ohio Regiment was ordered to carry those on the one hill,
and the Fifth Ohio those on the other, which they did with a rush. The
advance then ran down the hills on the other side and quickly captured
the two pieces of artillery. After this the soldiers burned Blue's
house and mill, and also a few other houses, on the ground that they
had been used to shelter the enemy, who had fired at them from the
windows. In this affair the Confederates lost nearly 40 men killed and
about the same number captured. There was no loss on the other side.
The fertile Shenandoah Valley, between the Blue Ridge and the
Alleghenies, was important to both sides, strategetically, and to the
Confederates especially as a source of supplies. In 1861 Gen. Thomas
J. Jackson (commonly called "Stonewall Jackson") was given command
there with a Confederate force of about 11,000 men. But he did nothing
of consequence during the autumn and winter. The National forces there
were commanded at first by General Frémont, and afterward by General
Banks. The first serious conflict was at Winchester, March 23, 1862.
Winchester was important for military purposes because it was at the
junction of several highroads. Jackson's army during the winter and
spring had been reduced about one-half, but when he learned that the
opposing force was also being reduced by the withdrawal of troops to
aid General McClellan, he resolved to make an attack upon the force of
General Shields at Winchester. His cavalry, under Turner Ashby, a
brilliant leader who fell a few months later, opened the engagement
with an attack on Shields's cavalry aided by other troops, and was
driven back with considerable loss. In this engagement General Shields
was painfully wounded by a fragment of shell. The next day at sunrise
the battle was renewed at Kernstown, a short distance south of
Winchester, and lasted till noon. About 6,000 men were engaged on the
Confederate side, and somewhat more than that on the National. The
Confederates were driven back half a mile by a brilliant charge, and
there took a strong position and posted their artillery
advantageously. Other charges followed, with destructive fighting,
when they retired, slowly at first, and afterward in complete rout,
losing three guns. They were pursued and shelled by a detachment under
Colonel Kimball until they had passed Newtown. The National loss in
this action was nearly 600; the Confederate, a little over 700.
The next important engagement in this campaign took place, May 8th,
near McDowell. After a slow retreat by the Confederates, which was
followed by the National forces under General Schenck, the former
turned to give battle, and in heavy force, probably about 6,000,
attacked General Milroy's brigade and the Eighty-second Ohio Regiment,
numbering in all about 2,300. Milroy's advance retired slowly, one
battery shelling the advancing enemy upon his main body, and the next
day it was discovered that the Confederates had posted themselves on a
ridge in the Bull Pasture Mountain. Milroy's force went out to attack
him, and when two-thirds of the way up the mountain began the battle.
It was soon found that this was only the advance of the Confederates,
which slowly fell back upon the main body posted in a depression at
the top of the mountain. One regiment after another was pushed
forward, and the fighting was pretty sharp for two or three hours,
when Milroy's men gave up the contest as hopeless and fell back. An
incident of this fight that illustrates the humors of war is told of
Lieut.-Col. Francis W. Thompson of the Third West Virginia Regiment in
Milroy's command. He was writing a message, holding the paper against
the trunk of a tree, when a bullet struck it and fastened it to the
bark. "Thank you," said he; "I am not posting advertisements, and if I
were I would prefer tacks." The National loss in this action was
reported at 256, and the Confederate at 499. General Frémont's army,
moving up the valley, reached Harrisonburg June 6th, and there was a
spirited action between a portion of his cavalry and that of the
Confederates. The fight fell principally upon the First New Jersey
cavalry regiment, which, after apparently driving the enemy a short
distance, fell into an ambuscade, where infantry suddenly appeared on
both sides of the road, protected by the stone walls, and fired into
the regiment, which sustained considerable loss, including the capture
of Colonel Wyndham. Other forces, under Colonel Cluseret and General
Bayard, were then pushed forward, and the enemy, which was the rear
guard of Jackson's army, commanded by Gen. Turner Ashby, was driven
from the field. During this action each side successively suffered
from an enfilading fire, and General Ashby was killed. Three
Confederate color sergeants were shot, and a considerable number of
officers either fell or were captured. Capt. Thomas Haines of the New
Jersey cavalry, who was one of the last to retire from the ambush, was
approached and shot by a Virginia officer in a long gray coat, who sat
upon a handsome horse; and the next moment a comrade of the captain's,
rising in his saddle, turned upon the foe shouting, "Stop," and shot
the Virginian.
While Frémont's force was thus following up Jackson directly, General
Shields's division was moving southward on the eastern flank of the
Shenandoah, expecting to intercept him. Jackson's purpose was rather
to get away than to fight, for by this time he was very much wanted
before Richmond. Two days after the affair at Harrisonburg, Frémont
overtook, at Cross Keys, Ewell's division, which Jackson had left
there to delay Frémont's advance, while he should prepare to cross the
Shenandoah with his whole force. Frémont attacked promptly and met a
spirited resistance, which he gradually overcame, although at
considerable loss. Stahel's brigade, on his left, was the heaviest
sufferer. At the close of the action Ewell retired, and Frémont's
troops slept on the field. Frémont had lost nearly 700 men. The
Confederate loss is unknown. The next day Shields, coming up east of
the river, encountered Jackson's main force at Port Republic, and was
attacked by it in overwhelming numbers. His men, however, stood their
ground and made a brilliant fight, even capturing one gun and a
considerable number of prisoners, but were finally routed, and lost
several of their own guns. Frémont was prevented from crossing to the
aid of Shields by the fact that Jackson had promptly burned the
bridge. In this engagement Shields lost about 1,000 men, half of whom
were captured. Jackson's loss in the two engagements together was
reported at 1,150, and his loss in the entire {217} campaign at about
1,900. After this battle he hurried away to join Lee before Richmond,
while Frémont and Shields received orders from Washington to give up
the pursuit, and thus ended the campaign in the valley.
[Illustration: UNITED STATES MILITARY TELEGRAPH.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT C. SCHENCK.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT H. MILROY.]
On the 10th of May, Gen. John E. Wool, with 5,000 men, landed at
Willoughby's Point, Va., and marched on Norfolk. As he approached the
city he was met by the mayor and a portion of the Common Council, who
formally surrendered it. On taking possession, he appointed Gen.
Egbert L. Viele military governor, and a little later he occupied
Norfolk and Portsmouth. His capture of Norfolk caused the destruction
of the _Merrimac_, which the Confederates blew up on the 11th. The
navy yard, with its workshops, storehouses, and other buildings, was
in ruins; but General Wool's captures included 200 cannon and a large
amount of shot and shell. The Norfolk _Day Book_, a violent secession
journal, was permitted to continue publication until it assailed Union
citizens who took the oath of allegiance, and then it was suppressed.
* * * * *
West Virginia had been pretty effectively cleared of Confederates
during the first year of the war, but a few minor engagements took
place on her soil during the second year. One of the most brilliant of
these was an expedition to Blooming Gap under Gen. Frederick W.
Lander, in February. General Lander crossed the Potomac with 4,000
men, marched southward, and bridged the Great Cacapon River. This
bridge was one hundred and eighty feet long, and was built in four
hours in the night. It was made by placing twenty wagons in the
stream, using them as piers, and putting planks across them. General
Lander then, with his cavalry, pushed forward seven miles to Blooming
Gap, expecting to cut off the retreat of a strong Confederate force
that was posted there and hold it until his infantry could come up. He
found that they had already taken the alarm and moved out beyond the
Gap, but by swift riding he came up with a portion of them. Bringing
up the Eighth Ohio and Seventh Virginia regiments of infantry for a
support, he ordered a charge, which he lead in person, against a sharp
fire. With a few followers he overtook a group of Confederate
officers, cut off their retreat, and then dismounted, greeted them
with, "Surrender, gentlemen," and held out his hand to receive the
sword of the leader. Five of the officers surrendered to him, and four
to members of his staff. Meanwhile the Confederate infantry had
rallied and made a stand. At this point Lander's cavalry became
demoralized and would not face the fire; but he now advanced his
infantry, which cleared the road, captured many prisoners, and pursued
the flying enemy eight miles. The total Confederate loss was near 100.
The National loss was seven killed and wounded. Among the latter was
Fitz-James O'Brien, the brilliant poet and story writer, who died of
his wound two months later. The Eighth Ohio Regiment was commanded by
Col. Samuel S. Carroll, who received special praise for his gallantry
in this affair, and two years later, at the request of General Grant,
was promoted to a brigadier-generalship for his brilliant services in
{218} the Wilderness. General Lander, who was especially complimented
for this affair in a letter from President Lincoln, died in March from
the effects of a wound received the previous year. He was one of the
most patriotic and earnest men and promising officers in the service,
and, like his staff officer who fell here, was himself somewhat of a
poet.
There were many little bands of bushwhackers in the mountainous
portions of the territory covered by the seat of war. Commonly they
occupied themselves only in seeking opportunities for murder and
robbery of Union citizens, but occasionally they made a stand and
showed fight when the bluecoats appeared. Early in May one company of
the Twenty-third Ohio infantry had a fight with such a band at Clark's
Hollow, W. Va. Under command of Lieutenant Bottsford they scouted the
hills until they found the camp of the bushwhackers, which had just
been abandoned. Resting for the night at the only house in the hollow,
Bottsford's men were attacked at daybreak by the gang they had been
hunting, who outnumbered them about five to one. They took possession
of the house, made loop-holes in the chinking between the logs, and,
being all sharp-shooters, were able to keep the enemy at bay. The
leader of the bushwhackers called to his men to follow him in a charge
upon the house, assuring them that the Yankees would quickly
surrender; but as he immediately fell, and three of his men,
endeavoring to get to him, had the same fate, the remainder retreated.
Soon afterward the rest of the regiment, commanded by Lieut.-Col.
Rutherford B. Hayes, came up and made pursuit. The flying bushwhackers
set fire to the little village of Princeton and disappeared over the
mountain. In this affair the National loss was one killed and 21
wounded; of the bushwhackers, 16 were killed and 67 wounded.
On the 10th of September, at Fayetteville, the Thirty-fourth Ohio
Regiment, under command of Col. John T. Toland, looking for the enemy
near Fayetteville, W. Va., found more of him than they wanted. The
Confederates were in heavy force, commanded by Gen. William W. Loring,
and were posted in the woods on the summit of a steep hill. After
three hours of fighting Toland was unable to gain the woods or to
flank the enemy, and was obliged to retire, while the Confederates
fired upon him from the heights as he passed. He had lost, in killed,
wounded, and missing, 109 men. The loss of the Confederates was not
ascertained, but was probably very slight.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN C. FRÉMONT.]
* * * * *
After Burnside had established a basis of operations on the North
Carolina coast there were numerous small expeditions thence to the
interior. These were partly for the purpose of foraging, partly for
observation to detect any movements of large bodies of Confederate
troops, and partly to give protection and encouragement to Union
citizens, of whom were many in that State. On June 5th a
reconnoissance in force was made from Washington, N. C., for the
purpose of testing the report that a considerable force of cavalry and
infantry had been gathered near Pactolus. The expedition was commanded
by Colonel Potter of the First North Carolina (National) volunteers,
and was accompanied by Lieutenant Avery of the Marine artillery with
three boat-howitzers. The day was oppressively hot, and the march
laborious. All along the route slaves came from their work in the
field, leaned upon the fences, and gave the soldiers welcome in their
characteristic way. The enemy were first found at Hodge's Mills, where
they were strongly posted between two swamps with the additional
protection from two mills. They had cut away the flooring of the mill
flumes to prevent the cavalry from reaching them, and on the approach
of the National advance they opened fire. The artillery was at once
ordered forward within half musket range, and opened such a sharp and
accurate fire that in forty-five minutes it completely riddled the
buildings and brought down many Confederate sharp-shooters from the
trees. When the main body of the troops rushed forward to charge the
position, it was found that the Confederates had disappeared. The
National loss was 16 men killed or wounded; the Confederate loss was
unknown, but was supposed to be nearly a hundred, including the
colonel commanding. In their flight they left behind them large
numbers of weapons and accoutrements. This action is known as the
battle of Tranter's Creek.
[Illustration: COLONEL PERCY WYNDHAM.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JULIUS H. STAHEL.]
On the 2d of September it became known to the commander of the Federal
force occupying Plymouth, N. C., that a detachment of about 1,400
Confederates was marching on that town with the avowed intention of
burning it. Hastily bringing together a company of Hawkins's Zouaves,
a company of loyal North Carolinians, and a few civilians who were
willing to fight in defence of their homes, making in all about 300
men, the captain in command sent them out under the charge of
Orderly-Sergeant Green. Three miles from the town they met the enemy,
which consisted of infantry and cavalry commanded by Colonel Garrett.
They were bivouacked in the woods, and Green's force, making a sudden
dash, surprised them and fought the whole force for {219} an hour,
when they broke and fled. Colonel Garrett and 40 of his men were
captured, and about 70 were killed or wounded. Green lost three men.
The civilians who had joined the expedition proved to be among the
most efficient of the volunteers.
Four days later (September 6th) the Confederates attempted a similar
enterprise against Washington, N. C. Early in the morning three
companies of the National cavalry, with three guns, had gone out on
the road toward Plymouth, when the Confederate cavalry dashed in at
the other end of the town, followed by a body of about 400 infantry.
The troops remaining in the town were surprised in their barracks, and
a special effort was made to capture the loyal North Carolinians. But
the men quickly rallied, the Confederate cavalry was driven back, and
a slow street fight ensued. The troops that had gone toward Plymouth
were recalled, and guns were planted where they could sweep the
streets. The National gunboats attempted to aid the land forces, but
were largely deterred by a heavy fog. When, however, they got the
range of the houses behind which the Confederates were sheltered, the
latter quickly retreated, carrying off with them four pieces of
artillery. During the fight the gunboat _Picket_ was destroyed by the
explosion of her magazine. The National loss was about 30, and the
Confederate considerably larger.
* * * * *
Throughout the war there was a strong desire to capture or punish the
city of Charleston, which was looked upon as the cradle of secession,
and also to close its harbor to blockade runners. Elaborate and costly
operations on the seaward side were maintained for a long time, but
never with any real success. The lowlands that stretch out ten or
twelve miles south of the harbor are cut by many winding rivers and
inlets, and broken frequently by swamps. At a point a little more than
four miles south of the city was the little village of Secessionville,
which was used as a summer resort by a few planters. It is on
comparatively high ground, and borders on a deep creek on the one side
and a shallow one on the other. Across the neck of land between the
two was an earthwork about two hundred yards long, known as Battery
Lamar. There were similar works at other similar points in the region
between Secessionville and the southern shore of the harbor. The
National forces on these islands in 1862 were commanded by Gen. H. W.
Benham, who in June planned an advance for the purpose of carrying the
works at Secessionville and getting within striking distance of the
city. The division of Gen. Isaac I. Stevens was to form the assaulting
column, and Wright's division and William's brigade to act as its
support. The movement was made on June 16th, at daybreak. The orders
were that the advance should be made in silence, with no firing that
could be avoided. Stevens's men pushed forward, captured the
Confederate picket, and approached the works through an open field.
But the enemy were not surprised, and a heavy fire of musketry and
artillery was opened upon them almost from the first. It was found
that the front presented by the work was too narrow for proper
deployment of much more than a regiment, and the assailants suffered
accordingly. There was also a line of abatis to be broken through, and
a deep ditch; and yet a portion of the assaulting forces actually
reached the parapet, but, of course, found it impossible to carry the
works. The Eighth Michigan, which was in the advance, lost 182 men out
of 534, including 12 of its 22 officers. Col. William M. Fenton, who
commanded this regiment, says: "The order not to fire, but use the
bayonet, was obeyed, and the advance companies reached the parapet of
the works at the angle on our right and front, engaging the enemy at
the point of the bayonet. During our advance the enemy opened upon our
lines an exceedingly destructive fire of grape, canister, and
musketry, and yet the regiment pushed on as veterans, divided only to
the right and left by a sweeping torrent from the enemy's main gun in
front. The enemy's fire proved so galling and destructive that our men
on the parapet were obliged to retire under its cover. The field was
furrowed across with cotton ridges, and many of the men lay there,
loading and firing as deliberately as though on their hunting grounds
at home." Even had they been able to carry the work, they could not
have held it long, for its whole interior was commanded by elaborate
rifle-pits in the rear. Artillery was brought up and well served, but
made no real impression upon the enemy. When it became evident that no
success was possible, General Stevens withdrew his command in a slow
and orderly manner. General Beauregard says: "The point attacked by
Generals Benham and I. I. Stevens was the strongest one of the whole
line, which was then unfinished and was designed to be some five miles
in length. The two Federal commanders might have overcome the
obstacles in their front had they proceeded farther up the Stone. Even
as it was, the fight at Secessionville was lost, in a great measure,
by lack of tenacity on the part of Generals Benham and Stevens. It was
saved by the skin of our teeth." The National loss in this action was
683 men, out of about 3,500 actually engaged. The Confederates, who
were commanded by Gen. N. G. Evans, lost about 200.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-COLONEL RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. (Afterward
Brevet Major-General.)]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES SHIELDS.]
In October an expedition was planned to set out from Hilton Head,
S. C., go up Broad River to the Coosahatchie and destroy the railroad
and bridges in that vicinity, in order to sever the communications
between Charleston and Savannah. It was under the command of
Brig.-Gen. J. M. Brannan, and included about 4,500 men. Ascending
Broad River on gunboats {220} and transports, October 22d, they landed
at the junction of the Pocotaligo and Tullafiny, and immediately
pushed inland toward Pocotaligo bridge. They marched about five miles
before they encountered any resistance, but from that point were fired
upon by batteries placed in commanding positions. As one after another
of these was bombarded or flanked, the Confederates retired to the
next, burning the bridges behind them, and in some places the pursuing
forces were obliged to wade through swamps and streams nearly shoulder
deep. At the Pocotaligo there was a heavy Confederate force well
posted behind a swamp, with artillery, commanded by General Walker,
and here Brannan's artillery ammunition gave out. As the day was now
nearly spent, and there seemed no probability of reaching the
railroad, Brannan slowly retired and returned to Hilton Head. A
detachment which he had sent out under Col. William B. Barton, of the
Forty-eighth New York Regiment, had marched directly to the
Coosahatchie and poured a destructive fire into a train that was
filled with Confederate soldiers coming from Savannah to the
assistance of General Walker. He then tore up the railroad for a
considerable distance, and pushed on toward the town, but there found
the enemy in a position too strong to be carried, and, after
exchanging a few rounds, retired to his boats. The National loss in
this expedition was about 300; that of the Confederates was probably
equal.
[Illustration: NEGRO QUARTERS, HILTON HEAD.]
[Illustration: A NORTH CAROLINA SWAMP.]
* * * * *
The situation of Fort Pulaski relatively to Savannah was quite similar
to that of Fort Sumter relatively to Charleston. It stood on an island
in the mouth of Savannah River and protected the entrance to the
harbor. Just one year after the bombardment and reduction of Sumter by
the Confederate forces, Fort Pulaski was bombarded and reduced by the
National forces. This work was of similar construction with Fort
Sumter, having brick walls seven and a half feet thick and twenty-five
feet high. It was on Cockspur Island, which is a mile long by half
a mile wide, and commanded all the channels leading up to the
harbor. At the opening of the war it was seized by the Confederate
authorities, and it was garrisoned by 385 men, under command of Col.
Charles H. Olmstead. It mounted forty heavy guns, which protected
blockade-runners and kept out National vessels. Soon after the capture
of Port Royal, Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore was ordered to make a
reconnoissance of this work and the ground on Tybee Island southeast
of it, with a view to its reduction. He reported that it was possible
to plant batteries of rifled guns and mortars on Tybee Island, and
also on Jones Island, with which he believed the work could be
reduced. Jones Island is northwest of Cockspur Island. The Forty-sixth
New York Regiment, commanded by Colonel Rosa, was sent to occupy Tybee
Island, and a passage was opened between the islands and the mainland
north of Savannah, so that guns could be brought through and placed on
Jones Island. This was done with tremendous labor, the mortars
weighing more than eight tons each and having to be dragged over deep
mud on plank platforms, most of the work being done at night. The
Seventh Connecticut Regiment was now sent to join the Forty-sixth New
York on Tybee, and the construction of batteries and magazines {221}
on that island was begun. Here, also, the guns had to be carried
across spongy ground, 250 men being required for the slow movement of
each piece, and all the work being done at night and in silence; for
the batteries were to be erected within easy reach of the guns of the
fort. Their construction occupied about two months, and screens of
bushes were contrived to conceal from the Confederates what was going
on. There were eleven batteries ranged along the northern edge of
Tybee Island, mounting twenty heavy guns and sixteen thirteen-inch
mortars. When all was ready, the fort was summoned to surrender by
Gen. David Hunter, who had recently been placed in command of the
department. Colonel Olmstead replied: "I can only say that I am here
to defend the fort, not to surrender it." Thereupon the batteries
opened fire upon the fort, and a bombardment of thirty hours
ensued--April 10 and 11. At the end of that time ten of the fort's
guns were dismounted, and, as the fire of the rifled guns was rapidly
reducing its masonry to ruins, it was evident that it could not hold
out much longer; whereupon Colonel Olmstead surrendered. The only
casualties were one man killed on the National side, and three wounded
in the fort. It was found that the mortars had produced very little
effect, the real work being done by the rifled guns. General Hunter
said in his report: "The result of this bombardment must cause, I am
convinced, a change in the construction of fortifications as radical
as that foreshadowed in naval architecture by the conflict between the
_Monitor_ and the _Merrimac_. No works of stone or brick can resist
the impact of rifled artillery of heavy calibre." And General Gillmore
said: "Mortars are unavailable for the reduction of works of small
area like Fort Pulaski. They cannot be fired with sufficient accuracy
to crush the casement arches." A fortnight later, the attempt to
reduce Forts Jackson and St. Philip led Farragut to the same
conclusion concerning the use of mortars.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF SECESSIONVILLE, JAMES ISLAND, S. C.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL EGBERT L. VIELE.]
One who participated in the bombardment relates an amusing incident.
The batteries were under the immediate command of Lieut. (afterward
General) Horace Porter, who went around to every gun to ascertain
whether its captain was provided with everything that would be
necessary when the firing should begin. At one mortar battery fuse
plugs were wanting, and the officer was in despair. This battery had
the position nearest to the fort, and its four mortars were useless
without the plugs. Finally he remembered that there was a Yankee
regiment on the island, and remarked, "All Yankees are whittlers. If
this regiment could be turned out to-night, they might whittle enough
fuse plugs before morning to fire a thousand rounds." Thereupon he
rode out in the darkness to the camp of that regiment, which was
immediately ordered out to whittle, and provided all the fuse plugs
that were needed. The first gun was fired by Lieut. P. H. O'Rourke,
who afterward fell at the head of his regiment at Gettysburg. It is
said that the first gun against Sumter had been fired by a classmate
of his. One who was in the fort says: "At the close of the fight all
the parapet guns were dismounted except three. Every casemate gun in
the southeast section of the fort was dismounted, and the casemate
walls breached in almost every instance to the top of the arch. The
moat was so filled with brick and mortar that one could have passed
over dry shod. The parapet walls on the Tybee side were all gone. The
protection to the magazine in the northwest angle of the fort had all
been shot away, the entire corner of the magazine was shot off, and
the powder exposed. Such was the condition of affairs when Colonel
Olmstead called a council of officers in the casemate, and they all
acquiesced in the necessity of a capitulation in order to save the
garrison from destruction by an explosion, which was momentarily
threatened."
* * * * *
{222} [Illustration: FORT PULASKI DURING BOMBARDMENT, APRIL 11, 1862.]
On the 16th of April the Eighth Michigan Regiment, Col. William M.
Fenton, with a detachment of Rhode Island artillery, was {223} sent
from Tybee Island, Ga., to make a reconnoissance of Wilmington Island.
On landing, they marched inland by three different roads, and soon
discovered the enemy in some force. They took up a position for
defence and were attacked by the Thirteenth Georgia Regiment. When
Colonel Fenton ordered the bugler to sound the charge for his main
body, his advance mistook it for retreat, fell back, and threw his
line into confusion. At this moment the enemy advanced and began
firing. Order was soon restored, and through the vigorous efforts of
Lieut. C. H. Wilson one company was carried to the right, through the
woods, and made a flank attack upon the enemy's left. Thereupon the
Confederates slowly retired, leaving their dead and wounded on the
field. The National loss was 45 men; Confederate loss, unknown.
On the 10th of January an expedition consisting of 5,000
men--infantry, cavalry, and artillery--set out from Cairo to make an
extended reconnoissance in the neighborhood of Columbus, Ky., and in
the direction of Mayfield. It was led by John A. McClernand, who was
temporarily in command of that district. Nearly every point of any
consequence within fifteen or twenty miles was visited, roads were
discovered that had not been laid down on any map, the position of the
enemy at Columbus was correctly ascertained, and much information was
obtained regarding the disposition of the inhabitants toward the
Government. The march of about one hundred and forty miles was made
over icy and miry roads with considerable difficulty, and proved
useful for future operations, although it was not enlivened by any
conflict.
On the 15th of February Bowling Green, which had been considered an
important point in the line of defence that was first broken by
General Grant at Fort Henry, was evacuated by the Confederates, who
went to join their comrades at Fort Donelson. The National troops
under General Buell, marching forty miles in twenty-eight hours, took
possession of the place in the afternoon.
Many of the gaps in the Alleghenies were strategically important
because they were the natural places for the crossing of the road that
connected the States east and west of that range, and there were
frequent expeditions and small actions at these gaps by which one side
or the other sought to clear them of the enemy. One of these took
place in March, 1862, when it was discovered that a somewhat irregular
Confederate force of about 500 men had taken possession of Pound Gap,
Eastern Kentucky, built huts, and gathered supplies for a permanent
occupation. A road to Abingdon, Va., passes through this gap. General
James A. Garfield, whose defeat of Humphrey Marshall on the Big Sandy
has been recorded in an earlier chapter, set out a month later, March
13th, with a force of 900 men to clear the Gap. It was a laborious
march of two days in snow and rain and mud, with roads obstructed by
felled trees, and streams whose bridges had been destroyed. Arriving
at Elkton Creek, two miles below the Gap, Garfield sent out his
cavalry to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, and himself with the
infantry climbed the mountain a mile or two below the Gap, and thence
moved along the summit to attack them in the flank. When this force
arrived at the Gap, the enemy were found deployed on the summit at its
opposite side. Garfield deployed his own force down the eastern slope,
and then ordered them to charge through the ravine and up the hill
held by the enemy, which they promptly did. But before they could
ascend the southern slope the whole Confederate force disappeared.
Nothing was left for the National troops to do but to ransack the
captured camp, pack up what they could of the large quantity of
supplies, burn the remainder, and return whence they came.
When Kentucky was invaded by the Confederate forces of Bragg, Humphrey
Marshall, and Kirby Smith, the movement was accompanied and assisted
by a raid from a large band of guerillas, or partisan rangers as they
called themselves, led by a bold rider named John H. Morgan. The
principal resistance to Morgan was at Cynthiana, July 17th, about
fifty miles south of Cincinnati. The National troops occupying that
town were commanded by Lieut.-Col. J. J. Landrum, and numbered about
340, a part of them being home guards not very well armed or
disciplined, with one field gun. Morgan's men approached the town
suddenly, drove in the pickets, and began shelling the place without
giving any notice for the women and children to be removed. Landrum
immediately placed his one gun in the public square, where it could be
turned so as to sweep almost any of the roads entering the town, and
posted all of his force except the artillery in the outskirts where he
supposed the enemy were approaching, putting most of them at the
bridge overlooking. But to his surprise Morgan's force was very large
in comparison with his own, and entered the town from a different
direction. In a little while Landrum's men found themselves
practically surrounded, and subjected to a sharp fire both front and
rear, the guerillas having the shelter of the houses. The artillerymen
in the square were subjected to so hot a fire from the riflemen that
they were obliged to abandon their gun. Colonel Landrum writes: "I
rode along the railroad to Rankin's Hotel to ascertain what position
the enemy was taking. Here I met an officer of the rebel band, aid to
Colonel Morgan, who demanded my surrender. I replied, 'I never
surrender,' and instantly discharged three shots at him, two of which
took effect in his breast. He fell from his horse, and I thought him
dead; but he is still living, and will probably recover,
notwithstanding two balls passed through his body." A portion of
Landrum's force, posted north of the town, was overpowered and forced
to surrender. With another portion he attempted to drive the enemy
from the bridge and take their battery, but found them so strong there
as to render this hopeless, while all the time he was subjected to a
fire from the rear. Finally he determined with the remainder of his
men to cut his way through and escape. He emerged from the town in a
southeast direction, met and routed a small detachment of the enemy,
and was pursued by another detachment when he made a stand, posting
his men behind the fences, and for a considerable time held them in
check. When his ammunition was exhausted he gave orders for every man
to save himself as he could, and thus his command was dispersed. In
this affair the National forces lost about 70 men killed or wounded.
The loss of the guerillas is unknown, but they left behind them a
considerable number of wounded, and the capture of the town must have
cost them about 100 men. In this raid Morgan is said to have commanded
from 900 to 1,200 men, to have ridden over 1,000 miles, captured 17
towns, and paroled nearly 1,200 prisoners.
The smaller guerilla raids in Kentucky that year were more numerous
than any popular history could find space to record. Some of them,
however, were spiritedly met and severely punished. On the 29th of
July a band of over 200 attacked the village of Mt. Sterling. The
provost-marshal of the place, Capt. J. J. Evans, at once put every
able-bodied man in the village under arms, and posted them on both
sides of the street by which the guerillas were about to enter. He had
hardly done this when in came the enemy, yelling wildly and demanding
{224} their surrender. The answer was a well-aimed volley which
brought down the whole of their front rank, and which was rapidly
followed by other volleys that soon put them to flight. In their
retreat they met a detachment of the Eighteenth Kentucky Regiment,
under Major Bracht, which had been in pursuit of them, and when these
troops charged upon them they scattered in the fields and woods,
leaving horses, rifles, and other material. Their loss was about 100.
On the 23d of August the Seventh Kentucky cavalry, a new regiment
commanded by Col. Leonidas Metcalfe, had a fight with Confederate
troops at Big Hill, about fifteen miles from Richmond. With 400 of his
men he set out to attack the enemy, and near the top of the hill
dismounted to fight on foot. He says: "We moved forward amid a shower
of bullets and shells, which so terrified my raw, undisciplined
recruits, that I could not bring more than 100 of them in sight of the
enemy. The great majority mounted their horses and fled, without even
getting a look at the foe. It was impossible to rally them, and they
continued their flight some distance north of Richmond." The hundred
men who stood their ground fought the enemy for an hour and a half and
finally compelled them to fall back. Soon afterward a new attack was
made upon Metcalfe's men by about 100 Confederates who dashed down the
road expecting to capture them. But he had placed 200 men of a
Tennessee infantry regiment in the bushes by the roadside, and their
fire brought down many of the enemy and dispersed the remainder. A few
minutes later still another attack was made by another detachment,
and, as before, the Tennesseeans met it with a steady fire and drove
them off. Metcalfe's men then retired to Richmond, whither the
Confederates pursued them and demanded a surrender of the town.
Metcalfe replied that he would not surrender but would fight it out,
and, as he presently received reinforcements, the enemy departed. He
lost in this affair about 50 men. The Confederate loss is unknown.
[Illustration: A WOUNDED ZOUAVE. (From a War Department photograph.)]
On the same days when the great battle of Groveton or second Bull Run
was fought in Virginia (August 29th and 30th, 1862), one of the
severest of the engagements consequent upon Kirby Smith's invasion
took place at Richmond, Ky. The National forces numbered about 6,500,
largely new troops, and were commanded by Brig.-Gen. M. D. Manson.
Kirby Smith had a force at least twice as large. Early in the
afternoon of the 29th the Confederates drove in Manson's outpost, and
he, having had early information of their approach, marched out to
meet them. About two miles from the town he took possession of a high
ridge commanding the turnpike, and formed his line of battle with
artillery on the flank. The enemy soon attacked in some force, and
were driven off by the fire from the guns. Manson then advanced
another mile, where he bivouacked, and sent out his cavalry to
reconnoitre. Early in the morning of the 30th the enemy advanced
again, when Manson's men drove them back and formed on a piece of high
wooded ground near Rogersville. Here the enemy attacked him in earnest
and in great force, attempting to turn his left flank, which faced
about and fought stubbornly. More of his forces were now brought to
the front and placed in line, and the battle became quite severe. At
length the enemy, with largely superior numbers, succeeded in breaking
his left wing, which retreated in disorder. "Up to this time," says
General Manson, "I had maintained my first position for three hours
and forty minutes, during all of which time the artillery, under
command of Lieutenant Lamphere, had kept up a constant fire, except
for a very short time when the ammunition had become exhausted. The
Fifty-fifth Indiana, the Sixteenth Indiana, the Sixty-ninth Indiana,
and the Seventy-first Indiana occupied prominent and exposed positions
from the commencement of the engagement, and contended against the
enemy with a {225} determination and bravery worthy of older soldiers.
The three remaining regiments of General Cruft's brigade arrived just
at the time when our troops were in full retreat and the rout had
become general. The Eighteenth Kentucky was immediately deployed into
line, and made a desperate effort to check the advance in the enemy,
and contended with him, single-handed and alone, for twenty minutes,
when after a severe loss they were compelled to give away before
overwhelming numbers." Deploying his cavalry as a rear guard, and
placing one gun to command the road, Manson retreated to his position
of the evening before and again formed line of battle. Here the enemy
soon attacked him again, advancing through the open fields in great
force. At this moment he received an order from his superior, General
Nelson, directing him to retire if the enemy advanced in force; but it
was then too late to obey, for within five minutes the battle was in
progress along the whole line. The right of the Confederates was
crushed by Manson's artillery fire, and the enemy then made a
determined effort to crush Manson's right, which, after being several
times gallantly repelled, they at length succeeded in doing. General
Nelson now appeared upon the field, and by his orders Manson's men
fell back and took up a new position very near the town. Here they
sustained another attack for half an hour, and then were broken and
once more driven back in confusion. Manson succeeded in organizing a
rear guard which assisted the escape of his main force, but was itself
defeated and broken to pieces in a later encounter. Manson, attempting
to escape through the enemy's lines, was fired upon, and his horse was
killed, he being soon afterward taken prisoner. His loss in this
engagement was about 900 killed or wounded, besides many prisoners.
The Confederate loss was reported at about 700.
On the 9th of October a National force, commanded by Col. E. A.
Parrott, marched out and met the enemy at a place called Dogwalk, near
Lawrenceburg. Parrott placed his men in an advantageous position, with
two pieces of artillery, and soon saw the Confederate skirmishers
advancing toward it. He sent out his own skirmishers to meet them, and
placed his guns to command the road. The artillery was used very
effectively, especially in driving the enemy from a dwelling-house
where they had opened a severe fire on the line of skirmishers, and
after a fight that lasted from eight A.M. till afternoon the
Confederates retired, leaving a portion of their dead and wounded on
the field. Parrott lost fourteen men.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL HUMPHREY MARSHALL, C. S. A.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: GENERAL E. KIRBY SMITH, C. S. A.]
On the 18th of December a force of Confederate cavalry, under Gen.
N. B. Forrest, captured Lexington, Tenn. The town was defended by the
Eleventh Illinois cavalry, commanded by Col. Robert G. Ingersoll,
which withstood the enemy in a fight of three hours, and was then
compelled to retreat, leaving two guns in the hands of the
Confederates, who had lost about 40 men.
The State of Tennessee, like some others of the Southern States, had
its mountain region and its lowland; and, as was generally true in
such cases in the Confederacy, the people of the mountain regions were
more inclined to be true to the Union, while those of the lowlands
favored secession. This fact, together with the position it occupied,
made Tennessee a debatable ground almost throughout the war. Besides
the great battles that were fought on her soil--Shiloh, Chickamauga,
Chattanooga, Franklin, and Nashville--there were innumerable minor
engagements of varying severity and importance.
On the 24th of March, 1862, a regiment of loyal Tennesseeans,
commanded by Col. James Carter, left their camp at Cumberland Ford and
made a march of forty miles through the mountains to Big Creek Gap,
where they fought and defeated a body of Confederate cavalry, and
captured a considerable supply of tents, arms, provisions, wagons, and
horses.
Union City, Tenn., was a small village at the junction of the {226}
railroads from Columbus and Hickman, and on the 30th of March an
expedition was sent out from Island No. 10, under Col. Abram Buford,
to make a reconnoissance there. Buford had four regiments of infantry,
with two companies of cavalry and a detachment of artillery. They made
a forced march of twenty-four hours, and discovered a body of
Confederate troops drawn in line of battle across the road near the
town. The flanks of the Confederate line were protected by woods, and
Buford sent off his cavalry to make a detour and get in their rear. In
a wheat field at the right of the road he found an eminence suitable
for his artillery, and it went into position at a gallop. Almost in
one moment the Confederates were subjected to a fire from rifle-guns,
saw a line of bayonets coming straight at them in front, and
discovered that hostile horsemen with drawn sabres were in their rear.
Naturally (and perhaps properly) they immediately turned and fled
without firing a gun. They numbered about 1,000 men, infantry and
cavalry. A few prisoners were taken, together with the camp and all
that it contained. The tents and barracks were now burned, and the
National forces marched to Hickman.
Early in June an expedition commanded by Brig.-Gen. James S. Negley,
setting out from Columbia, marched eastward and southward toward
Chattanooga, for the purpose of reconnoitring and threatening that
place, bringing some relief to the persecuted Unionists of East
Tennessee, and ascertaining the truth of a report that the
Confederates were about to make a strong movement to recapture
Nashville. Their first capture was at Winchester, of a squad of
cavalrymen, including a man who was at once a clergyman, principal of
a female seminary, and captain in the Confederate service. This man
had made himself notorious by capturing and bringing in Union men to
the town, where they were given the alternative of enlisting as
Confederate soldiers or being hanged. Andrew Johnson, military
governor of Tennessee, who had himself suffered much persecution at
the hands of the secessionists, and was very bitter toward them, had
declared that rich rebels should be made to pay for the depredations
of the roving Confederate bands upon Union men. In accordance with
this, General Negley arrested a considerable number of well-known
secessionists in Marion County and assessed them two hundred dollars
apiece, appropriating the money to the relief of Union people in that
part of the State. Crossing the mountains to the Sequatchie Valley,
the expedition first met the enemy at Sweeden's Cove. They were soon
put to flight, however, by Negley's guns, and were then pursued by his
cavalry, who overtook them after a chase of two or three miles, rode
among them, and used their sabres freely until the Confederates were
dispersed. The next day the expedition proceeded toward Chattanooga,
where they found a large Confederate force with intrenchments and
several guns in position. In the afternoon the Confederates opened
fire with rifles and artillery, to which Negley's guns made reply, and
the cannonading was kept up for two hours, during which the National
gunners exhibited the greater skill and finally silenced the enemy's
batteries. These were repaired during the ensuing night, and the next
day were bombarded again, until it was discovered that the town had
been evacuated. It is related that during this fight a man appeared on
the Confederate intrenchments displaying a black flag, and was
instantly shot down. In his report General Negley said: "The Union
people in East Tennessee are wild with joy. They meet us along the
road by hundreds. I shall send you a number of their principal
persecutors from the Sequatchie valley."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN M. PALMER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES S. NEGLEY.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM NELSON.]
About this time the roving Confederate cavalry, commanded by Gen.
N. B. Forrest, who two years later obtained such an unenviable
reputation for his conduct at Fort Pillow, began to attract special
attention by the rapidity and daring of its movements. On the 13th of
July he made an attack on Murfreesboro' at the head of about 3,000
men. The town was garrisoned by about 800, not very skilfully disposed
or very well disciplined. The attack fell principally on the Ninth
Michigan Regiment, which fought courageously hand to hand for twenty
minutes and put the enemy to flight, losing about 90 men. The attack
was soon renewed by a larger force, and finally resulted in the defeat
of the Michigan men. Meanwhile another portion of Forrest's command
had attacked the court-house, where a portion of the garrison took
shelter and kept up a destructive fire from the windows. Being unable
to drive them out, the {227} Confederates set fire to the building,
when the garrison were, of course, compelled to retire. The
Confederates captured and paroled most of the garrison, packed up and
carried off what they could plunder, and burned a large quantity of
camp equipage and clothing. The garrison was commanded by Brig.-Gen.
Thomas L. Crittenden, who was severely censured for the mismanagement
that made the disaster possible.
[Illustration: ANDREW JOHNSON. Military Governor of Tennessee,
afterward President.]
[Illustration: A SONG AROUND THE CAMPFIRE.]
Early in August Colonel De Courcey went out with his brigade from
Cumberland Gap southward toward Tazewell on a foraging expedition.
Near that town they were attacked by four Confederate regiments under
Colonel Rains, and the advance regiment of De Courcey's force was
immediately deployed across the road with artillery on the flank. The
enemy charged in columns, and was received in silence until he had
approached within two hundred and fifty yards, when a terrible fire
was opened upon him and threw him into disorder. In the meanwhile a
battery of six guns, unobserved by the Confederates, had gained an
eminence in their rear, and when it began firing they at once turned
and fled. The National loss in this short but brilliant action was 68,
50 of whom were prisoners, being two companies who were out on
detached service and were suddenly surrounded. The Confederate loss
was about 200.
Brig.-Gen. R. W. Johnson, setting out with a force of infantry,
cavalry, and artillery to pursue the raider Morgan and his men, found
them (August 21st) at Galletin, and ordered an attack. All seemed to
be going well for a time, until confusion began to appear in his
command, and soon a panic arose and half of his men ran away. He and
some of his officers tried in vain to rally them, and finally he was
obliged to order a retreat of such of his men as had stood their
ground. He then marched for Cairo on the Cumberland, but, before
reaching that place found the enemy pressing so closely in his rear
that he was obliged to form line of battle to receive them. Again,
when the firing became brisk, most of his men broke and fled, while
with the remainder of his command he held the enemy in check until the
fugitives were enabled to cross the river, when he and his little band
were surrounded and captured. He had lost 30 men killed, and 50
wounded, and 75 were made prisoners.
On the 31st of August there was a severe skirmish near Bolivar,
between two regiments of infantry and two detachments of cavalry, and
a large Confederate force, which lasted about seven hours, and was
brought to a close by an artillery fire and a gallant charge from the
National troops. In this charge Lieutenant-Colonel Hogg, of the Second
Illinois cavalry, fell in a hand-to-hand fight with Colonel
McCullough. The next day, two regiments of infantry, with two
companies of cavalry and a battery, commanded by Colonel Dennis,
moving to attack this Confederate force in the rear, encountered them
at Britton's Lane, near Denmark. Dennis, who had about 800 men,
selected a strong position and awaited attack in a large grove
surrounded by cornfields. The Confederates, commanded by
Brigadier-General Armstrong, numbered at least 5,000, and were able
merely to surround the little band. They soon captured the
transportation train and two guns, but before the fight was over
Dennis's men recaptured them. For four hours the Confederates
persisted in making successive charges, all of which were gallantly
repelled, when they retired, leaving Dennis in possession of the
field. Their loss in killed and wounded was about 400. Dennis lost 60
men.
{228} [Illustration: GOING TO THE FRONT--REGIMENTS PASSING THE ASTOR
HOUSE, NEW YORK.]
In October General Negley, commanding at Nashville, learning that a
considerable Confederate force under Generals Anderson, Harris, and
Forrest was being concentrated at La Vergne, fifteen miles eastward,
for the purpose of assaulting the city, sent out a force of about
2,500 men, under command of Gen. John M. Palmer, to attack them. A
portion of this force marched directly by the Murfreesboro' road,
while the remainder made a detour to the south. The Confederate
pickets and videttes were on the alert, and made a skirmish for
several miles, enabling the main body to prepare for the attack. The
battle was opened by fire of the Confederate artillery, but this was
soon silenced when a shell exploded their ammunition chest. Almost at
the same moment the detachment that had made a detour came up and
struck the Confederates on the flank, at the same time deploying
skilfully so as to cut off their retreat. In this difficult situation
the Confederates held their ground and fought for half an hour before
they broke and retreated in confusion. They had lost about 80 men
killed or wounded, and 175 were captured, besides three {229} guns, a
considerable amount of stores, stand of colors, etc. General Palmer
lost 18 men.
On the 18th of November 200 men of the Eighth Kentucky Regiment, under
Lieutenant-Colonel May, was guarding a supply train bivouacked on an
old camp-meeting ground at Rural Hills, seventeen miles southeast of
Nashville. While they were at breakfast the next morning the crack of
rifles was heard, and in a moment two columns of Confederate cavalry
were seen rushing upon them from their front and their right. The boys
in blue seized their muskets, fell into line, and in a moment met the
enemy with a sharp and continuous fire. Presently a section of
National artillery was brought into action, and not only played upon
the enemy immediately in front, but also upon a larger body that was
discovered somewhat more than a mile away. This was answered by two or
three Confederate guns, and the fight was continued for half an hour,
when the assailants withdrew, leaving a dozen dead men on the field.
Colonel May lost no men.
A similar affair took place on the 6th of December, at Lebanon, where
the Ninety-third Ohio Regiment, under Col. Charles Anderson, was
guarding a forage train. Seeing an enemy in front, who were evidently
preparing to intercept the train, he marched his regiment in
double-quick time through the fields skirting the road, in order to
get ahead of the train and prevent an attack upon it. By the time he
got there the Confederates were in position to receive him, and a
sharp fight ensued, which ended in the flight of the Confederates. In
these little affairs there was often displayed a dash and courage by
individual soldiers, which in a war of less gigantic dimensions would
have immortalized them. Every historian of the Revolutionary war
thinks it necessary to record anew the fact that when the flagstaff of
Fort Moultrie was shot away Sergeant Jasper leaped down from the
parapet and recovered it under fire. Without disparaging his exploit,
it may be said that it was surpassed in hundreds of instances by men
on both sides in the civil war. In the little action just described,
William C. Stewart, a color-bearer, was under fire for the first time
in his life. Colonel Anderson says he "stood out in front of his
company and of the regiment with his tall person and our glorious flag
elevated to their highest reach; nor could he be persuaded to seek
cover or to lower his colors."
At Hartsville on the Cumberland, about forty miles from Murfreesboro',
1,900 National troops, under command of Col. Absalom B. Moore, were
encamped in a position which would have been very strong if held by a
larger force, but was dangerous for one so small. Against this place
Morgan the raider, at the head of 4,000 men, marched on the 7th of
December. He crossed the river seven miles from Hartsville, at a point
where nobody supposed it could be crossed by any such force, on
account of the steepness of the banks. With a little digging he made a
slope, down which he slid his horses, and at the water's edge his men
remounted. Coming up unexpectedly by a byroad, they captured all the
National pickets except one, who gave the alarm and ran into the camp.
The Nationals formed quickly in line of battle, but at the first fire
the One Hundred and Eighth Ohio broke, leaving the flank exposed. The
Confederates saw their advantage, seized it, and quickly poured in a
cross-fire, which compelled the remainder of Moore's forces to fall
back, though they did not do it without first making a stubborn fight.
Soon afterward Colonel Moore, considering it sufficiently evident that
further resistance was useless, raised a white flag and surrendered
his entire command.
A similar surrender took place at Trenton, December 20th, when
Forrest's cavalry attacked that place for the purpose of breaking the
railroad and cutting off General Grant's supplies. Col. Jacob Fry, who
was in command there, had been notified by Grant to look out for
Forrest, as he was moving in that direction. He got together what
force he could, consisting largely of convalescents and fugitives, and
numbering but 250 in all, and prepared to make a defence. He had a few
sharp-shooters, whom he placed on two buildings commanding two of the
principal streets, and when in the afternoon the enemy appeared,
charging in two columns, they were met by so severe a fire from these
men that they quickly moved out of range. Forrest then planted a
battery of six guns where it could command the position held by the
Nationals, and opened fire with shells. Colonel Fry says: "Seeing that
we were completely in their power, and had done all the damage to them
we could, I called a council of officers. They were unanimous for
surrender.... The terms of the surrender were unconditional; but
General Forrest admitted us to our paroles the next morning, sending
the Tennessee troops immediately home, and others to Columbus under a
flag of truce."
Thus far in his raiding operations General Forrest had had things
mainly his own way, but in the closing engagement he was not so
fortunate. While he was marching toward Lexington a force of 1,500
men, commanded by Col. C. L. Dunham, was sent out to intercept him,
and came upon a portion of his troops at Parker's Cross Roads, five
miles south of Clarksburg, on the 30th of December. After some
preliminary skirmishes Dunham, seeing that he was soon to be attacked,
placed his men in readiness, and with two pieces of artillery opened
fire. This was replied to by the Confederates with six guns, and
Dunham then retreated some distance to a good position on the crest of
a ridge, placing his wagon train in the rear. The enemy in heavy
column soon emerged from the woods, and made a movement evidently
intended to gain his flank and rear; whereupon he promptly changed his
position to face them, and opened fire. But the Confederate artillery
gained a position where it could enfilade his lines, and at the same
time he was attacked in the rear by a detachment of dismounted
cavalry. Again he promptly changed his position, facing to the rear,
and drove off the enemy with a considerable loss, completing their
rout by a brilliant bayonet charge. A detachment of cavalry also made
two charges upon him from another direction, and both times was
repelled. This was the end of the principal fighting of the day. A few
minutes later Forrest sent in a flag of truce demanding an
unconditional surrender, to which Colonel Dunham replied: "You will
get away with that flag very quickly, and bring me no more such
messages. Give my compliments to the general, and tell him I never
surrender. If he thinks he can take me, come and try." In the course
of the battle Dunham's wagon train was captured, and he now called for
volunteers to retake it. A company of the Thirty-ninth Iowa offered
themselves for this task and quickly accomplished it, not only
recapturing the train but bringing in also several prisoners,
including Forrest's adjutant-general and three other officers.
Reinforcements for Dunham now approached, and the Confederates
departed. The National loss, in killed, wounded, and missing, was 220.
The Confederate loss is unknown. Another instance of peculiar
individual gallantry is here mentioned by the colonel in his report.
"As our line faced about and pressed back in their engagement of the
enemy in our rear, one of the guns of the battery was left behind in
the edge of the woods. All the {230} horses belonging to it had been
killed but two. After everybody had passed and left it, Private E. A.
Topliff, fearing that the enemy might capture it, alone and under a
smart fire disengaged the two horses, hitched them to the piece, and
took it safely out."
* * * * *
Although the struggle to determine whether Missouri should remain in
the Union or go out of it had been decided in the first year of the
war, her soil was by no means free from contention and bloodshed in
the second year. The earliest conflict took place in Randolph County,
January 8th, where 1,000 Confederates, under Colonel Poindexter, took
up a strong position at Roan's Tanyard, on Silver Creek, seven miles
south of Huntsville. Here they were attacked by about 500 men under
Majors Torrence and Hubbard, and after half an hour's fighting were
completely routed. Their defeat was owing mainly to the inefficiency
of their commander. The victors burned the camp and a considerable
amount of stores.
In February Captain Nolen, of the Seventh Illinois cavalry, with 64
men, while reconnoitring near Charleston, struck a small detachment of
Confederate cavalry under Jeff Thompson. Nolen pursued them for some
distance, and when Thompson made a stand and brought up his battery to
command the road, the Illinois men promptly charged upon it, captured
four guns, and put the Confederates to flight.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JUSTUS McKINSTRY.]
The most infamous of all the guerilla leaders was one Quantrell, who
seemed to take delight in murdering prisoners, whether they were
combatants or non-combatants. His band moved with the usual celerity
of such, and, like the others, was exceedingly difficult to capture,
or even find, when any considerable force set out to attack it. On the
22d of March a detachment of the Sixth Kansas Regiment overtook
Quantrell near Independence, killed seven of his men, and caused the
remainder to retreat precipitately, except eleven of them who were
captured.
Another encounter with Quantrell's guerilla band was had at
Warrensburg, March 26, where he attacked a detachment of a Missouri
regiment commanded by Major Emery Foster. Although Quantrell had 200
men, and Foster but 60, the latter, skilfully using a thick plank
fence for protection, succeeded in inflicting so much loss upon the
guerillas that they at length retired. Nine of them were killed and 17
wounded. The National loss was 13, including Major Foster wounded. The
same night about 500 guerillas attacked four companies of militia at
Humonsville, but were defeated and driven off with a loss of 15 killed
and a large number wounded.
On the 26th of April the Confederate general John S. Marmaduke
attacked the town of Cape Girardeau, but after a smart action was
driven off, with considerable loss, by the garrison, under Gen. John
McNeil. In the evening of the next day the cavalry force that formed
the advance guard on his retreat was surprised and attacked near
Jackson by the First Iowa cavalry and other troops. Two howitzers,
loaded with musket balls, were fired at them when they were not more
than thirty yards away, and the next instant the Iowa cavalry swooped
down upon them in a spirited charge, from which not one of the
Confederates escaped. All that were not killed were captured, together
with a few guns, horses, etc.
[Illustration: A MILITARY PONTOON BRIDGE.]
One of the most desperate fights with guerillas took place near
Memphis, Mo., on the 18th of July. A band of 600 had chosen a strong
position for their camp, partly concealed {231} by heavy brush and
timber, when they were attacked by a force of cavalry and militia,
commanded by Major John Y. Clopper. Clopper first knew their location
when they fired from concealment upon his advance guard, and he
immediately made dispositions for an attack. His men made five
successive charges across open ground, and were five times repelled;
but, nothing disheartened, and having now learned the exact position
of the concealed enemy, they advanced in a sixth charge, and engaged
him hand to hand. The result of the fight was the complete defeat of
the guerillas, who fled, leaving their dead and wounded on the field
and in the woods. Clopper lost 83 men.
In these affairs the guerillas were by no means always defeated. When
in August a band of 800 had been gathered by one Hughes, it was
determined to make an attack upon the small National garrison at
Independence, principally for the purpose of obtaining additional
arms. The guerillas surprised, captured, and murdered the picket
before they could give an alarm, and then entered the town by two
roads, and attacked the various buildings where detachments of the
garrison were stationed. A gallant resistance was made at every
possible point; but as the guerillas outnumbered the defenders two to
one, and there was no prospect of any relief, Lieut.-Col. J. T. Buell,
commanding the town, finally surrendered. Hughes and many of his men
had been killed. Several of the buildings were riddled with balls, and
26 of the garrison lost their lives.
Again, at Lone Jack, Mo., five days later (August 16th), the guerillas
were successful in a fight with the State militia. Major Foster at the
head of 600 militiamen was hunting guerillas, when he suddenly found
more than he wanted to see at one time. They were estimated at 4,000,
and on the approach of Foster's little force they turned and attacked
him. Foster's men fought gallantly for four hours, and were not
overpowered until they had lost 160 men, the loss of the guerillas
being about equal. On the approach of National reinforcements the
guerillas retreated.
A month later, at Shirley's Ford on Spring River, the Third Indiana
Regiment, commanded by Colonel Ritchie, attacked and defeated a force
of 600 guerillas, including about 100 Cherokee Indians, 60 of whom
were killed or wounded before they retreated.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN S. MARMADUKE, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JEFF M. THOMPSON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL H. H. SIBLEY, C. S. A.]
One more desperate fight with guerillas in that State took place on
the 29th of October, near Butler, in Bates County. A band of them, who
had been committing depredations, and were threatening several towns,
were pursued by 220 men of the First Kansas colored regiment,
commanded by white officers. The guerillas in superior force attacked
them near Osage Island, charging upon them and making every
demonstration of special hatred for the blacks; but the colored men
stood their ground like any other good soldiers, and dealt out severe
punishment to the guerillas. When, finally, the cavalrymen succeeded
in riding in among the colored troops, many desperate hand-to-hand
encounters ensued. Not a colored soldier would surrender; and one of
the leaders of the guerillas, in describing the action, said that "the
black devils fought like tigers." The character of much of the
guerilla fighting may be seen from a few incidents of this battle.
While Lieutenant Gardner was lying wounded and insensible, a guerilla
approached him, cut his revolver from the belt, and fired it at his
head. Fortunately the ball only grazed the skull, and the next instant
a wounded colored soldier near by raised himself sufficiently to level
his musket and shoot the miscreant dead. Captain Crew had been killed,
and a guerilla was rifling his pockets, when another wounded colored
soldier summoned strength enough to get to his feet and despatch the
guerilla with his bayonet. On the approach of reinforcements for the
little band, the guerillas retreated. The National force lost about 20
men.
* * * * *
Northern Arkansas, as well as southern Missouri, was infested by bands
of Confederate guerillas, though it was not so rich a field for their
operations, as the number of Unionists in that State was comparatively
small.
In February, the First Missouri cavalry, hunting guerillas there, were
fired upon from ambush at Sugar Creek, and 18 men fell. The regiment
immediately formed for action, and artillery was brought up and the
woods were shelled, but with no result except the unseen retreat of
the enemy.
* * * * *
At Searcy Landing, on Little Red River, 150 men of the National force
had a fight with about twice their number of Confederates, whom they
routed with a loss of nearly 100 men.
On the 22d of October, Brig.-Gen. James G. Blunt, commanding a
division of the Army of the Frontier, set out from Pea Ridge with two
brigades. After a toilsome march of thirty {232} miles he came upon a
Confederate force at Old Fort Wayne, near Maysville, which consisted
of two Texas regiments and other troops, numbering about 5,000 in all.
He found them in position to receive battle, but believing that they
intended to retreat he made haste to attack them with his advance
guard and shell them with two howitzers. The enemy promptly answered
the artillery fire and showed no signs of retreating, but on the
contrary attempted to overwhelm the little force. General Blunt
hurried forward the main body of his troops and flanked the enemy upon
both wings, then making a charge upon their centre and capturing their
artillery. This completely broke them up, and they fled in disorder,
being pursued for seven miles. Blunt lost about a dozen men, and found
50 of the enemy's dead on the field.
[Illustration: PRACTICE BATTERY, NAVAL ACADEMY, ANNAPOLIS, MD.]
On the 26th of November General Blunt learned that Marmaduke's
Confederate command was at Cane Hill, and immediately set out to
attack it with 5,000 men and 30 guns. After a march of thirty-five
miles he sent spies into the enemy's camp to learn its exact location
and condition, who discovered that on one of the approaches there were
no pickets out. He therefore made his dispositions for an attack on
that side, and was not discovered until he was within half a mile of
their lines, when they opened upon him with artillery. He replied with
one battery, and kept up a brisk fire while he sent back to hurry up
the main body of his troops. Placing guns on an eminence, he shelled
the enemy very effectively, and then formed his command in line for an
advance, expecting a desperate resistance, but found to his surprise
that they had quietly retreated. They made a stand a few miles distant
at the base of the Boston Mountains, and there he attacked them again,
when they retired to a lofty position on the mountain side, with
artillery on the crest. The Second and Eleventh Kansas and Third
Cherokee regiments stormed this position and carried it, when the
enemy fled in disorder and was pursued for three miles through the
woods. Here another stand was made by their rear guard, which was
promptly charged by Blunt's cavalry. But the position defended was in
a defile, and the cavalry suffered severely. Bringing up his guns,
Blunt was about to shell them out, when they sent in a flag of truce
with a request for permission to remove their dead and wounded.
General Blunt granted this, but it proved that the flag of truce {233}
was only a trick of Marmaduke's to obtain time to escape with his
command. Darkness now came on, and the pursuit was abandoned. Blunt
had lost about 40 men, and Marmaduke about 100.
A much more important action than of those just recorded took place at
Prairie Grove on the 7th of December. Learning that General Hindman's
forces had joined those of General Marmaduke, making an army of about
25,000 men, General Blunt, fearing an attack, ordered the divisions
commanded by Gen. F. J. Herron to join him at once. Herron obeyed the
order promptly; but the Confederates, learning of this movement, made
an advance for the purpose of interposing between Blunt and Herron.
They attacked Herron first, who drove back their advance and then
found them in position on a ridge commanding the ford across Illinois
Creek. Herron sent a detachment of his men to cut a road through the
woods and come in upon their flank, thus drawing their fire in that
direction and enabling his main force to cross the ford. This movement
was successful, and in a short time his command had crossed and
brought its guns to bear upon the enemy's position. He then pushed
forward his infantry in several charges, one of which captured a
battery, but all of which were finally repelled. The Confederates then
made a grand charge in return and came within a hundred yards of
Herron's guns, but the fire of artillery and musketry was too much for
them, and they retired in disorder. Again, in his turn, Herron charged
with two regiments, again captured a battery, and again was forced to
retire. While this action was in progress Blunt was pressing forward
to the relief of Herron with his command, and now came in on the
right, joined in the fight and defeated the enemy, who repeated their
trick with a flag of truce and escaped in the night. In this battle
the total National loss, killed, wounded, and missing, was 1,148. The
Confederate loss is not exactly known, but was much larger, and
included General Stein among the killed.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTING WINTER QUARTERS.]
[Illustration: ALLAN PINKERTON AND SECRET SERVICE OFFICERS.]
The great war extended not only over the Southern States, but into
some of the Territories. In the summer of 1861 the Confederate
government commanded Gen. H. H. Sibley to organize a brigade in Texas
and march northward into New Mexico for the conquest of that
Territory. He moved up the Rio Grande in January, 1862, and early in
February came within striking distance of Fort Craig, on the western
bank of the river, which was the headquarters of Col. (afterward Gen.)
E. R. S. Canby, who commanded the National forces in New Mexico. Canby
planned to attack him, and began by sending a force of cavalry with
two batteries to cut off the Texans from their supply of water at the
river. In that vicinity, on account of the steep banks, there was only
one point where the stream could be reached. This detachment, however,
was a little too late, as the Confederates had already gained the
water. Colonel Roberts, in command of the detachment, fired upon them
with his batteries, dismounted one of their guns, and drove them off.
Roberts then crossed to the eastern bank, and the fight was renewed
with varying success, until the Confederates charged upon and captured
some of his guns. Colonel Canby then came upon the field with more of
his forces and ordered an advance to attack the enemy where he
appeared to be lurking in the edge of a wood. But the Confederates did
not wait to be attacked. After a sharp musketry fire on the right
flank, they made desperate charges to capture Canby's two batteries.
The one against Hall's battery was made by cavalry, and the horsemen
were struck down so rapidly by the fire of the guns that they could
not reach it. The other was made by infantry, armed principally with
revolvers. The guns, commanded by Captain McRae, were served rapidly
and skilfully, and made awful slaughter of the Texans; but they
continually closed up the gaps in their ranks and steadily pushed
forward until the battery was theirs. The infantry supports, who
should have prevented this capture, miserably failed in their duty and
finally ran away from the field. McRae and his men remained at their
guns till the last minute, and most of them, including Captain McRae,
were killed. With the loss of the battery, hope of victory was gone,
and the National troops retired to the fort. Canby had in this fight
about 1,500 men, and lost about 200. The Confederates numbered about
2,000, and their loss is unknown.
Another fight in this territory took place at Apache Cañon, twenty
miles from Santa Fé, on the 28th of March, where Major Chivington with
1,300 men and six guns overtook and attacked a force of about 2,000
Texans. The first shots were fired by a small party of the Texans in
ambush, who were immediately rushed upon and disposed of by the
advance guard of the Nationals. Chivington then pressed forward,
surprised and captured the pickets, and about noon attacked the main
force of the enemy. The battle lasted four hours, and Chivington with
his six guns had a great advantage over the Texans, who had but one.
The result was a complete defeat of the Confederates and capture of
their entire train {234} consisting of sixty-four wagons. The Texans
had made four attempts to capture Chivington's guns, as they had
captured Canby's, but only met with heavy loss. The total Confederate
loss was over 300 killed or wounded, and about 100 taken prisoners.
Chivington's loss was 150.
[Illustration: HEADQUARTER GUARD, ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.]
[Illustration: BRINGING IN A PRISONER.]
* * * * *
In obedience to an Act of Congress, Lieut.-Com. Thomas S. Phelps, in
command of the steamer _Corwin_, was detached from the North Atlantic
blockading squadron and ordered to make a regular survey of the
Potomac River, to facilitate the operations of the army, no survey of
this river ever having been made. He began the work in July, 1862, and
rapidly pushed it to its completion in March, 1863, most of the time
opposed by the artillery and cavalry of the Confederates. During the
winter months it was frequently necessary to break the ice in order to
prosecute the work. While thus engaged, he assisted materially in the
blockade of the river and in breaking up the haunts of the
contrabandists. The magnitude of the work may be imagined from the
fact that on the Kettle-bottoms alone, a section of the river about
ten miles in length by an average of four miles in width, more than
six hundred miles of soundings were run, necessitated by the immense
number of small shoals on this ground which were dangerous to
navigation. The length of river surveyed was ninety-seven miles.
* * * * *
Enraged by real or fancied wrongs in the failure of payment of
annuities, the Sioux Indians took the opportunity when the Government,
as they supposed, had all it could do to grapple with the rebellion,
to indulge in a general uprising in the Northwest. In August they
attacked several frontier towns of Minnesota and committed horrible
atrocities. The village of New Ulm was almost destroyed, and more than
100 of its citizens--men, women, and children--were massacred. They
also destroyed the agencies at Redwood and Yellow Medicine, and
attacked the villages of Hutchinson and Forest City, but from these
latter were driven off. They besieged Fort Ridgley, but did not
succeed in capturing it. Altogether they committed about 1,000
murders. Col. H. H. Sibley with a strong force was sent against them,
and in September overtook several bodies of the Sioux, all of whom he
defeated. In the principal battle two cannon, of which the Indians
have always been in mortal terror, were used upon them with great
effect. The Indians asked for a truce to rescue their wounded and bury
their dead, but Sibley declined to grant any truce until they should
return the prisoners whom they had carried off. Ultimately about 1,000
Indians were captured. Many of them were tried and condemned, and 39
were hanged.
{235}
CHAPTER XX.
EMPLOYMENT OF COLORED SOLDIERS.
ENLISTMENT OF COLORED SOLDIERS DENOUNCED IN THE SOUTH--NEGRO
ASSISTANTS IN CONFEDERATE ARMIES--CONFEDERATE THREATS AGAINST NEGRO
SOLDIERS AND THOSE WHO LED THEM--DEMOCRATIC JOURNALS IN THE NORTH
DENOUNCE THE ENLISTMENT OF COLORED SOLDIERS--INTENSITY OF FEELING ON
THE SUBJECT OF SLAVERY--INTERESTING CRITICISMS BY COUNT
GUROWSKI--BLACK SOLDIERS IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR--BRAVERY OF COLORED
TROOPS--OPINION OF COL. THOMAS W. HIGGINSON--AN INTERESTING
STORY--NEGRO SENTINELS IN CONFEDERATE ARMIES.
The year 1863 began with several events of the first importance. On
December 31st and January 2d there was a great battle in the West,
which has just been described. On New Year's Day the final
proclamation of emancipation was issued, and measures were taken for
the immediate enlistment of black troops. On that day, also, in the
State of New York, which furnished one-sixth of all the men called
into the National service, the executive power passed into hands
unfriendly to the Administration.
The part of President Lincoln's proclamation that created most
excitement at the South was not that which declared the freedom of the
blacks--for the secessionists professed to be amused at this as a
papal bull against a comet--but that which announced that negroes
would thenceforth be received into the military service of the United
States. Whatever might be said of the powerlessness of the Government
to liberate slaves that were within the Confederate lines, it was
plain enough that a determination to enlist colored troops brought in
a large resource hitherto untouched. Military men in Europe, having
only statistical knowledge of our negro population, and not
understanding the peculiar prejudices that hedged it about, had looked
on at first in amazement, and finally in contempt, at its careful
exclusion from military service. The Confederates had no special
scruples about negro assistance on their own side; for they not only
constantly employed immense numbers of blacks in building
fortifications and in camp drudgery, but had even armed and equipped a
few of them for service as soldiers. In a review of Confederate troops
at New Orleans, in the first year of the war, appeared a regiment of
free negroes, and early the next year the legislature of Virginia
provided for the enrolment of the same class.
[Illustration: THE COOK.]
[Illustration: EVENING AT A NEGRO CABIN.]
But the idea that emancipated slaves should be employed to fight
against their late masters and for the enfranchisement of their own
race, appeared to be new, startling, and unwelcome; and the
Confederates, both officially and unofficially, threatened the direst
penalties against all who should lead black soldiers, as well as
against such soldiers themselves. General Beauregard wrote to a friend
in the Congress at Richmond: "Has the bill for the execution of
Abolition prisoners, after January next, been passed? Do it, and
England will be stirred into action. It is high time to proclaim the
black flag after that period. Let the execution be with the garrote."
Mr. Davis, late in December, 1862, issued a proclamation outlawing
General Butler and all commissioned officers in his command, and
directing that whenever captured they should be reserved for
execution, and added, "That all negro slaves captured in arms be at
once delivered over to the executive authorities of the respective
States to which they belong, to be dealt with according to the laws of
said States," and, "That the like orders be executed with respect to
all commissioned officers of the United States, when found serving in
company with said slaves." The Confederate Congress passed a series of
resolutions in which it was provided that on the capture of any white
commissioned officer who had {236} armed, organized, or led negro
troops against the Confederacy, he should be tried by a military court
and put to death or otherwise punished.
Democratic journalists and Congressmen at the North were hardly less
violent in their opposition to the enlistment of black men. They
denounced the barbarity of the proceeding, declared that white
soldiers would be disgraced if they fought on the same field with
blacks, and anon demonstrated the utter incapacity of negroes for war,
and laughed at the idea that they would ever face an enemy. Most of
the Democratic senators and representatives voted against the
appropriation bills, or supported amendments providing that "no part
of the moneys shall be applied to the raising, arming, equipping, or
paying of negro soldiers," and the more eloquent of them drew pitiful
pictures of the ruin and anarchy that were to ensue. Representative
Samuel S. Cox, then of Ohio, said: "Every man along the border will
tell you that the Union is forever rendered hopeless if you pursue
this policy of taking the slaves from the masters and arming them in
this civil strife."
It is impossible at this distance of time, and after the question of
slavery in our country has been so thoroughly settled that nobody
disputes the righteousness and wisdom of its abolition, to convey to
younger readers an adequate idea either of the diversity of opinion or
the intensity of feeling on the subject, when it was still under
discussion and was complicated with great military and political
problems. Not only before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued,
but for a considerable time afterward, these opinions were tenaciously
held and these feelings expressed. The so-called conservatives of the
Northern States constantly affirmed that abolitionists of whatever
degree, and active secessionists, were equally wrong and blameworthy;
that the latter had no right to break up the Union for any cause, and
that the former had no right to emancipate the slaves even to save the
Union. They assumed that the Constitution of the United States was
perpetual, perfect, and infallible for all time, and ignored the
natural antagonism between the systems of slave labor and free labor.
In June, 1862, the conservative members of Congress held a meeting,
and adopted a declaration of principles which included the following:
"At the call of the Government a mighty army, the noblest and most
patriotic ever known, sprung at once into the field, and is bleeding
and conquering in defence of its Government. Under these circumstances
it would, in our opinion, be most unjust and ungenerous to give any
new character or direction to the war, for the accomplishment of any
other than the first great purpose, and especially for the
accomplishment of any mere party or sectional scheme. The doctrines of
the secessionists and abolitionists, as the latter are now represented
in Congress, are alike false to the Constitution and irreconcilable to
the peace and unity of the country. The first have already involved us
in a cruel civil war, and the others--the abolitionists--will leave
the country but little hope of the speedy restoration of the Union or
peace, if the schemes of confiscation, emancipation, and other
unconstitutional measures which they have lately carried, and
attempted to carry, through the House of Representatives, shall be
enacted into the form of laws and remain unrebuked by the people. It
is no justification of such acts that the crimes committed in the
prosecution of the rebellion are of unexampled atrocity, nor is there
any such justification as State necessity known to our government or
laws."
On the other hand, at a great mass meeting held in Union Square, New
York City, July 15, 1862, a series of resolutions was adopted which
included the following:
"That we are for the union of the States, the integrity of the
country, and the maintenance of this Government without any condition
or qualification whatever, and at every necessary sacrifice of life or
treasure.
"That we urge upon the Government the exercise of its utmost
skill and vigor in the prosecution of this war, unity of design,
comprehensiveness of plan, a uniform policy, and the stringent use of
all the means within its reach consistent with the usages of civilized
warfare.
"That we acknowledge but two divisions of the people of the United
States in this crisis--those who are loyal to its Constitution and
every inch of its soil and are ready to make every sacrifice for the
integrity of the Union and the maintenance of civil liberty within it,
and those who openly or covertly endeavor to sever our country or to
yield to the insolent demand of its enemies; that we fraternize with
the former and detest the latter; and that, forgetting all former
party names and distinctions, we call upon all patriotic citizens to
rally for one undivided country, one flag, one destiny."
The extreme of opinion in favor of immediate and unqualified
emancipation, and of employment of colored troops, with impatience at
all delay in adopting such a policy, was represented picturesquely, if
not altogether justly, by Count Gurowski. Adam Gurowski was a Pole who
had been exiled for participating in revolutionary demonstrations, and
after a varied career had come to the United States, where he engaged
in literary pursuits, and from 1861 to 1863 was employed as a
translator in the state department at Washington. He was now between
fifty and sixty years of age, and was a keen observer and merciless
critic of what was going on around him. He had published several books
in Europe, and his diary kept while he was in the state department has
also been put into print. It is exceedingly outspoken in every
direction; and though it is often unjust, and represents hardly more
than his own exaggerated eccentricity, yet in many respects he struck
at once into the heart of important truths which slower minds
comprehended less readily or less willingly. The following extracts
are suggestive and interesting. Their dates range from April, 1862, to
April, 1863.
"Mr. Blair [Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General] worse and worse; is
more hot in support of McClellan, more determined to upset Stanton;
and I heard him demand the return of a poor fugitive slave woman to
some of Blair's Maryland friends. Every day I am confirmed in my creed
that whoever had slavery for mammy is never serious in the effort to
destroy it. Whatever such men as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Blair will do
against slavery will never be radical by their own choice or
conviction, but will be done reluctantly, and when under the
unavoidable pressure of events.... Mr. Lincoln is forced out again
from one of his pro-slavery intrenchments; he was obliged to yield,
and to sign the hard-fought bill for emancipation in the District of
Columbia. But how reluctantly, with what bad grace he signed it! Good
boy; he wishes not to strike his mammy. And to think that the friends
of humanity in Europe will credit this emancipation not where it is
due, not to the noble pressure exercised by the high-minded Northern
masses! Mr. Lincoln, his friends assert, does not wish to hurt the
feelings of any one with whom he has to deal. Exceedingly amiable
quality in a private individual, but at times turning almost to be a
vice in a man intrusted with the destinies of a nation. So he never
could decide to hurt the feelings of McClellan, and this after all
{237} the numerous proofs of his incapacity. But Mr. Lincoln hurts
thereby, and in the most sensible manner, the interests, nay, the
lives of the twenty millions of people.... The last draft could be
averted from the North if the four millions of loyal Africo-Americans
were called to arms. But Mr. Lincoln, with the Sewards, the Blairs,
and others, will rather see every Northern man shot than to touch the
palladium of the rebels.... Proclamation _conditionally_ abolishing
slavery from 1863. The _conditional_ is the last desperate effort made
by Mr. Lincoln and by Mr. Seward to save slavery. The two statesmen
found out that it was dangerous longer to resist the decided,
authoritative will of the masses. But if the rebellion is crushed
before January 1st, 1863, what then? If the rebels turn loyal before
that term? Then the people of the North will be cheated. The
proclamation is written in the meanest and the most dry routine style;
not a word to evoke a generous thrill, not a word reflecting the warm
and lofty comprehension and feelings of the immense majority of the
people on this question of emancipation. Nothing for humanity, nothing
to humanity. How differently Stanton would have spoken! General
Wadsworth truly says that never a noble subject was more belittled by
the form in which it was uttered.... The proclamation of September 22d
may not produce in Europe the effect and the enthusiasm which it might
have evoked if issued a year ago, as an act of justice and of
self-conscientious force, as an utterance of the lofty, pure, and
ardent aspirations and will of a high-minded people. Europe may see
now in the proclamation an action of despair made in the duress of
events.... Every time an Africo-American regiment is armed or created,
Mr. Lincoln seems as though making an effort, or making a gracious
concession in permitting the increase of our forces. It seems as if
Mr. Lincoln were ready to exhaust all the resources of the country
before he boldly strikes the Africo-American vein."
One hundred and seventy thousand negroes were enlisted, and many of
them performed notable service, displaying, at Fort Wagner, Olustee,
and elsewhere, quite as much steadiness and courage as any white
troops. If the expressions of doubt as to the military value of the
colored race were sincere, they argued inexcusable ignorance; for
black soldiers had fought in the ranks of our Revolutionary armies,
and Perry's victory on Lake Erie in 1813--which, with the battle of
the Thames, secured us the great Northwest--was largely the work of
colored sailors.
[Illustration: PLANTER'S RESIDENCE IN LOUISIANA.]
[Illustration: A "CONTRABAND."]
[Illustration: NEGRO CABIN ON SOUTHERN PLANTATION.]
The President recognized the obligation of the Government to protect
all its servants by every means in its power, and issued a
proclamation directing that "for every soldier of the United States
killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be
executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into
slavery, a rebel soldier {238} shall be placed at hard labor on the
public works." But such retaliation was never resorted to.
[Illustration: COLONEL ROBERT G. SHAW. (Commanding the Fifty-fourth
Massachusetts Colored Regiment.)]
Before the war it had been a constant complaint of the Southerners,
that the discussion of schemes for the abolition of slavery, and the
scattering of documents that argued the right of every man to liberty,
were likely to excite bloody insurrection among the slaves. And many
students of this piece of history have expressed surprise that when
the war broke out the blacks did not at once become mutinous all over
the South, and make it impossible to put Confederate armies in the
field. But it must be remembered, that although the struggle resulted
in their liberation, yet when it was begun no intention was expressed
on the part of the Government except a determination to save the
Union, and the war had been in progress a year and a half before the
blacks had any reason to suppose it would benefit them whichever way
it might turn. They were often possessed of more shrewdness than they
were credited with. Their sentiments up to the time of the
Emancipation Proclamation were perhaps fairly represented by one who
was an officer's servant in an Illinois regiment, and was at the
battle of Fort Donelson. A gentleman who afterward met him on the deck
of a steamer, and was curious to know what he thought of the struggle
that was going on, questioned him with the following result:
"Were you in the fight?"
"Had a little taste of it, sa."
"Stood your ground, did you?"
"No, sa; I runs."
"Run at the first fire, did you?"
"Yes, sa; and would ha' run soona had I know'd it war comin'."
"Why, that wasn't very creditable to your courage."
"Dat isn't in my line, sa; cookin's my perfeshun."
"Well, but have you no regard for your reputation?"
"Refutation's nuffin by de side ob life."
"Do you consider your life worth more than other people's?"
"It's worth more to me, sa."
"Then you must value it very highly?"
"Yes, sa, I does; more dan all dis wuld; more dan a million of
dollars, sa: for what would dat be wuf to a man wid de bref out of
him? Self-perserbashum am de fust law wid me."
"But why should you act upon a different rule from other men?"
"Because different men set different values upon dar lives: mine is
not in de market."
"But if you lost it, you would have the satisfaction of knowing that
you died for your country."
"What satisfaction would dat be to me when de power ob feelin' was
gone?"
"Then patriotism and honor are nothing to you?"
"Nuffin whatever, sa: I regard dem as among de vanities: and den de
Gobernment don't know me; I hab no rights; may be sold like old hoss
any day, and dat's all."
"If our old soldiers were like you, traitors might have broken up the
Government without resistance."
"Yes, sa; dar would hab been no help for it. I wouldn't put my life in
de scale 'ginst any gobernment dat ever existed; for no gobernment
could replace de loss to me."
"Do you think any of your company would have missed you if you had
been killed?"
"May be not, sa; a dead white man ain't much to dese sogers, let alone
a dead nigga; but I'd a missed myself, and dat was de pint wid me."
Incidents like this were eagerly reported by journals that chose to
argue that the colored men would not fight in any case, and such
assertions were kept up and repeated by them long after they had
fought most gallantly on several fields. Somebody in describing one of
these battles used the expression, "The colored troops fought nobly,"
and this was seized upon and repeated sneeringly in hundreds of
head-lines and editorials, always with an implication that it was
buncombe, until the readers of those journals were made to believe
that such troops did not fight at all. The fact was that their
percentage of losses on the whole number that went into the service
was slightly greater than that of the white troops; and when we
consider that they fought with a prospect of being either murdered or
sold into slavery, if they fell into the hands of the enemy, it must
be acknowledged that they were entitled to a full measure of credit.
Immediately after the proclamation of emancipation was issued, Lorenzo
Thomas, adjutant-general of the army, was sent to Louisiana, where he
explained his mission in a speech to the soldiers, in the course of
which he said:
"Look along the river, and see the multitude of deserted plantations
upon its banks. These are the places for these freedmen, where they
can be self-sustaining and self-supporting. All of you will some day
be on picket-duty; and I charge you all, if any of this unfortunate
race come within your lines, that you do not turn them away, but
receive them kindly and cordially. They are to be encouraged to come
to us; they are to be received with open arms; they are to be fed and
clothed; they are to be armed. This is the policy that has been fully
determined upon. I am here to say that I am authorized to raise as
many regiments of blacks as I can. I am authorized to give
commissions, from the highest to the lowest; and I desire those
persons who are earnest in this work to take hold of it. I desire only
those whose hearts are in it, and to them alone will I give
commissions. I don't care who they are, or what their present rank may
be. I do not hesitate to say, that all proper persons will receive
commissions.
"While I am authorized thus in the name of the Secretary of War, I
have the fullest authority to dismiss from the army any man, be his
rank what it may, whom I find maltreating the freedmen. This part of
my duty I will most assuredly perform if any case comes before me. I
would rather do that than give {239} commissions, because such men are
unworthy the name of soldiers. This, fellow soldiers, is the
determined policy of the Administration. You all know, full well, when
the President of the United States, though said to be slow in coming
to a determination, once puts his foot down, it is there; and he is
not going to take it up. He has put his foot down. I am here to assure
you that my official influence shall be given that he shall not raise
it."
Major-Gen. B. M. Prentiss then made a speech, in which he said, that
"from the time he was a prisoner, and a negro sentinel, with firm
step, beat in front of his cell, and with firmer voice commanded
silence within, he prayed God for the day of revenge; and he now
thanked God that it had come."
General Prentiss, it will be remembered, had been captured at the
battle of Shiloh, and from this incidental testimony it appears that
he found the Confederates had negroes doing duty as sentinels at
least.
Col. Thomas W. Higginson, who saw much service in General Saxton's
department on the coast of South Carolina, and who there raised and
commanded a regiment of colored troops, wrote: "It needs but a few
days to show up the absurdity of distrusting the military availability
of these people. They have quite as much average comprehension as
whites of the need of the thing, as much courage I doubt not, as much
previous knowledge of the gun, and, above all, a readiness of ear and
imitation which for purposes of drill counterbalances any defect of
mental training. As to camp life, they have little to sacrifice; they
are better fed, housed, and clothed than ever in their lives before,
and they appear to have fewer inconvenient vices. They are simple,
docile, and affectionate almost to the point of absurdity. The same
men who stood fire in open field with perfect coolness, on the late
expedition, have come to me blubbering in the most irresistibly
ludicrous manner on being transferred from one company in the regiment
to another. This morning I wandered about where different companies
were target shooting, and their glee was contagious. Such exulting
shouts of 'Ki! ole man,' when some steady old turkey-shooter brought
his gun down for an instant's aim and unerringly hit the mark; and
then, when some unwary youth fired his piece into the ground at half
cock, such infinite guffawing and delight, such rolling over and over
on the grass, such dances of ecstasy, as made the Ethiopian minstrelsy
of the stage appear a feeble imitation."
[Illustration: COLORED INFANTRY AT FORT LINCOLN.]
The first regiment of colored troops raised at the North was the
Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, commanded by Col. Robert G. Shaw, who fell
at their head in the desperate assault on Fort Wagner. The
whole-heartedness with which, when once permitted to enlist, the
colored soldiers entered into the war, is {240} indicated by the fact
that their enthusiasm added not only to the muskets in the field, but
also to the music and poetry in the air. A private in the regiment
just mentioned produced a song which, whatever its defects as poetry,
can hardly be criticised for its sentiments.
Frémont told them, when the war it first begun,
How to save the Union, and the way it should be done;
But Kentucky swore so hard, and Old Abe he had his fears,
Till every hope was lost but the colored volunteers.
CHORUS.
Oh, give us a flag all free without a slave!
We'll fight to defend it as our fathers did so brave.
The gallant Comp'ny A will make the rebels dance;
And we'll stand by the Union, if we only have a chance.
McClellan went to Richmond with two hundred thousand brave;
He said, "Keep back the niggers," and the Union he would save.
Little Mac he had his way, still the Union is in tears:
_Now_ they call for the help of the colored volunteers.
_Cho._--Oh, give us a flag, etc.
Old Jeff says he'll hang us if we dare to meet him armed--
A very big thing, but we are not at all alarmed;
For he first has got to catch us before the way is clear,
And "that's what's the matter" with the colored volunteer.
_Cho._--Oh, give us a flag, etc.
So rally, boys, rally! let us never mind the past.
We had a hard road to travel, but our day is coming fast;
For God is for the right, and we have no need to fear;
The Union must be saved by the colored volunteer.
_Cho._--Oh, give us a flag, etc.
How many of them Jeff Davis did hang, or otherwise murder, will never
be known; but it is certain that many of those captured were disposed
of in some manner not in accordance with the laws of war. At the
surrender of Port Hudson not a single colored man was found alive,
although it was known that thirty-five had been taken prisoners by the
Confederates during the siege. It is no wonder that when they did go
into battle they fought with desperation. The first regular engagement
in which they took part was the battle of Milliken's Bend, La., June
7, 1863; concerning which an eye-witness wrote:
"A force of about five hundred negroes, and two hundred men of the
Twenty-third Iowa, belonging to the Second Brigade, Carr's division
(the Twenty-third Iowa had been up the river with prisoners, and was
on its way back to this place), was surprised in camp by a rebel force
of about two thousand men. The first intimation that the commanding
officer received was from one of the black men, who went into the
colonel's tent, and said, 'Massa, the secesh are in camp.' The colonel
ordered him to have the men load their guns at once. He instantly
replied: 'We have done did that now, massa.' Before the colonel was
ready, the men were in line, ready for action. As before stated, the
rebels drove our force toward the gunboats, taking colored men
prisoners and murdering them. This so enraged them that they rallied,
and charged the enemy more heroically and desperately than has been
recorded during the war. It was a genuine bayonet charge, a
hand-to-hand fight, that has never occurred to any extent during this
prolonged conflict. Upon both sides men were killed with the butts of
muskets. White and black men were lying side by side, pierced by
bayonets, and in some instances transfixed to the earth. In one
instance, two men--one white and the other black--were found dead,
side by side, each having the other's bayonet through his body. If
facts prove to be what they are now represented, this engagement of
Sunday morning will be recorded as the most desperate of this war.
Broken limbs, broken heads, the mangling of bodies, all prove that it
was a contest between enraged men--on the one side, from hatred to a
race; and on the other, desire for self-preservation, revenge for past
grievances and the inhuman murder of their comrades. One brave man
took his former master prisoner, and brought him into camp with great
gusto. A rebel prisoner made a particular request that his own negroes
should not be placed over him as a guard."
Capt. M. M. Miller, who commanded a colored company in that action,
said: "I went into the fight with thirty-three men, and had sixteen
killed, eleven badly wounded, and four slightly. The enemy charged us
so close that we fought with our bayonets hand to hand. I have six
broken bayonets to show how bravely my men fought. The enemy cried,
'No quarter!' but some of them were very glad to take it when made
prisoners. Not one of my men offered to leave his place until ordered
to fall back. No negro was ever found alive that was taken a prisoner
by the rebels in this fight."
[Illustration: THE "INTELLIGENT CONTRABAND."]
[Illustration]
{241}
CHAPTER XXI.
CHANCELLORSVILLE.
"FIGHTING JOE HOOKER"--LETTER FROM PRESIDENT LINCOLN--RESTORING THE
DISCIPLINE OF THE ARMY--CAPTURING THE HEIGHTS OF
FREDERICKSBURG--SKILLFUL MOVEMENT BY "STONEWALL" JACKSON--HEROIC
CHARGE OF CAVALRY COMMANDED BY MAJOR PETER KEENAN--ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING
OF GENERAL JACKSON--DEFEAT OF THE NATIONAL FORCES--GENERAL HOOKER'S
EXPANATION OF HIS FAILURE--NUMEROUS INTERESTING INCIDENTS.
After Burnside's failure at Fredericksburg, he was superseded, January
25, 1863, by General Joseph Hooker, who had commanded one of his grand
divisions. Hooker, now forty-eight years old, was a graduate of West
Point, had seen service in the Florida and Mexican wars, had been
through the peninsula campaign with McClellan, was one of our best
corps commanders, and was a favorite with the soldiers, who called him
"Fighting Joe Hooker." In giving the command to General Hooker,
President Lincoln accompanied it with a remarkable letter, which not
only exhibits his own peculiar genius, but suggests some of the
complicated difficulties of the military and political situation. He
wrote: "I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of
course I have done this upon what appear to me sufficient reasons, and
yet I think it best for you to know there are some things in regard to
which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave
and skilful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe you do not
mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have
confidence in yourself, which is a valuable if not indispensable
quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good
rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command
of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him
as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country,
and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard,
in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying, that both the
army and the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for
this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only
those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask
of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The
Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is
neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders.
I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the
army, of criticising their commander, and withholding confidence from
him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put
it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, were he alive again, could get any
good out of any army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now,
beware of rashness! Beware of rashness! But with energy and sleepless
vigilance go forward and give us victories."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER.]
Hooker restored the discipline of the Army of the Potomac, which had
been greatly relaxed, reorganized it in corps, and opened the spring
campaign with every promise of success. The army was still on the
Rappahannock, opposite Fredericksburg, and he planned to cross over
and strike Lee's left. Making a demonstration with Sedgwick's corps
below the town, he moved a large part of his army up-stream, crossed
quickly, and had forty-six thousand men at Chancellorsville before Lee
guessed what he was about. This "ville" was only a single house, named
from its owner. Eastward, between it and Fredericksburg, there was
open country; west of it was the great thicket known as the
Wilderness, in the depths of which, a year later, a bloody battle was
fought.
Instead of advancing into the open country at once, and striking the
enemy's flank, Hooker lost a day in inaction, which gave Lee time to
learn what was going on and to make dispositions to meet the
emergency. Leaving a small force to check Sedgwick, who had carried
the heights of Fredericksburg, he moved toward Hooker with nearly all
his army, May 1st, and attacked at various points, endeavoring to
ascertain Hooker's exact position. By nightfall of this same day,
Hooker appears to have lost confidence in the plans with which he set
out, and been deserted by his old-time audacity; for instead of
maintaining a tactical offensive, he drew back from some of his more
advanced positions, formed his army in a semicircle, and awaited
attack. His left and his centre were strongly posted and to some
extent intrenched; but his right, consisting of Howard's corps, was
"in the air," and, moreover, it faced the Wilderness. When this weak
spot was discovered by the enemy, on the morning of the 2d, Lee sent
Jackson with twenty-six thousand men to make a long detour, pass into
the Wilderness, and, emerging suddenly from its eastern edge, take
Howard by surprise. Jackson's men were seen and counted as they passed
over the crest of a hill; they were even attacked by detachments from
Sickles's corps; and Hooker sent orders to Howard to strengthen his
position, advance his pickets, and not allow himself to be surprised.
But Howard appears to have disregarded all precautions, and in the
afternoon the enemy came down upon him, preceded by a rush of
frightened wild animals driven from their cover in the woods by the
advancing battle-line. Howards corps was doubled up, thrown into
confusion, and completely routed. The enemy was {242} coming on
exultingly, when General Sickles sent Gen. Alfred Pleasonton with two
regiments of cavalry and a battery to occupy an advantageous position
at Hazel Grove, which was the key-point of this part of the
battlefield. Pleasonton arrived just in time to see that the
Confederates were making toward the same point and were likely to
secure it. There was but one way to save the army, and Pleasonton
quickly comprehended it. He ordered Major Peter Keenan, with the
Eighth Pennsylvania cavalry regiment, about four hundred strong, to
charge immediately upon the ten thousand Confederate infantry. "It is
the same as saying we must be killed," said Keenan, "but we'll do it."
This charge, in which Keenan and most of his command were slain,
astonished the enemy and stopped their onset, for they believed there
must be some more formidable force behind it.[1]
[Footnote 1: This is the story of Keenan's charge as told by General
Pleasanton, and generally accepted, which has been made the theme of
much comment and several poems. Nobody questions that the charge was
gallantly made, and resulted in heavy loss to the intrepid riders; but
several participants have recorded their testimony that it did not
take place by order of General Pleasanton or in any such manner as he
relates--in fact, that it was rather an unexpected encounter with the
enemy when the regiment was obeying orders to cross over from a point
near Hazel Grove to the aid of General Howard. Among these is Gen.
Pennock Huey, who was the senior major in command of the regiment, and
was one of the few officers that survived the charge.]
In the precious minutes thus gained, Pleasonton brought together
twenty-two guns, loaded them with double charges of canister, and had
them depressed enough to make the shot strike the ground half-way
between his own line and the edge of the woods where the enemy must
emerge. When the Confederates resumed their charge, they were struck
by such a storm of iron as nothing human could withstand; other troops
were brought up to the support of the guns, and what little artillery
the Confederates had advanced to the front was knocked to pieces.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN SEDGWICK.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL D. N. COUCH.]
Here, about dusk, General Jackson rode to the front to reconnoitre. As
he rode back again with his staff, some of his own men, mistaking the
horsemen for National cavalry, fired a volley at them, by which
several were killed. Another volley inflicted three wounds upon
Jackson; and as his frightened horse dashed into the woods, the
general was thrown violently against the limb of a tree and injured
still more. Afterward, when his men were bearing him off, a National
battery opened fire down the road, one of the men was struck, and the
general fell heavily to the ground. He finally reached the hospital,
and his arm was amputated, but he died at the end of a week. Jackson's
corps renewed its attack, under Gen. A. P. Hill, but without success,
and Hill was wounded and borne from the field.
The next morning, May 3d, it was renewed again under Stuart, the
cavalry leader, and at the same time Lee attacked in front with his
entire force. The Confederates had sustained a serious disaster the
evening before, in the loss of Lee's ablest lieutenant; but now a more
serious one befell the National army, for General Hooker was rendered
insensible by the shock from a cannon-ball that struck a pillar of the
Chancellor house, against which he was leaning. After this there was
no plan or organization to the battle on the National side--though
each corps commander held his own as well as he could, and the men
fought valiantly--while Lee was at his best. The line was forced back
to some strong intrenchments that had been prepared the night before,
when Lee learned that Sedgwick had defeated the force opposed to him,
captured Fredericksburg heights, and was promptly advancing upon the
Confederate rear. Trusting that the force in his front would not
advance upon him, Lee drew off a large detachment of his army and
turned upon Sedgwick, who after a heavy fight was stopped, and with
some difficulty succeeded in crossing the river after nightfall. Lee
then turned again upon Hooker; but a great storm suspended operations
for twenty-four hours, and the next night the National army all
recrossed the Rappahannock, leaving on the field fourteen guns,
thousands of small arms, all their dead, and many of their wounded. In
this battle or series of battles, the National loss was about
seventeen thousand men, the Confederate about thirteen thousand.
Hooker had commanded about one hundred and thirteen thousand five
hundred, to Lee's sixty-two thousand (disregarding the different
methods of counting in the two armies); but as usual they were not in
action simultaneously; many were hardly in the fight at all, and at
every point of actual contact, with the exception of Sedgwick's first
engagement, the Confederates were superior in numbers.
Three general officers were killed in this battle. On the National
side, Major-Gens. Hiram G. Berry and Amiel W. Whipple; on the
Confederate side, Brig.-Gen. E. F. Paxton. {243} General Jackson, as
already mentioned, was mortally wounded, and several others were hurt,
some of them severely.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE.]
Sedgwick's part of this engagement is sometimes called the battle of
Salem Heights, and sometimes the second battle of Fredericksburg.
Two coincidences are noticeable in this action. First, each commander
made a powerful flank movement against his opponent's right, and
neither of these movements was completely successful, although they
were most gallantly and skilfully made. Second, each commander, in his
after explanations accounting for his failure to push the fight any
farther, declared that he could not conscientiously order his men to
assail the strong intrenchments of the enemy.
{244} [Illustration: BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE, SUNDAY, MAY 3,
1863--REPELLING ATTACK OF CONFEDERATES.]
General Hooker's explanation of his failure, so far as it could be
explained, was given in a conversation with Samuel P. Bates, his
literary executor, who visited the ground with him in 1876. Mr. Bates
says: "Upon our arrival at the broad, open, rolling fields opposite
Banks's Ford, three or four miles up the stream, General Hooker
explained, waving his hand significantly: 'Here on this open ground I
intended to fight my battle. But the trouble was to get my army on it,
as the banks of the stream are, as you can see, rugged and
precipitous, and the few fords were strongly fortified and guarded by
the enemy. By making a powerful demonstration in front of and below
the town of Fredericksburg with a part of my army, I was able,
unobserved, to withdraw the remainder, and, marching nearly thirty
miles up the stream, to cross the Rappahannock and the Rapidan
unopposed, and in four days' time to arrive at Chancellorsville,
within five miles of this coveted ground.... But at midnight General
Lee had moved out with his whole army, and by sunrise was in firm
possession of Jackson's Ford, had thrown up this line of breastworks,
which you can still follow with the eyes, and it was bristling with
cannon from one end to the other. Before I had proceeded two miles the
heads of my columns, while still upon the narrow roads in these
interminable forests, where it was impossible to manoeuvre my forces,
were met by Jackson with a full two-thirds of the entire Confederate
army. I had no alternative but to turn back, as I had only a fragment
of my command in hand, and take up the position about Chancellorsville
which I had occupied during the night, as I was being rapidly
outflanked upon my right, the enemy having open ground on which to
operate.... Very early on the first day of the battle I rode along the
whole line and examined every part, suggesting some changes and
counselling extreme vigilance. Upon my return to headquarters I was
informed that a continuous column of the enemy had been marching past
my front since early in the morning. This put an entirely new phase
upon the problem, and filled me with apprehension for the safety of my
right wing, which was posted to meet a front attack from the south,
but was in no condition for a flank attack from the west. I
immediately dictated a despatch to Generals Slocum and Howard, saying
that I had good reason to believe that the enemy was moving to our
right, and that they must be ready to meet an attack from the west....
The failure of Howard to hold his ground cost us our position, and I
was forced, in the presence of the enemy, to take up a new one.'"[2]
[Footnote 2: "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," vol. iii, p. 217,
_et seq._]
{245} General Howard says he did not receive that despatch, and in his
report he gave the following reasons for the disaster that overtook
his corps: "I. Though constantly threatened and apprised of the moving
of the enemy, yet the woods were so dense that he was able to mass a
large force, whose exact whereabouts neither patrols, reconnoissances,
nor scouts ascertained. He succeeded in forming a column opposite to
and outflanking my right. II. By the panic produced by the enemy's
reverse fire, regiments and artillery were thrown suddenly upon those
in position. III. The absence of General Barlow's brigade, which I had
previously located in reserve and _en echelon_ with Colonel Von
Gilsa's, so as to cover his right flank. This was the only general
reserve I had."
[Illustration: MAJOR PETER KEENAN.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL HIRAM G. BERRY.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL THOMAS J. ("STONEWALL") JACKSON,
C. S. A.]
[Illustration: JACKSON'S ATTACK ON RIGHT WING AT CHANCELLORSVILLE.]
Every such battle has its interesting incidents, generally enough to
fill a volume, and they are seldom repeated. Some of the most
interesting incidents of Chancellorsville are told by Capt. Henry N.
Blake, of the Eleventh Massachusetts Regiment. Here are a few of them:
"A man who was loading his musket threw away the cartridge, with a
fearful oath about government contractors; and I noticed that the
paper was filled with fine grains of dry earth instead of gunpowder.
In the thickest of the firing an officer seized an excited
soldier--who discharged his piece with trembling hands near the ears,
and endangered the lives, of his comrades--and kicked him into the
centre of the road. Trade prospered throughout the day, and the United
States sharp-shooters were constantly exchanging their dark green caps
for the regulation hats which were worn by the regiment. The captain
of one of the companies of skirmishers was posted near a brook at the
base of a slight ascent upon which the enemy was massed, and there was
a scattering fire of bullets which cautioned all to 'lie down.' While
he was rectifying the alignment he perceived with amazement one of his
men, who sat astride a log and washed his hands and face, and then
cleansed the towel with a piece of soap which he carried. One
sharp-shooter shielded himself behind a blanket; and another concealed
himself behind an empty cracker-box, the sides of which were half an
inch in thickness, exposed his person as little as possible, and felt
as secure as the ostrich with his head buried in the sand.
"The ominous silence of the sharp-shooters in front was a sure
indication that the main force was approaching; and a rebel officer,
upon the left, brought every man into his place in the ranks by
exclaiming to his command: 'Forward, double-quick, march! Guide left!'
The hideous yells once more disclosed their position in the dark
woods; but the volleys of buck and ball, and the recollection of the
previous repulse, quickly hushed their outcries, and they were again
vanquished. The conflict upon the left still continued, and the
defeated soldiers began to reinforce the troops that were striving by
desperate efforts to pierce the line, until a company swept the road
with its fire and checked the movement, and only one or two rebels at
intervals leaped across the deadly chasm. A demand for ammunition was
now heard--the most fearful cry of distress in a battle--and every man
upon the right contributed a few cartridges, which were carried to the
scene of action in the hats of the donors. The forty rounds which fill
the magazines are sufficient for any combat, unless the troops are
protected by earthworks or a natural barrier; and the extra
cartridges, which must be placed in the pockets and knapsacks, are
seldom used.
"It was after sunset; but the flashes of the rifles in the darkness
were the targets at which the guns were fired, until the enemy retired
at nine P.M., and the din of musketry was succeeded by the groans of
the wounded. The song of the whippoorwills increased the gloom that
pervaded the forest; and the pickets carefully listened to them,
because the hostile {246} skirmishers might signal to each other by
imitating the mournful notes. The rebels gave a yell as soon as they
were beyond the range of Union bullets, and repeated it in tones which
grew more distinct when they had retreated a great distance and
considered themselves safe. The abatis upon the extreme left was set
on fire in this prolonged struggle; and a gallant sergeant--who fell
at Gettysburg--sprang over the work, and averted the most serious
results by pouring water from the canteens of his comrades until the
flames were extinguished. The skirmishers began to exchange shots at
daybreak upon May 3d, and a bullet penetrated the head of a lieutenant
who was asleep in the adjoining company, and he never moved. There was
a ceaseless roll of musketry; at half-past five A.M. the batteries
emitted destructive charges of canister, and most of the men in the
ranks of the support crouched upon the ground while the balls passed
over them. For two hours the hordes of Jackson, encouraged by their
easy victory upon May 2d, screamed like fiends, assailed the troops
that defended the plank road, and succeeded in turning their left, and
compelling them to retire through the forest, and re-form their
shattered lines. There was no running: the soldiers fell back slowly,
company after company, and wished for some directing mind to select a
new position. Unfortunately the National cause had lost General Berry,
the brave commander of the division; the ranking brigadier, General
Mott, was wounded; another brigadier was an arrant coward; and the
largest part of nine regiments were marched three miles to the rear by
one of the generals without any orders. The regiments of the brigade,
under the supervision of their field and line officers, rallied in the
open field near the Chancellor house, which was the focus upon which
Lee concentrated his batteries, until the shells ignited it; and the
flames consumed some of the wounded who were helpless, and three women
that remained in the cellar for safety barely escaped from the ruins.
The brigade was aligned upon the road to the United States ford at
nine A.M., and the men recovered their knapsacks in the midst of a
heavy cannonading which still continued. No symptoms of fear were
manifested, although the artillery was planted upon the left, in the
rear and the front, from which point most of the shells were hurled;
and the force was threatened with capture. A rebel and a member of the
brigade rested together near an oak, and mutually assisted each other
to fight the fire in the forest, that began raging while the battle
was in progress; and joyfully clasped their scorched and aching hands
in friendship when it was quelled. Colors were captured, and hundreds
of the foe threw down their arms and retreated with the Union forces;
and happy squads without any guard were walking upon the road, and
inquiring the way to the rear. Three batteries lost most of their
horses, and a large proportion of their men, by the concentration of
Lee's artillery, and the bullets of the sharp-shooters, who were
specially instructed to pick off the animals before they shot the
gunners. Several pieces, including one without wheels, which had been
demolished, were drawn from the field by details from the infantry.
Some of those who were slightly injured returned to their commands
after their wounds had been dressed, and fought again. One cannon-ball
killed a cavalryman and his horse; and a shell tore the clothing from
an aid, but inflicted no personal hurt, and he returned, after a brief
absence, to search for his porte-monnaie, which he carried in the
pocket that had been so suddenly wrested from him.
"The corps color was always waving in the front; and General Sickles,
smoking a cigar, stood a few feet from the regiment, in the road up
which the troops had marched from the Chancellor house; and aids and
orderlies were riding to and fro, one of whom reported that his steed
had been killed. 'Captain, the Government will furnish you with
another horse,' he complacently replied.
"A rebel officer of high rank, who had been captured, stopped {247}
near the general, and sought to open a conversation, with the
following result:
"'General, I have met you in New York.'
"'Move forward that battery.'
"'General, I have seen you before.'
"'The brigade must advance to the woods.'
"'General, don't you remember'--
"'Go to the rear, sir; my troops are now in position.'
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. H. VAN ALLEN. (Aide-de-Camp to
General Hooker.)]
"There were few, if any, stretcher bearers at the front, and wounded
men that had lost a leg or an arm dragged themselves to the
field-hospital; and the surgeons of some regiments which had not been
engaged in the battle sat upon a log in idleness, and refused, with a
great display of dignity, to assist the suffering who were brought to
them, because they did not belong to their commands. This shameful
conduct, which I often witnessed, exasperated the officers and
soldiers; and they compelled the surgeons to discharge their duty in a
number of cases by threatening to shoot them. The heat was very
severe; many cannoneers divested themselves of their uniforms while
they were working; and a number of the skirmishers, who were posted in
the open field, and obliged to lie low without any shelter, were
sometimes afflicted by sunstroke. 'I will win a star or a coffin in
this battle,' remarked a colonel as he was riding to the scene of
conflict in which a bullet checked his noble military aspirations. 'To
take a soldier without ambition is to pull off his spurs.' 'I have got
my leave of absence now,' gladly said an officer, whose application
had always been refused at headquarters, when he left the regiment to
go to the hospital. The appearance of a rabbit causes an excitement
and a chase upon all occasions, and one ran in front of the line as
the action commenced; and the birds were flying wildly among the
trees, as if they anticipated a storm; and a soldier shouted, 'Stop
him, stop him! I could make a good meal if I had him.' 'This is
English neutrality,' an intelligent metal moulder remarked, in
examining the fragment of a shell, and explaining the process of its
manufacture to the company; while the rebel batteries every minute
added some specimens to his collection. The officials in Richmond
published at this time an order, directing that the clothing should be
taken from the bodies of their dead and issued to the living. They
always stripped the dead and the dying upon every field; and I noticed
that one man who had been stunned, and afterward effected his escape,
wore merely a shirt and hat when he entered the lines. An officer who
was going the rounds in the night was surprised to find one of his
most faithful men who returned no answer to his inquiries; and
supposing that he had been overcome by fatigue, and fallen asleep,
grasped his hands to awaken him: but they were cold with death. The
soldier, killed upon his post of duty, rested in the extreme front,
with his musket by his side, and face toward the enemies of his
country. General Whipple, the able commander of the third division of
the corps, was mortally wounded by a sharp-shooter who was one-third
of a mile from him; and a priest administered the last rites of the
Roman Catholic Church upon the spot where he fell, in the presence of
his weeping staff and soldiers, by whom he was greatly beloved. A
brigade made a reconnoissance in the forest at one P.M., and captured
forty sharp-shooters who were perched upon the limbs of lofty oaks,
and could not descend and escape before this force advanced.
"The rebels ascertained the location of the trains upon the north bank
of the Rappahannock, opened a battery upon them, and a squad of three
hundred prisoners uttered a yell of joy when they saw a cannon-ball
enter a large tent which was crowded with the dying and disabled. The
direction of the firing was changed, and caused utter dismay when some
of the number were killed by the missiles that were hurled by their
comrades in the army of Lee."
[Illustration: OFFICERS SETTING OUT TO MAKE CALLS OF CEREMONY ON THEIR
GENERALS.]
{248} [Illustration: BATTLE FIELDS OF THE GREAT CIVIL WAR.]
{249}
CHAPTER XXII.
GETTYSBURG.
INVASION OF THE NORTH DETERMINED ON--CAVALRY SKIRMISH AT FLEETWOOD,
WHICH MARKS A TURNING POINT IN THAT SERVICE--HOOKER'S PLANS--HE ASKS
TO BE RELIEVED--MEADE IN COMMAND--BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG--POSITION OF
CONFEDERATE FORCES--NUMBER OF MEN ENGAGED ON EACH SIDE--SURFACE OF THE
COUNTRY ABOUT GETTYSBURG--BLOODY FIGHTING ON THE RIGHT--GENERAL
HANCOCK SUPERSEDES GENERAL HOWARD--RAPID CONCENTRATION OF THE
ARMIES--TERRIFIC FIGHTING IN THE PEACH ORCHARD--DRAMATIC CHARGE OF THE
LOUISIANA TIGERS--THE CHARGE OF PICKETT'S BRIGADE--ROMANTIC AND
PATHETIC INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE--RETREAT OF THE CONFEDERATE
ARMIES--VICTORY DUE TO DETERMINATION AND COURAGE OF THE COMMON
SOLDIERS--EFFECT OF THE CONFEDERATE DEFEAT IN EUROPE--GREAT NATIONAL
CEMETARY ON THE BATTLEFIELD--LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS.
After the battle of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, public
opinion in the South began to demand that the army under Lee should
invade the North, or at least make a bold movement toward Washington.
Public opinion is not often very discriminating in an exciting crisis;
and on this occasion public opinion failed to discriminate between the
comparative ease with which an army in a strong position may repel a
faultily planned or badly managed attack, and the difficulties that
must beset the same army when it leaves its base, launches forth into
the enemy's country, and is obliged to maintain a constantly
lengthening line of communication. The Southern public could not see
why, since the Army of Northern Virginia had won two victories on the
Rappahannock, it might not march forward at once, lay New York and
Philadelphia under contribution, and dictate peace and Southern
independence in the Capitol at Washington. Whether the Confederate
Government shared this feeling or not, it acted in accordance with it;
and whether Lee approved it or not, he was obliged to obey. Yet, in
the largest consideration of the problem, this demand for an invasion
of the North was correct, though the result proved disastrous. For
experience shows that purely defensive warfare will not accomplish
anything. Lee's army had received a heavy reinforcement by the arrival
of Longstreet's corps, its regiments had been filled up with
conscripts, it had unbounded confidence in itself, and this was the
time, if ever, to put the plan for independence to the crucial test of
offensive warfare. Many subsidiary considerations strengthened the
argument. About thirty thousand of Hooker's men had been enlisted in
the spring of 1861, for two years, and their term was now expiring.
Vicksburg was besieged by Grant, before whom nothing had stood as yet;
and its fall would open the Mississippi and cut the Confederacy in
two, which might seal the fate of the new Government unless the shock
were neutralized by a great victory in the East. Volunteering had
fallen off in the North, conscription was resorted to, the Democratic
party there had become more hostile to the Government and loudly
abusive of President Lincoln and his advisers, and there were signs of
riotous resistance to a draft. Finally, the Confederate agents in
Europe reported that anything like a great Confederate victory would
secure immediate recognition, if not armed intervention, from England
and France.
[Illustration: CEMETARY GATE.]
Hooker, who had lost a golden opportunity by his aberration or his
accident at Chancellorsville, had come to his senses again, and was
alert, active, and clear-headed. As early as May 28, 1863, he informed
the President that something was stirring in the camp on the other
side of the river, and that a northward movement might be expected. On
the 3d of June, Lee began his movement, and by the 8th two of his
three corps (those of Ewell and Longstreet) were at Culpeper, while A.
P. Hill's corps still held the lines on the Rappahannock.
It was known that the entire Confederate cavalry, under Stuart, was at
Culpeper; and Hooker sent all his cavalry, under Pleasonton, with two
brigades of infantry, to attack it there. The assault was to be made
in two converging columns, under Buford and Gregg; but this plan was
disconcerted by the fact that the enemy's cavalry, intent upon masking
the movement of the great body of infantry and protecting its flank,
had advanced to Brandy Station. Here it was struck first by Buford and
afterward by Gregg, and there was bloody fighting, with the advantage
at first in favor of the National troops; but the two columns failed
to unite during the action, and finally withdrew. The loss was over
five hundred men on each side, including among the killed Col. B. F.
Davis, of the Eighth New York cavalry, and Colonel Hampton, commanding
a Confederate brigade. Both sides claimed to have accomplished their
object--Pleasonton to have ascertained the movements of Lee's army,
and Stuart to have driven back his opponent. Some of the heaviest
fighting was for possession of a height known as Fleetwood Hill, and
the Confederates name the action the battle of Fleetwood. It is of
special interest as marking the turning-point in cavalry service
during the war. Up to that time the Confederate cavalry had been
generally superior to the National. This action--a cavalry fight in
the proper sense of the term, between the entire mounted forces of the
two armies--was a drawn battle; and thenceforth the National cavalry
exhibited superiority in an accelerating ratio, till finally nothing
mounted {250} on Southern horses could stand before the magnificent
squadrons led by Sheridan, Custer, Kilpatrick, and Wilson.
Hooker now knew that the movement he had anticipated was in progress,
and he was very decided in his opinion as to what should be done. By
the 13th of June, Lee had advanced Ewell's corps beyond the Blue
Ridge, and it was marching down the Shenandoah Valley, while Hill's
was still in the intrenchments on the Rapidan, and Longstreet's was
midway between, at Culpeper. Hooker asked to be allowed to interpose
his whole army between these widely separated parts of its antagonist
and defeat them in detail; but with a man like Halleck for military
adviser at Washington, it was useless to propose any bold or brilliant
stroke. Hooker was forbidden to do this, and ordered to keep his army
between the enemy and the capital. He therefore left his position on
the Rappahannock, and moved toward Washington, along the line of the
Orange and Alexandria Railroad. Ewell moved rapidly down the
Shenandoah Valley, and attacked Winchester, which was held by General
Milroy with about ten thousand men. Milroy made a gallant defence; but
after a stubborn fight his force was broken and defeated, and about
four thousand of them became prisoners. The survivors escaped to
Harper's Ferry.
The corps of Hill and Longstreet now moved, Hill following Ewell into
the Shenandoah Valley, and Longstreet skirting the Blue Ridge along
its eastern base. Pleasonton's cavalry, reconnoitring these movements,
met Stuart's again at Aldie, near a gap in the Bull Run Mountains, and
had a sharp fight; and there were also cavalry actions at Middleburg
and Upperville. Other Confederate cavalry had already crossed the
Potomac, made a raid as far as Chambersburg, and returned with
supplies to Ewell. On the 22d, Ewell's corps crossed at Shepherdstown
and Williamsport, and moved up the Cumberland Valley to Chambersburg.
A panic ensued among the inhabitants of that region, who hastened to
drive off their cattle and horses, to save them from seizure. The
governors of New York and Pennsylvania were called upon for militia,
and forwarded several regiments, to be interposed between the enemy's
advance and Philadelphia and Harrisburg. The other two corps of Lee's
army crossed the Potomac on the 24th and 25th, where Ewell had
crossed; and Hooker, moving on a line nearer Washington, crossed with
his whole army at Edward's Ferry, on the 25th and 26th, marching
thence to Frederick. He now proposed to send Slocum's corps to the
western side of the South Mountain range, have it unite with a force
of eleven thousand men under French, that lay useless at Harper's
Ferry, and throw a powerful column upon Lee's communications, capture
his trains, and attack his army in the rear. But again he came into
collision with the stubborn Halleck, who would not consent to the
abandonment, even temporarily, of Harper's Ferry, though the
experience of the Antietam campaign, when he attempted to hold it in
the same way and lost its whole garrison, should have taught him
better. This new cause of trouble, added to previous disagreements,
was more than Hooker could stand, and on the 27th he asked to be
relieved from command of the army. His request was promptly complied
with, and the next morning the command was given to General Meade,
only five days before a great battle.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN BUFORD.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ALFRED PLEASONTON.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL J. F. REYNOLDS.]
George Gordon Meade, then in his forty-ninth year, was a graduate of
West Point, had served through the Mexican war, had done engineer duty
in the survey of the Great Lakes, had been with McClellan on the
peninsula, and had commanded a corps in the Army of the Potomac at
Antietam, at Fredericksburg, and at Chancellorsville. The first thing
he did on assuming command was what Hooker had been forbidden to do:
he ordered the evacuation of Harper's Ferry, and the movement of its
garrison to Frederick as a reserve.
At this time, June 28th, one portion of Lee's army was at
Chambersburg, or between that place and Gettysburg, another at York
and Carlisle, and a part of his cavalry was within sight of the spires
of Harrisburg. The main body of the cavalry had gone off on a raid,
Stuart having an ambition to ride a third time around the Army of the
Potomac. This absence of his cavalry {251} left Lee in ignorance of
the movements of his adversary, whom he appears to have expected to
remain quietly on the south side of the Potomac. When suddenly he
found his communications in danger, he called back Ewell from York and
Carlisle, and ordered the concentration of all his forces at
Gettysburg. Many converging roads lead into that town, and its
convenience for such concentration was obvious. Meade was also
advancing his army toward Gettysburg, though with a more certain
step--as was necessary, since his object was to find Lee's army and
fight it, wherever it might go. His cavalry, under Pleasonton, was
doing good service; and that general advanced a division under Buford
on the 29th to Gettysburg, with orders to delay the enemy till the
army could come up. Meade had some expectation of bringing on the
great battle at Pipe Creek, southeast of Gettysburg, where he marked
out a good defensive line; but the First Corps, under Gen. John F.
Reynolds, advanced rapidly to Gettysburg, and on the 1st of July
encountered west of the town a portion of the enemy coming in from
Chambersburg. Lee had about seventy-three thousand five hundred men
(infantry and artillery), and Meade about eighty-two thousand, while
the cavalry numbered about eleven thousand on each side, and both
armies had more cannon than they could use.[1]
[Footnote 1: Various figures and estimates are given as representing
the strength of the two armies, some of which take account of
detachments absent on special duty, and some do not. The figures here
given denote very nearly the forces actually available for the
battle.]
[Illustration: MAP OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. (Reproduced by
permission of Dick & Fitzgerald, N. Y., from "Twelve Decisive Battles
of the War.")]
When Reynolds advanced his own corps (the First) and determined to
hold Gettysburg, he ordered the Eleventh (Howard's) to come up to its
support. The country about Gettysburg is broken into ridges, mainly
parallel, and running north and south. On the first ridge west of the
village stood a theological seminary, which gave it the name of
Seminary Ridge. Between this and the next is a small stream called
Willoughby Run, and here the first day's battle was fought. Buford
held the ridges till the infantry arrived, climbing in the belfry of
the seminary and looking anxiously for their coming. The Confederates
were advancing by two roads that met in a point at the edge of the
village, and Reynolds disposed his troops, as fast as they arrived, so
as to dispute the passage on both roads. The key-point was a piece of
high ground, partly covered with woods, between the roads, and the
advance of both sides rushed for it. Here General Reynolds, going
forward to survey the ground, was shot by a sharp-shooter and fell
dead. He was one of the ablest corps commanders that the Army of the
Potomac ever had. The command devolved upon Gen. Abner Doubleday, who
was an experienced soldier, having served through the Mexican war,
been second in command under Anderson at Fort Sumter, and seen almost
constant service with the Army of the Potomac. The Confederate force
contending for the woods was Archer's brigade; the National was
Meredith's "Iron Brigade." Archer's men had been told that they would
meet nothing but Pennsylvania militia, which they expected to brush
out of the way with little trouble; but when they saw the Iron
Brigade, some of them were heard saying: "'Taint no militia; there are
the ---- black-hatted fellows again; it's the Army of the Potomac!"
The result here was that Meredith's men not only secured the woods,
but captured General Archer and a large part of his brigade, and then
advanced to the ridge west of the run.
On the right of the line there had been bloody fighting, with
unsatisfactory results, owing to the careless posting of regiments and
a want of concert in action. Two National regiments were driven from
the field, and a gun was lost; while on the other hand a Confederate
force was driven into a railroad cut for shelter, and then subjected
to an enfilading fire through the cut, so that a large portion were
captured and the remainder dispersed.
Whether any commander on either side intended to bring on a battle at
this point, is doubtful. But both sides were rapidly and heavily
reinforced, and both fought with determination. The struggle for the
Chambersburg road was obstinate, especially after the Confederates had
planted several guns to sweep it. "We have come to stay," said Roy
Stone's brigade, as they came into line under the fire of these guns
to support a battery of their own; and "the battle afterward became so
severe that {252} the greater portion did stay," says General
Doubleday. A division of Ewell's corps soon arrived from Carlisle,
wheeled into position, and struck the right of the National line.
Robinson's division, resting on Seminary Ridge, was promptly brought
forward to meet this new peril, and was so skilfully handled that it
presently captured three North Carolina regiments.
Gen. Oliver O. Howard, being the ranking officer, assumed command when
he arrived on this part of the field; and when his own corps (the
Eleventh) came up, about one o'clock, he placed it in position on the
right, prolonging the line of battle far around to the north of the
town. This great extension made it weak at many points; and as fresh
divisions of Confederate troops were constantly arriving, under Lee's
general order to concentrate on the town, they finally became powerful
enough to break through the centre, rolling back the right flank of
the First Corps and the left of the Eleventh, and throwing into
confusion everything except the left of the First Corps, which retired
in good order, protecting artillery and ambulances. Of the fugitives
that swarmed through the town, about five thousand were made
prisoners. But this had been effected only at heavy cost to the
Confederates. At one point Iverson's Georgia brigade had rushed up to
a stone fence behind which Baxter's brigade was sheltered, when
Baxter's men suddenly rose and delivered a volley that struck down
five hundred of Iverson's in an instant, while the remainder, who were
subjected also to a cross-fire, immediately surrendered--all but one
regiment, which escaped by raising a white flag.
In the midst of the confusion, Gen. Winfield S. Hancock arrived, under
orders from General Meade to supersede Howard in the command of that
wing of the army. He had been instructed also to choose a position for
the army to meet the great shock of battle, if he should find a better
one than the line of Pike Creek. Hancock's first duty was to rally the
fugitives and restore order and confidence. Steinwehr's division was
in reserve on Cemetery Ridge, and Buford's cavalry was on the plain
between the town and the ridge; and with these standing fast he
stopped the retreat and rapidly formed a line along that crest.
The ridge begins in Round Top, a high, rocky hill; next north of this
is Little Round Top, smaller, but still bold and rugged; and thence it
is continued at a less elevation, with gentler slopes, northward to
within half a mile of the town, where it curves around to the east and
ends at Rock Creek. The whole length is about three miles. Seminary
Ridge is a mile west of this, and nearly parallel with its central
portion. Hancock without hesitation chose this line, placed all the
available troops in position, and then hurried back to headquarters at
Taneytown. Meade at once accepted his plan, and sent forward the
remaining corps. The Third Corps, commanded by General Sickles, being
already on the march, arrived at sunset. The Second (Hancock's)
marched thirteen miles and went into position. The Fifth (Sykes's) was
twenty-three miles away, but marched all night and arrived in the
morning. The Sixth (Sedgwick's) was thirty-six miles away, but was put
in motion at once. At the same time, Lee was urging the various
divisions of his army to make the concentration as rapidly as
possible, not wishing to attack the heights till his forces were all
up.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE G. MEADE.]
It is said by General Longstreet that Lee had promised his corps
commanders not to fight a battle during this expedition, unless he
could take a position and stand on the defensive; but the excitement
and confidence of his soldiers, who felt themselves invincible,
compelled him. While he was waiting for his divisions to arrive,
forming his lines, and perfecting a plan of attack, Sedgwick's corps
arrived on the other side, and the National troops were busy
constructing rude breastworks.
Between the two great ridges there is another ridge, situated somewhat
like the diagonal portion of a capital N. The order of the corps,
beginning at the right, was this: Slocum's, Howard's, Hancock's,
Sickles's, with Sykes's in reserve on the left, and Sedgwick's on the
right. Sickles, thinking to occupy more advantageous ground, instead
of remaining in line, advanced to the diagonal ridge, and on this
hinged the whole battle of the second day. For there was nothing on
which to rest his left flank, and he was obliged to "refuse" it--turn
it sharply back toward Round Top. This presented a salient angle
(always a weak point) to the enemy; and here, when the action opened
at four o'clock in the afternoon, the blow fell. The angle was at a
peach orchard, and the refused line stretched back through a
wheat-field; General Birney's division occupying this ground, while
the right of Sickles's line was held by Humphreys.
{253} [Illustration: GENERAL HANCOCK AND STAFF NEAR LITTLE ROUND TOP.]
[Illustration: FIELD HOSPITAL--HEADQUARTERS. (From the Panorama of
Gettysburg, at Chicago.)]
Longstreet's men attacked the salient vigorously, and his extreme
right, composed of Hood's division, stretched out toward Little Round
Top, where it narrowly missed winning a position that would have
enabled it to enfilade the whole National line. Little Round Top had
been occupied only by signal men, when General Warren saw the danger,
detached Vincent's brigade from {254} a division that was going out to
reinforce Sickles, and ordered it to occupy the hill at once. One
regiment of Weed's brigade (the 140th New York) also went up, dragging
and lifting the guns of Hazlett's battery up the rocky slope; and the
whole brigade soon followed. They were just in time to meet the
advance of Hood's Texans, and engage in one of the bloodiest
hand-to-hand conflicts of the war, and at length the Texans were
hurled back and the position secured. But dead or wounded soldiers, in
blue and in gray, lay everywhere among the rocks. General Weed was
mortally wounded; General Vincent was killed; Col. Patrick H. O'Rorke,
of the 140th, a recent graduate of West Point, of brilliant promise,
was shot dead at the head of his men; and Lieut. Charles E. Hazlett
was killed as he leaned over General Weed to catch his last words. "I
would rather die here," said Weed, "than that the rebels should gain
an inch of this ground!" Hood's men made one more attempt, by creeping
up the ravine between the two Round Tops, but were repelled by a
bayonet charge, executed by Chamberlain's Twentieth Maine Regiment;
and five hundred of them, with seventeen officers, were made
prisoners. The peculiarity of Chamberlain's charge, which was one of
the most brilliant manoeuvres ever executed on a battlefield,
consisted in pushing the regiment forward in such a manner that the
centre moved more rapidly than the flanks, which gradually brought it
into the shape of a wedge that penetrated the Confederate line and cut
off the five hundred men from their comrades.
Meanwhile terrific fighting was going on at the salient in the peach
orchard. Several batteries were in play on both sides, and made
destructive work; a single shell from one of the National guns killed
or wounded thirty men in a company of thirty-seven. Here General Zook
was killed, Colonel Cross was killed, General Sickles lost a leg, and
the Confederate General Barksdale was mortally wounded and died a
prisoner. There were repeated charges and counter-charges, and
numerous bloody incidents; for Sickles was constantly reinforced, and
Lee, being under the impression that this was the flank of the main
line, kept hammering at it till his men finally possessed the peach
orchard, advanced their lines, assailed the left flank of Humphreys,
and finally drove back the National line, only to find that they had
forced it into its true position, from which they could not dislodge
it by any direct attack, while the guns and troops that now crowned
the two Round Tops showed any flank movement to be impossible. About
sunset Ewell's corps assailed the Union right, and at heavy cost
gained a portion of the works near Rock Creek.
One of the most dramatic incidents of this day was a charge on
Cemetery Hill by two Confederate brigades led by an organization known
as the Louisiana Tigers. It was made just at dusk, and the charging
column immediately became a target for the batteries of Wiedrick,
Stevens, and Ricketts, which fired grape and canister, each gun making
four discharges a minute. But the Tigers had the reputation of never
having failed in a charge, and in spite of the frightful gaps made by
the artillery and by volleys of musketry, they kept on till they
reached the guns, and made a hand-to-hand fight for them. Friend and
foe were fast becoming mingled, when Carroll's brigade came to the
rescue of the guns, and the remnants of the Confederate column fled
down the hill in the gathering darkness, hastened by a double-shotted
fire from Ricketts's battery. Of the seventeen hundred Tigers, twelve
hundred had been struck down, and that famous organization was never
heard of again.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL CARL SCHURZ.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ABNER DOUBLEDAY.]
Many exciting incidents of this twilight battle are told. When the
Confederates charged on Wiedrick's battery, there was a difficulty in
depressing the guns sufficiently, or they probably never would have
reached it; and when they did reach it the gunners stood by and fought
them with pistols, handspikes, rammers, {255} and stones; for they had
received orders not to limber up under any circumstances, but to fight
the battery to the last, and they obeyed their orders literally and
nobly. Nearly all of them, however, were beaten down by the
Confederate infantrymen, and the battery was captured entire; but the
victorious assailants were now subjected to a flank fire from
Stevens's battery, which poured in double-shotted canister at
point-blank range, before the arrival of Carroll's brigade completed
their destruction. At Ricketts's battery a Confederate lieutenant
sprang forward and seized the guidon, when its bearer, Private Riggen,
shot him dead with his revolver. The next moment a bullet cut the
staff of the guidon, and another killed Riggen, who fell across the
body of the lieutenant. Another Confederate lieutenant, rushing into
the battery, laid his hand upon a gun and demanded its surrender; his
answer was a blow from a handspike that dashed out his brains. At
another gun a Confederate sergeant, with his rifle in his hand,
confronted Sergeant Stafford with a demand for the surrender of the
piece; whereupon Lieutenant Brockway threw a stone that knocked him
down, and Stafford, catching his rifle, fired it at him and wounded
him seriously. Sergeant Geible, of the One Hundred and Seventh Ohio,
sprang upon the low stone wall when the Confederates were charging,
and defiantly waved the regimental colors, but was immediately shot,
and the flag fell outside. Adjutant Young then jumped over the wall
and rescued it, while at the same time the color-sergeant of the
Eighth Louisiana was rushing up at the head of his regiment and waving
his flag. Young sprang upon him, seized the flag, and shot the
sergeant; but he also received a bullet which passed through his arm
and into his lung, and at the same time a Confederate officer aimed a
heavy blow at his head, which was parried by a comrade. Clinging
tenaciously to the captured flag, Young managed to get back into his
own lines, and sank fainting from loss of blood; but his life was
saved, and he was promoted for his gallantry.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY BAXTER.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ADOLPH VON STEINWEHR.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL FRANCIS C. BARLOW, MAJOR-GENERAL
DAVID B. BIRNEY, BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN GIBBON, MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD
S. HANCOCK.]
While the actions of the first two days were complicated, that of the
third was extremely simple. Lee had tried both flanks, and failed. He
now determined to attempt piercing the centre of Meade's line.
Longstreet, wiser than his chief, protested, but in vain. On the other
hand, Meade had held a council of war the night before, and in
accordance with the vote of his corps commanders determined to stay
where he was and fight it out.
Whether General Meade contemplated a retreat, has been disputed. On
the one hand, he testified before the Committee on the Conduct of the
War that he never thought of such a thing; on the other, General
Doubleday, in his "Chancellorsville and Gettysburg," presents {256}
testimony that seems to leave no reasonable doubt. There is nothing
intrinsically improbable in the story. Meade's service in that war had
all been with the Army of the Potomac, and it was the custom of that
army to retreat after a great battle. The only exception thus far had
been Antietam; and two great battles, with the usual retreat, had been
fought since Antietam. Meade had been in command of the entire army
but a few days, and he cannot be said to have been, in the ordinary
sense of the term, the master-spirit at Gettysburg. It was Reynolds
who went out to meet the enemy, and stayed his advance, on the first
day; it was Hancock who selected the advantageous position for the
second day; it was Warren who secured the neglected key-point. The
fact of calling a council of war at all implies doubt in the mind of
the commander. But, after all, the question is hardly important, so
far at least as it concerns Meade's place in history. He is likely to
be less blamed for contemplating retreat at the end of two days'
fighting when he had the worst of it, than for not contemplating
pursuit at the end of the third day when the enemy was defeated. There
are some considerations, however, which must give Meade's conduct of
this battle a very high place for generalship. He seemed to know how
to trust his subordinates, and to be uninfluenced by that weakness
which attacks so many commanders with a fear lest something shall be
done for which they themselves shall not receive the credit. He
unhesitatingly accepted Hancock's judgment as to the propriety of
receiving battle on Cemetery Hill, and showed every disposition to do
all that would tend to secure the great purpose, without the slightest
reference to its bearing on anybody's reputation. Furthermore, he had,
what brilliant soldiers often lack, a complete comprehension of the
entire situation, as regarded the war, and appreciated the importance
of the action in which he was about to engage. This is proved by the
following circular, which he issued on the 30th of June, one day
before the battle, to his subordinates:
"The commanding general requests that, previous to the engagement soon
expected with the enemy, corps and all other commanding officers will
address their troops, explaining to them briefly the immense issues
involved in this struggle. The enemy are on our soil. The whole
country now looks anxiously to this army to deliver it from the
presence of the foe. Our failure to do so will leave us no such
welcome as the swelling of millions of hearts with pride and joy at
our success would give to every soldier in the army. Homes, firesides,
and domestic altars are involved. The army has fought well heretofore.
It is believed that it will fight more desperately and bravely than
ever if it is addressed in fitting terms. Corps and other commanders
are authorized to order the instant death of any soldier who fails in
his duty at this hour."
[Illustration: ARTILLERY COMING INTO ACTION. (From the Panorama of
Gettysburg, at Chicago.)]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GOUVERNEUR K. WARREN.]
[Illustration: DEVIL'S DEN. Position occupied by Confederate
Sharp-shooters, the point from which they shot at Union Officers on
Little Round Top. From photograph by W. H. Tipton, Gettysburg.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL GABRIEL R. PAUL.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ALFRED N. DUFFIÉ.]
Lee's first intended movement was to push the success gained at the
close of the second day by Ewell on the National right; but Meade
anticipated him, attacking early in the morning and driving Ewell out
of his works. In preparation for a grand charge, Lee placed more than
one hundred guns in position on Seminary Ridge, converging their fire
on the left centre of Meade's line, where he intended to send his
storming column. Eighty guns (all there was room for) were placed in
position on Cemetery Ridge to reply, and at one o'clock the firing
{257} began. This was one of the most terrific artillery duels ever
witnessed. There was a continuous and deafening roar, which was heard
forty miles away. The shot and shells ploughed up the ground,
shattered gravestones in the cemetery, and sent their fragments flying
among the troops, exploded caissons, and dismounted guns. A house used
for Meade's headquarters, in the rear of the line, was completely
riddled. Many artillerists and horses were killed; but the casualties
among the infantry were not numerous, for the men lay flat upon the
ground, taking advantage of every shelter, and waited for the more
serious work that all knew was to follow. At the end of two hours Gen.
Henry J. Hunt, Meade's chief of artillery, ordered the firing to
cease, both to cool the guns and to save the ammunition for use in
repelling the infantry charge. Lee supposed that his object--which was
to demoralize his enemy and cause him to exhaust his artillery--had
been effected. Fourteen thousand of his best troops--including
Pickett's division, which had not arrived in time for the previous
day's fighting--now came out of the woods, formed in heavy columns,
and moved forward steadily to the charge. Instantly the National guns
reopened fire, and the Confederate ranks were ploughed through and
through; but the gaps were closed up, and the columns did not halt.
There was a mile of open ground for them to traverse, and every step
was taken under heavy fire. As they drew nearer, the batteries used
grape and canister, and an infantry force posted in advance of the
main line rose to its feet and fired volleys of musketry into the
right flank. Now the columns began visibly to break up and melt away;
and the left wing of the force changed its direction somewhat, so that
it parted from the right, making an interval and exposing a new flank,
which the National troops promptly took advantage of. But Pickett's
diminishing ranks still pushed on, till they passed over the outer
lines, fought hand to hand at the main line, and even leaped the
breastworks and thought to capture the batteries. The point where they
penetrated was marked by a clump of small trees on the edge of the
hill, at that portion of the line held by the brigade of Gen.
Alexander S. Webb, who was wounded; but his men stood firm against the
shock, and, from the eagerness of all to join in the contest, men
rushed from every side to the point assailed, mixing up all commands,
but making a front that no such remnant as Pickett's could break. Gen.
Lewis A. Armistead, who led the charge and leaped over the wall, was
shot down as he laid his hand on a gun, and his surviving soldiers
surrendered themselves. On the slope of the hill many of the
assailants had thrown themselves upon the ground and held up their
hands for quarter; and an immediate sally from the National lines
brought in a large number of prisoners and battle-flags. Of that
magnificent column which had been launched out so proudly, only a
broken fragment ever returned. Nearly every officer in it, except
Pickett, had been either killed or wounded. Armistead, a prisoner and
dying, said to an officer who was bending over him, "Tell Hancock I
have wronged him and have wronged my country." He had been opposed to
secession, but the pressure of his friends and relatives {259} had at
length forced him into the service. Hancock had been wounded and borne
from the field, and among the other wounded on the National side were
Generals Doubleday, Gibbon, Warren, Butterfield, Stannard, Barnes, and
Brook; General Farnsworth was killed, and Gen. Gabriel R. Paul lost
both eyes. Among the killed on the Confederate side, besides those
already mentioned, were Generals Garnett, Pender, and Semmes; and
among the wounded, Generals Hampton, Jenkins, Kemper, Scales, J. M.
Jones, and G. T. Anderson.
{258} [Illustration: AN HEROIC INCIDENT--COLOR SERGEANT BENJAMIN
CRIPPEN REFUSES TO SURRENDER THE FLAG.]
While this movement was in progress, Kilpatrick with his cavalry rode
around the mountain and attempted to pass the Confederate right and
capture the trains, while Stuart with his cavalry made a simultaneous
attempt on the National right. Each had a bloody fight, but neither
was successful. This closed the battle. Hancock urged that a great
return charge should be made immediately with Sedgwick's corps, which
had not participated, and Lee expected such a movement as a matter of
course. But it was not done.
That night Lee made preparations for retreat, and the next day--which
was the 4th of July--the retreat was begun. General Imboden, who
conducted the trains and the ambulances, describes it as one of the
most pitiful and heart-rending scenes ever witnessed. A heavy storm
had come up, the roads were in bad condition, few of the wounded had
been properly cared for, and as they were jolted along in agony they
were groaning, cursing, babbling of their homes, and calling upon
their friends to kill them and put them out of misery. But there could
be no halt, for the Potomac was rising, and an attack was hourly
expected from the enemy in the rear.
Meade, however, did not pursue for several days, and then to no
purpose; so that Lee's crippled army escaped into Virginia, but it was
disabled from ever doing anything more than prolonging the contest.
Gettysburg was essentially the Waterloo of the war, and there is a
striking parallel in the losses. The numbers engaged were very nearly
the same in the one battle as in the other. At Waterloo the victors
lost twenty-three thousand one hundred and eighty-five men, and the
vanquished, in round numbers, thirty thousand. At Gettysburg the
National loss was twenty-three thousand one hundred and
ninety--killed, wounded, and missing. The Confederate losses were
never officially reported, but estimates place them at nearly thirty
thousand. Lee left seven thousand of his wounded among the unburied
dead, and twenty-seven thousand muskets were picked up on the field.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL DANIEL BUTTERFIELD. (Chief of Staff to
General Meade.)]
[Illustration: GENERAL MEADE'S HEADQUARTERS.]
The romantic and pathetic incidents of this great battle are
innumerable. John Burns, a resident of Gettysburg, seventy years old,
had served in the War of 1812, being one of Miller's men at Lundy's
Lane, and in the Mexican war, and had tried to enlist at the breaking
out of the Rebellion, but was rejected as too old. When the armies
approached the town, he joined the Seventh Wisconsin Regiment and
displayed wonderful skill as a sharp-shooter; but he was wounded in
the afternoon, fell into the hands of the Confederates, told some
plausible story to account for his lack of a uniform, and was finally
carried to his own house. Jennie Wade was baking bread for Union
soldiers when the advance of the Confederate line surrounded her house
with enemies; but she kept on at her work in spite of orders to
desist, until a stray bullet struck her dead. An unknown Confederate
officer lay mortally wounded within the Union lines, and one of the
commanders sent to ask his name and rank. "Tell him," said the dying
man, "that I shall soon be where there is no rank;" and he was never
identified. Lieut. Alonzo H. Cushing commanded a battery on General
Webb's line, and in the cannonade preceding the great charge on the
third day all his guns but one were disabled, and he was mortally
wounded. When the charging column approached, he exclaimed, "Webb, I
will give them one more shot!" ran his gun forward to the stone wall,
fired it, said "Good-by!" and fell dead. Barksdale, of Mississippi,
had been an extreme secessionist, and had done much to bring on the
war. At that part of the line where he fell, the Union commander was
Gen. David B. Birney, son of a slaveholder that had emancipated his
slaves, had been mobbed for his abolitionism, and had twice been the
presidential candidate of the Liberty party. A general of the National
army, who was present, remarks that Barksdale died "like a brave man,
with dignity and resignation." On that field perished also the cause
that he represented; and as Americans we may all be proud to say that,
so far as manly courage {260} could go, it died with dignity if not
with resignation.
Gen. Rufus R. Dawes, who was colonel of the Sixth Wisconsin Regiment,
gives some particulars of the fight at the railroad cut on the first
day: "The only commands I gave, as we advanced, were, 'Align on the
colors! Close up on that color!' The regiment was being broken up so
that this order alone could hold the body together. Meanwhile the
colors were down upon the ground several times, but were raised at
once by the heroes of the color-guard. Not one of the guard escaped,
every man being killed or wounded. Four hundred and twenty men started
as a regiment from the turnpike fence, of whom two hundred and forty
reached the railroad cut. Years afterward I found the distance passed
over to be one hundred and seventy-five paces. Every officer proved
himself brave, true, and heroic in encouraging the men to breast this
deadly storm; but the real impetus was the eager, determined valor of
our men who carried muskets in the ranks. The rebel color could be
seen waving defiantly just above the edge of the railroad cut. A
heroic ambition to capture it took possession of several of our men.
Corporal Eggleston, a mere boy, sprang forward to seize it, and was
shot dead the moment his hand touched the color. Private Anderson,
furious at the killing of his brave young comrade, recked little for
the rebel color; but he swung aloft his musket, and with a terrific
blow split the skull of the rebel who had shot young Eggleston.
Lieutenant Remington was severely wounded in the shoulder while
reaching for the colors. Into this deadly mélêe rushed Corporal
Francis A. Waller, who seized and held the rebel battle-flag. It was
the flag of the Second Mississippi Regiment.... Corporal James Kelly
turned from the ranks and stepped beside me as we both moved hurriedly
forward on the charge. He pulled open his woollen shirt, and a mark
where the deadly minié-ball had entered his breast was visible. He
said: 'Colonel, won't you please write to my folks that I died a
soldier?'"
[Illustration: PART OF THE BATTLEFIELD OF GETTYSBURG. (From a War
Department photograph.)]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL FRANCIS T. NICHOLLS, C. S. A.]
The story of the critical struggle for the possession of Little Round
Top, or at least of an important portion of it, has been graphically
related by Adjutant Porter Farley, of the One Hundred and Fortieth New
York Regiment, which went up at the same time with Hazlett's battery.
Captain Farley writes:
"Just at that moment our former brigadier, Gen. G. K. Warren, chief
engineer of the army, with an orderly and one or two officers, rode
down toward the head of our regiment. He came from the direction of
the hill-top. His speed and manner {261} indicated unusual excitement.
Before he reached us he called out to O'Rorke to lead his regiment
that way up the hill. O'Rorke answered him that General Weed had gone
ahead and expected this regiment to follow him. 'Never mind that,'
answered Warren, 'I'll take the responsibility.' Warren's words and
manner carried conviction of the importance of the thing he asked.
Accepting his assurance of full justification, O'Rorke turned the head
of the regiment to the left, and, following one of the officers who
had been with Warren, led it diagonally up the eastern slope of Little
Round Top. Warren rode off, evidently bent upon securing other troops.
The staff officer who rode with us, by his impatient gestures, urged
us to our greatest speed. Some of the guns of Hazlett's battery broke
through our files before we reached the hill-top amid the frantic
efforts of the horses, lashed by the drivers, to pull their heavy
pieces up that steep acclivity. A few seconds later the head of our
regiment reached the summit of the ridge, war's wild panorama spread
before us, and we found ourselves upon the verge of battle. It was a
moment which called for leadership. There was no time for tactical
formation. Delay was ruin. Hesitation was destruction. Well was it for
the cause he served that the man who led our regiment that day was one
prompt to decide and brave to execute. The bullets flew in among the
men the moment the leading company mounted the ridge; and as not a
musket was loaded, the natural impulse was to halt and load them. But
O'Rorke permitted no such delay. Springing from his horse, he threw
the reins to the sergeant-major; his sword flashed from its scabbard
into the sunlight, and calling, 'This way, boys,' he led the charge
over the rocks, down the hillside, till he came abreast the men of
Vincent's brigade, who were posted in the ravine to our left. Joining
them, an irregular line was formed, such as the confusion of the rocks
lying thereabout permitted; and this line grew and was extended toward
the right as the successive rearward companies came upon the seen of
action. There, while some were partly sheltered by the rocks and
others stood in the open, a fierce fight went on with an enemy among
the trees and underbrush. Flushed with the excitement of battle, and
bravely led, they pushed up close to our line. The steadfastness and
valor displayed on both sides made the result for some few minutes
doubtful; but a struggle so desperate and bloody could not be a long
one. The enemy fell back; a short lull was succeeded by another
onslaught, which was again repelled.
"When that struggle was over, the exultation of victory was soon
chilled by the dejection which oppressed us as we counted and realized
the cost of all that had been won. Of our regiment eighty-five
enlisted men and six officers had been wounded. Besides these,
twenty-six of the comrades who had marched with us that afternoon had
fallen dead before the fire of the enemy. Grouped by companies, a row
of inanimate forms lay side by side beneath the trees upon the eastern
slope. No funeral ceremony, and only shallow graves, could be accorded
them. In the darkness of the night, silently and with bitter
dejection, each company buried its dead. O'Rorke was among the dead.
Shot through the neck, he had fallen without a groan, and we may hope
without a pang. The supreme effort of his life was consummated by a
death heroic in its surroundings and undisturbed by pain."
[Illustration: COLONEL P. H. O'RORKE.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ELON J. FARNSWORTH.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL S. K. ZOOK.]
[Illustration: COLONEL A. VAN HORNE ELLIS.]
It has been well said that Gettysburg was the common soldier's battle;
that its great results were due, not so much to any generalship either
in strategy or in tactics, as to the intelligent courage and
magnificent staying powers of the Northern soldier. If any one man was
more than another the hero of the fight, it was General Hancock, who
for his services on that field received the thanks of Congress.
Senator Washburn, who saw him the next year at the Wilderness,
remarked: "He was the {262} finest-looking man above ground; he was
the very impersonation of war." Hancock not only chose the ground for
the battle and set things in order for the conflict of the second day,
but seemed to be everywhere present, animating the men with the spirit
of his own valor and enthusiasm. He was especially conspicuous during
the terrific cannonade that preceded the great charge of the third
day, riding slowly up and down the lines. It is said that when he
began this ride he was accompanied by thirty men, and when he finished
it there was but one man with him--the horseman who carried his corps
flag. All the others had either been struck down by the missiles of
the enemy, or been called to imperative duty on different parts of the
line. As he rode slowly along, he stopped frequently to speak to the
men who were lying upon the ground to avoid the shells and balls, and
clutching their rifles ready to spring up and meet the charge which
they knew would follow as soon as the artillery fire ceased. While
this famous charge was in progress, Hancock rode down to speak to
General Stannard, whose Vermonters were to move forward and strike the
charging column in flank, and at this moment he was most grievously
wounded. A rifle ball struck the pommel of his saddle, tearing out and
twisting a nail from it, and both bullet and nail entered his thigh.
Two of General Stannard's aids caught him as he fell from his horse,
and put him into an ambulance. Here he wrote a note to General Meade
urgently advising that, as soon as the Confederate charge was over, a
return charge be made with the comparatively fresh troops of the Sixth
Corps. Some think that if this had been done the Army of Northern
Virginia would have found the end of its career then and there,
instead of at Appomattox a year and a half later. But General
Longstreet says he expected such a charge and was prepared for it, and
that if it had been made Sedgwick's men would have fared as badly as
Pickett's.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP R. DE TROBRIAND.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY J. HUNT.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL DANIEL SICKLES. MAJOR-GENERAL SAMUEL P.
HEINTZELMAN.]
It is a little difficult to understand why so much has been made in
literature of this charge of Pickett's, unless, perhaps, it is owing
to the picturesque circumstances. It was at the close of the greatest
battle of the war; it was heralded by the mightiest cannonade of the
war; it was witnessed by two great armies; it was made in the middle
of the afternoon of a summer day, on a gentle slope, with the sun at
the backs of the assailants, the best possible arrangement for a grand
display; it exhibited magnificent courage and confidence on the part
of the soldiers that made it, and quite as great courage and
confidence on the part of those who met and thwarted it. It is,
perhaps, for these reasons that it has been made unduly famous; for,
after all, it was a blunder and a failure. There were other charges
{263} in the war that tested quite as much the devotion and endurance
of soldiers, and they were not all failures. The charge of Hooker's
and Thomas's men up the heights of Lookout Mountain and Mission Ridge
was even more picturesque, and was a grand success. The National
position at Gettysburg is always represented as being along a ridge,
and this, in a general way, is true; but near the centre the ridge is
so low that it almost dies away into the plain, and Pickett's men,
being directed toward this point, had only the very gentlest of slopes
to ascend. Gen. Alexander S. Webb, whose command was at this point,
said in conversation: "We had no intrenchments there, not a sod was
turned." "But why did you not intrench?" "Because we never supposed
that anybody would be fool enough to charge up there." The peril to
the charging column was more from the cross-fire of the batteries on
the higher ground to the right and left, than from the direct fire in
front.
[Illustration: "I WILL GIVE THEM ONE MORE SHOT!"]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE E. PICKETT, C. S. A.]
{264} [Illustration: BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, THIRD DAY.]
[Illustration: GROUP OF CONFEDERATE PRISONERS BEING MARCHED TO THE
REAR UNDER GUARD. (From the Panorama of Gettysburg, at Chicago.)]
General Sickles has been criticised somewhat severely for the
erroneous position taken by his corps on the second day of the battle,
which resulted in the great slaughter at the peach orchard and the
wheat-field. On a subsequent visit to Gettysburg he gave this
explanation of his action:
"It was quite early when I rode to General Meade's headquarters for
orders. The general told me that he did not think we would be
attacked, as he believed the enemy was in no condition to renew the
fight. I freely expressed to him my belief that the enemy would not
only force a battle at Gettysburg, but would do so soon. From General
Meade's conversation, and from his manner, I concluded he did not
intend to fight the battle at Gettysburg if he could avoid it. General
Butterfield, his chief of staff, told me that orders were being then
prepared for a change of position to Pipe Clay Creek. After waiting
some time for a decision as to what was to be done, I said to General
Meade that I should put my command in position with a view to meet any
emergency along my front, and at the same time asked him to send
General Butterfield with me to look over the field and inspect the
position I had decided to occupy. 'Butterfield is busy,' said he, and
he suggested that I use my own judgment. I again replied that I should
prefer to have some one of his staff officers sent with me, and asked
that General Hunt, chief of the artillery, be sent. General Meade
assented, and Hunt and I rode away. Carefully we surveyed the ground
in my front. I expressed the opinion that the high ground running from
the Emmetsburg road to Round Top was the most advantageous position.
Hunt agreed with me.
"'Then I understand that I am to take this position, and you, as
General Meade's representative, so order.' 'I do not care,' said he,
'to take the responsibility of ordering you to take that position, but
as soon as I can ride to General Meade's headquarters you will receive
his orders to do so.'
"He rode away, but before he reached headquarters, or I received
orders, my danger became imminent, and I was forced to go into line of
battle. Just after I had taken position on the high ground selected,
with Humphrey on the right, within and beyond the peach orchard, and
Birney on the left toward Round Top, I received an order from General
Meade to report at his headquarters. There was vigorous skirmishing on
my front, and I returned word to the general that I was about to be
attacked and could not leave the field. It was not long before I
received a peremptory order to report at once to headquarters, as
General Meade was going to hold an important conference of corps
commanders. I sent for Birney, put him in command, and rode rapidly to
Meade's headquarters. As I rode along I could hear the increasing fire
along the line, and felt very solicitous for my command. As I came up
to headquarters at a rapid gait, Meade came out hurriedly and said:
'Don't dismount, don't dismount; I fear your whole line is engaged;
return to your command, and in a few moments I will join you on the
field.' I rode back with all possible speed, reaching my corps before
the enemy had made his first furious assault. General Meade soon
joined me, as he had promised, and together we inspected {265} the
position I had taken. 'Isn't your line too much extended?' said he.
'It is,' I replied; 'but I haven't the Army of the Potomac, and have
a wide space to cover. Reserves should at once be sent up. My
dependence will have to be upon my artillery until support comes, and
I need more guns.' 'Send to Hunt for what you want,' said he, and he
glanced over the slender line of infantry that stretched toward Round
Top. Just before he left I said to him: 'Does my position suit you? If
it does not, I will change it.' 'No, no!' he replied quickly; 'I'll
send up the Fifth Corps, and Hancock will give any other supports you
may require.'
"He rode away, and soon after the battle began. The terrific struggle
along the whole line, and especially in the peach orchard and the
wheat-field on the right and left of my line, respectively, need not
be gone over. It is a matter of history. I sent to Hunt, when Meade
had gone, for forty pieces of artillery, which, added to the sixty I
had, gave me the guns to keep up the fighting while I waited for
reinforcements. Warren, who was then an engineer officer, was on Round
Top sending urgent appeals to me to send troops to hold that important
position. One brigade sent to me I immediately despatched him. As the
fighting went on and increased in intensity, I looked for the Fifth
Corps again and again, and sent an aid several times to hurry them up.
Sykes was slow, and, finding the needs of the hour growing greater and
greater every moment, I sent to Hancock for help. Hancock was always
prompt and generous, and with eager haste pushed forward his best
troops to the assistance of the struggling Third Corps. But the
moments I waited for reinforcements that day were as long to me as an
eternity, and the brave boys who wore the diamond during all this time
were obliged to stand the shock of as furious an assault as was ever
dealt against troops on any battlefield of modern times. The struggle
in that now peaceful peach-orchard was then fierce as death. The
wheat-field yonder was like the winepress with the dead and dying. Men
fought there, hand to hand, I think, as never they grappled before.
Onward and over against each other they bent again and again. Now the
Confederates would drive madly into the conflict. Now our boys would
push them back again at the point of the bayonet. Graham's and the
Excelsior Brigades, that I organized and commanded during the first of
the war, were in that section of the field, and hundreds of them lay
down to sleep under the shade of the peach trees that hot July day."
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL JAMES LONGSTREET, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL FITZHUGH LEE, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL E. P. ALEXANDER, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL RICHARD L. T. BEALL, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL R. S. EWELL, C. S. A.]
One who participated in the bloody struggle of the wheat-field on the
second day writes:
"General Birney rode up and ordered a forward movement, and directed
that the largest regiment of the brigade be sent double-quick to
prolong the line on the left, so as to fill in the intervening gap to
the foot of Round Top, for the occupation of which both forces were
now engaged in a deadly struggle. General de Trobriand designated the
Fortieth New York for this duty, and ordered me to conduct it to its
assigned position, and, if necessary, to remain there with it. We
proceeded. The air was filled with smoke and the interchanging fires
of artillery and musketry. The shouts of both armies were almost
deafening, but I succeeded in placing the regiment where it was
ordered, and decided to remain with it.
"The enemy had us at a disadvantage. They were on higher ground, and
were pouring a terrific fire into our front. I trust in God I may
never again be called to look upon such scenes as I there beheld. Col.
Thomas W. Egan, the commander of the regiment, one of the bravest men
I ever knew, was charging with his command, when a ball from the enemy
pierced the heart of his mare, who sank {266} under him. Major Warner
of the same regiment was borne past me for dead, but was only terribly
wounded. He afterward recovered. His horse came dashing by a few
moments afterward, and my own having been disabled from wounds and
rendered unfit for use, I caught and mounted him. The poor brute that
I was riding had two minie balls buried in him--one in the shoulders,
the other in the hip--and was so frantic with pain that he had
wellnigh broken my neck in his violent fall. My sword was pitched a
dozen yards from me, and was picked up by one of the men and returned
to me that night.
"Col. A. V. H. Ellis, of the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth New York,
one of the most chivalrous spirits that ever breathed, had received
his mortal wound. He was riding at the head of his regiment, waving
his sword in the air, and shouting to his men--his orange blossoms, as
he called them, the regiment having been raised in Orange County, New
York--when a bullet struck him in the forehead. He was borne to the
rear, his face covered with blood, and the froth spirting from his
mouth. He died in a few moments. Major Cromwell, also of that
regiment, was killed almost at the same instant by a shot in the
breast. He died without a groan or struggle. The adjutant of the
regiment was killed by a shot through the heart as it was moving off
the field. He had fought bravely for hours, and it seemed hard that
one so young and hopeful should be thus stricken down by a chance shot
after having faced the thickest of the fight unharmed. I learned
afterward that the noble young soldier was engaged to be married to a
beautiful young lady in his native State.
"It happened by the merest accident that I was within a few feet of
General Sickles when he received the wound by which he lost his leg.
When our command fell back after being relieved by General Sykes, I
hastened to find General De Trobriand, and, seeing a knot of officers
near the brick house into which General Sickles was so soon to be
taken, I rode up to see whether he (De Trobriand) was among them. The
knot of officers proved to be General Sickles and his staff. I saluted
him and was just asking for General De Trobriand, when a terrific
explosion seemed to shake the very earth. This was instantly followed
by another equally stunning, and the horses all began to jump. I
instantly noticed that General Sickles's pants and drawers at the knee
were torn clear off to the leg, which was swinging loose. The jumping
of the horse was fortunate for him, as he turned just in time for him
to alight on the upper side of the slope of the hill. As he attempted
to dismount he seemed to lose strength, and half fell to the ground.
He was very pale, and evidently in most fearful pain, as he exclaimed
excitedly, 'Quick, quick! get something and tie it up before I bleed
to death.' These were his exact words, and I shall never forget the
scene as long as I live, for we all loved General Sickles, who
commanded our corps. He was carried from the field to the house I have
mentioned, coolly smoking a cigar, quietly remarking to a Catholic
priest, a chaplain to one of the regiments in his command, 'Man
proposes and God disposes.' His leg was amputated within less than
half an hour after his receiving the wound."
[Illustration: THE STONE WALL--GENERAL O. O. HOWARD'S POSITION NEAR
CEMETARY HILL. (From the Panorama of Gettysburg, at Chicago.)]
Major Joseph G. Rosengarten says of General Reynolds: "In all the
intrigues of the army, and the interference of the politicians in its
management, he silently set aside the tempting offers to take part,
and served his successive commanders with {267} unswerving loyalty and
zeal and faith. In the full flush of life and health, vigorously
leading on the troops in hand, and energetically summoning up the rest
of his command, watching and even leading the attack of a
comparatively small body, a glorious picture of the best type of
military leader, superbly mounted, and horse and man sharing in the
excitement of the shock of battle, Reynolds was, of course, a shining
mark to the enemy's sharp-shooters. He had taken his troops into a
heavy growth of timber on the slope of a hill-side, and, under their
regimental and brigade commanders, the men did their work well and
promptly. Returning to rejoin the expected divisions, he was struck by
a minie-ball fired by a sharp-shooter hidden in the branches of a tree
almost overhead, and was killed at once. His horse bore him to the
little clump of trees, where a cairn of stones and a rude mark on the
bark, now almost overgrown, still tell the fatal spot. At the moment
that his body was taken to the rear, for his death was instantaneous,
two of his most gallant staff officers, Captains Riddle and Wadsworth,
in pursuance of his directions, effected a slight movement, which made
prisoners of Archer's brigade, so that the rebel prisoners went to the
rear almost at the same time, and their respectful conduct was in
itself the highest tribute they could pay to him who had thus fallen."
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF JOHN BURNS, THE OLD HERO OF GETTYSBURG.]
[Illustration: MISS JENNIE WADE, THE ONLY WOMAN KILLED AT GETTYSBURG.]
Gen. D. McM. Gregg, who commanded one of the two cavalry divisions of
the Army of the Potomac, while Gen. John Buford commanded the other,
in a rapid review of the part taken by the cavalry in the campaign,
writes: "The two divisions were put in motion toward the Potomac, but
did not take exactly the same route, and the Army of the Potomac
followed their lead. The advance of Stuart's Confederate cavalry
command had reached Aldie, and here, on June 17th, began a series of
skirmishes or engagements between the two cavalry forces, all of which
were decided successes for us, and terminated in driving Stuart's
cavalry through the gap at Paris. Kilpatrick's brigade, moving in the
advance of the second division, fell upon the enemy at Aldie, and
there ensued an engagement of the most obstinate character, in which
several brilliant mounted charges were made, terminating in the
retreat of the enemy. On June 19th, the division advanced to
Middleburg, where a part of Stuart's force was posted, and was
attacked by Col. Irvin Gregg's brigade. Here, as at Aldie, the fight
was very obstinate. The enemy had carefully selected the most
defensible position, from which he had to be driven step by step, and
this work had to be done by dismounted skirmishers, owing to the
unfavorable character of the country for mounted service. On the 19th,
Gregg's division moved on the turnpike from Middleburg in the
direction of Upperville, and soon encountered the enemy's cavalry in
great force. The attack was promptly made, the enemy offering the most
stubborn resistance. The long lines of stone fences, which are so
common in that region, were so many lines of defence to a force in
retreat; these could be held until our advancing skirmishers were
almost upon them, but then there would be no escape for those behind;
it was either to surrender or attempt escape across the open fields to
fall before the deadly fire of the carbines of the pursuers. Later in
the day General Buford's division came in on the right, and took the
enemy in flank. Then our entire force, under General Pleasonton,
supported by a column of infantry, moved forward and dealt the
finishing blow. Through Upperville the pursuit was continued at a run,
the enemy flying in the greatest {268} confusion; nor were they
permitted to re-form until night put a stop to further pursuit at the
mouth of the gap. Our losses in the fighting of these three days
amounted to five hundred in killed, wounded, and missing; of the
latter there were but few. The enemy's loss was much greater,
particularly in prisoners. Our captures also included light guns,
flags, and small arms. These successful engagements of our cavalry
left our infantry free to march, without the loss of an hour, to the
field of Gettysburg. At Frederick, Md., the addition of the cavalry,
formerly commanded by General Stahl, made it necessary to organize a
third division, the command of which was given to General Kilpatrick.
Buford, with his division in advance of our army, on July 1st, first
encountered the enemy in the vicinity of Gettysburg. How well his
brigades of regulars and volunteers resisted the advance of that
invading host, yielding so slowly as to give ample time for our
infantry to go to his support, is well known. Kilpatrick's division
marched from Frederick well to the right, at Hanover engaged the
enemy's cavalry in a sharp skirmish, and reached Gettysburg on the
1st. On the left of our line, on the 3d, one of his brigades, led by
General Farnsworth, gallantly charged the enemy's infantry and
protected that flank from any attack, with the assistance of General
Merritt's regular brigade. Gregg's division crossed the Potomac at
Edward's Ferry and reached Gettysburg on the morning of the 2d, taking
position on the right of our line. On the 3d, during that terrific
fire of artillery, it was discovered that Stuart's cavalry was moving
to our right, with the evident intention of passing to the rear to
make a simultaneous attack there. When opposite our right, Stuart was
met by General Gregg with two of his brigades and Custer's brigade of
the Third Division, and on a fair field there was another trial
between two cavalry forces, in which most of the fighting was done in
the saddle, and with the trooper's favorite weapon, the sabre. Stuart
advanced not a pace beyond where he was met; but after a severe
struggle, which was only terminated by the darkness of night, he
withdrew, and on the morrow, with the defeated army of Lee, was in
retreat to the Potomac."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE G. MEADE AND OFFICERS.]
The obstinate blindness of English partisanship in our great struggle
was curiously illustrated by an incident on the field of Gettysburg.
One Fremantle, a lieutenant-colonel in the British army, had come over
to visit the seat of war, and published his observations upon it in
_Blackwood's Magazine_. He was near General Longstreet when Pickett's
charge was made. Standing there with his back to the sun, and
witnessing the operation on the great slope before him, he, although a
soldier by profession, was so thoroughly possessed with the wish and
the expectation that the Confederate cause might succeed, that he
mistook Pickett's awful defeat for a glorious success, and rushing up
to General Longstreet, congratulated him upon it, and told him how
glad he was to be there and see it. "Are you, indeed?" said
Longstreet, surprised. "I am not."
About a month after the battle, General Lee wrote a letter to
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, in which he said:
"We must expect reverses, even defeats. They are sent to teach us
wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, and to prevent
our falling into greater disasters. Our people have only to be true
and united, to bear manfully the misfortunes incident to war, and all
will come right in the end. I know how prone we are to censure, and
how ready to blame others for the non-fulfilment of our expectations.
This is unbecoming in a generous people, and I grieve to see its
expression. The general remedy for the want of success in a military
commander is his removal. This is natural, and in many instances
proper; for, no matter what may be the ability of the officer, if he
loses the confidence of his troops, disaster must, sooner or later,
ensue. I have been prompted by these reflections more than once since
my return from Pennsylvania to propose to your Excellency the
propriety of selecting another commander for this army. I have seen
and heard of expressions of discontent in the public journals at the
result of the expedition. I do not know how far this feeling extends
in the army. My brother officers have been too kind to report it, and
so far the troops have been too generous to exhibit it. It is fair,
however, to suppose that it does exist, and success is so necessary to
us that nothing should be risked to secure it. I, therefore, in all
sincerity, request your Excellency to take measures to supply my
place."
Mr. Davis declined to relieve General Lee from his command of the Army
of Northern Virginia, and, consequently, he retained it until he
surrendered himself and that army as prisoners of war in the spring of
1865.
{269} The effect that the news of Gettysburg produced in Europe is
said to have been the absolute termination of all hope for a
recognition of the Confederacy as an independent power. A writer in
the _London Morning Advertiser_ says: "Mr. Disraeli, although never
committing himself, as Mr. Gladstone and Lord John Russell did, to the
principles for which the Southern Confederacy was fighting, always
regarded recognition as a possible card to play, and was quite
prepared, at the proper moment, to play it. The moment seemed to have
come when General Lee invaded the Federal States. At that time it was
notorious that the bulk of the Tory party and more than half of the
Ministerialists were prepared for such a step. I had frequent
conversations with Mr. Disraeli on the subject, and I perfectly
recollect his saying to me that the time had now come for moving in
the matter. 'But,' he said, 'it is of great importance that, if the
move is to be made, it should not assume a party character, and it is
of equal importance that the initiative should come from our (the
Conservative) side. If the thing is to be done, I must do it myself;
and then, from all I hear and know, the resolution will be carried,
Lord Palmerston being quite disposed to accept the declaration by
Parliament in favor of a policy which he personally approves. But I
cannot speak without more knowledge of the subject than I now possess,
and I should be glad if you could give me a brief, furnishing the
necessary statistics of the population, the institutions, the
commercial and political prospects of the Southern States, in order
that when the moment comes I may be fully armed.' I procured the
necessary information and placed it in his hands. Every day seemed to
bring the moment for its use nearer, and the general feeling in the
House of Commons was perfectly ripe for the motion in favor of
recognition, when the news of the battle of Gettysburg came like a
thunder-clap upon the country. General Meade defeated Lee, and saved
the Union, and from that day not another word was heard in Parliament
about recognition. A few days afterward I saw Mr. Disraeli, and his
exact words were, 'We nearly put our foot in it.'"
A great national cemetery was laid out on the battlefield, and the
remains of three thousand five hundred and sixty soldiers of the
National army who had fallen in that campaign were placed in it,
arranged in the order of their States. This was dedicated on the 19th
of November in the year of the battle, 1863; and this occasion
furnished a striking instance of the difference between natural genius
and artificial reputation. The orator of the day was Edward Everett,
who, by long cultivation and unlimited advertising, had attained the
nominal place of first orator in the country; but he was by no means
entitled to speak for the men who had there laid down their lives in
the cause of universal liberty; for, through all his political life,
until the breaking out of the war, he had been a strong pro-slavery
man. President Lincoln was invited to be present, as a matter of
course, and was informed that he would be expected to say a little
something. Mr. Everett delivered a long address, prepared in his usual
elaborate and artificial style, which was forgotten by every hearer
within twenty-four hours. Mr. Lincoln, on his way from Washington,
jotted down an idea or two on the back of an old envelope, by way of
memorandum, and when he was called upon, rose and delivered a speech
of fewer than three hundred words, which very soon took its place
among the world's immortal orations. Some time after the delivery of
the address, Mr. Lincoln, at the request of friends, carefully wrote
it and affixed his signature. This copy is here reproduced in such a
way as to give an exact fac-simile of his writing.
[Illustration: (hand written)
Address delivered at the dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we
can not hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of
the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.
Abraham Lincoln.
November 19, 1863.]
{270}
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN.
OPERATIONS ON THE MISSISSIPPI--GRANT PLACED IN COMMAND--PLANS THE
CAMPAIGN--LOSS AT HOLLY SPRINGS--SHERMAN AND PORTER DESCEND THE
RIVER--SHERMAN'S ATTEMPT ON THE YAZOO--AT HAINES'S BLUFF--CAPTURE OF
ARKANSAS POST--CUTTING A CANAL--YAZOO PASS ATTEMPTED--STEELE'S
BAYOU--GRANT CROSSES THE MISSISSIPPI--GRIERSON'S RAID--ACTION AT
RAYMOND--CAPTURE OF JACKSON--BATTLE OF CHAMPION'S HILL--PEMBERTON IN
VICKSBURG--SIEGE OF THE CITY BEGUN--SURRENDER--OPERATIONS OF GUNBOAT
ON THE RIVER--A DUMMY GUNBOAT--INTERESTING INCIDENTS DURING THE SIEGE.
In the autumn of 1862, after the battles of Iuka and Corinth, the
National commanders in the West naturally began to think of further
movements southward into the State of Mississippi, and of opening the
great river and securing unobstructed navigation from Cairo to the
Gulf. The project was slow in execution, principally from division of
authority, and doubt as to what general would ultimately have the
command. John A. McClernand, who had been a Democratic member of
Congress from Illinois, and was what was known as a "political
general," spent some time in Washington, urging the plan upon the
President (who was an old acquaintance and personal friend), of course
in the expectation that he would be intrusted with its execution. But
he found little favor with General Halleck. At this time General Grant
hardly knew what were the limits of his command, or whether, indeed,
he really had any command at all.
[Illustration: COMMUNICATING WITH THE FLOTILLA.]
[Illustration: FLAG OFFICER CHARLES HENRY DAVIS. (Afterward
Rear-Admiral and Chief of Bureau of Navigation.)]
[Illustration: COMMODORE W. D. PORTER.]
Vicksburg is on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi, where it
makes a sharp bend enclosing a long, narrow peninsula. The railroad
from Shreveport, La., reaches the river at this point, and connects by
ferry with the railroad running east from Vicksburg through Jackson,
the State capital. The distance between the two cities is forty-five
miles. About a hundred miles below Vicksburg is Port Hudson, similarly
situated as to river and railways. Between these two points the great
Red River, coming from the borders of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana,
flows into the Mississippi. As the Confederates drew a large part of
their supplies from Texas and the country watered by the Red River, it
was of the first importance to them to retain control of the
Mississippi between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, especially after they
had lost New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Memphis.
After taking New Orleans, in April, 1862, Farragut had gone up the
river with some of his ships, in May, and demanded the surrender of
Vicksburg; but, though the place was then but slightly fortified, the
demand was refused, and without a land force he could not take the
city, as it was too high to be damaged by his guns. He ran by the
batteries in June, and communicated with the river fleet of Capt.
Charles H. Davis. But all the while new batteries were being planted
on the bluffs, and after a time it became exceedingly hazardous for
any sort of craft to run the gantlet under their plunging fire. In
August, a Confederate force, under Gen. John C. Breckinridge,
attempted the capture of Baton Rouge, expecting to be assisted in the
assault by an immense iron-clad ram, the _Arkansas_, which was coming
down the river. The city was occupied by a force under Gen. Thomas
Williams, who made a stubborn and bloody fight, driving off the enemy.
General Williams was killed, as were also the Confederate General
Clarke and numerous officers of lower rank on either side, and more
than six hundred men in all were killed or wounded. The ram failed to
take part in the fight, because her machinery broke down. She was
attacked next day by two or three vessels, commanded by Captain (now
Admiral) David D. Porter, and when she had been disabled her crew
abandoned her and set her on fire, and she was blown into a thousand
fragments. After this defeat, General Breckinridge turned his
attention {271} to the fortification of Port Hudson, which was made
almost as strong as Vicksburg.
On the 12th of November, 1862, General Grant received a despatch from
General Halleck placing him in command of all troops sent to his
department, and telling him to fight the enemy where he pleased. Four
days later Grant and Sherman had a conference at Columbus, and a plan
was arranged and afterward modified, by which Grant (who then had
about thirty thousand men under his personal command) was to move
southward and confront an equal force, commanded by Gen. John C.
Pemberton, on the Tallahatchie; while Sherman, with thirty thousand,
was to move from Memphis down the eastern bank of the Mississippi,
and, assisted by Porter and his gunboats, attempt the capture of
Vicksburg from the rear. If Pemberton moved toward that city, Grant
was to follow and engage him as soon as possible.
Sherman and Porter, with their usual energy, went to work with all
speed to carry out their part of the programme. Grant moved more
slowly, because he did not wish to force his enemy back upon
Vicksburg, but to hold him as far north as possible. He established
his dépôt of supplies at Holly Springs, and waited for Sherman's
movement. But the whole scheme was ruined by the activity of two
Confederate cavalry detachments under Generals Van Dorn and Forrest.
On the 20th of December Van Dorn made a dash at Holly Springs, which
was held by fifteen hundred men under a Colonel Murphy, and captured
the place and its garrison. Grant had more than two million dollars'
worth of supplies there, and as Van Dorn could not remove them he
burned them all, together with the storehouses and railroad buildings.
Forrest, making a wide detour, tore up a portion of the railroad
between Jackson, Tenn., and Columbus, Ky., so that Grant's army was
cut off from all communication with the North for more than a week. It
had not yet occurred to anybody that a large army could leave its
communications and subsist on supplies gathered in the enemy's
country; so Grant gave up this part of his plan and moved back toward
Memphis.
But Sherman and Porter, not hearing of the disaster at Holly Springs,
had proceeded with their preparations, embarked the troops, and gone
down the river in a long procession, the gunboats being placed at
intervals in the line of transports. Sherman says: "We manoeuvred by
divisions and brigades when in motion, and it was a magnificent sight.
What few of the inhabitants remained at the plantations on the river
bank were unfriendly, except the slaves. Some few guerilla parties
infested the banks, but did not dare to molest so strong a force as I
then commanded." The guerilla bands alluded to had been a serious
annoyance to the boats patrolling the river. Besides the
sharp-shooters with their rifles, small parties would suddenly appear
at one point or another with a field gun, fire at a passing boat, and
disappear before any force could be landed to pursue them. Farragut
had been obliged to destroy the town of Donaldsonville, in order to
punish and break up this practice on the lower reaches of the river.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN. By permission of Dick &
Fitzgerald, N. Y., from "Twelve Decisive Battles of the War."]
The expedition arrived at Milliken's Bend on Christmas, where a
division was left, and whence a brigade was sent to break the railroad
from Shreveport. The next day the boats, with the three remaining
divisions, ascended the Yazoo thirteen miles to a point opposite the
bluffs north of Vicksburg, where the troops were landed. They were
here on the low bottom-land, which was crossed by numerous bayous,
some parts of it heavily wooded, the clearings being abandoned cotton
plantations. The bluffs were crowned with artillery, and along their
base was a deserted bed of the Yazoo. Most of the bridges were
destroyed, and the whole district was subject to inundation. It was
ugly ground for the operations of an army; but Sherman, confident that
Grant was holding Pemberton, felt sure there could not be a heavy
force on the heights, and resolved to capture them without delay. The
27th and 28th were spent in reconnoitring, selecting points for
attack, and placing the troops. On the 29th, while the gunboats made a
diversion at Haines's Bluff, and a part of Steele's division made a
feint on the right, near Vicksburg, the main force crossed the
intervening bayous at two points and attacked the centre of the
position. The battle was begun by a heavy artillery fire, followed by
musketry, and then the rush of the men. They had to face guns, at the
foot of the bluff, {272} that swept the narrow approaches, and at the
same time endure a cross-fire from the heights. Blair's brigade
reached the base of the hills, but was not properly supported by
Morgan's, and had to fall back again, leaving five hundred of its men
behind. The Sixth Missouri Regiment, at another point, had also gone
forward unsupported, reached the bluff, and could not return. The men
quickly scooped niches in the bank with their hands and sheltered
themselves in them, while many of the enemy came to the edge of the
hill, held out their muskets vertically at arm's-length, and fired
down at them. These men were not able to get back to their lines till
nightfall. This assault cost Sherman eighteen hundred and forty-eight
men, and inflicted upon the Confederates a loss of but two hundred. He
made arrangements to send a heavy force on the transports to Haines's
Bluff in the night of December 30, to be debarked at dawn, and storm
the works there, while the rest of the troops were to advance as soon
as the defences had been thus taken in reverse. But a heavy fog
prevented the boats from moving, and the next day a rain set in.
Sherman observed the water-marks on the trees ten feet above his head,
and a great deal more then ten feet above his head in the other
direction he saw whole brigades of reinforcements marching into the
enemy's intrenchments. He knew then that something must have gone
wrong with Grant's co-operating force, and so he wisely re-embarked
his men and munitions, and steamed down to the mouth of the Yazoo.
[Illustration: GUNBOATS PASSING VICKSBURG IN THE NIGHT.]
On the 4th of January, 1863, General McClernand assumed command of the
two corps that were commanded by Generals Sherman and George W.
Morgan. A fortnight before, a Confederate boat had come out of
Arkansas River and captured a mail boat, and it was known that there
was a Confederate garrison of five thousand men at Fort Hindman, or
Arkansas Post, on the Arkansas. It occurred to Sherman that there
could be no safety for boats on the Mississippi near the mouth of the
Arkansas till this post was captured or broken up; and accordingly he
asked McClernand to let him attack it with his corps, assisted by some
of the gunboats. McClernand concluded to go himself with the entire
army, and Porter also accompanied in person. They landed on the 10th,
below the fort, and drove in the pickets. That night the Confederates
toiled all night to throw up a line of works reaching from the fort
northward to an impassable swamp. On the 11th the whole National force
moved forward simultaneously to the attack, the gunboats steaming up
close to the fort and sweeping its bastions with their fire, while
Morgan's corps moved against its eastern face, and Sherman's against
the new line of works. The ground to be passed over was level, with
little shelter save a few trees and logs; but the men advanced
steadily, lying down behind every little projection, and so annoying
the artillerymen with their sharp-shooting that the guns could not be
well served. When the gunboats arrived abreast of the fort and
enfiladed it, the gunners ran down into {273} the ditch, a man with a
white flag appeared on the parapet, and presently white flags and rags
were fluttering all along the line. Firing was stopped at once, and
the fort was surrendered by its commander, General Churchill. About
one hundred and fifty of the garrison had been killed, and the
remainder, numbering forty-eight hundred, were made prisoners. The
National loss was about one thousand. The fort was dismantled and
destroyed, and the stores taken on board the fleet. McClernand
conceived a vague project for ascending the river farther, but on
peremptory orders from Grant the expedition returned to the
Mississippi, steaming down the Arkansas in a heavy snow-storm.
In accordance with instructions from Washington, Grant now took
personal command of the operations on the Mississippi, dividing his
entire force into four corps, to be commanded by Generals McClernand,
Sherman, Stephen A. Hurlbut, and James B. McPherson. Hurlbut's corps
was left to hold the lines east of Memphis, while the other troops,
with reinforcements from the North, were united in the river
expedition.
McClernand and Sherman went down the peninsula enclosed in the bend of
the river opposite Vicksburg, and with immense labor dug a canal
across it. Much was hoped from this, but it proved a failure, for the
river would not flow through it. Furthermore, there were bluffs
commanding the river below Vicksburg, and the Confederates had already
begun to fortify them; so that if the canal had succeeded, navigation
of the stream would have been as much obstructed as before. Still the
work was continued till the 7th of March, when the river suddenly rose
and overflowed the peninsula, and Sherman's men barely escaped
drowning by regiments.
Grant was surveying the country in every direction, for some feasible
approach to the flanks of his enemy. One scheme was to move through
Lake Providence and the bayous west of the Mississippi, from a point
far above Vicksburg to one far below. This involved the cutting of
another canal, from the Mississippi to one of the bayous, and
McPherson's corps spent a large part of the month of March in digging
and dredging; but this also was a failure. On the eastern side of the
Mississippi there had once been an opening, known as Yazoo Pass, by
which boats from Memphis made their way into Coldwater River, thence
into the Tallahatchie, and thence into the Yazoo above Yazoo City; but
the pass had been closed by a levee or embankment. Grant blew up the
levee, and tried this approach. But the Confederates had information
of every movement, and took prompt measures to thwart it. The banks of
the streams where his boats had to pass were heavily wooded, and great
trees were felled across the channel. Worse than this, after the boats
had passed in and removed many of the obstructions, it was found that
the enemy were felling trees across the channel behind them, so that
they might not get out again. Earthworks also were thrown up at the
point where the Yallabusha and Tallahatchie unite to form the Yazoo,
and heavily manned. Here the advance division of the expedition had a
slight engagement, with no result. Reinforcements arrived under Gen.
Isaac F. Quinby, who assumed command, and began operations for
crossing the Yallabusha and rendering the Confederate fortification
useless, when he was recalled by Grant, who had found that the
necessary light-draught boats for carrying his whole force through to
that point could not be had.
One more attempt in this direction was made before the effort to flank
Vicksburg on the north was given up. It was proposed to ascend the
Yazoo a short distance from its mouth, turn into Steele's bayou,
ascend this, and by certain passes that had been discovered get into
Big Sunflower River, and then descend that stream into the Yazoo above
Haines's Bluff. Porter and Sherman took the lead in this expedition,
and encountered all the difficulties of the Yazoo Pass project,
magnified several times--the narrow channels, the felled trees, the
want of solid ground on which troops could be manoeuvred, the horrible
swamps and canebrakes, through some of which they picked their way
with lighted candles, and the annoyance from unseen sharp-shooters
that swarmed through the whole region. Porter at one time was on the
point of abandoning his boats; but finally all were extricated, though
some of them had to back out through the narrow pass for a distance of
thirty miles.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL HENRY WALKE. (Commander of the "Tyler" and
"Carondelet.")]
In March, Farragut with his flagship and one gunboat had run by the
batteries at Port Hudson, but the remainder of his fleet had failed to
pass. Several boats had run by the batteries at Vicksburg; and Grant
now turned his attention to a project for moving an army by transports
through bayous west of the Mississippi to a point below the city,
where Porter, after running by the batteries with his iron-clads, was
to meet him and ferry the troops across to the eastern bank. The use
of the bayous was finally given up, and the army marched by the roads.
The fleet ran by the batteries on the night of April 16. As soon as it
was discovered approaching, the Confederates set fire to immense piles
of wood that they had prepared on the bank, the whole scene became as
light as day, and for an hour and a half {274} the fleet was under a
heavy fire, which it returned as it steadily steamed by; but beyond
the destruction of one transport there was no serious loss.
Bridges had to be built over bayous, and a suitable place discovered
for crossing the Mississippi. New Carthage was tried, but found
impracticable, as it was nearly surrounded by water. Grand Gulf was
strongly fortified, and on the 29th of April seven of Porter's
gunboats attacked it. They fired five hundred shots an hour for five
hours, and damaged the works somewhat, but only killed or wounded
eighteen men, while the fleet lost twenty-six men, and one boat was
seriously disabled. Grant therefore gave up the project of crossing
here, moved his transports down stream under cover of darkness, and at
daylight on the 30th began the crossing at Bruinsburg. McClernand's
corps was in the advance, and marched on Port Gibson that night. At
dawn the enemy was found in a strong position three miles west of that
place. There was sharp fighting all day, the Confederate force
numbering about eight thousand, and contesting every foot of the
ground; but the line was finally disrupted, and at night-fall they
made an orderly retreat, burning bridges behind them. The National
loss had been eight hundred and forty-nine men, killed, wounded, or
missing; the Confederate, about one thousand. Grant's movements at
this time were greatly assisted by one of the most effective cavalry
raids of the war. This was conducted by Col. Benjamin H. Grierson, who
with seventeen hundred men set out from La Grange, Tenn., on the 17th
of April, and rode southward through the whole State of Mississippi,
tearing up railroads, burning bridges, destroying supplies, eluding
every strong force that was sent out to stop him, defeating several
small ones, floundering through swamps, swimming rivers, spreading
consternation by the celerity and uncertainty of his movements, and
finally riding into Baton Rouge at the end of sixteen days with half
his men asleep in their saddles. He had lost but twenty-seven.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT E. M. KING.]
[Illustration: LAKE PROVIDENCE.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-COLONEL CHARLES RIVERS-ELLET.]
The fortifications at Grand Gulf were abandoned. Porter took
possession of them, and Grant established his base there. A bridge had
to be rebuilt at Port Gibson, and then Crocker's division pushed on in
pursuit of the retreating Confederates, saved a burning bridge at
Bayou Pierre, came up with them at Willow Springs, and after a slight
engagement drove them across the Big Black at Hankinson's Ferry, and
saved the bridge. There was a slight delay, for Sherman's corps and
the supplies to arrive, and then Grant pressed on resolutely with his
whole army. He had with him about forty-one thousand men, subsequently
increased to forty-five thousand; and Pemberton at this time had about
fifty thousand.
Grant moved northeasterly, toward Jackson, and on the 12th of May
found a hostile force near Raymond. It numbered but three thousand,
and was soon swept away, though not until it had lost five hundred men
and inflicted a loss of four hundred and thirty-two upon the National
troops. It was the purpose of the Union commander to move swiftly, and
beat the enemy as much as possible in detail before the scattered
forces could concentrate against him. Believing there was a
considerable force at Jackson, which he would not like to leave in his
rear, he {275} marched on that place, and the next conflict occurred
there, May 14th. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston (whom we took leave of when
he was wounded at Seven Pines, nearly a year before) had just been
ordered by the Confederate Government to take command of all the
forces in Mississippi, and arrived at Jackson in the evening of the
13th, finding there about twelve thousand men subject to his orders.
Pemberton was at Edwards Station, thirty miles westward, and Grant was
between them. Johnston telegraphed to Richmond that he was too late,
but took what measures he could for defence. It rained heavily that
night, and the next morning, when the corps of Sherman and McPherson
marched against the city, they travelled roads that were a foot under
water. McPherson came up on the west, and Sherman on the southwest and
south. The enemy was met two miles out, and driven in with heavy
skirmishing. While manoeuvring was going on before the intrenchments,
the Union commanders seeking for a suitable point to assault, it was
discovered that the enemy was evacuating the place, and Grant and his
men went in at once and hoisted the National colors. They had lost two
hundred and ninety men in the skirmishing; the enemy, eight hundred
and forty-five, mostly captured. Seventeen guns were taken, but the
Confederates burned most of their stores.
Leaving Sherman at Jackson to destroy the railroad, and the factories
that were turning out goods for the Confederacy, which he did very
thoroughly, Grant ordered all his other forces to concentrate
at Bolton, twenty miles west. Marching thence westward, keeping
the corps well together, and ordering Sherman to send forward an
ammunition-train--for he knew that a battle must soon be fought--Grant
found Pemberton with twenty-three thousand men waiting to receive him
at Champion's Hill, on high ground well selected for defence, which
covered the three roads leading westward. The battle, May 15th, lasted
four hours, and was the bloodiest of the campaign. The brunt of it, on
the National side, was borne by the divisions of Hovey, Logan, and
Crocker; and Hovey lost more than one-third of his men. Logan's
division pushed forward on the right, passed Pemberton's left flank,
and held the only road by which the enemy could retreat. But this was
not known to the Union commander at the time, and when Hovey, hard
pressed, called for help, Logan was drawn back to his assistance, and
the road uncovered. A little later Pemberton was in full retreat
toward the crossing of the Big Black River, leaving his dead and
wounded and thirty guns on the field. Grant's loss in the
action--killed, wounded, and missing--was twenty-four hundred and
forty-one. Pemberton's was over three thousand killed and wounded
(including General Tilghman killed), besides nearly as many more
captured in battle or on the retreat.
The enemy was next found at the Big Black River, where he had placed
his main line on the high land west of the stream, and stationed his
advance (or, properly speaking, his rear guard) along the edge of a
bayou that ran through the low ground on the east. This advanced
position was attacked vigorously on the 17th, and when Lawler's
brigade flanked it on the right, that general leading a charge in his
shirt-sleeves, the whole line gave way, and Pemberton resumed his
retreat, burning the bridge behind him and leaving his men in the
lowland to their fate. Some swam the river, some were drowned, and
seventeen hundred and fifty were made prisoners. Eighteen guns were
captured here. The National loss was two hundred and seventy-nine.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL J. C. PEMBERTON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL CARTER L. STEVENSON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL LLOYD TILGHMAN, C. S. A.]
Sherman now came up with his corps, and Grant ordered the building of
three bridges. One was a floating or raft bridge. One was made by
felling trees on both sides of the stream and letting them fall so
that their boughs would interlace over the channel, the trunks not
being cut entirely through, and so hanging to the stumps. Planks laid
crosswise on these trees made a good roadway. The third bridge was
made by using cotton bales for pontoons. Sherman's troops made a
fourth bridge farther up the stream; and that night he and Grant sat
on a log and watched the long procession of blue-coated men with
gleaming muskets marching across the swaying structure by the light of
pitch-pine torches. All the bridges were finished by morning, and that
day, the 18th, the entire army was west of the river.
Pemberton marched straight into Vicksburg, which had a long line of
defences on the land side as well as on the water front, and shut
himself up there. Grant, following closely, invested the place on the
19th. Sherman, holding the right of the line, was at Haines's Bluff,
occupying the very ground beneath which his men had suffered defeat
some months before. Here, on the Yazoo, Grant established a new base
for supplies. McPherson's corps was next to Sherman's on the left, and
McClernand's next, reaching to the river below the city. Sharp
skirmishing went on while the armies were getting into position, and
an assault in the afternoon of the 19th gained the National troops
some advantage in the advancement of the line to better ground.
Grant's army had been living for three weeks on five days' rations,
with what they could pick up in the country they passed through, which
was {276} not a little; and his first care was to construct roads in
the rear of his line, so that supplies could be brought up from the
Yazoo rapidly and regularly. He had now about thirty thousand men, the
line of defences before him was eight miles long, and he expected an
attack from Johnston in the rear. At ten o'clock on the 22d,
therefore, he ordered a grand assault, hoping to carry the works by
storm. But though the men at several points reached the breastworks
and planted their battle-flags on them, it was found impossible to
take them. McClernand falsely reported that he had carried two forts
at his end of the line, and asked for reinforcements, which were sent
to him, and a renewal of the assault was made to help him. This caused
additional loss of life, to no purpose, and shortly afterward that
general was relieved of his command, which was given to Gen. E. O. C.
Ord.
After this assault, which had cost him nearly twenty-five hundred men,
Grant settled down to a siege of Vicksburg by regular approaches. The
work went on day by day, with the usual incidents of a siege. There
was mining and counter-mining, and two large mines were exploded under
angles of the Confederate works, but without any practical result. The
great guns were booming night and day, throwing thousands of shells
into the city, and more than one citizen picked up and threw into a
heap hundreds of pounds of the iron fragments that fell into his yard.
Caves were dug in the banks where the streets had been cut through the
clayey hills, and in these the people found refuge from the shells. A
newspaper was issued regularly even to the last day of the siege, but
it was printed on the back of wallpaper. Provisions of course became
scarce, and mule-meat was eaten. Somebody printed a humorous bill of
fare, which consisted entirely of mule-meat in the various forms of
soup, roast, stew, etc. All the while the besiegers were digging away,
bringing their trenches closer to the defences, till the soldiers of
the hostile lines bandied jests across the narrow intervening space.
At the end of forty-seven days the works arrived at the point where a
grand assault must be the next thing, and at the same time famine
threatened, and the National holiday was at hand. After some
negotiation General Pemberton unconditionally surrendered the city and
his army of thirty-one thousand six hundred men, on the 4th of July,
1863, one day after Lee's defeat at Gettysburg.
Port Hudson, which Banks with twelve thousand men and Farragut with
his fleet had besieged for weeks, was surrendered with its garrison of
six thousand men, five days after the fall of Vicksburg. The entire
Confederate loss in Mississippi, from the time Grant entered the State
at Bruinsburg to the surrender, was about fifty thousand; Grant's was
about nine thousand. But the great triumph was in the opening of the
Mississippi River, which cut the Confederacy completely in two.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL RICHARD J. OGLESBY.]
By Grant's orders there was no cheering, no firing of salutes, no
expression of exultation at the surrender; because the triumph was
over our own countrymen, and the object of it all was to establish a
permanent Union.
In his correspondence with Pemberton, while demanding an unconditional
surrender, Grant had written: "Men who have shown so much endurance
and courage as those now in Vicksburg will always challenge the
respect of an adversary, and I can assure you will be treated with all
the respect due to prisoners of war. I do not favor the proposition of
appointing commissioners to arrange the terms of capitulation, because
I have no terms other than those indicated above." As soon as the
surrender was effected, the famished Confederate army was liberally
supplied with food, Grant's men taking it out of their own haversacks.
All the prisoners at Vicksburg and Port Hudson were immediately
paroled and furnished with transportation and supplies, under the
supposition that they would go to their homes and remain there till
properly exchanged.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL NEAL DOW.]
[Illustration: COLONEL CHARLES W. LE GENDRE.]
The coöperation of Porter's fleet of river gunboats above the city,
and some of Farragut's vessels below it, had been a great assistance
during the siege, in cutting off the city from communication across
the river. General Grant's thoughtfulness and mastery of details in
great military movements are suggested by one of his letters to
Farragut at this time. Knowing that Farragut's ships would need a
constant supply of coal, he sent him a large cargo, and wrote:
"Hearing nothing from Admiral Porter, I have determined to send you a
barge of coal from here. {277} The barge will be cast adrift from the
upper end of the canal at ten o'clock to-night. Troops on the opposite
side of the point will be on the lookout, and, should the barge run
into the eddy, will start it adrift again."
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM E. STRONG.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ADAM BADEAU.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL GABRIEL J. RAINS, C. S. A.]
One of the most ludicrous incidents of the siege was the career of the
dummy monitor, sometimes called the "Black Terror." The _Indianola_,
of Porter's fleet, had been attacked by the Confederates and captured
in a sinking condition. They were hard at work trying to raise her,
when they saw something coming down the river that struck them with
terror. Admiral Porter had fitted up an old flat-boat so that, at a
little distance, it looked like a monitor. It had mud furnaces and a
smokestack made of pork barrels. Fire was built in the furnaces, and
she was set adrift on the river without a single person on board. The
men at the Vicksburg batteries were startled at the appearance of a
monitor in those waters, and opened a furious cannonade, but did not
succeed in stopping the stranger, which passed on with the current. In
the excitement, orders were given to destroy the _Indianola_, and she
was blown up just before the trick was discovered.
A few days after the capture of Vicksburg, President Lincoln wrote
this characteristically frank and generous letter to General Grant:
MY DEAR GENERAL: I do not remember that you and I ever met personally.
I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost
inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say further:
when you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should
do what you finally did--march the troops across the neck, run the
batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any
faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the
Yazoo Pass expedition and the like could succeed. When you got below
and took Fort Gibson, Grand Gulf and vicinity, I thought you should go
down the river and join General Banks; and when you turned northward,
east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make a
personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong.
Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.
After the surrender Grant reorganized his army, issued instructions
for the care and government of the blacks who had escaped from slavery
and come within his lines, and gave orders for furloughs to be granted
freely to those of his soldiers who had been conspicuous for their
valor and attention to duty during the campaign. It is said that he
also took particular care that no exorbitant prices should be demanded
of these soldiers on the steamboats by which they ascended the river
in going to their homes. His own modesty and loyalty are exhibited in
a letter that he wrote, a month later, when the loyal citizens of
Memphis proposed to give him a public dinner. He said: "In accepting
this testimonial, which I do at great sacrifice of personal feelings,
I simply desire to pay a tribute to the first public exhibition in
Memphis of loyalty to the Government which I represent in the
Department of the Tennessee. I should dislike to refuse, for
considerations of personal convenience, to acknowledge anywhere or in
any form the existence of sentiments which I have so long and so
ardently desired to see manifested in this department. The stability
of this Government and the unity of this nation depends solely on the
cordial support and the earnest loyalty of the people."
{278} [Illustration: THE ADVANCE ON VICKSBURG--THE FIFTEENTH CORPS
CROSSING THE BIG BLACK RIVER BY NIGHT, MAY 16, 1863.]
Of the innumerable incidents of the marches and the siege, in this
campaign, some of the most interesting were told by Gen. Manning F.
Force in a paper read before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion,
all of them being drawn from his own experience. In that campaign he
was colonel of the Twentieth Ohio infantry.
"About the 20th of April I was sent, with the Twentieth Ohio and the
Thirtieth Illinois, seven miles out from Milliken's Bend, to build a
road across a swamp. When the sun set, the leaves of the forest seemed
to exude smoke, and the air became a saturated solution of gnats. When
my mess sat down to supper under a tree, the gnats got into our
mouths, noses, eyes, and ears. They swarmed upon our necks, seeming to
encircle them with bands of hot iron. Tortured and blinded, we could
neither eat nor see. We got a quantity of cotton, and made a circle
around the group, and set it on fire. The pungent smoke made water
stream from our eyes, but drove the gnats away. We then supped in
anguish, but in peace. I sent back to camp and got some mosquito
netting from a sutler. Covering my {279} head with many folds, I
slept, waking at intervals to burn a wad of cotton. Many of the men
sat by the fire all night, fighting the gnats, and slept next day. In
the woods we found stray cattle, sheep, and hogs. A large pond was
full of fish. We lived royally.
"On the 25th of April, Logan's division marched. The Twentieth Ohio
had just drawn new clothing, but had to leave it behind. Stacking
spades and picks in the swamp, they took their place in the column as
it appeared, taking with them only the scanty supplies they had there.
Six days of plodding brought them over nearly seventy miles, to the
shore of the river opposite Bruinsburg. We marched six miles one day,
and those six miles by evening were strewn with wrecks of wagons and
their loads and half-buried guns. At a halt of some hours the men
stood in deep mud, for want of any means of sitting. Yet when we
halted at night, every man answered to his name, and went laughing to
bed on the sloppy ground.
"On the 12th of May the Seventeenth Corps marched on the road toward
Raymond. The Thirtieth Illinois was deployed with a skirmish line in
front, on the left of the road; the Twentieth Ohio, in like manner on
the right. About noon we halted--the Twentieth Ohio in an open field,
bounded by a fence to the front, beyond which was forest and rising
ground. An unseen battery on some height beyond the timber began
shelling the fields. The Twentieth advanced over the fence into the
woods. The First Brigade came up and formed on our right. All at once
the woods rang with the shrill rebel yell and a deafening din of
musketry. The Twentieth rushed forward to a creek, and used the
farther bank as breastworks. The timber beyond the creek and the fence
was free from undergrowth. The Twentieth Illinois, the regiment next
to the right of the Twentieth Ohio, knelt down in place and returned
the fire. The enemy advanced into the creek in its front. I went to
the lieutenant-colonel, who was kneeling at the left flank, and asked
him why he did not advance into the creek. He said, 'We have no
orders.' In a few minutes the colonel of the regiment was killed. It
was too late to advance, it was murder to remain, and the
lieutenant-colonel withdrew the regiment in order back behind the
fence. I cannot tell how long the battle lasted. I remember noticing
the forest leaves, cut by rifle-balls, falling in thick eddies, still
as snowflakes. At one time the enemy in our front advanced to the
border of the creek, and rifles of opposing lines crossed while
firing. Men who were shot were burned by the powder of the rifles that
sped the balls.
"In eighteen days Grant marched two hundred miles, won five battles,
four of them in six days, inflicted a loss of five thousand men,
captured eighty-eight pieces of artillery, compelled the abandonment
of all outworks, and cooped Pemberton's army within the lines of
Vicksburg, while he had opened for himself easy and safe communication
with the North. During these eighteen days the men had been without
shelter, and had subsisted on five days' rations and scanty supplies
picked up on the way. The morning we crossed the Big Black I offered
five dollars for a small piece of corn bread, and could not get it.
The soldier said bread was worth more to him than money.
"The Twentieth was placed in a road-cut, which was enfiladed by one of
the enemy's infantry intrenchments. But when we sat with our backs
pressed against the side of the cut toward Vicksburg, the balls
whistled by just outside of our knees. At sunset the company cooks
were possessed to come to us with hot coffee. They succeeded in
running the gantlet, and the garrison could hear the jingling of tin
cups and shouts of laughter as the cramped men ate their supper. After
dark we were recalled and placed on the slope of a sharp ridge, with
orders to remain in place, ready to move at any moment, and with
strict injunctions not to allow any man's head to appear above the
ridge. There we lay two or three days in line. Coffee was brought to
us by the cooks at meal-time. Not a man those two or three days left
the line without a special order. The first night Lieutenant
Weatherby, commanding the right company reported that the slope was so
steep where he was that the men as soon as they fell asleep began to
roll down hill. I had to give him leave to shift his position.
"One day when there was a general bombardment I was told a soldier
wished to see me. Under the canopy of exploding shell I found a youth,
a boy, lying on his back on the ground. He was pale and speechless;
there was a crimson hole in his breast. As I knelt by his side he
looked wistfully at me. I said, 'We must all die some time, and the
man is happy who meets death in the discharge of duty. You have done
your whole duty well.' It was all he wanted. His eyes brightened, a
smile flickered on his lips, and I was kneeling beside a corpse.
"One day when the Twentieth Ohio was in advance, we came, at a turn in
the road, upon two old colored people, man and woman, plump and sleek,
riding mules, and coming toward us. As they caught sight of the long
column of blue-coats, the woman, crossing her hands upon her bosom,
rolled up her eyes and cried in ecstasy 'Bress de Lord! Bress Almighty
God! Our friends is come, our friends is come!' On the return, we
crossed a plantation where the field-hands were ploughing. The
soldiers like mules, and the negroes gladly unharnessed them, and
helped the soldiers to mount. I said to one, 'The soldiers are taking
your mules.' The quick response was, 'An' dey is welcome to 'em, sar;
dey is welcome to 'em.' Men and women looked wistfully at the marching
column, and began to talk about joining us. They seemed to wait the
determination of a gray-headed darky who was considering. Presently
there was a shout, 'Uncle Pete's a-gwine, an' I'm a-gwine, too!' As
they flocked after us, one tall, stern woman strode along, carrying a
wooden tray and a crockery pitcher as all her effects, looking
straight to the front. Some one asked, 'Auntie, where are you going?'
She answered, without looking, 'I don't car' whicher way I go, so as I
git away from dis place.'
"When the working parties carried the saps to the base of the works,
the besieged used to light the fuses of six-pound shells and toss them
over the parapet. They would roll down among the working parties and
explode, sometimes doing serious damage. A young soldier of the
Twentieth Ohio, named Friend, devised wooden mortars. A very small
charge of powder in one of these would just lift a shell over the
enemy's parapet and drop it within. After the surrender there was much
inquiry from the garrison how they were contrived."
Concerning this tossing of the shells, one who had been a private in
Grant's army said to the writer: "I was in the trenches one evening
when a shell came over without noise, as if thrown by hand.
Fortunately it did not explode, or it would have injured a good many
of us. This greatly surprised me, and when in a few minutes another
came, I was on the watch and noted the point from which it seemed to
start. By strange luck this also failed to explode. I then laid my
rifle across the breastwork, cocked it, and put my eye to the sight,
with the muzzle facing the point from which the shell had come.
Presently I saw a man {280} rise in the enemy's trench with a third
shell in his hand--but he never threw it."
[Illustration: SIEGE OF VICKSBURG--SHOWING SOME OF THE FEDERAL
INTRENCHMENTS.]
[Illustration: MAKING GABIONS.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL SETH M. BARTON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL N. G. EVANS, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM PRESTON, C. S. A.]
When the siege began, General Pemberton issued an order that all
non-combatants leave the city; but many of them refused to go--some
because they had no other home, or means to sustain themselves
elsewhere--and a few women and children were among those who remained.
One lady, wife of an officer in Pemberton's army, published the next
year an account of her life in the city during the siege, which is
especially interesting for its picturesque and suggestive details,
many of which are not to be found elsewhere. A few passages are here
reproduced:
"The cave [of a friend] was an excavation in the earth the size of a
large room, high enough for the tallest person to stand perfectly
erect, provided with comfortable seats, and altogether quite a large
and habitable abode (compared with some of the caves in the city),
were it not for the dampness and the constant contact with the soft
earthy walls.
"Two negroes were coming with a small trunk between them, and a
carpet-bag or two, evidently trying to show others of the profession
how careless of danger they were, and how foolish 'niggars' were to
run 'dat sort o' way.' A shell came through the air and fell a few
yards beyond the braves, when, lo! the trunk was sent tumbling, and
landed bottom upward; the carpet-bag followed--one grand somerset; and
amid the cloud of dust that arose, I discovered one porter doubled up
by the side of the trunk, and the other crouching close by a pile of
plank. A shout from the negroes on the cars, and much laughter,
brought them on their feet, brushing their knees and giggling, yet
looking quite foolish, feeling their former prestige gone. The
excitement was intense in the city. Groups of people stood on every
available position where a view could be obtained of the distant
hills, where the jets of white smoke constantly passed out from among
the trees.
"The caves were plainly becoming a necessity, as some persons had been
killed on the street by fragments of shells. The room that I had so
lately slept in had been struck by a fragment of a shell during the
first night, and a large hole made in the ceiling. Terror-stricken, we
remained crouched in the cave, while shell after shell followed each
other in quick succession. I endeavored by constant prayer to prepare
myself for the sudden death I was almost certain awaited me. My heart
stood still as we would hear the reports from the guns, and the
rushing and fearful sound of the shell as it came toward us. As it
neared, the noise became more deafening; the air was full of the
rushing sound; pains darted through my temples; my ears were full of
the confusing noise; and, as it exploded, the report flashed through
my head like an electric shock, leaving me in a quiet state of terror
the most painful that I can imagine, cowering in a corner, holding my
child to my heart--the only feeling of my life being the choking
throbs of my heart, that rendered me almost breathless. I saw one fall
in the road without the mouth of the cave, like a flame of fire,
making the earth tremble, and, with a low, singing sound, the
fragments sped on in their work of death.
"So constantly dropped the shells around the city that the inhabitants
all made preparations to live under ground during the siege.
M---- sent over and had a cave made in a hill near by. We seized the
opportunity one evening, when the gunners were probably at their
supper, for we had a few moments of quiet, to go over and take
possession.
"Some families had light bread made in large quantities, and subsisted
on it with milk (provided their cows were not killed from one milking
time to another), without any more cooking, until called on to
replenish. Though most of us lived on corn bread and bacon, served
three times a day, the only luxury of the meal consisting in its
warmth, I had some flour, and frequently had some hard, tough biscuit
made from it, there being no soda or yeast to be procured. At this
time we could also procure beef. A gentleman friend was kind enough to
offer me his camp-bed; another had his tent-fly stretched over the
mouth of our residence to shield us from the sun. And so I went
regularly to work keeping house under ground. Our new habitation was
an excavation made in the earth, and branching six feet from the
entrance, forming a cave in the shape of a T. In one of the wings my
bed fitted; the other I used as a kind of dressing-room. In this the
earth had been cut down a foot or two below the floor of the main
cave; I could stand erect here; and when tired of sitting in other
portions of my residence I bowed myself into it, and stood impassively
resting at full height--one of the variations in the still
shell-expectant life.
"We were safe at least from fragments of shell, and they were flying
in all directions. We had our roof arched and braced, the supports of
the bracing taking up much room in our confined quarters. The earth
was about five feet thick above, and seemed hard and compact.
"'Miss M----,' said one of the more timid servants, 'do they want to
kill us all dead? Will they keep doing this until we all die?' I said
most heartily, 'I hope not.' The servants we had with us seemed to
possess more courage than is usually attributed to negroes. They
seldom hesitated to cross the street for water at any time. The 'boy'
slept at the entrance of the cave, with a pistol I had given him,
telling me I need not be 'afeared--dat any one dat come dar would have
to go over his body first.' He never refused to carry out any little
article to M---- on the battlefield. I laughed heartily at a dilemma
{281} he was placed in one day. The mule that he had mounted to ride
out to the battlefield took him to a dangerous locality, where the
shells were flying thickly, and then, suddenly stopping, through
fright, obstinately refused to stir. It was in vain that George kicked
and beat him--go he would not; so, clinching his hand, he hit him
severely in the head several times, jumped down, ran home, and left
him. The mule stood a few minutes rigidly; then, looking round, and
seeing George at some distance from him, turned and followed quite
demurely.
"One morning, after breakfast, the shells began falling so thickly
around us, that they seemed aimed at the particular spot on which our
cave was located. Two or three fell immediately in the rear of it,
exploding a few minutes before reaching the ground, and the fragments
went singing over the top of our habitation. I at length became so
much alarmed--as the cave trembled excessively--for our safety, that I
determined, rather than be buried alive, to stand out from under the
earth; so taking my child in my arms, and calling the servants, we ran
to a refuge near the roots of a large fig-tree, that branched out over
the bank, and served as a protection from the fragments of shells. As
we stood trembling there--for the shells were falling all around
us--some of my gentleman friends came up to reassure me, telling me
that the tree would protect us, and that the range would probably be
changed in a short time. While they spoke, a shell, that seemed to be
of enormous size, fell, screaming and hissing, immediately before the
mouth of our cave, sending up a huge column of smoke and earth, and
jarring the ground most sensibly where we stood. What seemed very
strange, the earth closed in around the shell, and left only the newly
upturned soil to show where it had fallen.
"The cave we inhabited was about five squares from the levee. A great
many had been made in a hill immediately beyond us; and near this hill
we could see most of the shells fall. Caves were the fashion--the
rage--over besieged Vicksburg. Negroes who understood their business
hired themselves out to dig them, at from thirty to fifty dollars,
according to the size. Many persons, considering different localities
unsafe, would sell them to others who had been less fortunate or less
provident; and so great was the demand for cave workmen, that a new
branch of industry sprang up and became popular--particularly as the
personal safety of the workman was secured, and money withal.
"A large trunk was picked up after the sinking of the _Cincinnati_,
belonging to a surgeon on board. It contained {282} valuable surgical
instruments that could not be procured in the Confederacy.
"I was sitting near the entrance, about five o'clock, thinking of the
pleasant change--oh, bless me!--that to-morrow would bring, when the
bombardment commenced more furiously than usual, the shells falling
thickly around us, causing vast columns of earth to fly upward,
mingled with smoke. I was startled by the shouts of the servants and a
most fearful jar and rocking of the earth, followed by a deafening
explosion such as I had never heard before. The cave filled instantly
with powder, smoke, and dust. I stood with a tingling, prickling
sensation in my head, hands, and feet, and with a confused brain. Yet
alive!--was the first glad thought that came to me; child, servants,
all here, and saved!--from some great danger, I felt. I stepped out,
to find a group of persons before my cave, looking anxiously for me;
and lying all around, freshly torn, rose-bushes, arbor-vitæ trees,
large clods of earth, splinters, pieces of plank, wood, etc. A mortar
shell had struck the corner of the cave, fortunately so near the brow
of the hill that it had gone obliquely into the earth, exploding as it
went, breaking large masses from the side of the hill, tearing away
the fence, the shrubbery and flowers, sweeping all like an avalanche
down near the entrance of my good refuge.
"A young girl, becoming weary in the confinement of the cave, hastily
ran to the house in the interval that elapsed between the slowly
falling shells. On returning, an explosion sounded near her--one wild
scream, and she ran into her mother's presence, sinking like a wounded
dove, the life-blood flowing over the light summer dress in crimson
ripples from a death-wound in her side, caused by the shell fragment.
A fragment had also struck and broken the arm of a little boy playing
near the mouth of his mother's cave. This was one day's account.
"I was distressed to hear of a young Federal lieutenant who had been
severely wounded and left on the field by his comrades. He had lived
in this condition from Saturday until Monday, lying in the burning sun
without water or food; and the men on both sides could witness the
agony of the life thus prolonged, without the power to assist him in
any way. I was glad, indeed, when I heard the poor man had expired on
Monday morning. Another soldier left on the field, badly wounded in
the leg, had begged most piteously for water; and lying near the
Confederate intrenchments, his cries were all directed to the
Confederate soldiers. The firing was heaviest where he lay, and it
would have been at the risk of a life to have gone to him; yet a
Confederate soldier asked and obtained leave to carry water to him,
and stood and fanned him in the midst of the firing, while he eagerly
drank from the heroic soldier's canteen.
"One morning George made an important discovery--a newly made stump of
sassafras, very near the cave, with large roots extending in every
direction, affording us an inexhaustible vein of tea for future use.
We had been drinking water with our meals previous to this disclosure;
coffee and tea had long since been among the things that were, in the
army. We, however, were more fortunate than many of the officers,
having access to an excellent cistern near us; while many of our
friends used muddy water or river water.
"On another occasion, a gentleman sent me four large slices of ham,
having been fortunate enough to procure a small piece himself. Already
the men in the rifle-pits were on half rations--flour or meal enough
to furnish bread equivalent in quantity to two biscuits in two days.
They amused themselves, while lying in the pits, by cutting out little
trinkets from the wood of the parapet and the minie-balls that fell
around them. Major Fry, from Texas, excelled in skill and ready
invention, I think; he sent me one day an armchair that he had cut
from a minie-ball--the most minute affair of the kind I ever saw, yet
perfectly symmetrical. At another time, he sent me a diminutive plough
made from the parapet wood, with traces of lead, and a lead point made
from a minie-ball.
"The courier brought many letters to the inhabitants from friends
without. His manner of entering the city was singular. Taking a skiff
in the Yazoo, he proceeded to its confluence with the Mississippi,
where he tied the little boat, entered the woods, and awaited the
night. At dark he took off his clothing, placed his despatches
securely within them, bound the package firmly to a plank, and, going
into the river, he sustained his head above the water by holding to
the plank, and in this manner floated in the darkness through the
fleet, and on two miles down the river to Vicksburg, where his arrival
was hailed as an event of great importance in the still life of the
city.
"The hill opposite our cave might be called 'death's point,' from the
number of animals that had been killed in eating the grass on the
sides and summit. Horses or mules that are tempted to mount the hill
by the promise of grass that grows profusely there invariably come
limping down wounded, to die at the base, or are brought down dead
from the summit.
"A certain number of mules are killed each day by the commissaries,
and are issued to the men, all of whom prefer the fresh meat, though
it be of mule, to the bacon and salt rations that they have eaten for
so long a time without change.
"I was sewing, one day, near one side of the cave, where the bank
slopes and lights up the room like a window. Near this opening I was
sitting, when I suddenly remembered some little article I wished in
another part of the room. Crossing to procure it, I was returning,
when a minie-ball came whizzing through the opening, passed my chair,
and fell beyond it. Had I been still sitting, I should have stopped
it."
[Illustration]
{283}
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE DRAFT RIOTS.
ATTITUDE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY--VALLANDIGHAM BANISHED--SPEECH OF
EX-PRESIDENT PIERCE--SPEECH OF HORATIO SEYMOUR--LAW OF SUBSTITUTES
PERSISTENTLY MISINTERPRETED--THE DRAFT IN NEW YORK--THE RIOTS--THE
AUTUMN ELECTIONS.
The second attempt at invasion by Lee had ended at Gettysburg even
more disastrously than the first, and he returned to Virginia at the
head of hardly more than one-half of the army with which he had set
out; on the next day Vicksburg fell, the Mississippi was opened, and
Pemberton's entire army stacked their muskets and became prisoners.
Then the war should have ended; for the question on which the appeal
to arms had been made was practically decided. Four great slave
States--Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri--had never really
joined the Confederacy, though some of them were represented in its
Congress, and the territory that it actually held was steadily
diminishing. The great blockade was daily growing more effective, the
largest city in the South had been held by National troops for fifteen
months, and the Federal authority was maintained somewhere in every
State, with the sole exception of Alabama. The delusion that Southern
soldiers would make a better army, man for man, than Northern, had
long since been dispelled. The nation had suffered from incompetent
commanders; but time and experience had weeded them out, and the
really able ones were now coming to the front. The taboo had been
removed from the black man, and he was rapidly putting on the blue
uniform to fight for the enfranchisement of his race. Lincoln with his
proclamation, and Meade and Grant with their victories, had destroyed
the last chance of foreign intervention. In the military situation
there was nothing to justify any further hope for the Confederacy, or
any more destruction of life in the vain endeavor to disrupt the
Union. If there was any justification for a continuance of the
struggle on the part of the insurgents, it was to be found only in a
single circumstance--the attitude of the Democratic party in the
Northern States; but it must be confessed that this was such as to
give considerable color to their expectation of ultimate success.
[Illustration]
The habitual feeling of antagonism to the opposite party, from which
few men in a land of popular politics are ever wholly free, was
reinforced by a sincere belief on the part of many that the
Government, in determining to crush the rebellion, had undertaken a
larger task than it could ever accomplish. This belief was born of an
ignorance that it was impossible to argue with, because it supposed
itself to be enlightened and fortified by great historical facts. Both
conscious and unconscious demagogues picked out little shreds of
history and formulated phrases and catch-words, which village
newspapers and village statesmen confidently repeated as unanswerable
arguments from the experience of nations. Thus Pitt's exclamation
during the war of American independence, "You cannot conquer America!"
was triumphantly quoted thousands of times, as an argument for the
impossibility of conquering the South. Assertions were freely made
that the despotism of the Administration (in trying to save the
National armies from useless slaughter, by arresting spies and
traitors at the North) exceeded anything ever done by Cæsar or the
Russian Czar. The word "Bastile" was given out, without much
explanation, and was echoed all along the line. The war Governors of
the free States, and especially the provisional military Governors in
Tennessee and Louisiana, were called Lincoln's satraps; and "satraps,"
with divers pronunciations, became a popular word. The fathers of the
Republic were all mentioned with sorrowful reverence, and it was
declared that the Constitution they had framed was destroyed--not by
the Secessionists, but by Mr. Lincoln and his advisers. Somebody
invented a story that Secretary Seward had said he had only to reach
forth his hand and ring a bell, and any man in the country whom he
might designate would at once be seized and thrown into prison;
whereupon "the tinkle of Seward's little bell" became a frequent
head-line in the Democratic journals. The army before Vicksburg was
pointed at in derision, as besieging a place that could never be
taken.
It did not occur to any of these orators and journalists to explain
the difference between an ocean three thousand miles wide, and the
Rappahannock River; or the difference between an absolute monarch born
to the purple, and a president elected by a free vote of the people;
or even the difference between a state of peace and a state of war.
None of them told their hearers that, only eight years before, the
city of Sebastopol had withstood the combined armies of England and
France for almost a year, while the city of Vicksburg, when Grant
besieged it, fell on the forty-seventh day. Nor did any of them ever
appear to consider what the probable result would be if the entire
Democratic party in Northern States should give the Administration as
hearty support as it received from its own.
It is easy to see the fallacy of all those arguments now, and the
unwisdom of the policy from which they sprang; but they were a power
in the land at that time, and wrought unmeasured mischief. The most
conspicuous opponent of the Government in the West was Clement L.
Vallandigham, of Ohio, whose position will be understood most readily
from a few of his public utterances. He wrote, in May, 1861: "The
audacious usurpation of President Lincoln, for which he deserves
impeachment, in daring, against the very letter of the Constitution,
and without the shadow of law, to raise and support armies, and to
provide and maintain a navy, for three years, by mere executive
proclamation, I will not vote to sustain or {284} ratify--never."
Speaking in his place in the House of Representatives in January,
1863, he said: "I have denounced, from the beginning, the usurpations
and infractions, one and all, of law and Constitution, by the
President and those under him; their repeated and persistent arbitrary
arrests, the suspension of _habeas corpus_, the violation of freedom
of the mails, of the private house, of the press and of speech, and
all the other multiplied wrongs and outrages upon public liberty and
private right which have made this country one of the worst despotisms
on the earth for the past twenty months. To the record and to time I
appeal for my justification." In proposing conciliation and compromise
as a substitute for the war, he said, borrowing the language of the
Indiana Democratic platform, "In considering terms of settlement, we
will look only to the welfare, peace, and safety of the white race,
without reference to the effect that settlement may have upon the
condition of the African." For these and similar utterances,
especially in regard to a military order that forbade the carrying of
firearms and other means of disturbing the peace, and for the effect
they were having upon his followers, Mr. Vallandigham was arrested in
May, 1863, by the military authorities in Ohio, tried by
court-martial, and sentenced to imprisonment during the war. The
President commuted the sentence to banishment beyond the lines, and
the prisoner was taken south through Kentucky and Tennessee, and sent
into Confederate territory under a flag of truce. This of course
placed him in the light of a martyr, and a few months later it made
him the Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio.
In the East, ex-President Pierce, of New Hampshire, loomed up as a
leader of the opposition. On January 6, 1860, he had written to
Jefferson Davis (who had been Secretary of War in his cabinet) a
letter in which he said: "Without discussing the question of right--of
abstract power to secede--I have never believed that actual disruption
of the Union can occur without blood; and if through the madness of
Northern abolitionists that dire calamity must come, the fighting will
not be along Mason and Dixon's line merely. It will be within our own
borders, and in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens
to whom I have referred. Those who defy law and scout constitutional
obligations will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find
occupation enough at home." In an elaborate Fourth-of-July oration at
Concord in 1863, he said: "No American citizen was then [before the
war] subject to be driven into exile for opinion's sake, or
arbitrarily arrested and incarcerated in military bastiles--even as he
may now be--not for acts or words of imputed treason, but if he do but
mourn in silent sorrow over the desolation of his country. Do we not
all know that the cause of our calamities is the vicious intermeddling
of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the
constitutional rights of the Southern States, coöperating with the
discontents of the people of those States? We have seen, in the
experience of the last two years, how futile are all our efforts to
maintain the Union by force of arms; but, even had war been carried on
by us successfully, the ruinous result would exhibit its utter
impracticability for the attainment of the desired end. With or
without arms, with or without leaders, we will at least, in the effort
to defend our rights as a free people, build up a great mausoleum of
hearts, to which men who yearn for liberty will in after years, with
bowed heads and reverently, resort, as Christian pilgrims to the
sacred shrines of the Holy Land." This was long referred to, by those
who heard it, as "the mausoleum-of-hearts speech."
In the great State of New York the Democratic leader was Horatio
Seymour, who had been elected Governor in the period of depression
that followed the military defeats of 1862. While Pierce was speaking
in Concord, Seymour was delivering in New York a carefully written
address, in which--like Pierce and Vallandigham--he complained, not of
the secessionists for making war at the South, but of the
Administration for curtailing the liberty of the Government's enemies
at the North. He said: "When I accepted the invitation to speak at
this meeting, we were promised the downfall of Vicksburg [the
telegraph brought news of it while he was speaking], the opening of
the Mississippi, the probable capture of the Confederate capital, and
the exhaustion of the rebellion. When the clouds of war overhung our
country, we implored those in authority to compromise that difficulty;
for we had been told by that great orator and statesman, Burke, that
there never yet was a revolution that might not have been prevented by
a compromise opportunely and graciously made. Until we have a united
North, we can have no successful war; until we have a united,
harmonious North, we can have no beneficent peace. Remember this, that
the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of public
necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by a government."
The practical effect of all these protests, in the name of liberty,
against arrests of spies and traitors, and suspension of the _habeas
corpus_, was to assist the slave-holders in their attempt to make
liberty forever impossible for the black race, in pursuance of which
they were willing to destroy the liberties of the white race and
sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives, most of which were valuable
to their country and to mankind, being lives of men who earned a
living by the sweat of their own faces. All the abridgment of the
liberties of Northern citizens, in time of war, by President Lincoln's
suspension of the writ, and by arbitrary arrests, was not a tithe of
what those same citizens had suffered in time of peace from the
existence of slavery under the Constitution. Yet neither President
Pierce, nor Chief Justice Taney, nor Horatio Seymour, nor Mr.
Vallandigham, had ever uttered one word of protest against the denial
of free speech in criticism of that institution, or against the
systematic rifling of mails at the South, or against the refusal to
permit American citizens to sojourn in the slave States unless they
believed in the divine right of slavery.
It was no wonder that such utterances as those quoted above, by the
leaders of a party, at such a time, should be translated by its baser
followers into reasons for riot, arson, and butchery. Another exciting
cause was found in the persistent misinterpretation of what was meant
to be a beneficent provision of the conscription law. Drafts had been
ordered in several of the States to fill up quotas that were not
forthcoming under the volunteer system. The law provided that a man
whose name was drawn, if he did not wish to go into the service
himself, might either procure a substitute or pay three hundred
dollars to the Government and be released. In the North, where
there were no slaves to do the necessary work at home, it was
absolutely essential to have some system of substitution; and the
three-hundred-dollar clause was introduced, not because the Government
wanted money more than it wanted men, but to favor the poor by keeping
down the price of substitutes, for it was evident that that price
could never rise above the sum necessary for a release. Yet this
very clause was attacked by the journals that assumed to champion
the cause of the poor, as being a discrimination in favor of the
rich! Mr. Vallandigham {285} said in a speech at Dayton: "The
three-hundred-dollar provision is a most unjust discrimination against
the poor. The Administration says to every man between twenty and
forty-five, 'Three hundred dollars or your life.'" When the clause had
been repealed, in consequence of the ignorant clamor raised by this
persistent misrepresentation, the price of substitutes rapidly went
beyond a thousand dollars.
A new levy of three hundred thousand men was called for in April,
1863, with the alternative of a draft if the quotas were not filled by
volunteering. The quota of the city of New York was not filled, and a
draft was begun there on Saturday, the 11th of July. There had been
premonitions of trouble when it was attempted to take the names and
addresses of those subject to call, and in the tenement-house
districts some of the marshals had narrowly escaped with their lives.
On the morning when the draft was to begin, several of the most widely
read Democratic journals contained editorials that appeared to be
written for the very purpose of inciting a riot. They asserted that
any draft at all was unconstitutional and despotic, and that in this
case the quota demanded from the city was excessive, and denounced the
war as a "mere abolition crusade." It is doubtful if there was any
well-formed conspiracy, including any large number of persons, to get
up a riot; but the excited state of the public mind, especially among
the laboring population, inflammatory handbills displayed in the
grogshops, the presence of the dangerous classes, whose best
opportunity for plunder was in time of riot, and the absence of the
militia that had been called away to meet the invasion of
Pennsylvania, all favored an outbreak. It was unfortunate that the
draft was begun on Saturday, and the Sunday papers published long
lists of names that were drawn--an instance of the occasional
mischievous results of journalistic enterprise. Those interested had
all Sunday to talk it over in their accustomed meeting-places, and
discuss wild schemes of relief or retaliation; and the insurrection
that followed was more truly a popular uprising than the rebellion
that it assisted and encouraged.
When the draft was resumed on Monday, the serious work began. One
provost-marshal's office was at the corner of Third Avenue and
Forty-sixth Street. It was guarded by sixty policemen, and the wheel
was set in motion at ten o'clock. The building was surrounded by a
dense, angry crowd, who were freely cursing the draft, the police, the
National Government, and "the nigger." The drawing had been in
progress but a few minutes when there was a shout of "Stop the cars!"
and at once the cars were stopped, the horses released, the conductors
and passengers driven out, and a tumult created. Then a great human
wave was set in motion, which bore down everything before it and
rolled into the marshal's office, driving out at the back windows the
officials and the policemen, whose clubs, though plied rapidly and
knocking down a rioter at every blow, could not dispose of them as
fast as they came on. The mob destroyed everything in the office, and
then set the building on fire. The firemen came promptly, but were not
permitted to throw any water upon the flames. At this moment
Superintendent John A. Kennedy, of the police, approaching
incautiously and unarmed, was recognized and set upon by the crowd,
who gave him half a hundred blows with clubs and stones, and finally
threw him face downward into a mud-puddle, with the intention of
drowning him. When rescued, he was bruised beyond recognition, and was
lifted into a wagon and carried to the police headquarters. The
command of the force now devolved upon Commissioner Thomas C. Acton
and Inspector Daniel Carpenter, whose management during three fearful
days was worthy of the highest praise.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-COLONEL EDWARD JARDINE. Commanding a
detachment of troops for service against the rioters.]
[Illustration: HORATIO SEYMOUR.]
[Illustration: CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM.]
Another marshal's office, where the draft was in progress, was at
Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street, and here the mob burned the whole
block of stores on Broadway between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth
Streets. At Third Avenue and Forty-fourth Street there was a battle
between a small force of police and a mob, in which the police were
defeated, many of them being badly wounded by stones and pistol-shots.
Some of them who were knocked down were almost instantly robbed of
their clothing. Officer Bennett fell into the hands of the crowd, and
was beaten so savagely that no appearance of life was left in him,
when he was carried away to the dead-house at St. Luke's Hospital.
Here came his wife, who discovered that his heart was still beating;
means of restoration were used promptly, and after three days of
unconsciousness and a long illness he recovered. {286} Another officer
was stabbed twice by a woman in the crowd; and another, disabled by a
blow from an iron bar, was saved by a German woman, who hid him
between two mattresses when the pursuing mob was searching her house
for him. In the afternoon a small police force held possession of a
gun factory in Second Avenue for four hours, and was then compelled to
retire before the persistent attacks of the rioters, who hurled stones
through the windows and beat in the doors.
Toward evening a riotous procession passed down Broadway, with drums,
banners, muskets, pistols, pitchforks, clubs, and boards inscribed "No
Draft!" Inspector Carpenter, at the head of two hundred policemen,
marched up to meet it. His orders were, "Take no prisoners, but strike
quick and hard." The mob was met at the corner of Amity (or West
Third) Street. The police charged at once in a compact body, Carpenter
knocking down the foremost rioter with a blow that cracked his skull,
and in a few minutes the mob scattered and fled, leaving Broadway
strewn with their wounded and dying. From this time, the police were
victorious in every encounter.
During the next two days there was almost constant rioting, mobs
appearing at various points, both up-town and down-town. The rioters
set upon every negro that appeared--whether man, woman, or child--and
succeeded in murdering eleven of them. One they deliberately hanged to
a tree in Thirty-second Street, his only offence being the color of
his skin. At another place, seeing three negroes on a roof, they set
fire to the house. The victims hung at the edge of the roof a long
time, but were obliged to drop before the police could procure
ladders. This phase of the outbreak found its worst expression in the
sacking and burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum, at Fifth Avenue and
Forty-fourth Street. The two hundred helpless children were with great
difficulty taken away by the rear doors while the mob were battering
at the front. The excitement of the rioters was not so great as to
prevent them from coolly robbing the building of everything valuable
that could be removed before they set it on fire. Bed-clothing,
furniture, and other articles were passed out and borne off (in many
cases by the wives and sisters of the rioters) to add to the comfort
of their own homes. Several tenement houses that were occupied by
negroes were attacked by the mob with a determination to destroy, and
were with difficulty protected by the police.
[Illustration: RECRUITING OFFICE IN NEW YORK CITY HALL PARK. (From an
engraving published in "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly," during the
war.)]
The office of the _Tribune_ was especially obnoxious to the rioters,
because that paper was foremost in support of the Administration and
the war. Crowds approached it, singing
"We'll hang old Greeley on a sour-apple-tree,"
and at one time its counting-room was entered by the mob and a fire
was kindled, but the police drove them out and extinguished the
flames. The printers were then supplied with a quantity of muskets and
bomb-shells, and long board troughs {287} were run out at the windows,
so that in case of an attack a shell could be lighted and rolled out,
dropping from the end of the trough into the crowd, where its
explosion would produce incalculable havoc. Happily the ominous
troughs proved a sufficient warning.
A small military force was brought to the aid of the police, and
whenever an outbreak was reported, a strong body was sent at once to
the spot. The locust clubs, when wielded in earnest, proved a terrible
weapon, descending upon the heads of rioters with blows that generally
cracked the skull. A surgeon who attended twenty-one men reported that
they were all wounded in the head, and all past recovery. One of the
most fearful scenes was in Second Avenue, where the police and the
soldiers were assailed with stones and pistol-shots from the windows
and the roofs. Dividing into squads, they entered the houses, which,
amid the cries and curses of the women, they searched from bottom to
top. They seized their cowering assailants in the halls, in the dark
bedrooms, wherever they were hiding, felled them, bayoneted them,
hurled them over the balusters and through the windows, pursued them
to the roof, shot them as they dodged behind chimneys, refusing all
mercy, and threw the quivering corpses into the street as a warning to
the mob. It was like a realization of the imaginary taking of
Torquilstone.
One of the saddest incidents of the riot was the murder of Col. Henry
J. O'Brien, of the Eleventh New York Volunteers, whose men had
dispersed one mob with a deadly volley. An hour or two later the
Colonel returned to the spot alone, when he was set upon and beaten
and mangled and tortured horribly for several hours, being at last
killed by some frenzied women. Page after page might be filled with
such incidents. At one time Broadway was strewn with dead men from
Bond Street to Union Square. A very young man, dressed in the
working-clothes of a mechanic, was observed to be active and daring in
leading a crowd of rioters. A blow from a club at length brought him
down, and as he fell he was impaled on the picket of an iron fence,
which caught him under the chin and killed him. On examination, it was
found that under the greasy overalls he wore a costly and fashionable
suit, and there were other indications of wealth and refinement, but
the body was never identified.
Three days of this vigorous work by the police and the soldiers
brought the disturbance to an end. About fifty policemen had been
injured, three of whom died; and the whole number of lives destroyed
by the rioters was eighteen. The exact number of rioters killed is
unknown, but it was more than twelve hundred. The mobs burned about
fifty buildings, destroying altogether between two million and three
million dollars' worth of property. Governor Seymour incurred odium by
a speech to the rioters, in which he addressed them as his friends,
and promised to have the draft stopped, and by his communications to
the President, in which he complained of the draft, and asked to have
it suspended till the question of its constitutionality could be
tested in the courts. His opponents interpreted this as a subterfuge
to favor the rebellion by preventing the reinforcement of the National
armies. The President answered, in substance, that he had no objection
to a testing of the question, but he would not imperil the country by
suspending operations till a case could be dragged through the courts.
Fourteen of the Northern States had enacted laws enabling the soldiers
to vote without going home. In some of the States it was provided that
commissioners should go to the camps and take the votes; in others the
soldier was authorized to seal up his ballot and send it home to his
next friend, who was to present it at the polls and make oath that it
was the identical one sent to him. The enactment of such laws had been
strenuously opposed by the Democrats, on several grounds, the most
plausible of which was, that men under military discipline were not
practically free to vote as they pleased. The most curious argument
was to this effect: a soldier that sends home his ballot may be killed
in battle before that ballot reaches its destination and is counted.
Do you want dead men to decide your elections?
These were the darkest days of the war; but the riots reacted upon the
party that was supposed to favor them, the people gradually learned
the full significance of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and at the autumn
election the State of New York, which a year before had elected
Governor Seymour, gave a handsome majority in favor of the
Administration. In Ohio, where the Democrats had nominated
Vallandigham for Governor, and made a noisy and apparently vigorous
canvass, the Republicans nominated John Brough. When the votes were
counted, it was found that Mr. Brough had a majority of one hundred
thousand, the largest that had ever been given for any candidate in
any State where there was a contest. Politically speaking, this buried
Mr. Vallandigham out of sight forever, and delivered a heavy blow at
the obstructive policy of his party.
[Illustration: OFFICERS OF THE FORTY-FOURTH NEW YORK INFANTRY.]
{288}
CHAPTER XXV.
THE SIEGE OF CHARLESTON.
BLOCKADE OF THE HARBOR--DU PONT'S ATTACK--DEFEAT--CAPTURE OF THE
"ATLANTA"--GILLMORE'S SIEGE--ASSAULT ON FORT WAGNER--ITS CAPTURE--THE
SWAMP ANGEL--BOMBARDMENT OF CHARLESTON--ACCURATE FIRING FROM MORTAR
GUNS--TURNING NIGHT INTO DAY--STEADY CANNONADING FOR FORTY HOURS.
As Charleston was the cradle of secession, there was a special desire
on the part of the Northern people that it should undergo the heaviest
penalties of war. They wanted poetic vengeance to fall upon the very
men that had taught disunion, fired upon Sumter, and kindled the
flames of civil strife. And there were not a few at the South who
shared this sentiment, believing that they had been dragged into ruin
by the politicians of South Carolina. Many would have been glad if the
whole State could have been pried off from the rest of the Union and
slidden into the depths of the sea. But there was a better than
sentimental reason for directing vigorous operations against
Charleston. Its port was exceedingly useful to the Confederates for
shipping their cotton to Europe and receiving in return the army
clothing, rifles, and ammunition that were produced for them by
English looms and arsenals. Early in the war the Government attempted
to close this port with obstructions. Several old whale-ships were
loaded with stone, towed into the channel, and sunk, at which there
was a great outcry, and the books were searched to see whether this
barbarous proceeding, as it was called, was permissible under the laws
of war and of nations. In 1854 the harbor of Sebastopol had been
obstructed in the same way; but that was done by the Russians, whose
harbor it was, to prevent the enemy from coming in. The strong
currents at Charleston soon swept away the old hulks or buried them in
the sand, and a dozen war vessels had to be sent there to maintain the
blockade. This was an exceedingly difficult task. The main channel ran
for a long distance near the shore of Morris Island, and was protected
by batteries. The westward-bound blockade runners commonly went first
to the British port of Nassau, in the West Indies, and thence with a
pilot sailed for Charleston. After the main channel had been closed in
consequence of the occupation of Morris Island by National troops,
steamers of very light draft, built in England for this special
service, slipped in by the shallower passes. A great many were
captured, for the blockaders {289} developed remarkable skill in
detecting their movements, but the practice was never wholly broken up
till the city was occupied by the National forces in February, 1865.
[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON CHARLESTON.]
In January, 1863, two Confederate iron-clads steamed out of the
harbor, on a hazy morning, and attacked the blockading fleet. Two
vessels, by shots through their steam-drums, were disabled, and struck
their colors; but the remainder of the fleet came to their assistance,
and the iron-clads were driven back into the harbor, leaving their
prizes behind. General Beauregard and Captain Ingraham (commanding the
military and naval forces of the Confederacy at Charleston) formally
proclaimed this affair a victory that had "sunk, dispersed, and driven
off or out of sight the entire blockading fleet," and, consequently,
raised the blockade of the port. These assertions, repeated in foreign
newspapers, threatened for a time to create serious complications with
European powers, by raising the question whether the blockade
(supposed to be thus broken) must not be re-proclaimed, and notice
given to masters of merchant vessels, before it could be
reëstablished. But the falsity of the claim was soon shown, and no
foreign vessels accepted the invitation to demand free passage into
the port of Charleston.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL QUINCY A. GILLMORE.]
This affair increased the desire to capture the port, put an absolute
end to the blockade-running there, and use it as a harbor of refuge
for National vessels. Accordingly, a powerful fleet was fitted out for
the purpose, and placed under the command of Rear-Admiral S. F. Du
Pont, who had reduced the forts of Port Royal in November, 1861. It
consisted of seven monitors, an iron-clad frigate, an iron-clad ram,
and several wooden gunboats. On the 7th of April, 1863, favored by
smooth water, Du Pont steamed in to attack the forts, but most
extraordinary precautions had been taken to defend the city. The
special desire of the Northern people to capture it was offset by an
equally romantic determination on the part of the Secessionists not to
part with the cradle in which their pet theory had been rocked for
thirty years. Besides the batteries that had been erected for the
reduction of Fort Sumter, they had established others, and they
occupied that fort itself. All these works had been strengthened, and
new guns mounted, including some specially powerful ones of English
manufacture. All the channels were obstructed with piles and chains,
with innumerable torpedoes, some of which were to be fired by electric
wires from the forts, while others were arranged to explode whenever a
vessel should run against them. The main channel, between Fort
Moultrie and Fort Sumter, was crossed by a heavy cable supported on
empty barrels, with which was connected a network of smaller chains.
In the south channel there was a tempting opening in the row of piles;
but beneath this were some tons of powder waiting for the electric
spark.
The monitor _Weehawken_ led the way, pushing a raft before her to
explode the torpedoes. Not a man was to be seen on any of the decks,
and the forts were ominously silent. But when the _Weehawken_ had
reached the network of chains, and had become somewhat entangled
therein with her raft, the batteries opened all around, and she and
the other monitors that came to her assistance were the target for a
terrible concentric fire of bursting shells and solid bolts. The
return fire was directed principally upon Sumter, and was kept up
steadily for half an hour, but seemed to have little effect; and after
trying both the main and the south channel, the fleet retired. The
monitor _Keokuk_, which had made the nearest approach to the enemy,
was struck nearly a hundred times. Shots passed through both of her
turrets, and there were nineteen holes in her hull. That evening she
sank in an inlet. Most of the other vessels were injured, and some of
the monitors were unable to revolve their turrets because of the
bending of the plates.
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL JOHN A. DAHLGREN AND OFFICERS.]
Du Pont's defeat was offset two months later, when the Confederate
iron-clad _Atlanta_ started out on her first cruise. She was
originally an English blockade-runner, and as she was unable to get
out of the port of Savannah after the fall of Fort Pulaski, the
Confederates conceived the idea of iron-plating her {290} after the
fashion of the _Merrimac_ and sending her out to sink the monitors and
raise the blockade of Charleston. It was said that the ladies of
Charleston contributed their jewelry to pay the expenses, and after
fourteen months of hard labor she was ready for action. But Du Pont
had heard the story, and sent two monitors to watch her. On the 17th
of June, early in the morning, she dropped down the channel, followed
by two steamers loaded with citizens, including many ladies, who
anticipated a great deal of pleasure in seeing their powerful
iron-clad sink the monitors. These came up to meet her, the
_Weehawken_, Captain Rodgers, taking the lead. Rodgers fired just five
shots from his enormous eleven-inch and fifteen-inch guns. One struck
the shutter of a port-hole and broke it, another knocked off the
_Atlanta's_ pilot-house, another struck the edge of the deck and
opened the seams between the plates, and another penetrated the iron
armor, splintered the heavy wooden backing, and disabled forty men.
Thereupon the _Atlanta_ hung out a white flag and surrendered, while
the pleasure-seekers hastened back to Savannah. It is said that the
vessel might have been handled better if she had not run aground. She
was carrying an immense torpedo at the end of a boom thirty feet long,
which projected from her bow under water. She was found to be
provisioned for a long cruise, and was taken to Philadelphia and
exhibited there as a curiosity.
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL D. M. FAIRFAX.]
The city of Charleston, between its two rivers, with its
well-fortified harbor, bordered by miles of swampy land, was
exceedingly difficult for an enemy to reach. General Quincy A.
Gillmore, being sent with a large force to take it, chose the approach
by way of Folly and Morris Islands, where the monitors could assist
him. Hidden by a fringe of trees, he first erected powerful batteries
on Folly Island. On the northernmost point of Morris Island (Cumming's
Point) was the Confederate Battery Gregg, the one that had done most
damage to Sumter at the opening of the war. South of this was Fort
Wagner, and still farther south were other works.
Fort Wagner was a very strong earthwork, measuring on the inside six
hundred and thirty feet from east to west, and two hundred and
seventy-five feet from north to south. It had a bomb-proof magazine,
and a heavy traverse protecting its guns from any possible attack on
the land side. Behind the sea-face was a well-constructed bomb-proof,
into which no shot ever penetrated. The land-face was constructed with
reëntering angles, so that the approaches could all be swept by cross
fire, and the work was surrounded by a ditch filled with water, in
which was a line of boarding-pikes fastened together with interlaced
wire, and there were also pickets at the front of the fort with
interwoven wire a slight distance above the ground, to impede the
steps of any assaulting force. It was one of the most elaborate works
constructed during the war. Its engineer, Captain Cleves, was killed
by one of the first shells fired at it.
On the morning of July 10th, Gillmore suddenly cut down the trees in
his front and opened fire upon the most southerly works on Morris
Island, while at the same time the fleet commanded by Admiral
Dahlgren, who had succeeded Du Pont, bombarded Fort Wagner. Under
cover of this fire troops were landed, and the earthworks were quickly
taken.
The day being terribly hot, the advance on Fort Wagner was postponed
till the next morning, and then it was a failure. A week later a
determined assault was made with a force of six thousand men, the
advance being led by the first regiment of colored troops (the
Fifty-fourth Massachusetts) that had been raised under the
authorization that accompanied the Emancipation Proclamation. A
bombardment of the fort by the land batteries and the fleet was kept
up from noon till dusk, and during its last hour there was a heavy
thunder-storm. As soon as this was over, the assaulting columns were
set in motion. They marched out under a concentrated fire from all the
Confederate batteries, then met sheets of musketry fire that blazed
out from Wagner, then crossed the ditch waist-deep in water, while
hand-grenades were thrown from the parapet to explode among them, and
even climbed up to the rampart. But here the surviving remnant met a
stout resistance and were hurled back. General Strong, Colonel
Chatfield, Colonel Putnam, and Robert G. Shaw, the young commander of
the black regiment, were all killed, and a total loss was sustained of
fifteen hundred men, while the Confederates lost but about one
hundred.
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL STEWART L. WOODFORD. (Chief of
Staff to General Gillmore.)]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL ALFRED H. TERRY. (Afterward
Major-General.)]
In burying the dead, the Confederates threw the body of Colonel Shaw
into the bottom of a trench, and heaped {291} upon it the bodies of
black soldiers, whose valor, no less than their color, had produced an
uncontrollable frenzy in the Confederate mind. When it was inquired
for, under flag of truce, word was sent back: "We have buried him with
his niggers." Those who thus tried to cast contempt upon the boyish
colonel were apparently not aware that he was braver than any of his
foes. In advancing along that narrow strip of land, every foot of
which was swept by a deadly fire, crossing the ditch and mounting the
parapet, Colonel Shaw exhibited a physical courage that it was
impossible to surpass; while in organizing and leading men of the
despised race that was now struggling toward liberty, he showed a
moral courage such as the rebels neither shared nor comprehended.
Among those who participated in this sorrowful enterprise was the Rev.
Henry Clay Trumbull, chaplain of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment, who
was so assiduous in his attentions to the wounded, and remained so
long on the field among them, that he was captured by the
Confederates, who held him a prisoner for several months. Among those
in attendance at the hospital at the first parallel was Clara Barton,
who afterward became famous for her humane services.
[Illustration: BATTERY REYNOLDS--FIVE TEN-INCH MORTARS BEARING ON FORT
WAGNER.]
[Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF FIELD OFFICERS ON THE SECOND PARALLEL.]
Gen. Alvin C. Voris, who was seriously wounded in the assault on Fort
Wagner, has given a vivid description of his experiences there, from
which we quote a few interesting passages:
"All through the night of July 17th I lay with my men, the
Sixty-seventh Ohio, within half canister range of the fort. It was
very dark, cloudy, and enlivened by an occasional splash of rain and
lightning, by which we could see sentinels on beat on the fort. Just
before break of day we crawled quietly away, and took a good square
breath of relief as we passed behind our first line of intrenchments.
There we undertook to rest under a most scorching sun and on burning
white sand, which reflected back both light and heat rays with
torturing rigor. We were compelled to work night and day, twelve hours
on and twelve off, all the while under shot and exploding shell from
some quarter. When off duty we tried to rest ourselves under the
shelter of the low sand-waves silently thrown up by the wind. Our poor
tired bodies became so exhausted under the great pressure upon us that
we would stretch out on the burning sands, even when under the
greatest danger, and snatch a few hours of fitful, anxious sleep,
frequently to be awakened by the explosion of some great shell. The
land and sea breezes kept the air full of floating sand, which
permeated everything--clothing, {292} eyes, ears, nostrils--and at the
height of the wind would fly with such force as to make the face and
hands sting with pain.
"Just at dark ten regiments of infantry were formed along the beach,
one and a half miles below the fort, and the charge was at once
undertaken. Quietly the column marched until its head had passed the
line of our field batteries. No sooner had this taken place than one
thousand six hundred men in Wagner and Gregg sprang to arms and opened
on the advancing columns with shot, shell, and musketry, which called
to their immediate assistance the armed energies of Sumter, Moultrie,
and Beauregard, and all the batteries on Sullivan's and James's
Islands. When we got within canister range of the fort there were
added to this awful cataclysm double-shotted charges of canister from
eight heavy guns directly raking our approach, each discharge equal to
a double pailful of cast-iron bullets, three-fourths of an inch in
diameter. Every moment some unfortunate comrade fell, to rise no more,
but we closed up our shattered ranks and pressed on with such
impetuosity that we scaled the walls and planted our banners on the
fort. The Sixty-seventh, with heroic cheers, flung her flag to the
midnight breezes on the rampart of Wagner, but only to bring it away
riddled to tatters. Seven out of eight of the color-guard were shot
down, and Color-Sergeant McDonald, with a broken leg, brought it away.
Lieutenant Cochran went alone to headquarters, two thousand five
hundred yards to the rear, for reinforcements, assuring General
Gillmore that we could hold the fort, and then went back to Wagner and
brought off eighteen out of forty men with whom he started in the
column in that fatal charge. Two other lieutenants, with a dozen men,
held one of the enemy's large guns for nearly two hours, over which
they had hand-to-hand contests with the soldiers in charge of the
piece.
"I was shot within a hundred and fifty yards of the fort, and so
disabled that I could not go forward.... Two boys of the Sixty-second
Ohio found me and carried me to our first parallel, where had been
arranged an extempore hospital. Here a surgeon sent his savage
finger-nail into my lacerated side and pronounced the bullet beyond
his reach, and said I would not need his further attention. Like a
baby I fainted, and, on reviving, laid my poor aching head on a
sand-bag to recruit a little strength. That blessed chaplain, Henry
Clay Trumbull, found me and poured oil of gladness into my soul and
brandy into my mouth, whereat I praised him as a dear good man and
cursed that monster of a surgeon, which led the chaplain to think the
delirium of death was turning my brain, and he reported me among the
dead of Wagner."
General Gillmore now resorted to regular approaches for the reduction
of Fort Wagner. The first parallel was soon opened, and siege guns
mounted, and the work was pushed as rapidly as the unfavorable nature
of the ground would admit. By the 23d of July a second parallel was
established, from which fire was opened upon Fort Sumter, two miles
distant, and upon the intervening earthworks. As the task proceeded
the difficulty increased, for the strip of land grew narrower as Fort
Wagner was approached, and the men in the trenches were subjected to
cross-fire from a battery on James's Island, as well as from
sharp-shooters and from the fort itself. A dozen breaching batteries
of enormous rifled guns were established, most of the work being done
at night, and on the 17th of August all of them opened fire. The shot
and shell were directed mainly against Fort Sumter, and in the course
of a week its barbette guns were dismounted, its walls were knocked
into a shapeless mass of ruins, and its value as anything but a rude
shelter for infantry was gone.
The parallels were still pushed forward toward Wagner, partly through
ground so low that high tides washed over it, and finally where mines
of torpedoes had been planted. When they had arrived so near that it
was impossible for the men to work under ordinary circumstances, the
fort was subjected to a bombardment with shells fired from mortars and
dropping into it almost vertically, while the great rifled guns were
trained upon its bomb-proof at short range, and the iron-clad frigate
_New Ironsides_ came close in shore and added her quota in the shape
of eleven-inch shells fired from eight broadside guns. Powerful
calcium lights had been prepared, so that there was no night there,
and the bombardment went on incessantly. At the end of two days, three
columns of infantry were ready to storm the work, when it was
discovered that the Confederates had suddenly abandoned it. Battery
Gregg, on Cumming's Point, was also evacuated.
It is easy to tell all this in a few words; but no brief account of
that operation can give the reader any adequate idea of the enormous
labor it involved, the danger, the anxiety, and the dogged
perseverance of the besiegers. It required the efforts of three
hundred men to move a single gun up the beach. General Gillmore was
one of the most accomplished of military engineers, and we present
here a few of the more interesting passages from his admirable
official report:
At the second parallel the "Surf Battery" had barely escaped entire
destruction, about one-third of it having been carried away by the
sea. Its armament had been temporarily removed to await the issue of
the storm. The progress of the sap was hotly opposed by the enemy,
with the fire of both artillery and sharp-shooters. At one point in
particular, about two hundred yards in front of Wagner, there was a
ridge, affording the enemy good cover, from which we received an
unceasing fire of small-arms, while the guns and sharp-shooters in
Wagner opened vigorously at every lull in the fire directed upon it
from our batteries and gunboats. The firing from the distant James's
Island batteries was steady and accurate. One attempt, on the 21st, to
obtain possession of the ridge with infantry having failed, it was
determined to advance by establishing another parallel. On the night
of August 21st the fourth parallel was opened about one hundred yards
from the ridge, partly with the flying sap and partly with the full
sap. At the place selected for it the island is about one hundred and
sixty yards in width above high water. It was now determined to try
and dislodge the enemy from the ridge with light mortars and navy
howitzers in the fourth parallel, and with other mortars in rear
firing over those in front. The attempt was made on the afternoon of
August 26th, but did not succeed. Our mortar practice was not very
accurate. Brigadier-General Terry was ordered, on the 26th of August,
to carry the ridge at the point of the bayonet, and hold it. This was
accomplished, and the fifth parallel established there on the evening
of the same day, which brought us to within two hundred and forty
yards of Fort Wagner. The intervening space comprised the narrowest
and shallowest part of Morris island. It was simply a flat ridge of
sand, scarcely twenty-five yards in width, and not exceeding two feet
in depth, over which the sea in rough weather swept entirely across to
the marsh on our left. Approaches by the flying sap were at once
commenced on this shallow beach, from the right of the fifth parallel,
and certain means of defence in the parallel itself were ordered. It
was soon ascertained that we had now reached the point where the
really formidable, passive, defensive arrangements of the enemy
commenced. An {293} elaborate and ingenious system of torpedo mines,
to be exploded by the tread of persons walking over them, was
encountered, and we were informed by the prisoners taken on the ridge
that the entire area of firm ground between us and the fort, as well
as the glacis of the latter on its south and east fronts, was thickly
filled with these torpedoes. This knowledge brought us a sense of
security from sorties, for the mines were a defence to us as well as
to the enemy. By daybreak on the 27th of August our sappers had
reached, by a rude and unfinished trench, to within one hundred yards
of Fort Wagner. The dark and gloomy days of the siege were now upon
us. Our daily losses, although not heavy, were on the increase, while
our progress became discouragingly slow, and even fearfully uncertain.
The converging fire from Wagner alone almost enveloped the head of our
sap, delivered, as it was, from a line subtending an angle of nearly
ninety degrees, while the flank fire from the James's Island batteries
increased in power and accuracy every hour. To push forward the sap in
the narrow strip of shallow shifting sand by day was impossible, while
the brightness of the prevailing harvest moon rendered the operation
almost as hazardous by night. Matters, indeed, seemed at a standstill,
and a feeling of despondency began to pervade the rank and file of the
command. There seemed to be no adequate return in accomplished results
for the daily losses which we suffered, and no means of relief,
cheering and encouraging to the soldier, appeared near at hand. In
this emergency, although the final result was demonstrably certain, it
was determined, in order to sustain the flagging spirits of the men,
to commence vigorously and simultaneously two distinct methods of
attack, viz., first, to keep Wagner perfectly silent with an
overpowering curved fire from siege and coehorn mortars, so that our
engineers would have only the more distant batteries of the enemy to
annoy them; and, second, to breach the bomb-proof shelter with rifled
guns, and thus deprive the enemy of their only secure cover in the
work, and, consequently, drive them from it. Accordingly, all the
light mortars were moved to the front and placed in battery; the
capacity of the fifth parallel and the advanced trenches for
sharp-shooters was greatly enlarged and improved; the rifled guns in
the left breaching batteries were trained upon the fort and prepared
for prolonged action; and powerful calcium lights to aid the
night-work of our cannoneers and sharp-shooters, and blind those of
the enemy, were got in readiness. The coöperation of the powerful
battery of the _New Ironsides_, Captain Rowan, during the daytime, was
also secured.
[Illustration: A BOMB-PROOF.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM B. TALIAFERRO, C. S. A.]
These final operations against Fort Wagner were actively inaugurated
at break of day on the morning of September 5th. For forty-two
consecutive hours the spectacle presented was of surpassing sublimity
and grandeur. Seventeen siege and coehorn mortars unceasingly dropped
their shells into the work, over the heads of our sappers and the
guards of the advanced trenches; thirteen of our heavy Parrott
rifles--one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred pounders--pounded
away at short though regular intervals, at the southwest corner of the
bomb-proof; while during the daytime the _New Ironsides_, with
remarkable regularity and precision, kept an almost incessant stream
of eleven-inch shells from her eight-gun broadside, ricocheting over
the water against the sloping parapet of Wagner, whence, deflected
upward with a low remaining velocity, they dropped nearly vertically,
exploding within or over the work, and rigorously searching every part
of it except the subterranean shelters. The calcium lights turned
night into day, and while throwing around our own men an impenetrable
obscurity, they brilliantly illuminated every object in front, and
brought the minutest details of the fort into sharp relief. In a few
hours the fort became practically silent.
The next night, after the capture of Fort Wagner, a few hundred
sailors from the fleet went to Fort Sumter in row-boats and attempted
its capture. But they found it exceedingly difficult to climb up the
ruined wall; most of their boats were knocked to pieces by the
Confederate batteries; they met an unexpected fire of musketry {294}
and hand-grenades, and two hundred of them were disabled or captured.
While all this work was going on, General Gillmore thought to
establish a battery near enough to Charleston to subject the city
itself to bombardment. A site was chosen on the western side of Morris
Island, and the necessary orders were issued. But the ground was soft
mud, sixteen feet deep, and it seemed an impossible task. The captain,
a West Pointer, to whom it was assigned, was told that he must not
fail, but he might ask for whatever he needed, whereupon he made out a
formal requisition for "a hundred men eighteen feet high," and other
things in proportion. The jest seems to have been appreciated, but the
jester was relieved from the duty, which was then assigned to Col.
Edward W. Serrell, a volunteer engineer, who accomplished the work.
Piles were driven, a platform was laid upon them, and a parapet was
built with bags of sand, fifteen thousand being required. All this had
to be done after dark, and occupied fourteen nights. Then, with great
labor, an eight-inch rifled gun was dragged across the swamp and
mounted on this platform. It was nearly five miles from Charleston,
but by firing with a high elevation was able to reach the lower part
of the city. The soldiers named this gun the "Swamp Angel." Late in
August it was ready for work, and, after giving notice for the removal
of non-combatants, General Gillmore opened fire. A few shells fell in
the streets and produced great consternation, but at the thirty-sixth
discharge the Swamp Angel burst, and it never was replaced.
Gillmore had supposed that when Sumter was silenced the fleet would
enter the harbor, but Admiral Dahlgren did not think it wise to risk
his vessels among the torpedoes, especially as the batteries of the
inner harbor had been greatly strengthened. As Fort Wagner and Battery
Gregg were nearer the city by a mile than the Swamp Angel, Gillmore
repaired them, turned their guns upon Charleston, and kept up a
destructive bombardment for weeks.
As a protection to the city, under the plea that its bombardment was a
violation of the rules of war, the Confederate authorities selected
from their prisoners fifty officers and placed them in the district
reached by the shells. Capt. Willard Glazier, who was there, writes:
"When the distant rumbling of the Swamp Angel was heard, and the cry
'Here it comes!' resounded through our prison house, there was a
general stir. Sleepers sprang to their feet, the gloomy forgot their
sorrows, conversation was hushed, and all started to see where the
messenger would fall. At night we traced along the sky a slight stream
of fire, similar to the tail of a comet, and followed its course until
'whiz! whiz!' came the little pieces from our mighty two-hundred
pounder, scattering themselves all around." By placing an equal number
of Confederate officers under fire, the Government compelled the
removal of its own.
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH, CHARLESTON, S. C.]
{295}
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CHATTANOOGA CAMPAIGN AND BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.
ROSECRANS AND BRAGG--FIGHT AT DOVER--AT FRANKLIN--AT MILTON--MORGAN'S
RAID IN OHIO--MANOEUVRING FOR CHATTANOOGA--BATTLE AT
CHICKAMAUGA--NUMBER OF MEN ENGAGED ON EACH SIDE--OPERATIONS OF THE
FIRST DAY--RETREAT OF FEDERAL FORCES AT CHATTANOOGA--NUMBER OF
OFFICERS AND MEN KILLED AT CHICKAMAUGA--GENERAL ROSECRANS'S OPINION OF
THE GENERAL CONDUCT OF THE BATTLE--INSTANCES OF PERSONAL COURAGE AND
GALLANTRY--GENERAL BRAGG'S CRITICISMS OF GENERAL POLK.
While Grant's army was pounding at the gates of Vicksburg, those of
Rosecrans and Bragg were watching each other at Murfreesboro', both
commanders being unwilling to make any grand movement. General Grant
and the Secretary of War wanted Rosecrans to advance upon Bragg, lest
Bragg should reinforce Johnston, who was a constant menace in the rear
of the army besieging Vicksburg. The only thing Grant feared was, that
he might be attacked heavily by Johnston before he could capture the
place. But Rosecrans refused to move, on the ground that it was
against the principles of military science to fight two decisive
battles at once, and that the surest method of holding back Bragg from
reinforcing Johnston was by constantly standing ready to attack him,
but not attacking. As it happened that Bragg was very much like
Rosecrans, and was afraid to stir lest Rosecrans should go to Grant's
assistance, the policy of quiet watchfulness proved successful--so far
at least as immediate results were concerned. Bragg did not reinforce
Johnston, Johnston did not attack Grant; and besiegers and besieged
were left, like two brawny champions of two great armies, to fight it
out, dig it out, and starve it out, till on the 4th of July the city
fell. Whether it afterward fared as well with Rosecrans as it might if
he had attacked Bragg when Grant and Stanton wanted him to, is another
question.
But though the greater armies were quiescent, both sent out
detachments to make destructive raids, and that season witnessed some
of the most notable exploits of the guerilla bands that were operating
in the West, all through the war, in aid of the Confederacy. Late in
January, 1863, a Confederate force of cavalry and artillery, about
four thousand men, under Wheeler and Forrest, was sent to capture
Dover, contiguous to the site of Fort Donelson, in order to close the
navigation of Cumberland River, by which Rosecrans received supplies.
The place was held by six hundred men, under command of Col. A. C.
Harding, of the Eighty-third Illinois Regiment, who, with the help of
gunboats, repelled two determined attempts to storm the works
(February 3), and inflicted a loss of seven hundred men, their own
loss being one hundred and twenty-six.
Early in March, a detachment of about twenty-five hundred National
troops, under Colonels Coburn and Jordan, moving south of Franklin,
Tenn., unexpectedly met a force of about ten thousand Confederates
under Van Dorn, and the stubborn fight that ensued resulted in the
surrounding and capture of Coburn's entire force, after nearly two
hundred had been killed or wounded on each side. A few days later, Van
Dorn was attacked and driven southward by a force under Gen. Gordon
Granger. Still later in the month a detachment of about fourteen
hundred men under Colonel Hall went in pursuit of the guerilla band
commanded by John Morgan, fought it near Milton, and defeated it,
inflicting a loss of nearly four hundred men. Early in April another
detachment of National troops, commanded by Gen. David S. Stanley,
found Morgan's men at Snow Hill, and defeated and routed them so
thoroughly that it was two weeks before the remnants of the band could
be brought together again.
[Illustration: A PASS IN THE RACCOON RANGE.]
{296} [Illustration: MISSIONARY RIDGE, FROM ORCHARD KNOB. (From a
Government photograph.)]
In the same month Col. A. D. Streight, with eighteen hundred men, was
sent to make a raid around Bragg's army, cut his communications, and
destroy supplies. This detachment was pursued by Forrest, who attacked
the rear guard at Day's Gap, but was repelled, and lost ten guns and a
considerable number of men. Streight kept on his way, with continual
skirmishing, destroyed a dépôt of provisions at Gadsden, had another
fight at Blount's Farm, in which he drove off Forrest again, and
burned the Round Mountain Iron Works, which supplied shot and shell to
the Confederates. But on the 3d of May he was confronted by so large a
force that he was compelled to surrender, {297} his men and horses
being too jaded to attempt escape.
These are but examples of hundreds of engagements that took place
during the war of secession and are scarcely known to the general
reader because their fame is overshadowed by the magnitude of the
great battles. Had they occurred in any of our previous wars, every
schoolboy would know about them. In Washington's celebrated victory at
Trenton, the number of Hessians surrendered was fewer than Streight's
command captured by Forrest; and in the bloodiest battle of the
Mexican war, Buena Vista, the American loss (then considered heavy)
was but little greater than the Confederate loss in the action at
Dover, related above. The armies surrendered by Burgoyne and
Cornwallis, if combined, would constitute a smaller force than the
least of the three that surrendered to Grant.
One of these affairs in the West, however, was so bold and startling
that it became famous even among the greater and more important
events. This was Morgan's raid across the Ohio. In July he entered
Kentucky from the south, with a force of three thousand cavalrymen,
increased as it went by accessions of Kentucky sympathizers to about
four thousand, with ten guns. He captured and robbed the towns of
Columbia and Lebanon, reached the Ohio, captured two steamers, and
crossed into Indiana. Then marching rapidly toward Cincinnati, he
burned mills and bridges, tore up rails, plundered right and left, and
spread alarm on every side. But the home guards were gathering to meet
him, and the great number of railways in Ohio and Indiana favored
their rapid concentration, while farmers felled trees across the roads
on hearing of his approach. He passed around Cincinnati, and after
much delay reached the Ohio at Buffington's Ford. Here some of his
pursuers overtook him, while gunboats and steamboats filled with armed
men were patrolling the river, on the watch for him. The gunboats
prevented him from using the ford, and he was obliged to turn and give
battle. The fight was severe, and resulted in Morgan's defeat. Nearly
eight hundred of his men surrendered, and he with the remainder
retreated up the river. They next tried to cross at Belleville by
swimming their horses; but the gunboats were at hand again, and made
such havoc among the troopers that only three hundred got across,
while of the others some were shot, some drowned, and the remnant
driven back to the Ohio shore. Morgan with two hundred fled still
farther up the stream, but at last was compelled to surrender at New
Lisbon. He was confined in the Ohio penitentiary, but escaped a few
months later by digging under the walls. A pathetic incident of this
raid was the death of the venerable Daniel McCook, sixty-five years
old. He had given eight sons to the National service, and four of them
had become generals. One of these was deliberately murdered by
guerillas, while he was ill and riding in an ambulance in Tennessee.
The old man, hearing that the murderer was in Morgan's band, took his
rifle and went out to join in the fight at Buffington's Ford, where he
was mortally wounded.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. H. MORGAN, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE L. HARTSUFF.]
[Illustration: SCENE OF OPERATION OF THE ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND IN
TENNESSEE, GEORGIA, AND ALABAMA.]
When at last Rosecrans did move, by some of the ablest strategy
displayed in the whole war he compelled Bragg to fall back
successively from one position to another, all the way from Tullahoma
to Chattanooga. This was not done without frequent and heavy
skirmishes, however; but the superiority of the National cavalry had
now been developed at the West as well as at the East, and they all
resulted in one way. Colonel (afterward Senator) John F. Miller was
conspicuous in several of these actions, and in that at Liberty Gap
one of his eyes was shot out by a rifle-ball.
The purpose of Rosecrans was to get possession of Chattanooga; and
when Bragg crossed the Tennessee and occupied that town, he set to
work to manoeuvre him out of it. To effect this, he moved southwest,
as if he were intending to pass around Chattanooga and invade Georgia.
This caused Bragg to fall back to Lafayette, and the National troops
took {298} possession of Chattanooga. But at this time Rosecrans
was for a while in a critical situation, where a more skilful
general than Bragg would probably have destroyed him; for his three
corps--commanded by Thomas, Crittenden, and McCook--were widely
separated. The later movements of this campaign had been rendered
tediously slow by the heavy rains and the almost impassable nature of
the ground; so that although Rosecrans had set out from Murfreesboro'
in June, it was now the middle of September.
Supposing that Bragg was in full retreat, Rosecrans began to follow
him; but Bragg had received large reinforcements, and turned back from
Lafayette, intent upon attacking Rosecrans. The two armies, feeling
for each other and approaching somewhat cautiously for a week, met at
last, and there was fought, September 19 and 20, 1863, a great battle
on the banks of a creek, whose Indian name of Chickamauga is said to
signify "river of death."
Rosecrans had about fifty-five thousand men; Bragg, after the arrival
of Longstreet at midnight of the 18th, about seventy thousand. The
general direction of the lines of battle was with the National troops
facing southeast, and the Confederates facing northwest, though these
lines were variously bent, broken, and changed in the course of the
action. Thomas held the left of Rosecrans's line, Crittenden the
centre, and McCook the right. Bragg was the attacking party, and his
plan was, while making a feint on the National right, to fall heavily
upon the left, flank it, crush it, and seize the roads that led to
Chattanooga. If he could do this, it would not only cut off Rosecrans
from his base and insure his decisive defeat, but would give Bragg
possession of Chattanooga, where he could control the river and the
passage through the mountains between the East and the West. The
concentration of the National forces in the valley had been witnessed
by the Confederates from the mountain height southeast of the creek,
who therefore knew what they had to meet and how it was disposed.
The battle of the 19th began at ten o'clock in the forenoon, and
lasted all day. The Confederate army crossed the creek without
opposition, and moved forward confidently to the attack. But the left
of the position--the key-point--was held by the command of Gen. George
H. Thomas, who for a slow and stubborn fight was perhaps the best
corps commander produced by either side in the whole war. Opposed to
him, on the Confederate right, was Gen. (also Bishop) Leonidas Polk.
There was less of concerted action in the attack than Bragg had
planned for, partly because Thomas unexpectedly struck out with a
counter-movement when an opportunity offered; but there was no lack of
bloody and persistent fighting. Brigades and divisions moved forward
to the charge, were driven back, and charged again. Batteries were
taken and re-taken, the horses were killed, and the captains and
gunners in some instances, refusing to leave them, were shot down at
the wheels. Brigades and regiments were shattered, and on both sides
many prisoners were taken. Thomas's line was forced back, but before
night he regained his first position, and the day closed with the
situation practically unchanged.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS.]
During the night both sides corrected their lines and made what
preparation they could for a renewal of the struggle. Bragg intended
to attack again at daybreak, his plan (now perfectly evident to his
opponent) being substantially the same as on the day before. He wanted
to crush the National left, force back the centre, and make a grand
left wheel with his entire army, placing his right firmly across the
path to Chattanooga. But the morning was foggy, Polk was slow, and the
fighting did not begin till the middle of the forenoon. Between Polk
and Thomas the edge of battle swayed back and forth, and the
Confederates could make no permanent impression. Thomas was obliged to
call repeatedly for reinforcements, which sometimes reached him and
sometimes failed to; but whether they came or not, he held manfully to
all the essential portions of his ground.
Rosecrans was constantly uneasy about his right centre, where he knew
the line to be weak; and at this point the great disaster of the day
began, though in an unexpected manner. It arose from an order that was
both miswritten and misinterpreted. This order, addressed to Gen.
Thomas J. Wood, who commanded a division, was written by a member of
Rosecrans's staff who had not had a military education, and was not
sufficiently impressed with the exact meaning of the technical terms.
It read: "The general commanding directs that you close up on Reynolds
as fast as possible, and support him." It was impossible to obey both
clauses of this order; since to "close up" means to bring the ends of
the lines together so that there shall be no gap and they shall form
one continuous line, while to "support," in the technical military
sense, means to take a position in the rear, ready to advance when
ordered. The aid that wrote the order evidently used the word
"support" only in the general sense of assist, strengthen, protect,
encourage, and did not dream of its conflicting with the command to
"close up." General Wood, a West Point graduate, instead of sending or
going to Rosecrans for better orders, obeyed literally the second
clause, and {299} withdrew his command from the line to form it in the
rear of Reynolds. Opposite to the wide and fatal opening thus left was
Longstreet, the ablest corps commander in the Confederate service, who
instantly saw his advantage and promptly poured his men, six divisions
of them, through the gap. This cut off McCook's corps from the rest of
the army, and it was speedily defeated and routed in confusion. The
centre was crumbled, and it looked as if the whole army must be
destroyed. Rosecrans, who had been with the defeated right wing,
appeared to lose his head completely, and rode back in all haste to
Chattanooga to make arrangements for gathering there the fragments of
his forces. At nightfall he sent his chief of staff, Gen. James A.
Garfield (afterward President), to find what had become of Thomas, and
Garfield found Thomas where not even the destruction of three-fifths
of the army had moved or daunted him.
When Thomas's right flank was exposed to assault by the disruption of
the centre, he swung it back to a position known as Horseshoe Ridge,
still covering the road. Longstreet was pressing forward to pass the
right of this position, when he was stopped by Gordon Granger, who had
been with a reserve at Rossville Gap, but was wiser and bolder than
his orders, and, instead of remaining there, moved forward to the
support of Thomas. The Confederate commander, when complete victory
was apparently so near, seemed reckless of the lives of his men,
thrusting them forward again and again in futile charges, where
Thomas's batteries literally mowed them down with grape and canister,
and a steady fire of musketry increased the bloody harvest. About dusk
the ammunition was exhausted, and the last charges of the Confederates
were repelled with the bayonet. Thomas had fairly won the title of
"the rock of Chickamauga." In the night he fell back in good order to
Rossville, leaving the enemy in possession of the field, with all the
dead and wounded. Sheridan, who had been on the right of the line and
was separated by its disruption, kept his command together, marched
around the mountain, and before morning joined Thomas at Rossville,
whence they fell back the next day to Chattanooga, where order was
quickly restored and the defences strengthened.
The National loss in the two-days' battle of Chickamauga--killed,
wounded, and missing--was sixteen thousand three hundred and
thirty-six. The Confederate reports are incomplete and unsatisfactory;
but estimates of Bragg's loss make it at least eighteen thousand, and
some carry it up nearly to twenty-one thousand. With the exception of
Gettysburg, this was thus far the most destructive action of the war.
Tactically it was a victory for Bragg, who was left in possession of
the field; but that which he was fighting for, Chattanooga, he did not
get.
[Illustration: LEE AND GORDON'S MILLS ON THE CHICKAMAUGA.]
{300} [Illustration: BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA, GA., SEPTEMBER 19th AND
20th, 1863.]
Among the killed in this battle were Brig.-Gen. William H. Lytle on
the National side, and on the Confederate side Brig.-Gens. Preston
Smith, Benjamin H. Helm, and James Deshler; also on the National side,
three colonels who were in command of brigades--Cols. Edward A. King
of the Sixty-eighth Indiana Regiment, Philemon P. Baldwin of the Sixth
Indiana, and Hans C. Heg of the Fifteenth Wisconsin. The number of
officers of lower rank who fell, generally when exhibiting notable
courage in the performance of their dangerous duties, was very great.
Of General Whittaker's staff, numbering seven, three were killed and
three wounded. His brigade lost nearly a thousand men, and Colonel
Mitchell's brigade of four regiments lost nearly four hundred. The
Ninety-sixth Illinois Regiment went into the battle with four {301}
hundred and fifteen men, and lost one hundred and sixty-three killed
or wounded. Of its twenty-three officers, eleven were either killed or
wounded. In the fall of General Lytle we lost another man of great
literary promise, though his published writings were not extensive,
whose name must be placed on the roll with those of Winthrop, Lander,
and O'Brien. He was the author of the popular poem that begins with
the line--
"I am dying, Egypt, dying."
Another poet who distinguished himself on this field was Lieut.
Richard Realf, of the Eighty-eighth Illinois Regiment, who was
honorably mentioned, especially for his services in going back through
a heavy fire and bringing up a fresh supply of ammunition when it was
sorely needed. Realf was a personal friend of Lytle's, and the bullet
that killed Lytle passed through a sheet of paper in his pocket,
containing a little poem that Realf had addressed to him a short time
before. Some of Realf's war lyrics are among the finest that we have.
Here are two stanzas from one:
"I think the soul of Cromwell kissed
The soul of Baker when,
With red sword in his bloody fist,
He died among his men.
I think, too, that when Winthrop fell,
His face toward the foe,
John Hampden shouted, 'All is well!'
Above that overthrow.
"And Lyon, making green and fair
The places where he trod;
And Ellsworth, sinking on the stair
Whereby he passed to God;
And those whose names are only writ
In hearts, instead of scrolls,
Still show the dark of earth uplit
With shining human souls."
And here is a sonnet suggested by the loss of many of his comrades on
the battlefield:
"Thank God for Liberty's dear slain; they give
Perpetual consecration unto it;
Quickening the clay of our insensitive
Dull natures with the awe of infinite
Sun-crowned transfigurations, such as sit
On the solemn-brooding mountains. Oh, the dead!
How they do shame the living; how they warn
Our little lives that huckster for the bread
Of peace, and tremble at the world's poor scorn,
And pick their steps among the flowers, and tread
Daintily soft where the raised idols are;
Prone with gross dalliance where the feasts are spread,
When most they should stride forth, and flash afar
Light like the streaming of heroic war!"
General Garfield was distinguished in this action for his judgment and
incessant activity. As chief of staff he wrote every order issued by
General Rosecrans during the action, except the blundering order that
caused the disaster by the withdrawal of Wood's division from the
line. He was advanced to the rank of major-general "for gallant and
meritorious services at the battle of Chickamauga."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES B. STEEDMAN.]
General Rosecrans, in his official report, says of his own personal
movements on the field:
"At the moment of the repulse of Davis's division [when the
Confederates poured through the gap left by Wood] I was standing in
rear of his right, waiting the completion of the closing of McCook's
corps to the left. Seeing confusion among Van Cleve's troops, and the
distance Davis's men were falling back, and the tide of battle surging
toward us, the urgency for Sheridan's troops to intervene became
imminent, and I hastened in person to the extreme right, to direct
Sheridan's movement on the flank of the advancing rebels. It was too
late. The crowd of returning troops rolled back, and the enemy
advanced. Giving the troops directions to rally behind the ridges west
of the Dry Valley road, I passed down it, accompanied by General
Garfield, Major McMichael, and Major Bond, of my staff, and a few of
the escort, under the shower of grape, canister, and musketry, for two
or three hundred yards, and attempted to rejoin General Thomas and the
troops sent to his support, by passing to the rear of the broken
portion of our line, but found the routed troops far toward the left;
and hearing the enemy's advancing musketry and cheers, I became
doubtful whether the left had held its ground, and started for
Rossville. On consultation and further reflection, however, I
determined to send General Garfield there, while I went to Chattanooga
to give orders for the security of the pontoon bridges at Battle Creek
and Bridgeport, and to make preliminary disposition, either to forward
ammunition and supplies should we hold our ground, or to withdraw the
troops into good position.
"General Garfield despatched me from Rossville that the left and
centre still held its ground. General Granger had gone to its support.
General Sheridan had rallied his division, and was advancing toward
the same point, and General Davis was going up the Dry Valley road, to
our right. General Garfield proceeded to the front, remained there
until the close of the fight, and despatched me the triumphant defence
our troops there made against the assaults of the enemy."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GORDON GRANGER.]
{302} General Rosecrans says concerning the general conduct of the
battle:
"The fight on the left, after two P.M., was that of the army. Never,
in the history of this war at least, have troops fought with greater
energy or determination. Bayonet charges, often heard of but seldom
seen, were repeatedly made by brigades and regiments in several of our
divisions. After the yielding and severance of the division of the
right, the enemy bent all efforts to break the solid portion of our
line. Under the pressure of the rebel onset, the flanks of the line
were gradually retired until they occupied strong, advantageous
ground, giving to the whole a flattened, crescent shape. From one to
half-past three o'clock the unequal contest was sustained throughout
our line. Then the enemy, in overpowering numbers, flowed around our
right, held by General Brannan, and occupied a low gap in the ridge of
our defensive position, which commanded our rear. The moment was
critical. Twenty minutes more, and our right would have been turned,
our position taken in reverse, and probably the army routed.
Fortunately Major-General Granger, whose troops had been posted to
cover our left and rear, with the instinct of a true soldier and a
general, hearing the roar of the battle, and being beyond the reach of
orders from the general commanding, moved to its assistance. He soon
encountered the enemy's skirmishers, whom he disregarded, well knowing
that at that stage of the conflict the battle was not there. Posting
Col. Daniel McCook's brigade to take care of anything in that vicinity
and beyond our line, he moved the remainder to the scene of action,
reporting to General Thomas, who directed him to our suffering right.
He discovered at once the peril and the point of danger--the gap--and
quick as thought directed his advance brigade upon the enemy. General
Steedman, taking a regimental color, led the column. Swift was the
charge and terrible the conflict, but the enemy was broken. A thousand
of our brave men, killed and wounded, paid for its possession, but we
held the gap. Two divisions of Longstreet's corps confronted the
position. Determined to take it, they successively came to the
assault. A battery of six guns, placed in the gorge, poured death and
slaughter into them. They charged to within a few yards of the pieces;
but our grape and canister and the leaden hail of our musketry,
delivered in sparing but terrible volleys, from cartridges taken, in
many instances, from the boxes of their fallen companions, was too
much even for Longstreet's men. About sunset they made their last
charge, when our men, being out of ammunition, rushed on them with the
bayonet, and gave way to return no more."
General Rosecrans adds that: "The battle of Chickamauga was absolutely
necessary to secure our concentration and cover Chattanooga. It was
fought in a country covered with woods and undergrowth, and wholly
unknown to us. Every division came into action opportunely, and fought
squarely on the 19th. We were largely outnumbered, yet we foiled the
enemy's flank movement on our left, and secured our own position on
the road to Chattanooga."
In this battle the National army expended two million six hundred and
fifty thousand rounds of musket cartridges and seven thousand three
hundred and twenty-five rounds of artillery ammunition. With figures
like these the reader may realize how nearly true is the saying that
it requires a man's own weight of metal to kill him in battle.
Rosecrans lost thirty-six pieces of artillery and eight thousand four
hundred and fifty stand of small arms. He took two thousand prisoners.
He says in his report: "A very great meed of praise is due to Capt.
Horace Porter, of the Ordnance, for the wise system of arming each
regiment with arms of the same calibre, and having the ammunition
wagons properly marked, by which most of the difficulties of supplying
ammunition where troops had exhausted it in battle were obviated."
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL H. V. N. BOYNTON.]
[Illustration: COLONEL B. F. SCRIBNER. (Afterward Brevet
Brigadier-General.)]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL EMERSON OPDYKE.]
Gen. T. J. Wood says in his report, concerning the fight on his part
of the line: "A part of the contest was witnessed by that able and
distinguished commander Major-General Thomas. I think it must have
been two o'clock P.M. when he came to where my command was so hotly
engaged. His presence was most welcome. The men saw him, felt they
were battling under the eye of a great chieftain, and their {303}
courage and resolution received fresh inspiration from this
consciousness."
In this terrible two days' struggle there were innumerable instances
of the display of special personal courage and timely gallantry. When
the One Hundred and Fifteenth Illinois Regiment was struggling to
rally after being somewhat broken, General Steedman took the flag from
the color-bearer and advanced toward the enemy, saying to the
regiment: "Boys, I'll carry your flag if you'll defend it." Whereupon
they rallied around him and went into the fight once more.
William S. Bean, a quartermaster's sergeant, whose place was at the
rear, and who might properly have remained there, went forward to the
battle line, and is said to have done almost the work of a general in
encouraging the bold and animating the timid. Lieut. C. W. Earle, a
mere boy, was left in command of the color company of the Ninety-sixth
Ohio Regiment, and stood by his colors unfalteringly throughout the
fight, though all but two of the color-guard were struck down and the
flag was cut to pieces by the bullets of the enemy. The Twenty-second
Michigan Regiment did not participate in the first day's battle, but
went in on the second day with five hundred and eighty-four officers
and men, and lost three hundred and seventy-two. Its colonel, Heber
LeFavour, received high praise for the manner in which he led his
regiment in a bayonet charge after their ammunition was exhausted. He
was taken prisoner late in the action.
General Bragg, in his report of the battle, complains bitterly of
General Polk's dilatoriness in obeying orders to attack, and says:
"Exhausted by two days' battle, with very limited supply of
provisions, and almost destitute of water, some time in daylight was
absolutely essential for our troops to supply these necessaries and
replenish their ammunition before renewing the contest. Availing
myself of this necessary delay to inspect and readjust my lines, I
moved, as soon as daylight served, on the 21st.... Our cavalry soon
came upon the enemy's rear guard where the main road passes through
Missionary Ridge. He had availed himself of the night to withdraw from
our front, and his main body was already in position within his lines
at Chattanooga. Any immediate pursuit by our infantry and artillery
would have been fruitless, as it was not deemed practicable, with our
weak and exhausted forces, to assail the enemy, now more than double
our numbers, behind his intrenchments. Though we had defeated him and
driven him from the field with heavy loss in arms, men, and artillery,
it had only been done by heavy sacrifices, in repeated, persistent,
and most gallant assaults upon superior numbers strongly posted and
protected. Our loss was in proportion to the prolonged and obstinate
struggle. Two-fifths of our gallant troops had fallen, and the number
of general and staff officers stricken down will best show how these
troops were led. Major-General Hood, the model soldier and inspiring
leader, fell after contributing largely to our success, and has
suffered the irreparable loss of a leg."
General Bragg believed that although he did not gain possession of
Chattanooga by the battle of Chickamauga, he had only to make one more
move to secure the prize. And perhaps he would have been correct in
this calculation if the commander opposed to him had not been
succeeded about a month later by General Grant. Bragg advanced his
army to positions on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, and put
the town of Chattanooga into a state of siege, managing to stop the
navigation of the river below and cut off all Rosecrans's routes of
supply except one long and difficult wagon road. This campaign
virtually closed the military career of General Rosecrans. He had
shown many fine qualities as a soldier, and had performed some
brilliant feats of strategy; but, as with some other commanders, his
abilities appeared to stop suddenly short at a point where great
successes were within easy reach. It was not more science that was
wanted, but more energy. When Grant appeared on the scene, with no
more knowledge of the military art than Rosecrans, but with boundless
and tireless energy, the conditions quickly changed.
[Illustration: "DO NOT SKULK HERE--"]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL MARCELLUS A. STOVALL, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL PATRICK R. CLEBURNE, C. S. A.]
{304} [Illustration: BRIDGE ACROSS TENNESSEE RIVER--CHATTANOOGA AND
LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN IN THE DISTANCE. (From a war-time photograph.)]
{305}
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA.
GRANT'S ARRIVAL AT CHATTANOOGA--GENERAL ROSECRANS'S INACTION--OPENING
A NEW LINE OF SUPPLY--DESPERATE FIGHTING UNDER GENERAL
SHERMAN--PAROLED PRISONERS FORCED INTO THE CONFEDERATE ARMY--FIGHTING
AROUND KNOXVILLE--THE BATTLE ABOVE THE CLOUDS--CAPTURE OF MISSIONARY
RIDGE--BRAGG'S ARMY COMPLETELY DEFEATED--PICTURESQUE AND ROMANTIC
INCIDENTS.
A month after the battle of Chickamauga the National forces in the
West were to some extent reorganized. The departments of the Ohio, the
Cumberland, and the Tennessee were united under the title of Military
Division of the Mississippi, of which General Grant was made
commander, and Thomas superseded Rosecrans in command of the Army of
the Cumberland. General Hooker, with two corps, was sent to Tennessee.
Grant arrived at Chattanooga on the 23d of October, and found affairs
in a deplorable condition. It was impossible to supply the troops
properly by the one wagon road, and they had been on short rations for
some time, while large numbers of the mules and horses were dead.
From the National lines the tents and batteries of the Confederates on
Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge were in plain sight; their
sentinels walked the rounds in a continuous line not a thousand yards
away; and from these heights their guns occasionally sent a shot
within the lines. When General Sherman, on his arrival, walked out and
surveyed the situation, he turned to Grant and exclaimed in surprise,
"Why, General, you are besieged." "Yes," said Grant, "it is too true,"
and pointed out to him a house on Missionary Ridge which was known to
be Bragg's headquarters. General Rosecrans, like a similar commander
at the East, was able to give most excellent reasons for his prolonged
inaction. And so able a soldier as Gen. David S. Stanley, in an
article read by him before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion,
seems to justify Rosecrans. The unpleasant and unsatisfactory
correspondence of this period, between Rosecrans and the War
Department, culminated when the former, having reported the success of
an expedition against McMinnville, received a despatch from General
Halleck, which said: "The Secretary of War says you always report your
successes, but never report your reverses." And Rosecrans replied: "If
the Secretary of War says I report my successes, but do not report my
reverses, the Secretary of War lies."
It may be that the poor condition of the cavalry, and other
discouraging circumstances, were really a proper cause for non-action
to a general who was more inclined to study the safety of his own army
than the destruction of the enemy; but somehow or other, wherever
General Grant appeared, reasons for inactivity seemed to melt away,
and the spirit of determined aggression to take their place.
[Illustration: GENERAL SHERMAN'S HEADQUARTERS AT CHATTANOOGA.]
Grant's first care was to open a new and better line of supply.
Steamers could come up the river as far as Bridgeport, and he ordered
the immediate construction of a road and bridge to reach that point by
way of Brown's Ferry, which was done. Within five days the "cracker
line," as the soldiers called it, was opened, and thenceforth they had
full rations and abundance of everything. The enemy attempted to
interrupt the work on the road; but Hooker met them at Wauhatchie,
west of Lookout Mountain, and after a three hours' action drove them
off.
Chattanooga was now no longer in a state of siege; but it was still
seriously menaced by Bragg's army, which held a most {306} singular
position. Its flanks were on the northern ends of Lookout Mountain and
Missionary Ridge, the crests of which were occupied for some distance,
and its centre stretched across Chattanooga Valley. This line was
twelve miles long, and most of it was well intrenched.
Grant ordered Sherman to join him with one corps, and Sherman promptly
obeyed; but, as he did considerable railroad repairing on the way, he
did not reach Chattanooga till the 15th of November. Moreover, he had
to fight occasionally, and be ready to fight all the time. At
Colliersville he was aroused from a nap in the car by a great noise
about the train, and was informed that the pickets had been driven in,
and there was every reason to suppose that a large cavalry force would
soon make an attack. Sherman immediately got his men out of the train
and formed them in a line on a knoll near a railroad cut. Presently a
Confederate officer appeared with a flag of truce, and Sherman sent
out two officers to meet him, secretly instructing them to keep him in
conversation as long as possible. When they returned, it was with the
message that General Chalmers demanded the surrender of the place.
Sherman ordered his officers to return again to the line and talk as
long as possible with the Confederate officer, but finally give him a
negative answer. In the little time thus gained he got a telegraph
message sent to Memphis and Germantown, ordering Corse's division to
hurry forward, and at the same time backed the train into the depot,
which was a loopholed brick building, and drew his men into some
smaller works that surrounded it. In a few minutes the enemy swooped
down, cutting the wires and tearing up the rails on both sides, and
then attacked Sherman's little band in their intrenchments. Sherman
ordered all the houses that were near enough to shelter the enemy's
sharp-shooters to be set on fire, and, finding some muskets in the
depot, put them into the hands of the clerks and orderlies, making
every man available for an active defence. The Confederates had some
artillery, with which they knocked his locomotive to pieces, and set
fire to the train; but many of Sherman's men were excellent marksmen
and trained soldiers, and they not only kept the enemy at bay but
managed to put out the fire. This state of things lasted about three
hours, when the approach of Corse's division caused the enemy to
withdraw. Corse's men had come twenty-six miles on the double quick.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN W. GEARY.]
[Illustration: DESPATCHES FOR HEADQUARTERS.]
General Sherman, in his graphic "Memoirs," gives many incidents of
this march, some of which were not only interesting but significant.
Just before he set out, a flag of truce came in one day, borne by a
Confederate officer with whom he was acquainted, and escorted by
twenty-five men. Sherman invited the officer to take supper with him,
and gave orders to his own escort to furnish the Confederate escort
with forage and whatever else they wanted during their stay. After
supper the conversation turned upon the war, and the Confederate
officer said: "What is the use of your persevering? It is simply
impossible to subdue eight millions of people. The feeling in the
South has become so embittered that a reconciliation is impossible."
Sherman answered: "Sitting as we are here, we appear to be very
comfortable, and surely there is no trouble in our becoming friends."
"Yes," said the Confederate officer, "that is very true of us; but we
are gentlemen of education, and can easily adapt ourselves to any
condition of things; but this would not apply equally well to the
common people or the common soldiers." Thereupon, General Sherman took
him out to the campfires behind the tent and showed him the men of the
two escorts mingled together, drinking coffee, and apparently having a
happy time. "What do you think of that?" said he. And the Confederate
officer admitted that Sherman had the best of the argument.
Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the war had now continued more
than two years, that the territory held by the Confederates had
steadily diminished, that they had passed the climax of their military
resources while those of the North were still abundant, that
Gettysburg and Vicksburg had rendered their terrible verdicts, and
that all hope of foreign assistance or even recognition was at an
end--the opinions {307} expressed by the officer just quoted were very
generally held at the South. It is perhaps not wonderful that the
ordinary people and the soldiers in the ranks, few of whom understood
the philosophy of war in its larger aspects, and to all of whom their
generals and their Government continually misrepresented the state of
affairs, should have believed that they were invincible. But their
educated generals and statesmen ought to have known better; yet either
they did not know better, or they concealed their real opinions.
Alexander H. Stephens, by many considered the ablest statesman in the
Confederacy, late in July of this year (1863), made a speech at
Charlotte, N. C., in which he assured his hearers that there was no
reason for anything but the most confident hope. He said that the loss
of Vicksburg was not as severe a blow as the loss of Fort Pillow,
Island No. 10, or New Orleans, and, as the Confederacy had survived
those losses, it would also survive this one. He declared that if they
were to lose Mobile, Charleston, and Richmond, it would not affect the
heart of the Confederacy, which would survive all such losses and
finally secure its independence. The enemy, he said, had made two
years of unsuccessful war, and thus far had not broken the shell of
the Confederacy. He alluded to the fact that during the Revolutionary
war the British at one time had possession of North Carolina, South
Carolina, New York, and Philadelphia, and yet did not conquer our
forefathers; and he added: "In the war of 1812 the British captured
the capital of the nation, Washington city, and burned it, yet they
did not conquer us; and if we are true to ourselves now, true to our
birthright, the Yankee nation will utterly fail to subjugate us.
Subjugation would be utter ruin and eternal death to Southern people
and all that they hold most dear. Reconstruction would not end the
war, but would produce a more horrible war than that in which we are
now engaged. The only terms on which we can obtain permanent peace is
final and complete separation from the North." With such argument and
appeal as this, from statesmen, demagogues, generals, ministers of the
gospel, journalists, and other citizens of lesser note, the Southern
people were induced to continue the terrible struggle, until, when the
final surrender came, they had hardly anything left to surrender
except the ground on which they stood.
Another incident of the march was one that gave the Fifteenth Corps
its badge. An Irish soldier of that corps one day straggled out and
joined a party of the Twelfth Corps at their campfire. Seeing a star
marked on every tent, wagon, hat, etc., he asked if they were all
brigadier-generals in that corps; and they explained that the star was
their corps badge, and then in turn asked him what was the badge of
his (the Fifteenth) corps. Now, this corps as yet had not adopted any
badge, and the Irishman had never before even heard of a corps badge;
but he promptly answered, "Forty rounds in the cartridge box and
twenty in the pocket." When General Logan heard this story, he adopted
the cartridge box and forty rounds as the badge of his corps.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL HUGH EWING.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL ABSALOM BAIRD.]
The condition of affairs at this time in that department, and the
reasons for it, are set forth with admirable clearness in a letter
addressed by General Halleck to General Grant, under date of October
20, 1863:
"It has been the constant desire of the Government, from the beginning
of the war, to rescue the loyal inhabitants of East Tennessee from the
hands of the rebels, who fully appreciated the importance of
continuing their hold upon that country. In addition to the large
amount of agricultural products drawn from the upper valley of the
Tennessee, they also obtained iron and other materials from the
vicinity of Chattanooga. The possession of East Tennessee would cut
off one of their most important railroad communications, and threaten
their manufactories at Rome, Atlanta, etc.
"When General Buell was ordered into East Tennessee in the summer of
1862, Chattanooga was comparatively unprotected; but Bragg reached
there before Buell, and, by threatening his communications, forced him
to retreat on Nashville and Louisville. Again, after the battle of
Perryville, General Buell {308} was urged to pursue Bragg's defeated
army and drive it from East Tennessee. The same was urged upon his
successor; but the lateness of the season, or other causes, prevented
further operations after the battle of Stone River.
"Last spring, when your movements on the Mississippi River had drawn
out of Tennessee a large force of the enemy, I again urged General
Rosecrans to take advantage of that opportunity to carry out his
projected plan of campaign, General Burnside being ready to coöperate
with a diminished but still efficient force. But he could not be
persuaded to act in time, preferring to lie still till your campaign
should be terminated.
"When General Rosecrans finally determined to advance, he was allowed
to select his own lines and plans for carrying out the objects of the
expedition. He was directed, however, to report his movements daily,
till he crossed the Tennessee, and to connect his left, so far as
possible, with General Burnside's right. General Burnside was directed
to move simultaneously, connecting his right, as far as possible, with
General Rosecrans's left, so that, if the enemy concentrated upon
either army, the other could move to its assistance. When General
Burnside reached Kingston and Knoxville, and found no considerable
number of the enemy in East Tennessee, he was instructed to move down
the river and coöperate with General Rosecrans. These instructions
were repeated some fifteen times, but were not carried out, General
Burnside alleging as an excuse that he believed that Bragg was in
retreat, and that General Rosecrans needed no reinforcements. When the
latter had gained possession of Chattanooga he was directed not to
move on Rome as he proposed, but simply to hold the mountain-passes,
so as to prevent the ingress of the rebels into East Tennessee. That
object accomplished, I considered the campaign as ended, at least for
the present.
"The moment I received reliable information of the departure of
Longstreet's corps from the Army of the Potomac, I ordered forward to
General Rosecrans every available man in the Department of the Ohio,
and again urged General Burnside to move to his assistance. I also
telegraphed to Generals Hurlbut, Sherman, and yourself, to forward all
available troops in your department. If these forces had been sent to
General Rosecrans by Nashville, they could not have been supplied; I
therefore directed them to move by Corinth and the Tennessee River.
The necessity of this has been proved by the fact that the
reinforcements sent to him from the Army of the Potomac have not been
able, for the want of railroad transportation, to reach General
Rosecrans's army in the field.
"It is now ascertained that the greater part of the prisoners paroled
by you at Vicksburg, and General Banks at Port Hudson, were illegally
and improperly declared exchanged, and forced into the ranks to swell
the rebel numbers at Chickamauga. This outrageous act, in violation of
the laws of war, of the cartel entered into by the rebel authorities,
and of all sense of honor, gives us a useful lesson in regard to the
character of the enemy with whom we are contending. He neither regards
the rules of civilized warfare, nor even his most solemn engagements.
You may, therefore, expect to meet in arms thousands of unexchanged
prisoners released by you and others on parole not to serve again till
duly exchanged. Although the enemy, by this disgraceful means, has
been able to concentrate in Georgia and Alabama a much larger force
than we anticipated, your armies will be abundantly able to defeat
him. Your difficulty will not be in the want of men, but in the means
of supplying them at this season of the year. A single-track railroad
can supply an army of sixty or seventy thousand men, with the usual
number of cavalry and artillery; but beyond that number, or with a
large mounted force, the difficulty of supply is very great."
Meanwhile, General Longstreet, with about twenty thousand men, was
detached from Bragg's army and sent against Burnside at Knoxville,
which is about one hundred and thirty miles northeast of Chattanooga.
After Sherman's arrival, Grant had about eighty thousand men. He
placed Sherman on his left, on the north side of the Tennessee,
opposite the head of Missionary Ridge; Thomas in the centre, across
Chattanooga valley; and Hooker on his right, around the base of
Lookout Mountain. He purposed to have Sherman advance against Bragg's
right and capture the heights of Missionary Ridge, while Thomas and
Hooker should press the centre and left just enough to prevent any
reinforcements from being sent against Sherman. If this were
successful Bragg's key-point being taken, his whole army would be
obliged to retreat. Sherman laid two bridges in the night of November
23d, and next day crossed the river and advanced upon the enemy's
works; but he met with unexpected difficulties in the nature of the
ground, and was only partially successful. Hooker, who had more genius
for fighting than for strictly obeying orders, moved around the base
of Lookout Mountain, and attacked the seemingly impregnable heights.
General Geary's command led the way, encountering intrenchments and
obstructions of all sorts, both in the valley and on the slope of the
mountain. Having crossed the Tennessee River below, it moved eastward
across Lookout Creek, and thence marched directly up the mountain till
its right rested on the palisaded heights. At the same time Grose's
brigade advanced farther up stream, drove the Confederates from a
bridge, put it into repair, and then moved on. At this moment the
Confederates were seen leaving their camps on the mountain and coming
down to the rifle-pits and breastworks at its foot to dispute the
progress of their enemy. Then another brigade was sent still farther
up the stream to make a crossing, and a section of artillery was
placed where it could enfilade the position just taken by the
Confederates, while another section was established to enfilade the
route they had taken in coming down the mountain. All the batteries
within range began to play upon the Confederates, and it was made so
hot for them that they were glad to abandon their intrenchments in the
valley. Then the remainder of Hooker's men were pushed across the
stream, and the ascent of the mountain began in earnest. They climbed
up over ledges and bowlders directly under the muzzles of the guns on
the summit, driving their enemy from one position after another, and
following him as closely as possible, in order to make him a shield
from the fire of the batteries. The advance had begun at eight o'clock
in the morning, and by noon Geary's men had reached the summit of the
mountain. Other brigades came up in rapid succession at various
points, and on the summit the Confederates found themselves surrounded
and subjected to a rapid fire from every direction save one, in which
direction (southward along the ridge) all of them who could get away
retreated, but many were taken prisoners. At this point the movement
of Hooker's men was arrested by darkness. Clouds had been hanging over
the summit of the mountain during the morning, and had gradually
settled down toward the valley, so that the last of the battle was
fought above them, spectators from below seeing the troops go up into
those clouds and disappear. Hooker's line was then established on the
east side of the mountain, with the left near the mouth of Chattanooga
Creek, {309} and the right on the palisades. To prevent the bringing
forward of artillery, the Confederates had undermined the road and
covered it with felled timber. During the night Hooker's men removed
the timber and placed the road in a serviceable condition, while all
the time an irregular fire was kept up along the line, and once a
serious attack was threatened by the Confederates. But before morning
they abandoned the mountain entirely, leaving behind the camp equipage
of three brigades. This action is famous as Hooker's "battle above the
clouds," and that evening, when the moon rose over the crest of the
mountain, a strange spectacle was seen of troops apparently marching
across its yellow disk.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN.]
The next day, the 25th, Hooker was to pass down the eastern slope of
Lookout Mountain, cross Chattanooga valley, and strike the left of
Bragg's position, as now held on the crest and western slope of
Missionary Ridge. But the destruction of a bridge by the retreating
enemy delayed him four hours, and Grant saw that Bragg was weakening
his centre to mass troops against Sherman. So, without waiting longer
for Hooker, he ordered an advance of the centre held by Thomas. Under
the immediate leadership of Generals Sheridan and Wood, Thomas's men
crossed the valley, walked right into the line of Confederate works at
the base of Missionary Ridge, followed the retreating enemy to a
second line halfway up the slope, took this, and still keeping at the
very heels of the Confederates, who thus shielded them from the
batteries at the top, reached the summit and swept everything before
them.
{310} [Illustration: LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN AND TENNESSEE RIVER. (From a
photograph owned by the United States Government.)]
General Sherman advanced, according to orders, against Missionary
Ridge, but met with a more determined resistance, and had a much
slower fight on the 25th. The enemy massed heavily in his front, and
Thomas sent a division to his assistance, when the whole line was
pushed forward; and at length the enemy retired hastily, abandoning
the works at the foot of the hill, and were closely followed up the
slope to the crest, which was soon captured, with many prisoners and
all the guns. Gen. Thomas J. Wood says in his report:
"Troops in line and column checkered the broad plain of Chattanooga.
In front, plainly to be seen, was the enemy, so soon to be encountered
in deadly conflict. My division seemed to drink in the inspiration of
the scene, and, when the advance was sounded, moved forward in the
perfect order of a holiday parade.
"It has been my good fortune to witness, on the Champs-de-Mars and on
Long Champ reviews of all arms of the French service, under the eye of
the most remarkable man of the present generation. I once saw a
review, followed by a mock battle, of the finest troops of El Re
Galantuomo. The pageant was held on the plains near Milan, the queen
city of Lombardy, and the troops in the sham conflict were commanded
by two of the most distinguished officers of the Piedmontese
service--Cialdini, and another whose name I cannot now recall. In none
of these {311} displays did I ever see anything to exceed the
soldierly bearing and the steadiness of my division, exhibited in the
advance on Monday afternoon. There was certainly one striking
difference in the circumstances of these grand displays. The French
and Italian parades were peaceful pageants; ours involved the
exigencies of stern war--certainly an immense difference. I should do
injustice to the brave men who thus moved forward to the conflict in
such perfect order, were I to omit to record that not one straggler
lagged behind to sully the magnificence and perfectness of the grand
battle array.... As soon as our troops began to move forward, the
enemy opened a terrific fire from his batteries on the crest of the
ridge. It would not, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say that the enemy
had fifty pieces of artillery disposed on the crest of Missionary
Ridge. But the rapid firing of all this mass of artillery could not
stay the onward movement of our troops. When the first line of
intrenchments was carried, the goal for which we had started was won.
Our orders carried us no further. We had been instructed to carry the
line of intrenchments at the base of the ridge, and then halt. But the
enthusiasm and impetuosity of the troops were such that those who
first reached the intrenchments at the base of the ridge bounded over
them and pressed on up the ascent after the flying enemy. Moreover,
the intrenchments were no protection against the enemy's artillery on
the ridge. To remain would be destruction; to retire would be both
expensive in life and disgraceful. Officers and men all seemed
impressed with this truth. In addition, the example of those who
commenced to ascend the ridge so soon as the intrenchments were
carried was contagious. Without waiting for an order, the vast mass
pressed forward in the race of glory, each man eager to be the first
on the summit. The enemy's artillery and musketry could not check the
impetuous assault. The troops did not halt to fire; to have done so
would have been ruinous. Little was left to the immediate commanders
of the troops but to cheer on the foremost, to encourage the weaker of
limb, and to sustain the very few who seemed to be faint-hearted."
[Illustration: COLONEL GREEN B. RAUM.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN B. TURCHIN.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL CHARLES R. WOODS.]
By this brilliant battle, which occupied portions of three days,
Bragg's army was completely defeated, and its captured guns were
turned upon it as it fled. His men seemed to have lost all respect for
him, for when he rode among the fugitives and vainly tried to rally
them by shouting, "Here's your commander," he was derisively answered,
"Here's your mule," and was obliged to join in the flight. This
practically closed his military career. He had been a special favorite
of Mr. Davis, who is accused by some Confederate writers of
obstinately placing him where it was obvious he should have placed an
abler man. He was relieved soon after this battle from command, and
called to Richmond as the military adviser of Mr. Davis.
In these battles the National loss was nearly six thousand men. The
Confederate loss was about ten thousand (of whom six thousand were
prisoners) and forty-two guns. Bragg established the remainder of his
army in a fortified camp at Dalton, Ga., and was soon superseded by
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Granger and Sherman were sent to the relief
of Burnside at Knoxville, and Longstreet withdrew to Virginia.
The Chattanooga campaign was perhaps the most picturesque of any in
the war, and was full of romantic incidents.
[Illustration: A DEAD CONFEDERATE IN THE TRENCHES.]
[Illustration: WAITING FOR ORDERS.]
All the armies were followed by correspondents of the great
newspapers, some of whom were men of high literary ability and were
alive to the inspiration of the great drama they witnessed. Americans
may be pardoned for some considerable degree of pride when they
consider that in the emergency of that great war they not only had men
of sufficient skill and valor for every possible and some seemingly
impossible tasks, but also had the resources and the art to
manufacture nearly all the arms and material that were called for, and
writers capable of putting into dignified and often brilliant
literature the rapidly moving story of those terrible days. Among
these correspondents was Benjamin F. Taylor, the journalist and poet,
who followed the Army of the Cumberland as the representative of the
_Chicago Journal_. He witnessed the battles before Chattanooga, and
had a son among the blue-coated boys that scaled the mountain. From
his description, written very soon after the events, we take the
following passages:
"Let me show you a landscape that shall not fade out from 'the lidless
eye of time' long after we are all dead. A half mile {312} from the
eastern border of Chattanooga is a long swell of land, sparsely
sprinkled with houses, flecked thickly with tents, and checkered with
two or three graveyards. On its summit stand the red earthworks of
Fort Wood, with its great guns frowning from the angles. Mounting the
parapet and facing eastward you have a singular panorama. Away to your
left is a shining elbow of the Tennessee, a lowland of woods, a
long-drawn valley, glimpses of houses. At your right you have wooded
undulations with clear intervals extending down and around to the
valley at the eastern base of Lookout. From the fort the smooth ground
descends rapidly to a little plain, a sort of trough in the sea, then
a fringe of oak woods, then an acclivity, sinking down to a second
fringe of woods, until full in front of you, and three-fourths of a
mile distant, rises Orchard Knob, a conical mound, perhaps a hundred
feet high, once wooded, but now bald. Then ledges of rocks, and narrow
breadths of timber, and rolling sweeps of open ground for two miles
more, until the whole rough and stormy landscape seems to dash against
Missionary Ridge, three miles distant, that lifts like a sea-wall
eight hundred feet high, wooded, rocky, precipitous, wrinkled with
ravines. This is, in truth, the grand feature of the scene, for it
extends north as far as you can see, with fields here and there cut
down through the woods to the ground, and lying on the hillsides like
brown linen to bleach; and you feel, as you look at them, as if they
are in danger of slipping down the Ridge into the road at its base.
And then it curves to the southwest, just leaving you a way out
between it and Lookout Mountain. Altogether the rough, furrowed
landscape looks as if the Titans had ploughed and forgotten to harrow
it. The thinly fringed summit of the Ridge varies in width from twenty
to fifty feet, and houses looking like cigar-boxes are dotted along
it. On the top of that wall are rebels and batteries; below the first
pitch, three hundred feet down, are more rebels and batteries; and
still below are their camps and rifle-pits, sweeping five miles. At
your right, and in the rear, is Fort Negley, the old 'Star' fort of
Confederate _régime_; its next neighbor is Fort King, under the frown
of Lookout; yet to the right is the battery of Moccasin Point. Finish
out the picture on either hand with Federal earthworks and saucy
angles, fancy the embankment of the Charleston and Memphis Railroad
drawn diagonally, like an awkward score, across the plain far at your
feet, and I think you have the tremendous theatre.... At half-past
twelve the order came; at one, two divisions of the Fourth Corps made
ready to move; at ten minutes before two, twenty-five thousand Federal
troops were in line of battle. The line of skirmishers moved lightly
out, and swept true as a sword-blade into the edge of the field. You
should have seen that splendid line, two miles long, as straight and
unwavering as a ray of light. On they went, driving in the pickets
before them. Shots of musketry, like the first great drops of summer
rain upon a roof, pattered along the line. One fell here, another
there, but still, like joyous heralds before a royal progress, the
skirmishers passed on. From wood and rifle-pit, from rocky ledge and
mountain-top, sixty-five thousand rebels watched these couriers
bearing the gift of battle in their hands. The bugle sounded from Fort
Wood, and the divisions of Wood and Sheridan began to move; the
latter, out from the right, threatened a heavy attack; the former,
forth from the left, dashed on into the rough road of the battle.
Black rifle-pits were tipped with fire; sheets of flame flashed out of
the woods; the spatter of musketry deepened into volleys and rolled
like muffled drums; hostile batteries opened from the ledges; the
'Rodmans' joined {313} in from Fort Wood; bursting shell and gusts of
shrapnel filled the air; the echoes roused up and growled back from
the mountains; the rattle was a roar--and yet those gallant fellows
moved steadily on. Down the slope, through the wood, up the hills,
straight for Orchard Knob as the crow flies, moved that glorious wall
of blue. The air grew dense and blue, the gray clouds of smoke surged
up the sides of the valley. It was a terrible journey they were
making, these men of ours; and three-fourths of a mile in sixty
minutes was splendid progress. They neared the Knob; the enemy's fire
converged; the arc of batteries poured in upon them lines of fire,
like the rays they call a 'glory' about the head of the Madonna and
Child;--but they went up the rugged altar of Orchard Knob at the
double-quick with a cheer; they wrapped like a cloak round an Alabama
regiment that defended it, and swept them down on our side of the
mound. Prisoners had begun to come in before; they streamed across the
field like files of geese. Then on for a second altar, Brush Knob,
nearly a half-mile to the northeast, and bristling with a battery; it
was swept of foes and garnished with Federal blue in thirty minutes.
Perhaps it was eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning when the rumble of
artillery came in gusts from the valley to the west of Lookout.
Climbing Signal Hill, I could see volumes of smoke rolling to and fro,
like clouds from a boiling caldron. The mad surges of tumult lashed
the hills till they cried aloud, and roared through the gorges till
you might have fancied all the thunders of a long summer tumbled into
that valley together. And yet the battle was unseen. It was like
hearing voices from the under-world. Meanwhile it began to rain;
skirts of mist trailed over the woods and swept down the ravines. But
our men trusted in Providence, kept their powder dry, and played on.
It was the second day of the drama; it was the second act I was
hearing; it was the touch on the enemy's left. The assault upon
Lookout had begun! Glancing at the mighty crest crowned with a
precipice, and now hung round about, three hundred feet down, with a
curtain of clouds, my heart misgave me. It could never be taken.
Hooker thundered, and the enemy came down like the Assyrian; while
Whittaker on the right, and Colonel Ireland of Geary's command on the
left, having moved out from Wauhatchie, some five miles from the
mountain, at five in the morning, pushed up to Chattanooga Creek,
threw over it a bridge, made for Lookout Point, and there formed the
right under the shelf of the mountain, the left resting on the creek.
And then the play began; the enemy's camps were seized, his pickets
surprised and captured, the strong works on the Point taken, and the
Federal front moved on. Charging upon him, they leaped over his works
as the wicked twin Roman leaped over his brother's mud wall, the
Fortieth Ohio capturing his artillery and taking a Mississippi
regiment, and gained the white house. And there they stood, 'twixt
heaven and--Chattanooga. But above them, grand and sullen, lifted the
precipice; and they were men, and not eagles. The way was strewn with
natural fortifications, and from behind rocks and trees they delivered
their fire, contesting inch by inch the upward way. The sound of the
battle rose and fell; now fiercely renewed, and now dying away. And
Hooker thundered on in the valley, and the echoes of his howitzers
bounded about the mountains like volleys of musketry. That curtain of
cloud was hung around the mountain by the God of battles--even our
God. It was the veil of the temple that could not be rent. A captured
colonel declared that, had the day been clear, their sharp-shooters
would have riddled our advance like pigeons, and left the command
without a leader; but friend and foe were wrapped in a seamless
mantle, and two hundred will cover the entire Federal loss, while our
brave mountaineers strewed Lookout with four hundred dead, and
captured a thousand prisoners. Our entire forces bore themselves
bravely; not a straggler in the command, they all came splendidly up
to the work, and the whole affair was graced with signal instances of
personal valor. Lieutenant Smith, of the Fortieth Ohio, leaped over
the works, discharged his revolver six times like the ticking of a
clock, seized a sturdy foe by the hair, and gave him the heel of the
'Colt' over the head. Colonel Ireland was slightly wounded, and Major
Acton, of the Fortieth Ohio, was shot through the heart while leading
a bayonet charge. And now, returning to my point of observation, I was
waiting in painful suspense to see what should come out of the roaring
caldron in the valley, now and then, I confess, casting an eye up to
the big gun of Lookout, lest it might toss something my way, over its
left shoulder--I, a non-combatant, and bearing no arms but a Faber's
pencil 'Number 2'--when something was born out of the mist (I cannot
better convey the idea) and appeared on the shorn side of the
mountain, below and to the west of the white house. It was the head of
the Federal column! And there it held, as if it were riveted to the
rock, and the line of blue, a half mile long, swung slowly around from
the left, like the index of a mighty dial, and swept up the brown face
of the mountain. The bugles of this city of camps were sounding high
noon, when in two parallel columns the troops moved up the mountain,
in the rear of the enemy's rifle-pits, which they swept at every fire.
Ah, I wish you had been here! It needed no glass to see it; it was
only just beyond your hand. And there, in the centre of the columns,
fluttered the blessed flag. 'My God! what flag is that?' men cried.
And up steadily it moved. I could think of nothing but a gallant
ship-of-the-line grandly lifting upon the great billows and riding out
the storm. It was a scene never to fade out. Pride and pain struggled
in my heart for the mastery, but faith carried the day; I believed in
the flag, and took courage. Volleys of musketry and crashes of cannon,
and then those lulls in a battle even more terrible than the tempest.
At four o'clock an aid {314} came straight down the mountain into the
city--the first Federal by that route in many a day. Their ammunition
ran low--they wanted powder up on the mountain. He had been two hours
descending, and how much longer the return!
"Night was closing rapidly in, and the scene was growing sublime. The
battery at Moccasin Point was sweeping the road to the mountain. The
brave little fort at its left was playing like a heart in a fever. The
cannon upon the top of Lookout were pounding away at their lowest
depression. The flash of the guns fairly burned through the clouds;
there was an instant of silence, here, there, yonder, and the tardy
thunder leaped out after the swift light. For the first time, perhaps,
since that mountain began to burn beneath the gold and crimson sandals
of the sun, it was in eclipse. The cloud of the summit and the smoke
of the battle had met halfway and mingled. Here was Chattanooga, but
Lookout had vanished! It was Sinai over again, with its thunderings
and lightnings and thick darkness, and the Lord was on our side. Then
the storm ceased, and occasional dropping shots told off the evening
till half-past nine, and then a crashing volley, and a rebel yell, and
a desperate charge. It was their good-night to our boys; good-night to
the mountain. They had been met on their own vantage-ground; they had
been driven one and a half miles. The Federal foot touched the hill,
indeed, but above still towered the precipice.
"At ten o'clock a growing line of lights glittered obliquely across
the breast of Lookout. It made our eyes dim to see it. It was the
Federal autograph scored along the mountain. They were our campfires.
Our wounded lay there all the dreary night of rain, unrepining and
content. Our unharmed heroes lay there upon their arms. Our dead lay
there, 'and surely they slept well.' At dawn Captain Wilson and
fifteen men of the Eighth Kentucky crept up among the rocky clefts,
handing their guns one to another--'like them that gather
samphire--dreadful trade!'--and stood at length upon the summit. The
entire regiment pushed up after them, formed in line, threw out
skirmishers, and advanced five miles to Summerton. Artillery and
infantry had all fled in the night, nor left a wreck behind.
"If Sherman did not roll the enemy along the Ridge like a carpet, at
least he rendered splendid service, for he held a huge ganglion of the
foe as firmly on their right as if he had them in the vice of the
'lame Lemnian' who forged the thunderbolts. General Corse's, General
Jones's, and Colonel Loomis's brigades led the way, and were drenched
with blood. Here Colonel O'Meara, of the Ninetieth Illinois, fell.
Here its lieutenant-colonel, Stuart, received a fearful wound. Here
its brave young captains knelt at the crimson shrine, and never rose
from worshipping. Here one hundred and sixty of its three hundred and
seventy heroes were beaten with the bloody rain. The brigades of
Generals Mathias and Smith came gallantly up to the work. Fairly blown
out of the enemy's guns, and scorched with flame, they were swept down
the hill only to stand fast for a new assault. Let no man dare to say
they did not acquit themselves well and nobly. To living and dead in
the commands of Sherman and Howard who struck a blow that day--out of
my heart I utter it--hail and farewell! And as I think it all over,
glancing again along that grand, heroic line of the Federal epic--I
commit the story with a childlike faith to history, sure that when she
gives her clear, calm record of that day's famous work, standing like
Ruth among the reapers in the fields that feed the world, she will
declare the grandest staple of the Northwest is Man."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL A. P. STEWART, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM B. BATE, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JEREMY F. GILMER, C. S. A. Chief Engineer
Army of the Tennessee.]
[Illustration: A TYPICAL SOUTHERN MANSION. (From a war-time
photograph.)]
{315}
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BLACK CHAPTER.
PERSECUTIONS OF UNION MEN--THE BLACK FLAG--THE GUERILLAS--SECESSION
FROM SECESSION--RIOT IN CONCORD, N. H.--MASSACRE AT FORT PILLOW--CARE
OF PRISONERS--ANDERSONVILLE--OTHER PRISONS--SUSPENSION OF
EXCHANGES--VIOLATION OF PAROLES--PRINCIPLES RELATING TO
CAPTURES--CRUELTIES COMMITTED BY UNION SOLDIERS IN VIRGINIA--GENERAL
IMBODEN'S STATEMENTS REGARDING FEDERAL ATROCITIES--GENERAL EARLY'S
ACCOUNT OF THE BURNING OF CHAMBERSBURG.
So far as the military situation was concerned, the victories at
Gettysburg and Vicksburg wrote the doom of the Confederacy, and there
the struggle should have ended. That it did not end there, was due
partly to a hope that the Democratic party at the North might carry
the next presidential election, as well as to the temper of the
Southern people, which had been concentrated into an intense
personalized hatred. This began before the war, was one of the chief
circumstances that made it possible to carry the conspiracy into
execution, and seemed to be carefully nursed by Mr. Davis and his
ministers.
[Illustration: PRISONERS IN ANDERSONVILLE STOCKADE.]
Gen. Andrew J. Hamilton, who had been attorney-general of Texas, in a
speech delivered in New York in 1863, declared that two hundred men
were hanged in Texas during the presidential canvass of 1860, because
they were suspected of being more loyal to the Union than to slavery.
Judge Baldwin, of Texas, speaking in Washington in October, 1864,
said: "The wrongs inflicted on the Union men of Texas surpass in
cruelty the horrors of the Inquisition. From two to three thousand men
have been hanged, in many cases without even the form of a trial,
simply and solely because they were Union men and would not give their
support to secession. Indeed, it has been, and is, the express
determination of the secessionists to take the life of every Union
man. Nor are they always particular to ascertain what a man's real
sentiments are. It is sufficient for them that a man is a d----d
Yankee. One day a secessionist said to the governor of Texas, 'There
is Andrew Jackson Hamilton--suppose I kill the d----d Unionist.' Said
the governor, 'Kill him or any other Unionist, and you need fear
nothing while I am governor.' As I was passing through one place in
Texas, I saw three men who had been hanged in the course of the night.
When I inquired the cause, I was told in the coolest manner that it
was to be presumed they were Union men. In Grayson County, a man named
Hillier, who had come from the North, was forced into the Confederate
army. Soon afterward his wife was heard to remark that she wished the
Union army would advance and take possession of Texas, that her
husband might return and provide for his family. This being reported
to the provost marshal, he sent six men dressed in women's clothes,
who dragged her to the nearest tree and hanged her in the sight of her
little children."
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL A. J. HAMILTON. (Military Governor of
Texas.)]
In the mountainous portions of Virginia, Tennessee, and North
Carolina, where comparatively few slaves were kept, large numbers of
the people were opposed to secession, and for their devotion to the
Union they suffered such persecution as had never been witnessed in
this part of the world. It was perhaps most violent in East Tennessee.
Among the numerous deliberate and brutal murders, committed by men in
Confederate uniform, were those of the Rev. L. Carter and his son in
Bradley County, the Rev. M. Cavander in Van Buren County, the Rev. Mr.
Blair of Hamilton County, and the Rev. Mr. Douglas--all for the simple
reason that they were Unionists. Many of the outrages upon the wives
and children of Union men were such as any writer would shrink from
recording. Those who could get away fled northward, often after their
homes had been burned and their movable property carried off, and
became subjects of charity in the free States.
Many secessionists, residing in States that did not secede, had gone
unhindered to the Confederate armies, and when such were captured by
the National armies they received no different treatment from other
prisoners of war. But the Confederate Government professed to look
upon all Unionists in the seceded States (and even in some of the
States whose secession was at least a doubtful question) as traitors,
and numerous {316} orders declaring them such and prescribing their
punishment were issued. In one of these, dated November 25, 1861,
Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of War, said to a
Confederate colonel at Knoxville: "I now proceed to give you the
desired instruction in relation to the prisoners of war taken by you
among the traitors of East Tennessee. First, all such as can be
identified in having been engaged in bridge burning are to be tried
summarily by drum-head court-martial, and, if found guilty, executed
on the spot by hanging. It would be well to leave the bodies hanging
in the vicinity of the burned bridges. Second, all such as have not
been so engaged are to be treated as prisoners of war, and sent with
an armed guard to Tuscaloosa.... In no case is one of the men known to
have been up in arms against the Government to be released on any
pledge or oath of allegiance. They are all to be held as prisoners of
war, and held in jail till the end of the war." The Rev. Thomas W.
Humes, in his "Loyal Mountaineers," says that, in consequence of this
order, "Two men, Hensie and Fry, were hung at Greenville by Colonel
Ledbetter's immediate authority, and without delay. Had not the
execution been so hasty, it might have been discovered, in time to
save Fry's life, that not he but another person of the same surname
was the real offender in the case." Many residents of Knoxville and
its vicinity were imprisoned under this order; and the Rev. William G.
Brownlow, who was one of them, says that on the lower floor of the
jail, where he was kept, the prisoners were so numerous that there was
not room for them all to lie down at one time, and that the only
article of furniture in the building was a dirty wooden bucket from
which the prisoners drank water with a tin cup. The following entries,
taken from his diary while he was thus imprisoned, are fair samples of
many: "December 17: Brought in a Union man from Campbell County
to-day, leaving behind six small children, and their mother dead. This
man's offence is holding out for the Union. To-night two brothers
named Walker came in from Hawkins County, charged with having 'talked
Union talk.'" "December 18: Discharged sixty prisoners to-day, who had
been in prison from three to five weeks--taken through mistake, as was
said, there being nothing against them." "December 22: Brought in old
man Wampler, a Dutchman, seventy years of age, from Green County,
charged with being an 'Andrew Johnson man and talking Union talk.'"
In Virginia, Governor Letcher wrote to a man named Fitzgerald, who had
been arrested on suspicion of Unionism and asked to be released: "In
1856 you voted for the abolitionist Frémont for President. Ever since
the war, you have maintained a sullen silence in regard to its merits.
Your son, who, in common with other young men, was called to the
defence of his country, has escaped to the enemy, probably by your
advice. This is evidence enough to satisfy me that you are a traitor
to your country, and I regret that it is not sufficient to justify me
in demanding you from the military authorities, to be tried and
executed for treason." The Lynchburg _Republican_ said, "Our people
were greatly surprised, on Saturday morning, to see the black flag
waving over the depot of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company.
We are for displaying that flag throughout the whole South. We should
ask no quarter at the hands of the vandal Yankee invaders, and our
motto should be, an entire extermination of every one who has set foot
upon our sacred soil." And the Jackson _Mississippian_ said, in the
summer of 1862, "In addition to pitched battles upon the open field,
let us try partisan ranging, bushwhacking, and henceforward, until the
close of this war, let our sign be the black flag and no quarter."
According to Governor Letcher, as quoted in Pollard's "Secret History
of the Confederacy," Stonewall Jackson was, from the beginning of the
war, in favor of raising the black flag, and thought that no prisoners
should be taken. The same historian is authority for the story that
once, when an inferior officer was regretting that some National
soldiers had been killed in a display of extraordinary courage, when
they might as readily have been captured, Jackson replied curtly,
"Shoot them all; I don't want them to be brave."
The rules of civilized warfare forbid the use of explosive bullets, on
the ground that when a bullet strikes a soldier it is likely to
disable him sufficiently to put him out of the combat; and, therefore,
to construct it so that it will explode and kill him after it has
entered the flesh, is essentially murder. It has been asserted that in
some instances explosive bullets were fired by the Confederates; and
it has also been strenuously denied. Gen. Manning F. Force, in his
"Personal Recollections of the Vicksburg Campaign," read before the
Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, says: "There was much speculation
and discussion about certain small explosive sounds that were heard.
General Ransom and others maintained they were caused by explosive
bullets. General Logan and others scouted the idea. One day one struck
the ground and exploded at Ransom's feet. Picking up the exploded
shell of a rifle-ball, he settled the question. After the siege, many
such explosive rifle-balls, which had not been used, were picked up on
the former camp-grounds of the enemy."
The Confederate Congress passed an act, approved April 21, 1862,
authorizing the organization of bands of partisan rangers, to be
entitled to the same pay, rations, and quarters as other soldiers, and
to have the same protection in case of capture. These partisan rangers
were popularly known as guerillas, and most of them were irresponsible
marauding bands, acting the part of thieves and murderers until
captured, and then claiming treatment as prisoners of war, on the
ground that they were regularly commissioned and enlisted soldiers of
the Confederacy.
Some of the devices that were resorted to for the purpose of
intensifying the hatred of Northern people and Unionists now appear
ludicrous. Thousands of people in the South were made to believe that
Hannibal Hamlin, elected Vice-President on the ticket with Mr.
Lincoln, was a mulatto; that Mr. Lincoln himself was a monster of
cruelty; and that the National army was made up largely of Irish and
German mercenaries.
As Mr. Lincoln predicted, and as every reflecting citizen must have
known, those who attempted to carry out the doctrine of secession from
the United States were obliged to confront its corollary in a proposal
to secede from secession. In North Carolina a convention was held to
nominate State officers, with the avowed purpose of asserting North
Carolina's sovereignty by withdrawing from the Confederacy--on the
ground that it had failed in its duties as agent for the sovereign
States composing it--and making peace with the United States. The
convention was largely attended, and included many of the most
intelligent and wealthy men in the State; but the Confederate
Government sent an armed force to break up the meeting and imprison
the leaders. In the Confederate Congress there were forty members who
always voted in a body, in secret session, as Mr. Davis wanted them
to. They were commonly known as "the forty thieves." When the war
began to look hopeless, a popular movement in favor of peace resulted
in the choice of other men to fill their places. But, before their
terms expired, a law was passed which made it treason to use language
that could be {317} construed as a declaration that any State had a
right to secede from the Confederacy. The people of southwestern North
Carolina, like those of eastern Tennessee, were mostly small,
industrious farmers, without slaves, living in a secluded valley. They
knew almost nothing of the political turmoil that distracted the
country, and did not wish to take any part in the war. They had voted
against disunion, and asked to be exempted from the Confederate
conscription law. When this was denied, they petitioned to be
expatriated; and when this also was refused, they resorted to such
measures as they could to avoid conscription. Thereupon, the
Confederate Government sent North Carolina troops to subdue them; and
when these were found to fraternize with the people, troops from other
States were sent; and when they also failed to do the required work, a
brigade of Cherokee Indians was turned into the valley, who committed
such atrocities as might have been expected.[1]
[Footnote 1: See report of a speech by the Hon. C. J. Barlow, of
Georgia, delivered in Cooper Institute, New York, October 15, 1864.]
There were Unionists also in other parts of North Carolina, and
against them the Confederate Government appeared to have a special
grudge. Some of them entered the National service by regular
enlistment, and when the Confederate force, under General Hoke,
captured Plymouth, in April, 1864, some of these loyal North
Carolinians were among the garrison. Knowing what would be their fate
if captured, they had provided themselves with morphine, and when the
Confederate sergeants went through the ranks and picked them out, they
secretly swallowed the drug. As soon as it was discovered what they
had done, each was placed between two Confederate soldiers, who kept
him walking and awake until its effects had passed away, in order that
the "traitors," as they were called, might die by hanging, and soon
afterward they were hanged.
[Illustration: EXECUTION OF A PRIVATE SOLDIER FOR DESERTION AND
ATTEMPTED COMMUNICATION WITH THE ENEMY.]
There were instances of intolerance and outrage at the North, but they
were comparatively few. One of the most notable occurred in Concord,
N. H., in August, 1863, where a newspaper that had been loud in its
disloyalty was punished by a mob, mainly of newly recruited soldiers,
who gutted the office and threw the type into the street. The
sheriff's reading of the Riot Act consisted in climbing a lamp-post,
extending his right arm, and saying persuasively to the rioters, "Now,
boys, I guess you'd better go home."
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN S. PRESTON, C. S. A. (In charge
of the Bureau of Conscription.)]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN H. WINDER, C. S. A.
(Superintendent of Prisons.)]
[Illustration: SAMUEL COOPER, C. S. A. (Adjutant and
Inspector-General.)]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL S. B. MAXEY, C. S. A. (Superintendent of
Indian Affairs.)]
The most serious charge made by Confederate writers, with sufficient
proof, of violation of the laws of war on the part of National troops
or commanders, is that which they bring against Gen. David Hunter for
his acts in the Shenandoah Valley, when he commanded there in the
summer of 1864. Gen. John D. Imboden has made the most dispassionate
and apparently honest statement of these that has been published. He
says:
"What I write is history--every fact detailed is true, indisputably
true, and sustained by evidence, both Confederate and Federal, that no
living man can gainsay, and a denial is boldly challenged, with the
assurance that I hold the proofs ready for production whenever,
wherever, and however required. Perhaps no one now living was in a
better position to know, at the time of their occurrence, all the
details of these transactions than myself.
"Up to his occupation of Staunton, where his army was so much
strengthened by Crook and Averill as to relieve his mind of all
apprehension of disaster, his conduct had been soldierly, striking his
blows only at armed men. But at Staunton he commenced burning private
property, and the passion for house-burning grew upon him, and a new
system of warfare was inaugurated that a few weeks afterward
culminated in the retaliatory burning of Chambersburg. At Staunton,
his incendiary appetite was appeased by the burning of a large woollen
mill that gave employment to many poor women and children, and a large
steam flouring mill and the railway buildings.
"At the breaking out of the war David S. Creigh, an old man of the
highest social position, the father of eleven sons and daughters,
beloved by all who knew them for their virtues, and intelligence,
resided on his estate, near Lewisburg, in Greenbrier County. His
reputation was of the highest order. No man in the large county of
Greenbrier was better known or more esteemed; few, if any, had more
influence. Besides offices of high public trust in civil life, he was
an elder in the Presbyterian church of Lewisburg, one of the largest
and most respectable in {318} the synod of Virginia. In the early part
of November, 1863, there being a Federal force near Lewisburg, Mr.
Creigh, on entering his house one day, found a drunken and dissolute
soldier there using the most insulting language to his wife and
daughters, and at the same time breaking open trunks and drawers, and
helping himself to their contents. At the moment Mr. Creigh entered,
the ruffian was attempting to force the trunk of a young lady teacher
in the family. Mr. Creigh asked him to desist, stating that it was the
property of a lady under his protection. The villain, rising from the
trunk, immediately drew a pistol, cocked it, pointed it at Mr. Creigh,
and exclaimed: 'Go out of this room. What are you doing here? Bring me
the keys.' Mr. Creigh attempted to defend himself and family, but a
pistol he tried to use for the purpose snapped at the instant the
robber fired at him, the ball grazing his face and burying itself in
the wall. They then grappled, struggled into the passage, and tumbled
downstairs, the robber on top. They rose, and Mr. Creigh attempted to
wrest the pistol from the hands of his adversary, when it was
accidentally discharged, and the latter wounded. They struggled into
the portico, where the ruffian again shot at Mr. Creigh, when a negro
woman who saw it all ran up with an axe in her hand, and begged her
master to use it. He took it from her and despatched the robber. After
consultation and advice with friends, it was decided to bury the body
and say nothing about it.
"The troops left the neighborhood, and did not return till June, 1864,
when they were going through to join Hunter. A negro belonging to a
neighbor, having heard of the matter, went to their camp and told it.
Search was made, the remains found, and Mr. Creigh was arrested. He
made a candid statement of the whole matter, and begged to be
permitted to introduce witnesses to prove the facts, which was
refused, and he was marched off with the army, to be turned over to
General Hunter, at Staunton.... Mr. Creigh had no trial, no witnesses,
no counsel nor friends present, but was ordered to be hanged like a
dog for an act of duty to his helpless wife and daughters.
"At Lexington he enlarged upon the burning operations begun at
Staunton. On his way, and in the surrounding country, he burnt mills,
furnaces, storehouses, granaries, and all farming utensils he could
find, besides a great amount of fencing and a large quantity of grain.
In the town he burnt the Virginia Military Institute, and all the
professors' houses except the superintendent's (General Smith's),
where he had his headquarters, and found a portion of the family too
sick to be removed. He had the combustibles collected to burn
Washington College, the recipient of the benefactions of the Father of
his Country by his will; but, yielding to the appeals of the trustees
and citizens, spared the building, but destroyed the philosophical and
chemical apparatus, libraries, and furniture. He burned the mills and
some private stores in the lower part of the town. Captain Towns, an
officer in General Hunter's army, took supper with the family of Gov.
John Letcher. Mrs. Letcher, having heard threats that her house would
be burned, spoke of it to Captain Towns, who said it could not be
possible, and remarked that he would go at once to headquarters and
let her know. He went, returned in a half hour, and told her that he
was directed by General Hunter to assure her that the house would not
be destroyed, and she might, therefore, rest easy. After this, she
dismissed her fears, not believing it possible that a man occupying
Hunter's position would be guilty of wilful and deliberate falsehood
to a lady. It, however, turned out otherwise, for the next morning, at
half-past eight o'clock, his assistant provost-marshal, accompanied by
a portion of his guard, rode up to the door, and Captain Berry
dismounted, rang the door-bell, called for Mrs. Letcher, and informed
her that General Hunter had ordered him to burn the house. She
replied, 'There must be some mistake,' and requested to see the order.
He said it was verbal. She asked if its execution could not be delayed
till she could see Hunter. He replied: 'The order is peremptory, and
you have five minutes to leave the house.' Mrs. {319} Letcher then
asked if she could be allowed to remove her mother's, her sister's,
her own and her children's clothing. This request being refused, she
left the house. In a very short time they poured camphene on the
parlor floor and ignited it with a match. In the meantime Miss Lizzie
Letcher was trying to remove some articles of clothing from the other
end of the house, and Berry, finding these in her arms, set fire to
them. The wardrobe and bureaus were then fired, and soon the house was
enveloped in flames. While Hunter was in Lexington, Capt. Mathew X.
White, residing near the town, was arrested, taken about two miles,
and, without trial, was shot, on the allegation that he was a
bushwhacker. During the first year of the war he commanded the
Rockbridge cavalry, and was a young gentleman of generous impulses and
good character. The total destruction of private property in
Rockbridge County, by Hunter, was estimated and published in the local
papers at the time as over two million dollars.
"From Lexington he proceeded to Buchanan, in Botetourt County, and
camped on the magnificent estate of Col. John T. Anderson, an elder
brother of Gen. Joseph R. Anderson, of the Tredegar Works at Richmond.
Colonel Anderson's estate, on the banks of the Upper James, and his
mansion, were baronial in character. The house crowned a high, wooded
hill, was very large, and furnished in a style to dispense that lavish
hospitality which was the pride of so many of the old-time Virginians.
It was the seat of luxury and refinement, and in all respects a place
to make the owner contented with his lot in this world. Colonel
Anderson was old--his head as white as snow--and his wife but a few
years his junior. He was in no office, and too old to fight, hence was
living on his fine estate strictly the life of a private gentleman.
There was no military or public object on God's earth to be gained by
ruining such a man. Yet Hunter, after destroying all that could be
destroyed on the plantation when he left it, ordered the grand old
mansion with all its contents to be laid in ashes.
"It seems that, smarting under the miserable failure of his grand raid
on Lynchburg, he came back to the Potomac more implacable than when he
left it a month before. His first victim was the Hon. Andrew Hunter,
of Charlestown, Jefferson County, his own first cousin, and named
after the general's father. Mr. Hunter is a lawyer of great eminence,
and a man of deservedly large influence in his county and the State.
His home, eight miles from Harper's Ferry, in the suburbs of
Charlestown, was the most costly and elegant in the place, and his
family as refined and cultivated as any in the State. His offence, in
General Hunter's eyes, was that he had gone politically with his
State, and was in full sympathy with the Confederate cause. The
general sent a squadron of cavalry out from Harper's Ferry, took Mr.
Hunter prisoner, and held him a month in the common guard-house of his
soldiers, without alleging any offence against him not common to
nearly all the people of Virginia, and finally discharged him without
trial or explanation, after heaping these indignities on him. Mr.
Hunter was an old man, and suffered severely from confinement and
exposure. While he was thus a prisoner General Hunter ordered his
elegant mansion to be burned to the ground with all its contents, not
even permitting Mrs. Hunter and her daughter to save their clothes and
family pictures from the flames. His next similar exploit was at
Shepherdstown, in the same county, where, on the 19th of July, 1864,
he caused to be burned the residence of the Hon. A. R. Boteler. Mrs.
Boteler was also a cousin of General Hunter. This homestead was an old
colonial house, endeared to the family by a thousand tender memories,
and contained a splendid library, many pictures, and an invaluable
collection of rare and precious manuscripts, illustrating the early
history of that part of Virginia, that Colonel Boteler had collected
by years of toil. The only members of the family who were there at the
time were Colonel Boteler's eldest and widowed daughter, Mrs.
Shepherd, who was an invalid, her three children, the eldest five
years old and the youngest eighteen months, and Miss Helen Boteler.
Colonel Boteler and his son were in the army, and Mrs. Boteler in
Baltimore. The ladies and children were at dinner when informed by the
servants that a body of cavalry had turned in at the gate, from the
turnpike, and were coming up to the house. It proved to be a small
detachment of the First New York cavalry, commanded by a Capt. William
F. Martindale, who, on being met at the door by Mrs. Shepherd, coolly
told her that he had come to burn the house. She asked him by what
authority. He told her by that of General Hunter, and showed her his
written order. On reading it, she said: 'The order, I see, sir, is for
you to burn the houses of Col. Alexander R. Boteler and Mr. Edmund I.
Lee. Now, this is not Colonel Boteler's house, but is the property of
my mother, Mrs. Boteler, and therefore must not be destroyed, as you
have no authority to burn her house.' 'It's Colonel Boteler's _home_,
and that's enough for me,' was Martindale's reply. She then said: 'I
have been obliged to remove all my personal effects here, and have
several thousand dollars' worth of property stored in the house and
outbuildings, which belongs to me and my children. Can I not be
permitted to save it?' But Martindale curtly told her that he intended
to 'burn everything under roof upon the place.' Meanwhile some of the
soldiers were plundering the house of silver spoons, forks, cups, and
whatever they fancied, while others piled the parlor furniture on the
floors, and others poured kerosene on the piles and floors, which they
then set on fire. They had brought the kerosene with them, in canteens
strapped to their saddles. Miss Boteler, being devoted to music,
pleaded hard for her piano, as it belonged to her, having been a gift
from her grandmother, but she was brutally forbidden to save it;
whereupon, although the flames were roaring in the adjoining rooms,
and the roof all on fire, she quietly went into the house, and seating
herself for the last time before the instrument, sang her favorite
hymn, 'Thy will be done.' Then shutting down the lid and locking it,
she calmly went out upon the lawn, where her sick sister and the
frightened little children were sitting under the trees, the only
shelter then left for them."
Gen. Jubal A. Early, in his "Memoir of the Last Year of the War,"
makes briefly the same accusations against General Hunter that have
just been quoted from General Imboden's paper, and adds:
"A number of towns in the South, as well as private country houses,
had been burned by the Federal troops, and the accounts had been
heralded forth in some of the Northern papers in terms of exultation,
and gloated over by their readers, while they were received with
apathy by others. I now came to the conclusion that we had stood this
mode of warfare long enough, and that it was time to open the eyes of
the people of the North to its enormity, by an example in the way of
retaliation. The town of Chambersburg in Pennsylvania was selected as
the one on which retaliation should be made, and McCausland was
ordered to proceed with his brigade and that of Johnson and a battery
of artillery to that place, and demand of the municipal authorities
the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in gold, or five hundred
thousand dollars in United States currency, as a compensation for the
{320} destruction of the houses named and their contents; and, in
default of payment, to lay the town in ashes. A written demand to that
effect was sent to the municipal authorities, and they were informed
what would be the result of a failure or refusal to comply with it. I
desired to give the people of Chambersburg an opportunity of saving
their town by making compensation for part of the injury done, and
hoped that the payment of such a sum would have the desired effect and
open the eyes of people of other towns at the North to the necessity
of urging upon their Government the adoption of a different policy.
McCausland was also directed to proceed from Chambersburg toward
Cumberland in Maryland, and levy contributions in money upon that and
other towns able to bear them, and, if possible, destroy the machinery
at the coal-pits near Cumberland, and the machine shops, depots, and
bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, as far as practicable. On
the 30th of July McCausland reached Chambersburg and made the demand
as directed, reading to such of the authorities as presented
themselves the paper sent by me. The demand was not complied with, the
people stating that they were not afraid of having their town burned,
and that a Federal force was approaching. McCausland proceeded to
carry out his orders, and the greater part of the town was laid in
ashes. For this act I alone am responsible, as the officers engaged in
it were executing my orders and had no discretion left them."
The resentment excited by the enlistment of black troops, and the
determination not to treat them in accordance with the rules of
civilized warfare, were most notably exemplified at the capture of
Fort Pillow, April 12, 1864. This work was on the bank of the
Mississippi, about forty miles above Memphis, on a high bluff, with a
ravine on either side. In the lower ravine were some Government
buildings and a little village. The fort, under command of Major L. F.
Booth, had a garrison of about five hundred and fifty men, nearly half
of whom were colored. The Confederate General Forrest, with about five
thousand men, attacked the place at sunrise. The garrison made a
gallant defence, aided by the gunboat _New Era_, which enfiladed the
ravines, and after half a day's fighting, though the commander of the
fort was killed, the besiegers had made no progress. They then
resorted to the device of sending in flags of truce, demanding a
surrender, and took advantage of the truce to move up into positions
near the fort, which they had vainly tried to reach under fire. As
soon as the second flag of truce was withdrawn, they made a rush upon
the fort, passed over the works, and with a cry of "No quarter!" began
an indiscriminate slaughter, though the garrison threw down their
arms, and either surrendered or ran down the river-bank. Women and
children, as well as men, were deliberately murdered, and the savagery
continued for hours after the surrender. The sick and the wounded were
butchered in their tents, and in some cases tents and buildings were
set on fire after the occupants had been fastened so that they could
not escape. In one instance a Confederate officer had taken up a negro
child behind him on his horse. When General Chalmers observed this, he
ordered the officer to put the child down and shoot him, and the order
was obeyed. Major W. F. Bradford, on whom the command of the fort had
devolved, was murdered the next day, when he was being marched away as
a prisoner. Fewer than a hundred of the garrison were killed in the
battle, and about three hundred were butchered after the surrender.
Forrest's loss is unknown. His early reports of the affair were
exultant. In one he wrote: "We busted the fort at ninerclock and
scatered the niggers. The men is still a killanem in the woods....
Them as was cotch with spoons and brestpins and sich was killed and
the rest of the lot was payrold and told to git." Again he or his
adjutant wrote: "The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered
for two hundred yards.... It is hoped that these facts will
demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope
with Southerners." Forrest had been a slave-trader before the war, and
did not know that there could be any such thing as cruelty or
treachery in dealing with black men. When he found that the civilized
world was horrified at what he had done, he attempted to palliate it
by saying that the flag at the fort had not been hauled down in token
of surrender when his men burst over the works, and that some of the
garrison retreating down the river-bank fired at their pursuers. But
his argument is vitiated by the fact that, three weeks before, in
demanding the surrender of a force at Paducah he notified the
commander that if he had to carry the place by storm no quarter need
be expected.
[Illustration: LIBBY PRISON--INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR.]
There had been from the beginning a difficulty about the care of
prisoners in the hands of the Confederates, which arose chiefly from
the incompetence and brutality of Commissary-General Northrop. Once
when Captain Warner, who had charge of the prisoners in Richmond, was
directed to make a requisition on Northrop for subsistence, he was
answered, "I know nothing of Yankee prisoners--throw them all into the
James River!" "But," said the captain, "at least tell me how I am to
keep my {321} accounts for the prisoners' subsistence." "Sir," said
Northrop, "I have not the will or the time to speak with you. Chuck
the scoundrels into the river!" This man was maintained in the post of
commissary-general throughout the war--though his maladministration of
the office many times produced a scarcity of food in the Confederate
camps--and in the last year the subsistence of prisoners was also
intrusted to him.
Of the prisoners captured by the Confederate armies, most of the
commissioned officers were confined in the Libby warehouse
(thenceforward known as Libby Prison) in Richmond, and at Columbia,
S. C. The non-commissioned officers and privates were kept in
camps--on Belle Isle, in the James River, at Richmond; at Salisbury,
N. C.; at Florence, S. C.; at Tyler, Tex.; and at Andersonville and
Millen, Ga. Most of these were simply open stockades, with little or
no shelter. That at Andersonville enclosed about twenty acres,
afterward enlarged to thirty. The palisade was of pine logs, fifteen
feet high, set close together. Outside of this, at a distance of a
hundred and twenty feet, was another palisade, and between the two
were the guards. Inside of the inner stockade, and about twenty feet
from it, was a slight railing known as the "dead line," since any
prisoner that passed it, or even approached it too closely, was
immediately shot. A small stream flowed sluggishly through the
enclosure, and furnished the prisoners their only supply of water for
washing, drinking, or cooking. The cook-houses and camp of the guards
were placed on this stream, above the stockade. There was plenty of
timber in sight from the prison, yet no shelter was furnished inside
of the stockade, except such as the prisoners could make with the few
blankets they possessed. Their rations were often issued to them
uncooked, and they burrowed in the ground for roots with which to make
a little fire. The stream was soon polluted, and its banks became a
mass of mire and filth. A common exclamation of newly arrived
prisoners, as they entered the appalling place, was, "Is this hell?"
[Illustration: MAJOR R. R. TURNER, C. S. A. (Keeper of Libby Prison.)]
It is said that the Confederate general, John H. Winder, under whose
direction the stockade was built, was asked to leave a few trees
inside of it, and erect some sheds for the shelter of the prisoners,
but he answered, "No! I am going to build the pen so as to destroy
more Yankees than can be destroyed at the front." Winder's well-known
character, the place chosen for the stockade, all its arrangements,
and the manner in which it was kept, leave no reasonable doubt that
such was the purpose. When Mr. Davis and his cabinet were appealed to
by the Confederate inspector of prisons, and others, to replace
General Winder by a more humane officer, they answered by promoting
Winder to the place of commissary-general of all the prisoners.
One of the prisoners, Robert H. Kellogg, sergeant-major of the
Sixteenth Connecticut Regiment, who was taken to Andersonville when it
had been in use about two months, says in his diary: "As we entered
the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with
horror, and made our hearts within fail us. Before us were forms that
had once been active and erect, stalwart men, now nothing but mere
walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. In the centre was a
swamp occupying three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part
of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and
excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was
suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of
this plague spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer
weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings was more than we
cared to think of just then. No shelter was provided for us by the
rebel authorities, and we therefore went to work to provide for
ourselves. Eleven of us combined to form a family. For the small sum
of two dollars in greenbacks we purchased eight small saplings, eight
or nine feet long. These we bent and made fast in the ground, and,
covering them with our blankets, made a tent with an oval roof, about
thirteen feet long. We needed the blankets for our protection from the
cold at night, but concluded it to be quite as essential to our
comfort to shut out the rain. There were ten deaths on our side of the
camp that night. The old prisoners called it 'being exchanged,' and
truly it was a blessed transformation."
[Illustration: "CASTLE THUNDER," RICHMOND, VA. (In this building Union
prisoners were confined.)]
At one time there were thirty-three thousand prisoners in the
stockade, which gave a space about four feet square to each man. The
whole number sent there was about forty-nine thousand five hundred, of
whom nearly thirteen thousand died. At Salisbury prison the deaths
were thirteen per cent. a month, and at Florence twelve per cent. Most
of the deaths were from disease and starvation, but there were
numerous murders. It was said that every sentry, on shooting a
prisoner for violation of rules, received a month's furlough; and this
was corroborated by the alacrity with which they seized any pretext
for firing. In Libby, men were often shot for approaching near enough
to a window for the sentry to see their heads. In Andersonville one
was shot for crawling out to secure a small piece of wood that lay
near the dead-line; and there were many incidents of that kind. Some
of the men became deranged or desperate, and {322} deliberately walked
up to the dead-line for the purpose of being put out of their misery.
There were many escapes from these prisons; but the fugitives were
generally soon missed, and were followed by fleet horsemen and often
tracked by bloodhounds, and though they were always befriended by the
negroes, who fed them, concealed them by day, and guided them at
night, but few ultimately reached the National lines.
A captain in the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania Regiment, who was a
prisoner in the hands of the Confederates, gives this leaf from his
experience: "During the night of July 27, 1864, while several hundred
of my brother officers were being transported from Macon to Charleston
by rail, Captain Kellogg, of Wisconsin, Ensign Stoner, of New York,
Ensign Smith, now of Washington, Lieut. E. P. Brooks, of Washington,
Paymaster Billings, of the United States Navy, and myself, jumped from
a car and escaped to the swamp, through which we hardly thought an
alligator could have followed us. Late in the afternoon of the second
day, however, we heard the deep baying of the dogs, and soon we were
surrounded with dogs, which we held at bay with stout clubs until the
two fiendish hunters had called them off. Before starting on our weary
march back to that dread imprisonment, one of our captors took
occasion to say: 'It's a good thing for you-uns that our catch-dogs
gave out half a mile back, for I reckon they'd a tored you-uns up
'fore we-uns got thare.' He said the dogs that recaptured us were a
mixture between the fox-hound and the beagle-dog, but that the large,
brutish catch-dogs were a cross between the full South American
bloodhound and the bull-dog. He said he kept two large packs of these
dogs, with quite a number of catch-dogs, or bloodhounds, at Hamburg,
which he hired out for the purpose of hunting escaped Yankee prisoners
and runaway niggers. I saw Captain Holmes, of St. Louis, Mo., a
prisoner of war at Macon, Ga., in July, 1864, who had been fearfully
mangled and torn by a catch-dog in Alabama while he was trying to
escape. I frequently saw two large South American bloodhounds outside
of the stockade at Macon. At Andersonville they had a large pack of
bloodhounds."
[Illustration: CAMP DOUGLAS, AT CHICAGO. (Confederate prisoners were
confined here.)]
The crowded condition of the prisons in 1864 was owing to the fact
that exchanges had been discontinued. A cartel for the exchange of
prisoners had been in operation for some time; but when it was found
that the Confederate authorities had determined not to exchange any
black soldiers, or their white officers, captured in battle, the
United States Government refused to exchange at all, being bound to
protect equally all who had entered its service. Paroling prisoners on
the field was also discontinued, because the Confederates could not be
trusted to observe their parole. There had been much complaint that
Confederate officers and soldiers violated their word in this respect,
either because in their intense hatred of the North they could not
realize that they were bound by any promise given to it, or because
their own Government forced them back into its service. Many of them
were captured with arms in their hands, while they were still under
parole from a previous capture. All such, by the laws of war, might
have been summarily executed, but none of them were. The thirty
thousand taken by Grant at Vicksburg, and the six thousand taken by
Banks at Port Hudson, in July, 1863, were released on parole, because
the cartel designated two points for delivery of prisoners--Vicksburg
in the West, and Aiken's Landing, Va., in the East--and Vicksburg,
having been captured, was no longer available for this purpose, and
Aiken's Landing was too far away. Three months later, the Confederate
armies being in want of reinforcements, Colonel Ould, Confederate
commissioner of exchange, raised the technical point that the
prisoners captured by Grant and Banks had not been delivered at a
place mentioned in the cartel, and therefore he declared them all
released from their parole, and they were restored to the ranks. At
Chattanooga, in November, Grant's army captured large numbers from
Bragg's army whom they had captured in July with Pemberton and had
released on {323} a solemn promise that they would not take up arms
again until properly exchanged.
Other difficulties arose to complicate still further the question of
exchanges. At one time the Confederate authorities refused to make any
but a general exchange--all held by either side to be liberated--which
the National Government declined, since it held an excess of about
forty thousand. It was observed, also, when partial exchanges were
effected, that the men returning from Southern prisons were nearly all
wasted to skeletons and unfit for further service, while the
Confederates returning from Northern prisons were well clothed, well
fed, and generally in good health. Photographs of the emaciated men
from Andersonville and Belle Isle were exhibited throughout the North,
and caused more of horror than the report from any battlefield.
Engravings from them were published, in the summer of 1864, by
newspapers of both parties, for opposite purposes--the Republican, to
prove the barbarity of the Confederate authorities and the atrocious
spirit of the rebellion; the Democratic, to prove that President
Lincoln was a monster of cruelty in that he did not waive all
questions at issue and consent to a general exchange. At a later
period, the Confederate authorities, being badly in need of men to
fill up their depleted armies, offered to give up their point about
black soldiers, and exchange man for man--or rather skeleton for
man--without regard to color. But as the war was nearing its close,
and to do this would have reinforced the Southern armies with some
thousands of strong and well-fed troops, and prolonged the struggle,
the National Government refused. Efforts were made, both by the
Government and by the Sanitary Commission, to send food, clothing, and
medical supplies to those confined in the Confederate prisons; but
only a small portion of these things ever reached the men for whom
they were intended. At Libby Prison, at one time, boxes for the
prisoners arrived at the rate of three hundred a week; but instead of
being distributed they were piled up in warehouses in sight of the
hungry and shivering captives, where they were plundered by the guards
and by the poorer inhabitants of the city. In one case, a lieutenant
among the prisoners saw his own home-made suit of clothes on a prison
official, and pointed out his name embroidered on the watch-pocket.[2]
[Footnote 2: See "Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United
States Officers and Soldiers while Prisoners of War in the Hands of
the Rebel Authorities. Being the Report of a Commission of Inquiry
Appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission. With an Appendix
containing the Testimony." (1864.) Valentine Mott, M.D., was chairman
of the commission.]
The total number of soldiers and citizens captured by the Confederate
armies during the war was 188,145, and it is estimated that about half
of them were actually confined in prisons. The number of deaths in
those prisons was 36,401. The number of Confederates captured by the
National forces was 476,169, of whom 227,570 were actually confined.
The percentage of mortality in the Confederate prisons was over 38; in
the National prisons it was 13.3.
There has been much acrimonious controversy over this question of the
prisoners, and attempts have been made, by juggling with the figures,
to prove that they were as badly treated in Northern as in Southern
prisons. The most plausible excuse for the starving of captives at the
South is in the assertion that the Confederate army was on short
allowance at the same time. It is a sorrowful subject in any aspect,
and presents complicated questions; but if it is to be discussed at
all, several principles should be kept in view, some of which appear
to have been lost sight of. No belligerent is under any obligation to
enter into a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. In the war of
1812-15, between the United States and Great Britain, there were no
exchanges till the close of the contest. Every belligerent that takes
prisoners is bound by the laws of war to treat them well, since they
are no longer combatants. A belligerent that has not the means of
caring properly for prisoners is in so far without the means of
carrying on civilized warfare, and therefore comes so far short of
possessing the right to make war at all. Every time a soldier is put
out of the combat by being made a prisoner instead of being shot, so
much is gained for the cause of humanity; and if all prisoners could
be cared for properly, the most humane way of conducting a war would
be to make no exchanges, since these reinforce both sides, prolong the
contest, and increase the mortality in the field.
Whatever may be said of individual experiences in the prisons, North
or South, and whatever may have been the brutality, or the humanity,
of this or that keeper, one great fact overtops everything and settles
the main question of the treatment of prisoners beyond dispute. The
prisons at the South were open stockades, with no building of any kind
inside, no tree, no tent, no shelter furnished for the prisoners from
sun or rain, not even the simplest sanitary arrangements, and an
enormous number of prisoners were crowded into them. At Belle Isle the
prisoners were packed so close that when they lay sleeping no one
could turn over until the whole line agreed to turn simultaneously. On
the other hand, the Northern prisons contained buildings for the
shelter of the prisoners, with bunks as comfortable as in any
barracks, and stoves to heat them in cold weather, while the sanitary
arrangements were carefully looked after, and good rations issued
regularly. It is impossible to look upon these contrasted pictures and
not say that it was the intention of the one Government that its
prisoners should suffer as much as possible, and the intention of the
other Government that its prisoners should be made as comfortable as
prisoners in large numbers ever can be.
[Illustration]
{324}
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE SANITARY AND CHRISTIAN COMMISSIONS.
WOMEN IN THE WAR--SANITARY COMMISSION FORMED--THE PUBLIC IDEA ABOUT
IT--WORK OF THE COMMISSION--SANITARY FAIRS--THE CHRISTIAN
COMMISSION--VOLUNTARY NURSES--THE VAST AMOUNT OF WORK DONE BY WOMEN IN
HOSPITALS--MISS DOROTHEA L. DIX, MISS ALCOTT, AND MANY OTHERS.
The ancient sarcasm, that women have caused many of the bloodiest of
wars, was largely disarmed by the part they played in the war of
secession. Their contribution to the comfort and efficiency of the
armies in the field, and to the care of the sick and wounded soldiers,
was on the same vast scale as the war itself. Their attempts to assist
the cause began with the first call for volunteers, and were as
awkward and unskilled as the green regiments that they equipped and
encouraged. But as their brothers learned the art of war, they kept
even pace in learning the arts that alleviate its sufferings. When the
President issued the first call for troops, in April, 1861, the women
in many places held meetings to confer as to the best methods by which
they could assist, and to organize their efforts and resources. The
statement of the objects of one of these organizations suggests some
conception of the contingencies of war in a country that for nearly
half a century had known almost unbroken peace: "To supply nurses for
the sick; to bring them home when practicable; to purchase clothing,
provisions, and matters of comfort not supplied by Government
regulations; to send books and newspapers to the camps; and to hold
constant communication with the officers of the regiments, in order
that the people may be kept informed of the condition of their
friends."
[Illustration: SISTER OF MERCY.]
[Illustration: MISS LOUISA M. ALCOTT.]
On one of the last days in April, the Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows and
Dr. Elisha Harris met casually in the street in New York, and fell
into conversation concerning the evident need of sanitary measures for
the armies that were then mustering. They agreed to attend a meeting
of women that had been called to discuss that subject, and from that
meeting a call was issued to all the existing organizations of women
for a general meeting to be held in Cooper Union. This invitation,
which furnished the basis on which the Sanitary Commission was
afterward formed, was signed by ninety-two women. The hall was
crowded, and the Women's Central Association of Relief was organized,
under a constitution written by Dr. Bellows, who was chosen its
president. A committee was sent to Washington to offer the services of
the organization to the Government, and learn in what way they could
be most effective. This committee, consisting of Dr. Bellows and three
eminent physicians--Drs. Van Buren, Harsen, and Harris--presented to
the War Department an address whose suggestions were based largely
upon the experience of the British forces in the Crimean war of
1854-55. Being sent by women who were overflowing with patriotic
enthusiasm, to officials who were jealous and distrustful of
everything outside of the regulations, they had a difficult and
delicate task. The Government was already embarrassed somewhat in the
adjustment of authority between regular and volunteer officers, and
dreaded a further complication if a third element of civilian
authority should be introduced. Even Mr. Lincoln is said to have
spoken slightingly of their proposition as a fifth wheel to a coach.
General Scott received the committee kindly, but was not willing to
give the proposed commission any authority. He would, however, consent
to their acting in an advisory capacity, provided the head of the
medical bureau agreed. After an interview with Acting Surgeon-General
Wood, they obtained his consent to the formation of a "commission of
inquiry and advice in respect to the sanitary interests of the United
States forces," and he also wrote a letter commending the project to
the other officers whose consent was necessary. Most of these officers
looked upon the project with distrust and suspicion, and at length the
committee were asked to "tell outright what they really did want,
under this benevolent disguise." After fighting their way through
these obstacles, the committee met with a misfortune in the death of
Surgeon-General Lawson. His successor, Dr. Clement A. Finley, frowned
upon the whole matter, but after a long struggle was induced to
tolerate a commission that should not be clothed with any authority,
and should act only in connection with officers of the volunteer army.
Finally, on June 13, 1861, the committee received from President
Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron an order authorizing them
to form an association for "inquiry and advice in respect to the
sanitary interests of the United States." Their first work was to
bring about a re-inspection of the volunteer forces, which resulted in
the discharge of many boys and physically unsound men who had been
accepted and mustered in through carelessness. When the committee
returned to New York, the fact that there was a wide popular demand
for the establishment of such an organization as they had proposed was
made evident through articles in the newspapers, {325} opinions of
physicians, and a multitude of letters from all parts of the country.
Dr. Bellows was made president of the Commission, Frederick Law
Olmsted secretary, and George T. Strong treasurer, and with them were
associated a score of well-known men, including several eminent
physicians. In the organization, the first division of the duties of
the Commission was into two departments--those of Inquiry and Advice.
The Department of Inquiry was subdivided into three--the first, to
have charge of such immediate aid and obvious recommendations as an
ordinary knowledge of the principles of sanitary science would enable
the board to urge upon the authorities; the second, to have charge of
the inspection of recruiting stations, transports, camps, and
hospitals, and to consult with military officers as to the condition
and wants of their men; the third, to investigate questions of
cleanliness, cooking, clothing, surgical dressings, malaria, climate,
etc. The Department of Advice was also subdivided. The general object
was "to get the opinions and conclusions of the Commission approved by
the Medical Bureau, ordered by the War Department, and acted upon by
officers and men." One sub-committee was in direct communication with
the War Department, another with army officers, and a third with the
State governments and the local associations.
The popular idea of the Sanitary Commission seemed to be that its
chief purpose was to form dépôts for receiving supplies of clothing,
medicines, and delicacies for the camps and hospitals, and forwarding
them safely and speedily. And this part of the work soon grew to
proportions that had never been contemplated. The Commission issued an
address "to the loyal women of America," urging the formation of local
societies for providing these articles, and in response more than
seven thousand such societies were organized. They were managed
entirely by women, and were all tributary to the Sanitary Commission.
Of the fifteen million dollars' worth of articles received and
distributed, more than four-fifths came from these local societies.
The Commission was managed as nearly as possible in accordance with
military ideas of discipline and precision. Every request that the
stores furnished by a State or city might be conveyed to its own
regiments was met with the answer that all was for the nation and must
be turned in to the general store. The Commission rapidly disarmed
prejudice, and won the admiration of everybody in the military
service. It employed skilled men to coöperate with the regimental
surgeons in choosing sites for camps, regulating the drainage, and
inspecting the cooking. It constructed model pavilion hospitals, to
prevent the spread of contagion. It established a system of soldiers'
homes, where the sick and the convalescent could be provided for on
their way back and forth between their homes and the front, and where
whole regiments were sometimes fed when their own commissariat failed
them. It fitted up hospital steamers on the Mississippi and its
tributaries, with surgeons and nurses on board, to ply between the
seat of war and the points from which Northern hospitals could be
reached. Dr. Elisha Harris, of the Commission, invented a hospital
car, in which the stretcher on which a wounded man was brought from
the field could be suspended and thus become a sort of hammock. The
cars were built with extra springs, to diminish the jolting as much as
possible, and trains of them were run regularly, with physicians and
stores on board, until the plan was adopted by the Government Medical
Bureau. Supplies were constantly furnished in abundance, and the
Commission established dépôts at convenient points, where the articles
were assorted and labelled, and the army officials were kept
constantly informed that such and such things, in such and such
quantities, were subject to their requisition. When it was found
difficult to transport fresh vegetables from distant points, the
Commission laid out gardens of its own, where vegetables were raised
for the use of the soldiers in the field. The Commission also had its
own horses and wagons, which followed the armies to the battlefield,
carrying supplies that were often welcome when those of the medical
department were exhausted or had gone astray. After the battle of the
Antietam, when ten thousand wounded lay on the field, the train
containing the medical stores was blocked near Baltimore; but the
wagon-train of the Sanitary Commission had been following the army,
and for four days the only supplies were those that it furnished. On
this occasion it issued over twenty-eight thousand shirts, towels,
pillows, etc., thirty barrels of lint and bandages, over three
thousand pounds of farina, over two thousand pounds of condensed milk,
five thousand pounds of beef stock and canned meats, three thousand
bottles of wine and cordial, several tons of lemons, and crackers,
tea, sugar, rubber cloth, tin cups, and other conveniences. In the
course of the war, the Commission furnished four million five hundred
thousand meals to sick and hungry soldiers. In many instances, notably
at the second battle of Bull Run and at the assault on Fort Wagner,
the agents of the Commission were on the actual battlefield with their
supplies, and were close at the front rescuing the wounded. At Fort
Wagner they followed up the storming party to the moat.
A large part of the money and supplies was raised by means of fairs
held in nearly every city, and the generosity exhibited in a thousand
different ways was something for the nation to be forever proud of.
Those who could not give cash gave all sorts of things--horses, cows,
carriages, watches, diamonds, books, pictures, curiosities, and every
conceivable article. The managers would be informed that a farmer was
at the door with a cow, which he wished to give, and some person would
be deputed to take the cow and find a stable for her until she could
be sold. Another would appear with a portion of his crops. Men and
women of note were asked to furnish their autographs for sale, and
papers were printed, made up of original contributions by well-known
authors. The sales were largely by auction, and rich men would bid off
articles at high prices, and then give them back to be sold over
again. The amount of cash received by the Commission was over four
million nine hundred thousand dollars. The State of California, which
was farthest from the seat of war, and contributed but few men to the
armies, sent more than one million three hundred thousand dollars. The
value of articles received by the Commission was estimated at fifteen
million dollars. It established convalescent camps, which were
afterward taken by the Government, and a system of hospital
directories, and a pension bureau and claim agency, by which soldiers'
claims were prosecuted free of charge. From beginning to end there was
never a deficit or irregularity of any kind in its finances.
At the beginning of the war, many of the volunteers were members of
the Young Men's Christian Association, and through these an especial
solicitude was felt in that organization for the spiritual needs of
the soldiers. Almost as soon as the first call for troops was made,
measures were taken to supply every regiment with religious
reading-matter, prayer-meetings were held at the recruiting stations,
and a soldiers' hymn-book was compiled and printed by thousands. When
the army began to move, men volunteered to go with it, at their own
expense, and {326} continue this work. One of these was Vincent
Colyer, the artist, who, after spending ten weeks in the field, wrote
to the chairman of the national committee of the Association, urging
the formation of a Christian Commission to carry on the work
systematically. As a result, such a commission was organized on
November 14, 1861. The approval of the President and the War
Department was obtained more readily than in the case of the Sanitary
Commission, but the appeal to the people did not elicit any immediate
enthusiasm. Even the religious press was in some instances distrustful
and discouraging. For nearly a year the means of the Commission were
limited, and its work was feeble. In May, 1862, after an earnest
address to the public, it was enabled to equip and send out fourteen
delegates, as they were called, ten of whom were clergymen. By the end
of that year, they had sent four hundred to the army, and had more
than a thousand engaged in the home work. They had distributed in the
armies more than a hundred thousand Bibles, as many hymn-books, tens
of thousands of other books, ten million leaflets, and hundreds of
thousands of papers and magazines; they had formed twenty-three
libraries, expended over a hundred and forty thousand dollars in
money, and distributed an equal value in stores.
[Illustration: OFFICERS OF THE SANITARY COMMISSION. (From a war-time
photograph.)]
[Illustration: REV. DR. HENRY W. BELLOWS. (President of the Sanitary
Commission.)]
At the close of the second year the Commission had one hundred and
eleven auxiliary associations, and the work in the field was more
perfectly organized. General Grant, then in command in the West,
issued a special order giving the Commission every opportunity for the
prosecution of its work, and tried, but in vain, to obtain permission
for its delegates to visit the National soldiers in Confederate
prisons. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia, was chairman of the
executive committee, Joseph Patterson treasurer, and Lemuel Moss
secretary. The work increased rapidly. Chapel tents and chapel roofs
were furnished to the armies, diet kitchens were established in the
hospitals, the service called "individual relief" was extended, and
schools were opened for children of colored soldiers. Thousands of
letters were written for disabled men in the hospitals, and thousands
of packages forwarded to the camps. Jacob Dunton, of Philadelphia,
invented a "coffee wagon" and presented it to the Commission. Coffee
could be made in it in large quantities, as it was driven along. Like
the Sanitary Commission, the Christian Commission had its own teams,
and followed the armies with medical supplies. In the course of its
existence, it sent out in all six thousand delegates, none of whom
received any pay. One hundred and twenty of these were women employed
mainly in the diet kitchens.
There were also many women in the service of the Government as
volunteer nurses. The first of these was Miss Dorothea L. Dix, who
offered her services eight days after the call for troops in April,
1861, and was accepted by the Surgeon-General, who requested that all
women wishing to act as nurses report to her. Miss Dix served through
the war. Miss Amy Bradley, besides having charge of a large camp for
convalescents near Alexandria, Va., assisted twenty-two hundred men in
collecting arrears of pay due them, amounting to over two hundred
thousand dollars. Arabella Griffith Barlow, wife of the gallant
General Francis C. Barlow, spent three years in hospitals at the
front, and died in the service. Miss Clara Barton entered upon
hospital work at the beginning of the war, had charge of the hospitals
of the Army of the James during its last year, and after the war
undertook the search for the missing men of the National armies. Miss
Louisa M. Alcott, author of "Little Women," served as a nurse, and
published her experiences in a volume entitled "Hospital Sketches."
Many other women, less noted, performed long and arduous service,
which in some cases cost them their lives, for {327} which they live
in the grateful remembrance of those who came under their care.
Among these was Miss Helen L. Gilson, a teacher in Boston, who gave
this answer to an inquiry as to how she succeeded in getting into the
work: "When I reached White House Landing I saw the transport _Wilson
Small_ in the offing, and knew that it was full of wounded men; so,
calling a boatman, and directing him to row me to the vessel, I went
on board. A poor fellow was undergoing an amputation, and, seeing that
the surgeon wanted help, I took hold of the limb and held it for him.
The surgeon looked up, at first surprised, then said, 'Thank you,' and
I stayed and helped him. Then I went on with him to the next case; he
made no objection, and from that time I never had any difficulty
there."
[Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF THE SANITARY COMMISSION, ARMY OF THE
POTOMAC. (From a war-time photograph.)]
Dr. Bellows, president of the Sanitary Commission, writing of his
experiences on the field of Gettysburg, said: "I went out to the field
hospital of the Third Corps, where two thousand four hundred men lay
in their tents, a vast camp of mutilated humanity. One woman [Miss
Gilson], young and fair, but grave and earnest, clothed in purity and
mercy--the only woman on that whole vast camp--moved in and out of the
hospital tent, speaking some tender word, giving some restoring
cordial, holding the hand of a dying boy, or receiving the last words
of a husband for his widowed wife. I can never forget how, amid scenes
which under ordinary circumstances no woman could have appeared in
without gross indecorum, the holy pity and purity of this angel of
mercy made her presence seem as fit as though she had indeed dropped
out of heaven. The men themselves, sick or well, all seemed awed and
purified by such a resident among them." Miss Gilson continued her
labors unremittingly through the war, and died about two years after
its close, probably from the effects of her arduous work, at the age
of thirty-two.
[Illustration: MARGARET AUGUSTA PETERSON.]
Besides the labors of such women in the field hospitals, a vast amount
of similar and quite as useful work was done by a great number of
women in the hospitals at various points in the Northern States,
whither the wounded were sent as soon as they could be removed. A
peculiarly sad and romantic case was that of Margaret Augusta
Peterson, a young lady of brilliant promise, who entered upon service
in a large hospital at Rochester, N. Y., refused to leave it when
there was an outbreak of small-pox, saying she was then needed more
than ever, and lost her life, at the age of twenty-three, from some
dreadful mistake in the vaccination. Her story, which had other
romantic elements, is told literally in this poem:
Through the sombre arch of that gateway tower
Where my humblest townsman rides at last,
You may spy the bells of a nodding flower,
On a double mound that is thickly grassed.
And between the spring and the summer time,
Or ever the lilac's bloom is shed,
When they come with banners and wreaths and rhyme,
To deck the tombs of the nation's dead,
They find there a little flag in the grass,
And fling a handful of roses down,
And pause a moment before they pass
To the captain's grave with the gilded crown.
But if perchance they seek to recall
What name, what deeds, these honors declare,
They cannot tell, they are silent all
As the noiseless harebell nodding there. {328}
She was tall, with an almost manly grace;
And young, with strange wisdom for one so young;
And fair, with more than a woman's face;
With dark, deep eyes, and a mirthful tongue.
The poor and the fatherless knew her smile;
The friend in sorrow had seen her tears;
She had studied the ways of the rough world's guile,
And read the romance of historic years.
What she might have been in these times of ours,
At once it is easy and hard to guess;
For always a riddle are half-used powers,
And always a power is lovingness.
But her fortunes fell upon evil days--
If days are evil when evil dies--
And she was not one who could stand at gaze
Where the hopes of humanity fall and rise.
Nor could she dance to the viol's tune,
When the drum was throbbing throughout the land,
Or dream in the light of the summer moon,
When Treason was clinching his mailèd hand.
Through the long, gray hospital's corridor
She journeyed many a mournful league,
And her light foot fell on the oaken floor
As if it never could know fatigue.
She stood by the good old surgeon's side,
And the sufferers smiled as they saw her stand;
She wrote, and the mothers marvelled and cried
At their darling soldiers' feminine hand.
She was last in the ward when the lights burned low,
And Sleep called a truce to his foeman Pain;
At the midnight cry she was first to go,
To bind up the bleeding wound again.
For sometimes the wreck of a man would rise,
Weird and gaunt in the watch-lamp's gleam,
And tear away bandage and splints and ties,
Fighting the battle all o'er in his dream.
No wonder the youngest surgeon felt
A charm in the presence of that brave soul,
Through weary weeks, as she nightly knelt
With the letter from home or the doctor's dole.
He heard her called, and he heard her blessed,
With many a patriot's parting breath;
And ere his soul to itself confessed,
Love leaped to life in those vigils of death.
"Oh, fly to your home!" came a whisper dread,
"For now the pestilence walks by night."
"The greater the need of me here," she said,
And bared her arm for the lancet's bite.
Was there death, green death, in the atmosphere?
Was the bright steel poisoned? Who call tell?
Her weeping friends gathered beside her bier,
And the clergyman told them all was well.
Well--alas that it should be so!
When a nation's debt reaches reckoning-day--
Well for it to be able, but woe
To the generation that's called to pay!
Down from the long, gray hospital came
Every boy in blue who could walk the floor;
The sick and the wounded, the blind and lame,
Formed two long files from her father's door.
There was grief in many a manly breast,
While men's tears fell as the coffin passed;
And thus she went to the world of rest,
Martial and maidenly up to the last.
And that youngest surgeon, was he to blame?--
He held the lancet--Heaven only knows.
No matter; his heart broke all the same,
And he laid him down, and never arose.
So Death received, in his greedy hand,
Two precious coins of the awful price
That purchased freedom for this dear land--
For master and bondman--yea, bought it twice.
Such fates too often such women are for!
God grant the Republic a large increase,
To match the heroes in time of war,
And mother the children in time of peace.
[Illustration]
{329}
CHAPTER XXX.
MINOR EVENTS OF THE THIRD YEAR.
BANDS OF GUERILLAS IN VIRGINIA AND THE EAST--UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS TO
CAPTURE MOSBY--IMPORTANT ACTION AT WAPPING HEIGHTS--NUMEROUS
ENGAGEMENTS IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY AND ON THE SLOPES OF THE BLUE
RIDGE--MINOR ENGAGEMENTS IN CONNECTION WITH THE PURSUIT OF LEE'S ARMY
AFTER GETTYSBURG--MINOR ENGAGEMENTS IN WEST VIRGINIA--INVASION OF
KENTUCKY BY CONFEDERATES UNDER GENERAL PEGRAM--THE CONFEDERATES'
ATTEMPT TO RECAPTURE FORT DONELSON--NUMEROUS SMALL BATTLES IN
TENNESSEE--LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF EASTERN TENNESSEE AND WESTERN
NORTH CAROLINA--BATTLES AT FAYETTEVILLE, BATESVILLE, AND HELENA,
ARK.--OPERATIONS UNDER THE CONFEDERATE GENERAL MARMADUKE IN
MISSOURI--SACKING AND BURNING OF LAWRENCE, KAN.--CRUELTIES PRACTISED
BY CONFEDERATE GUERILLAS UNDER QUANTRELL AND OTHERS--CAPTURE OF
GALVESTON, TEXAS, BY THE CONFEDERATES--MILITARY OPERATIONS AGAINST THE
INDIANS.
Some of the smaller engagements of the year 1863 were so closely
connected with the great movements that they have been described in
the chapters devoted to those campaigns. Others were isolated from any
such connection, and the more notable of them are here grouped in a
chapter by themselves.
[Illustration: UNION SCOUTS.]
[Illustration: A GROCERY STORE IN SOUTHERN VIRGINIA.]
{330} [Illustration: BATTLE OF VERMILION BAYOU, LA.]
Suffolk, Va., on Nansemont River, southwest of Portsmouth, was held by
a National force that included the Eighty-ninth and One Hundred and
Twelfth New York Regiments, and the Eighth and Sixteenth Connecticut.
An amusing story is told in the "History of the Sixteenth
Connecticut," of its adventures when it first reached Suffolk. It
arrived in a dark night, the men not knowing which way to go, or what
they would find when they stepped out of the train, and most of their
officers having been left behind by accident. Setting out through the
darkness, they first tumbled down a steep embankment, then into a deep
brook, and finally brought up against a rail fence. Tearing this down,
they found themselves in a field, and set about hunting fuel for a
fire. Some of them, groping in the darkness, came upon a house which
they supposed to be uninhabited, and, beginning at the bottom, pulled
off all the clapboards as high as they could reach. When daylight came
they discovered that it was a handsome white house inhabited by the
owner and his family, who presently appeared on the scene and produced
a tableau. In the darkness one of the men had bored a hole into a
barrel of coffee, which he supposed was whiskey, and was found shaking
it violently and wondering why it did not run. Sunlight showed them
that they were on the outskirts of the town, and immediately the One
Hundred and Twelfth New York came to their relief with hot coffee,
etc. Suffolk really had very little military importance, and yet it
was the subject of considerable fighting. Gen. John J. Peck commanded
the National forces, and was subjected to much elaborate ridicule for
the extent to which he fortified the place. In January the
Confederates made an attack, and after some fighting were driven off,
and, with the assistance of the gunboats, six guns and two hundred of
their men were captured. In April a siege was begun by General
Longstreet, who failed in an attempt to carry the place by surprise,
and then constructed earthworks, intending to bombard it; but, as soon
as he opened fire from them, his guns were silenced by the gunboats on
the river and the heavy artillery in the National works. Early in May
he was needed to assist General Lee in the impending conflict of
Chancellorsville, and slowly drew off his men from Suffolk, {331} when
Generals Getty and Harland sallied out from that place with a column
of seven thousand men and attacked his powerful rear guard. A sharp
action ensued, which resulted in no immediate advantage to either
side, but in the night the Confederates left the field. Some
stragglers were captured, but otherwise there was no definite result
except that the siege was raised.
Guerilla bands, so numerous at the West, were few at the East, the
most noted being one led by John S. Mosby. In March he made a daring
midnight raid with a few of his men on Fairfax Court House, Va., and
captured and carried off Brigadier-General Stoughton, two captains,
and thirty men, with about sixty horses. In May he approached
Warrenton Junction with about three hundred men and attacked a small
cavalry force there. The National soldiers were feeding their horses
and did not have time to mount, but made a gallant resistance on foot,
until they were overcome by numbers. The Fifth New York cavalry then
came up, and, sabre in hand, charging upon the guerillas, killed and
scattered many, and wounded the rest, except a few whom they captured.
Among the killed was a Confederate spy who had just come from
Washington and had in his possession many important documents. Again,
at Kettle Run, Mosby attacked a railway train that was loaded with
forage. When the firing was heard, the Fifth and First Vermont cavalry
set out from Fairfax Court House and soon came up with the enemy. His
one howitzer was captured in a gallant charge, and a considerable
number of his men were killed. It was said that as fast as the band
was depleted by the casualties of battle it was filled up with picked
men sent from the Confederate army.
Several attempts were made to capture Mosby, but although there was an
occasional fight with his band, and a considerable number of his
followers fell, he himself eluded captivity till the end of the war,
when he issued an order announcing to his men that he was no longer
their commander, and they dispersed. The difficulty of capturing a
small mounted force, which is irresponsible and has no mission but to
roam in a lawless way over a country like that of Virginia, must be
always exceedingly great; but there was one opportunity to capture
Mosby and his band which would have been successful had the affair not
been disgracefully mismanaged. In April, 1863, one hundred and fifty
men of the First Vermont cavalry, under Captain Flint, set out to
capture them, and found them at a farm-house unprepared to fight.
Flint took his men through the gate, fired a volley at Mosby's men,
and then charged with the sabre, which would have been correct enough
if Flint had kept his command together; but he made the mistake of
dividing it and sending a portion around to the rear, in fear that the
guerillas would escape. Mosby quickly took advantage of this, ordered
a charge upon the detachment headed by Captain Flint, and succeeded in
cutting his way through, Flint and some of his men being killed. Of
the affair near Warrenton, in May, Mosby, in his somewhat boastful
"Reminiscences," gives this highly colored account:
"On May 2, seventy or eighty men assembled at my call. I had
information that Stoneman's cavalry had left Warrenton and gone south,
which indicated that the campaign had opened. My plan now was to
strike Hooker.
"Before we had gone very far, an infantry soldier was caught, who
informed me that I was marching right into the camp of an infantry
brigade. I found out that there was some cavalry on the railroad at
another point, and so I made for that. These troops had just been sent
up to replace Stoneman's. I committed a great error in allowing myself
to be diverted by their presence from the purpose of my expedition.
They were perfectly harmless where they were, and could not help
Hooker in the great battle then raging. I should at least have
endeavored to avoid a fight by marching around them.
"Just as we debouched from the woods in sight of Warrenton Junction, I
saw, about three hundred yards in front of us, a body of cavalry in
the open field. It was a bright, warm morning; and the men were
lounging on the grass, while their horses, with nothing but their
halters on, had been turned loose to graze on the young clover. They
were enjoying the music of the great battle, and had no dream that
danger was near. Not a single patrol or picket had been put out. At
first they mistook us for their own men, and had no suspicion as to
who we were until I ordered a charge and the men raised a yell. The
shouting and firing stampeded the horses, and they scattered over a
field of several hundred acres, while their riders took shelter in
some houses near by. We very soon got all out of two houses; but the
main body took refuge in a large frame building just by the railroad.
I did not take time to dismount my men, but ordered a charge on the
house; I did not want to give them time to recover from their panic. I
came up just in front of two windows by the chimney, from which a hot
fire was poured that brought down several men by my side. But I paid
them back with interest when I got to the window, into which I emptied
two Colt's revolvers. The house was as densely packed as a sardine
box, and it was almost impossible to fire into it without hitting
somebody. The doors had been shut from the inside; but the Rev. Sam
Chapman dismounted, and burst through, followed by John Debutts,
Mountjoy, and Harry Sweeting. The soldiers in the lower rooms
immediately surrendered; but those above held out. There was a
haystack near by; and I ordered some of the hay to be brought into the
house, and fire to be set to it. Not being willing to be burned alive
as martyrs to the Union, the men above now held out a white flag from
the window. The house was densely filled with smoke, and the floor
covered with the blood of the wounded. The commanding officer, Major
Steel, had received a mortal wound; and there were many others in the
same condition. All who were able now came out of the house.
"After a severe fight I had taken three times my own number prisoners,
together with all their horses, arms, and equipments. Most of my men
then dispersed over the field in pursuit of the frightened horses
which had run away. I was sitting on my horse near the house, giving
directions for getting ready to leave with the prisoners and spoil,
when one of my men, named Wild, who had chased a horse some distance
down the railroad, came at full speed, and reported a heavy column of
cavalry coming up. I turned to one of my men and said to him, '_Now we
will whip them._' I had hardly spoken the words when I saw a large
body of Union cavalry, not over two hundred or three hundred yards
off, rapidly advancing. Most of my command had scattered over the
field, and the enemy was so close there was no time to rally and
re-form before they got upon us. In attempting to do so, I remained on
the ground until they were within fifty yards of me, and was nearly
captured. So there was nothing to do but for every man to take care of
himself. The command I had at this time was a mere aggregation of men
casually gathered, belonging to many different regiments, who happened
to be in the country. Of course, such a body has none of the cohesion
and discipline that springs from organization, no matter how brave the
men may be individually. Men never fought better than they did at the
house, while the defenders were inspired to greater resistance,
knowing that relief was near. We had defeated and captured three times
our own {332} number, and now had to give up the fruits of victory,
and in turn to fly to prevent capture. My men fled in every direction,
taking off about fifty horses and a number of prisoners. Only one of
my men, Templeman, was killed, but I lost about twenty captured,
nearly all of whom were wounded."
[Illustration: COLONEL JOHN S. MOSBY, C. S. A.--A GROUP OF MOSBY'S
RAIDERS.]
In March General Hooker, learning that a Confederate force, under
Stuart, had set out for Fauquier and the adjoining counties to enforce
the draft, determined to send out a large cavalry force to intercept
them, and at the same time to make a reconnoissance on the south side
of the Rappahannock. The troops chosen for this work were the First
and Fifth regulars, the Thirty-fourth and Sixteenth Pennsylvania, the
First Rhode Island, the Fourth New York, and the Sixth Ohio, with a
battery of six guns, all under the command of Gen. William W. Averill.
At the close of the first day's march the expedition encamped near
Kelly's Ford on the Rapidan, and the next morning, the 17th, on riding
down to the ford, found the passage disputed. The Confederates had
constructed abatis along the southern bank and were in strong force.
Several attempts to cross the stream by separate regiments were
ineffectual, until a squadron of the First Rhode Island, led by
Lieutenant Brown, plunged boldly through the stream, cut their way
through the abatis, charged up the bank, and routed the enemy in their
immediate front. The whole force then crossed and formed in line of
battle. As they moved on, the Confederates charged upon them, but were
met in a counter charge and broken. Rallying, they attempted it again,
and again were broken and put to flight. Meanwhile the Pennsylvania
regiment struck them on the flank, and the artillery opened upon them.
When a point about a mile and a half from the river had been reached,
General Averill re-formed his line, which then moved through the woods
and fired as it went. The Confederates now, for the first time,
brought their artillery into play, of which they had twelve pieces,
and the shot fell fast among Averill's men. Following this, the
Confederates made another charge, but were broken by the Third
Pennsylvania. A participant says: "From the time of crossing the river
until now there had been many personal encounters, single horsemen
dashing at each other with full speed, and cutting and slashing with
their sabres until one or the other was disabled. The wounds received
by both friend and foe in these single combats were frightful, such as
I trust never to see again." A running fight was now kept up, the
Confederates retreating slowly, and occasionally halting to use their
artillery, until a point six miles from the river was reached, when
General Averill, finding that his artillery ammunition was nearly
exhausted, and that there were strong intrenchments not far ahead,
ordered a return. The Confederates, who had been retreating, now
advanced in their turn, and annoyed the retiring column somewhat with
their artillery. General Averill lost nine men killed, thirty-five
wounded, and forty captured. The Confederate loss is not exactly
known, but Averill's men brought away sixty prisoners, including Major
Breckenridge, of the First Virginia cavalry. In {333} this action was
killed John Pelham, commander of Stuart's horse artillery, who was
called the "Boy Major" and had won high reputation as an artillerist.
His fall is the subject of the finest poem produced at the South
during the war, written by James R. Randall.
"Just as the spring came laughing through the strife
With all its gorgeous cheer,
In the bright April of historic life,
Fell the great cannoneer.
The wondrous lulling of a hero's breath
His bleeding country weeps;
Hushed in the alabaster arms of Death
Our young Marcellus sleeps.
Nobler and grander than the child of Rome,
Curbing his chariot steeds,
The knightly scion of a Southern home
Dazzled the land with deeds.
Gentlest and bravest in the battle-brunt,
The champion of the truth,
He bore his banner to the very front
Of our immortal youth.
A clang of sabres 'mid Virginian snow,
The fiery pang of shells--
And there's a wail of immemorial woe
In Alabama dells.
The pennon drops that led the sacred band
Along the crimson field;
The meteor blade sinks from the nerveless hand
Over the spotless shield.
We gazed and gazed upon that beauteous face;
While round the lips and eyes,
Couched in their marble slumber, flashed the grace
Of a divine surprise.
O mother of a blessed soul on high,
Thy tears may soon be shed!
Think of thy boy with princes of the sky,
Among the Southern dead!
How must he smile on this dull world beneath,
Fevered with swift renown--
He, with the martyr's amaranthine wreath
Twining the victor's crown!"
When Lee, after Gettysburg, retreated southward up the Shenandoah
Valley, Meade pursued on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge in a
parallel line, taking possession of the passes as far southward as
Manassas Gap. On the 22d of April, he learned that a Confederate corps
was near the western end of that gap, which was held by Buford's
division of cavalry alone. The Third Corps, then guarding Ashby's Gap,
was thereupon ordered down to Manassas Gap, and made a prompt and
swift march, reaching Buford at midnight. The next day, from a lofty
point on the mountains, the movements of a large part of the
Confederate army could be seen. One immense column was in plain sight,
consisting, first, of several thousand infantry, followed by disabled
soldiers mounted on horses that had been taken in Pennsylvania, the
rear being brought up by a large body of cavalry, while the wagon
trains were moving on a parallel road further west, and all were
pushing southward as rapidly as possible. It was thought that a
movement through the gap might cut the Confederate column in two, and
this was accordingly ordered. Berdan's sharp-shooters, the Twentieth
Indiana, the Sixty-third Pennsylvania, and the Third and Fourth Maine
Regiments, of high reputation as skirmishers, were pushed forward, and
soon brushed away the small Confederate force that occupied its
western end. This fell back upon a supporting force posted on a lofty
hill. Here the sharp-shooters kept the attention of the Confederates
while the Maine regiments silently crept up the face of the hill,
unobserved from its summit, delivered a volley, and then made a rapid
charge which cleared the hill of all Confederates except those that
were disabled or made prisoners. It was then discovered that the main
body of the Confederate force that was intended to dispute the passage
of the gap was on another line of hill, still farther to the west, and
strongly fortified. The Excelsior brigade, commanded by General
Spinola, was now brought forward to dislodge the enemy. Passing
through the line of skirmishers, the men of this brigade soon reached
the slope of the hill, which was ragged and precipitous and swept by a
fire from the crest. Without a minute's hesitation they scrambled up
the ascent, which was more than three hundred feet high, grasping at
the bushes and points of rock until they reached the summit, when they
fired a volley, fixed their bayonets, gave a shout, and rushed upon
the enemy, who immediately fled in confusion. General Spinola was
twice wounded in this assault, and the command devolved upon Colonel
Farnum, who immediately re-formed the line and set out to carry in a
similar manner another crest, which he succeeded in doing, and took a
considerable number of prisoners. At this point of time, General
Meade, having learned that a Confederate corps was moving down the
valley to take part in this action, ordered the troops to discontinue
their advance and hold the points already gained. At the same time he
brought up the bulk of his army in anticipation of the battle the next
day. But when the sun next arose the Confederates had all disappeared.
By this movement General Meade lost two days in the race of the armies
southward, which enabled the Confederates to get back to their old
ground, south of the Rappahannock, before he could reach it. This
action is known as the battle of Wapping Heights. The National loss
was one hundred and ten men, killed or wounded; the Confederate loss
is unknown.
In August, General Averell's cavalry command made an expedition
through the counties of Hardy, Pendleton, Highland, Bath, Green Briar,
and Pocahontas. They destroyed saltpetre works and burned a camp with
a large amount of equipments and stores. They had numerous skirmishes
with a Confederate cavalry force, commanded by Gen. Samuel Jones, and
at Rocky Gap, near Sulphur Springs, a serious engagement. This battle
lasted two days. On the first day the Confederates opened the fire
with artillery, which was answered by Averell's guns, and a somewhat
destructive duel ensued. The Confederates attempted to capture
Averell's battery by charging across an open field, but were repelled
by its steady fire. On the other hand, similar charges were made seven
times in succession by a portion of Averell's men, and not one of them
was successful. When, finally, Averell's ammunition was nearly
exhausted, and he learned that the enemy was about to be reinforced,
he withdrew from the field in good order. The loss in this engagement
was about two hundred on each side.
In an irregular and unsatisfactory campaign of manoeuvres between
Meade and Lee, along the slopes of the Blue Ridge, after the battle of
Gettysburg, but before the retirement to winter quarters, there were
some engagements which would have been notable had not the whole
campaign resulted in nothing. One of these was at Bristoe Station,
three miles west {334} of Manassas Junction, October 14th, when Meade
was making retrograde movements, and Lee attacked his rear guard with
A. P. Hill's corps. The Second Corps formed the rear of Meade's line,
and marched to Bristoe on the south side of the track of the Orange
and Alexandria Railroad, with flankers well out on both sides, and
skirmishers deployed. About noon, the advance of this corps, which was
Gen. Alexander S. Webb's division, reached the eastern edge of woods
that look out toward Broad Run. The rear of the Fifth Corps, which
preceded the Second on the march, had just crossed the Run. Suddenly
they were fired upon by artillery which emerged from the woods by an
obscure road, and then a line of Confederate skirmishers appeared on
the hill north of the railroad. Immediately General Webb's division
was thrown forward in a line south of the railroad, with its right
resting on Broad Run, and General Hays's division took position at
Webb's left, while Caldwell's faced the railroad, and a section of
Brown's Rhode Island battery was put in position on the other side of
Broad Run where it could enfilade the enemy's skirmishing line, and
the remainder was placed on a hill west of the Run. Arnold's famous
battery was also put in a commanding position. Very soon Confederates
opened a furious fire of artillery and musketry from the edge of the
wood; but when the National battery began its work their batteries
were very soon silenced, and their skirmishing line melted away.
General Warren ordered a detail of ten men from each regiment in that
part of the Fifth Corps which had participated in the fight, to rush
forward and bring off the Confederate guns, which, for the minute,
seemed to have been deserted. With a cheer the men crossed the
railroad track, climbed the hill, wheeled pieces into position, and
fired them at the retreating Confederates, and then dragged them away.
But they had not gone far when the enemy came out of the wood again
and charged upon them. Whereupon they dropped the battery, resumed
their small arms, drove back the charge, and then brought off the
guns. A participant says, "I have heard some cheering on election
nights, but I never heard such a yell of exultation as rent the air
when the rebel guns, caissons, and equipments were brought across the
railroad track to the line of our infantry." The Confederates now
tried the experiment of attacking the Second Corps, and two regiments
of North Carolina troops charged upon its right over the railroad.
When they reached the track, they were met by two or three deadly
volleys, which sent them rapidly back again. They became broken, and
hid themselves behind rocks and logs, or came in as prisoners, when
the National line was advanced. Still their main body kept up the
fight until dark, when they finally retired into the woods, after
losing six guns, two battle flags, seven hundred and fifty prisoners,
and an unknown number in killed or wounded. Among the Confederate
losses in this section was Brig.-Gen. Carnot Posey, mortally wounded.
There was considerable desultory fighting around Charlestown Va. On
the 15th of July a National cavalry force overtook and attacked a
Confederate force near that place, and captured about one hundred
prisoners, afterward holding the town. On the 18th of October a
Confederate cavalry force, under Gen. John J. Imboden, attacked the
garrison, finding them in the court-house and other buildings, and
demanded the surrender; to which the commander, Colonel Simpson,
answered, "Take me if you can." Imboden then opened fire on the
court-house with artillery at a distance of less than two hundred
yards, and of course soon drove out the occupants. After exchanging a
volley or two, most of the National troops surrendered, while some had
escaped toward Harper's Ferry. Two hours later a force came up from
that place and drove out Imboden's men, who retired slowly toward
Berryville, fighting all the way.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL R. S. FOSTER, AND STAFF.]
In its slow pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of the
Potomac, early in November, came up with that army at Rappahannock
Station, where the Orange and Alexandria Railroad crosses the Rapidan
River. General Lee showed an intention to get into winter quarters
here, for the ground was elaborately fortified on both sides of the
river, and his men were known to be building huts. General Meade made
his dispositions for a serious attack at this point. Lee had a strong
force intrenched with artillery on the north side of the river to
prevent any crossing, and works extended thence for a considerable
distance in each direction, while the main body of his army was on the
south side of the river and also intrenched. General Meade placed the
Fifth and Sixth Corps under the command of General Sedgwick, fronting
Rappahannock Station. General French was placed in command of the
First, Second, and Third Corps, and ordered to move to Kelly's Ford,
four miles below Rappahannock Station, cross the river, carry the
heights on the south side, and then move toward the enemy's rear at
Rappahannock to {335} assist General Sedgwick's column in its front
attack. General Buford's cavalry was to cross the Rappahannock above
these positions, and General Kilpatrick's below. Sedgwick's column
arrived within a mile and a half of the river at noon, on the 7th of
November, and threw out skirmishers to examine the enemy's works. At
the same hour, French's column arrived at Kelly's Ford. General French
promptly opened the battle with his artillery, sent a brigade across
the river which captured many prisoners in the rifle trenches, and an
hour later crossed the division and began the laying of pontoon
bridges, so that his entire command crossed before night. General Lee,
believing that the demonstration at Rappahannock Station was a feint
and that at Kelly's Ford the real movement, heavily reinforced his
troops at the Ford. Those on the north side of the river at
Rappahannock Station were also reinforced. Sedgwick's plan of attack
was to have the Fifth Corps get possession of the river bank on the
left, and the Sixth Corps on the right, and plant his batteries on
high ground, from which he could compel evacuation of the works. This
movement was made, and the batteries opened their fire, but the
Confederates did not leave the works. In the edge of evening it was
determined to make an assault in heavy force. The artillery kept up a
rapid fire, until the assaulting column, led by Gen. David A. Russell,
had moved forward and approached near to the works. This movement
appears to have been a surprise to the Confederates, and it was
carried out so systematically and rapidly that the storming party, led
by the Fifth Wisconsin and the Sixth Maine Regiments, carried the
works in a few minutes. The Forty-ninth and One Hundred and Nineteenth
Pennsylvania were close after them, and the Fifth Maine and One
Hundred and Twenty-first New York at the same time carried the
rifle-pits on the right, while the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth New
York and the Twentieth Maine, which had been on picket duty, promptly
joined in the assault. This gallant affair was a complete success, and
General Wright remarked at the time that it was the first instance
during the war in which an important intrenched position had been
carried at the first assault. The National loss in killed and wounded
was three hundred and seventy-one men. The Confederate loss, killed,
wounded, and missing, was nearly seventeen hundred, including thirteen
hundred captured. The captures also included seven battle-flags,
twelve hundred stands of small arms, and four guns. When the
Confederate commander learned of the disaster, he burned his pontoon
bridge, and in the night fled back to Mount Roan, from which position
the next day he withdrew to his old camps south of the Rapidan. A
heavy fog on the 8th prevented the National commander from pursuing in
time to effect anything.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SAMUEL JONES, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM W. AVERELL.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL HENRY PRINCE.]
When the Army of Northern Virginia retired from the action at
Rappahannock Station to the south side of the Rapidan, it took up an
intrenched position stretching nearly twenty miles along the river,
from Barnett's Ford above the railroad crossing to Morton's Ford
below. The cavalry were thrown out to watch the fords above and below
this position. Lee then constructed a new intrenched line, nearly at
right angles with the main line, to protect his right flank. As soon
as the railroad was repaired, General Meade began another advance, and
after considering Lee's new position, determined to attack him by
crossing at the lower fords and moving against his right flank. He
planned to move three columns simultaneously, concentrating two of
them at Robertson's tavern, and then advance rapidly westward by the
turnpike and the plank road to strike Lee's right and overcome it
before it could be reinforced from the more distant wing. The orders
were issued for the movement to begin on the 24th of November, but a
heavy rainstorm delayed it two days. Everything was carefully
explained to the corps commanders, and all possible pains were taken
to make the different parts of the great machine move harmoniously.
The Third and Sixth Corps were to cross at Jacob's Ford and move to
Robertson's Tavern, through wood roads which were not known except
through inquiry. The ground to be moved over was a part of the
so-called Wilderness, which was made famous when Grant began his
overland campaign the next spring. The Second Corps, crossing at
Germanna Ford, was also to move to Robertson's Tavern. The First and
Fifth Corps were to cross at Culpeper Mine Ford, and move to the plank
road at Parker's Store, advancing thence to New Hope Church, where a
road comes in from Robertson's Tavern. Gregg's cavalry division was to
cross at Ely's Ford, covering the left flank, while the other
division, under Custer, was to guard the fords above, facing the main
line of the enemy. Merritt's cavalry was to protect the trains. Every
experienced soldier knows how difficult it is to bring about
simultaneous and concentric movements of large bodies of troops
separated by any considerable distance, and moving by different
routes. Any one of many contingencies may stop the progress of any
column or send it astray, and very few such plans have ever succeeded.
This one of General Meade's was devised with the utmost care, and
every possible provision against miscarriage seemed to have {336} been
made. Yet at the very outset, on the morning of the 26th, there was a
delay of two hours in crossing the river, because the Third Corps was
not up in time, and then there was a further serious loss of time
because the bridges for Jacob's Ford and Germanna Ford were found to
be a little too short, lacking only one pontoon each. The river banks
here on the south side are more than one hundred feet high, and very
steep, so that it was only with great labor that the wagons and the
guns could be taken up. The artillery of two corps had to be taken to
another ford than that by which the infantry of this corps crossed. It
happened, therefore, that when the day was spent the heads of the
column, instead of being at Robertson's Tavern, were only about three
miles from the river, while the tavern is six or seven miles from the
river by the road. These fords had all been watched by Confederate
cavalry, and the movements of the Army of the Potomac were by this
time well known at the Confederate headquarters. They had been
inferred still earlier when the Confederate signal men saw the troops
and trains moving in the morning. One thing, however, General Lee did
not know--whether it was Meade's intention to attack his army where it
was, or to move eastward toward Richmond and draw it out of its
intrenchments. In the night of the 26th Lee drew his army out of its
lines and put it in motion ready to act in accordance with either of
these movements of Meade, as the event might determine.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL MICHAEL CORCORAN.]
[Illustration: COLONEL HIRAM BERDAN.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN S. WILLIAMS, C. S. A.]
Thus affairs were in a state likely to produce exactly such a conflict
in the Wilderness as actually was produced when Grant crossed the
Rapidan in the spring of 1864, but there was this difference, that it
was Meade's intention to turn westward and attack Lee where he was,
while it was Grant's intention to move eastward, get out of the
Wilderness if possible, plant himself across Lee's communications, and
compel him to leave his intrenchments. In the afternoon of the 27th,
the leading division of the Fifth Corps, commanded by Gen. Alexander
Hays, came into collision with the leading division of Early's
Confederate corps, and drove back his skirmishers on the turnpike,
while Webb's division to the right, with Rodes's Confederate division
in its front, promptly deployed, and drove back his skirmishers toward
Raccoon Ford. The National troops in deploying possessed themselves of
a strong position, and the Confederate commanders were not willing to
attack until reinforced, but their reinforcements were delayed near
Bartlett's Mills by being fired upon by the Third Corps pickets, and
the expectation of an attack at that point. General French, commanding
the Third Corps, appears to have blundered as to the road he was to
take, and at the forks took the right hand instead of the left, which
not only threw his corps nearer the enemy, but prevented him from
appearing where he was expected at Robertson's Tavern at the same hour
when the Second Corps arrived there. He then blundered still further
by halting and sending word that he was waiting for the Fifth Corps,
when in fact the Fifth was waiting for him. By the time that orders
had passed back and forth explaining his error, the enemy had begun to
throw out a large infantry force upon his right flank. The plan of
action was then necessarily so far changed, as that General French was
ordered to attack the enemy in his front at once, which he did, the
divisions engaged being those of Carr, Prince, and Birney. The
heaviest fighting fell upon Carr's division, and there were charges
and countercharges, the lines swaying back and forth several times.
General Meade, unwilling to bring on a general engagement until he
could get his army together, had been holding the First and Fifth
Corps in their positions waiting for French's corps to join them, and
there was a little fighting in front of the Fifth when the enemy came
close to its lines. General Lee was quite as reluctant to attack in
force as was General Meade, and that night he drew back his army
within its intrenchments. A hard storm the next day delayed all
movements, and when, toward evening, Meade advanced to the eastern
bank of Mine Run, he found that the Confederate intrenchments on the
western bank were altogether too strong to justify an assault. Sending
the Fifth Corps, in the night of the 28th, to threaten the Confederate
right flank in the {337} morning, and turn it if possible, Meade
directed his other corps commanders to search for possible weak points
in the enemy's lines. One was found on the extreme Confederate left
and another near the centre, while the First and Fifth Corps
commanders reported that there was no weak spot whatever in their
front. A simultaneous assault on these points was arranged for the
morning of the 30th, to be covered, as usual, by a heavy artillery
fire. The guns opened promptly at the designated hour, and were as
promptly replied to by the Confederate artillery; but before the
assault began, General Warren sent word to General Meade that he found
the enemy had so strengthened the works on their right, as to make an
assault there hopeless. General Meade, therefore, gave orders to
suspend the attacks that were already begun at the other points, and
here the campaign virtually ended. There was no other possible
movement, except to march around the right of the Confederate
position, and for this it would have been necessary first to bring
over the trains which had been left on the north side of the river.
Further, the weather was very severe; some of the pickets had been
frozen to death, and the roads were rapidly becoming impassable.
General Meade, therefore, withdrew his army to the north side of the
Rapidan in the night of December 1st. In this unfortunate and
altogether unsatisfactory affair, Meade lost about a thousand men,
most of them in the Third Corps; the Confederate losses were reported
at about six hundred.
Early in the morning of January 3d, a strong Confederate cavalry force
made a dash upon Moorefield, W. Va., and after a contest of several
hours with the garrison, was driven off. The Confederates, however,
carried away sixty-five prisoners and some arms and horses.
In April a Confederate force of five hundred men descended the Kanawha
on flat-boats and attacked Point Pleasant, which was garrisoned by
fifty men under Captain Carter of the Thirteenth Virginia (National)
Regiment. A fight of four hours ensued, the garrison successfully
defending themselves in the court-house, and refusing to surrender
even when the Confederates threatened to burn the town. After the
assailants had lost about seventy men, and inflicted a loss on the
garrison of nearly a dozen, they withdrew, and their retreat was
hastened by some well-directed shots from a Government transport in
the river.
[Illustration: A FORAGING PARTY.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD HATCH.]
{338} [Illustration: BRIDGE BUILT BY UNITED STATES TROOPS, WHITESIDE,
TENN. (From a Government photograph taken during the war.)]
The most considerable engagement that resulted from an expedition
under General Jones was near Fairmount, where the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad crosses the Monongahela River. The defensive forces here
consisted of only three hundred men, while the Confederates numbered
several thousands. At their approach, a company of militia and armed
citizens went out on the hills to meet them, and made such good
preparations for disputing their passage by the turnpike, that a force
was sent around the slopes to drive them off, which was accomplished
after some fighting. As the Confederates approached the suspension
bridge, a part of the defensive force made a gallant stand, taking
shelter in a foundry and firing with great effect upon the Confederate
skirmishers and sharp-shooters. After a time, this little force fell
back, and the Confederates crossed by the suspension bridge and
advanced toward the railroad bridge. At the latter there was a similar
attack and defence, until the detachments that had crossed at the
suspension bridge came up in the rear of those who defended the
railroad bridge, and the little band was summoned to surrender. This,
however, they did not do until they were completely surrounded and
could fight no longer, when they raised a white flag and the firing
ceased. Hardly had this taken place, when a detachment of National
troops came up the railroad with two guns, and shelled the
Confederates on the west side of the river. The Confederates then set
about destroying the railroad bridge, which at that time was the
finest in the United States. It was of iron, supported on tubular
columns of cast iron, which rested on massive {339} stone piers, and
had cost about half a million dollars. They poured powder by the
kegful into the hollow iron column and exploded it, blowing the whole
structure into the river. They had lost in the fight nearly a hundred
men, while the National loss was but half a dozen. After robbing every
store in the town, and destroying much private property, including the
law and private libraries of Governor Pierpont, which they carried
into the street and burned, the Confederates departed.
On the 13th of July a cavalry expedition of two regiments, commanded
by Col. John Toland, set out to cut the railroad at Wytheville, Va.
They crossed Lens Mountain, reached Coal River, and moved along that
stream toward Raleigh Court House, where they began to meet with
resistance. They then ascended the Guyan Mountain, and descended on
the other side into an almost unknown valley, where, writes one of the
officers, "The few inhabitants obtained a livelihood largely by
digging ginseng and other roots. They live in huts that the Esquimaux
would scorn to be invited into. Long, dirty, tobacco-dried,
sallow-complexioned women stare at you as you pass. Ask them a
question, they answer you, giving what information they possess, but
it is so little as to render you no assistance. Here stands a small,
dirty tavern, with two or three half-starved old men gazing upon the
Yankees as they march by." The expedition crossed the Tug Mountains,
and descended to Abb's Valley. Here they captured a small Confederate
camp with thirty-six men. The writer just quoted says of Abb's Valley:
"The scenery beggars description for beauty. As far as the eye can
reach, stretch hills and vales in every direction. The country is
rich, owned principally by wealthy citizens who were very influential
in bringing about the rebellion, living in luxury and ease. They
little dreamed that they, living in so remote a place, should be made
to feel the weight of the hand of war." The expedition then marched to
Clinch River, and crossed Rich Mountain. "The people had heard much
and seen little of Yankee soldiers, and the white population looked
upon us with fear, ready to give all when attacked. On the other hand,
the negroes assembled in groups, threw themselves in every conceivable
form, jumping, singing, dancing, yelling, and giving signs that the
year of jubilee had come. The white men fled as we approached, leaving
their homes at our mercy, which were not molested, except those that
had been used in some way to benefit the rebel army; in such cases,
they were always destroyed." The next march was across Garden
Mountain, Rich Valley, and Walker's Mountain, to the vicinity of
Wytheville. Here the Confederate pickets were encountered, and
skirmishing began. When the whole body of the expedition charged upon
the town, they found the Confederates not in line of battle, but in
buildings commanding the principal streets, from which they opened
fire upon the advancing column. This firing from the houses was
participated in by citizens, and also to some extent by women, and was
very effective. The three companies that first rode into the town
discovered two pieces of artillery in position, and made a dash and
captured them. Colonel Toland hurried up with the remainder of his
force, and, finding that the enemy could not otherwise be dislodged
from the buildings, gave orders to burn the town. The officers were
the special mark of the sharp-shooters, and in ten minutes the colonel
fell dead, when the command devolved upon Colonel Powell, who also was
struck and had to be carried off, seriously wounded. Reinforcements
were sent to the Confederates from various points, but before they
arrived the town was laid in ashes, and the expedition fell back,
burning a bridge behind them. They then slowly retraced their line of
march, with occasional skirmishes on the way, but finding their chief
hardships in the lack of food and the exhaustion of the horses. "We
ascended Blue Stone Mountain by file. The road was very steep, and ere
we reached the top twenty-three horses lay stretched across the road,
having fallen from exhaustion. The descent was terrible, cliffs ten to
thirty-one feet, down which the smooth-footed horse would slip with
scarce life enough to arrest his progress, except it be stopped by
contact with a tree or some other obstacle." They at length reached
Raleigh, N. C., where provisions were forwarded to them from
Fayetteville. They had been absent eleven days, and had ridden about
five hundred miles. Their loss was eighty-five men and three hundred
horses.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL W. H. FRENCH.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD FERRERO.]
An invasion of Kentucky by the Confederate General Pegram, with about
two thousand six hundred men, in March, came to a sudden end at
Somerset, in the central part of the State. General Gillmore, with
twelve hundred mounted men, set out from that town to attack him, and
found him in a strong position at Dutton's Hill, twelve miles from
Somerset. Gillmore drew up in line of battle, placed his guns in the
centre, and, in an artillery fight of an hour and a half, dismounted
three of the enemy's pieces. He then ordered his wings to advance,
which they did in the face of a brisk fire. But, disregarding this,
they pressed on up the hill rapidly until the enemy broke and fled. A
body of Confederate cavalry, led by Scott and Ashby, were then
detected in a flank movement. This was promptly met, and, after a
short conflict, sixty of them were made prisoners and the remainder
were put to flight. Three miles from Somerset the Confederates made a
stand, but here again they were routed, and {340} in the night they
crossed the river, where it was said many of them were drowned. The
Confederate loss was nearly a hundred killed or wounded, besides many
prisoners. Gillmore's loss was about forty. They placed a battery on
the river bank in the morning, but Gillmore's artillery soon knocked
it to pieces, and in another dash four hundred cattle that they had
taken were recaptured. His men captured the flags of a Louisiana and a
Tennessee cavalry regiment. A participant wrote: "Wolford himself
pursued the rebel leader, Colonel Scott, so closely that when within
thirty paces of him, with levelled pistol he called upon him to die or
surrender. At the moment, Wolford's horse was shot, and Scott escaped.
When McIntire arrived, cheering his men forward on foot, the rebels
broke in confusion and fled. Wolford halted for ammunition, but
McIntire, with seventy-two men yelling like a thousand, followed
across an open field and into the woods, and here began the most
extraordinary flight and pursuit, I venture to assert, that has been
recorded during the war. The rebel panic increased with every rod
passed over in their terrific flight over hill and valley, brook and
rock, tangled brush and fallen timber. Any one to review the field
to-day would pronounce such a race over such ground impossible. At the
base of a precipitous hill, and embarrassed by the contracting valley,
high fences, and a complication of lanes, the rebels were evidently
about to turn at bay in very desperation, when additional
reinforcements, under Colonel Sanders, appeared dashing along at their
left. This completed their consternation, and they again broke, every
man for himself."
Early in January Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut, commanding the district of
Tennessee, issued a proclamation at Memphis, in which he warned the
resident sympathizers with the Confederate cause that they must expect
to suffer if the guerilla operations, which had become very frequent
and annoying in that State, were continued. He alluded especially to
the threat to tear up the railroads, and declared that for every such
raid he would select ten families from the wealthiest and most noted
secessionists in Memphis and send them South.
A detachment of Confederates, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Dawson,
made a raid into Tennessee in January, and busied themselves
especially in burning all the cotton they could find. But on the 8th a
detachment of the Twentieth Illinois cavalry, under Captain Moore,
surprised Dawson's camp, near Ripley, at sunrise, and, without losing
a man, killed eight of the Confederates, wounded twenty, and captured
forty-six, while the remainder escaped.
On the last day of January a scouting party of National cavalry,
setting out from Nashville, came unexpectedly upon a portion of
Wheeler's cavalry at the little village of Rover, and immediately
attacked them. A hand-to-hand sabre fight ensued, which resulted in
the complete defeat of the Confederates, who had thus been taken
unawares. About twenty-five of them were disabled, and three hundred
made prisoners.
Fort Donelson, which Grant's army had captured in February, 1862, was
now held by six hundred men under Col. A. C. Harding, and on February
3, 1863, was attacked by a force of five thousand under Generals
Wheeler and Forrest. At the approach of the enemy Harding sent out his
cavalry to reconnoitre, but they were all captured. At the same time
his telegraph lines were cut, and he sent out mounted messengers to
bring up a gunboat that was down the river. He had hardly placed his
little command in position for defence, when the Confederates sent in
a flag of truce and demanded a surrender, which he declined. The enemy
then opened upon him with eight guns, and he replied steadily with
five, called in his skirmishers, and strengthened his line as much as
possible. The fight continued from noon till evening, when surrender
was again demanded and again refused. The Confederates now made
arrangements for an assault, and Harding placed his men in the
rifle-pits with fixed bayonets to await the onset. A distant gun told
him that help was coming, and very soon the black hull of the
_Lexington_ was seen moving up the river. The garrison began to cheer,
and when her shells were sent over their heads and fell among the
enemy, the siege was raised at once and the Confederates quickly fled
away. In a charge made at the moment when they broke, Harding took
some prisoners. He had lost about seventy-five men, killed or wounded,
and the Confederates over four hundred.
Learning that a Confederate cavalry force was foraging, plundering,
and conscripting, near Bradyville, twelve miles from Murfreesboro',
General Stanley set out (March 1st) with sixteen hundred men in search
of it. He found it strongly posted near the village, and at once
attacked and drove it through the town. The Confederates took up a new
position half a mile distant, where a ledge of rocks gave them good
shelter. Stanley then sent a squadron around their left flank, and
another to their right, while he made a show of attacking in front.
The Confederates stood their ground until they found themselves
subjected to two enfilading fires, when they at once gave way, and
Stanley's men rode in among them and used their sabres and pistols.
They were pursued three miles and completely disorganized. About
thirty of them were disabled, and a hundred taken prisoners.
Three days later a similar expedition, under Col. John Coburn, set out
from Franklin in search of a similar party of Confederates. They found
them near Thompson's Station, and were attacked by riflemen hidden
behind a stone wall near the depot. A few minutes later two batteries
opened upon them, and the enemy advanced in line of battle. Coburn's
infantry stood their ground bravely, but his artillery was badly
managed, and his cavalry retired instead of advancing. When his
ammunition failed, at the end of three hours, Coburn was obliged to
surrender with such of his forces as had not escaped. He lost four
hundred men, killed or wounded, and about twelve hundred captured.
About six hundred of the Confederates were disabled.
Still another of these expeditions left Murfreesboro', March 18, in
search of marauding bands of Confederates. It was commanded by Col.
A. S. Hall. At Statesville he encountered and quickly defeated a small
body of Confederate cavalry. At Auburn he discovered that a
Confederate force, superior to his own, was moving up to attack him,
whereupon he drew back to Vaught's Hill, near Milton, and formed his
line. One of his two guns began the fight by throwing shells over the
little village and into the advance guard of the enemy. The
Confederates, consisting of eleven regiments, commanded by Generals
Wheeler and Morgan, promptly attacked along the whole line. Hall's
guns were advantageously placed, and raked the lines of the enemy as
they advanced, while his infantry were very skilfully managed, and
held their ground against determined attacks on both flanks. A
detachment of cavalry which had passed around the right flank, and was
attempting to get into the rear, was met by such a deadly fire that it
immediately withdrew in confusion. The Confederates, enraged at the
execution of one of Hall's guns, concentrated a large force and made a
desperate rush for its capture. Hall's men allowed them to come within
forty yards, and then opened upon them with a fire of musketry so
destructive that they soon {341} broke and fled in confusion. The
assailants now drew off and contented themselves with cannonading at a
distance, which was kept up until one of Hall's skilfully managed guns
sent a shot which dismounted one of theirs, and then they withdrew
altogether. The Confederate loss in this action was about four
hundred, killed or wounded; the National loss was about forty.
Again, in April, General Stanley set out with a brigade of infantry
and two thousand cavalry to attack Morgan's and Wharton's Confederate
force at Snow Hill. After some preliminary skirmishes and desultory
fighting two regiments of Stanley's cavalry succeeded in getting into
the rear of the enemy, when they broke and fled, losing more than a
hundred men disabled or captured.
The Confederate General Van Dorn, who had been for some time
threatening to attack the garrison of Franklin, commanded by Gen.
Gordon Granger, appeared before the town on the 10th of April, with a
heavy force, and drove in the outposts. He then formed a strong
skirmish line, and behind this a line of battle ready for an immediate
charge. Granger's advance troops, consisting of the Fortieth Ohio
Regiment, commanded by Capt. Charles G. Matchett, were quickly placed
in a critical position, having both flanks menaced at the same time
that the enemy was advancing in front. Captain Matchett gave the order
to fall back at a double quick, and was, as he expected to be,
followed closely by the enemy's mounted skirmishers. Suddenly he
halted his regiment, faced them about, and gave the pursuers a volley
that drove them back from their main line, when he continued his
retreat. This manoeuvre was repeated several times in admirable style,
the front company each time retiring on the double quick to the rear
of the other companies, when they faced about and delivered their
fire. In this manner they reached the town, took advantage of the
houses and other defences, and checked any further pursuit. The
Confederates now opened fire with their batteries, which was replied
to by the siege guns in the fortifications, and by field batteries,
which drove them off. Meanwhile, a force under General Stanley had
moved out and struck the flank of the Confederates, capturing six guns
and two hundred prisoners. The National loss was about one hundred
men; the Confederate loss is unknown.
On the 7th of September a Confederate force of four regiments, which
had fortified Cumberland Gap and occupied it nearly a year,
surrendered to a National force under General Shackleford without
firing a gun.
General Shackleford, undertaking to drive the various bands of
Confederates out of East Tennessee, in September, found one near
Bristol, fought it, pursued it, and fought it again, until it made a
decided stand at Blountville, September 22. Here he opened fire upon
them, and the fight lasted from one o'clock till dusk, when the
Confederates were defeated, and fled, closely pursued by Colonel
Carter's command. They were ultimately dispersed, some of them taking
to the mountains, and the others returning to their homes.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL POWELL CLAYTON.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL THOMAS M. SCOTT, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES P. FAGAN, C. S. A.]
The position of General Burnside was peculiar, and probably was more
influenced by a feeling of personal regard than that of any other
commander on the National side. His enthusiastic loyalty, his bravery,
his hearty and manly conduct among his fellow patriots, and his
personal modesty were all perfectly evident. His capacity for a large
independent command was at least doubtful. Early in the war he had led
a successful expedition through many dangers of wind and wave on the
coast of North Carolina. Later he had made two notable failures--as a
corps commander at Antietam, and as commander of the army at
Fredericksburg. But he had never aspired to the chief command, which
really was thrust upon him, and he so frankly assumed the
responsibility and blame for his errors, that the feeling toward him
was much the same as that in the South toward Lee after his disastrous
failure at Gettysburg. Although he was not retained in command of the
Army of the Potomac, he was, in March, 1863, given command of the
Department of the Ohio, and his old corps, the Ninth, was sent to him
with the intention of having him go through eastern Kentucky and
Tennessee, and relieve the Union people there from the {342}
Confederate oppression and outrages that they were suffering. This
plan was delayed by the necessity of sending his corps to reinforce
Grant at Vicksburg, and Burnside was practically idle through the
summer. But late in August, with twenty thousand men, he set out from
Richmond, Ky., and moved southward into East Tennessee, where he met
with a most enthusiastic reception from the inhabitants. The stars and
stripes, which had been hidden away during the presence of Confederate
forces, were now waving from nearly every house, and supplies of all
kinds were freely brought to his forces. His coming, however, was not
the only reason for the withdrawal of the various Confederate bands
that had infested that region; these were being united to Bragg's army
to strengthen it for his contemplated movement on Chattanooga.
Meanwhile, Longstreet, with his corps, had been detached from Lee's
army and sent to Bragg's, and had played an important part, as we have
seen, in the battle of Chickamauga. Various detachments of Burnside's
forces had encountered the enemy, and some of these actions have
already been described in this chapter.
The next important movement made by the Confederates was designed to
destroy Burnside's force, or drive it out of East Tennessee. That
mountainous region, with its sturdily loyal people, lying between the
disloyal portions of Virginia and North Carolina on the one hand, and
those of Tennessee on the other, was a constant source of discomfort
to the Confederate Government, and would evidently be a standing
menace to the Confederacy should its independence ever be established.
Hence their anxiety to clear it of Union sentiment, by whatever means.
About twenty thousand men, under the command of General Longstreet,
were detached from Bragg's army and sent out upon this errand.
Burnside had scattered his own forces pretty widely, and some of his
detachments were obliged to fight the enemy at various points before
they were all concentrated again. One of these actions was at the
village of Philadelphia, where two thousand men, under Col. F. T.
Wolford, were attacked by three times their number of Confederates,
and, after a gallant resistance, escaped with the loss of their
artillery and wagons, and managed to carry away half a hundred
prisoners. Reinforcements coming up, the train was recaptured and the
enemy driven in turn. About a hundred men were killed or wounded on
each side. Longstreet's general plan and purpose being now evident,
Burnside began the concentration of his forces, and, being joined by
his Ninth Corps again, had about the same number of men as Longstreet.
He chose an advantageous position at Campbell's Station, a dozen miles
southwest of Knoxville, and gave battle. He had no difficulty in
holding his own against the enemy, although their line was more
extended than his, for his artillery was in place while theirs had not
yet come up. But when, late in the day, they brought their guns to the
front, he was obliged to fall back to another strong position, which
he held until his trains were safely under way, and in the night fell
back still farther to the defences of Knoxville. In the action at
Campbell's Station he had lost about three hundred men; the
Confederate loss is unknown. Longstreet followed him slowly, and on
the 17th of November sat down before the city. The place was strongly
fortified, and although the Confederates by a quick assault carried a
position on the right of Burnside's line, they did not materially
impair his defences. In this affair Burnside lost about a hundred men,
including Brig.-Gen. William P. Sanders killed. Longstreet's men
skirmished and bombarded for ten days, at the end of which time,
having been reinforced, he determined upon the experiment of a heavy
assault. On the 28th of November he hurled three of his best brigades
against an unfinished portion of the works on Burnside's left, where
Gen. Edward Ferrero was in command. The assault was gallantly
delivered, but was quite as gallantly met, and proved a failure,
Longstreet losing about eight hundred men, including two colonels
killed, while the defenders of the works lost but one hundred. A few
days later Grant, having thoroughly defeated Bragg at Chattanooga,
sent a force under Sherman to the relief of Knoxville, and Longstreet
was obliged to abandon the siege, and returned to Virginia.
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL CHRISTOPHER CARSON. (Kit
Carson.)]
When, in June, it was learned that a Confederate force was about to
make a raid upon the railroad in Northern Mississippi and destroy the
bridges, Lieutenant-Colonel Phillips, of the Ninth Illinois Cavalry,
was sent out to meet them with his own regiment and parts of the Fifth
Ohio and Eighteenth Missouri. At Rocky Crossing, on the Tallahatchie,
he encountered a Confederate force of two thousand men, infantry,
cavalry, and artillery, under General Ruggles, and, although he had
but six hundred men and no guns, he at once gave battle, and his men
fought so spiritedly and skilfully that they drove off the enemy,
inflicting a loss of one hundred and thirty-five in killed and
wounded, and captured thirty prisoners, themselves losing about
thirty-five men.
On the 16th of July, Jackson, capital of Mississippi, which had been
besieged by Sherman's forces since the fall of Vicksburg, was
evacuated by Johnston, who quietly moved away to the eastward, and the
National troops took possession of the town. During the investment
there had been no serious fighting, except on the 12th, when General
Lauman's division, on Sherman's extreme right, attempted to make an
advance and was repelled with heavy loss.
On the same day when Jackson was evacuated, Col. Cyrus Bussey,
Sherman's chief of cavalry, was sent out with a thousand horsemen and
a brigade of infantry to attack Jackson's cavalry, which was known to
be near Canton. The enemy was discovered within two miles of that
place, on the west side of Bear Creek, in a position to receive
battle. Colonel Bussey immediately deployed his forces and attacked.
The Confederates made several attempts to get by his flank and capture
his train, {343} but all were thwarted, and, after a somewhat stubborn
fight, the whole body of Confederates was driven back through the
woods and crossed the creek, destroying the bridge behind them. The
next day Bussey moved into the town, and destroyed the forges and
machinery that had long been employed in furnishing the Confederates
with war materials. He also burned the railroad buildings, with all
their contents, thirteen large machine shops, fifty cars, and other
property. The retiring force of Confederates had already burned the
depot and six hundred bales of cotton. Before the expedition returned
it destroyed about forty miles of the railroad that was used by the
Confederates for bringing supplies from the west.
On the 13th of October a National cavalry force, commanded by Colonel
Hatch, consisting of twenty-five hundred men with eight guns, appeared
before the town of Wyatt's, on the Tallahatchie, which was fortified
and held by a strong Confederate force. The Confederates began in the
afternoon with an attack on the National left, which was not
successful. They then massed their forces and made a desperate attempt
to break the centre, but were again foiled. Colonel Hatch slowly
advanced his line, keeping up a wary fight until evening, when the
Confederates retired under cover of darkness and crossed the river.
Colonel Hatch lost about forty men and captured seventy-five
prisoners, the Confederate loss in killed and wounded being unknown.
* * * * *
Arkansas was still the scene of occasional fighting, though always on
a small scale. It furnished supplies to the Confederacy, and was in
some respects a tempting field for foraging. Early in February a
detachment of cavalry, commanded by Col. George E. Waring, Jr., made a
raid in Arkansas and rode suddenly into the town of Batesville,
attacked the Confederate force there, defeated it, and drove it out of
the town. The Confederates fled in such haste that those who could not
crowd into the boats swam the river. Colonel Waring then remounted his
men with horses from the surrounding country.
On the 15th of the same month there was a fight at Arkadelphia between
a small party of National troops and one of Confederates, in which
about twenty men were disabled on each side.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM DWIGHT COMMANDING AT THE
BATTLE OF VERMILION BAYOU, LA. (From an original drawing by James E.
Taylor.)]
On the 18th of April a Confederate force of cavalry, with a section of
artillery and a considerable number of guerillas, made a night march
from the Boston Mountains and attacked the {344} National force at
Fayetteville, Ark., commanded by Col. M. L. Harrison of the First
Arkansas cavalry. They charged up a deep ravine and made a desperate
attempt to capture Colonel Harrison's headquarters; but he had had
some intimation of their coming, and had promptly thrown his men into
line for defence, so that every charge was gallantly repelled. The
Confederates then tried an artillery fire without doing much damage,
and finally a desperate cavalry charge upon Harrison's right wing,
which was met by a most destructive fire that caused them to recoil
and then to retreat in disorder to the woods. Harrison then sent out
two companies, which went within rifle-range of the enemy's artillery
and compelled them to withdraw their battery. Their wings were soon
broken, but their centre still made a stubborn fight, until about noon
that too gave way, and the whole force retreated. Harrison's loss was
thirty-five men. That of the enemy was unknown, except that about
sixty were captured and a considerable number were left dead or
wounded on the field.
Helena, Ark., on the Mississippi, one hundred and fifty miles above
Vicksburg, was held by a National force, under Gen. B. M. Prentiss,
when on the 4th of July it was attacked by about nine thousand
Confederates, under command of Generals Price and Holmes. Learning of
their coming, General Prentiss drew his entire force within the
fortifications. By a sudden rush, a detachment of the Confederates
captured a battery, drove some of the infantry out of the rifle-pits,
and were advancing into the town. But a portion of Prentiss's force
was boldly pushed forward to check them, and those in possession of
the battery were soon subjected to so severe a fire that they were
glad to surrender. The Confederates had now planted guns upon
commanding positions, with which they opened fire upon the works, but
at the same time the gunboat _Tyler_ had moved up to the scene and
soon began sending its broadsides along the slopes and through the
ravines that they occupied. Their batteries were ultimately silenced
by this fire, and their infantry lost heavily. A heavy fog settling
down caused a cessation of the engagement for some time, and when it
lifted the fighting was resumed, the Confederates making desperate
assaults upon the works and subjecting themselves to the terrible fire
of the heavy guns. After several hours of this reckless work, they
were drawn off, leaving their dead and wounded on the field and many
prisoners. Prentiss's loss was two hundred and thirty; that of the
Confederates, nearly two thousand, including the numerous prisoners.
An incident is told that illustrates the character of the fighting.
One assaulting column was led by a lieutenant-colonel who preceded his
men, and was standing on a log waving his sword and yelling wildly,
when the captain of the battery called out to him, "What do you keep
swinging that sword for? why don't you surrender?" "By what authority
do you demand my surrender?" said the Confederate officer. "By
authority of my twelve-pound howitzer," replied the captain. The
Confederate looked about him, saw that his command had melted away,
and then held out his sword saying, "Very well, sir, I surrender."
On the 1st day of September there was a fight at a place called
Devil's Backbone, sixteen miles from Fort Smith, between a portion of
General Blunt's forces, under Colonel Cloud, and a Confederate force
under Colonel Cabell, in which the latter was defeated and routed with
a loss of about sixty men, the National loss being fourteen. This was
an incident of the advance of General Blunt to Fort Smith, which place
he occupied on the 10th. It had been in the possession of the
Confederates since the beginning of the war.
The garrison at Pine Bluff, Ark., commanded by Col. Powell Clayton,
was attacked on the 25th of October by a Confederate force under
General Marmaduke. The Confederate skirmishers came forward with a
flag of truce, met Lieutenant Clark of the Fifth Kansas cavalry
outside of the town, and demanded a surrender. Clark replied, "Colonel
Clayton never surrenders, but is always anxious for you to come and
take him; and you must get to your command immediately, or I will
order my men to fire on you." Clayton sent out skirmishers to delay
the advance of the enemy, and then set three hundred negroes at work
rolling out cotton bales and barricading the streets, while he placed
nine guns in position to command every approach to the square. His
sharp-shooters were posted in the houses, and he then set the negroes
at work bringing water from the river and filling all the barrels they
could find, so that, if necessary, he might sustain a siege. The enemy
opened upon him with twelve guns, and in the course of two hours
succeeded in setting fire to several buildings, some of which were
destroyed before the flames were extinguished by the work of the
negroes. Meanwhile, Clayton's sharp-shooters had fired at every
Confederate that came within range, and succeeded in killing or
wounding about one hundred and thirty of them. Finding that he could
not set fire to the town, and could not assault the barricades without
heavy loss, Marmaduke retired from the field. Whereupon Clayton sent
out a pursuing force and captured some prisoners. Thirty-nine of
Clayton's men and seventeen of the negroes were killed or wounded.
Missouri, a slave State almost surrounded by free territory, was still
a ground of contention for small armed bands, although it had long
since become evident that it could not be taken out of the Union.
The garrison at Springfield, commanded by Gen. E. B. Brown, was
attacked by about five thousand men, under Marmaduke on the 8th of
January. Outposts at Lawrence Mills and Ozark were driven in by the
advancing enemy, while General Brown called in small reinforcements
from various stations and made hasty preparation to defend the place.
The convalescents in the hospitals were brought out and armed, and
three guns were made ready in the night. The Confederates advanced
slowly across the prairie, coming up in line of battle with three
pieces of artillery and cavalry on the wings. General Brown ordered
the burning of several houses south of the fort, to prevent their use
by the enemy, and opened with his guns as soon as the Confederates
came within range. Within an hour there was brisk fighting all along
the line, with several charges and counter-charges, in one of which
the Confederates captured a gun after a desperate fight. At the same
time a detachment of them took possession of an unfinished stockade.
The Confederates massed against the centre and the right wing
successively, and gained possession of several houses, from one of
which a sharp-shooter shot General Brown, wounding him so that he was
carried from the field, when the command devolved upon Colonel Crabb.
The fighting was kept up steadily with varying fortune, but with no
decisive result, till dark, when the Confederates withdrew. The
National loss in this action was one hundred and sixty-two men; the
Confederate loss is unknown.
Three days later Marmaduke came into collision at Hartsville with a
force of eight hundred men, commanded by Colonel Merrill, which was on
the march for Springfield. Early in the morning Merrill learned of the
approach of the Confederates, and threw his little command into line
of battle. The Confederates came up and fought them for an hour, and
then unaccountably {345} fell back. Finding that they were moving on
Hartsville by another road, Merrill moved to intercept them, and took
another position close to the town. Here he was attacked about noon,
first with artillery, and then in a cavalry charge. His infantry lay
flat upon the ground until the Confederate horsemen were within easy
range, when they rose and fired with such accuracy as to throw them
all into confusion. For three hours the Confederates continued to
attack in small bodies at a time, every one of which was repelled. In
the afternoon, they slowly gave up the attempt and fell back, and at
night they disappeared. Merrill lost about seventy-five men; the
Confederates nearly three hundred. The credit of the victory was given
largely to the artillery, which was served with great skill.
One of the most horrible occurrences of the war was the sacking and
burning of Lawrence, Kan., on the 21st of August, by the notorious
band of Confederate guerillas led by Quantrell. They rode suddenly
into the town, shooting right and left, indiscriminately, at whatever
citizens they happened to meet, and then, spreading through the place,
began systematic plunder. Where they could not get the keys of safes,
they blew them open with powder. They took possession of the hotels
and robbed the guests of everything valuable, even their finger-rings.
Unarmed people, who gave up their money and surrendered, were in
numerous instances wantonly shot. The guerillas appeared to have a
special animosity against Germans and negroes, and murdered all of
these that they could find. The only soldiers there were twenty-two
men at a recruiting station, and eighteen of these were shot. After
thoroughly sacking the town, the guerillas set many buildings on fire,
and a large portion of it was destroyed. It was estimated that their
plunder included about three hundred thousand dollars in cash.
The first action of the year in Louisiana was by a combined naval and
land force, under Gen. Godfrey Weitzel and Commander McKean Buchanan,
against the obstructions in Bayou Teche. It was found that the
Confederates had a steam vessel of war, called the _J. A. Cotton_,
there, that they had erected many batteries, and that they were now
collecting forces above Donaldsonville. General Weitzel set out, with
five regiments and three batteries, on the 11th of January, with the
gunboats _Calhoun_, _Diana_, _Kinsman_, and _Estrella_, the cavalry
and artillery going by land. They proceeded up the Atchafalaya, and on
the 14th found the enemy. The gunboats steamed up to a point near the
batteries and opened fire upon them, and received a fire in return,
but without any special effect. Here a torpedo exploded under the
_Kinsman_ and lifted her violently out of water, yet without doing
serious damage. Commander Buchanan then steamed ahead in his flagship,
the _Diana_, when he was subjected to a fire from rifle-pits, and he
was the first to fall, shot through the head. At this point the bayou
was very narrow, so that the longest of the gunboats could hardly turn
around in the channel. Meanwhile, the land forces had been put ashore
on the side of the river where the batteries were located, and while
one regiment gained the rear of the rifle-pits and drove out the
Confederates, taking about forty prisoners, the three batteries passed
around a piece of forest and took an advantageous position, from which
they opened fire upon the steamer _Cotton_. This craft made a vain
effort to fight these batteries, and was raked from stem to stern. She
finally retired up the bayou and gave it up, and the next morning she
floated down stream in flames. The expedition before returning
captured a large number of cattle, but the obstructions to navigation
of the bayou were not removed.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT W. T. CLARK. (Afterward Brigadier-General.)]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAMES CRAIG.]
{346} [Illustration: THE BATTLE OF INDIAN BEND, LA.]
When Banks marched out to invest Port Hudson, a portion of his forces,
under Gen. Godfrey Weitzel, made a long detour to the west from New
Orleans and thence northward. At Franklin, on the Atchafalaya, a
strong force of the enemy was found, and Weitzel at once attacked it,
April 12th. There was spirited fighting with both infantry and
artillery through the day, but with no decisive result, and at night
the Confederates retreated toward Irish Bend. Here they met Grover's
division, which had been sent there to cut off their retreat, and on
the 14th there was another battle. The Twenty-fifth Connecticut
Regiment, thrown out as a skirmish line, advanced to the edge of the
woods, when they were met with a sharp musketry fire, and also came
within range of the Confederate battery and the Confederate gunboat
_Diana_. It was the first time that this regiment had been under fire,
but the men stood to the work like veterans, and very soon a brigade,
under Gen. Henry W. Birge, came to their support. Two guns were
brought up, which answered the artillery fire of the enemy; but still
the advance troops were suffering from a cross-fire, which was
increased by the appearance of two Confederate {347} regiments on the
right flank. One regiment was moved to the left, and advanced rapidly
upon the battery, firing as it went, when the guns were soon whirled
away to save them from capture. This regiment did capture the
battery's flag, and was just resting in supposed victory, when another
Confederate force came upon its flank, and it was hastily withdrawn. A
second brigade was now sent to the assistance of the first, and the
whole made a grand charge, before which the Confederates fled in
disorder; and when a third brigade came up and threatened the capture
of the gunboat _Diana_, her crew abandoned her and blew her up. Sixty
prisoners were taken, and some artillery horses and many small arms.
Out of three hundred and fifty men of the Twenty-fifth Connecticut
Regiment, which took the leading part in this action, eighty-six were
killed or wounded, and ten were missing. The Thirteenth Connecticut
lost seven killed and forty-six wounded. Many instances of peculiar
valor in this small but destructive battle are recorded. Of Lieut.
Daniel P. Dewey, who was killed at the point where the hostile lines
came nearest together, the adjutant wrote: "I saw him then, and the
sight I shall never forget--waving his sword above his head, calling
to his men, 'Remember you are Company A,' his whole bearing so brave
and heroic that it seemed almost impossible for any enemy to avoid
marking him. Standing unmoved in a rain of bullets, he had a word of
encouragement for every man near him, kindly greeting for a friend,
and even a merry quotation from a favorite song to fling after a shell
that went shrieking by. So I last saw him, so I shall always remember
him." Lieutenant Dewey had left his studies in Trinity College,
Hartford, to enlist.
At Vermilion Bayou there were several slight actions, the most
considerable of which took place October 10th. The Confederates being
discovered here to the number of six or seven thousand, together with
two batteries and a cavalry force, the Nineteenth Corps advanced to
take them. After cavalry skirmishing a line of battle was formed, and
the Confederates were driven across the bayou. Three batteries of
rifled guns were then brought up, and they were diligently shelled
wherever there was any appearance of them on the shore or in the
woods. The cavalry found a ford, and the infantry improvised a pontoon
bridge, which was partly supported by the burned portions of the
bridge that the enemy had used. The whole force then crossed the
bayou, but was not able to overtake the flying Confederates. A report
says: "The conduct of all concerned in this affair was excellent, and
the most conspicuous of all was the gallant General Weitzel on his
war-horse, riding boldly to the front, whither he had forbidden any
other going on horseback. His appearance inspired the troops with the
wildest enthusiasm, and the firing, which was warm and rapid before,
seemed to redouble as he rode along the line."
[Illustration: COLONEL H. G. GIBSON.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL S. J. CRAWFORD.]
[Illustration: AN ENCOUNTER BETWEEN A UNION AND A CONFEDERATE
SOLDIER.]
In April, another expedition, commanded by Col. O. P. Gooding,
consisting of one brigade, marched against the Confederate works on
the Bayou Teche. As soon as they arrived in sight of {348} the
batteries, on the 13th, they were met by an artillery fire, which they
returned at the same time that a large part of the infantry crossed
the bayou and gained a position partly in the rear. Here they were met
by a heavy skirmish line, which they gradually drove back into the
works. A portion of the intrenchments were then carried by assault,
when darkness put an end to the fight. In the morning it was found
that the enemy had fled. One hundred and thirty of them had been made
prisoners. Colonel Gooding's loss was seventy-two men, killed or
wounded. One of the many instances of personal daring and skill that
occurred in this great war is specially mentioned in the colonel's
report. In the course of the fight Private Patrick Smith, of the
Thirty-eighth Massachusetts Regiment, came suddenly upon three
Confederate soldiers in the woods. He shot one, and compelled the
other two to surrender, and brought them in as prisoners.
Galveston, Tex., had been occupied by National forces, and its harbor
closed to blockade-running, in October, 1862. On the first day of
January, 1863, a strong Confederate force, under Gen. John B.
Magruder, attacked the fleet and the garrison, and succeeded in
retaking the town and raising the blockade. The naval force there
consisted of six gunboats, under Commander W. B. Renshaw. Three
Confederate steamers were discovered in the bay by the bright
moonlight of the preceding night, and very early in the morning they
came down to attack the gunboats, while at the same time the land
force attacked the garrison. The gunboat _Harriet Lane_ was set upon
by two Confederate steamers, which were barricaded with cotton bales,
and carried rifled guns, besides a large number of sharp-shooters on
the decks. The _Harriet Lane_ made a gallant fight, and was rammed by
one of the steamers, which so injured itself in the collision that it
ran for the shore and sank. The other steamer then ran into the
_Harriet Lane_, made fast to her, sent volleys of musketry across her
deck, and boarded her. She was quickly captured; but her commander,
J. M. Wainwright, refused to surrender, and defended himself with his
revolver until he was killed. The first lieutenant and five of the
crew also fell. The _Owasco_, going to the assistance of the _Harriet
Lane_, got aground several times, and finally, seeing that the guns of
the _Harriet Lane_ were turned upon her, drew off, but continued the
engagement with the enemy on shore. The other gunboats had a similar
ill-fortune, and when some of them finally arrived within range of the
_Harriet Lane_ they were prevented from firing upon her by the fact
that the Confederates exposed her captured crew on deck. Flags of
truce, demanding surrender, were now sent in by the Confederates, who
used the opportunity while operations were thus suspended to capture
the garrison on shore, and get artillery into position to fire upon
the gunboats. Commander Renshaw declined to surrender, and ordered his
executive officer to blow up the _Westfield_, in case she could not be
got afloat. Arrangements for this were made, and the explosion took
place prematurely, killing Commander Renshaw, two other officers, and
a dozen of the crew. The remaining gunboats escaped and abandoned the
blockade. General Magruder then issued a proclamation declaring the
port opened to commerce.
The minor events of the third year included a few naval affairs of
some importance in their way. On the 14th of January guerillas
captured the steamer _Forest Queen_ at Commerce, Miss., and destroyed
her. The privateer _Nashville_ had been for some time blockaded by Du
Pont's vessels, where she lay under the guns of Fort McAllister, Ga.
She made several unsuccessful attempts to get to sea, and finally, on
the 27th of February, Commander John L. Worden, perceiving that she
had grounded, moved up rapidly with the iron-clad _Montauk_, and at
twelve hundred yards fired into her with eleven-inch and fifteen-inch
shells. Several of these exploded inside of the _Nashville_ and set
her on fire. She burned until the flames reached her magazine, when
she was blown into fragments. Worden had been assisted by three wooden
vessels of the blockading fleet, which kept down the fire of the
battery. On the Nansemond River, Va., in April, one of the National
gunboats, the _Mount Washington_, being disabled, the Confederate
gunboats came down to attack her, using both artillery and
sharp-shooters. Lieut. William B. Cushing, commanding the _Barney_,
went to her assistance, and after a sharp fight drove off the
Confederate boats and brought away the _Mount Washington_ in tow.
Three of his men were killed and seven wounded. He says in his report:
"It is only requisite to look at the _Mount Washington_ to see with
what desperate gallantry Lieutenant Lampson fought his vessel."
The troubles with Indians, which reached their height in the Minnesota
massacres of 1862, continued to some extent through 1863. In July a
body of troops, commanded by Lieut.-Col. William R. Marshall, had a
severe fight with them at a place called Big Mound, in Dakota. The
Indians were posted among the rocky ridges and ravines of the summit
range, and Marshall was obliged to make several detours to flank them
as he drove them successively from one ridge to another. At the same
time a detachment under Major Bradley had fought them on another
ridge, and finally, in a desultory fight that lasted from four o'clock
in the morning till nine o'clock at night, the Indians were completely
routed and scattered. Colonel Marshall lost eight men, including a
surgeon who was murdered before the fight, and killed or wounded about
one hundred of the Indians. In September there were several other
engagements of the usual character with the Indians, in Dakota, the
most considerable of them taking place at Whitestone Hill. Here Gen.
Alfred Sully's command attacked a party of Indians who had been
murdering and plundering, and not only defeated them and put them to
flight, but captured much of the property of the Indians, including
dogs, tents, and a large quantity of dried buffalo meat, all of which
he burned. He took more than one hundred Indians prisoners. On the 8th
of July there was a fight near Fort Halleck, Idaho, between the
garrison of the fort and a party of Ute Indians. The engagement had
lasted two hours, when the soldiers, led by Lieutenant Williams, made
a charge that finished the battle, and the Indians fled to the
mountains. Sixty of the Indians had been killed or wounded, and half a
dozen of the soldiers.
One of the incidents of this year well illustrates the true method of
dealing with a contingency that arises in nearly every war. General
Burnside had ordered the execution of two Confederate officers who
were detected in recruiting for their army within his lines--in other
words, inducing his men to desert. In this action he followed strictly
the laws of war. When it became known to the Confederate authorities,
they ordered that two captains should be selected by lot from among
the prisoners held in Libby, for execution in retaliation. The order
was transmitted to the keepers of the prison, who proceeded to carry
it out, and three chaplains among the prisoners were appointed to
conduct the drawing. The lot fell upon Capt. Henry W. Sawyer, of the
Second New Jersey cavalry, and Captain Flynn, of the Fifty-first
Indiana Regiment. The Richmond _Despatch_ said in its report: "Sawyer
heard the decision with no apparent emotion, remarking that some one
had to be {349} drawn, and he could stand it as well as any one else.
Flynn was very white and much depressed." The two condemned men were
conveyed to the headquarters of General Winder, who warned them not to
be deluded by any hope of escape, as the retaliatory punishment would
certainly be inflicted eight days from that time. Captain Sawyer
obtained permission to write to his wife, on condition, of course,
that the letter should be read by the prison authorities. In this
letter, after telling what had been done, he wrote: "The
Provost-General, J. H. Winder, assures me that the Secretary of War of
the Southern Confederacy will permit yourself and my dear children to
visit me before I am executed. You will be permitted to bring an
attendant. Captain Whilldin, or uncle W. W. Ware, or Dan, had better
come with you. My situation is hard to be borne, and I cannot think of
dying without seeing you and the children. I am resigned to whatever
is in store for me, with the consolation that I die without having
committed any crime. I have no trial, no jury, nor am I charged with
any crime, but it fell to my lot. You will proceed to Washington. My
Government will give you transportation to Fortress Monroe, and you
will get here by a flag of truce, and return the same way." Sawyer and
Flynn were then placed in close confinement in a dungeon under ground,
where they were fed on corn-bread and water, the dungeon being so damp
that their clothing mildewed. Captain Sawyer's letter had precisely
the effect that he intended--his wife immediately went to Washington
with it, and laid it before the President and the Secretary of War. It
happened at this time, that among the Confederate officers who were
held as prisoners by the National authorities were a son of General
Lee and a son of General Winder, and Secretary Stanton immediately
ordered that these officers be placed in close confinement, as
hostages for the safety of Sawyer and Flynn, while notification was
sent by flag of truce to the Confederate Government, that, immediately
upon receiving information of the execution of Sawyer and Flynn, Lee
and Winder would be likewise executed. The result was what it always
is when prompt and sufficient retaliation is prepared for in such
cases--none of the men were executed, and within three weeks Captains
Flynn and Sawyer were placed again on the same footing as other
prisoners in Libby. During the war, whenever there was a proposal of
retaliation for an outrage, there was always an outcry against it, on
the ground that it would only result in double murders. Those who made
such outcries could not have read history very attentively, or they
would have known that the result has always been exactly the opposite
of that.
[Illustration: CHAIN BRIDGE OVER THE POTOMAC RIVER, NEAR WASHINGTON.
(From a war-time photograph.)]
{350} [Illustration: CONSTRUCTING WINTER QUARTERS, ARMY OF THE
POTOMAC.]
[Illustration: POPLAR GROVE CHURCH. (Built by the United States
Military Engineer Corps.)]
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN.
GRANT MADE LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WITH COMMAND OF ALL THE
ARMIES--HEADQUARTERS WITH THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC--PLAN OF THE
CAMPAIGN--POSITION OF THE ARMIES--RELATIVE NUMBERS--A GREAT ARMY IN
WINTER QUARTERS--PICTURESQUE AND INTERESTING DETAILS OF CAMP
LIFE--GRANT CROSSES THE RAPIDAN--BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS--BATTLE OF
SPOTTSYLVANIA--BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR--THE LOSSES OF BOTH SIDES--GRANT
CROSSES THE JAMES--CAVALRY OPERATIONS--CRITICISMS OF GENERAL
GRANT--GENERAL LONGSTREET WOUNDED--EWELL SEES THE END.
At the close of the third year of the war--the winter of 1863-4--it
was evident to all thoughtful citizens that something was lacking in
its conduct. To those who understood military operations on a large
scale this had been apparent long before. It was true that there had
been great successes as well as great failures. Both of Lee's attempts
at invasion of the North had resulted disastrously to him--the one at
the Antietam, the other at Gettysburg; and when he recrossed the
Potomac the second time, with half of his army disabled, it was
morally certain that he would invade no more. Grant, first coming into
notice as the captor of an army in February, 1862, had captured
another, more than twice as large, in the summer of 1863, thus
securing the stronghold of Vicksburg, and enabling the Mississippi, as
Lincoln expressed it, to flow unvexed to the sea. Later in the same
year he had won a brilliant victory over Bragg at Chattanooga,
securing that important point and relieving East Tennessee. New
Orleans, by far the largest city in the South, had been firmly held by
the National forces ever since Farragut captured it, in April, 1862.
There were also numerous points on the coast of the Carolinas,
Georgia, and Florida where the Stars and Stripes floated every day in
assertion of the nation's claim to supreme authority. Missouri,
Kentucky, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee--all confidently
counted upon by the Confederates at the outset--were now hopelessly
lost to them. Though it had seemed, from the reports of the great
battles, and the manner in which they were discussed, that the
Confederates must be making headway, yet a glance at the map showed
that the territory covered by Confederate authority had been steadily
diminishing. Only one recapture of any consequence had taken place,
and that was in Texas. Faulty though it was, if the military process
thus far pursued by the Administration had been kept up, it must
ultimately have destroyed the Confederacy. And there was no military
reason (using the word in its narrow sense) why it could not be kept
up; for the resources of the North, in men and material, were not
seriously impaired. All the farms were tilled, all the workshops were
busy, the colleges had almost their usual number of students; and
there were not nearly so many young women keeping books or standing
behind counters as now. Moreover, the ports of the North were all
open, and the markets of the world accessible. It is true that the
currency and the national securities were at a discount, and it was
certain that their value would be diminished still further by the
prolongation of the war; but this was not fatal so long as our own
country produced everything essential, and it was equally certain that
with a restored Union the national credit would be so high that we
could take {351} our own time about paying the debt, distributing the
burden over as many generations as we chose.
[Illustration: IN WINTER QUARTERS.]
[Illustration: PICKETS EXAMINING PASSES.]
The necessity for a swifter process was more political than military.
There was a half-informed populace to be satisfied, and a half-loyal
party to be silenced. The subtlest foe was in our own household; and
the approach of the Presidential and Congressional elections, unless
great National victories should intervene, might bring its opportunity
and seal the fate of the Republic.
The one thing required was a single supreme military head for all the
armies in the field. The faulty disposition by which, in many of the
great battles, the several parts of an army had struck the enemy
successively instead of all at once, existed also on the grander
scale. There was no concert of action between the armies of the East,
the West, and the Southwest; so that large detachments of the
Confederate forces were sent back and forth on their shorter interior
lines, to fight wherever they were most needed. Thus Longstreet's
powerful corps was at one time engaged in Pennsylvania, a little later
besieging Burnside in Tennessee, and again with Lee in Virginia. Not
only was the need for a supreme commander apparent, but it was now no
longer possible to doubt who was the man. We had one general that from
the first had gone directly for the most important objects in his
department, and thus far had secured everything he went for.
Accordingly Congress passed a bill reviving the grade of
lieutenant-general in February, 1864, and President Lincoln promptly
conferred that rank upon General Ulysses S. Grant. Only Washington and
Scott had previously borne this commission in the United States
service, and through three years of the war we had nothing higher than
a major-general in the field. Rank was cheaper in the Confederacy,
where there were not only lieutenant-generals, but several full
generals. The corps commanders in Lee's army, at the head of ten
thousand or fifteen thousand men, had nominally the same rank
(lieutenant-general) as Grant when he assumed command of all the
National forces in the field. When Lincoln handed Grant his
commission, they met for the first time. A year and a month later the
war was ended, Grant was the foremost soldier in the world, and
Lincoln was in his grave. When the question of headquarters arose,
General Sherman, who was one of the warmest of Grant's personal
friends as well as his ablest lieutenant, besought him to remain in
the West, for he feared the Washington influences that had always been
most heavily felt in the army covering the capital. General Sherman,
never afraid of anything else, was always in mortal terror of
politicians. Grant appears not to have feared even the politicians;
for he promptly fixed his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac,
thus placing himself where, on the one hand, he could withstand
interference that might thwart the operations of a subordinate, and
where, on the other, he would personally conduct the campaign against
the strongest army of the Confederacy and its most trusted leader.
{352} [Illustration: WHARF AT BELLE PLAIN, VA.]
He planned a campaign in which he considered the Army of the Potomac
his centre; the Army of the James, under General Butler, his left
wing; the Western armies, now commanded by Sherman, his right wing;
and the army under Banks in Louisiana, a force operating in the rear
of the enemy. In its great {353} features, the plan was this: that all
should move simultaneously--Butler against Petersburg, to seize the
southern communications of the Confederate capital; Sherman against
Johnston's army (then at Dalton, Ga.), to defeat and destroy it if
possible, or at least to force it back and capture Atlanta with its
workshops and important communications; Banks to set out on an
expedition toward Mobile, to capture that city and close its harbor to
blockade-runners; Sigel to drive back the Confederate force in the
Shenandoah valley, and prevent that fertile region from being used any
longer as a Confederate granary; while the Army of the Potomac, taking
Lee's army for its objective, should follow it wherever it went,
fighting and flanking it until it should be captured or dispersed.
South of the Rapidan is a peculiar region twelve or fifteen miles
square, known as the Wilderness. Some of the earliest iron-works in
the country were here, and much of the ground was dug over for the
ore, while the woods were cut off to supply fuel for the furnaces. A
thick second growth sprang up, with tangled underbrush; the mines were
deserted, the furnaces went to decay, and the whole region was
desolate, save a roadside tavern or two, and here and there a little
clearing. Chancellorsville, where a great battle was fought in May,
1863, was upon the eastern edge of this Wilderness. The bulk of Lee's
army was now (May, 1864) upon its western edge, with a line of
observation along the Rapidan, and headquarters at Orange Court-House.
The Army of the Potomac was north of the Rapidan, opposite the
Wilderness, where it had lain since November, when it had crossed to
the south side with the purpose of attacking the Army of Northern
Virginia (as narrated in a previous chapter), but found it too
strongly intrenched along Mile Run, and so recrossed and went into
winter quarters.
The conduct of affairs where a great army lies in winter quarters,
making a peculiar sort of community by itself, has its picturesque and
interesting details and incidents, as well as its general dulness. The
reader may get a suggestive glimpse of the camp on the north side of
the Rapidan that winter, if he will look at it through the eyes of
Captain Blake:
"The army steadily advanced in successive years from river to river,
and erected its winter quarters upon the banks of the Potomac, the
Rappahannock, and the Rapidan. The headquarters were established at
the same point that had been occupied by Lee, and the staff which he
left in his hasty flight was unadorned; while the American flag daily
ascended and descended the high pole when the call 'to the color' was
sounded at sunrise and sunset. The telegraph office in the town was
occupied by the same operator for the fifth time in the various
changes that had taken place in the position of the army--the rebels
always possessed it for a similar purpose as soon as it was abandoned;
and both parties used the same table, and several miles of the same
wire. Operations against the enemy, and drills, were suspended during
the inclement season; and details to guard the trains, the camps, and
the picket-lines, and labor upon the roads, comprised the routine of
duty. Courts-martial assembled frequently to determine the nature and
punishment of military crimes; and one tribunal, of which the author
was judge-advocate, tried about forty men for misconduct in skulking
from Mine Run; and a chaplain was found guilty of stealing a horse,
and dismissed from the service by order of the President.
"The face of the country soon assumed the barren aspect of Falmouth;
and the pickets of the brigade, for a month, made their fires of the
woodwork of corn-shelling, threshing, and the numerous other machines
with which a large farm was supplied; and iron rods, bolts,
ploughshares, cranks, and cogwheels were sprinkled upon the ground in
the vicinity of the posts. The fifteen hundred inhabitants that lived
in Culpeper before the Rebellion had been reduced to only eighty
persons, who were chiefly dependent upon the Government for the means
of sustenance. The court-house and slave-pen had been gutted, and were
used as places of confinement for rebel prisoners. The fences that
enclosed the cemeteries which were attached to the churches had been
torn down and burned; and sinks, booths, stables for horses, and the
fires of the cooks were scattered in the midst of the gravestones and
tombs. The state of destitution that prevailed may be illustrated more
clearly by quoting the remark of a young woman who resided in the
place: 'My father was worth three hundred thousand dollars; but all
his people, except a small boy, ran away with your folks; his large
house was burned by your cavalry; we eat your pork and bread; and,
just think of it, I haven't had a new dress or bonnet since the war
began!' The refugees and their families constantly entered the lines;
and one of them said that he was assisted by a friend, who gave him
his horse, and manifested much indignation and declared that the
animal had been stolen, to mislead the neighbors, when he received the
news of his successful escape. Deserters exhausted their ingenuity in
finding ways to reach the cavalry videttes; and some gladly swam
across the Rappahannock in the coldest nights of the year.
"The old residents asserted that the ground upon which the division
had encamped was always submerged in winter, and it would be
impossible for the men to remain there until spring: but the barracks
were never swept away by any inundation; and they explained the matter
by saying that it was the dryest season that had existed for thirty
years. The results of one severe rain, that deluged the plain, showed
that, if they were often repeated, all persons would perceive the
wisdom of the warning. The river rose and overflowed the swamp so
suddenly that the members of seven posts which were located near it
were obliged to climb trees to avoid the unlooked-for danger of
drowning; and the brief tour of picket duty was extended many hours.
Squads that were not stationed in the forest found themselves upon an
island, and waded through the deep water a long distance; and some
were compelled to swim to reach the reserve upon what was the
mainland. A small stream was enlarged to the dimensions of a lake
one-fourth of a mile in width; and a part of the cavalry provost-camp
was submerged, and an officer discovered that the rushing water was
two feet deep in his tent when he awoke. The weather-wisers always
glanced at the mountains; and the voices of experience uttered the
following precept--that there would be rain once in every two days as
long as the snow crowned the crests of the Blue Ridge.
"During this period the enemy did not attempt to make any movement,
although a long line of railroad conveyed supplies from Alexandria;
and the troops of Lee labored unceasingly, and constructed miles of
earthworks upon the bluffs that had been fortified by nature; while
the Union forces rested in their camps, and relied for defence upon
the strong arm and loyal heart. A number of false alarms occurred, and
the soldiers were sometimes ordered to be in readiness to march at a
second's notice to resist an advance.
"The number of officers' wives and other ladies that were present in
the camps was much larger than at any previous period; and balls and
similar festivities relieved the monotony of many winter quarters.
Large details, that sometimes comprised a thousand men, were ordered
to report at certain {354} headquarters for the purpose of
constructing suitable halls of logs on the 'sacred soil' of Virginia.
A chapel was built within the limits of the brigade by the soldiers,
who daily labored upon it for three weeks; and many of the officers
contributed money to purchase whatever appeared to be required for it.
An agent of the Christian Commission furnished a capacious tent, which
formed the roof; and religious, temperance, and Masonic meetings were
frequently held, until this apostle, who employed most of his time in
writing long letters for the press, that portrayed in vivid colors the
'good work' which he was accomplishing, removed the canvas because an
innocent social assembly occupied it during one evening. The enlisted
men, who rarely enjoyed the benefit of these structures which they
erected, originated dances of a singular character. By searching the
cabins and houses of the natives, and borrowing apparel, and a liberal
use of pieces of shelter tents and the hoops of barrels, one-half of
the soldiers were arrayed as women, and filled the places of the
seemingly indispensable partners of the gentler sex. The resemblance
in the features of some of these persons were so perfect that a
stranger would be unable to distinguish between the assumed and the
genuine characters.
"Thousands of crows rendered good service by devouring the entrails of
animals which had been slaughtered by the butchers, and the carcasses
of dead horses and mules. They were never shot, because the citizens
had no guns, and the soldiers would be punished if they wasted
ammunition; and they grew tame and fat in opposition to the well-known
saying, and propagated so rapidly that their immense numbers blackened
acres of ground in the vicinity of the camps. One noticeable event was
a fire which swept over the field of Cedar Mountain, and caused the
explosion of shells that had remained there nearly two years after the
battle.
"The ordinary preparations for active operations were made as soon as
the roads became dry and hard: the ladies were notified to leave the
camps previous to a specified date; surplus baggage resumed its annual
visit to the storehouses in the rear; and reviews, inspections, and
target-practice daily took place."
[Illustration: IN THE WILDERNESS.]
The Army of the Potomac was now organized in three infantry corps, the
Second, Fifth, and Sixth--commanded respectively by Gens. Winfield S.
Hancock, Gouverneur K. Warren, and John Sedgwick--and a cavalry corps
commanded by Gen. Philip H. Sheridan; Gen. George G. Meade being still
in command of the whole. Burnside's corps, the Ninth, nearly twenty
thousand strong, was at Annapolis, and nobody but General Grant knew
its destination. President Lincoln and his Cabinet thought it was to
be sent on some duty down the coast; and so perhaps did the enemy.
Grant knew too well that there was a leak somewhere in Washington,
through which every Government secret escaped to the Confederates; and
he therefore delayed till the last moment the movement of Burnside's
corps to a point from which it could follow the Army of the Potomac
across the Rapidan within twenty-four hours.
The Army of Northern Virginia consisted of two infantry corps,
commanded by Gens. Richard S. Ewell and Ambrose P. Hill, with a
cavalry corps commanded by Gen. James E. B. Stuart; the whole
commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee; while, as an offset to Burnside's
corps, Gen. James Longstreet's was within call. The exact number of
men in either army cannot be told, as reports and authorities differ;
nor can the approximate numbers be mentioned fairly, unless with an
explanation. The method of counting for the official reports was
different in the two armies. In the National army, a report that a
certain number of men were present for duty included every man that
was borne on the pay-rolls, whether officer, soldier, musician,
teamster, cook, or mechanic, and also all that had been sent away on
special duty, guarding trains and the like. This was necessary,
because they were all paid regularly, and the money had to be
accounted for. In the Confederate army there was no pay worth speaking
of, and the principal object of a morning report was to show the exact
effective force available that day; accordingly, the Confederate
reports included only the men actually bearing muskets or sabres, or
handling the artillery. Counted in this way, Lee had sixty thousand,
or perhaps sixty-five thousand, men--for exact reports are wanting,
even on that basis. If counted after the fashion in the National army,
his men numbered about eighty thousand. Grant puts his own numbers,
everything included, at one hundred and sixteen thousand, and thinks
the preponderance was fully offset by the fact that the enemy was on
the defensive, seldom leaving his intrenchments, in a country
admirably suited for defence, and with the population friendly to him.
As each side received reinforcements from time to time about equal to
its losses, the two armies may be considered as having, throughout the
campaign from the Rapidan to the James, the strength just stated.
It was clearly set forth by General Grant at the outset that the true
objective was the Army of Northern Virginia. In that lay the chief
strength of the Confederacy; while that stood, the Confederacy would
stand, whether in Richmond or out of it; when that fell, the
Confederacy would fall. To follow that {355} army wherever it went,
fight it, and destroy it, was the task that lay before the Army of the
Potomac; and every man in the army, as well as most men in the
country, knew it was a task that could be accomplished only through
immense labor and loss of life, hard marching, heavy fighting, and all
manner of suffering.
The intention was to have the simultaneous movement of all the armies
begin as near the 1st of May as possible. It actually began at
midnight of the 3d, when the Army of the Potomac was set in motion and
crossed the Rapidan, which is there about two hundred feet wide, on
five pontoon bridges near Germania, Culpeper Mine, and Ely's fords. On
crossing, it plunged at once into the Wilderness, which is here
traversed from north to south by two roads, a mile or two apart. And
these roads are crossed by two--the Orange turnpike and Orange plank
road--running nearly east and west. Besides these, there are numerous
cross-roads and wood-paths. It would have been easy for the army to
pass through this wooded tract in a very few hours, and deploy in the
open country; but the supply and ammunition train consisted of four
thousand wagons, and the reserve artillery of more than one hundred
guns--all of which must be protected by keeping the army between them
and the enemy. Consequently the troops remained in the Wilderness
during the whole of the 4th, while the long procession was filing
across the bridges and stretching away on the easternmost roads. And
after this the bridges themselves were taken up. Grant's headquarters
that night were at the old Wilderness Tavern, on the Orange turnpike,
near the intersection of the road from Germania Ford. It had been
supposed that Lee would either dispute the passage of the river, or
(as he had done on previous occasions) await attack on some chosen
ground that was suitable for fighting. As he had not disputed the
passage, the army now expected to march out of the Wilderness the next
day, thus turning the enemy's right flank, and placing itself between
him and his capital.
But Grant kept pickets out on all the roads to the west; and it cannot
be said that he was surprised, though he was probably disappointed,
when he found his lines attacked on the morning of the 5th. The
movement was believed at first to be only a feint, intended to keep
the Army of the Potomac in the Wilderness, while the bulk of the enemy
should slip by to the south and take up a position covering the
approach to Richmond. But it was developed rapidly, and it soon became
evident that the Confederate commander had resorted to the bold device
of launching his whole army down the two parallel roads, with the
purpose of striking the Army of the Potomac when it was ill-prepared
to receive battle. Under some circumstances he would thus have gained
a great advantage; as it was, the army was clear of the river, with
all its trains safe in the rear, was reasonably well together, had had
a night's rest, and was not in any proper sense surprised. Hancock's
corps, which had the lead and was marching out of the Wilderness, was
quickly recalled, Burnside's was hurried up from the rear, and a line
of battle was formed--so far as there could be any line of battle in a
jungle. Neither artillery nor cavalry could be used to any extent by
either side, and the contest was little more than a murdering-match
between two bodies of men, each individual having a musket in his
hand, and being unable to see more than a few of his nearest
neighbors. This went on all day, increasing hourly as more of the
troops came into position, with no real advantage to either side when
night fell upon the gloomy forest, already darkened by smoke that
there was no breeze to waft away. Lee's attack had been vigorous on
his left, but imperfect on his right, where Longstreet's corps did not
get up in time to participate in the fighting that day. No sooner had
the battle ended than both sides began to intrench for the struggle of
the morrow, and they would hear the sound of each other's axes, only a
few rods distant, as they worked through the night, cutting down
trees, piling up logs for breastworks, and digging the customary
trench.
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS. Reproduced by
permission of Dick & Fitzgerald, N. Y., from "Twelve Decisive Battles
of the War."]
Grant intended to take the initiative on the morning of the 6th, and
gave orders for an attack at five o'clock. But Lee, who did not want
the real battle of the day to begin till Longstreet's corps should be
in place on his right, attacked {356} with his left at a still earlier
hour. Grant recognized this as a feint, and went on with his purpose
of attacking the enemy's right before Longstreet should come up. This
work devolved upon Hancock's corps, which, as usual, was ready to
advance at the hour named; but just then came rumors of a flank
movement by Longstreet, and Hancock, detaching troops to meet it,
greatly weakened the blow he was ordered to deliver. This was all a
mistake, as there was no enemy in that direction, save Rosser's
Confederate cavalry, which Sheridan's defeated that day in three
encounters. But Hancock's advance was powerful enough to drive the
enemy before him for more than a mile. At that juncture Longstreet
came up, the broken Confederate line rallied on his corps, and Hancock
was driven back in turn. Here the fighting was stubborn, and the
losses heavy. Gen. James S. Wadsworth, one of the most patriotic men
in the service, was mortally wounded, and died within the Confederate
lines. The Confederate General Jenkins was killed, and Longstreet was
seriously wounded in almost exactly the same way that Stonewall
Jackson had been, a year and three days before, on nearly the same
ground. As he was returning from the front with his staff, some of his
own men mistook them for National cavalry and fired upon them.
Longstreet was shot through the neck and shoulder, and had to be
carried from the field. His men had been thrown into great confusion,
and General Lee, who now took command of them in person, found it
impossible to rally them for an attack on Hancock's intrenchments, or
at least deferred the attack that had been planned. But late in the
afternoon such an assault was made, and met with a little temporary
success. The Confederates burst through the line at one point, but
were soon driven back again with heavy loss. At this time a fire broke
out in Hancock's front, and soon his log breastworks were burning. His
men were forced back by the heat, but continued firing at their enemy
through the flame. Large numbers of the dead and wounded were still
lying where they fell, scattered over the belt of ground, nearly a
mile wide, where the tide of battle had swayed back and forth, and an
unknown number of the wounded perished by the fire and smoke. Burnside
had come into line during the day, and fighting had been kept up along
the entire front, but it was nowhere so fierce as on the left or
southern end of the line, where each commander was trying to double up
the other's flank. At night the Confederates withdrew to their
intrenchments, and from that time till the end of the campaign they
seldom showed a disposition to leave them.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. BRIGADIER-GENERAL J.
I. GREGG. MAJOR-GENERAL WESLEY MERRITT. BRIGADIER-GENERAL THOMAS C.
DEVIN. BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE A. CUSTER.]
The terrible tangle of the Wilderness in which this great battle was
fought is indicated by the fact that in several instances squads from
either army, who were guarding prisoners and intending to take them to
the rear, lost their way and carried them into their opponents' lines,
where the guards in turn became prisoners. A participant says of the
fighting on the National right, where the Confederates gained some
ground the first day: "The extreme heat of the day increased the
fatigue, and tears were shed by some who overrated the results of the
disaster. The slaughter in many regiments had been large, and at one
point the bodies of the killed defined with terrible exactness the
position held by the Union troops, and a long line of rebel corpses
was extended in front of it. One of the flag-staffs of the {357}
regiment was severed by a bullet, and each hand of the bearer grasped
a piece of it." The same participant says of the fighting on his part
of the line during the second day:
"The division was posted once more behind the slight breastwork which
had been erected upon the Germania-Ford road; the skirmishers were
deployed in its front at four P.M., and the author commanded the
detachment from the regiment. The groups were properly aligned within
the next ten minutes, when the tramp of a heavy force resounded
through the woods. Orders were excitedly repeated--'Forward!' 'Guide
right!' 'Close up those intervals!'--and finally a voice shouted:
'Now, men, for the love of God and your country, forward!' The legions
of Longstreet advanced without skirmishers; the muskets of the feeble
line were discharged to alarm the reserve; the men upon the outposts
rushed to the main body; and thousands of glistening gun-barrels which
were resting upon the works opened, and the fusillade began. The
soldiers crouched upon the ground, loaded their pieces with the utmost
celerity, rose, fired, and then reloaded behind the shelter; so that
the loss was very slight; while the enemy suffered severely, as the
trees were small, and there was no protection. The only artillery that
was used in the afternoon was planted upon the left of the brigade,
and consisted of four cannons, which hurled canister, shell, and solid
shot until their ammunition was exhausted. Unfortunately, the dry logs
of which the breastwork was formed were only partially covered with
earth; and the flames, ignited by the burning wadding during the
conflict (an enemy that could not be resisted as easily as the
myrmidons of Longstreet), destroyed them, and every second of time
widened the breaches. The undaunted men crowded together until they
formed fourteen or sixteen ranks; and those who were in the front
discharged the guns which were constantly passed to them by their
comrades that were in the rear and could not aim with accuracy or
safety. The fingers of many men were blistered by the muskets, which
became hot from the rapid firing. The fire triumphed when it flashed
along the entire barrier of wood, reduced it to ashes, and forced the
defenders, who had withstood to the last its intolerable heat, to
retire to the rifle-pits a short distance in the rear. The shattered
rebel columns cautiously approached the road; but the impartial flames
which had caused the discomfiture of the division became an obstacle
that they could not surmount. The same misfortune followed the Union
forces, and no exertions could check the consuming element; and the
second line was burned like the first. The conflagration in the road
had nearly ceased at this time; the enemy yelled with exultation; the
odious colors were distinctly seen when the smoke slowly disappeared;
a general charge was made, which resulted in the capture of the
original position; and the pickets were stationed half of a mile in
the advance at sunset without opposition. Many were eating their
dinners when the assault commenced; and an officer hurriedly rushed to
the works with a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other."
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOSHUA J. OWENS.]
The losses in this great two-days' battle cannot be stated accurately.
The best authorities vary as to the National loss, from fewer than
fourteen thousand--killed, wounded, and missing--to about fifteen
thousand four hundred. As to the Confederate loss, the figures can
only be made up from partial reports, estimates, and inferences.
According to these, it did not differ materially from the National
loss, and in the circumstances of the battle there was no reason for
thinking it would. Among the officers lost, besides those already
mentioned, were, on the National side, Gen. Alexander Hays killed;
Generals Getty, Baxter, and McAllister, and Colonels Carroll and
Keifer wounded; and Generals Seymour and Shaler captured; on the
Confederate side, Generals Pegram and Benning wounded.
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL THOMAS A. SMYTH.]
[Illustration: COLONEL WILLIAM H. MORRIS.]
If General Lee supposed that the Army of the Potomac, after a sudden
blow and a bloody battle, would turn about and go home to repair
damages--as it had been in the habit of doing--he omitted from his
calculation the fact that it was now led by a soldier who never did
anything of the sort. Indeed, he is reported to have said to his
lieutenants, after this costly experiment: "Gentlemen, at last the
Army of the Potomac has a head." Tactically, it had been a drawn
battle. Grant accounts it a victory, which he says "consisted in
having successfully crossed a formidable stream, almost in the face of
an enemy, and in getting the army together as a unit." It was also a
National victory in a certain dismal sense, from the fact that--in
changing off man for man to the extent of twelve or fifteen
thousand--that had been done which the enemy could least afford.
{358} There was no fighting on the 7th except a cavalry engagement at
Todd's Tavern, by which Sheridan cleared the road for the southward
movement of the army; and in the afternoon Grant gave the order to
move by the left flank toward Spottsylvania. Gen. William T. Sherman
says in a private letter: "It was then probably that General Grant
best displayed his greatness. Forward by the left flank!--that settled
that campaign." That the same opinion was held by a large part of the
army itself at the time, is shown by the testimony of various men who
were there. Frank Wilkeson writes: "Grant's military standing with the
enlisted men this day hung on the direction we turned at the
Chancellorsville House. If to the left, he was to be rated with Meade
and Hooker and Burnside and Pope--the generals who preceded him. At
the Chancellorsville House we turned to the right. Instantly all of us
heard a sigh of relief. Our spirits rose. We marched free. The men
began to sing. The enlisted men understood the flanking movement. That
night we were happy."
[Illustration: WOUNDING OF GENERAL LONGSTREET BY HIS OWN MEN.]
Grant's general purpose was to place his army between the enemy and
Richmond, interfering with the communications and compelling Lee to
fight at disadvantage. The immediate purpose was a rapid march to
Spottsylvania Court-House, fifteen miles southeast of the Wilderness
battle-field, and a dozen miles southwest of Fredericksburg, to take a
strong position covering the roads that radiate from that point.
Warren's corps was to take the advance, marching by the Brock road, to
be followed by Hancock's on the same road. Sedgwick's and Burnside's
were to take a route farther north, through Chancellorsville. The
trains were put in motion on Saturday, May 7th, and Warren began his
march at nine o'clock that evening. To withdraw an army in this
manner, in the presence of a powerful enemy, and send it forward to a
new position, is a difficult and delicate task, as it may be attacked
after it has left the old position and before it has gained the new.
The method adopted by General Grant was repeated in each of his
flanking movements between the Wilderness and the James. It consisted
in withdrawing the corps that held his right flank, and passing it
behind the others while they maintained their position. Four small
rivers rise in this region--the Mat, the Ta, the Po, and the Ny--which
unite to form the Mattapony. Spottsylvania Court-House is on the ridge
between the Po and the Ny. The country around it is heavily wooded,
and somewhat broken by ravines.
The distances that the two armies had to march to reach Spottsylvania
Court-House were very nearly the same; if there was any difference, it
favored the National; but two unforeseen circumstances determined the
race and the form of the ensuing battle. The Brock road was occupied
by a detachment of Confederate cavalry, and Warren's corps stood still
while the National cavalry undertook to clear the way. This was not
done easily, and the road was further obstructed where the
Confederates had felled trees across it. After precious time had been
lost Warren's corps went forward and cleared the way for itself. The
other circumstance was more purely fortuitous. Anderson's division of
Longstreet's corps led the Confederate advance, and Anderson had his
orders to begin the march early on Sunday morning, the 8th. But from
the burning of the woods he found no suitable ground for bivouac, and
consequently marched all night. The National cavalry were in
Spottsylvania Court-House Sunday morning, and found there but a slight
force of cavalry, easily brushed away; but they had to retire before
the Confederate infantry when Anderson came down the road.
Consequently, when Warren came within sight of the Court-House, he
found the same old foe intrenched in his front. Still, if Hancock had
come up promptly, the works might have been carried by a rapid
movement, and held till the army should be where Grant wanted it, in
position between the enemy and their capital. But Hancock had been
held back, because of apprehensions that the Confederates would make a
heavy attack upon the rear of the moving columns. So the remainder of
Longstreet's corps, and finally all of Lee's troops, poured into the
rude sylvan fortress, and once more the Army of Northern Virginia
stood at bay.
At this point of time, May 8th, Grant sent Sheridan with his {359}
cavalry to do to the Confederate army what in previous campaigns its
cavalry had twice done to the Army of the Potomac--to ride entirely
around it, tearing up railroads, destroying bridges and depots, and
capturing trains. Sheridan set out to execute his orders with the
energy and skill for which he was becoming famous. He destroyed ten
miles of railroad and several trains of cars, cut all the telegraph
wires, and recaptured four hundred prisoners who had been taken in the
battle of the Wilderness and were on their way to Richmond. As soon as
it was known which way he had gone, the Confederate cavalry set out to
intercept him, and by hard riding got between him and Richmond.
Sheridan's troops met them at Yellow Tavern, seven miles north of the
city, and after a hard fight defeated and dispersed them, Gen. J. E.
B. Stuart, the ablest cavalry leader in the Confederacy, being
mortally wounded. Sheridan dashed through the outer defences of
Richmond and took some prisoners, but found the inner ones too strong
for him. He then crossed the Chickahominy, and rejoined the army on
the 25th.
As the National army came into position before the intrenchments of
Spottsylvania, Hancock's corps had the extreme right or western end of
the line; then came Warren's, then Sedgwick's, and on the extreme left
Burnside's. While Sedgwick's men were placing their batteries, they
were annoyed by sharp-shooters, one of whom, apparently posted in a
tree, seemed to be an unerring marksman. He is said to have destroyed
twenty lives that day. The men naturally shrank back from their work,
when General Sedgwick, coming up, expostulated with them, remarking
that "they couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." As he stepped
forward to the works, a bullet struck him in the face, and he fell
dead. In his fall the army lost one of its best soldiers, and the
country one of its purest patriots. Sedgwick had been offered higher
command than he held, but had firmly declined it, from a modest
estimate of his own powers. Gen. Horatio G. Wright succeeded him in
the command of the Sixth Corps.
On the evening of the 9th Hancock's corps moved to the right, with a
view to flanking and attacking the Confederate left, and made a
reconnoissance at the point where the road from Shady Grove church
crosses the Po on a wooden bridge. A brigade of Barlow's division laid
down bridges and crossed the stream, but was confronted by
intrenchments manned by a portion of Early's corps. It was now seen
that the Confederate left rested on the stream at a point above, so
that Hancock by crossing would only have isolated himself from the
rest of the army and invited destruction. But before he could withdraw
Barlow, the enemy sallied out from their intrenchments and attacked
that brigade in heavy force. The assault was met with steady courage
and repelled, with considerable loss to Barlow, but with much greater
loss to the assailants. After a short interval the experiment was
renewed, with precisely the same result; and Barlow then recrossed,
under cover of a supporting column, and took up his bridges.
The weak point in the Confederate line was the salient at the northern
point of their intrenchment. A salient is weak because almost any fire
directed against it becomes an enfilading fire for one or another part
of it. But the National army were not up in balloons, looking down
upon the earth as a map; and they could only learn the shape of the
Confederate intrenchments after traversing thick woods, following out
by-paths and scrambling through dark ravines. As soon as the salient
was discovered, preparations were made for assaulting it. The storming
party consisted of twelve regiments of Wright's corps, commanded by
Col. Emory Upton, and was to be supported by Mott's division of
Hancock's, while at the same time the remainder of Wright's and all of
Warren's corps were to advance and take advantage of any opportunity
that should be made for them. While a heavy battery was firing rapidly
at the salient and enfilading one of its sides, Upton's men formed
under cover of the woods, near the enemy's line, and the instant the
battery ceased firing, about six o'clock in the evening, burst out
with a cheer, swept over the works after a short hand-to-hand fight,
and captured more than a thousand prisoners, and a few guns. Mott,
forming in open ground, did not move so promptly, suffered more from
the fire of the enemy, and effected nothing. Warren's corps moved
forward, but was driven back with heavy loss. In a second assault,
they reached the breastworks and captured them after fierce fighting,
but were not able to hold them when strong Confederate reinforcements
came up, and retired again. Upton, who had broken through a second
line of intrenchments, seemed to have opened a way for the destruction
of the Confederate army; but the difficulties of the ground and the
lateness of the hour made it impracticable to follow up the advantage
by pouring a whole corps through the gap and taking everything in
reverse. After dark, Upton's men withdrew, bringing the prisoners and
the captured battle-flags, but leaving the guns behind. For this
exploit, in which he was severely wounded, Colonel Upton was made a
brigadier-general on the field. While this was going on, Burnside, at
the extreme left of the line, had obtained a good position, from which
he could have assaulted advantageously the Confederate right, which he
overlapped. But this was not perceived, and as there was a dangerous
gap between his corps and Wright's, he was drawn back in the night,
and the advantage was lost.
{360} [Illustration: FALL OF GENERAL JOHN SEDGWICK, AT SPOTTSYLVANIA.]
On the 11th it rained heavily, and there was no fighting; but there
were reconnoissances and preparations for a renewal of the battle on
the next day. Grant determined to make a heavier and more persistent
assault upon the tempting salient, and moved Hancock's corps by a
wood-road, after dark, to a point opposite the apex. The morning of
the 12th was foggy, but by half-past four o'clock it was light enough,
and Hancock's men advanced, some of them passing through thickets of
dead pines. When they were half-way across the open ground in front of
the salient, they burst into a wild cheer and rushed for the works.
Here they were met by a brave and determined resistance on the part of
the half-surprised Confederates, who fought irregularly with clubbed
muskets. But nothing could resist the impetus of Hancock's corps,
which was over the breastworks in a few seconds. Large numbers of
Confederates were killed, mostly with the bayonet. So sudden was
Hancock's irruption into the enemy's works, that he captured Gen.
Edward Johnson's entire division of nearly four thousand men, with its
commander and also Brigadier-General Steuart. "How are you, Steuart?"
said Hancock, recognizing in his prisoner an old army friend, and
extending his hand. "I am General Steuart, of the Confederate army,"
was the reply, "and under the circumstances I decline to take your
hand." "Under any other circumstances," said Hancock quietly, "I
should not have offered it." Hancock's men had also captured twenty
guns, with their horses and caissons, thousands of small arms, and
thirty battle-flags. The guns were immediately turned upon the enemy,
who was followed through the woods toward Spottsylvania Court-House
till the pursuers ran up against another line of intrenchments, which
had been constructed in the night across the base of the salient. At
the same time that Hancock assaulted at the apex, {361} Warren and
Burnside had assaulted at the sides, but with less success, though
their men reached the breastworks.
Lee understood too well the danger of having his line thus ruptured at
the centre, and poured his men into the salient with a determination
to retake it, for which some of his critics have censured him.
Hancock's men, when the pressure became too great for them, fell back
slowly to the outer intrenchments, and turning, used them as their
own. Five times the Confederates attacked these in heavy masses, and
five times they were repelled with bloody loss. Before, they had been
at disadvantage from defending a salient, and now they were at equal
disadvantage in assailing a reëntrant angle. To add to the slaughter,
Hancock had established several batteries on high ground, where they
could fire over the heads of his own men and strike the enemy beyond.
Here and along the west face of the angle the fighting was kept up all
day, and was most desperate and destructive. Field guns were run up
close to the works and fired into the masses of Confederate troops
within the salient, creating terrible havoc; but in turn the horses
and gunners were certain to be shot down. There was hand-to-hand
fighting over the breastworks, and finally the men of the two armies
were crouching on either side of them, shooting and stabbing through
the crevices between the logs. Sometimes one would mount upon the
works and have loaded muskets passed up to him rapidly, which he would
fire in quick succession till the certain bullet came that was to end
his career, and he tumbled into the ditch. In several instances men
were pulled over the breastworks and made prisoners. One doughty but
diminutive Georgian officer nearly died of mortification when a huge
Wisconsin colonel reached over, seized him by the collar, and in a
twinkling jerked him out of the jurisdiction of the Confederacy and
into that of the United States. The fighting around the "death-angle,"
as the soldiers called it, was kept up till past midnight, when the
Confederates finally withdrew to their interior line. The dead were
not only literally piled in heaps, but their bodies were terribly torn
and mangled by the shot. Every tree and bush was cut down or killed by
the balls, and in one instance the body of an oak tree nearly two feet
in diameter was completely cut through by bullets, and in falling
injured several men of a South Carolina regiment. Not even Sickles'
salient at Gettysburg had been so fatal as this. If courage were all
that a nation required, there was courage enough at Spottsylvania, on
either side of the intrenchments, to have made a nation out of every
State in the Union.
It was extremely difficult for either side to rescue or care for any
of the wounded. A note from Col. Leander W. Cogswell, of the Ninth New
Hampshire Regiment, gives a suggestive incident: "During the night of
the 13th, as officer of the day, I was ordered to take a detail of men
from our brigade, and, if possible, find the dead bodies of members of
the Ninth Regiment. We went over the intrenchments and into that
terrible darkness, under orders 'to strike not a match, nor speak
above a whisper.' When near the spot where they fell, we crawled upon
our hands and knees, and felt for the dead ones, and in this manner
succeeded in finding upwards of twenty, and conveyed them within our
lines, where, with a few others, they were buried the next morning in
one trench."
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN M. JONES, C. S. A. Killed at the
Wilderness.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ALEXANDER HAYS. Killed at the
Wilderness.]
Thus far we have looked only at what was going on in front. A few
sentences from the diary of Chaplain Alanson A. Haines, of the
Fifteenth New Jersey Regiment, will give the reader an idea of the
rear at Spottsylvania: "With Dr. Hall, our good and brave surgeon, I
found a place in the rear, a little hollow with grass and a spring of
water, where we made hasty preparations to receive the coming wounded.
Those that could walk soon began to find their way in of themselves,
and some few were helped in by their comrades as soon as the charge
was over and a portion withdrawn. It was a terrible thing to lay some
of our best and truest men in a long row on the blankets, waiting
their turn for the surgeon's care. Some came with body wounds, and
arms shattered, and hands dangling. At ten o'clock, with the drum
corps, I sought the regiment to take off any of our wounded we could
find. On my way, met some men carrying Orderly-Sergeant Van Gilder,
mortally wounded, in a blanket. With his hand all blood, he seized
mine, saying, 'Chaplain, I am going. Tell my wife I am happy.' At two
o'clock A.M. I lay down amid a great throng of poor, bleeding
sufferers, whose moans and cries for water kept me awake. At four
o'clock got up and had coffee made, and, going around among the
wounded, found a Pennsylvanian who had lain at my feet, dead. At noon
the regiment moved off to the right. I retained five drummers to bury
Sergeants Schenck and Rubadeau. A number of men from several regiments
were filling their canteens at the spring. I asked them if they could
come for a few moments around a soldier's grave. Most of them came,
and uncovered their heads. I repeated some passages of Scripture, and
offered a short prayer. Drum-Sergeant Kline filled up the grave,
nailing to two posts which he planted a piece of cracker-box, on which
I cut the names of the dead. While he was doing this, with my other
men I gathered the muskets and {362} accoutrements left by the
wounded. Laying the muskets with the muzzle on a stump, one heavy
stamp of the foot bent the barrel, broke the stock, and made the piece
useless. The accoutrements we heaped together and threw on the fire,
and with hasty steps sought the regiment."
The National losses in the fighting around Spottsylvania, from the 8th
to the 21st of May, were thirteen thousand six hundred--killed,
wounded, and missing. Somewhat over half of this loss occurred on the
12th. There are no exact statistics of the Confederate loss; but it
appears to have been ten thousand on the 12th, and was probably about
equal in the aggregate to the National loss. The losses were heavy in
general officers. In the National army, besides Sedgwick, Gens. T. G.
Stevenson and J. C. Rice were killed, and Gens. H. G. Wright and
Alexander S. Webb and Col. Samuel S. Carroll were wounded; the last
named being promoted to brigadier-general on the field. Of the
Confederates, Generals Daniel and Perrin were killed; Gens. R. D.
Johnston, McGowan, Ramseur, and Walker wounded, and Gens. Edward
Johnston and Steuart captured.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL R. O. TYLER.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL GRIFFIN A. STEDMAN, JR.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM H. SEWARD.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM DE LACEY.]
General Grant had written to Halleck on the 11th: "We have now ended
the sixth day of very hard fighting. The result up to this time is
much in our favor. But our losses have been heavy, as well as those of
the enemy.... I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons for a
fresh supply of provisions and ammunition, and purpose to fight it out
on this line if it takes all summer." A week was spent in manoeuvring
to find a new point of attack that promised success, but without
avail, and at the end of that time it was determined to move again by
the left flank. The movement was to the North Anna River; again it was
a race, and this time the Confederates had the shorter line.
The distance from Spottsylvania Court House to Richmond is a little
more than fifty miles. About midway between them is Hanover Junction,
where the railroad from Richmond to Fredericksburg is crossed by the
Virginia Central road. Grant did not wish to conceal his movement
altogether. He was anxious to induce the enemy to fight without the
enormous advantage of intrenchments. So he planned to send one corps
toward Richmond, hoping that Lee would be tempted to attack it with
all his army, whereupon the other corps might follow up sharply and
attack the Confederates before they had time to intrench. When the
movement was begun, Lee, instead of moving at once in the same
direction, sent Ewell's corps to attack the National right. It
happened that six thousand raw recruits, under Gen. R. O. Tyler, were
on their way to reinforce the Army of the Potomac, and had not quite
reached their place in line when they were struck by Ewell's flank
movement. Grant says they maintained their position in a manner worthy
of veterans, till they were reinforced by the divisions of Birney and
Crawford, which promptly moved up to the right and left, and Ewell was
then quickly driven back with heavy loss. This was on the 19th of May.
The corps thrown forward as a bait was Hancock's, and it marched on
the night of the 20th, going easterly to Guinea Station, and then
southerly to Milford. Warren's corps followed twelve hours later, and
twelve hours later still the corps of Burnside and Wright. Some
trifling resistance was met by the advance; but the Confederates had
no notion of taking any risk. They made a reconnoissance to their
left, to be sure that Grant had not kept a corps at Spottsylvania to
fall upon their rear, and then set out by a shorter line than his to
interpose themselves once more between him and their capital.
The new position that was taken up after some tentative movements was
one of the strongest that could have been devised. The Confederate
left stretched in a straight line, a mile and a half long, from Little
River to the North Anna at Oxford. Here, bending at a right angle, the
line followed the North Anna down stream for three quarters of a mile,
thence {363} continuing in a straight line southeastward, to and
around Hanover Junction. The North Anna here makes a bend to the
south, and on the most southerly point of the bend the Confederate
line touched and held it. If we imagine a ring cut in halves, and the
halves placed back to back, in contact, and call one the line of
Confederate intrenchments and the other the river, we shall have a
fair representation of the essential features of the situation. It is
evident that any enemy approaching from the north, and attempting to
envelop this position, would have his own line twice divided by the
river, so that his army would be in three parts. Any reinforcements
passing from one wing to the other would have to cross the stream
twice, and, long before they could reach their destination, the army
holding the intrenchments could strengthen its threatened wing. The
obvious point to assail in such a position would be the apex of the
salient line where it touched the river; and Burnside was ordered to
force a passage at that point. But the banks were high and steep, and
the passage was covered by artillery. Moreover, an enfilading fire
from the north bank was thwarted by traverses--intrenchments at right
angles to the main line. Wright's corps crossed the river above the
Confederate position, and destroyed some miles of the Virginia Central
Railroad; while Hancock's crossed below, and destroyed a large section
of the road to Fredericksburg. By this time they had learned the
effective method of not only tearing up the track, but piling up the
ties and setting them on fire, heating the rails, and bending and
twisting them so that they could not be used again. These operations
were not carried on without frequent sharp fighting, which cost each
side about two thousand men; but there was no general battle on the
North Anna.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN C. ROBINSON.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL HARRY T. HAYS, C. S. A.]
Before the next flank movement was made by the Army of the Potomac,
Gen. James H. Wilson's cavalry division was sent to make a
demonstration on the right, to give the enemy the impression that this
time the turning movement would be in that direction. In the night of
May 26, which was very dark, the army withdrew to the north bank of
the North Anna, took up its pontoon bridges, destroyed all the others,
and was put in motion again by the left flank. Sheridan's cavalry led
the way and guarded the crossings of the Pamunkey, which is formed by
the junction of the North and South Anna Rivers. The Sixth Corps was
the advance of the infantry, followed by the Second, while the Fifth
and Ninth moved by roads farther north. The direction was southeast,
and the distance about thirty miles to a point at which the army would
cross the Pamunkey and move southwest toward Richmond, the crossing
being about twenty miles from that city. But between lie the swamps of
the Chickahominy. In the morning of the 28th the cavalry moved out on
the most direct road to Richmond, and at a cross-roads known as
Hawes's Shop encountered a strong force of Confederate cavalry, which
was dismounted and intrenched. After a bloody fight of some hours'
duration, the divisions commanded by Gens. David M. Gregg and George
A. Custer broke over the intrenchments and forced back the enemy; the
other divisions came up promptly, and the position was held.
A member of the First New Jersey cavalry, which participated in this
action, writes: "One company being sent on each flank, mounted,
Captain Robbins with four companies, dismounted, moved forward and
occupied a position on the right of the road, opening a rapid fire
from their carbines on the line of the enemy, which was forming for
attack. The remainder of the regiment was moved to the left of the
road, and having been dismounted, was ordered to the support of the
First Pennsylvania, which was hotly engaged. Robbins, as usual, moved
with a rush to the assault, and soon cleared his immediate front of
the rebels, chasing them across the open ground beyond the wood in
which they had taken cover. In this field there was a double ditch,
lined by fencing, with another of the same character facing it, only
forty or fifty paces distant. As Captain Beekman, heading his men,
sprang across the first fence at charging speed, they were met by a
desperate volley from the second line of the rebels lying in the other
cover. Instinctively, as they saw the flash, the men threw themselves
upon the ground, and now Beekman, rolling into the ditch, called his
troops there beside him. From the two covers there was kept up a
tremendous fire--our men sometimes charging toward the hostile ditch,
but in each case falling back, and the fight going on, both parties
holding their own, but neither gaining ground upon the other.
Meanwhile Captain Robbins, on the right of the {364} road, was being
sorely pressed. Major Janeway was sent with two squadrons to his
relief, and the fight redoubled in intensity. The ammunition of the
men giving out, a supply was brought from the rear and distributed
along the line itself by the officers, several of whom fell while
engaged in the service. Captain Beekman was shot through both hands as
he stretched them forth full of ammunition. Lieutenant Bellis was
almost at the same moment mortally wounded, as was also Lieutenant
Stewart. Captain Robbins was wounded severely in the shoulder,
Lieutenant Shaw severely in the head, Lieutenant Wynkoop fearfully in
the foot. Lieutenant Bowne was the only officer of the first battalion
on the field who was untouched, and he had several narrow escapes.
Major Janeway also had a narrow escape, a ball passing so close to his
forehead as to redden the skin. As Lieutenant Brooks was manoeuvring
the fifth squadron under fire, a ball fired close at hand struck him
near his belt-clasp, slightly penetrating the skin in two places, and,
doubling him up, sent him rolling headlong for thirty feet across the
road. As he recovered steadiness, he saw his whole squadron hurrying
to pick him up, and, in the excitement, losing all sensation of pain,
he ordered them again forward, and walked after them half-way to the
front. There he was obliged to drop upon the ground, and was carried
from the field. Lieutenant Craig also, of the same squadron, was badly
bruised by some missile that struck him in the breast, but, though
suffering severely from the blow, he did not leave the field. Still
the men bravely held their own. And now Custer, coming up with his
Michigan brigade, charged down the road, the whole body of the First
Jersey skirmishers simultaneously springing from their cover and
dashing upon the enemy, sweeping him from the field, and pursuing him
until the whole mass had melted into disordered rout. Meanwhile the
fighting on the left of the road had been of the severest character.
Malsbury received a mortal wound; Dye was killed instantly; Cox was
hit in the back, but remained the only officer with the squadron till,
toward the close of the action, he received a wound which disabled
him. The total loss of the nine companies of the First New Jersey
engaged, in killed and wounded, was sixty-four, eleven being
officers."
[Illustration: PONTOON BRIDGE AT DEEP BOTTOM ON THE JAMES RIVER.]
Soon after noon of that day three-fourths of the army had crossed the
Pamunkey, and the remaining corps crossed that night. Here were
several roads leading to the Confederate capital; but the Confederate
army, as soon as it found the enemy gone from its front, had moved in
the same direction, by a somewhat shorter route, and had quickly taken
up a strong position across all these roads, with flanks on Beaver Dam
and Totopotomoy creeks. Moreover, at this time it was heavily {365}
reinforced by troops that were drawn from the defences east of
Richmond.
The next day the opposing forces were in close proximity, each trying
to find out what the other was about, and all day the crack of the
skirmisher's rifle was heard. Near Bethesda church there was a small
but bloody engagement, where a portion of Early's corps made an attack
on the National left and gained a brief advantage, but was soon driven
back, with a brigade commander and two regimental commanders among its
killed. At dusk, one brigade of Barlow's division made a sudden rush
and carried a line of Confederate rifle-pits. But it was ascertained
that the position offered no chance of success in a serious assault.
Furthermore, Grant was expecting reinforcements from Butler's Army of
the James, to come by way of White House, at the head of navigation on
York River, and he feared that Lee would move out with a large part of
his army to interpose between him and his reinforcements and overwhelm
them. So he extended his left toward Cold Harbor, sending Sheridan
with cavalry and artillery to secure that place. Sheridan was heavily
attacked there on the morning of June 1st, but held his ground, and
twice drove back the assailants. In the course of the day he was
relieved by the Sixth corps, to which the ten thousand reinforcements
under Gen. William F. Smith were added. At the same time the
Confederate line had been extended in the same direction, so as still
to cover all roads leading to Richmond. The Army of the Potomac, in
its movement down the streams, was now at the highest point that it
had reached in its movement up the peninsula, when led by McClellan
two years before.
At six o'clock in the evening, Smith's and Wright's corps attacked the
Confederate intrenchments. Along most of the front they were obliged
to cross open ground that was swept by artillery and musketry; but
they moved forward steadily, in spite of their rapid losses, and
everywhere carried the first line of works, taking some hundreds of
prisoners, but were stopped by the second. They intrenched and held
their advanced position; but it had been dearly bought, since more
than two thousand of their men were killed or wounded, including many
officers.
When the other corps had followed the Sixth, and the entire army was
in its new position at Cold Harbor, eight or ten miles from Richmond,
with its enemy but a little distance in front of it, an attack was
planned for the morning of the 3d. The Confederate position was very
strong. The line was from three to six miles from the outer defences
of Richmond, the right resting on the Chickahominy, and the left
protected by the woods and swamps about the head-waters of several
small streams. The Chickahominy was between it and Richmond, but the
water was low and everywhere fordable. The only chance for attack was
in front, and it remained to be demonstrated by experiment whether
anything could be done there. If Lee's line could be disrupted at the
centre, and a strong force thrust through, it would for the time being
disorganize his army, though a large part of it would undoubtedly
escape across the river and rally in the intrenchments nearer the
city.
At half-past four o'clock on the morning of the 3d, the Second, Sixth,
and Eighteenth (Smith's) corps began the attack as planned. They moved
forward as rapidly and regularly as the nature of the ground would
admit, under a destructive fire of artillery and musketry, till they
carried the first line of intrenchments. Barlow's division of
Hancock's corps struck a salient, and, after a desperate hand-to-hand
contest, captured it, taking nearly three hundred prisoners and three
guns, which were at once turned upon the enemy. But every assaulting
column, on reaching the enemy's first line, found itself subjected to
cross-fires from the enemy's skilfully placed artillery, and not one
of them could go any farther. Most of them fell back speedily, leaving
large numbers prisoners or bleeding on the ground, and took up
positions midway between the lines, where they rapidly dug trenches
and protected themselves. General Grant had given orders to General
Meade to suspend the attack the moment it should appear hopeless, and
the heavy fighting did not last more than an hour, though firing was
kept up all day. A counter-attack by Early's corps was as unsuccessful
as those of the National troops had been; and one or two lighter
attacks by the Confederates, later in the day, were also repelled.
{366} [Illustration: INTRENCHMENTS AT KENESAW MOUNTAIN, GA.]
The Ninety-eighth New York regiment was among the troops that were
brought up from the Army of the James and joined the Army of the
Potomac two or three days before the battle of Cold Harbor. Its
colonel, William Kreutzer, writes a graphic account of the regiment's
experience during those first three days of June:
"After ten o'clock, Devens, putting the Ninety-eighth in charge of one
of his staff, sent it, marching by the right flank, through the wood
to support one of his regiments. Soon the rattling of the men among
the brush and trees attracted some one's attention in front, and he
poured a volley down along our line lengthwise. We stop; the ground
rises before us, and the aim of the firing is too high. Staff-officer
says: 'These are our men, there is some mistake; wait awhile, and the
firing will stop.' Firing does not stop, and the aim is better.
Staff-officer goes to report, hastens for orders and instructions, and
never comes back. Our position is terribly embarrassing, frightfully
uncomfortable. Our ignorance of the place, the darkness, the wood, the
uncertainty whether the firing is from friend or foe, increase the
horrors of that night's battle. The writer walked from the centre to
the head of the regiment and asked Colonel Wead what the firing meant.
Wead replied: 'We are the victims of some one's blunder.' We
suggested: 'Let us withdraw the regiment, or fire at the enemy in
front. We can't stay here and make no reply. Our men are being killed
or wounded fast.' Wead remarked: 'I have no orders to do either; they
may be our men in front. I am here by direction of General Devens, and
one of his staff has gone to report the facts to him. He will return
in a short time. If we are all killed, I don't see that I can prevent
it, or am to blame for it.'
"We asked Colonel Wead to have the men lie down. The order, 'Lie
down,' was passed along the line, and we returned to our position by
the colors. Subsequently, Colonel Wead joined us there. The firing
continued; the range became lower; the men lying down were wounded
fast. We all lay down. Colonel Wead was struck a glancing blow on the
shoulder-strap by a rifle-ball, and, after lying senseless for a
moment, said to the writer, 'I am wounded; take the command.' We arose
immediately, walked along the line, and quietly withdrew the men to
the lower edge of the wood where we had entered. In that night's
blunder the regiment lost forty-two men, killed and wounded. During
the night and early morning, Colonel Wead and the wounded crawled back
to the regiment. The more severely wounded were carried back half a
mile farther to an old barn, where their wounds were dressed and
whence they were taken in ambulances to White House. Nothing could
equal the horrors of that night's battle; the blundering march into
the enemy's intrenchments, his merciless fire, the cries of our {367}
wounded and dying, the irresolute stupidity and want of sagacity of
the conducting officer, deepen the plot and color the picture.
"At 4 A.M. of the 3d, the Eighteenth Corps was formed for the charge
in three lines; first, a heavy skirmish line; second, a line
consisting of regiments deployed; third, a line formed of regiments in
solid column doubled on the centre. The Ninety-eighth was in the third
line. The whole army advanced together at sunrise. Within twenty
minutes after the order to advance had been given, one of the most
sanguinary battles of the war, quick, sharp, and decisive, had taken
place. By this battle the Army of the Potomac gained nothing, but the
Eighteenth Corps captured and held a projecting portion of the enemy's
breastwork in front. The Ninety-eighth knew well the ground that it
helped to capture, for there lay its dead left on the night of the
1st.
"The men at once began the construction of a breastwork, using their
hands, tin cups, and bayonets. Later they procured picks and shovels.
They laid the dead in line and covered them over, and to build the
breastwork used rails, logs, limbs, leaves, and dirt. The enemy's
shells, solid shot and rifle-balls all the while showered upon them,
and hit every limb and twig about or above them. Nothing saved us but
a slight elevation of the ground in front. A limb cut by a solid shot
felled General Marston to the ground. Three boyish soldiers, thinking
to do the State service, picked him up, and were hurrying him to the
rear, when he recovered his consciousness and compelled them to drop
himself. In a short time he walked slowly back to the front. In this
advance and during the day our regimental flag received fifty-two
bullet-holes, and the regiment lost, killed and wounded, sixty-one.
Colonel Wead rose to his feet an instant on the captured line, when a
rifle-ball pierced his neck and cut the subclavian vein. He was
carried back to the barn beside the road, where he died the same
day....
"On the night of the 4th the Ninety-eighth moved from the second line
through the approach to the front line, and relieved the One Hundred
and Eighteenth New York and the Tenth New Hampshire. It had barely
time to take its position when the Confederates made a night attack
along our whole front. For twenty minutes before, the rain of shells
and balls was terrific; the missiles tore and screamed and sang and
howled along the air. Every branch and leaf was struck; every inch of
the trees and breastworks was pierced. Then the firing ceased along
his line for a few minutes, while the enemy crossed his breastworks
and formed for the charge, when,
'At once there rose so wild a yell,
As all the fiends from heaven that fell
Had pealed the banner cry of hell.'
But no living thing could face that 'rattling shower' of ball and
shell which poured from our lines upon them. They fell to the ground,
they crept away, they hushed the yell of battle. The horrors of that
night assault baffle description."
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL EMORY UPTON.]
[Illustration: MAJOR MARTIN T. McMAHON. (Afterward Brevet
Major-General.)]
[Illustration: COLONEL SAMUEL S. CARROLL. (Afterward Brevet
Major-General.)]
The entire loss of the National Army at Cold Harbor in the first
twelve days of June--including the battles just described and the
almost constant skirmishing and minor engagements--was ten thousand
and eighty-eight; and among the dead and wounded were many valuable
officers. General Tyler and Colonel Brooke were wounded, and Colonels
Porter, Morris, Meade, and Byrnes were killed.[1]
[Footnote 1: The lines of the two armies were so close to each other
that it was impossible to care for the wounded that lay between them,
except by a cessation of hostilities. As the National forces had been
the assailants, most of the wounded were theirs. General Grant made an
immediate effort to obtain a cessation for this humane purpose, but
General Lee delayed it with various trivial excuses for forty-eight
hours, and at the end of that time all but two of the wounded were
dead. See a part of the correspondence in Grant's "Memoirs," Vol. II.,
pp. 273 _et seq._ As to the losses here and at Spottsylvania,
authorities differ. The figures given above are from a statement
compiled in the Adjutant-General's office.]
{368} The Confederate loss--which included Brigadier-General Doles
among the killed, and Brigadier-Generals Kirkland, Lane, Law, and
Finnegan among the wounded--is unknown; but it was much smaller than
the National. The attack of June 3d is recognized as the most serious
error in Grant's military career. He himself says, in his "Memoirs,"
that he always regretted it was ever made. It was as useless, and
almost as costly, as Lee's assault upon Meade's centre at Gettysburg.
But we do not read that any of Grant's lieutenants protested against
it, as Longstreet protested against the attack on Cemetery Ridge.
For some days Grant held his army as close to the enemy as possible,
to prevent the Confederates from detaching a force to operate against
Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley.
General Halleck now proposed that the Army of the Potomac should
invest Richmond on the north. This might have prevented any
possibility of Lee's launching out toward Washington, but it could
hardly have effected anything else. The Confederate lines of supply
would have been left untouched, while the National troops would have
perished between impregnable intrenchments on the one side and
malarious swamps on the other. Grant determined to move once more by
the left flank, swing his army across the James, and invest the city
from the south. A direct investment of the Confederate capital on that
side was out of the question, because the south bank of the James is
lower than the city; and the movement would, therefore, resolve itself
into a struggle for Petersburg, thirty miles south of Richmond, which
was its railroad centre.
To withdraw an army from so close contact with the enemy, march it
fifty miles, cross two rivers, and bring it into a new position, was a
very delicate and hazardous task, and Grant performed it with
consummate skill. He sent a part of his cavalry to make a
demonstration on the James above Richmond and destroy portions of
Lee's line of supplies from the Shenandoah; he had a line of
intrenchments constructed along the north bank of the Chickahominy,
from his position at Cold Harbor down to the point where he expected
to cross; and directed General Butler to send two vessels loaded with
stone to be sunk in the channel of the James as far up-stream as
possible, so that the Confederate gunboats could not come down and
attack the army while it was crossing. A large number of vessels had
been collected at Fort Monroe, to be used as ferry-boats when the army
should reach the James. The so-called "bridges" on the Chickahominy
were now only names of geographical points, for all the bridges had
been destroyed; but each column was to carry its pontoon train.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL P. ST. GEORGE COOKE.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAMES A. BEAVER.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL ISAAC S. CATLIN.]
The march began in the evening of June 12th, and at midday of the 13th
a pontoon was thrown across at Long Bridge, fifteen miles below the
Cold Harbor position, and Wilson's cavalry crossed and immediately
moved out a short distance on the roads toward Richmond, to watch the
movements of the enemy and prevent a surprise. The Fifth corps
followed quickly, and took a position covering these roads till the
remainder of the army could cross. The Second, Sixth, and Ninth corps
crossed the Chickahominy a few miles farther down; while the
Eighteenth had embarked at White House, to be sent around by water. In
the evening of the 13th, the Fifth reached Wilcox's Landing on the
James, ten miles below Haxall's, where McClellan had reached the river
at the close of his peninsula campaign. The other corps reached the
landing on the 14th. The river there is more than two thousand feet
wide; but between four o'clock, P.M., and midnight a pontoon was laid,
and the crossing began. The artillery and trains were sent over first,
and the infantry followed in a long procession that occupied
forty-eight hours, the rear guard of the Sixth corps passing over at
midnight of the 16th. Thus an army of more than one hundred thousand
men was taken from a line of trenches within a few yards of the enemy,
marched fifty miles, and, with all its paraphernalia, carried across
two rivers and placed in a position threatening that enemy's capital,
without a serious collision or disaster. General Ewell said that when
the National army got across the James River he knew that the
Confederate cause was lost, and it was the duty of their authorities
to make {369} the best terms they could while they still had a right
to claim concessions.
Most critics of this campaign have persistently proceeded on the
assumption that Grant's objective was the city of Richmond, and have
accordingly condemned his plan of marching overland, and with apparent
conclusiveness have pointed to his heavy losses and to the fact that
Richmond was still uncaptured, and then asked the question, which has
been wearisomely repeated, why he might not as well have carried his
army by water in the first place to a position before Richmond,
without loss, as McClellan had done two years before, instead of
getting there along a bloody overland trail at such heavy cost. These
critics should know, even if Grant himself had not distinctly declared
it at the outset, that his objective was not the city of Richmond;
that it was Lee's army, which it was his business to follow and fight
until he destroyed it. The same critics appear to think also that he
ought to have found a way to accomplish his purpose without bloodshed,
and that because he did not he was no general, but a mere "butcher,"
as some of them boldly call him. If they were asked to name a general
who had won great victories without himself losing men by the
thousand, they would find it difficult to do so, for no such general
figures in the pages of history. If there ever was a chance to defeat
the Army of Northern Virginia and destroy the Confederacy by anything
but hard fighting, it was when McClellan planted his army on the
peninsula; but McClellan's timidity was not the quality necessary for
a bold and brilliant stroke. Nearly the whole State of Virginia is
admirably adapted for defence against an invading army; and by the
time that Grant set out on his overland campaign every position where
Lee's army could make a stand was thoroughly known, and most of them
were fortified; furthermore, the men of his army were now veterans and
understood how to use every one of their advantages, while Lee as a
general had only to move his army over ground that it had already
traversed several times, and manoeuvre for a constant defence. Under
these circumstances, nothing but hard and continuous fighting could
have conquered such an army. The same criticism that finds fault with
General Grant for not transporting his army by water to the front of
Richmond instead of fighting his way thither overland, must also
condemn General Lee for not surrendering in the Wilderness instead of
fighting all the way to Appomattox and then surrendering at last.
[Illustration: NEWSPAPER HEADQUARTERS AT THE FRONT. (From a war-time
photograph.)]
{370} [Illustration: A GROUP OF NAVAL OFFICERS, U. S. N. COMMANDER
ROBERT W. SHUFELDT. REAR-ADMIRAL HIRAM PAULDING. COMMANDER S. L.
BREESE. LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER HENRY ERBEN. COMMANDER E. T. NICHOLS.
COMMANDER NAPOLEON COLLINS. COMMODORE GEORGE HENRY PREBLE. CAPTAIN
JOHN FAUNCE. REAR-ADMIRAL H. K. HOFF.]
{371}
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE CONFEDERATE CRUISERS.
THE "ALABAMA" SUNK BY THE "KEARSARGE"--THE "SUMTER" AND OTHER
CRUISERS--PROTEST OF OUR GOVERNMENT TO THE BRITISH
GOVERNMENT--SECRETARY SEWARD'S DESPATCHES--PRIVATEERING--WHY ENGLAND
DID NOT INTERFERE--ARBITRATION AND AMOUNT OF DAMAGE OBTAINED FROM THE
BRITISH GOVERNMENT.
While the Army of the Potomac was putting itself in fighting trim
after its change of base, a decisive battle of the war took place
three thousand miles away. A vessel known in the builders' yard as the
"290," and afterward famous as the _Alabama_, had been built for the
Confederate Government in 1862, at Birkenhead, opposite Liverpool. She
was of wood, a fast sailer, having both steam and canvas, was two
hundred and twenty feet long, and rated at one thousand and forty
tons. She was thoroughly fitted in every respect, and cost nearly a
quarter of a million dollars. The American minister at London notified
the British Government that such a ship was being built in an English
yard, in violation of the neutrality laws, and demanded that she be
prevented from leaving the Mersey. But, either through design or
stupidity, the Government moved too slowly, and the cruiser escaped to
sea. She went to Fayal, in the Azores, and there took on board her
guns and coal, sent out to her in a merchant ship from London. Her
commander was Raphael Semmes, who had served in the United States
navy. Her crew were mainly Englishmen. For nearly two years she roamed
the seas, traversing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Gulf of
Mexico, and captured sixty-nine American merchantmen, most of which
were burned at sea. Their crews were sent away on passing vessels, or
put ashore at some convenient port. Several war-vessels were sent out
in search of the _Alabama_, but they were at constant disadvantage
from the rule that when two hostile vessels are in a neutral port, the
first that leaves must have been gone twenty-four hours before the
other is permitted to follow. In French, and especially in British
ports, the _Alabama_ was always welcome, and enjoyed every possible
facility, because she was destroying American commerce.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN A. WINSLOW AND OFFICERS ON THE DECK OF THE
"KEARSARGE." (From a Government photograph.)]
In June, 1864, she was in the harbor of Cherbourg, France. The United
States man-of-war _Kearsarge_, commanded by John {372} A. Winslow,
found her there, and lay off the port, watching her. By not going into
the harbor, Winslow escaped the twenty-four-hour rule. Semmes sent a
note to Winslow, asking him not to go away, as he was coming out to
fight; but no such challenge was called for, as the _Kearsarge_ had
come for that purpose, and was patiently waiting for her prey. She was
almost exactly the size of the _Alabama_, and the armaments were so
nearly alike as to make a very fair match. But her crew were
altogether superior in gun-practice, and she had protected her boilers
by chains, "stoppered" up and down the side amidships, as had been
done in the fights at New Orleans and elsewhere. On Sunday morning,
June 19th, the _Alabama_ steamed out of the harbor amid the plaudits
of thousands of Englishmen and Frenchmen, who had not a doubt that she
was going to certain victory. The _Kearsarge_ steamed away as she
approached, and drew her off to a distance of seven or eight miles
from the coast. Winslow then turned and closed with his enemy. The two
vessels steamed around on opposite sides of a circle half a mile in
diameter, firing their starboard guns. The practice on the _Alabama_
was very bad; she began firing first, discharged her guns rapidly, and
produced little or no effect, though a dozen of her shots struck her
antagonist. But when the _Kearsarge_ began firing there was war in
earnest. Her guns were handled with great skill, and every shot told.
One of them cut the mizzenmast so that it fell. Another exploded a
shell among the crew of the _Alabama's_ pivot gun, killing half of
them and dismounting the piece. Balls rolled in at the port-holes and
swept away the gunners; and several pierced the hull below the water
line, making the ship tremble from stem to stern, and letting in
floods of water. The vessels had described seven circles, and the
_Alabama's_ deck was strewn with the dead, when at the end of an hour
she was found to be sinking, her colors were struck, and her officers,
with a keen sense of chivalry, threw into the sea the swords that were
no longer their own. The _Kearsarge_ lowered boats to take off the
crew; but suddenly the stern settled, the bow was thrown up into the
air, and down went the _Alabama_ to the bottom of the British Channel,
carrying an unknown number of her men. An English yacht picked up
Semmes and about forty sailors, and steamed away to Southampton with
them; others were rescued by the boats of the _Kearsarge_, and still
others were drowned.
In January, 1863, the _Alabama_ had fought the side-wheel steamer
_Hatteras_, of the United States Navy, off Galveston, Tex., and
injured her so that she sank soon after surrendering. The remainder of
the _Alabama's_ career, till she met the _Kearsarge_, had been spent
in capturing merchant vessels and either burning them or releasing
them under bonds. Before Captain Semmes received command of the
_Alabama_, he had cruised in the _Sumter_ on a similar mission,
capturing eighteen vessels, when her course was ended in the harbor of
Gibraltar, in February, 1862, where she was blockaded by the United
States steamers _Kearsarge_ and _Tuscarora_, and, as there was no
probability that she could escape to sea, her captain and crew
abandoned her.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN RAPHAEL SEMMES.]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN A. WINSLOW. (Afterward Rear-Admiral.)]
A score of other Confederate cruisers roamed the seas, to prey upon
United States commerce, but none of them became quite so famous as the
_Sumter_ and the _Alabama_. They included the _Shenandoah_, which made
thirty-eight captures; the _Florida_, which made thirty-six; the
_Tallahassee_, which made twenty-seven; the _Tacony_, which made
fifteen; and the _Georgia_, which made ten. The _Florida_ was captured
in the harbor of Bahia, Brazil, in October, 1864, by a United States
man-of-war, in violation of the neutrality of the port. For this the
United States Government apologized to Brazil, and ordered the
restoration of the _Florida_ to the harbor where she was captured. But
in Hampton Roads she met with an accident and sank. It was generally
believed that the apparent accident was contrived with the connivance,
if not by direct order, of the Government.
Most of these cruisers were built in British shipyards; and whenever
they touched at British ports, to obtain supplies and land prisoners,
their commanders were ostentatiously welcomed and lionized by the
British merchants and officials.
[Illustration: OPENING OF THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE "KEARSARGE" AND THE
"ALABAMA."]
The English builders were proceeding to construct several swift
iron-clad cruisers for the Confederate Government, when the United
States Government protested so vigorously that the British Government
prevented them from leaving port. One or two passages from Secretary
Seward's despatches to Charles Francis Adams, the American minister at
London, contain the whole argument that was afterward elaborated
before a high court of arbitration, and secured a verdict against
England. More than this, these passages contain what probably was the
controlling reason that determined England not to try the experiment
of intervention. Secretary Seward wrote, under date of October 5-6,
1863:
"I have had the honor to receive and submit to the President your
despatch of the 17th of September, which relates to the iron-clad
vessels built at Laird's shipyards for war against the United States,
which is accompanied by a very interesting correspondence between
yourself and Earl Russell. The positions you have taken in this
correspondence are approved. It is indeed a cause of profound concern,
that, notwithstanding an engagement which the President has accepted
as final, there still remains a doubt whether those vessels will be
prevented from coming out, according to the original hostile purposes
of the enemies of the United States residing in Great Britain.
"Earl Russell remarks that her Majesty's Government, having {373}
proclaimed neutrality, have in good faith exerted themselves to
maintain it. I have not to say now for the first time, that, however
satisfactory that position may be to the British nation, it does not
at all relieve the gravity of the question in the United States. The
proclamation of neutrality was a concession of belligerent rights to
the insurgents, and was deemed by this Government as unnecessary, and
in effect as unfriendly, as it has since proved injurious, to this
country. The successive preparations of hostile naval expeditions in
Great Britain are regarded here as fruits of that injurious
proclamation.... It is hardly necessary to say that the United States
stand upon what they think impregnable ground, when they refuse to be
derogated, by any act of British Government, from their position as a
sovereign nation in amity with Great Britain, and placed upon a
footing of equality with domestic insurgents who have risen up in
resistance against their authority.
"It does not remain for us even to indicate to Great Britain the
serious consequences which must ensue if the iron-clads shall come
forth upon their work of destruction. They have been fully revealed to
yourself, and you have made them known to Earl Russell, within the
restraints which an honest and habitual respect for the Government and
the people of Great Britain imposes. It seems to me that her Majesty's
Government might be expected to perceive and appreciate them, even if
we were henceforth silent upon the subject. When our unhappy civil war
broke out, we distinctly confessed that we knew what great temptations
it offered to foreign intervention and aggression, and that in no
event could such intervention or aggression be endured. It was
apparent that such aggression, if it should come, must travel over the
seas, and therefore must be met and encountered, if at all, by
maritime resistance. We addressed ourselves to prepare the means of
such resistance. We have now a navy, not, indeed, as ample as we
proposed, but yet one which we feel assured is not altogether
inadequate to the purposes of self-defence, and it is yet rapidly
increasing in men, material, and engines of war. Besides this regular
naval force, the President has asked, and Congress has given him,
authority to convert the mercantile marine into armed squadrons, by
the issue of letters of marque and reprisal. All the world might see,
if it would, that the great arm of naval defence has not been thus
invigorated for the mere purpose of maintaining a blockade, or
enforcing our authority against the insurgents; for practically they
have never had an open port, or built and armed, nor could they from
their own resources build and arm, a single ship-of-war.
"Thus the world is left free to understand that our measures of
maritime war are intended to resist maritime aggression, which is
constantly threatened from abroad and even more constantly apprehended
at home. That it would be employed for that purpose, if such
aggression should be attempted, would {374} seem certain, unless,
indeed, there should be reason to suppose that the people do not in
this respect approve of the policy and sympathize with the sentiments
of the executive Government. But the resistance of foreign aggression
by all the means in our power, and at the hazard, if need be, of the
National life itself, is the one point of policy on which the American
people seem to be unanimous and in complete harmony with the
President.
"The United States understand that the _Alabama_ is a pirate
ship-of-war, roving over the seas, capturing, burning, sinking, and
destroying American vessels, without any lawful authority from the
British Government or from any other sovereign power, in violation of
the law of nations, and contemptuously defying all judicial tribunals
equally of Great Britain and all other states. The United States
understand that she was purposely built for war against the United
States, by British subjects, in a British port, and prepared there to
be armed and equipped with a specified armament adapted to her
construction for the very piratical career which she is now pursuing;
that her armament and equipment, duly adapted to this ship-of-war and
no other, were simultaneously prepared by the same British subjects,
in a British port, to be placed on board to complete her preparation
for that career; that when she was ready, and her armament and
equipment were equally ready, she was clandestinely and by connivance
sent by her British holders, and the armament and equipment were at
the same time clandestinely sent through the same connivance by the
British subjects who had prepared them, to a common port outside of
British waters, and there the armament and equipment of the _Alabama_
as a ship-of-war were completed, and she was sent forth on her work of
destruction with a crew chiefly of British subjects, enlisted in and
proceeding from a British port, in fraud of the laws of Great Britain
and in violation of the peace and sovereignty of the United States.
"The United States understand that the purpose of the building,
armament and equipment, and expedition of the vessel was one single
criminal intent, running equally through the building and the
equipment and the expedition, and fully completed and executed when
the _Alabama_ was finally despatched; and that this intent brought the
whole transaction of building, armament, and equipment within the
lawful jurisdiction of Great Britain, where the main features of the
crime were executed. The United States understand that they gave
sufficient and adequate notice to the British Government that this
wrongful enterprise was begun and was being carried out to its
completion; and that upon receiving this notice her Majesty's
Government were bound by treaty obligations and by the law of nations
to prevent its execution, and that if the diligence which was due had
been exercised by the British Government the expedition of the
_Alabama_ would have been prevented, and the wrongful enterprise of
British subjects would have been defeated. The United States confess
that some effort was made by her Majesty's Government, but it was put
forth too late and was too soon abandoned. Upon these principles of
law and these assumptions of fact, the United States do insist, and
must continue to insist, that the British Government is justly
responsible for the damages which the peaceful, law-abiding citizens
of the United States sustain by the depredations of the _Alabama_.
"Though indulging a confident belief in the correctness of our
positions in regard to the claims in question, and others, we shall be
willing at all times hereafter, as well as now, to consider the
evidence and the arguments which her Majesty's Government may offer,
to show that they are invalid; and if we shall not be convinced, there
is no fair and just form of conventional arbitrament or reference to
which we shall not be willing to submit them."
In 1856 the great powers of Europe signed at Paris a treaty by which
they relinquished the right of privateering, and some of the lesser
powers afterward accepted a general invitation to join in it. The
United States offered to sign it, on condition that a clause be
inserted declaring that private property on the high seas, if not
contraband of war, should be exempt from seizure by the public armed
vessels of an enemy, as well as by private ones. The powers that had
negotiated the treaty declined to make this amendment, and therefore
the United States did not become a party to it. When the war of
secession began, and the Confederate authorities proclaimed their
readiness to issue letters of marque for private vessels to prey upon
American commerce, the United States Government offered to accept the
treaty without amendment; but England and France declined to permit
our Government to join in the treaty then, if its provisions against
privateering were to be understood as applying to vessels sent out
under Confederate authority. There the subject was dropped, and while
the insurgents were thus left at liberty to do whatever damage they
could upon the high seas, the United States Government was also left
free to send not only its own cruisers but an unlimited number of
privateers against the commerce of any nation with which it might
become involved in war. When at the beginning of President Lincoln's
administration Mr. Adams was sent out as minister at London, he
carried instructions that included this passage: "If, as the President
does not at all apprehend, you shall unhappily find her Majesty's
Government tolerating the application of the so-called seceding
States, or wavering about it, you will not leave them to suppose for a
moment that they can grant that application and remain the friends of
the United States. You may even assure them promptly, in that case,
that if they determine to recognize, they may at the same time prepare
to enter into alliance with the enemies of this Republic."
England had had a costly experience of American privateering under
sail in the war of 1812-15, and she now saw what privateering could
become under steam power. While she was rejoicing at the destruction
of American merchantmen, she knew what might happen to her own. Let
her become involved in war with the United States, and not only a
hundred war-ships but a vast fleet of privateers would at once set
sail from American ports, and in a few months her commerce would be
swept from every sea. The fisherman on the coast of Maine would carpet
his hut with Persian rugs, and the ship-carpenter's children would
play with baubles intended to decorate the Court of St. James.[1] The
navies of England and France combined could not blockade the harbors
of New England; and from those harbors, where every material is at
hand, might have sailed a fleet whose operations would not only have
impoverished the merchants of London, but called out the wail of
famine from her populace. Other considerations were discussed; but it
was doubtless this contingency that furnished the controlling reason
why the British Government resisted the tempting offers of cotton and
free trade, {375} resisted the importunities of Louis Napoleon,
resisted the clamor of its more reckless subjects, resisted its own
prejudice against republican institutions, and refused to recognize
the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation. It may have been
this consideration also that induced it, after the war was over, to
agree to exactly that settlement by arbitration which was suggested by
Secretary Seward in the despatch quoted above. In 1872 the
international court of arbitration, sitting in Geneva, Switzerland,
decided that the position taken by the United States Government in
regard to responsibility for the Confederate cruisers was right; and
that the British Government, for failing to prevent their escape from
its ports, must pay the United States fifteen and a half million
dollars. So far as settlement of the principle was concerned, the
award gave Americans all the satisfaction they could desire; but the
sum named fell far short of the damage that had been wrought. Charles
Sumner, speaking in his place in the Senate, had contended with great
force for the exaction of what were called "consequential damages,"
which would have swelled the amount to hundreds of millions; but in
this he was overruled.
[Footnote 1: See lists of goods captured by American privateers in the
war of 1812: "Eighteen bales of Turkish carpets, 43 bales of raw silk,
20 boxes of gums, 160 dozen swan-skins, 6 tons of ivory, $40,000 in
gold dust, $80,000 in specie, $20,000 worth of indigo, $60,000 in
bullion, $500,000 worth of dry goods, 700 tons of mahogany," etc. In
Coggeshall's "History of American Privateers."]
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PRELIMINARY OPERATIONS IN THE WEST.
GENERAL SHERMAN CAPTURES MERIDIAN, MISS.--DESTRUCTION OF RAILROADS AND
SUPPLIES--GENERAL BANKS ATTEMPTS TO CAPTURE SHREVEPORT, LA.--BATTLE OF
SABINE CROSS-ROADS--TEMPORARY ROUT AND DEFEAT OF THE UNION
FORCES--DEFEAT OF THE CONFEDERATES AT PLEASANT HILL--INCIDENTS OF
HEROISM ON BOTH SIDES--BUILDING OF DAMS IN THE RED RIVER--SUCCESSFUL
PASSAGE OF THE RAPIDS BY GUNBOATS--LOSSES AND INCIDENTS OF THE
EXPEDITION.
The first important movements at the West in 1864 were for the purpose
of securing the Mississippi River, possession of which had been won by
the victories of Farragut at New Orleans and Grant at Vicksburg, and
setting free the large garrisons that were required to hold the
important places on its banks. On the 3d of February Gen. William T.
Sherman set out from Vicksburg with a force of somewhat more than
twenty thousand men, in two columns, commanded respectively by
Generals McPherson and Hurlbut. Their destination was Meridian, over
one hundred miles east of Vicksburg, where the Mobile and Ohio
Railroad is crossed by that from Jackson to Selma. The march was made
in eleven days, without notable incident, except that General Sherman
narrowly escaped capture at Decatur. He had stopped for the night at a
log house, Hurlbut's column had passed on to encamp four miles beyond
the town, and McPherson's had not yet come up. A few straggling wagons
of Hurlbut's train were attacked at the cross-roads by a detachment of
Confederate cavalry, and Sherman ran out of the house to see wagons
and horsemen mingled in a cloud of dust, with pistol bullets flying in
every direction. With the few orderlies and clerks that belonged to
headquarters, he was preparing to barricade a corn-crib where they
could defend themselves, when an infantry regiment was brought back
from Hurlbut's corps and quickly cleared the ground. General Grant had
an equally narrow escape from capture just before he set out on his
Virginia campaign. A special train that was taking him to the front
reached Warrenton Junction just after a detachment of Confederate
cavalry, still in sight, had crossed the track at that point.
[Illustration]
General Leonidas Polk, who was in command at Meridian, marched out at
the approach of Sherman's columns, and retreated into Alabama--perhaps
deceived by the report Sherman had caused to be spread that the
destination of the expedition was Mobile. The National troops entered
the town on the 14th, and at once began a thorough destruction of the
arsenal and storehouses, the machine-shops, the station, and
especially the railroads. Miles of the track were torn up, the ties
burned, and the rails heated and then bent and twisted, or wound
around trees. These were popularly called "Jeff Davis's neckties" and
"Sherman's hairpins." Wherever the columns passed they destroyed the
mills and factories and stations, leaving untouched only the
dwelling-houses. Sherman was determined to disable those railroads so
completely that the Confederates could not use them again, and in this
he succeeded, as he did in everything he undertook personally. But
another enterprise, intended to be carried out at the same time, was
not so fortunate. He sent Gen. W. Sooy Smith with a cavalry force to
destroy Forrest's Confederate cavalry, which was very audacious in its
frequent raids, and liable at any time to dash upon the National
railroad communication in middle Tennessee. Smith had about seven
thousand men, and was to leave Memphis on the 1st of February and go
straight to Meridian, Sherman telling him he would be sure to
encounter Forrest on the way, and how he must manage the fight. But
Smith did not leave Memphis till the 11th, and, instead of defeating
Forrest, allowed Forrest to defeat him and drive him back to Memphis;
so that Sherman waited at Meridian till the 20th, and then returned
with his expedition to Vicksburg, followed by thousands of negroes of
all ages, who could not and would not be turned back, but pressed
close upon the army, in their firm belief that its mission was their
deliverance.
{376} [Illustration: LANDING OF FEDERAL FORCES AT INDIAN BEND, LA.,
APRIL, 1863.]
While the gap that had been made in the Confederacy by the seizure of
the Mississippi was thus widened by destruction of railroads east of
that river, General Banks, in command at New Orleans, attempted to
perform a somewhat similar service west of it. With about fifteen
thousand men he set out in March for Shreveport, at the head of steam
navigation on Red River, to be joined at Alexandria by ten thousand
men under Gen. A. J. Smith (loaned for the occasion by Sherman from
the force at Vicksburg) and by Commodore David D. Porter with a fleet
of gunboats and transports. Smith and Porter arrived promptly at the
rendezvous, captured Fort de Russey below Alexandria, and waited for
Banks. After his arrival, the army moved by roads parallel with the
river, and the gunboats kept even pace with them, though with great
difficulty because of low water. Small bodies of Confederate troops
appeared frequently, but were easily brushed aside by the army, while
the fire from the gunboats destroyed a great many who were foolhardy
enough {377} to attack them with musketry and field guns. So used had
the troops become to this proceeding, that common precautions were
relaxed, and the army jogged along strung out for twenty miles on a
single road, with a small cavalry force in the advance, then the
wagon-trains, and then the infantry.
As they approached Sabine Cross Roads, April 8, they were confronted
by a strong Confederate force commanded by Gen. Richard Taylor, and
suddenly there was a battle, though neither commander intended it.
Taylor, before camping for the night, had sent out troops merely to
drive back the advance guard of the expedition. But the men on both
sides became excited, and the Nationals fought persistently to save
their trains, while Banks tried to bring forward his infantry, but in
vain, because his wagons blocked the road.
When the skirmish line was driven back on the main body, the
Confederates advanced in heavy force, and for a time there was very
fierce fighting. Several of the National batteries were pushed
forward, and fought most gallantly. On the left was Nim's battery,
which was doing terrible execution, when the enemy prepared to make a
charge upon it in great force. General Stone, observing this, ordered
that the battery be withdrawn to save it from capture; but it was
found that this was impossible, because nearly all the horses had been
killed. The gunners continued to fire double charges of grape and
canister into the advancing enemy, and struck down a great many of
them, including Gen. Alfred Mouton, who was leading the charge. But
this did not stop the assailants, who rapidly closed up their ranks
and pushed on, capturing four of the guns, while the other two were
hauled off by hand. Many of the horses of the wagon trains became
frightened, broke loose, and dashed wildly through the lines of the
infantry; and, amid the increasing confusion, the Confederates pressed
closer to follow up their advantage. General Banks, General Franklin,
and others of the commanders, were in the thick of the fray
endeavoring to rally the men and hold them up to the fight. Two horses
were killed under General Franklin, and one member of his staff lost
both feet by a cannon shot. When the battle had been in progress an
hour and a half the line suddenly gave way, and the cavalry and
teamsters rushed back in a disorderly mass, followed closely by the
victorious enemy. Banks's personal efforts to rally them were useless,
and he was borne away by the tide. Three miles in the rear the
Nineteenth Corps was drawn up in line, and here the rout was stayed.
The Confederates attacked this line, but could not break it, and at
nightfall retired. Banks had lost over three thousand men, nineteen
guns, and a large amount of stores.
[Illustration: GENERAL BANKS'S ARMY IN THE ADVANCE ON SHREVEPORT, LA.,
CROSSING CANE RIVER, MARCH 31, 1864.]
A participant in this battle, writing an account of it at the time,
said: "General Banks personally directed the fight. Everything that
man could do he did. Occupying a position so exposed that nearly every
horse ridden by his staff was wounded, and many killed, he constantly
disregarded the entreaties of those around, who begged that he would
retire to some less exposed position. General Stone, his chief of
staff, with his sad, earnest face, that seemed to wear an unusual
expression, was constantly at the front, and by his reckless bravery
did much to encourage the men. And so the fight raged. The enemy were
pushing a temporary advantage. Our army was merely forming into
position to make a sure battle. Then came one of those unaccountable
events that no genius or courage can control. The battle {378} was
progressing vigorously. The musketry firing was loud and continuous,
and having recovered from the danger experienced by Ransom's division,
we felt secure of the position. I was slowly riding along the edge of
a wood, conversing with a friend who had just ridden up about the
events and prospects of the day. We had drawn into the side of the
wood to allow an ammunition-wagon to pass, and although many were
observed going to the rear, some on foot and some on horseback, we
regarded it as an occurrence familiar to every battle, and it
occasioned nothing but a passing remark. Suddenly there was a rush, a
shout, the crashing of trees, the breaking down of rails, the rush and
scamper of men. It was as sudden as though a thunder-bolt had fallen
among us and set the pines on fire. What caused it, or when it
commenced, no one knew. I turned to my companion to inquire the reason
of this extraordinary proceeding, but before he had the chance to
reply, we found ourselves swallowed up, as it were, in a hissing,
seething, bubbling whirlpool of agitated men. We could not avoid the
current; we could not stem it; and if we hoped to live in that mad
company, we must ride with the rest of them. Our line of battle had
given way. General Banks took off his hat and implored his men to
remain; his staff-officers did the same, but it was of no avail. Then
the general drew his sabre and endeavored to rally his men, but they
would not listen. Behind him the rebels were shouting and advancing.
Their musket-balls filled the air with that strange file-rasping sound
that war has made familiar to our fighting men. The teams were
abandoned by the drivers, the traces cut, and the animals ridden off
by the frightened men. Bareheaded riders rode with agony in their
faces, and for at least ten minutes it seemed as if we were going to
destruction together. It was my fortune to see the first battle of
Bull Run, and to be among those who made that celebrated midnight
retreat toward Washington. The retreat of the fourth division was as
much a rout as that of the first Federal army, with the exception that
fewer men were engaged, and our men fought here with a valor that was
not shown on that serious, sad, mock-heroic day in July. We rode
nearly two miles in this madcap way, until, on the edge of a ravine,
which might formerly have been a bayou, we found Emory's division
drawn up in line. Our retreating men fell beyond this line, and Emory
prepared to meet the rebels. They came with a rush, and, as the shades
of night crept over the tree-tops, they encountered our men. Emory
fired three rounds, and the rebels retreated. This ended the fight,
leaving the Federals masters. Night, and the paralyzing effect of the
stampede upon our army, made pursuit impossible. The enemy fell back,
taking with them some of the wagons that were left, and a number of
the guns that were abandoned."
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL CUVIER GROVER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL NATHANIEL P. BANKS.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS KILBY SMITH.]
That night Banks fell back fifteen miles to Pleasant Hill, General
Emory's command burying the dead and caring for the wounded before
following as the rear-guard. Here General Smith's command joined him,
making his full force about fifteen thousand men, and he formed a
strong line of battle and waited to be attacked again. The line was
stretched across the main road, with its left resting on the slight
eminence known as Pleasant Hill. The Confederates spent a large part
of the day in gathering up plunder and slowly advancing with
skirmishing until about four o'clock in the afternoon. At that hour
they advanced their lines in heavy charging columns against the
centre, which fought stubbornly for a while and then fell back slowly
upon the reserves. The Confederates then pressed upon the right wing,
when the reserves were pushed forward and charged them vigorously in
turn, while the centre was rallied and re-formed and advanced so as to
strike them in the flank. What took place at this time is well
described by an eye-witness: "This fighting was terrific--old soldiers
say it never was surpassed for desperation. Notwithstanding the
terrible havoc in their ranks, the enemy pressed fiercely on, slowly
pushing the men of the Nineteenth Corps back, up the hill, but not
breaking their line of battle. A sudden and bold dash of the rebels on
the right gave them possession of Taylor's battery, and forced our
line still further back. Now came the grand _coup de main_. The
Nineteenth, on arriving at the top of the hill, suddenly filed off
over the hill and passed through the lines of General Smith. The
rebels were now in but two lines of battle, the first having been
almost annihilated by General Emory, what remained being forced back
into the second line. But these two lines came on exultant and sure of
victory. The first passed over the knoll, and, all heedless of the
long line of cannons and crouching forms of as brave men as ever trod
Mother Earth, pressed on. The second line appeared on the crest, and
the death-signal was sounded. Words cannot describe the awful effect
of this discharge. Seven thousand rifles, and several batteries of
artillery, each gun loaded to the muzzle with grape and canister, were
fired simultaneously, and the whole centre of the rebel line was
crushed down as a field of ripe wheat through which a tornado had
passed. It is estimated that one thousand men were hurried into
eternity or frightfully mangled by this one discharge. No time was
given them to recover their good order, but General Smith ordered a
charge, and his men dashed rapidly forward, the boys of the Nineteenth
joining in. {379} The rebels fought boldly and desperately back to the
timber, on reaching which, a large portion broke and fled, fully two
thousand throwing aside their arms."
After being thus routed, the Confederates were pursued nearly three
miles. Their losses this day included Gen. Thomas Green, killed. The
Confederate general, E. Kirby Smith, who commanded that department,
says: "Our repulse at Pleasant Hill was so complete, and our command
was so disorganized, that, had Banks followed up his success
vigorously, he would have met but feeble opposition to his advance on
Shreveport.... Assuming command, I was consulting with General Taylor
when some stragglers from the battlefield, where our wounded were
still lying, brought the intelligence that Banks had precipitously
retreated after the battle, converting a victory which he might have
claimed into a defeat."
General Banks, in his official report, gives the reasons why he
retreated to Grand Ecore immediately after his brilliant victory at
Pleasant Hill: "At the close of the engagement the victorious party
found itself without rations and water. To clear the field for the
fight, the train had been sent to the rear upon the single line of
communication through the woods, and could not be brought to the front
during the night. There was water neither for man nor beast, except
such as the now exhausted wells had afforded during the day, for miles
around. Previous to the movement of the army from Natchitoches, orders
had been given to the transport fleet, with a portion of the Sixteenth
Corps, under the command of Gen. Kilby Smith, to move up the river, if
it was found practicable, to some point near Springfield Landing, with
a view of effecting a junction with the army at that point on the
river. The surplus ammunition and supplies were on board these
transports. It was impossible to ascertain whether the fleet had been
able to reach the point designated. The rapidly falling river and the
increased difficulties of navigation made it appear almost certain
that it would not be able to attain the point proposed. A squadron of
cavalry sent down to the river, accompanied by Mr. Young, of the
Engineer Corps, who was thoroughly acquainted with the country,
reported, on the day of the battle, that no tidings of the fleet could
be obtained on the river. These considerations, the absolute
deprivation of water for man or beast, the exhaustion of rations, and
the failure to effect a connection with the fleet on the river, made
it necessary for the army, although victorious in the terrible
struggle through which it had just passed, to retreat to a point where
it would be certain of communicating with the fleet, and where it
would have an opportunity of reorganization."
Another reason for Banks's retreat was that he had been ordered to
return Smith's borrowed troops immediately.
The principal hero of this battle was Gen. Andrew Jackson Smith, whose
prompt arrival with his command Friday night, together with his energy
and good generalship in the battle of the ensuing day, probably saved
Banks's army from a second defeat. With him was the gallant Gen.
Joseph A. Mower, hardly less conspicuous in the fighting. So far as
energy and valor were concerned, however, every officer there rose to
his full duty. General Banks was under fire much of the time, and a
bullet passed through his coat. General Franklin exhibited great skill
in manoeuvring his troops. A staff officer was riding down the line
with an order, when a cannon shot took off his horse's head. Col W. F.
Lynch, at the head of a small detachment pursuing the enemy, captured
three caissons filled with ammunition. As he was attempting to jump
his horse over a ditch, a bullet whistled past his ear, and turning,
he saw that it had been fired by a wounded Confederate soldier in the
ditch, who was just preparing to take a second and more careful shot
at him. The colonel drew his revolver and prevented any further
mischief from that quarter. Col. Lewis Benedict was wounded early in
the fight, but refused to leave the field, and remained with his
brigade until he fell at its head, of a mortal wound. Col. W. T. Shaw,
commanding a brigade, observed preparations for a cavalry charge
intended to break his line, and ordered his men to reserve their fire
until the enemy should be within thirty yards. This order was obeyed,
and as the Confederate horsemen rode up at a gallop, each infantryman
selected his mark, and when the volley was fired, nearly every one of
the four hundred saddles was instantly emptied. It was said that not
more than ten of the cavalrymen escaped. A participant says: "In the
very thickest of the fight, on our left and centre, rode the
patriarchal-looking warrior, Gen. Andrew Jackson Smith, whose troops
received an increased inspiration of heroism from his presence.
Wherever he rode, cheer after cheer greeted him." The same writer
says: "There was something more than solemn grandeur in the scene at
Pleasant Hill, at sunset, on Saturday, April 9th. Standing on a slight
eminence which overlooked the left and centre of our line, I could see
the terrible struggle between our well-disciplined troops and the
enemy. The sun shone directly in the faces of our men, while the wind
blew back the smoke of both the enemy's fire and that of our own
gallant men into our ranks, rendering it almost impossible at times to
distinguish the enemy in the dense clouds of smoke. All of a sudden,
our whole front seemed to gather renewed strength, and they swept the
rebels before them like chaff."
The Forty-ninth Illinois Regiment, led by Major Morgan, charged a
Confederate battery and captured two guns and a hundred prisoners. A
brigade, consisting of the Fifty-eighth and One Hundred and Nineteenth
Illinois, and the Eighty-ninth Indiana, being a part of the force that
struck the Confederates in the flank, retook one of the batteries that
had been lost the day before, and with it four hundred prisoners.
{380} [Illustration: BAILEY'S DAM, RED RIVER.]
It was said that one reason for the recklessness with which the
Confederates threw away their lives in hopeless charges was that they
had found a large quantity of whiskey among the captures of the
previous day. The writer last quoted gives a vivid description of the
appearance of the field after the battle. He says: "On Sunday morning,
at daybreak, I took occasion to visit the scenes of Saturday's bloody
conflict, and a more ghastly spectacle I have not witnessed. Over the
field and upon the Shreveport road were scattered dead horses, broken
muskets, and cartridge-boxes stained with blood, while all around, as
far as the eye could reach, were mingled the inanimate forms of
patriot and traitor, side by side. Here were a great many rebels badly
wounded, unable to move, dying for want of water, and not a drop
within two miles, and no one to get it for them. Their groans and
piteous appeals for 'Water! water! water! were heart-rending, and sent
a shudder to the most stony heart. I saw one sweet face, that of a
young patriot, and upon his icy features there lingered a heavenly
smile, speaking of calmness and resignation. The youth was probably
not more than nineteen, with a full blue eye beaming, even in death,
with meekness. The morning wind lifted his auburn locks from off his
marble face, exposing to view a noble forehead, which was bathed with
the heavy dew of Saturday night. I dismounted for a moment, hoping to
be able to find some trace of the hero's name, but the chivalry had
stripped his body of every article of value. The fatal ball had
pierced his heart. Not twenty feet from this {381} dreary picture lay
prostrate the mutilated body of an old man. His cap lay by the side of
his head, in a pool of blood, while his long flowing gray beard was
dyed with his blood. A shell had fearfully lacerated his right leg,
while his belt was pierced in two places. In front of the long belt of
woods which skirted the open field, and from which the rebels emerged
so boldly, was a deep ditch, and at this point the slaughter among the
rebels was terrific. In many places the enemy's dead were piled up in
groups, intermixed with our dead."
[Illustration: A LOUISIANA SUGAR PLANTATION.]
Banks's loss in the three days, April 7-9, was three thousand nine
hundred and sixty-nine men, of whom about two thousand were prisoners.
The Confederate loss never was reported; but there is reason to
believe that it was even larger than Banks's.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL RICHARD TAYLOR, C. S. A.]
When the army and the fleet were once more together at Grand Ecore, a
new difficulty arose. There was a rapid in the river about a mile
long, and the fleet in ascending had been taken over it with great
difficulty. The water had now fallen, bringing to view many ragged
rocks, and leaving it impossible to find any channel of sufficient
depth for the boats to descend. They were in imminent danger of being
captured, and it was seriously proposed to abandon or destroy them.
Admiral Porter says: "I saw nothing before me but the destruction of
the best part of the Mississippi squadron." But he adds: "There seemed
to have been an especial Providence looking out for us, in providing a
man equal to the emergency." This man was Lieut.-Col. Joseph Bailey,
engineer of the Nineteenth Corps, who had foreseen the difficulty and
proposed its remedy just before the battle of Pleasant Hill. His
proposition, which was to build a dam or dams and raise the water
sufficiently to float the boats down over the rapid, was ridiculed by
the regular engineers. But it had the sanction of General Banks; and
with three thousand men he set to work. Two regiments of Maine
lumbermen began the felling of trees, while three hundred teams were
set in motion bringing in stone and logs, and quarries were opened,
and flat-boats were hastily constructed to bring material down the
stream. Admiral Porter says: "Every man seemed to be working with a
vigor I have seldom seen equalled, while perhaps not one in fifty
believed in the success of the undertaking." Bailey first constructed
a dam three hundred feet long, reaching from the left bank of the
river straight out into the stream. It was made of the heaviest
timbers he could get, cross-tied, and filled with stone. Four barges
were floated down to the end of it, and then filled with brick and
stone until they sank. From the right bank a similar dam was run out
until it nearly met the barges. At the end of eight days the water had
risen sufficiently to allow the smaller gunboats to go down, and it
was expected that in another day it would be deep enough for all; but
the pressure was too much, and two of the barges were swept away. This
accident threatened to diminish the accumulated water so rapidly that
none of the boats could be saved, when Admiral Porter ordered that one
of the larger vessels, the _Lexington_, be brought down to attempt the
passage. This was done; and he says: "She steered directly for the
opening in the dam, through which the water was rushing so furiously
that it seemed as if nothing but destruction awaited her. Thousands of
beating hearts looked on, anxious for the result. The silence was so
great as the _Lexington_ approached the dam, that a pin might almost
be heard to fall. She entered the gap with a full head of steam on,
pitched down the roaring torrent, made two or three spasmodic rolls,
hung for a moment on the rocks below, was then swept into deep water
by the current, and rounded-to safely into the bank. Thirty thousand
voices rose in one deafening cheer, and universal joy seemed to
pervade the face of every man present. The _Neosho_ followed next; all
her hatches battened down, and every precaution taken against
accident. She did not fare as well as the _Lexington_, her pilot
having become frightened as he approached the abyss, and stopped her
engine when I particularly ordered a full head of steam to be carried;
the result was that for a moment her hull disappeared from sight under
the water. Every one thought she was lost. She rose, however, swept
along over the rocks with the current, and fortunately escaped with
only one hole in her bottom, which was stopped in the course of an
hour." Two more of the boats then passed through safely.
This partial success filled everybody with enthusiasm, and the
soldiers, who had been working like beavers for eight days, some of
them up to their necks in water, set to work with a will to repair the
dams, and in three days had done this, and also constructed a series
of wing dams on {382} the upper falls. The six large vessels then
passed down safely without any serious accident, and a few hours later
the whole fleet was ready to go down the river with the transports
under convoy. Admiral Porter says, in his report: "The highest honors
that the Government can bestow on Colonel Bailey can never repay him
for the service he has rendered the country. He has saved to the Union
a valuable fleet, worth nearly two million dollars, and he has
deprived the enemy of a triumph which would have emboldened them to
carry on this war a year or two longer; for the intended departure of
the army was a fixed fact, and there was nothing left for me to do, in
case that occurred, but to destroy every part of the vessels, so that
the rebels could make nothing of them."
In this expedition the fleet lost two small gunboats and a
quartermaster's boat, which they were convoying with four hundred
troops on board. At Dunn's Bayou, three hundred miles below
Alexandria, a powerful land force, with a series of batteries,
attacked these boats, pierced their boilers with shot, and killed or
wounded many of the soldiers with rifle-balls. The crews fought their
vessels as long as possible, but at length were obliged to give up the
contest, and one of the gunboats was abandoned and burned, while the
other was surrendered because her commander would not set fire to her
when she had so many wounded men on her decks.
E. C. Williams, who was an ensign in the fleet on this expedition,
says, in the course of his "Recollections," read before the Ohio
Commandery of the Loyal Legion:
"Our station for coaling was at Fort Butler, a small earthwork at the
mouth of Bayou Lafourche, occupied by a small garrison from Banks's
army. The garrison had erected a very tall flag-staff, reaching far
above the fog-bank that in that latitude usually shut out all view of
the land in the early fall and spring mornings. From our boat it was a
sight of rare beauty to watch the flag as it was each morning unfurled
over the little fort. Shut out from all view of the surrounding
country by the impenetrable fog as completely as though we had been in
mid-ocean, our attention would be first attracted to the fort by the
shrill notes of the fife and the rattle of the drum as they sounded
the color salute, when, watching the top of the staff, which was
usually visible above the bank of fog that covered the lowlands from
our view, we would see the flag rise to the peak; and as the last
shrill note of the fife was sounded, accompanied by the roll of the
drum, the halyards were cleared, and the flag, full and free, floated
out in the heavens over us, far above the clouds, and the mists, and
the gloom with which we were surrounded. Officers, at their own
request, were repeatedly called from their sleep to see the sight
which I have so faintly portrayed.
"It was part of our duty--at least we made it so--to take on board all
escaped slaves that sought our protection, and turn them over to the
nearest army garrison. Many affecting incidents occurred in connection
with these poor people seeking the freedom vouchsafed them by Uncle
Sam under Lincoln's proclamation. I remember one day when we were in a
part of the river peculiarly infested with marauding bands of the
rebel forces, a hail from shore was reported. Under cover of our guns,
a boat was sent off to see what was wanted, and, returning, reported
that a large number of slaves were near at hand, concealed in the
dense cotton-wood brush. They had been hiding in the woods for several
days, fearing re-capture by some of the roving bands of the enemy, and
a scouting party was even then hard upon them, from which they could
not hope to escape unless we gave them protection by taking them on
board. We at once made for the designated spot, not far distant, and,
running inshore, taking all precaution against a surprise, threw open
a gangway, and, as the slaves showed themselves, ran out a long plank,
and called to them to hurry on board. On they came--a great motley
crowd of them, of both sexes and all ages, from babies in arms to
gray-headed old patriarchs. One of the latter--and who was evidently
the leader of the party--stood at the foot of the plank encouraging
the timid and assisting the weak as they hurried on board, and, when
he had seen all the others safely on, stepped on the plank himself;
and as he reached the guard before coming on board, little heeding our
orders to hurry, he dropped on his knees, and, reverently uncovering
his head, pressed his lips fervently to the cold iron casemates, and
with uplifted eyes, and hands raised to heaven, broke out with, 'Bress
God and Massa Lincum's gunboats! We's free! We's free!'"
There was much speculation as to the real or ulterior object of this
Red River expedition. Some writers spoke of it flippantly as a mere
cotton-stealing enterprise, while others imagined they discovered a
deep design to push our arms as far as possible toward the borders of
Mexico, because a small French army had recently been thrown into that
country, and was supposed to be a menace to our Republic.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM H. EMORY.]
[Illustration: COLONEL ALBERT L. LEE. (Afterward Brigadier-General.)]
{383}
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN.
SHERMAN AND JOHNSTON--SHERMAN BEGINS THE CAMPAIGN--JOHNSTON ABANDONS
RESACA--FIGHTING AT NEW HOPE CHURCH--THE POSITION AT PINE
MOUNTAIN--JOHNSTON AT KENESAW--FALL OF GENERAL POLK--SHERMAN EMPLOYS
NEGROES--BATTLE OF KENESAW--CROSSING THE CHATTAHOOCHEE--HOOD
SUPERSEDES JOHNSTON--ACTION AT PEACH TREE CREEK--BATTLE OF
ATLANTA--DEATH OF GENERAL McPHERSON--THE LOSSES--CAVALRY
EXPEDITIONS--STONEMAN'S RAID--FALL Of ATLANTA.
The expeditions described in the foregoing chapter were preliminary to
the great campaign that General Grant had designed for an army under
Sherman, simultaneous with that conducted by himself in Virginia, and
almost equal to it in difficulty and importance. The object was to
move southward from Chattanooga, cutting into the heart of the
Confederacy where as yet it had been untouched, and reach and capture
Atlanta, which was important as a railroad centre and for its
manufactures of military supplies. This involved conflict with the
army under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, by some esteemed the ablest
general in the Confederate service. If he was not the ablest in all
respects, he was certainly equal to the conducting of a defensive
campaign with great skill. There could be no running over an army
commanded by him; it must be approached cautiously and fought
valiantly. The distance from Chattanooga to Atlanta, in a straight
line, is a hundred miles, through a country of hills and streams, with
a great many naturally strong defensive positions. Johnston was at
Dalton, with an army which he sums up at about forty-three thousand,
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. But this (according to the
Confederate method of counting) means only the men actually carrying
muskets or sabres or handling the guns, excluding all officers,
musicians, teamsters, etc. If counted after the ordinary method, his
army probably numbered not fewer than fifty-five thousand.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN B. HOOD, C. S. A.]
To contend with this force, Sherman had about a hundred thousand men,
consisting of the Army of the Cumberland commanded by Gen. George H.
Thomas, the Army of the Tennessee commanded by Gen. James B.
McPherson, and the Army of the Ohio commanded by Gen. John M.
Schofield. The discrepancy in numbers seems very great, until we
consider that Sherman was not only to take the offensive, but must
constantly leave detachments to guard his communications; for he drew
all his supplies from Nashville, over one single-track railroad, and
it was liable to be broken at any time by guerilla raids. As he
advanced into the enemy's country, this line would become longer, and
the danger of its being broken still greater. Johnston, on the
contrary, had nothing to fear in the rear, for he was fighting on his
own ground, and could bring his entire force to the front at every
emergency. All things considered, it was pretty nearly an even match.
In one respect, however, Sherman had a decided advantage; he possessed
the confidence of the Government that he served, while Johnston did
not. At least, Johnston complains that Mr. Davis did not trust him as
he should, and thwarted him in many ways; and in this the general
appears to be corroborated by the circumstances of the campaign.
When Sherman concentrated his forces at Chattanooga, and considered
the means of supply, he found that about one hundred and thirty cars
loaded with provisions must arrive at that point every day. But that
railroad had not cars and locomotives enough for such a task, and so
he sent orders to Louisville for the seizure of trains arriving there
from the North, and soon had rolling-stock in great abundance and
variety. While he thus provided liberally for necessary supplies, he
excluded all luxuries. Tents were taken only for the sick and wounded.
The sole exception to this was made in favor of General Thomas, who
needed a tent and a small wagon-train, which the soldiers immediately
christened "Thomas's Circus." Sherman had no tent or train. Every man,
whether officer or private, carried provisions for five days.
{384} [Illustration: THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA, GA., JULY 22, 1864.]
Thus equipped and disciplined, the army set out from Chattanooga on
the 5th of May (the day on which Grant entered the Wilderness),
following the line of the railroad south toward Atlanta. A direct
approach to Dalton was impossible, because of Johnston's
fortifications at Tunnel Hill. So Sherman made a feint of attacking
there, and sent McPherson southward to march through the gap in the
mountains, strike Resaca, and cut the railroad over which Johnston
drew all his supplies. Here at the very outset was the brilliant
opportunity of the campaign, not to occur again. McPherson reached
Resaca, but found fortifications and an opposing force there, and just
lacked the necessary boldness to attack promptly and vigorously,
thrusting his army into a position where it would have made the
destruction of Johnston's almost certain. Instead of this, he fell
back to the gap, and waited for the remainder of the army to join him
there. But this enabled Johnston to learn what was going on, and when
Sherman had passed down to the gap with his entire {385} army, he
found, of course, that his antagonist had fallen back to Resaca and
concentrated his forces there in a strong position.
General Sherman says of this error of McPherson's: "McPherson had
startled Johnston in his fancied security, but had not done the full
measure of his work. He had in hand twenty-three thousand of the best
men of the army, and could have walked into Resaca (then held only by
a small brigade), or he could have placed his whole force astride the
railroad above Resaca, and there have easily withstood the attack of
all of Johnston's army, with the knowledge that Thomas and Schofield
were on his heels. Had he done so, I am certain that Johnston would
not have ventured to attack him in position, but would have retreated
eastward by Spring Place, and we should have captured half his army
and all his artillery and wagons at the very beginning of the
campaign. But at the critical moment McPherson seems to have been a
little cautious. Still he was perfectly justified by his orders, and
fell back and assumed an unassailable defensive position in Sugar
Valley, on the Resaca side of Snake Creek Gap. As soon as informed of
this, I determined to pass the whole army through Snake Creek Gap, and
to move on Resaca with the main army."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD.]
On the 14th of May, Sherman's army was in position around Resaca on
the north and west, and on that and the next day there was continual
skirmishing and artillery firing, though nothing like a great battle.
Neither general was willing to fight at disadvantage; Sherman would
not attack the intrenchments, and Johnston would not come out of them.
McPherson, on the right, advanced his line of battle till he gained an
elevated position from which his guns could destroy the railroad
bridge over the Oostenaula in the Confederate rear, and all attempts
to drive him out of this position ended only in bloody repulse. On the
left of the line, Hooker exhibited something of his usual dash by
capturing a small portion of the enemy's intrenchments, with four guns
and some prisoners. Meanwhile, Sherman had thrown two pontoon bridges
across the river three miles below the town, so that he could send
over a detachment to break the railroad, and had also sent a division
of cavalry down the river, to cross at some lower point for the same
purpose. Johnston, therefore, seeing his communications threatened so
seriously, and having no good roads by which he could retreat
eastward, did not wait to be cooped up in Resaca, but in the night of
the 15th retired southward across the river, following the railroad,
and burned the bridges behind him. Sherman thus came into possession
of Resaca; but Resaca was not what he wanted, and without the
slightest delay he started his entire army in pursuit of the enemy.
Hooker crossed the river by fords and ferries above the town; Thomas
and Schofield repaired the half-burned bridges and used them;
McPherson crossed by the pontoons.
The enemy was found, on the 19th, in position at Cassville, just east
of Kingston, and apparently ready to fight; but when Sherman's columns
converged on the place the Confederates, after some sharp skirmishing,
retreated again in the night of the 20th, and crossed Etowah River.
Johnston had really intended to fight here, and he explains his
refusal to do so by saying that Hood and Polk told him their corps
could not hold their positions, as a portion of each was enfiladed by
the National artillery. Hood's version of the mysterious retreat is to
the effect that he wanted to assume the offensive, marching out with
his own corps and a part of Polk's to overwhelm Schofield, who was
separated from the remainder of the National army.
Here Sherman halted for a few days, to get his army well together,
re-provision it, and repair the railroad in his rear. Twenty years
before, when he was a young lieutenant, he had ridden through the
country from Charleston, S. C., to northwestern Georgia, and he still
retained a good recollection of the topography. Knowing that Allatoona
Pass, through which runs the railroad south of Kingston, was very
strong and would probably be held by Johnston, he diverged from the
railroad at Kingston, passing considerably west of it, and directed
his columns toward Dallas; his purpose being to threaten Marietta and
Atlanta so as to cause Johnston to withdraw from Allatoona and release
his hold on the railroad, which became more and more necessary to the
invading army as it advanced into the country. Johnston understood
this manoeuvre, and moved westward to meet it. The armies, in an
irregular way--for each was somewhat scattered and uncertain of the
other's exact position--came into collision at the cross-roads by New
Hope Church. Around this place for six days there was continuous
fighting, sometimes mere skirmishing, and sometimes an attack by a
heavy detachment of one party or the other; but all such attacks, on
either side, were costly and fruitless. The general advantage,
however, was with Sherman; for as he gradually got his lines into
proper order, he strengthened his right, and then reached out with his
left toward the railroad, secured all the wagon-roads from Allatoona,
and sent out a strong force of cavalry to occupy that pass and repair
the railroad. Johnston then left his position at New Hope Church, and
took up a new one.
Thus ended the month of May in this campaign, where each commander
exercised the utmost skill, neither was guilty of anything rash, and
the results were such as would naturally follow from the military
conditions with which it began. The losses on each side, thus far,
were fewer than ten thousand men--killed, wounded, and missing; but
strong positions had been successively taken up, turned, abandoned;
and Sherman was steadily drawing nearer to his goal.
Johnston's new position was on the slopes of Kenesaw, Pine, and Lost
Mountains, thus crossing the railroad above Marietta. It had the
advantage of a height from which everything done by Sherman's
approaching army could be seen; but it had the {386} disadvantage of a
line ten miles long, and so disposed that one part could not readily
reinforce another. Though heavy rains were falling, the National army
kept close to its antagonist, and intrenched at every advance. The
railroad was repaired behind it, and the trains that brought its
supplies ran up almost to its front. In one instance, an engineer
detached his locomotive and ran forward to a tank, where he quietly
took in the necessary supply of water, while a Confederate battery on
the mountain fired several shots, but none of them quite hit the
locomotive, which woke the echoes with its shrill whistling as it ran
back out of range.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. S. ROBINSON.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL T. H. RUGER.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL W. F. BARTLETT.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL W. Q. GRESHAM.]
When the rain was over, Sherman occupied a strongly intrenched line
that followed the contour of Johnston's, and was at nearly all points
close to it. Both sides maintained skirmish lines that were almost as
strong as lines of battle, and occupied rifle-pits. From these the
roar of musketry was almost unceasing, and there was a steady loss of
men. On June 14, while General Sherman was reconnoitring the enemy's
position, he observed a battery on the crest of Pine Mountain, and
near it a group of officers with field-glasses. Ordering a battery to
fire two or three volleys at them, he rode on. A few hours later, his
signal officer told him that the Confederates had signalled from Pine
Mountain to Marietta, "Send an ambulance for General Polk's body." The
group on the mountain had consisted of Generals Johnston, Hardee, and
Polk, and a few soldiers that had gathered around them. One of the
cannon-balls had struck General Polk in the chest and cut him in two.
He was fifty-eight years old at the time of his death, had been
educated at West Point, but afterward studied theology, and at the
outbreak of the war had been for twenty years the Protestant Episcopal
Bishop of Louisiana.
The next day Sherman advanced his lines, intending to attack between
Kenesaw and Pine Mountain, but found that Johnston had withdrawn from
Pine Mountain, taking up a shorter line, from Kenesaw to Lost
Mountain. Sherman promptly occupied the ground, and gathered in a
large number of prisoners, including the Fourteenth Alabama Regiment
entire. The next day he pressed forward again, only to find that the
enemy had still further contracted his lines, abandoning Lost
Mountain, but still occupying Kenesaw, and covering Marietta and the
roads to Atlanta with the extension of his left wing. The successive
positions to which Johnston's army had fallen back were prepared
beforehand by gangs of slaves impressed for the purpose, so that his
soldiers had little digging to do, and could save their strength for
fighting. After a time Sherman adopted a similar policy, by setting at
work the crowds of negroes that flocked to his camp, feeding them from
the army supplies, and promising them ten dollars a month, as he was
authorized to do by an act of Congress. The fortifications consisted
of a sort of framework of rails and logs, covered with earth thrown up
from a ditch on each side. When there was opportunity, they were
finished with a heavy head-log laid along the top, which rested in
notches cut in other logs that extended back at right angles and
formed an inclined plane down which the head-log could roll harmlessly
if knocked out of place by a cannon-shot. Miles of such works were
often constructed in a single night; and they were absolutely
necessary, when veteran armies were facing each other with weapons of
precision in their hands.
Sherman was now facing a little south of east, and kept pressing his
lines closer up to Johnston's, with rifle and artillery firing going
on all the time. On the 21st the divisions of Generals Wood and
Stanley gained new positions, on the southern flank of Kenesaw, where
several determined assaults failed to dislodge them; and the next day
the troops of Hooker and Schofield {387} pressed forward to within
three miles of Marietta, and withstood an attack by Hood's corps,
inflicting upon him a loss of a thousand men. As the National line was
now lengthened quite as far as seemed prudent, and still the
Confederate communications were not severed, Sherman determined upon
the hazardous experiment of attacking the enemy in his intrenchments.
He chose two points for assault, about a mile apart, and on the
morning of the 27th launched heavy columns against them, while firing
was at the same time kept up all along the line. He expected to break
the centre, and with half of his army take half of Johnston's in
reverse, while with the remainder of his troops he held the other half
so close that it could not go to the rescue. But his columns wasted
away before the fire from the intrenchments, and as in Pickett's
charge at Gettysburg, and Grant's assault at Cold Harbor, only a
remnant reached the enemy's works, there to be killed or captured.
Among those sacrificed were Brig.-Gens. Daniel McCook and Charles G.
Harker, both of whom died of their wounds. This experiment cost
Sherman over two thousand five hundred men, while Johnston's loss was
but little over eight hundred.
It was evident that any repetition would be useless, and the approved
principles of warfare seemed to supply no alternative. What General
Sherman therefore did was to disregard the maxim that an army must
always hold fast to its communications; and by doing the same thing on
a grander scale six months later he won his largest fame. He
determined to let go of the railroad north of Kenesaw, take ten days'
provisions in wagons, and move his whole army southward to seize the
road below Marietta. This would compel Johnston either to fall back
farther toward Atlanta, or come out and fight him in his
intrenchments--which, as both commanders well knew, was almost certain
destruction to the assaulting party. In the night of July 2,
McPherson's troops, who had the left or north of the line, drew out of
their works and marched southward, passing behind the lines held by
Thomas and Schofield. This was the same manoeuvre as that by which
Grant had carried his army to its successive positions between the
Wilderness and the James River, except that he moved by the left flank
and Sherman by the right, and Grant never had to let go of his
communications, being supplied by lines of wagons from various points
on the Potomac.
When Johnston saw what Sherman was doing he promptly abandoned his
strong position at Kenesaw, and fell back to the Chattahoochee; but he
did not, as Sherman hoped, attempt to cross the stream at once.
Intrenchments had been prepared for him on the north bank, and here he
stopped. Sherman, expecting to catch his enemy in the confusion of
crossing a stream, pressed on rapidly with his whole army, and ran up
against what he says was one of the strongest pieces of field
fortification he had ever seen. A thousand slaves had been at work on
it for a month. And yet, like many other things in the costly business
of war, it was an enormous outlay to serve a very brief purpose. For
Sherman not only occupied ground that overlooked it, but held the
river for miles above and below, and was thus able to cross over and
turn the position. Johnston must have known this when the
fortifications were in process of construction, and their only use was
to protect his army from assault while it was crossing the river. On
the 9th of July, Schofield's army crossed above the Confederate
position, laying two pontoon bridges, and intrenched itself in a
strong position on the left bank. Johnston, thus compelled to
surrender the stream, crossed that night with his entire army, and
burned the railroad and other bridges behind him. Sherman was almost
as cautious in the pursuit, wherever there was any serious danger, as
Johnston was in the retreat; and he not only chose an upper crossing,
farther from Atlanta, but spent a week in preparations to prevent
disaster, before he threw over his entire army. This he did on the
17th, and the next day moved it by a grand right wheel toward the city
of Atlanta.
The Chattahoochee was the last great obstruction before the
fortifications of the Gate City were reached, and on the day that
Sherman crossed it something else took place, which, in the opinion of
many military critics, was even more disastrous to the fortunes of the
Confederacy. This was the supersession of the careful and skilful
Johnston by Gen. John B. Hood, an impetuous and sometimes reckless
fighter, but no strategist. The controversy over the wisdom of this
action on the part of the Confederate Government will probably never
be satisfactorily closed. The merits of it can be sufficiently
indicated by two brief extracts. The telegram conveying the orders of
the War Department said: "As you have failed to arrest the advance of
the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta, far in the interior of Georgia,
and express no confidence that you can defeat or repel him, you are
hereby relieved from the command of the Army and Department of
Tennessee, which you will immediately turn over to General Hood."
General Johnston said in his reply: "As to the alleged cause of my
removal, I assert that Sherman's army is much stronger compared with
that of Tennessee than Grant's compared with that of Northern
Virginia. Yet the enemy has been compelled to advance much more slowly
to the vicinity of Atlanta than to that of Richmond and Petersburg,
and penetrated much deeper into Virginia than into Georgia. Confident
language by a military commander is not usually regarded as evidence
of competence."
Within twenty-four hours the National army learned that its antagonist
had a new commander, and there was eager inquiry as to Hood's
character as a soldier. Schofield and McPherson had been his
classmates at West Point, and from their testimony and the career of
Hood as a corps commander it was easily inferred that a new policy
might be looked for, very different from Johnston's. Sherman warned
his army to be constantly prepared for sallies of the enemy, and his
prediction did not wait long for fulfilment. On the 20th, at noonday,
as his army was slowly closing in upon the city, the Confederates left
the intrenchments that Johnston had prepared for them along the line
of Peach Tree Creek, where he would have awaited attack, and made a
heavy assault upon Thomas, who held the right of the National line.
The weight of the blow fell mainly upon Hooker's corps, and the attack
was so furious and reckless that in many places friend and foe were
intermingled, fighting hand to hand. A heavy column of Confederates
attempted to fall upon an exposed flank of the Fourth Corps; but
Thomas promptly brought several batteries to play upon it, and at the
end of two hours the enemy was driven back to his intrenchments,
leaving hundreds of dead on the field. Hooker also lost heavily,
because his men fought without intrenchments or cover of any kind.
{388} [Illustration: FALL OF GENERAL JAMES B. McPHERSON, NEAR
ATLANTA.]
The Confederates now abandoned the line of works along Peach Tree
Creek, and fell back to the immediate defences of the city. It was
seen that one point in their line was an eminence--then called Bald
Hill, but since known as Leggett's Hill--from which, if it could be
occupied, the city could be shelled. After a consultation between
Generals Blair and McPherson on the afternoon of the 20th, it was
agreed that this hill ought to be captured, and the task was assigned
to Gen. Mortimer D. Leggett's {389} division. Leggett accordingly said
to Gen. M. F. Force, who commanded his first brigade: "I want you to
carry that hill. Move as soon as it is light enough to move. I will
support your left and rear with the rest of the division, and the
fourth division will make a demonstration as you go up to distract the
attention of the enemy in their front." Accordingly, at daylight,
Leggett's skirmish line cautiously went forward, and got as near as
possible to the Confederate works without alarming the enemy. After
some little delay, caused by waiting for the fourth division, General
Force gave the order for the assault. What then followed is told by
Col. Gilbert D. Munson, of the Seventy-eighth Ohio Regiment: "The
skirmish line sprang forward; the brigade debouched from its
concealment in the wood. In the front line on came the Twelfth and
Sixteenth Wisconsin, close supported by the Twentieth, Thirtieth, and
Thirty-first Illinois--the second line of battle; flags flying,
bayonets fixed; arms right shoulder shift and unloaded; Force and his
aid, Adams, just in rear of the Wisconsin regiments, and his
adjutant-general, Capt. J. Bryant Walker, and another aid, Evans, with
the Illinois boys--mounted; all regimental officers on foot. The
skirmishers, for a moment, distracted the enemy by their rapid advance
and firing; then the brigade received and enveloped them as it reached
the crest of the hill, and exposed its full front to the steady fire
of Cleburne's rifles. Our men fell in bunches; still came the charging
column on; faster and faster it pressed forward. 'Close up! close up!'
the command, and each regiment closed on its colors, and over the
barricades went the first line, handsomely, eagerly, and well aligned.
Then began our firing and our fun. Into the gray-coats the Sixteenth
Wisconsin poured a rattling fire, as they scattered and ran along the
level ground, down the slope of the hill, and on toward Atlanta. I
joined General Force after the skirmish line was merged in his line of
battle, and was with him when it came to and went over the barricades.
'Our orders are to carry this hill, General; the Sixteenth are away
beyond, where, I understand, we are to go.' Force said something about
being able to take the next hill, too, but immediately sent Captain
Walker after Colonel Fairchild, and his 'Right about, march,' brought
the regiment back. Captain Walker then reported the capture of the
hill to General Leggett, who was with the rest of the division. Walker
said to me, on his return, that, having a message for Gen. Giles A.
Smith, commanding the fourth division, he told him the hill was won
and held by Force, but Smith would hardly believe him: he thought he
was joking. It seemed doubtful to him that such an important point had
been won so quickly."
[Illustration: COLONEL CHARLES CANDY. (Afterward Brigadier-General.)]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL GEORGE H. GORDON.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD M. McCOOK.]
The fourth division, on the right of Force's brigade, met with a
stubborn resistance, but finally overcame it, and other troops were
brought up, and after a little the place was firmly held. This hill
was the key-point of the line, and its capture was what caused Hood to
come out and give battle the next day. He found that Sherman's left
flank, which crossed the line of railroad to Augusta, was without
proper protection, and consequently he moved to the attack at that
point. He marched by a road parallel with the railroad, and the
contour of the ground and the forests hid him until his men burst in
upon the rear of Sherman's extreme left, seized a battery that was
moving through the woods, and took possession of some of the camps.
But McPherson's veterans were probably in expectation of such a
movement, and under the direction of Generals Logan, Charles R. Wood,
and Morgan L. Smith, quickly formed to meet it. That flank of the army
was "refused"--turned back at a right angle with the main line--and
met the onsets of the Confederates with steady courage from noon till
night. Seven heavy assaults were made, resulting in seven bloody
repulses, guns were taken and retaken, and finally a counter attack
was made on the Confederate flank by Wood's division, assisted by
twenty guns that fired over the heads of Wood's men as they advanced,
which drove back the enemy, who retired slowly to their defences,
carrying with them some of the captured guns. It had been intended
that Wheeler's Confederate cavalry should capture McPherson's
supply-trains, which were at Decatur; but the troopers were fought off
till the trains could be drawn back to a place of safety, and Wheeler
only secured a very few wagons. The National loss in this battle was
thirty-five hundred and twenty-one men killed, {390} wounded, and
missing, and ten guns. The total Confederate loss is unknown, but it
was very heavy; General Logan reported thirty-two hundred and twenty
dead in front of his lines, and two thousand prisoners, half of whom
were wounded. The most grievous loss to Sherman was General McPherson,
who rode off into the woods at the first sounds of battle, almost
alone. His horse soon came back, bleeding and riderless, and an hour
later the general's dead body was brought to headquarters. McPherson
was a favorite in the army. He was but thirty-four years old, and with
the exception of his error at the outset of the campaign, by which
Johnston was allowed to escape from Dalton, he had a brilliant
military record. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, who had lost an arm at Fair
Oaks and was now in command of the Fourth Corps, was promoted to
McPherson's place in command of the Army of the Tennessee; whereupon
General Hooker, commanding the Twentieth Corps, who believed that the
promotion properly belonged to him, asked to be relieved, and left the
army. His corps was given to Gen. Henry W. Slocum.
Sherman now repeated his former manoeuvre, of moving by the right
flank to strike the enemy's communications and compel him either to
retreat again or fight at a disadvantage. The Army of the Tennessee
was withdrawn from the left on the 27th, and marched behind the Army
of the Cumberland to the extreme right, with the intention of
extending the flank far enough to cross the railroad south of Atlanta.
The movement was but partially performed when Hood made a heavy attack
on that flank, and for four or five hours on the 28th there was bloody
fighting. Logan's men hastily threw up a slight breastwork, from which
they repelled six charges in quick succession, and later in the day
several other charges by the Confederates broke against the immovable
lines of the Fifteenth Corps. Meanwhile Sherman sent Gen. Jefferson C.
Davis's division to make a detour, and come up into position where it
could strike the Confederate flank in turn; but Davis lost his way and
failed to appear in time. In this battle Logan's corps lost five
hundred and seventy-two men; while they captured five battle-flags and
buried about six hundred of the enemy's dead. The total Confederate
losses during July, in killed and wounded, were reported by the
surgeon-general at eighty-eight hundred and forty-one, to which
Sherman adds two thousand prisoners. Sherman reports his own losses
during that month--killed, wounded, and missing--at ninety-seven
hundred and nineteen; but this does not include the cavalry.
Johnston's estimate of Sherman's losses is so enormous that if it had
been correct his government would have been clearly justified when it
censured him for not driving the National army out of the State.
Sherman had sent out several cavalry expeditions to break the
railroads south of Atlanta, but with no satisfactory results. They
tore up a few miles of track each time, but the damage was quickly
repaired. The marvellous facility with which both sides mended broken
railroads and replaced burned bridges is illustrated by many
anecdotes. Sherman had duplicates of the important bridges on the road
that brought his supplies, and whenever the guerillas destroyed one,
he had only to order the duplicate to be set up. On the 26th Gen.
George Stoneman had set out with a cavalry force to break up the
railroad at Jonesboro', with the intention of pushing on rapidly to
Macon and Andersonville, and releasing a large number of prisoners
that were confined there in stockades; while at the same time another
cavalry force, under McCook, was sent around by the right to join
Stoneman at Jonesboro'. They destroyed two miles of track, burned two
trains of cars and five hundred wagons, killed eight hundred mules,
and took three or four hundred prisoners. But McCook was surrounded by
the enemy at Newnan, and only escaped with a loss of six hundred men;
while Stoneman destroyed seventeen locomotives and a hundred cars, and
threw a few shells into Macon, but was surrounded at Clifton, where he
allowed himself and seven hundred of his men to be captured in order
to facilitate the escape of the remainder of his command.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL MANNING F. FORCE.]
Perhaps it was quite as well that he did not reach Andersonville, for
General Winder, in command there, had issued this order on July 27th:
"The officers on duty and in charge of battery of Florida artillery
will, on receiving notice that the enemy has approached within seven
miles of this post, open fire on the stockade with grape-shot, without
reference to the situation beyond this line of defence." The conduct
of those on guard duty at the prison leaves little doubt that this
order would have been obeyed with alacrity.
Two or three weeks later, Wheeler's Confederate cavalry passed to the
rear of Sherman's army, captured a large drove of cattle, and broke up
two miles of railroad; and about the same time Kilpatrick's cavalry
rode entirely round Atlanta, fought and defeated a combined cavalry
and infantry force, and inflicted upon the railroad such damage as he
thought it would take ten days to repair; but within twenty-four hours
trains were again running into the city.
Finding that cavalry raids could effect nothing, Sherman posted
Slocum's corps at the railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee, and,
moving again by the right, rapidly but cautiously, concealing the
movement as far as possible, he swung all the remainder of his army
into position south of Atlanta, where they tore up the railroads,
burning the ties and twisting the rails, and then advanced toward the
city. There was some fighting, and Govan's Confederate brigade was
captured entire, with ten guns; but the greater part of Hood's forces
escaped eastward in the night of September 1st. They destroyed a large
part of the Government property that night, and the sound of the
explosions caused Slocum to move down from the bridge, when he soon
found that he had nothing to do but walk into Atlanta. A few days
later Sherman made his headquarters there, disposed his army in and
around the city, and prepared for permanent possession.
{391}
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE BATTLE OF MOBILE BAY.
DEFENCES--ADMIRAL FARRAGUT'S PREPARATIONS--PASSING THE FORTS--LOSS OF
THE "TECUMSEH"--FIGHT WITH THE RAM "TENNESSEE"--COST OF THE
VICTORY--CRAVEN'S CHIVALRY--OFFICIAL REPORT OF ADMIRAL
FARRAGUT--POETIC DESCRIPTION OF THE BATTLE BY A POET WHO PARTICIPATED
IN THE CONFLICT.
The capture of Mobile had long been desired, both because of its
importance as a base of operations, whence expeditions could move
inland, and communication be maintained with the fleet, and because
blockade-running at that port could not be entirely prevented by the
vessels outside. Grant and Sherman had planned to have the city taken
by forces moving east from New Orleans and Port Hudson; but everything
had gone wrong in that quarter.
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL DAVID G. FARRAGUT.]
The principal defences of Mobile Bay were Fort Morgan on Mobile Point,
and Fort Gaines, three miles northwest of it, on the extremity of
Dauphin Island. The passage between these two works was obstructed by
innumerable piles for two miles out from Fort Gaines, and from that
point nearly to Fort Morgan by a line of torpedoes. The eastern end of
this line was marked by a red buoy, and from that point to Fort Morgan
the channel was open, to admit blockade-runners.
Farragut's fleet had been for a long time preparing to pass these
forts, fight the Confederate fleet inside (which included a powerful
iron-clad ram), and take possession of the bay. But he wanted the
coöperation of a military force to capture the forts. This was at last
furnished, under Gen. Gordon Granger, and landed on Dauphin Island,
August 4th. Farragut had made careful preparations, and, as at New
Orleans, had given minute instructions to his captains. The attacking
column consisted of four iron-clad monitors and seven wooden
sloops-of-war. To each sloop was lashed a gunboat on the port (or
left) side, to help her out in case she were disabled. The heaviest
fire was expected from Fort Morgan, on the right, or starboard, side.
Before six o'clock in the morning of the 5th all were under way, the
monitors forming a line abreast of the wooden ships and to the right
of them. The _Brooklyn_ headed the line of the wooden vessels, because
she had an apparatus for picking up torpedoes. They steamed along in
beautiful style, coming up into close order as they neared the fort,
so that there were spaces of but a few yards from the stern of one
vessel to the bow of the next. The forts and the Confederate fleet,
which lay just inside of the line of torpedoes, opened fire upon them
half an hour before they could bring their guns to answer. They made
the _Hartford_, Farragut's flagship, their especial target, lodged a
hundred-and-twenty-pound ball in her mainmast, sent great splinters
flying across her deck, more dangerous than shot, and killed or
wounded many of her crew. One ball from a Confederate gunboat killed
ten men and wounded five. The other wooden vessels suffered in like
manner as they approached; but when they came abreast of the fort they
poured in rapid broadsides of grape-shot, shrapnel, and shells, which
quickly cleared the bastions and silenced the batteries.
The captains had been warned to pass to the east of the red buoy; but
Captain T. A. M. Craven, of the monitor _Tecumseh_, eager to engage
the Confederate ram _Tennessee_, which was behind the line of
torpedoes, made straight for her. The consequence was that his vessel
struck a torpedo, which exploded, and she went down in a few seconds,
carrying with her the captain and most of the crew. The _Brooklyn_
stopped when she found torpedoes, and began to back. This threatened
to throw the whole line into confusion while under fire, and defeat
the project; but Farragut instantly ordered more steam on his own
vessel and her consort, drew ahead of the _Brooklyn_, and led the line
to victory. All this time he was in the rigging of the _Hartford_, and
a quartermaster had gone up and tied him to one of the shrouds, so
that if wounded he should not fall to the deck. As the fleet passed
into the bay, several of the larger vessels were attacked by the ram
_Tennessee_ and considerably damaged, while their shot seemed to have
little effect on her heavy iron mail. At length she withdrew to her
anchorage, and the order was given from the flagship, "Gunboats chase
enemy's gunboats," whereupon the lashings were cut and the National
gunboats were off in a flash. In a little while they had destroyed or
captured all the Confederate vessels save one, which escaped up the
bay, where the water was too shallow for them to follow her.
But as the fleet was coming to anchor, in the belief that the fight
was over, the _Tennessee_ left her anchorage and steamed boldly into
the midst of her enemies, firing in every direction and attempting to
ram them. The wooden vessels stood to the fight in the most gallant
manner, throwing useless broadsides against the monster, avoiding her
blows by skilful manoeuvring, and trying to run her down till some of
them hammered their bows to splinters. The three monitors pounded at
her to more purpose. They fired one fifteen-inch solid shot that
penetrated her armor; they jammed some of her shutters so that the
port-holes could not be opened; they shot away her steering-gear, and
knocked off her smoke-stack, so that life on board of her became
intolerable, and she surrendered. Her commander, Franklin Buchanan,
formerly of the United States navy, had been seriously wounded.
This victory cost Farragut's fleet fifty-two men killed and one
hundred and seventy wounded, besides one hundred and thirteen that
went down in the _Tecumseh_. Knowles, the same old quartermaster that
had tied Farragut in the rigging, says he saw the admiral coming on
deck as the twenty-five dead sailors of the _Hartford_ were being laid
out, "and it was the only time I ever saw the old gentleman cry, but
the tears came into his eyes like a little child." The Confederate
fleet lost ten men killed, sixteen wounded, and two hundred and eighty
prisoners. The loss in the forts is unknown. They were surrendered
soon afterward to the land forces, with a thousand men.
Of the four iron-clads that went into this fight, two--the _Tecumseh_
and the _Manhattan_--had come from the Atlantic coast, while the
_Chickasaw_ and the _Winnebago_, which had been {392} built at St.
Louis by James B. Eads, came down the Mississippi. Much doubt had been
expressed as to the ability of these two river-built monitors to stand
the rough weather of the Gulf, and Captain Eads had visited the Navy
Department, and offered to bear all the expenses in case they failed.
It is agreed by all authorities, that in the fight with the ram
_Tennessee_, which was a much more serious affair than passing the
forts, the best work was done by the monitor _Chickasaw_. The
commander of this vessel, George H. Perkins, and his lieutenant,
William Hamilton, had received leave of absence and were about to go
North, when they learned that the battle was soon to take place, and
volunteered to remain and take part in it. They were then at New
Orleans and were assigned to the _Chickasaw_. As this vessel passed
thence down the Mississippi on her way to Mobile, she took a pilot for
the navigation of the river. It often happened that the National
vessels were obliged to take Southern men as pilots in the Southern
waters, and they were not always to be trusted. In this instance,
Captain Perkins, being called away from the pilot-house for a few
minutes, observed that his vessel's course was at once changed and she
was heading for a wreck. Rushing back to the pilot-house, he seized
the wheel and gave her the proper direction, after which he drew his
pistol and told the pilot that if the ship touched ground or ran into
anything, he would instantly blow out his brains. The pilot muttered
something about the bottom of the river being lumpy, and the best
pilots not always being able to avoid the lumps. But Captain Perkins
told him he could not consider any such excuse, and if he touched a
single lump he would instantly lose his life. There was no more
trouble about the piloting.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL W. P. BENTON.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL F. M. COCKRELL, C. S. A.]
The _Chickasaw_ was a double-turreted monitor, carrying two
eleven-inch guns in each turret, and she was the only iron-clad that
remained in perfect condition throughout the fight. This, perhaps, was
owing to the fact that Captain Perkins, who was young, enthusiastic,
and ambitious, personally inspected everything on the ship while she
was in preparation and before she went into action. The place of the
ships in line was determined by the rank of their commanders, and the
_Chickasaw_ came last of the monitors. In the fight with the
_Tennessee_, she fired solid shot, most of them striking her about the
stern. The pilot of the _Tennessee_ said after the battle: "The
_Chickasaw_ hung close under our stern; move where we would, she was
always there, firing the two eleven-inch guns in her forward turret
like pocket pistols, so that she soon had the plates flying in the
air." Captain Perkins himself says: "When the _Tennessee_ passed my
ship first, it was on my port side. After that she steered toward Fort
Morgan. Some of our vessels anchored, others kept under way, and when
the _Tennessee_ approached the fleet again, she was at once attacked
by the wooden vessels, but they made no impression upon her. An order
was now brought from Admiral Farragut to the iron-clads, by Dr.
Palmer, directing them to attack the _Tennessee_; but when they
approached her, she moved off toward the fort again. I followed
straight after her with the _Chickasaw_, and, overtaking her, I poured
solid shot into her as fast as I could, and after a short engagement
forced her to surrender, having shot away her smoke-stack, destroyed
her steering-gear, and jammed her after-ports, rendering her guns
useless, while one of my shots wounded Admiral Buchanan. I followed
her close, my guns and turrets continuing in perfect order in spite of
the strain upon them. When Johnston came on the roof of the
_Tennessee_, and showed the white flag as signal of surrender, no
vessel of our fleet, except the _Chickasaw_, was within a quarter of a
mile. But the _Ossipee_ was approaching, and her captain was much
older than myself. I was wet with perspiration, begrimed with powder,
and exhausted with constant and violent exertion; so I drew back and
allowed Captain LeRoy to receive the surrender, though my first
lieutenant, Mr. Hamilton, said at the time, 'Captain Perkins, you are
making a mistake.'"
Admiral Farragut says in his official report: "As I had an elevated
position in the main rigging near the top, I was able to overlook not
only the deck of the _Hartford_, but the other vessels of the fleet. I
witnessed the terrible effects of the enemy's shot, and the good
conduct of the men at their guns; and although no doubt their hearts
sickened, as mine did, when their shipmates were struck down beside
them, yet there was not a moment's hesitation to lay their comrades
aside, and spring again to their deadly work.... I must not omit to
call the attention of the department to the conduct of Acting Ensign
Henry C. Nields, of the _Metacomet_, who had charge of the boat sent
from that vessel, when the _Tecumseh_ sunk. He took her under one of
the most galling fires I ever saw, and succeeded in rescuing from
death ten of her crew within six hundred yards of the fort." Commodore
Foxhall A. Parker, in his very accurate account of this battle,
describes more particularly the exploit of Ensign Nields: "Starting
from the port quarter of the _Metacomet_, and steering the boat
himself, this mere boy pulled directly under the battery of the
_Hartford_, and around the _Brooklyn_, to within a few hundred yards
of the fort, exposed to the fire of both friends and foes. After he
had gone a little distance from his vessel, he seemed suddenly to
reflect that he had no flag flying, when he dropped the yoke-ropes,
picked up a small ensign from the bottom of the boat, and unfurling it
from its staff, which he shipped in a socket made for it in the
stern-sheets, he threw it full to the breeze, amid the loud cheers of
his men. 'I can hardly describe,' says an officer of the _Tennessee_,
'how I felt at witnessing this most gallant act. The muzzle of our gun
was slowly raised, and the bolt intended for {393} the _Tecumseh_ flew
harmlessly over the heads of that glorious boat's crew, far down in
the line of our foes.' After saving Ensign Zelitch, eight men, and the
pilot, Nields turned, and, pulling for the fleet, succeeded in
reaching the _Oneida_, where he remained until the close of the
action."
In a memorandum discovered among Admiral Farragut's papers he said:
"General orders required the vessels to pass inside the buoys next to
Fort Morgan. When the _Tecumseh_ reached that point, it looked so
close that poor Craven said to the pilot, 'The admiral ordered me to
go inside that buoy, but it must be a mistake.' He ran just his
breadth of beam too far westward, struck a torpedo, and went down in
two minutes. Alden saw the buoys ahead, and stopped his ship. This
liked to have proved fatal to all of us. I saw the difficulty, and
ordered the _Hartford_ ahead, and the fleet to follow. Allowing the
_Brooklyn_ to go ahead was a great error. It lost not only the
_Tecumseh_, but many valuable lives, by keeping us under the fire of
the forts for thirty minutes; whereas, had I led, as I intended to do,
I would have gone inside the buoys, and all would have followed me.
The officers and crews of all the ships did their duty like men. There
was but one man who showed fear, and he was allowed to resign. This
was the most desperate battle I ever fought since the days of the old
_Essex_."
[Illustration: CAPTAIN TUNIS A. M. CRAVEN.]
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL THORNTON A. JENKINS.]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN PERCIVAL DRAYTON.]
The thorough discipline and devotion of the crews is illustrated by an
incident on the _Oneida_. A shot penetrated her starboard boiler, and
the escaping steam scalded thirteen men. At this one gun's-crew shrank
back for a moment, but when Captain Mullany shouted, "Back to your
quarters, men!" they instantly returned to their guns. Soon afterward,
Captain Mullany lost an arm and received six other wounds. Craven's
chief engineer in the _Tecumseh_, C. Farron, was an invalid in the
hospital at Pensacola when the orders were given to sail for Mobile,
but he insisted on leaving his bed and going with his ship, with which
he was lost.
A Confederate officer who was in the water battery at Fort Morgan
expressed unbounded admiration at the manoeuvring of the vessels when
the _Brooklyn_ stopped and the _Hartford_ drew ahead and took the
lead. "At first," he says, "they appeared to be in inextricable
confusion, and at the mercy of our guns; but when the _Hartford_
dashed forward, we realized that the grand tactical movement had been
accomplished."
An officer of the _Hartford_ wrote in his private journal: "The order
was, to go 'slowly, slowly,' and receive the fire of Fort Morgan. At
six minutes past seven the fort opened, having allowed us to get into
such short range that we apprehended some snare; in fact, I heard the
order passed for our guns to be elevated for fourteen hundred yards
some time before one was fired. The calmness of the scene was sublime.
No impatience, no irritation, no anxiety, except for the fort to open;
and, after it did open, full five minutes elapsed before we answered.
In the mean time the guns were trained as if at a target, and all the
sounds I could hear were, 'Steady, boys, steady! Left tackle a
little--so! so!' Then the roar of a broadside, and an eager cheer as
the enemy were driven from their water battery. Don't imagine they
were frightened; no man could stand under that iron shower; and the
brave fellows returned to their guns as soon as it lulled, only to be
driven away again."
Farragut, who was a man of deep religious convictions, fully realized
the perils of the enterprise upon which he was entering, and did not
half expect to survive it. In a letter to his wife, written the
evening before the battle, he said: "I am going into Mobile Bay in the
morning, if God is my leader, as I hope he is, and in him I place my
trust. If he think it is the proper place for me to die, I am ready to
submit to his will in that as in all other things." In spite of the
universal sailor superstition, he fought this battle on Friday.
One incident of this battle suggests the thought that many of the
famous deeds of Old-World chivalry have been paralleled in American
history. When the _Tecumseh_ was going down, Captain Craven and his
pilot met at the foot of the ladder that afforded the only escape, and
the pilot stepped aside. "After you, pilot," said Craven, drawing
back, for he knew it was by his own fault, not the pilot's, that the
vessel was struck. "There was nothing after me," said the pilot, in
telling the story; "for the moment I reached the deck the vessel
seemed to drop from under me, and went to the bottom."
{394} [Illustration: ON BOARD THE "HARTFORD," BATTLE OF MOBILE BAY.
(From a painting by W. H. Overend.)]
{395} [Illustration: GUN PRACTICE ON A NATIONAL WAR-SHIP. (From a
war-time photograph.)]
In all the literature of our language there is but one instance of the
poetical description of a battle by a genuine poet who was a
participator in the conflict. This instance is Brownell's "Bay Fight."
Drayton's fine "Ballad of Agincourt" has long been famous, but that
battle was fought a century and a half before Drayton was born.
Campbell witnessed the battle of Hohenlinden, famous through his
familiar poem, but only from the distant tower of a convent. Byron's
description of the battle of Waterloo is justly admired, but Byron was
not at Waterloo. Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade at
Balaklava," which every schoolboy knows, is another hearsay poem, for
Tennyson was never within a thousand miles of Balaklava. Henry Howard
Brownell, a native of Providence, R. I., when a young man taught a
school in Mobile, Ala. Afterward he practised law in Hartford, Conn.,
but left it for literature, and at the age of twenty-seven published a
volume of poems that attracted no attention. During the war he made
numerous poetical contributions to periodicals, some of which were
widely copied. One of these, a poetical version of Farragut's General
Orders at New Orleans, attracted the admiral's attention and led to a
correspondence. Brownell wrote that he had always wanted to witness a
sea-fight, and Farragut, answering that he would give him an
opportunity, procured his appointment as acting ensign on board the
_Hartford_. During the battle of Mobile, Brownell was on deck
attending to his duties, for which he was honorably mentioned in the
admiral's report, and at the same time taking notes of the picturesque
incidents. The outcome was his unique and powerful poem entitled "The
Bay Fight." Oliver Wendell Holmes, in an article in the _Atlantic
Monthly_, said: "New modes of warfare thundered their demand for a new
poet to describe them; and Nature has answered in the voice of our
battle laureate, Henry Howard Brownell." From Mr. Brownell's poem we
take the following stanzas:
Three days through sapphire seas we sailed;
The steady trade blew strong and free,
The northern light his banners paled,
The ocean stream our channels wet.
We rounded low Canaveral's lee,
And passed the isles of emerald set
In blue Bahama's turquoise sea.
By reef and shoal obscurely mapped,
And hauntings of the gray sea-wolf,
The palmy Western Key lay lapped
In the warm washing of the gulf.
{396}
But weary to the hearts of all
The burning glare, the barren reach
Of Santa Rosa's withered beach,
And Pensacola's ruined wall.
And weary was the long patrol,
The thousand miles of shapeless strand,
From Brazos to San Blas, that roll
Their drifting dunes of desert sand.
Yet, coast-wise as we cruised or lay,
The land-breeze still at nightfall bore,
By beach and fortress-guarded bay,
Sweet odors from the enemy's shore,
Fresh from the forest solitudes,
Unchallenged of his sentry lines--
The bursting of his cypress buds,
And the warm fragrance of his pines.
Our lofty spars were down,
To bide the battle's frown,
(Wont of old renown)--
But every ship was drest
In her bravest and her best,
As if for a July day.
Sixty flags and three,
As we floated up the bay;
Every peak and mast-head flew
The brave red, white, and blue--
We were eighteen ships that day.
On, in the whirling shade
Of the cannon's sulphury breath,
We drew to the line of death
That our devilish foe had laid--
Meshed in a horrible net,
And baited villanous well,
Right in our path were set
Three hundred traps of hell!
And there, O sight forlorn!
There, while the cannon
Hurtled and thundered--
(Ah! what ill raven
Flapped o'er the ship that morn!)--
Caught by the under-death,
In the drawing of a breath,
Down went dauntless Craven,
He and his hundred!
A moment we saw her turret,
A little heel she gave,
And a thin white spray went o'er it,
Like the crest of a breaking wave.
In that great iron coffin,
The channel for their grave,
The fort their monument,
(Seen afar in the offing),
Ten fathom deep lie Craven,
And the bravest of our brave.
Trust me, our berth was hot;
Ah, wickedly well they shot!
How their death-bolts howled and stung!
And their water batteries played
With their deadly cannonade
Till the air around us rung.
So the battle raged and roared--
Ah! had you been aboard
To have seen the fight we made!
Never a nerve that failed,
Never a cheek that paled,
Not a tinge of gloom or pallor.
There was bold Kentucky's grit,
And the old Virginian valor,
And the daring Yankee wit.
There were blue eyes from turfy Shannon,
There were black orbs from palmy Niger;
But there, alongside the cannon,
Each man fought like a tiger.
And now, as we looked ahead,
All for'ard, the long white deck
Was growing a strange dull red;
But soon, as once and again
Fore and aft we sped
(The firing to guide or check),
You could hardly choose but tread
On the ghastly human wreck,
(Dreadful gobbet and shred
That a minute ago were men)!
Red, from main-mast to bitts!
Red, on bulwark and wale--
Red, by combing and hatch--
Red, o'er netting and rail!
And ever, with steady con,
The ship forged slowly by;
And ever the crew fought on,
And their cheers rang loud and high.
Fear? A forgotten form!
Death? A dream of the eyes!
We were atoms in God's great storm
That roared through the angry skies.
A league from the fort we lay,
And deemed that the end must lag;
When lo! looking down the bay,
There flaunted the rebel rag--
The ram is again under way
And heading dead for the flag!
Steering up with the stream,
Boldly his course he lay,
Though the fleet all answered his fire,
And, as he still drew nigher,
Ever on bow and beam
Our monitors pounded away--
How the _Chickasaw_ hammered away!
Quickly breasting the wave,
Eager the prize to win,
First of us all the brave
_Monongahela_ went in,
Under full head of steam--
Twice she struck him abeam,
Till her stem was a sorry work.
(She might have run on a crag!)
The _Lackawanna_ hit fair--
He flung her aside like cork,
And still he held for the flag.
Heading square at the hulk,
Full on his beam we bore;
But the spine of the huge sea-hog
Lay on the tide like a log--
He vomited flame no more.
By this he had found it hot.
Half the fleet, in an angry ring,
Closed round the hideous thing,
Hammering with solid shot,
And bearing down, bow on bow--
He has but a minute to choose;
Life or renown?--which now
Will the rebel admiral lose?
Cruel, haughty, and cold,
He ever was strong and bold--
Shall he shrink from a wooden stem?
He will think of that brave band
He sank in the _Cumberland_--
Ay, he will sink like them!
Nothing left but to fight
Boldly his last sea-fight!
Can he strike? By Heaven, 'tis true!
Down comes the traitor blue,
And up goes the captive white!
Ended the mighty noise,
Thunder of forts and ships,
Down we went to the hold--
Oh, our dear dying boys!
How we pressed their poor brave lips
(Ah, so pallid and cold!)
And held their hands to the last
(Those that had hands to hold)!
O motherland, this weary life
We led, we lead, is 'long of thee!
Thine the strong agony of strife,
And thine the lonely sea.
Thine the long decks all slaughter-sprent,
The weary rows of cots that lie
With wrecks of strong men, marred and rent,
'Neath Pensacola's sky.
And thine the iron caves and dens
Wherein the flame our war-fleet drives--
The fiery vaults, whose breath is men's
Most dear and precious lives.
Ah, ever when with storm sublime
Dread Nature clears our murky air,
Thus in the crash of falling crime
Some lesser guilt must share!
To-day the Dahlgren and the drum
Are dread apostles of His name;
His kingdom here can only come
By chrism of blood and flame.
Be strong! already slants the gold
Athwart these wild and stormy skies;
From out this blackened waste behold
What happy homes shall rise!
And never fear a victor foe--
Thy children's hearts are strong and high;
Nor mourn too fondly--well they know
On deck or field to die.
Nor shalt thou want one willing breath,
Though, ever smiling round the brave,
The blue sea bear us on to death,
The green were one wide grave.
{397}
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE ADVANCE ON PETERSBURG.
ADVANCE ON PETERSBURG--GENERAL BUTLER'S MOVEMENT--BEAUREGARD'S
COUNTER-MOVEMENT--ADVANCE FORCES UNDER GENERAL SMITH--HANCOCK'S
ATTACK--CUTTING OFF THE RAILROADS--THE FIGHT AT WELDON
ROAD--BURNSIDE'S MINE--EXPLOSION AND THE SLAUGHTER AT THE
CRATER--FIGHTING AT DEEP BOTTOM--THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ARMY
RAILROAD--SIEGE OF PETERSBURG BEGUN.
It had been a part of Grant's plan, in opening the campaign of 1864,
that Gen. B. F. Butler, with a force that was called the Army of the
James, should march against Richmond and Petersburg. He moved
promptly, at the same time with the armies led by Grant and Sherman,
embarking his forces on transports at Fort Monroe, and first making a
feint of steaming up York River. In the night the vessel turned back
and steamed up the James. Early the next day, May 6th, the troops were
landed at City Point, at the junction of the James and the Appomattox,
and intrenchments were thrown up. Detachments were sent out to cut the
railroads south of Petersburg, and between that city and Richmond; but
no effective work was done. General Butler was ordered to secure a
position as far up the James as possible, and advanced to Drury's
Bluff, where he was attacked by a force under General Beauregard and
driven back to Bermuda Hundred. At the point where the curves of the
James and the Appomattox bring those two streams within less than
three miles of each other, Butler threw up a line of intrenchments,
with his right resting on the James at Dutch Gap, and his left on the
Appomattox at Point of Rocks. The position was very strong, and it
would be hopeless for the Confederates to assault it. The disadvantage
was, that Beauregard had only to throw up a parallel line of
intrenchments across the same neck of land, and Butler could not
advance a step. What he had secured, however, was afterward valuable
as a protection for City Point, when Grant swung the Army of the
Potomac across the James, which became thenceforth the landing-place
for supplies.
Grant had reinforced Butler with troops under Gen. William F. Smith,
and planned to have an immediate advance on Petersburg while the Army
of the Potomac was crossing the James (June 14, 1864). The work was
intrusted to Smith, who was to get close to the Confederate
intrenchments in the night, and carry them at daybreak. He
unexpectedly came upon the enemy fortified between City Point and
Petersburg, and had a fight in which he was successful, but it caused
a loss of precious time. Grant hurried Hancock's troops over the
river, to follow Smith. But this corps was delayed several hours
waiting for rations, and finally went on without them. It appears that
Hancock's instructions were defective, and he did not know that he was
expected to take Petersburg till he received a note from Smith urging
him to hurry forward. Smith spent nearly the whole of the 15th in
reconnoitring the defences of Petersburg, which were but lightly
manned, and in the evening carried a portion of them by assault, the
work being done by colored troops under Gen. Edward W. Hincks. In the
morning of the 16th Hancock's men captured a small additional portion
of the works; but here that general had to be relieved for ten days,
because of the breaking out of the grievous wound that he had received
at Gettysburg. Gen. David B. Birney succeeded him in the command of
the corps. General Meade came upon the ground, ordered another
assault, and carried another portion. But by this time Beauregard had
thrown more men into the fortifications, and the fighting was stubborn
and bloody. It was continued through the 17th, with no apparent
result, except that at night the Confederates fell back to an inner
line, and in the morning the National line was correspondingly
advanced. In these preliminary operations against Petersburg, the
National loss was nearly ten thousand men. There is no official
statement of the Confederate loss, but the indications were that it
was about the same.
[Illustration: CITY POINT--A FEDERAL SUPPLY STATION.]
When Lee found where Grant was going, he moved east and south of
Richmond, crossing the James at Drury's Bluff, and presently
confronting his enemy in the trenches east and {398} south of
Petersburg. The country is well adapted for defence, and the works
were extensive and very strong. Seeing that the city itself could not
be immediately captured, Grant endeavored to sever its important
communications. The Norfolk Railroad was easily cut off; and the Army
of the Potomac, which for some time had hardly known any difference
between day and night, was allowed a few days of rest and comparative
quiet. But the most important line was the Weldon Railroad, which
brought up Confederate supplies from the South, and Grant and Meade
made an early attempt to seize it. On the 21st and 22d Birney's corps
was pushed to the left, extending south of the city, while Wright's
was sent by a route further south to strike directly at the railroad.
Wright came into a position nearly at right angles with Birney, facing
west toward the railroad, while Birney faced north toward the city.
They were not in connection, however, and did not sufficiently guard
their flanks. A heavy Confederate force under Gen. A. P. Hill, coming
out to meet the movement, drove straight into the gap, turned the left
flank of the Second Corps, threw it into confusion, and captured
seventeen hundred men and four guns. The fighting was not severe; but
the movement against the railroad was arrested. Hill withdrew to his
intrenchments in the evening, the Second Corps reëstablished its line,
and the Sixth intrenched itself in a position facing the railroad and
about a mile and a half from it. On this flank, affairs remained
substantially in this condition till the middle of August.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL LYSANDER CUTLER.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL J. J. BARTLETT.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL RUFUS INGALLS.]
But meanwhile something that promised great results was going on near
the centre of the line, in front of Burnside's corps. A regiment
composed largely of Pennsylvania miners dug a tunnel under the nearest
point of the Confederate works. These works consisted of forts or
redans at intervals, with connecting lines of rifle-pits, and the
tunnel was directed under one of the forts. The digging was begun in a
ravine, to be out of sight of the enemy, and the earth was carried out
in barrows made of cracker-boxes, and hidden under brushwood. The
Confederates learned what was being done, and the location of the
tunnel, but did not succeed in striking it by countermining. They came
to have vague and exaggerated fears of it, and many people in
Petersburg believed that the whole city was undermined. The work
occupied nearly a month, and when finished it consisted of a straight
tunnel five hundred feet long, ending in a cross-gallery seventy feet
long. In this gallery was placed eight thousand pounds of powder, with
slow-matches. The day fixed for the explosion was the 30th of July. To
distract attention from it, and diminish if possible the force that
held the lines immediately around Petersburg, Hancock was sent across
the James at Deep Bottom, where an intrenched camp was held by a force
under Gen. John G. Foster, to make a feint against the works north of
the river. This had the desired effect, as Lee, anxious for the safety
of Richmond, hurried a large part of his army across at Drury's Bluff
to confront Hancock. With this exception, the arrangements for the
enterprise were all bad. The explosion of the mine alone would do
little or no good; but it was expected to make such a breach in the
enemy's line that a strong column could be thrust through and take the
works in reverse. For such a task the best of troops are required; but
Burnside's corps was by no means the best in the army, and the choice
of a {399} division to lead, being determined by lot, fell upon Gen.
James H. Ledlie's, which was probably the worst, and certainly the
worst commanded. Furthermore, the obstructions were not properly
cleared away to permit the rapid deployment of a large force between
the lines.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL W. H. F. LEE, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY HETH, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL R. E. COLSTON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: PETERSBURG, RICHMOND, AND VICINITY.]
A few minutes before five o'clock in the morning, the mine was
exploded. A vast mass of earth, surrounded by smoke, with the flames
of burning powder playing through it, rose two hundred feet into the
air, seemed to poise there for a moment, and then fell. The fort with
its guns and garrison--about three hundred men of a South Carolina
regiment--was completely destroyed, and in place of it was a crater
about thirty feet deep and nearly two hundred feet long. At the same
moment the heavy batteries in the National line opened upon the enemy,
to protect the assaulting column from artillery fire. Ledlie's
division pushed forward into the crater, and there stopped. General
Ledlie himself did not accompany the men, and there seemed to be no
one to direct them. Thirty golden minutes passed, during which the
Confederates, who had run away in terror from the neighboring
intrenchments, made no effort to drive out the assailants. At the end
of that they began to rally to their guns, and presently directed a
heavy fire upon the men in the crater. Burnside tried to remedy the
difficulty by pushing out more troops, and at length sent his black
division, which charged through the crater and up the slope beyond,
but was there met by a fire before which it recoiled; for the
Confederates had constructed an inner line of breastworks commanding
the front along which the explosion had been expected. Finally, both
musketry and artillery were concentrated upon the disorganized mass of
troops huddled in the crater, while shells were lighted and rolled
down its sloping sides, till those who were left alive scrambled out
and got away as best they could. This affair cost the National army
about four thousand men--many of them prisoners--while the Confederate
loss was hardly a thousand. Soon after this General Burnside was
relieved, at his own request, and the command of his corps was given
to Gen. John G. Parke. General Grant had never had much faith in the
success of the mine, and had given only a reluctant consent to the
experiment. Perhaps this was because he had witnessed two similar ones
at Vicksburg, both of which were failures. He could hardly escape the
criticism, however, that it was his duty either to forbid it
altogether or to give it every element of success, including
especially a competent leader for the assault.
On the 13th of August, Hancock made another and more serious
demonstration from Deep Bottom toward Richmond. {400} He assaulted the
defences of the city, and fighting was kept up for several days. He
gained nothing, for Lee threw a strong force into the intrenchments
and repelled his attacks. But there was great gain at the other end of
the line; for Grant took advantage of the weakening of Lee's right to
seize the Weldon Railroad. Warren's corps was moved out to the road on
the 18th, took a position across it at a point about four miles from
Petersburg, and intrenched. On the 19th, and again on the 21st, Lee
made determined attacks on this position, but was repelled with heavy
loss. Warren clung to his line, and made such dispositions as at
length enabled him to meet any assault with but little loss to
himself. A day or two later, Hancock returned from the north side of
the James, and was rapidly marched to the extreme left, to pass beyond
Warren and destroy some miles of the Weldon Railroad. He tore up the
track and completely disabled it to a point three miles south of Reams
Station, and on the 25th sent out Gibbon's division to the work some
miles farther. But the approach of a heavy Confederate force under
Gen. A. P. Hill caused it to fall back to Reams Station, where with
Miles's division (six thousand men in all) and two thousand cavalry it
held a line of intrenchments. Three assaults upon this line were
repelled, with bloody loss to the Confederates. General Hill then
ordered Heth's division to make another assault and carry the works at
all hazards. Heth found a place from which a part of the National line
could be enfiladed by artillery, and after a brisk bombardment
assaulted, carried the works, and captured three batteries. Miles's
men were rallied, retook a part of the line and one of the batteries,
and formed a new line, which they held, assisted by the dismounted
cavalry, who poured an effective fire into the flank of the advancing
Confederates. At night both sides withdrew from the field. Hancock had
lost twenty-four hundred men, seventeen hundred of whom were
prisoners. The Confederate loss is unknown, but it was severe.
[Illustration: EXPLOSION OF THE MINE BEFORE PETERSBURG.]
[Illustration: GLOBE TAVERN, GENERAL WARREN'S HEADQUARTERS AT
PETERSBURG.]
From that time Grant held possession of the Weldon Railroad, and
whatever supplies came to the Confederate army by that route had to be
hauled thirty miles in wagons. The National army constructed for its
own use a railroad in the rear of and parallel with its long line of
intrenchments, running from City Point to the extreme left flank. This
road was not particular about grades and curves, but simply followed
the natural contour of the ground. Then began what is called the siege
of Petersburg, which was not a siege in the proper sense of the word,
because the Confederate communications were open; but the military
preparations and processes were identical with those known as siege
operations, and every possible appliance, mechanical or military, that
could assist in the work was brought here.
{401} [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN G. FOSTER.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL H. H. HEATH.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT B. POTTER AND STAFF.]
[Illustration: GENERAL DAVID B. BIRNEY.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM HAYS.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ORLANDO B. WILCOX. (Afterward
Major-General.)]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL SIMON G. GRIFFIN.]
{402}
CHAPTER XXXVII.
WASHINGTON IN DANGER.
CONFEDERATE FORCES THREATEN THE NATIONAL CAPITAL--GENERAL GRANT SENDS
TROOPS TO ITS DEFENCE--BATTERIES AND INTRENCHMENTS AROUND
WASHINGTON--CONFEDERATE FORCES IN SIGHT OF THE DOME OF THE
CAPITOL--PRESIDENT LINCOLN EXPOSED TO THE FIRE OF CONFEDERATE
SHARP-SHOOTERS--GENERAL EARLY'S RETREAT UP THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY.
Partly to check the movements of General Hunter in the Shenandoah
Valley, and partly with the hope that an attack on Washington would
cause Grant to withdraw from before Richmond and Petersburg, Lee sent
Early's corps into the valley. Hunter, being out of ammunition, was
obliged to retire before the Confederates, and Early marched down the
Potomac unopposed, and threatened the National capital. Serious fears
were entertained that he would actually enter the city, and all sorts
of hurried preparations were made to prevent him, department clerks
being under arms, and every available man pressed into the service.
The defences of Washington, which had been in course of construction
ever since the war began, consisted of sixty-eight enclosed forts or
batteries, connected by lines of intrenchments, forming a circle about
that city and Alexandria, and being on an average four miles from the
centre of the city. These mounted about eight hundred guns and one
hundred mortars, and, with their connecting works, were calculated to
give fighting room for thirty-five thousand men. But at this time they
were manned by not more than thirteen thousand. Some of these were
members of the invalid corps, which was formed of soldiers who had
been wounded so as to be unfit for the hard duty at the front; others
were hundred-day men. There was great excitement in Washington, and
serious fears that the Confederates might succeed in marching into the
capital.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A FORT--PART OF THE DEFENCES OF WASHINGTON.
(From a Government photograph.)]
[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.]
Gen. Lew Wallace, in command at Baltimore, gathered a body of recruits
and went out to meet Early, not with the hope of defeating him, but
only of delaying him till a sufficient force could be sent from the
Army of the Potomac. Ricketts's division of the Sixth Corps had
already set out for Baltimore, and on arriving there immediately
followed Wallace. They met the enemy at the Monocacy, thirty-five
miles from Washington, July 9, and took up a position on the left bank
of the stream, covering the roads to the capital. Wallace had six
field guns and a small force of cavalry, and disposed his line so as
to hold the bridges and fords as long as possible. The Confederates
attacked at first in front, with a strong skirmish line and sixteen
guns, and there was bloody fighting at one of the bridges. Then they
changed their tactics, marched a heavy force down stream, crossed at a
ford out of range of the National artillery, and then marched up
stream again to strike Wallace's left flank. That part of the line was
held by Ricketts, who changed front to meet the attack, and was
promptly reinforced from Wallace's scanty resources. Two assaults in
line of battle were repelled, after some destructive fighting, and
Wallace determined still to hold his ground, as he was hourly
expecting three additional regiments. But the afternoon wore away
without any appearance of assistance, and when he saw preparations for
another and heavier assault he determined to retreat. While the left
was being withdrawn, the right, under General Tyler, was ordered to
prevent the remaining Confederate force from crossing at the bridges.
The wooden bridge was burned, and the stone bridge was held to the
last possible moment, when Tyler also retreated. The missing regiments
were met on the road, and there was no pursuit. This {403} action was
not important from its magnitude; but in that it probably saved the
city of Washington from pillage and destruction, it was of the first
importance. Wallace has received high praise for his promptness and
energy in fighting a battle of great strategic value when he knew that
the immediate result must be the defeat of his own force. He lost
about fourteen hundred men, half of whom were prisoners. The
Confederates admitted a loss of six hundred.
Early now marched on Washington, and on the 12th was within a few
miles of it, where some heavy skirmishing took place with a force sent
out by Gen. Christopher C. Augur. His nearest approach was at Fort
Stevens, directly north of the city. General Early says in his memoir:
"I rode ahead of the infantry and arrived in sight of Fort Stevens a
short time after noon, when I discovered that the works were but
feebly manned. Rodes, whose division was in front, was immediately
ordered to bring it into line as rapidly as possible, and move into
the works if he could." This is supposed to have been Early's golden
opportunity, which he somehow missed, for the capture of Washington.
His own explanation is this: "My whole column was then moving by
flank, which was the only practicable mode of marching on the road we
were on; and before Rodes's division could be brought up we saw a
cloud of dust in the rear of the works toward Washington, and soon a
column of the enemy filed into them on the right and left, and
skirmishers were thrown out in front, while an artillery fire was
opened on us from a number of batteries. This defeated our hopes of
getting possession of the works by surprise, and it became necessary
to reconnoitre. Rodes's skirmishers were thrown to the front, driving
those of the enemy to the cover of the works, and we proceeded to
examine the fortifications in order to ascertain if it was practicable
to carry them by assault. They were found to be exceedingly strong.
The timber had been felled within cannon range all round, and left on
the ground, making a formidable obstacle, and every possible approach
was raked by artillery. On the right was Rock Creek, running through a
deep ravine, which had been rendered impassable by the felling of the
timber on each side, and beyond were the works on the Georgetown pike,
which had been reported to be the strongest of all. On the left, as
far as the eye could reach, the works appeared to be of the same
impregnable character. This reconnoissance consumed the balance of the
day. The rapid marching, which had broken a number of the men who were
weakened by previous exposure, and had been left in the valley and
directed to be collected at Winchester, and the losses in killed and
wounded at Harper's Ferry, Maryland Heights, and Monocacy, had reduced
my infantry to about eight thousand muskets. Of those remaining, a
very large number were greatly exhausted by the last two days'
marching, some having fallen by sunstroke; and I was satisfied, when
we arrived in front of the fortifications, that not more than
one-third of my force could have been carried into action. After dark
on the 11th, I held a consultation with Major-Generals Breckenridge,
Rodes, Gordon, and Ramseur, in which I stated to them the danger of
remaining where we were, and the necessity of doing something
immediately, as the probability was that the passes of the South
Mountain and the fords of the upper Potomac would soon be closed
against us. After interchanging views with them, being very reluctant
to abandon the project of capturing Washington, I determined to make
an assault at daylight next morning. During the night a despatch was
received from Gen. Bradley Johnson, from near Baltimore, informing me
that two corps had arrived from General Grant's army, and that his
whole army was probably in motion. As soon as it was light enough to
see, I rode to the front and found the parapets lined with troops. I
had, therefore, reluctantly to give up all hopes of capturing
Washington, after I had arrived in sight of the dome of the Capitol."
Early's information was correct, as Grant had sent to Washington the
remainder of the Sixth Corps, and also the Nineteenth Corps, which had
just arrived from Louisiana.
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL C. G. SAWTELLE.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ANDREW PORTER.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. A. HASKIN.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL THEO. RUNYON.]
{404} [Illustration: JOHN CABIN BRIDGE NEAR WASHINGTON.]
[Illustration: AN EARNEST REQUEST FOR A FURLOUGH.]
During the fighting at Fort Stevens, President Lincoln was in the
fort, and was exposed to the fire of the Confederate sharp-shooters.
General Wright had the greatest difficulty in persuading him to leave
his dangerous position, and could not do so until an officer standing
near the President had been struck down by a shot from the enemy. Even
then, Mr. Lincoln persisted in looking over the parapet to see what
was going on, and when finally the Sixth Corps men drove back the
enemy he was as excited and jubilant in the cheering as any of those
around him.
Early retreated up the valley, carrying with him considerable plunder,
and was followed some distance until the pursuing force was withdrawn.
The Sixth and Nineteenth Corps were ordered to rejoin Grant's army,
and were on their way to it when it was learned that Early was again
advancing. Grant now determined to finish him and clear the valley,
and accordingly sent General Sheridan to command in that quarter, in
August. Meanwhile, a part of Early's force had been struck at
Winchester by a force under General Averell, who defeated it and
captured four guns and about four hundred men. Three days later, Early
defeated a force under Gen. George Crook, and drove it across the
Potomac, after which he sent his cavalry, under Generals McCausland
and Bradley T. Johnson, to make a raid into Pennsylvania. McCausland,
in the course of his raid, burned Chambersburg, the particulars of
which have been given in another chapter.
This raid created a panic among the inhabitants of western Maryland
and southern Pennsylvania, many of whom fled from their homes, driving
off their cattle and carrying whatever they could.
{405}
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SHERIDAN IN THE SHENANDOAH.
IMPORTANCE OF THE VALLEY--HUNTER ASKS TO BE RELIEVED--SHERIDAN'S
CAREER--GRANT'S INSTRUCTIONS--INTERFERENCE AT WASHINGTON--LINCOLN
GIVES GRANT A HINT--SHERIDAN MARCHES ON WINCHESTER--MINOR
ENGAGEMENTS--SHERIDAN'S OPPORTUNITY--BATTLE OF THE OPEQUAN--EARLY GOES
WHIRLING THROUGH WINCHESTER--BATTLE OF FISHER'S HILL--DESTRUCTION IN
THE VALLEY--ACTION AT TOM'S BROOK--BATTLE OF CEDAR CREEK.
It had become plainly evident that something must be done to cancel
the whole Shenandoah Valley from the map of the theatre of war. The
mountains that flanked it made it a secure lane down which a
Confederate force could be sent at almost any time to the very door of
Washington; while the crops that were harvested in its fertile fields
were a constant temptation to those who had to provide for the
necessities of an army. General Grant took the matter in hand in
earnest after Early's raid and the burning of Chambersburg. His first
care was to have the separate military departments in that section
consolidated, his next to find a suitable commander, and finally to
send an adequate force. He would have been satisfied with General
Hunter, who was already the ranking officer there; but Hunter had been
badly hampered in his movements by constant interference from
Washington, and knowing that he had not the confidence of General
Halleck, he asked to be relieved, since he did not wish to embarrass
the cause. In this, Grant says, Hunter "showed a patriotism that was
none too common in the army. There were not many major-generals who
would voluntarily have asked to have the command of a department taken
from them on the supposition that for some particular reason, or for
any reason, the service would be better performed." Grant accepted his
offer, and telegraphed for General Sheridan to come and take command
of the new department. Sheridan was on hand promptly, and was placed
at the head of about thirty thousand troops, including eight thousand
cavalry, who were named the Army of the Shenandoah.
Sheridan was now in his thirty-fourth year; and Secretary Stanton,
with a wise caution, made some objection, on the ground that he was
very young for a command so important. He had not stood remarkably
high at West Point, being ranked thirty-fourth in his class when the
whole number was fifty-two; but he had already made a brilliant record
in the war, winning his brigadier-generalship by a victory at
Booneville, Mo., and conspicuous for his gallantry and skill at
Perryville, Murfreesboro', Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge, and for
his bold riding around Lee's army in the spring campaign of 1864.
Under him and Custer, Crook, Merritt, and Kilpatrick, the cavalry arm
of the National service, weak and inefficient at the opening of the
war, had become a swift and sure weapon against the now declining but
still defiant Confederacy. It had been noted by everybody that Grant
exhibited an almost unerring judgment in the choice of his
lieutenants.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL H. G. WRIGHT.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL A. T. A. TORBERT.]
In his instructions, which were at first written out for Hunter and
afterward transferred to Sheridan, Grant said: "In pushing up the
Shenandoah Valley, where it is expected you will have to go first or
last, it is desirable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy
to return. Take all provisions, forage, and stock wanted for the use
of your command. Such as cannot be consumed, destroy. It is not
desirable that the buildings should be destroyed--they should rather
be protected; but the people should be informed that so long as an
army can subsist among them recurrences of these raids must be
expected; and we are determined to stop them at all hazards."
The condition of things at Washington--where Halleck always, and
Stanton sometimes, interfered with orders passing that way--is vividly
suggested by a despatch sent in cipher to Grant at this time, August
3. Mr. Lincoln wrote: "I have seen your despatch, in which you say, 'I
want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field, with
instructions to put himself south of the enemy and follow him to the
death. Wherever the enemy goes, let our troops go also.' This I think
is exactly right, as to how our forces should move. But please look
over the despatches you may have received from here, even since you
made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in
the head of any one here of 'putting our army south of the enemy,' or
of 'following him to the death' in any direction. I repeat to you, it
will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day and
hour, and force it." This caused Grant to go at once to Maryland and
put things in train for the vigorous campaign that he had planned in
the valley of the Shenandoah. Perhaps Mr. Lincoln had found a way to
give Halleck also an impressive hint; for the very next day that
general telegraphed to Grant: "I await your orders, and shall strictly
carry them out, whatever they may be."
{406} Grant, who had all confidence in Sheridan, wrote to him: "Do not
hesitate to give command to officers in whom you repose confidence,
without regard to claims of others on account of rank. If you deem
Torbert the best man to command the cavalry, place him in command, and
give Averell some other command, or relieve him from the expedition
and order him to report to General Hunter. What we want is prompt and
active movements after the enemy, in accordance with the instructions
you have already had. I feel every confidence that you will do the
very best, and will leave you, as far as possible, to act on your
judgment, and not embarrass you with orders and instructions." In
accordance with this, Torbert was made Sheridan's chief of cavalry,
and Merritt was given command of Torbert's division. When Grant
visited Sheridan, before the battle of the Opequan, he carried a plan
of battle in his pocket; but he says he found Sheridan so thoroughly
ready to move, with so perfect a plan, and so confident of success,
that he did not even show him his plan or give him any orders, except
authority to move.
Early, whose main force was on the south bank of the Potomac, above
Harper's Ferry, still had a large part of his cavalry in Maryland,
where they were loading their wagons with wheat on the battlefield of
Antietam, and seizing all the cattle that the farmers had not driven
off beyond their reach. But these were now recalled. As soon as
Sheridan could get his force well in hand, he moved it skilfully
southward toward Winchester, in order to threaten Early's
communications and draw him into a battle. Early at once moved his
army into a position to cover Winchester, but was unwilling to fight
without the reinforcements that were on the way to him from Lee's
army; so he retreated as far as Fisher's Hill to meet them, and was
followed by Sheridan, who was about to attack there when warned by
Grant to be cautious, as the enemy was too strong for him. He
therefore withdrew to his former position on Opequan Creek, facing
west toward Winchester and covering Snicker's Gap, through which
reinforcements were to come to him. Here he was attacked, August 21,
and after a fight in which two hundred and sixty men on the National
side were killed or wounded, he drew back to a stronger position at
Halltown. He had complained, in a letter to Grant, that there was not
a good military position in the whole valley south of the Potomac. In
his retrograde movement, as he reported, he "destroyed everything
eatable south of Winchester."
Early reconnoitred the position at Halltown and found it too strong to
be attacked, but for three or four weeks remained with his whole force
at the lower end of the valley, threatening raids into Maryland,
Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, breaking the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad and the Chesapeake Canal, keeping the authorities at
Washington in a constant state of anxiety, and all the time inviting
attack from Sheridan. There were frequent minor engagements, mainly by
cavalry, with varying results. In one, Custer's division only escaped
capture by crossing the Potomac in great haste. In another, a force
under Gen. John B. McIntosh captured the Eighth South Carolina
infantry entire--though that regiment now consisted of but one hundred
and six men. It had probably consisted of a thousand men at the
outset, and the wear and tear of three years of constant warfare had
reduced it, like many others on either side, to these meagre
proportions.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL ALFRED GIBBS.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL LOUIS H. PELOUZE.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL W. H. PENROSE.]
Grant and Sheridan were in perfect accord as to the best policy, and
they pursued it steadily, in spite of the uneasiness at Washington,
the complaints of the Maryland farmers, and the criticisms of the
newspapers. They knew that with the Army of the Potomac constantly
busy in his front, feeling out for new positions beyond Petersburg, or
massing north of the James in close proximity to Richmond, or
threatening to break through his centre, the time must come when Lee
would recall a part of the forces that he had sent to the valley, and
that would be the moment for Sheridan to spring upon Early. The
opportunity arrived on the 19th of September, when Lee had recalled
the command of R. H. Anderson, with which he had reinforced Early in
August, and Early, as if to double his danger, had sent a large part
of his remaining troops to Martinsburg, twenty miles away. Grant's
order to Sheridan at this juncture was "Go in," and Sheridan promptly
went in.
The various movements of the two armies had brought them around to
substantially the same positions that they held in the engagement of
August 21--Early east of and covering Winchester, Sheridan along the
line of Opequan Creek, which is about five miles east of the city.
Sheridan's plan was to march straight on Winchester with his whole
force, and crush Early's right before the left could be withdrawn from
Martinsburg to assist it. He set his troops in motion at three o'clock
in the morning, to converge toward the Berryville pike, a macadamized
{407} road crossing the Opequan, passing through a ravine, and leading
into Winchester. Wilson's cavalry secured the crossing of the stream,
and cleared the way through the ravine for the infantry; but there
was, as usual, some difficulty in moving so many troops by a single
road, and it was midday before the battle began. This delay gave Early
an opportunity to bring back his troops from Martinsburg and unite his
whole force in front of Winchester. Sheridan's infantry deployed under
a heavy artillery fire from Early's right wing, and advanced to the
attack, when the battle began almost simultaneously along the whole
line, and was kept up till dark. There were no field-works, the only
shelter being such as was afforded by patches of woodland and rolling
ground, and the fighting was obstinate and bloody. The usual
difficulty of preserving the line intact while advancing over broken
ground was met, and wherever a gap appeared it was promptly taken
advantage of. In one instance, a Confederate force led by Gen. Robert
E. Rodes drove in between the Sixth and Nineteenth Corps, crumbled
their flanks, and turned to take the Nineteenth in reverse; but at
this juncture a division of the Sixth Corps under Gen. David A.
Russell, coming forward to fill the gap, struck the flank of the
intruding Confederate force in turn, enfiladed it with a rapid fire of
canister from the Fifth Maine battery, and sent it back in confusion,
capturing a large number of prisoners. In this movement Generals Rodes
and Russell were both killed. On the National right the fighting was
at first in favor of the Confederates, and that wing was temporarily
borne back some distance.
[Illustration: THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY.]
Sheridan now brought up his reserves, which he had intended to move
south of Winchester to cut off retreat, and sent them into the fight
on his right flank, while the cavalry divisions of Merritt and
Averell, under Torbert, came in by a detour and struck Early's left,
pushing back his cavalry and getting into the rear of a portion of his
infantry. From this time Sheridan drove everything before him. The
Confederates found some shelter in a line of field-works near the
town, but were soon driven out, and fled through the streets in
complete rout and confusion. But darkness favored them, and most of
them escaped up the valley. Their severely wounded were left in
Winchester. The National loss was nearly five thousand men. The
Confederates lost about four thousand--including two generals, Rodes
and Godwin--with five guns and nine battle-flags. Early established a
strong rear guard, and managed to save his trains.
This battle, which in proportion to the numbers engaged was one of the
most destructive of the war, had its many curious and valorous
incidents. Near its close General Russell received a bullet in his
breast, but did not mention it even to his staff officer, and
continued urging forward and encouraging the troops. A little later,
in the very moment of victory, a fragment of shell tore through his
heart. Lieut. Morton L. Hawkins, of the Thirty-fourth Ohio Regiment,
writes: "Here fell badly wounded our gallant division commander, Gen.
I. H. Duval; and while crossing a cornfield, and just before reaching
the edge of the sanguinary Red Bud, the chivalrous and manly Carter,
at the head of Company D, my old regiment, fell dead at my feet,
struck in the forehead with a musket ball; but never faltering, with
our eyes fixed on the enemy, who at that time were advancing to the
opposite side of the Red Bud, we pushed on, amid a shower of musketry
that was simply murderous. Emerging on the opposite bank, we ascended
the elevation and met them face to face. Then ensued a hand-to-hand
contest. The ranks of Union and Confederate regiments mingled
indiscriminately, the colors of both floating in the breeze together,
the blue and the gray, man to man. Duval had been carried to the rear
with a musket ball in his thigh, but Col. R. B. Hayes, since President
of the United States, assumed the command of the division, and by his
presence in the battle wreck encouraged his men to deeds of daring.
Cool and vigilant, he sat upon his horse amid that leaden rain, while
scores of veterans on either side went down around him. Finally the
tide turned in our favor. Down the hill, hotly pressed by the Union
men, went that valiant band of rebels. The day was won. The flag of
the old Thirty-fourth never looked so beautiful, nor was borne so
proudly, as on that glorious day, when in the thickest of the fight
its shadow fell on its brave defenders."
{408} [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN AND STAFF.]
In contrast with this is the entry in the journal of a Confederate
officer who was wounded and captured: "I never saw our {409} troops in
such confusion before. Night found Sheridan's hosts in full and
exultant possession of much-abused, beloved Winchester. The hotel
hospital was full of desperately wounded and dying Confederates. The
entire building was shrouded in darkness during the dreadful night,
and sleep was impossible, as the groans, sighs, shrieks, prayers, and
oaths of the wretched sufferers, combined with my own severe pain,
banished all thought of rest. Our scattered troops, closely followed
by the large army of pursuers, retreated rapidly and in disorder
through the city. It was a sad, humiliating sight."
General Early attributes his defeat largely to the fact that his
cavalry was inferior in both numbers and equipments to the National
cavalry that opposed it.
The news of this battle was received with unmeasured enthusiasm in the
Army of the Potomac, in Washington, and at the North, where every
newspaper repeated in its bold head-lines Sheridan's expression that
he had "sent Early whirling through Winchester."
President Lincoln telegraphed to General Sheridan: "Have just heard of
your great victory. God bless you all, officers and men. Strongly
inclined to come up and see you." General Grant telegraphed: "I
congratulate you and the army serving under you for the great victory
just achieved. It has been most opportune in point of time and effect.
It will open again to the Government and to the public the very
important line from Baltimore to the Ohio, and also the Chesapeake
Canal. Better still, it wipes out much of the stain upon our arms by
previous disasters in that locality. May your good work continue, is
now the prayer of all loyal men."
For this brilliant success, Sheridan was advanced to the grade of
brigadier-general in the regular army.
When Early retreated southward after this battle of the Opequan (or
battle of Winchester as the Confederates called it), he took up a
position at Fisher's Hill, where the valley is but four miles wide. As
Sheridan had said, there was no really good military position in the
valley, unless for a much larger army than either he or Early
commanded. At Fisher's Hill, the Confederate right rested on the North
Fork of the Shenandoah, and was sufficiently protected by it; but for
the left there was no natural protection. Early's men set to work
vigorously constructing intrenchments and preparing abatis. Sheridan
followed promptly, his advance guard skirmishing with the Confederate
pickets and driving them through Strasburg. There was an eminence
overlooking the Confederate intrenchments, and after a sharp fight
this was gained by the National troops, who at once began to cut down
the trees and plant batteries. When Sheridan had thoroughly
reconnoitred the position, he planned to send the greater part of his
cavalry through the Luray Valley to get into the rear of the
Confederates and cut off retreat; then to attack in front with the
Sixth and Nineteenth Corps, while Crook, with the Eighth Corps, should
make a detour and come in on the enemy's left flank. The ground was so
broken that the manoeuvres were necessarily slow, and it was almost
sunset when Crook reached Early's flank. But the little daylight that
remained was used to the utmost advantage. Crook came out of the woods
so suddenly and silently that the Confederates at that end of the line
were simply astounded. Their works were taken in reverse, and their
dismounted cavalry was literally overrun. The forward movement of the
troops in front was prompt, the right of the Sixth Corps joining
properly with the left of Crook's, and everywhere Sheridan and his
lieutenants were with the men, repeating the command to push forward
constantly, without stopping for anything. The result was a complete
rout of the Confederates, who fled in confusion once more up the
valley, leaving sixteen of their guns behind. But Sheridan's plan for
their capture was foiled because his cavalry, meeting a stout
resistance from Early's cavalry, failed to get through to their rear.
Pursuit was made in the night, but to no purpose. In this battle,
which was fought on the 22d of September, the National loss was about
four hundred; the Confederate, about fourteen hundred.
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL GEORGE A. FORSYTH.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL N. P. CHIPMAN.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL NICHOLAS DAY.]
For the next three days the retreat was continued, Sheridan's whole
force following rapidly, and often being near enough to engage the
skirmishers or exchange shots with the artillery. Early went to Port
Republic to meet reinforcements that were on the way to him from Lee's
army, and there stopped. Sheridan halted his infantry at Harrisonburg,
but sent his cavalry still farther up the valley. The column under
Torbert reached Staunton, where it destroyed a large quantity of arms,
ammunition, and provisions, and then tore up the track of the Virginia
Central Railroad eastward to Waynesboro', and pulled down the iron
bridge over the stream at that point. Here it was attacked in force,
and retired. Grant wanted the movement continued to Charlottesville;
but Sheridan found serious difficulties in his {410} lack of supplies
and transportation so far from his base. He adopted the alternative of
rendering the valley untenable for any army that could not bring its
provisions with it, and Grant had repeated his early instructions,
saying, "Leave nothing for the subsistence of an army on any ground
you abandon to the enemy." On the 5th of October the march down the
valley was begun. The infantry went first, and the cavalry followed,
being stretched entirely across the valley, burning and destroying, as
it went, everything except the dwellings. Sheridan said in his report:
"I have destroyed over two thousand barns filled with wheat, hay, and
farming implements; over seventy mills filled with flour and wheat;
have driven in front of the army over four thousand head of stock, and
have killed and issued to the troops not less than three thousand
sheep."
Early, being reinforced, now turned and pursued Sheridan. At Tom's
Brook, on the 7th, the National cavalry under Torbert, Merritt, and
Custer engaged the Confederate cavalry under Rosser and Lamont. After
a spirited engagement Rosser was driven back twenty-five miles, and
Torbert captured over three hundred prisoners, eleven guns, and a
large number of wagons--or, as was said in the report, "everything
they had on wheels."
Sheridan halted at Cedar Creek, north of Strasburg, and put his army
into camp there, while he was summoned to Washington for conference as
to the continuation of the campaign, leaving General Wright in
command. Early, finding nothing in the valley for his men and horses
to eat, was obliged to do one thing or another without delay--advance
and capture provisions from the stores of his enemy, or retreat and
give up the ground. He chose to assume the offensive, and in the night
of the 18th moved silently around the left of the National line,
taking the precaution to leave behind even the soldiers' canteens,
which might have made a clatter. In the misty dawn of the 19th the
Confederates burst upon the flank held by Crook's corps, with such
suddenness and vehemence that it was at once thrown into confusion and
routed. They were among the tents before anybody knew they were
coming, and many of Crook's men were shot or stabbed before they could
fairly awake from their sleep. The Nineteenth Corps was also routed,
but the Sixth stood firm, and the Confederates themselves became
somewhat broken and demoralized by the eagerness of the men to plunder
the camps. Wright's Sixth Corps covered the retreat; and when
Sheridan, hearing of the battle and riding with all speed from
Winchester, met the stream of fugitives, he deployed some cavalry to
stop them, and inspired his men with a short and oft-repeated oration,
which is reported as, "Face the other way, boys! We are going back to
our camps! We are going to lick them out of their boots!" This
actually turned the tide; a new line was quickly formed and
intrenched, and when Early attacked it he met with a costly repulse.
In the afternoon Sheridan advanced to attack in turn, sending his
irresistible cavalry around both flanks, and after some fighting the
whole Confederate line was broken up and driven in confusion, with the
cavalry close upon its heels. All the guns lost in the morning were
retaken, and twenty-four besides. In this double battle the
Confederate loss was about thirty-one hundred; the National,
fifty-seven hundred and sixty-four, of whom seventeen hundred were
prisoners taken in the morning and hurried away toward Richmond. Among
the losses in this battle on the National side were Brig.-Gens. Daniel
D. Bidwell, Charles R. Lowell, J. H. Hitching, and George D. Welles,
and Col. Joseph Thoburn, all killed; on the Confederate side,
Major-Gen. Stephen D. Ramseur, killed.
[Illustration: A VIEW ON GOOSE CREEK, VIRGINIA. (From a war-time
photograph.)]
{411} The explanation of Early's well-planned attack upon the camp is
found in the fact that the Confederates had a signal station on
Massanutten Mountain from which everything in Sheridan's army could be
seen. On the day before the battle Gen. John B. Gordon climbed to that
signal station, where with his field-glass he says, "I could
distinctly see the red cuffs of the artillerymen. In front of the
Belle Grove mansion I could see members of Sheridan's staff coming and
going. I could not imagine a better opportunity for making out an
enemy's position and strength. I could even count the men who were
there. I marked the position of the guns, and the pickets walking to
and fro, and observed where the cavalry was placed." The explanation
of the surprise is, that the Confederates by careful approach captured
a picket and obtained the countersign. They then proceeded to capture
more of the pickets, exchanged clothes with them and put their own men
on guard. This, of course, enabled them to open the door of the camp,
so to speak, in perfect silence for their approaching army.
The story of Sheridan's return, and how he changed the defeat into a
victory, as here told, is that which is generally received. But some
of his soldiers say it is more dramatic than strictly truthful. They
say that when he arrived General Wright already had restored order,
and had the Sixth Corps in perfect condition for an advance movement.
Still there is no doubt that the presence of Sheridan brought with it
an inspiration, and gave vigor to the movement when it was made. Col.
Moses M. Granger, of the One Hundred and Twenty-second Ohio Regiment,
which was in the Sixth Corps, says: "When Sheridan arrived, the line
in position consisted of the cavalry, with its right on the pike; the
second division, Sixth Corps, with its left on the pike; then Hayes,
with part of the Army of West Virginia; and next to him our Second
Brigade, third division, Sixth Corps. I had no watch with me, but at
the time, I supposed that we connected with Getty not far from ten
o'clock in the forenoon. As our breakfast had been very early and
hasty, we now advanced the dinner hour, made coffee, and soon felt
refreshed--ready for anything. While we were in this state of good
feeling, General Sheridan, attended by Major A. J. Smith, came riding
along the line. Just in my rear, as I was sitting on a stump, he drew
rein, returned our salute, gave a quick look at the men, and said:
'You look all right, boys! We'll whip 'em like ---- before night!' At
this, hearty cheers broke out, and he rode on, passing from the rear
to the front of our line, through the right wing of my regiment, and
thence westward, followed ever by cheers. Instantly all thought of
merely defeating an attack upon us ended. In its stead was a
conviction that we were to attack and defeat them that very
afternoon.... Thus before Sheridan arrived Wright had given orders for
the establishment of a strong and well-manned line, and made it
certain that the rebel advance must there stop. What Wright might or
would have done if Sheridan had remained at Winchester, I cannot tell.
Called from his bed to fight an enemy already on his flank and rear
and partly within his lines, his promptness and decision enabled him
to withdraw from Early's grasp almost all that was not in his hands
before Wright's eager haste brought him from bed to battle. When his
black horse brought Sheridan to our lines on that October forenoon,
Wright turned over to him an army ready, eager, and competent to win
success that afternoon."
Sheridan's campaign in the Valley of the Shenandoah was now
practically ended, and the people of the loyal North were no longer
obliged to call it the Valley of Humiliation.
An incident of this campaign inspired one of the most vigorous and
popular of the war poems, entitled "Sheridan's Ride." We quote two
stanzas:
"But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good broad highway leading down;
And there, through the flash of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night
Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight,
As if he knew the terrible need;
He stretched away with the utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell--but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
* * * * *
"Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!
And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldier's Temple of Fame,
There, with the glorious general's name,
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright:
'Here is the steed that saved the day
By carrying Sheridan into the fight
From Winchester--twenty miles away!'"
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL BRADLEY T. JOHNSON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL R. E. RODES, C. S. A. Killed at
Winchester, Va.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL DAVID A. RUSSELL. Killed at
Winchester, Va.]
{412}
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
EFFORTS TOWARD PEACE--THE FRÉMONT CONVENTION--THE REPUBLICAN
CONVENTION--NOMINATION OF LINCOLN AND JOHNSON--THE DEMOCRATIC
CONVENTION--ITS DENUNCIATION OF THE WAR--NOMINATION OF McCLELLAN AND
PENDLETON--FRÉMONT WITHDRAWS--CHARACTER OF THE CANVASS--THE HOPE OF
THE CONFEDERATES--THE ISSUE AS POPULARLY UNDERSTOOD--ELECTION OF
LINCOLN--MARYLAND ABOLISHES SLAVERY--THE HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENT OF THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE.
The length of time that the war had continued, the drain upon the
resources of both belligerents, and especially the rapidity and
destructiveness of the battles in the summer of 1864, had naturally
suggested the question whether there were not some possibility of a
satisfactory peace without further fighting. In each section there was
a party, or at least there were people, who believed that such a peace
was possible; and the loud expression of this opinion led to several
efforts at negotiation, as it also shaped the policy of a great
political party. In July Col. James F. Jacques, of the Seventy-third
Illinois Regiment, accompanied by James R. Gillmore (known in
literature by his delineations of Southern life just before the war,
under the pen-name of "Edmund Kirke"), went to Richmond under flag of
truce, where they were admitted to a long interview with the chief
officers of the Confederate Government. They had gone with Mr.
Lincoln's informal sanction, but had no definite terms to offer; and
if they had, Mr. Davis's remarks show that it would have been in vain.
At the close he said: "Say to Mr. Lincoln, from me, that I shall at
any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis of our
independence. It will be useless to approach me with any other." In
that same month of July, three Southerners of some note created a
great sensation by a conference at Niagara Falls, with Horace Greeley,
on the subject of peace; but the affair came to nothing.
The first Presidential convention of the year met at Cleveland, O., on
the last day of May, in response to a call addressed "to the radical
men of the nation." The platform declared, among other things, "that
the rebellion must be suppressed by force of arms, and without
compromise; that the rebellion has destroyed slavery, and the Federal
Constitution should be amended to prohibit its reëstablishment; that
the question of the reconstruction of the rebellious States belongs to
the people, through their representatives in Congress, and not to the
Executive; and that confiscation of the lands of the rebels, and their
distribution among the soldiers and actual settlers, is a measure of
justice." Gen. John C. Frémont was nominated for the Presidency, and
Gen. John Cochrane for the Vice-Presidency. Though this was the least
of the conventions, yet in all the points here quoted from its
platform, with the exception of the last, it indicated the policy that
was ultimately pursued by the nation; and it is a singular fact that
the exceptional plank (confiscation) was objected to by both
candidates in their letters of acceptance.
The Republican National Convention met in Baltimore on the 7th of
June. It dropped the word "Republican" for the time being, and simply
called itself a Union Convention, to accommodate the war Democrats,
who were now acting with the Republican party. Not only the free
States were represented, but some that had been claimed by the
Confederacy and had been partially or wholly recovered from it,
including Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The platform, reported
by Henry J. Raymond, one of the ablest of American journalists, was
probably written largely, if not entirely, by him. Its most
significant passages were these:
"That we approve the determination of the Government of the United
States not to compromise with the rebels, nor to offer them any terms
of peace except such as may be based upon an unconditional surrender
of their hostility and a return to their full allegiance to the
Constitution and the laws of the United States.
"That as slavery was the cause and now constitutes the strength of
this rebellion, and as it must be always and everywhere hostile to the
principles of republican government, justice and the national safety
demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the
Republic.... We are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the
Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its
provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of
slavery within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States.
"That we approve and applaud the practical wisdom, the unselfish
patriotism, and unswerving fidelity to the Constitution and the
principles of American liberty, with which Abraham Lincoln has
discharged, under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty, the great
duties and responsibilities of the presidential office; that we
approve and indorse, as demanded by the emergency and essential to the
preservation of the nation, and as within the Constitution, the
measures and acts which he has adopted to defend the nation against
its open and secret foes; that we approve especially the Proclamation
of Emancipation, and the employment as Union soldiers of men
heretofore held in slavery.
"That the National faith, pledged for the redemption of the public
debt, must be kept inviolate; that it is the duty of every loyal State
to sustain the credit and promote the use of the National currency."
On the first ballot, all the delegations voted for Mr. Lincoln, except
that from Missouri, whose vote was given to General Grant. According
to the official report of the proceedings, the first ballot for a
candidate for Vice-President resulted in two hundred votes for Andrew
Johnson, one hundred and eight for Daniel S. Dickinson (a war
Democrat), one hundred and fifty for Hannibal Hamlin (who then held
the office), and fifty-nine scattering; several delegations changed
their votes to Johnson, and he was almost unanimously nominated. But
according to the testimony of one who was on the floor as a delegate,
the nomination of Mr. Lincoln was immediately followed by an outburst
of cheering, yelling, and the wildest excitement, and in the confusion
and uproar it was declared that Mr. Johnson had somehow been
nominated. He had been a poor white in the South, and a life-long
Democrat, but had done some brave things in withstanding secession,
and some bitter things in thwarting the slave-holders. Mr. Lincoln had
appointed him military governor of Tennessee in March, 1862, and he
was still acting in that capacity. Whatever may have been the wisdom
of nominating a war Democrat when the war was so near its close, the
Republican party found reason in the next four years to repent its
choice of Andrew Johnson as bitterly as its predecessor, the Whig
party, had repented the choice of John Tyler, a life-long Democrat, in
1840. But the nominating conventions that have {413} sufficiently
considered the contingent importance of the Vice-Presidency have been
exceedingly few.
The Democratic National Convention, called to meet in Chicago, did not
convene till nearly three months after the Republican, August 29. In
the meantime, the hard fighting around Richmond, and on Sherman's road
to Atlanta, the fruits of which were not yet evident, the appearance
of Confederate forces at the gates of Washington, and the delay of
Sheridan's movements in the Shenandoah Valley, had produced a more
gloomy feeling than had been experienced before since the war began;
and this feeling, as was to be expected, operated in favor of whatever
opposed the National administration. The suffering and the
discontented are always prone to cry out for a change, without
defining what sort of change they want, or considering what any change
is likely to bring. Seizing upon this advantage, the Democratic
convention made a very clear and bold issue with the Republican. It
was presided over by Horatio Seymour, then governor of New York, while
Clement L. Vallandigham was a member of the committee on resolutions,
and is supposed to have written the most significant of them. The
platform presented these propositions:
"That this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the
American people, that, after four years of failure to restore the
Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of
military necessity of a war power higher than the Constitution, the
Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public
liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material
prosperity of the country essentially impaired--justice, humanity,
liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made
for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention
of all the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the
earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the
Federal Union of the States.
"That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the
Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired."
On the first ballot, Gen. George B. McClellan was nominated for
President, receiving two hundred and two and a half votes, against
twenty-three and a half for Thomas H. Seymour, of Connecticut. George
H. Pendleton, of Ohio, an ultra-peace man, was nominated for
Vice-President. General McClellan, in his letter of acceptance,
virtually set aside a portion of the platform, and said: "The
reëstablishment of the Union, in all its integrity, is and must
continue to be the indispensable condition in any settlement.... No
peace can be permanent without Union."
The declaration that the war had been a failure received a crushing
comment the day after the convention adjourned; for on that day
Sherman's army marched into Atlanta. And this success was followed by
others--notably Sheridan's brilliant movements in the valley--all of
which, when heralded in the Republican journals, were accompanied by
the quotation from the Democratic platform declaring the war a
failure. General Frémont withdrew from the contest in September,
saying in his published letter:
"The policy of the Democratic party signifies either separation or
reëstablishment with slavery. The Chicago platform is simply
separation; General McClellan's letter of acceptance is
reëstablishment with slavery. The Republican candidate is, on the
contrary, pledged to the reëstablishment of the Union without slavery;
and, however hesitating his policy may be, the pressure of his party
will, we may hope, force him to it. Between these issues, I think no
man of the Liberal party can remain in doubt; and I believe I am
consistent with my antecedents and my principles in withdrawing--not
to aid in the triumph of Mr. Lincoln, but to do my part toward
preventing the election of the Democratic candidate."
The canvass was exceedingly bitter, especially in the abuse heaped
upon Mr. Lincoln. The undignified and disgraceful epithets that were
applied to him by journals of high standing were not such as would
make any American proud of his country. This course had its
culmination in the publication of certain ghastly pictures of returned
prisoners, to show what Lincoln--the usurper, despot, and tyrant, as
they freely called him--was doing by not disregarding "nigger
soldiers" and continuing the exchange of whites. They constantly
repeated the assertion with which they had greeted the Emancipation
Proclamation, that the war had been wickedly changed from one for the
preservation of the Union into one for the abolition of slavery. On
the other hand, the Republican press freely accused the Democratic
party of desiring the success of secession--which was not true. Aside
from all patriotic considerations, that party had the strongest
reasons for wishing to perpetuate the Union, because without the
Southern vote it was in a minority. There were many members of that
party, however, who, while they by no means desired the destruction of
the Union, believed it was inevitable, and thought the sooner the
necessity was acknowledged the better.
One of the most effective arguments of the canvass was furnished in a
condensed form by one of Mr. Lincoln's famous little stories, and in
that form was repeated thousands of times. Answering the address of a
delegation of the Union League, a day or two after his nomination, he
said: "I have not permitted myself to conclude that I am the best man
in the country; but I am reminded in this connection of the story of
an old Dutch farmer, who once remarked to a companion that 'it was not
best to swap horses when crossing streams.'" There was singing in the
canvass, too, and some of the songs rendered by glee-clubs every
evening before large political meetings were very effective. One of
the most notable had been written in response to the President's call
for three hundred thousand volunteers, and bore the refrain,
"We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!"
Much of the popular parlor music of the time consisted of songs
relating to the great struggle, prominent among which were "Tenting on
the Old Camp-Ground" and "When this Cruel War is over." At the South,
as at the North, there had been an outburst of lyric enthusiasm at the
beginning of the war, which found expression in "My Maryland," the
"Bonnie Blue Flag," and "Dixie;" but the spirit that inspires such
poems seems to have died out there after the war had been in progress
two or three years, when its terrible privations were increasing every
day.
{414} [Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL GEORGE D. RAMSAY.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL RUFUS SAXTON.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL F. T. DENT.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL C. P. BUCKINGHAM.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM P. RICHARDSON.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL J. K. BARNES.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM A. HAMMOND.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL HENRY A. BARNUM.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL AMOS B. EATON.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL MORTIMER LEGGETT AND STAFF.]
The Confederates were now looking eagerly for the result of the
Presidential election as a possible solution of the great question in
their favor. John B. Jones, who was a clerk in the Confederate War
Department, recorded in his published diary that Mr. Vallandigham,
when banished to the South, had assured the officers of the Government
at Richmond that "if we [the Confederates] can only hold out this
year, the peace party of the North would sweep the Lincoln dynasty out
of political existence." This was now their strongest hope; and it was
common talk {415} across the lines, between the pickets, that in the
event of McClellan's election the Confederates expected a speedy
cessation of hostilities and ultimately their independence. And such
is the unaccountable elasticity of the human mind, in dealing with
facts and principles, that a large number of the bravest and most
devoted soldiers in the National service, knowing this, were preparing
to cast their ballots in a way to give the utmost assistance and
encouragement to the very enemy into the muzzles of whose guns they
were looking.
Whether General Frémont's arraignment of the Administration as
"politically, militarily, and financially a failure" was just or
unjust, whether it was true or not that the triumph of General
McClellan and his party would result in a final disruption of the
country, before the canvass was over the land had settled down to the
belief that the only way to secure the continuance of the war to a
successful termination was to reëlect Mr. Lincoln, while a vote for
General McClellan meant something else--nobody knew exactly what. The
solemnity of the occasion appeared to be universally appreciated, and
though a heavy vote was polled the election was the quietest that had
ever been held. The citizens were dealing with a question that, in
most of its aspects at least, they by this time thoroughly understood.
When they sprang to arms in 1861, they did not know what war was; but
now they had had three years of constant schooling to its burdens and
its horrors. They had seen regiment after regiment march away to the
music of drum and fife, with a thousand men in the ranks, and come
back at the end of two years' service with perhaps two hundred bronzed
veterans to be mustered out. They had read in their newspapers, after
every great battle, the long lists of killed and wounded, which the
telegraph was quick to report. Every city had its fair for the relief
of the widows and orphans, every hamlet its two or three crippled
soldiers hobbling about in their faded blue overcoats, almost every
house its incurable sorrow. They had seen the wheel turning in the
provost-marshal's office, in places where volunteering was not
sufficiently rapid, and knew that their own names might be the next to
be drawn for service at the front. They knew how many graves there
were at Gettysburg, how many at Shiloh, how many at Stone River; they
knew what was to be seen in the hospitals of every Northern city, and
something of the unspeakable horrors of captivity. They saw the price
of gold go beyond two hundred, while the Government was spending
between two and three millions of dollars a day, piling up a national
debt in undreamed-of proportions, for which they were already heavily
taxed, and which must some day be paid in solid coin.
Seeing and understanding all this, and having the privilege of a
secret and unquestioned ballot, they quietly walked up to the polls
and voted for a vigorous prosecution of the war, reëlecting Mr.
Lincoln by a popular majority of more than four hundred thousand, and
giving him the votes of all the States excepting Delaware, New Jersey,
and Kentucky--two hundred and twelve against twenty-one. The vote of
the soldiers in the field, so far as it could be counted separately
(for in some States it was sent home sealed, and mingled with the
other ballots in the boxes), showed about one hundred and nineteen
thousand for Lincoln, and about thirty-four thousand for McClellan.
The soldiers confined in some of the Confederate prisons held an
election at the suggestion of their keepers, who were exceedingly
curious to see how the prisoners would vote. Sergeant Robert H.
Kellogg tells us that in the stockade at Florence, S. C., where he was
confined, two empty bags were hung up, and the prisoners were
furnished with black and white beans and marched past in single file,
each depositing a black bean for Lincoln, or a white one for
McClellan. The result was in the proportion of two and a half for
Lincoln to one for McClellan. In the prison at Millen, Ga., Sergeant
W. Goodyear tells us, the vote was three thousand and fourteen for
Lincoln, and one thousand and fifty for McClellan. In Congress, the
number of Republican members was increased from one hundred and six to
one hundred and forty-three, and the number of Democratic members
reduced from seventy-seven to forty-one.
Meanwhile, in October, Maryland had adopted a new constitution, in
which slavery was prohibited. In answer to serenades after the
election, Mr. Lincoln made some of his best impromptu speeches, saying
in one: "While I am duly sensible to the high compliment of a
reëlection, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having
directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their
good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be
disappointed by the result. May I ask those who have not differed with
me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have?"
If there is any one act of the American people that above all others,
in the sober pages of history, reflects credit upon them for correct
judgment, determined purpose, courage in present difficulties, and
care for future interests, that act, it seems to me, was the
reëlection of President Lincoln.
CHAPTER XL.
THE NATIONAL FINANCES.
AN EMPTY TREASURY--BORROWING MONEY AT TWELVE PER CENT.--SALMON P.
CHASE MADE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY--THE DIRECT-TAX BILL--ISSUE OF
DEMAND NOTES--CHASE'S COURAGE--THE BANKS FORM SYNDICATE--ISSUE OF
BONDS--AMOUNT OF COIN IN CIRCULATION--SUSPENSION OF SPECIE
PAYMENTS--PAY OF SOLDIERS--GREENBACKS--CHASE'S PLAN FOR A NATIONAL
BANKING SYSTEM--THE FRACTIONAL CURRENCY--FLUCTUATIONS OF GOLD--THE
COST OF THE WAR.
When President Lincoln came into office he found the treasury empty,
and the public debt somewhat over seventy-six million dollars. In the
last days of President Buchanan's administration the Government had
been borrowing money at twelve per cent. per annum. In December, 1860,
Congress passed a bill for the issue of ten million dollars in
one-year treasury notes. Half of this amount was advertised, and
offers were received for a small portion, at rates of discount varying
from twelve to thirty-six per cent. The twelve per cent. offers were
accepted, and subsequently a syndicate of bankers took the remainder
of the five millions at that figure. The other five millions were
taken a month later at eleven per cent. discount. In February, 1861,
Congress authorized a loan of twenty-five millions, to bear interest
at six per cent., and to be paid in not less than ten nor more than
twenty years. The Secretary succeeded in negotiating one-third of the
amount at rates from ninety to ninety-six.
In Mr. Lincoln's cabinet, Salmon P. Chase (formerly governor of Ohio,
and then United States senator) was made Secretary of the Treasury.
Under the existing acts he borrowed eight millions in March at
ninety-four and upward--rejecting all offers under ninety-four--and
early in April issued at par nearly five millions in two-year treasury
notes, receivable for public dues and also convertible into
six-per-cent. stocks. On the 12th of {416} that month the war was
begun by the firing on Fort Sumter. In May seven millions more of the
six-per-cent. loan were issued at rates from eighty-five to
ninety-three, and two and a half millions in treasury notes at par.
These transactions were looked upon as remarkably successful, for many
considered it questionable whether the Government would survive the
blow that was aimed at its life, and be able to redeem any of its
securities. The existing tariff, which was low, produced an annual
income of not more than thirty millions.
Congress met, at the call of the President, on the 4th of July, 1861,
and on the 17th passed a bill (with but five dissenting votes in the
House of Representatives) for the issue of bonds and treasury notes to
the amount of two hundred and fifty millions. It also increased the
duties on many articles, passed an act for the confiscation of the
property of rebels, and levied a direct tax of twenty millions,
apportioned among the States and Territories. The States that were in
rebellion of course did not pay. All the others paid except Delaware,
Colorado, Utah, Oregon, and the District of Columbia. The law provided
for collection by United States officers in such States as should not
formally assume and pay the tax themselves. In some of the seceding
States, lands worth about seven hundred thousand dollars were seized
and sold for non-payment.
In August the first demand notes were issued as currency, being paid
to clerks in the departments for their salaries. Though these were
convertible into gold, there was at first great reluctance to receive
them, but after a little time they became popular, and in five months
about thirty-three millions were issued.
In August also Mr. Chase held a conference with the principal bankers
of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, to negotiate a national loan on
the basis of the recent acts of Congress. Most of them expressed their
desire to sustain the Government, but they made some objections to the
terms and rates of interest. When it looked as if the negotiation
might fail, the Secretary assured the bankers that if they were not
able to take the loan on his terms, he would return to Washington and
issue notes for circulation, "for it is certain that the war must go
on until the rebellion is put down, if we have to put out paper until
it takes a thousand dollars to buy a breakfast." The banks agreed to
form a syndicate to lend the Government fifty million dollars in coin,
to pay which the Secretary was to issue three-year notes bearing seven
and three-tenths per cent. interest, convertible into six-per-cent.
twenty-year bonds. These were popularly known as "seven-thirties." The
peculiar rate of interest was made both as a special inducement and
for ease of calculation, the interest being two cents a day on each
hundred dollars. They were issued in denominations as low as fifty
dollars, so that people of limited means could take them, and were
very popular. The coupon and registered bonds that were to run not
less than five years nor more than twenty were popularly known as
"five-twenties." Subscription-books were opened in every city, and the
people responded so promptly that the Government was soon enabled to
repay the banks and make another loan on similar terms. But a third
loan was refused, and Secretary Chase then issued fifty millions in
"five-twenties," bearing interest at six per cent., but sold at such a
discount as to make a seven-per-cent. investment. Of all the agents
employed to dispose of these bonds, Jay Cooke, of Philadelphia, was
the most successful. They were paid one-fifth of one per cent. for the
first hundred thousand dollars, and one-eighth of one per cent. for
all in excess of that sum.
The amount of coin in circulation in the United States at this time
was estimated at about two hundred and ten million dollars. Before the
war had been in progress one year, the operations of the Government
had become so vast that this did not furnish a sufficient volume of
currency for the transactions. On December 30, 1861, the banks
suspended specie payments, and the Government was then obliged to do
likewise. There were now over half a million men in the field, and the
navy had been increased from forty-two vessels to two hundred and
sixty-four. The pay of a private soldier was thirteen dollars a month,
with food and clothing. The total cost to the Government for each
soldier maintained in the field was about a thousand dollars a
year--two and a half times the cost of a British soldier, and twelve
times the cost of a French soldier.
Early in 1862 even the smallest coins disappeared from circulation,
and some kinds of business were almost paralyzed for want of change.
Tokens and fractional notes were issued by private firms, and various
expedients were resorted to, a favorite one being the enclosure of
specified amounts of postage-stamps in small envelopes properly
labelled. Thaddeus Stevens, member of Congress from Pennsylvania,
proposed that the Government should issue notes for circulation, to
any amount that might be required, and make them legal tender for all
debts, public and private. Secretary Chase opposed this, and proposed
instead a national banking system, which should embrace an issue of
notes bearing a common impression and a common authority, the
redemption of these notes by the institutions to which the Government
should deliver them for issue, and a pledge of United States stocks as
security for such redemption. This scheme was opposed by the State
banks, and Mr. Chase gave a reluctant consent to the legal-tender
measure, which was then carried through Congress, and the "greenbacks"
became payable for everything except duties on imports. Subsequently
Mr. Chase's plan for a national banking system was also adopted,
substantially as we have it now. In the loyal States the greenbacks
were popular from the first, and the large amount in circulation led
to general extravagance in expenditures. In the insurrectionary States
they were at first refused with scorn. But when the secessionists
found that these notes had a purchasing power vastly superior to those
of their own Government, they soon became reconciled to them. When
soldiers of the National army were made prisoners of war, they were
almost immediately requested by their captors to exchange any
greenbacks they might have for Confederate money, and some show of
fairness was made by the allowance of a heavy discount, seldom less
than seven for one. The Confederate currency was redeemable "six
months after the ratification of a treaty of peace with the United
States." The Government supplemented the greenbacks with fractional
paper currency in denominations of fifty, twenty-five, ten, and five
cents; and in this money the war bills were paid and all business
transacted, except at the custom-houses.
The daily quotations of gold were looked to as an indication of the
prospects of the war. Gold itself did not materially change in value,
but the premium on it represented the depreciation of the greenbacks
with which it was purchased. At the beginning of 1862 there was a
premium of about two per cent. on gold. This fluctuated from day to
day, but the general tendency was upward, till at the end of that year
the premium was thirty-three. By the end of 1863 gold had risen to one
hundred and fifty-one; and on June 21, 1864, just after the Army of
the Potomac crossed the James, it touched two hundred. In other {417}
words, the United States paper dollar was then worth half a dollar. On
the 11th of July, 1864, gold reached its highest point, two hundred
and eighty-five. Confederate paper money had been at par until
November, 1861; but from that time its value diminished steadily and
rapidly, until, at the close of 1864, five hundred paper dollars were
worth but one dollar in gold, and three months later six hundred.
Most of the funded debt of the United States was represented by
five-twenty bonds. An act was passed authorizing the issue of
ten-forties, but they were not popular, and comparatively few were
taken. The total assessed value of all the property in the United
States, real and personal, by the census of 1860, was somewhat over
sixteen thousand million dollars. The cost of the war to the
Government has been nearly, if not quite, half that amount--or about
equal to the value in 1860 of all the real estate in the loyal States.
The amount of the Confederate debt is unknown. If that and the
incidental losses could be ascertained, the cost of the war would
probably make a grand total almost equivalent to a wiping out of all
values in the country as they were estimated in the year of its
beginning. The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution--proposed in
1866, and declared in force in 1868--provides, on the one hand, that
the validity of the public debt shall not be questioned, and, on the
other, that neither the United States nor any State shall ever pay any
debt or obligation that has been incurred in aid of insurrection
against the United States.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF A CONFEDERATE BOND.]
{418} [Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL W. E. STRONG, GENERAL
McPHERSON'S INSPECTOR-GENERAL, ORDERING A COLONEL TO PLACE HIS COMMAND
IN ACTION.]
{419}
CHAPTER XLI.
THE MARCH TO THE SEA.
SHERMAN MAKES ATLANTA A MILITARY DEPOT--HIS PECULIAR
POSITION--DISAFFECTION IN THE CONFEDERACY--HOOD ATTACKS THE
COMMUNICATIONS--DEFENCE OF ALLATOONA--THOMAS ORGANIZES AN
ARMY--SHERMAN DETERMINES TO GO DOWN TO THE SEA--DESTRUCTION IN
ATLANTA--THE ORDER OF MARCH--SHERMAN'S INSTRUCTIONS--THE
ROUTE--INCIDENTS--DESTRUCTION OF THE RAILROAD--KILLING THE
BLOODHOUNDS--THE BUMMERS--CAPTURE OF FORT McALLISTER--HARDEE EVACUATES
SAVANNAH, AND SHERMAN OFFERS IT AS A CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO THE
PRESIDENT--BATTLE OF FRANKLIN--BATTLE OF NASHVILLE--HOOD'S ARMY
DESTROYED.
Before Sherman's army had been a week in Atlanta he determined to send
away all the inhabitants of the city, giving each the choice whether
to go South or North, and furnishing transportation for a certain
distance. His reason for this measure is given briefly in his own
words: "I was resolved to make Atlanta a pure military garrison or
dépôt, with no civil population to influence military measures. I had
seen Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, and New Orleans, all captured from
the enemy, and each at once was garrisoned by a full division of
troops, if not more, so that success was actually crippling our armies
in the field by detachments to guard and protect the interests of a
hostile population." Of course this action met with a vigorous protest
from the people themselves, from the city authorities, and from
General Hood, between whom and General Sherman there was a sharp
correspondence discussing the humanity of the measure and to some
extent the issues of the war.
General Sherman also received a letter signed by the mayor and two of
the councilmen, in which they set forth the difficulties and
sufferings that the people would encounter, and asked him to
reconsider his order for their removal. This he answered at length,
presenting a broad view, not of Atlanta only, but of the entire
country, and the state of the war, and the effect that this would have
upon it. There were few generals on either side who understood the
entire aspect, military, political, moral, and economical, as
thoroughly, or describe it as clearly, as Sherman. He said:
"I give full credit to your statements of the distress that will be
occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders, because they were not
designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for the
future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Atlanta
have a deep interest. We must have peace, not only at Atlanta, but in
all America. To secure this, we must stop the war that now desolates
our once happy and favored country. To stop war, we must defeat the
rebel armies which are arrayed against the laws and Constitution that
all must respect and obey. To defeat those armies, we must prepare the
way to reach them in their recesses, provided with the arms and
instruments which enable us to accomplish our purpose. Now, I know the
vindictive nature of our enemy, that we may have many years of
military operations from this quarter, and therefore deem it wise and
prudent to prepare in time. The use of Atlanta for warlike purposes is
inconsistent with its character as a home for families. There will be
no manufactures, commerce, or agriculture here, for the maintenance of
families, and sooner or later want will compel the inhabitants to go.
Why not go now, when all the arrangements are completed for the
transfer, instead of waiting till the plunging shot of contending
armies will renew the scenes of the past month? Of course I do not
apprehend any such thing at this moment, but you do not suppose this
army will be here until the war is over. I cannot discuss this subject
with you fairly, because I cannot impart to you what we propose to do;
but I assert that our military plans make it necessary for the
inhabitants to go away, and I can only renew my offer of services to
make their exodus in any direction as easy and comfortable as
possible.
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty,
and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country
deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know
I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more
sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have
peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a
division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate
of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must
assert its authority wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes
one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the
national feeling. This feeling assumes various shapes, but always
comes back to that of Union. Once admit the Union, once more
acknowledge the authority of the National Government, and, instead of
devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of war, I
and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding
you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may. I know that a
few individuals cannot resist a torrent of error and passion, such as
swept the South into rebellion; but you can point out, so that we may
know those who desire a government, and those who insist on war and
its desolation.
"You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these
terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable; and the only way the
people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at
home, is to stop the war, which can only be done admitting that it
began in error and is perpetuated in pride. We don't want your
negroes, or your horses, or your houses, or your lands, or anything
that you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the
laws of the United States. That we will have, and, if it involves the
destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it. You have
heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by
falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other
quarters, the better. I repeat, then, that, by the original compact of
government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which
have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South began
war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., long
before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or
tittle of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and
children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with
bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed
thousands upon thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our
hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes home to
you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not
feel them when you sent carloads of soldiers and ammunition, and
moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to
desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only
asked to live in peace at their old homes and under the government of
their inheritance. But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, {420} you
may call on me for anything. Then I will share with you the last
cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against
danger from every quarter."
Among the considerations that influenced General Sherman's action at
that time, two appear to have been paramount--one a hope, the other a
fear. The fear was, that some portion of Hood's army would make a
serious break in his communications by destroying portions of the
long, single-track railroad over which he drew all his supplies from
Chattanooga. The hope was, that Georgia, seeing any further
prosecution of the war to be useless, would withdraw her troops from
the Confederate armies and practically secede from the Confederacy.
Some color was given to this from the fact that Gov. Joseph E. Brown
had recalled the Georgia militia from Hood's army, while Mr. Davis, on
a flying visit to that army, had made a speech in which he threw the
blame for the recent disasters upon General Johnston and Governor
Brown, and told the soldiers they were about to set out on a campaign
that would carry them to Tennessee and Kentucky. Sherman sent word to
Governor Brown that if Georgia's troops were withdrawn from the
Confederate service, he would pass across the State as harmlessly as
possible, and pay for all the corn and fodder that he took; but if
not, he would devastate the State through its whole length and
breadth.
[Illustration: HON. JOSEPH E. BROWN, Governor of Georgia.]
[Illustration: ALL THE LIVE STOCK LEFT ON McGILL'S FARM.]
In North Carolina there had been a strong movement for peace this
year, the only difference of opinion being as to the method in which
peace should be sought. The governor, Zebulon B. Vance, as a candidate
for reëlection, represented those who held that the State should only
act in coöperation with the other States that were engaged with her in
the war. The other party, whose candidate was William W. Holden, held
that North Carolina should assert her sovereignty and negotiate peace
directly and alone with the United States. Governor Vance probably
presented the decisive argument when he said: "Secession from the
Confederacy will involve us in a new war, a bloodier conflict than
that which we now deplore. So soon as you announce to the world that
you are a sovereign and independent nation, as a matter of course the
Confederate Government has a right to declare war against you, and
President Davis will make the whole State a field of battle and blood.
Old Abe would send his troops here also, because we would no longer be
neutral; and so, if you will pardon the expression, we would catch the
devil on all sides." At the election in August, Governor Vance
received fifty-four thousand votes, against twenty thousand for Mr.
Holden.
Georgia did not secede from the Confederacy, but Hood did attack the
communications. At every important point on the railroad there was a
strong guard, and at the bridges there were block-houses with small
but well-appointed garrisons. About the 1st of October Hood crossed
the Chattahoochee, going northward to strike the railroad. Sherman
hurried after him, and on the 5th looked down from Kenesaw Mountain
upon the fires that were burning the ties and heating the rails of a
dozen miles of his road. Anticipating an attack on Allatoona, which
was held by a small brigade under command of Lieut.-Col. John E.
Tourtellotte, he signalled over the heads of the enemy a message to
Allatoona conveying an order for Gen. John M. Corse, then at Rome, to
go to the relief of Tourtellotte with a strong force. Corse obeyed
promptly, going down with all the men he could obtain transportation
for, and arriving at midnight. In the morning the garrison, now nearly
two thousand strong, were summoned to surrender immediately, to avoid
a needless effusion of blood. General Corse answered, "We are prepared
for the needless effusion of blood whenever it is agreeable to you,"
and at once his men were attacked from all sides. They were driven
into their redoubts, and there made so determined a resistance that
after five hours of desperate fighting the Confederates withdrew,
leaving their dead and wounded on the field. Corse had lost seven
hundred and seven men out of his nineteen hundred and forty-four,
including Colonel Redfield, of the Thirty-ninth Iowa, killed, and had
himself suffered the loss of an ear and a cheek-bone. The total
Confederate loss is unknown; but Corse reported burying two hundred
and thirty-one of their dead, and taking four hundred and eleven
prisoners, which would indicate a total loss of sixteen hundred. This
successful defence of Allatoona was one of the most gallant affairs of
the kind in history.
General Thomas had previously been sent to Nashville with two
divisions, General Slocum was left in Atlanta with the Twentieth
Corps, and with the remainder of his forces Sherman pursued Hood
through the country between Rome and Chattanooga and westward of that
region. But he could not bring the Confederates to battle, and had
little expectation of overtaking them. He thinks he conceived of the
march to the sea some time in September; the first definite proposal
of it was in a telegram to General Thomas, on the 9th of October, in
which he said: "I want to destroy all the road below Chattanooga,
including Atlanta, and to make for the sea-coast. We cannot defend
this long line of road." In various despatches between that date and
the 2d of November, Sherman proposed the great march to Grant and to
the President. {421} Grant thought Hood's army should be destroyed
first, but finally said: "I do not see that you can withdraw from
where you are, to follow Hood, without giving up all we have gained in
territory. I say, then, go on as you propose." This was on the
understanding, suggested by Sherman, that Thomas would be left with
force enough to take care of Hood. Sherman sent him the Fourth and
Twenty-third Corps, commanded by Generals Stanley and Schofield, and
further reinforced him with troops that had been garrisoning various
places on the railroad, while he also received two divisions from
Missouri and some recruits from the North. These, when properly
organized, made up a very strong force; and, with Thomas at its head,
neither Sherman nor Grant felt any hesitation about leaving it to take
care of Tennessee.
[Illustration: ALLATOONA PASS, LOOKING NORTH. (From a war-time
photograph.)]
Sherman rapidly sent North all his sick and disabled men, and all
baggage that could be spared. Commissioners came and took the votes of
the soldiers for the Presidential election, and departed. Paymasters
came and paid off the troops, and went back again. Wagon trains were
put in trim and loaded for a march. Every detachment of the army had
its exact orders what to do; and as the last trains whirled over the
road to Chattanooga, the track was taken up and destroyed, the bridges
burned, the wires torn down, and all the troops that had not been
ordered to join Thomas concentrated in Atlanta. From the 12th of
November nothing more was heard from Sherman till Christmas.
The depot, machine-shops, and locomotive-house in Atlanta were all
torn down, and fire was set to the ruins. The shops had been used for
the manufacture of Confederate ammunition, {422} and all night the
shells were exploding in the midst of the ruin, while the fire spread
to a block of stores, and finally burned out the heart of the city.
With every unsound man and every useless article sent to the rear,
General Sherman now had fifty-five thousand three hundred and
twenty-nine infantrymen, five thousand and sixty-three cavalrymen, and
eighteen hundred and twelve artillerymen, with sixty-five guns. There
were four teams of horses to each gun, with its caisson and forge; six
hundred ambulances, each drawn by two horses; and twenty-five hundred
wagons, with six mules to each. Every soldier carried forty rounds of
ammunition, while the wagons contained an abundant additional supply
and twelve hundred thousand rations, with oats and corn enough to last
five days. Probably a more thoroughly appointed army was never seen,
and it is difficult to imagine one of equal numbers more effective.
Every man in it was a veteran, was proud to be there, and felt the
most perfect confidence that under the leadership of "Uncle Billy" it
would be impossible to go wrong.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN M. CORSE.]
On the 15th of November they set out on the march to the sea, nearly
three hundred miles distant. The infantry consisted of four corps. The
Fifteenth and Seventeenth formed the right wing, commanded by Gen.
Oliver O. Howard; the Fourteenth and Twentieth the left, commanded by
Gen. Henry W. Slocum. The cavalry was under the command of Gen. Judson
Kilpatrick. The two wings marched by parallel routes, generally a few
miles apart, each corps having its own proportion of the artillery and
trains. General Sherman issued minute orders as to the conduct of the
march, which were systematically carried out. Some of the instructions
were these:
"The habitual order of march will be, wherever practicable, by four
roads, as nearly parallel as possible. The separate columns will start
habitually at seven A.M., and make about fifteen miles a day. Behind
each regiment should follow one wagon and one ambulance. Army
commanders should practise the habit of giving the artillery and
wagons the road, marching the troops on one side. The army will forage
liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade
commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, who will
gather corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn
meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to
keep in the wagons at least ten days' provisions. Soldiers must not
enter dwellings or commit any trespass; but, during a halt or camp,
they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other
vegetables, and to drive in stock in sight of their camp. To corps
commanders alone is intrusted the power to destroy mills, houses,
cotton-gins, etc. Where the army is unmolested, no destruction of such
property should be permitted; but should guerillas or bushwhackers
molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct
roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders
should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless,
according to the measure of such hostility. As for horses, mules,
wagons, etc., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery
may appropriate freely and without limit; discriminating, however,
between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor and
industrious, usually neutral or friendly. In all foraging, the parties
engaged will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion
for their maintenance."
Thus equipped and thus instructed, the great army moved steadily, day
after day, cutting a mighty swath, from forty to sixty miles wide,
through the very heart of the Confederacy. The columns passed through
Rough and Ready, Jonesboro', Covington, McDonough, Macon,
Milledgeville, Gibson, Louisville, Millen, Springfield, and many
smaller places. The wealthier inhabitants fled at the approach of the
troops. The negroes in great numbers swarmed after the army, believing
the long-promised day of jubilee had come. Some of them seemed to have
an intelligent idea that the success of the National forces meant
destruction of slavery, while most of them had but the vaguest notions
as to the whole movement. One woman, with a child in her arms, walking
along among the cattle and horses, was accosted by an officer, who
asked her, "Where are you going, aunty?" "I'se gwine whar you's gwine,
massa." One party of black men, who had fallen into line, called out
to another who seemed to be asking too many questions, "Stick in dar!
It's all right. We'se gwine along; we'se free." Major George Ward
Nichols describes an aged couple whom he saw in a hut near
Milledgeville. The old negress, pointing her long finger at the old
man, who was in the corner of the fireplace, hissed out, "What fer you
sit dar? You s'pose I wait sixty years for nutten? Don't yer see de
door open? I'se follow my child; I not stay; I walks till I drop in my
tracks."
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL NATHAN KIMBALL.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL N. C. McLEAN.]
The army destroyed nearly the whole of the Georgia Central Railroad,
burning the ties, and heating and twisting the rails. As they had
learned that a rail merely bent could be straightened and used again,
a special tool was invented with which a {423} red-hot rail could be
quickly twisted like an auger, and rendered forever useless. They also
had special appliances for tearing up the track methodically and
rapidly. All the depot buildings were in flames as soon as the column
reached them. As the bloodhounds had been used to track escaped
prisoners, the men killed all that they could find.
The foraging parties--or "bummers," as they were popularly
called--went out for miles on each side, starting in advance of the
organizations to which they belonged, gathered immense quantities of
provisions, and brought them to the line of march, where each stood
guard over his pile till his own brigade came along. The progress of
the column was not allowed to be interrupted for the reception of the
forage, everything being loaded upon the wagons as they moved. The
"flankers" were thrown out on either side, passing in thin lines
through the woods to prevent any surprise by the enemy, while the
mounted officers went through the fields to give the road to the
troops and trains.
The only serious opposition came from Wheeler's Confederate cavalry,
which hung on the flanks of the army and burned some bridges, but was
well taken care of by Kilpatrick's, who generally defeated it when
brought to an encounter. There was great hope that Kilpatrick would be
able to release the prisoners of war confined in Millen, but when he
arrived there he found that they had been removed to some other part
of the Confederacy. When the advance guard was within a few miles of
Savannah there was some fighting with infantry, and a pause before the
defences of the city.
Fort McAllister, which stood in the way of communication with the
blockading fleet, was elaborately protected with ditches, palisades,
and _chevaux-de-frise_; but Gen. William B. Hazen's division made
short work with it, going straight over everything and capturing the
fort on the 13th of December, losing ninety-two men in the assault,
and killing or wounding about fifty of the garrison. That night
General Sherman, with a few officers, pulled down the river in a yawl
and visited a gunboat of the fleet in Ossabaw Sound. Four days later,
having established full communication, Sherman demanded the surrender
of the city of Savannah, which Gen. William J. Hardee, who was in
command there with a considerable force, refused. Sherman then took
measures to make its investment complete; but on the morning of the
21st it was found to be evacuated by Hardee's forces, and Gen. John W.
Geary's division of the Twentieth Corps marched in. The next day
Sherman wrote to the President: "I beg to present you as a Christmas
gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and
plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of
cotton." Sherman's entire loss in the march had been seven hundred and
sixty-four men.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL PETER J. OSTERHAUS.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL BENJAMIN HARRISON. COLONEL DANIEL
DUSTIN. BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM T. WARD. BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL
WILLIAM COGGSWELL.]
That phase of war which reaches behind the armies in the field and
strikes directly at the sources of supply, bringing home its burdens
and its hardships to men who are urging on the conflict without
participating in it, was never exhibited on a grander scale or
conducted with more complete success. This, in fact, is the most
humane kind of war, since it accomplishes the purpose with the least
destruction of life and limb. Sherman's movement across Georgia
naturally brings to mind another famous march to the sea; but that was
a retreat of ten thousand, while this was a victorious advance of
sixty thousand; and it was only in their shout of welcome, _Thalatta!
thalatta!_ ("The sea! the sea!") that the weary and disheartened
Greeks resembled Sherman's triumphant legions.
{424} [Illustration: CONFEDERATE WORKS BEFORE ATLANTA. (From a
Government photograph.)]
The condition of affairs in Georgia, as seen by the residents, just
before and at the time of Sherman's great march, has been vividly
described by the Rev. J. Ryland Kendrick, who was pastor of a church
in Charleston when the war broke out, and two years later removed to
Madison, Ga. He says:
"In passing from South Carolina to Georgia one could hardly fail to be
immediately conscious of breathing a somewhat larger and freer
atmosphere. The great mass of the people in the latter State were
perhaps no less ardent in their zeal for the {425} Confederate cause
than those of the former, but still there was among them more latitude
of opinion, and criticisms on the political and military status were
not so rigorously repressed. Owing to her greater extent of territory,
her less aristocratic civil institutions, and her more composite
population, Georgia had long been characterized by a broader spirit of
tolerance than South Carolina, and she manifested that spirit during
the war. Not a few might be found in almost any community who had no
heart in the pending conflict, and little faith in its successful
issue. Besides, her governor, Joseph E. Brown, early showed a
disposition to do his own thinking, and to take ground which was not
always pleasing to the autocratic will of Jefferson Davis. This
naturally encouraged freedom of thought and utterance among the people
at large.
"At the beginning of 1863 I received a call to the pastorate of the
Baptist church in Madison, a village on the Georgia railroad, and made
my home there for the remainder of the war. It was an ideal refuge
amidst the storm and stress of the time, especially for a man with my
peculiar convictions. The village was one of the pleasantest and most
attractive in the State, comprising in its population a considerable
number of wealthy, educated, and refined families, a large share of
which belonged to my church. In the ante-bellum days it had been
distinguished as an educational centre for girls, with two flourishing
seminaries--one Baptist, the other Methodist. When I went there the
war had closed both of them. Just on the line which divides the upper
from the lower country, Madison was as remote from the alarms of war
as any place in the war-girdled South could well be, and fairly
promised to be about the last spot which the invaders would strike. To
its various attractions Madison added, for me, one other, which at the
time was not generally esteemed an attraction at all, but rather a
serious reproach. I refer to its reputation for somewhat lax loyalty
to the Confederacy. It was known throughout the State as a town much
given to croaking and criticism, with a suspicion of decided
disaffection on the part of some of its leading citizens. Foremost
among these sullen and recalcitrant Madisonians was Col. Joshua Hill,
familiarly known as 'Josh Hill,' confessedly the most prominent man in
the community, and about as much at odds with the Confederate
Government as one could well be without provoking the stroke of its
iron hand. He had been a member of the United States Congress when the
secession fury began, and having stuck to his post as long as possible
finally retired from it in a regular and honorable way.
"Preaching as I did only on Sunday mornings, I often availed myself of
the opportunity to attend, in the after-part of that day, the
religious services of the colored people; sometimes preaching to them
myself, but more commonly listening to the preachers of their own
race. While, as might be expected, there was a sad lack of any real
instruction in their pulpit performances, there was superabundance of
fervor and not a little of genuine oratorical effectiveness.
"It interested me especially, in these meetings of the colored people,
to watch their attitude toward the pending war, in whose issues they
had so great a stake, and by which they were placed in an extremely
delicate relation to their masters. Their shrewdness was simply
amazing. Their policy was one of reserve and silence. They rarely
referred to the war in their sermons or prayers, and when they did
mention it they used broad terms which meant little and compromised
nobody. Of course they could not betray sympathy for the invaders, but
they certainly exhibited none for the other side. To any keen observer
their silence was significant enough, but nobody cared to evoke their
real sentiments. The subtlest sagacity could not have dictated a more
prudent line of conduct than that which their instincts chose. Indeed,
the conduct of the colored people through the whole war, whose import
they vaguely but truly divined, was admirable, and such as to merit
the eternal gratitude of the Southern whites. Under the most tempting
opportunities, outrages upon women and children were never fewer,
petty crimes were not increased, and of insurrectionary movements, so
far as I knew, there were absolutely none, while the soil was never
tilled with more patient and faithful industry. No doubt their conduct
was largely determined by a shrewd comprehension of the situation, as
well as by their essential kindliness of nature. They understood that
bodies of soldiery were never far away, and that any uprising would be
speedily and remorselessly crushed. They knew, too, that it was wiser
to wait for the coming of 'Massa Linkum's' legions, whose slow
approach could not be concealed from them.
"If the colored people dimly saw that their deliverance was
approaching with the advance of the Federal armies, the faith of the
whites in the perpetuity of the divine institution lingered long and
died hard. It seemed to them impossible that this institution should
come to an end. Indeed, there was manifested on the part of some very
good and devout people a disposition to hazard their faith in the
veracity of God and the Bible on the success of the Southern arms. The
Bible, they argued, distinctly sanctioned slavery, and if slavery
should be overthrown by the failure of the South the Bible would be
fatally discredited.
"In those trying days some few compensations came to us for the
deprivations inflicted by the blockade. For one thing, the tyranny of
fashion was greatly abated. Style was little thought of, and fine
ladies were made happy by the possession of an English or French
calico gown. For another thing, cut off from magazines, reviews, and
cheap yellow-covered literature, and with newspapers so curtailed of
their ordinary proportions that they were taken in at a _coup d'oeil_,
we were driven back upon old standard books. I suspect that among the
stay-at-homes a larger amount of really good, solid reading was done
during the war than in the previous decade. Now and then a contraband
volume slipped through the blockade, and was eagerly sought after.
Somehow, a copy of Buckle's 'History of Civilization' got into my
neighborhood, and had a wide circulation. Victor Hugo's 'Les
Misérables' appeared among us in a shocking edition, printed, I think,
in New Orleans.
"The ever-beginning, never-ending topic of conversation was the war,
with its incidents and prospects. We breakfasted, dined, and supped on
startling reports of victories or defeats, and vague hints of
prodigious things shortly to occur. It is noteworthy that our reports
were almost uniformly of victories, frequently qualified by the slow
and reluctant admission that, having won a brilliant success, the
Confederate forces at last fell back. This trick of disguising defeat
came, after a while, to be so well understood, that 'to conquer and
fall back' was tossed about as a grim jest.
"As the tide of war surged southward, and at last reached Chattanooga,
our village, like nearly all others on railway lines, became a
hospital station, and the large academy was appropriated to the sick
and wounded.
"After the battle of Chickamauga great trains of cars came lumbering
through our town, crowded with Union captives. They were a sad sight
to look upon. Standing one day by the {426} track as such a train was
slowly passing, the irrepressible prisoners shouted to me, 'Old Rosey
will be along here soon!' 'Old Rosey' never came, but 'Uncle Billy' in
due time put in an unmistakable appearance, which more than fulfilled
what at the moment seemed the prediction of mere reckless bravado.
"During the summer of 1864 our secluded little village was rudely
shaken by its first experience in the way of invasion. After steadily
pushing back the Confederate columns, Sherman had at last reached
Atlanta, and his hosts were in fact only about seventy miles away from
us. In certain conditions of the atmosphere we could hear the dull,
heavy thunder of his guns. Yet, strangely enough, this proximity of
war in its sternest form created no panic among us. In fact, a kind of
paralysis now benumbed the sensibilities of the people. The back of
the Confederacy had been definitely broken in the preceding summer by
the battle of Gettysburg. Nearly all discerning persons were conscious
of this, and but for the foreordained and blind obstinacy of Jefferson
Davis and his satellites efforts would have been made to save the
South from utter wreck. Alexander H. Stephens was understood to
entertain very definite ideas as to the hopeless and disastrous course
of events under Davis's policy.
"On a hot July morning I was sitting, Southern fashion, with a number
of gentlemen before a store just outside of the public square. We were
canvassing a strange rumor which had just reached us, to the effect
that Yankee soldiers had been seen not far from the town. At that
moment a man from the country rode up to our group, and, hearing the
topic of conversation, generously offered to 'eat all the Union
soldiers within ten miles of Madison.' Scarcely had he uttered these
reassuring words when a man in uniform galloped into the square. Now,
we said, we shall get trustworthy information, thinking that this was
a Confederate scout. In a moment, however, another cavalryman dashed
around the corner, and fired a pistol at a fugitive clad in
Confederate gray. The truth instantly flashed upon us, and with a cry
of '_Yankees!_' we all sprang to our feet. Not much alarmed myself, I
called to my friends, 'Don't run!' but the most of them, disregarding
my advice, took themselves off in remarkably quick time. The strange
intruders, coming upon us as suddenly as if they had dropped out of
the summer sky, now poured into the square and overflowed all the
streets. Boldly standing my ground, I approached the first officer I
could make out, and requested permission to go at once to my home on
the outskirts of the village. He informed me that I must wait until
the arrival of the colonel in command. So it was that for a space of
five or ten minutes I may be said to have been a prisoner under the
flag of my country. The colonel soon rode up, a stalwart,
square-built, kindly-faced Kentuckian--Colonel Adams, as I afterward
learned--who promptly granted my request, and directed an officer to
see me safe through the crowd of soldiers. At my gate I found two or
three soldiers, quietly behaved, and simply asking for food.
Gratefully receiving such as we could give them, they departed,
leaving us quite unharmed.
"In November an important ministerial service called me to
southwestern Georgia, and, as all seemed quiet about Atlanta, I
hesitatingly ventured, accompanied by my wife, upon the journey.
Starting homeward after a few days, we reached Forsyth, and paused
there on the edge of the desert. For a desert it was that stretched
for some sixty miles between us and Madison, a _terra incognita_, over
which no adventurous explorer had passed since Sherman's legions had
blotted out all knowledge of it. Only wild rumors filled the air. At
last a friend took the serious risk of letting us have his carriage,
with a pair of mules and a negro driver, for the perilous journey.
Having crossed the Ocmulgee, we at once struck the track of Sherman's
army, his right, under Howard, having kept near the river. In that
day's ride we met on the road but one human being--a negro on
horseback. A white woman rushed frantically from her little cabin to
inquire if any more Yankees were coming, a question which I ventured
to answer with a very confident negative. Rather late in the
afternoon, as we were passing a pleasant farm-house, a gentleman came
out to our carriage and with a very solemn voice and manner warned us
against going any further. He had just been informed that ten thousand
Yankee soldiers were at somebody's mills, not far away, and he
declared that we were driving straight into their ranks. This
staggered me for a moment. But a little reflection convinced me of the
violent improbability of the rumor, and a little further reflection
determined me to go on. From that moment to the evening hour when we
drew up before a planter's house to spend the night, we saw not a
human being, scarcely a living thing. Indeed, the wide, dead silence
was the most marked sign that we {427} were in the path over which a
few days before a great army had passed. The road here and there was
considerably cut up, showing that heavy wagons had recently gone over
it. Fences were frequently down or missing, and two or three heaps of
blackened ruins, surmounted by solitary chimneys, denoted that the
torch had done some destructive work. The next day, in passing through
Monticello, I saw the charred remains of the county jail, but the
signs of conflagration were surprisingly few.
"The family with whom we spent the night had had the strange
experience of being for a while in the midst of an encamped army. The
soldiers, they informed us, had swarmed about them like bees, but had
behaved as well as soldiers commonly do. The planter's horses and
cattle had been freely appropriated, and as much of his corn and
vegetables as were needed; but there was no complaint of violence or
rudeness, and an ample supply of the necessaries of life was left for
his household. Indeed, from my observations in this trip across the
line of Sherman's march, that march, so far from having been
signalized by wanton destruction, was decidedly merciful. No doubt
bummers and camp followers committed many atrocities, but the progress
of the army proper was attended by no unusual incidents of severity.
The year had been one of exceptional bounty, and there was no want in
Sherman's rear. Such was the plenty that I believe he might have
retraced his steps and subsisted his army on the country.
"On reaching Madison we found the place substantially intact. Not a
house had been destroyed, not a citizen harmed or insulted. The
greatest sufferers from the invasion were the turkeys and chickens.
The country was thickly strewn with the feathers of these slaughtered
innocents. When I expressed to a friend some doubt as to Sherman's
ability to reach the sea, he replied, 'If you had been here and seen
the sort of men composing his cohorts, you would not question that
they could go wherever they had a mind to.'
"Our life between the time of Sherman's march and Lee's surrender,
with the scenes and incidents that attended and followed that
surrender, was as strange and abnormal as a bad dream. We had, indeed,
an abundance of the necessary articles of food and clothing. I have
hardly ever lived in more physical comfort than during the last year
of the war. The few fowls that had escaped the voracious appetites of
the invaders soon provided a fresh supply of chickens and eggs. Coffee
at twenty-five dollars a pound (Confederate money), and sugar at not
much less cost, were attainable, and I managed to keep a fair supply
of them for my little family. But though our physical conditions were
tolerable, life was subject to a painful strain of uncertainty and
anxiety, relieved only by the conviction that the war, of which all
were weary and sick unto death, was nearly over. When the end came,
confusion was confounded in a jumble so bewildering as scarcely to be
credited with reality. The town streets and country roads were full of
negroes, wandering about idle and aimless, going they knew not
whither--a pitiful spectacle of enfranchised slaves dazed by their
recent boon of liberty. Presently Union soldiers were everywhere. A
German colonel, lately a New York broker, moved among us in the
spick-and-span bravery of his uniform, the sovereign arbiter of our
destinies. The world had rarely presented such a topsy-turvy condition
of things, half tragical, half comical.
"As soon as matters had sufficiently quieted down to warrant it, I
resolved on a visit to my Northern friends, toward whom my heart
yearned. My point of departure was Atlanta, still a desolation of
falling walls, blackened chimneys, and almost undistinguishable
streets. How queer it was to be again in the great world! How splendid
Nashville, Louisville, and Cincinnati appeared, with their brilliant
gaslights, crowded thoroughfares, showy shop windows, and fashionably
dressed people! Evidently war here, whatever it had meant of sorrow
and deprivation, had not been war as we had known it in the
beleaguered, invaded, blockaded South. This prosperity was all but
incredible when contrasted with Southern poverty, distress, and
desolation."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Atlantic Monthly_ for October, 1889.]
[Illustration: MAP OF THE THEATRE OF OPERATIONS COVERED BY THE BATTLES
OF FRANKLIN AND NASHVILLE. By permission of Dick & Fitzgerald, New
York. From "Twelve Decisive Battles of the War."]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GUSTAVUS W. SMITH, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN T. MORGAN, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL BENJAMIN F. CHEATHAM, C. S. A.]
{428} [Illustration: POTTER HOUSE, ATLANTA--SHOWING EFFECT OF
ARTILLERY FIRE. (From a Government photograph.)]
When Hood found that he could not lure Sherman away from Atlanta, or
make him loose his hold upon that prize of his long campaign, he
turned toward Nashville, under orders from Richmond, hoping to destroy
the army that Thomas was organizing. He was hindered by heavy rains,
and it was late in November when he arrived at Duck River, about forty
miles south of the city. Here he found a force, under Gen. John M.
Schofield, which was easily flanked by crossing the river, whereupon
Schofield fell back to Franklin, on Harpeth River, eighteen miles from
Nashville, intrenched a line south and west of the town, with both
flanks resting on bends of the river, and got his artillery and trains
across the stream, placing the guns where they could play upon any
attacking force. Schofield had about twenty-five thousand men, and
Hood over forty thousand. In the afternoon of November 30 the attack
was made. Schofield's rear guard, consisting of Wagner's brigade,
instead of falling back to the main body, as ordered, so as to permit
the fire of the whole line to be poured into the advancing enemy,
attempted to withstand the Confederate onset. Of course it was quickly
swept back, {429} and as the men rushed in confusion into the lines
they were closely followed by the enemy, who captured a portion of the
intrenchments. From a part of the line thus seized they were driven in
turn, but they clung tenaciously to the remainder, and Schofield
established a new line a few rods in the rear.
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOSEPH W. FISHER.]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOSEPH B. FORAKER. (Afterward Governor of
Ohio.)]
Hood's orders to his corps and division commanders were that they were
to drive the National army into Harpeth River, while Forrest's cavalry
was to cross the river above, sweep down upon the trains, and destroy
or capture whatever remnant should have succeeded in crossing the
stream. General Schofield did not believe that the attack upon so
strong a position would be made in front; he looked for a flank
movement, and accordingly, when the battle took place, he was on the
north side of the river making arrangements for an adequate means of
crossing in case of such movement. But he gave Hood credit for more
generalship than he ever possessed. Hood never seemed to have a
conception of any method of conducting a battle except by driving his
men straight up against the guns and intrenchments of the enemy. In
this instance, although he possessed an abundance of artillery, only
two batteries were with him. Schofield's line was about a mile and a
half long, running through the suburbs of the little town which lay in
the bend of the river. The town was approached by three roads, from
the southeast, south, and southwest, and along these converging roads
Hood pushed the twenty-two thousand men that he brought into the
fight. The immediate commander on the field of the National forces was
Gen. Jacob D. Cox, who showed himself a masterly tactician and
inspiring leader. The works were well planned and very strong, and as
the reckless Hood pushed his doomed men up against them they were
swept down by front-fire and cross-fire, musketry and artillery, in
ghastly heaps along the whole line. When the advanced line was driven
back and the centre temporarily broken, the exultant Confederates
imagined they were to have everything their own way; and as their
divisions came in on converging lines they were crowded together in
great masses, through which the fire of the artillery from right and
left, as well as the musketry, played with terrible effect. Two
companies of one Kentucky regiment were armed with repeating rifles,
and their fire alone was equal to that of five hundred ordinary
infantrymen. A participant describing the scene at this time says:
"From Stiles's and Casement's brigades a blaze of fire leaped from the
breastworks and played so incessantly that it appeared to those who
saw it as if it had formed a solid plane upon which a man might walk;"
and a Confederate staff officer describes it as "a continuous living
fringe of flame." Lieutenant Speed, of the Twelfth Kentucky Regiment,
says: "The artillery in the line played incessantly, hurling double
charges of grape over the field. From Casement and Stiles to the left
there was an unabated roar of musketry, which now was continued with
intensified fury along Reilly's line up to the pike, and swelled with
terrific grandeur along the front all the way to Carter's Creek pike.
Along Reilly's line it was a desperate hand-to-hand conflict.
Sometimes it seemed that the masses of the assailants would overwhelm
all opposition. The struggle was across and over the breastworks. The
standards of both armies were upon them at the same time. Muskets
flashed in men's faces. Officers fought with the men, musket in hand.
The Confederates were at a disadvantage on account of the ditch
outside the works, which they could not cross under the blinding storm
of lead. Bewildered and confused, they, who had a moment before
shouted the cry of victory, could now only receive death and
destruction in the most appalling form. In this immediate front the
Confederate loss was heavier than at any other point. Here Cleburne
fell, almost up to the works; also Granberry and Quarles. The ditch
outside the works was filled with killed and wounded men. Confederate
officers who witnessed their removal next morning have stated that in
places they were piled five deep." The Confederates made in rapid
succession so many charges against the new line of works where they
had broken the first line, that witnesses differed as to their number.
Some counted fourteen, and none counted fewer than ten. But all were
in vain. In this action the National troops expended a hundred wagon
loads of ammunition, and as the smoke did not rise readily it seemed
as if the darkness {430} of night were coming on prematurely. No doubt
this circumstance contributed largely to the terrible losses of the
Confederates. Forrest's cavalry, which was expected to cross the river
and capture Schofield's trains, did not accomplish anything. The
reason given for its inaction was lack of ammunition. In this brief
and bloody encounter Hood lost more than one-third of his men engaged.
His killed numbered one thousand seven hundred and fifty. The number
of his wounded can only be computed, but it is not probable that they
were fewer than seven thousand. Major Sanders, of the Confederate
army, estimates the loss in two of the brigades at sixty-five per
cent. These losses included Major-Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne and
Brig.-Gens. John Adams, Oscar F. Strahl, S. R. Gist, and H. B.
Granberry, all killed; also six general officers wounded and one
captured; and more than thirty colonels and lieutenant-colonels were
killed or wounded. Schofield lost two thousand five hundred men, and
his army took seven hundred prisoners and thirty-three stands of
colors. At midnight Schofield crossed the river and retreated to
Nashville. Hood followed him, and there confronted the whole of
Thomas's army. Schofield has been criticised for thus retreating after
his victory; but if he had remained at Franklin the conditions for a
battle the next day would have been materially changed. Hood brought
up all his artillery in the night, intending to open upon the works in
the morning, and it is not probable that Forrest's vigorous cavalry
would have remained inactive another day.
[Illustration: SHERMAN'S FORAGERS ON A GEORGIA PLANTATION.]
Everybody complained of Thomas's slowness, and he was in imminent
danger of being superseded; but he would not assume the offensive till
he felt that his army was prepared to make sure work. When all was
ready, he still had to delay because of bad weather; but on the 15th
of December (one day after Sherman reached the sea) the long-meditated
blow was given. Thomas's army advanced against Hood's, striking it
simultaneously in front and on the left flank. The weight of the
attack fell upon the flank, which was completely crushed, and a part
of the intrenchments with their guns fell into the hands of the
National forces. In the night Hood retreated a mile or two, to another
line on the hills, made some new dispositions, and awaited attack. He
was seriously embarrassed by the absence of a large part of Forrest's
cavalry, which should have been protecting his flanks. In the
afternoon of the 16th, Thomas, having sent Wilson's cavalry around the
enemy's left flank, attacked with his whole force. He made no headway
against Hood's right, but again he crushed the left flank, and
followed up the advantage so promptly and vigorously that all
organization in the Confederate army was lost, and what was left of it
fled in wild confusion toward Franklin, pursued by Wilson's cavalry.
Thomas captured all their artillery and took forty-five hundred
prisoners. The number of their killed and wounded was never reported.
His own loss was about three thousand. Brig.-Gen. Sylvester G. Hill
was among the killed.
{431}
CHAPTER XLII.
MINOR EVENTS OF THE FOURTH YEAR.
DESPERATE CONDITION OF THE CONFEDERACY--THE EXPORTATION OF COTTON,
TOBACCO, AND SUGAR PROHIBITED--THE THREATENED SECESSION OF NORTH
CAROLINA FROM THE CONFEDERACY--SWEEPING CONSCRIPTION ACTS--FORCES
UNDER GENERAL BUTLER ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE RICHMOND--NUMEROUS MINOR
ENGAGEMENTS IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY--BATTLE BETWEEN CAVALRY FORCES AT
TREVILIAN STATION--PLYMOUTH, N. C., CAPTURED BY THE
CONFEDERATES--BLACK FLAG RAISED AND NEGRO PRISONERS SHOT--THE
DESTRUCTION OF THE RAM "ALBEMARLE" BY A FORCE UNDER LIEUTENANT
CUSHING--DEFEAT OF FEDERAL FORCE AT OLUSTEE--ENGAGEMENTS AT DANDRIDGE
AND FAIR GARDENS, TENN.--OPERATIONS IN LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI.
With the dawn of the fourth year of the war the statesmen and
journalists of the Confederacy showed by their utterances that they
knew how desperate were its straits, and how much its prospects had
waned since the victories of the first and second years. The _Richmond
Whig_ said: "The utmost nerve, the firmest front, the most undaunted
courage, will be required during the coming twelve months from all who
are charged with the management of affairs in our country, or whose
position gives them any influence in forming or guiding public
sentiment." The _Wilmington_ (N. C.) _Journal_ said: "Moral courage,
the power to resist the approaches of despondency, and the faculty of
communicating this power to others, will need greatly to be called
into exercise; for we have reached that point in our revolution--which
is inevitably reached in all revolutions--when gloom and depression
take the place of hope and enthusiasm, when despair is fatal, and
despondency is even more to be dreaded than defeat. Whether a crisis
be upon us or not, there can be in the mind of no one, who looks at
the map of Georgia and considers her geographical relations to the
rest of the Confederacy, a single doubt that much of our future is
involved in the result of the next spring campaign in upper Georgia."
The Confederate Congress passed, in secret session, a bill to prohibit
exportation of cotton, tobacco, naval stores, molasses, sugar, or
rice, and one to prohibit importation of luxuries into the
Confederacy, both of which bills were promptly signed by Mr. Davis. At
Huntsville, Ala., a meeting of citizens was held, at which resolutions
were passed deprecating the action of the South, and calling upon the
Government to convene the legislature, that it might call a convention
to provide some mode for the restoration of peace and the rights and
liberties of the people. The legislature of Georgia, in March, adopted
resolutions, declaring that the Confederate Government ought, after
every success of the Confederate arms, to make to the United States
Government an official offer to treat for peace. The _Richmond
Examiner_ said: "People and army, one soul and one body, feel alike,
in their inmost hearts, that when the clash comes it will be a
struggle for life or death. So far we feel sure of the issue. All else
is mystery and uncertainty. Where the first blow will fall, when the
two armies of Northern Virginia meet each other face to face, how
Grant will try to hold his own against the master-spirit of Lee, we
cannot yet surmise; but it is clear to the experienced eye that the
approaching campaign will bring into action two new elements not known
heretofore in military history, which may not unlikely decide the fate
of the gigantic crusade. The enemy will array against us his new
iron-clads by sea and his colored troops by land." In the western
districts of North Carolina the execution of the Confederate
conscription law created great excitement, and several public meetings
were held to consider the action of separating from the Confederacy
and returning to the Union. The _Raleigh Standard_ declared boldly,
that, if the measures proposed by the Confederate Government were
carried out, the people of North Carolina would take their affairs
into their own hands and proceed, in convention assembled, to
vindicate their liberties and privileges.
[Illustration: A FEDERAL SIGNAL STATION NEAR WASHINGTON.]
{432} [Illustration: CHARGE OF CONFEDERATE CAVALRY AT TREVILIAN
STATION, VIRGINIA.]
As the war {433} progressed, and the Confederate armies were depleted
by the casualties of battle and the illness attendant upon the
hardships of the camp, the conscription became more sweeping, and at
last it was made to embrace every man in the Confederacy between
eighteen and forty-five years of age. This almost emptied the
colleges, until some of them reduced the age of admission to sixteen
years, when they were rapidly filled up again. But even these boys
were held subject to military call in case of necessity, and in some
of the battles of the last year cadets of the Virginia Military
Institute took part, and many of them were killed. Another noticeable
effect was the diminution in the number of small and detached military
operations, because the waning resources of the Confederacy were
concentrated more and more in its principal armies.
On the first day of the year a detachment of seventy-five men,
commanded by Major Henry A. Cole, being on the scout near Harper's
Ferry, suddenly encountered, near Rectortown, a portion of General
Rosser's Confederate command, and a stubborn fight ensued. The result
was that fifty-seven of Cole's men were either killed or captured, and
the remainder made their escape. Two days later a Confederate force,
under Gen. Sam Jones, suddenly attacked an Illinois regiment,
commanded by Major Beers, near Jonesville, and after a desperate fight
compelled them to surrender.
On the 6th of February, an expedition, organized by General Butler for
the purpose of dashing into Richmond and releasing the prisoners
there, marched from Yorktown by way of New-Kent Court House. They
failed in their purpose to surprise the enemy at Bottom's Bridge,
where they were to cross the Chickahominy, because, as a Richmond
newspaper said, "a Yankee deserter gave information in Richmond of the
intended movement." The Confederates had felled a great number of
trees across the roads and made it impossible for the cavalry to pass.
There was great consternation in Richmond, however, and in the evening
of the 7th the bells were rung, and men rushed through the streets
crying, "To arms, to arms! the Yankees are coming." The home guard was
called out, and the women and children ran about seeking places of
safety.
Early in May, General Crook, with about seven thousand men, moving
from the mouth of New River through Raleigh Court House and Princeton
toward Newbern, met a Confederate force, under Albert G. Jenkins, on
Cloyd's Mountain, on the 9th. In the engagement that ensued, the
Confederates were defeated and General Jenkins was killed. The next
day a cavalry force under General Averell was met at Crockett's Cove
by one under General Morgan, and was defeated. General Crook, after
the battle of Cloyd's Mountain, destroyed the bridge over New River
and a considerable section of the Virginia and Tennessee railroad.
On the 15th of May, General Sigel's force in the Shenandoah Valley
being in the northern outskirts of the town of Newmarket, General
Breckenridge moved up from the south to attack him. The town is
divided by a ravine running at right angles to the Shenandoah, and in
the beginning the contest was mainly an artillery battle, both sides
firing over the town. Then General Breckenridge's cavalry, with one or
two batteries, made a detour to the right, and obtained a position on
a hill where they could enfilade the left of Sigel's line, and drove
back his cavalry on that wing. At the same time Breckenridge advanced
his infantry and pushed back Sigel's whole line about half a mile.
Later in the day, repeating the same tactics, he pushed Sigel back a
mile farther, but did not accomplish this without severe fighting. One
notable incident was the capture of an unsupported battery on the
right of Sigel's line, which had been playing with terrible effect
upon Breckenridge's left. One regiment of veterans and the cadets of
the Military Institute were sent to capture it, which they did at
terrible cost. Of the five hundred and fifty men in the regiment, two
hundred and forty-one were either killed or wounded, nearly all of
them falling in the last three hundred yards before they reached the
battery. Of the two hundred and twenty-five boys from the Institute,
fifty-four were killed or wounded. When night fell, Sigel crossed the
river and burned the bridge behind him. General Imboden, who commanded
Breckenridge's cavalry in this action, says: "If Sigel had beaten
Breckenridge, General Lee could not have spared the men to check his
progress (as he did that of Hunter, a month later) without exposing
Richmond to immediate and almost inevitable capture. The necessities
of General Lee were such that on the day after the battle he ordered
Breckenridge to join him near Richmond with the brigades of Echols and
Wharton."
Early in June General Sheridan was sent out with the cavalry of the
Army of the Potomac, about eight thousand strong, to strike the
Virginia Central Railroad near Charlotteville, where it was expected
he would meet the force under General Hunter moving through the
Shenandoah Valley. He intended to break the main line at Trevilian
Station, and the Lynchburg branch at Charlotteville. He encountered
the enemy's cavalry near Trevilian Station on the morning of the 11th.
Sending Custer's brigade to the left, and Torbert with the remainder
of his division to the right, Sheridan moved directly forward with his
main body. The enemy was found dismounted in the edge of the forest,
his line stretching across the road. Sheridan's men also dismounted,
and promptly attacked. Sharp fighting ensued, in the course of which
the enemy was driven back two miles with a heavy loss. Williston's
battery was then brought up, and with great skill sent its shells into
the mass of fleeing Confederates, whose retreat was turned into a wild
rout. A portion of the defeated force, retreating toward Louisa Court
House, was struck by Custer's brigade, which defeated them, and
captured about three hundred and fifty men. But a little later Fitz
Lee's Confederate cavalry came up in the rear of Custer, and captured
his wagon-train and headquarters baggage. One of his guns also was
captured, but was recaptured in a charge that he led in person. Custer
and his whole command came so near being captured when the enemy
closed around them, that, when his color-bearer was killed, he tore
the flag from the staff and hid it in his bosom. That night the
remainder of the enemy retired toward Gordonsville. The next day
Sheridan's men destroyed about five miles of the railroad. In the
afternoon Torbert advanced toward Gordonsville, and found the
Confederates in position across the railroad, facing east. Here they
attacked them again, chiefly on their left wing, and again bringing
forward Williston's battery, punished them severely, but not so as to
drive them from their position before dark. In these actions Sheridan
lost about six hundred men. The Confederate loss is not fully known,
but it was probably larger. Sheridan now learned that Hunter would not
conclude to meet him, and that he was likely instead to encounter
Ewell's corps. He therefore turned back, and recrossed the North Anna.
Plymouth, N. C., had been held for some months by a garrison of
sixteen hundred men, under General Wessells, when it was attacked on
April 17, 1864, by the Confederate General Hoke, with about five
thousand men. Skirmishing and artillery firing began early in the
morning, and very soon the National camps {434} were riddled by shot
from the guns. The skirmishers retired within their works, and the
Confederates pressed up to these in heavy masses, and were shot down
in great numbers. One of the forts, which stood some distance in front
of the general line of fortifications, was supplied with hand
grenades, and these were used with great effect. But at last this work
was captured. The next day the attack was renewed, and a most gallant
defence was made. General Hoke, who had been promised a promotion in
case of his capturing the place, was determined to do it at whatever
cost. Three times he demanded its surrender, and three times he was
refused, when he said: "I will fill your citadel full of iron; I will
compel your surrender if I have to fight to the last man." It is
doubtful, however, if he would have succeeded but for the assistance
of the ram _Albemarle_, which came down the river and got into the
rear of the National position. Lieutenant Blakeslee, of the Sixteenth
Connecticut Regiment, says: "There was a force of five or six thousand
in line about six hundred yards in front of our works. At this hour a
rocket was sent up as the signal for the attack, and a more furious
charge we never witnessed. Instantly over our heads came a peal of
thunder from the ram. Up rose a curling wreath of smoke--the batteries
had opened, and quickly flashed fierce forks of flame--loud and
earth-shaking roars in quick succession. Lines of men came forth from
the woods--the battle had begun. We on the skirmish line fell back and
entered Coneby redoubt, properly barred the gates and manned the
works. The enemy, with yells, charged on the works in heavy column,
jumped into the ditch, climbed the parapet, and for fifteen murderous
minutes were shot down like mown grass. The conflict was bloody,
short, and decisive. The enemy were in such numbers that we had to
yield. The gate had been crushed down by a rebel shot, and the enemy
poured in, to the number of five or six hundred, with thousands on the
outside. Great confusion then ensued; guns were spiked, musket barrels
bent, and all sorts of mischief practised by the Union soldiers, while
the enemy were swearing at a terrible rate because we would not take
off equipments and inform them if the guns could be turned on the
town, and in trying to reorganize their troops, who were badly mixed,
to take the next work. We were prisoners, and as we marched out of the
fort, we could see at what a fearful cost it was to them. Of the
eighty-two men in this fort, but one was wounded." The Confederates
then worked their way from one redoubt to another, each of which was
obstinately defended, but finally captured, until all were taken, and
Plymouth was theirs. Lieutenant Blakeslee says: "The rebels raised the
black flag against the negroes found in uniform, and mercilessly shot
them down. The shooting in cold blood of three or four hundred negroes
and two companies of North Carolina troops, who had joined our army,
and even murdering peaceable citizens, were scenes of which the
Confederates make no mention, except the hanging of one person, but of
which many of us were eye-witnesses." The loss of the garrison in the
fighting was fifteen killed and about one hundred wounded. The
Confederate loss is not exactly known, but it appears to have been
well nigh two thousand.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAMS C. WICKHAM, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL H. B. LYON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN D. IMBODEN, C. S. A.]
When the iron-clad ram _Albemarle_ came down the Roanoke to assist
General Hoke in the capture of Plymouth, she not only bombarded the
garrison, but attacked the National flotilla there and destroyed or
scattered it. She wrecked the _Southfield_ by ramming, and when the
wooden gunboat _Miami_ gallantly stood up to the work and fired {435}
its broadsides against her iron walls, the shot simply rebounded or
rolled off, and one of these returning shots struck and killed Lieut.
C. W. Flusser who was in command of the _Miami_.
In the autumn, Lieut. William B. Cushing, of the United States navy,
who had performed many gallant exploits, and whose brother was killed
beside his gun at Gettysburg, formed a plan for the destruction of the
_Albemarle_. He obtained the sanction of his superior officer for the
experiment, which Cushing himself considered so hazardous that he
asked leave to make a visit to his home before carrying it out. On his
return he fitted up an open launch about thirty feet long with a small
engine, a twelve-pound howitzer in the bow, and a boom fourteen feet
long swinging at the bow by a hinge. This boom carried a torpedo at
the end, so arranged that it could be lowered into the water, pushed
under a vessel, and then detached from the boom before being exploded.
With fifteen picked men in this little craft, in the night of October
27th, Cushing steamed off in the darkness and found the ram at her
mooring at Plymouth. When he drew near he was discovered and sharply
challenged, whereupon he ordered on all steam and steered straight for
the ram. He was fired upon, but in the darkness the shot failed of its
mark. Then a large fire was lighted on the bank, and this revealed to
him the fact that the _Albemarle_ was protected by a circle or boom of
logs. Without hesitation, he drew back about a hundred yards, and then
under full headway drove straight at them, trusting to make his launch
slip over them into the enclosed space where the ram lay. In this he
was successful. By this time the crew of the ram were thoroughly
alarmed, and as Cushing stood on the bow with the exploding line in
his hand he could hear every word of command on the ram, and his
clothing was perforated with bullets. He now ordered the boom to be
lowered until the motion of the launch pushed the torpedo under the
ram's overhang. Then he pulled the detaching line, and, after waiting
a little for the torpedo to rise in the water and rest under the hull,
he pulled the exploding line. The result to the ram was that a hole
was torn in her hull which caused her to keel over and sink. At the
same instant a discharge of grape shot from one of her guns tore the
launch to pieces, and a large part of the mass of water that was
lifted by the torpedo came down upon her little crew. Cushing
commanded his men to save themselves, and throwing off his sword,
revolver, shoes, and coat, jumped into the water and swam for the
opposite shore. Making his way through swamps, and finding a skiff,
Lieutenant Cushing at last, almost exhausted, reached the National
fleet. One of his crew also escaped, two were drowned, and the
remainder were captured. The _Albemarle_ was of no further use.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL DAVID McM. GREGG AND STAFF.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE CROOK.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL CHARLES T. EWING.]
During the early days of the year a constant fire was kept up upon
Charleston, and sometimes as many as twenty shells, loaded with Greek
fire, were thrown into the city in a day. The Charleston _Courier_
said: "The damage being done is extraordinarily {436} small in
comparison with the number of shot and weight of metal fired. The
whizzing of shells overhead has become a matter of so little interest
as to excite scarcely any attention from passers-by."
In Savannah, April 17th, there was a riot of women who marched through
the streets in procession, demanding bread or blood, many of them
carrying arms. They seized food wherever they could find it. After a
time soldiers were called out, and the leaders of the riot were
arrested and put into jail.
Early in February, Gen. Truman Seymour, by order of General Gillmore,
left Hilton Head with five thousand five hundred men for Jacksonville,
Fla., accompanied by five gunboats under Admiral Dahlgren. The object
of the expedition was to penetrate the country west of Jacksonville
for the purpose of making an outlet for cotton and lumber, cutting off
one source of the enemy's supplies, obtaining recruits for black
regiments, and taking measures to protect any citizens who might be
disposed to bring the State back into the Union. It was unfortunate
that the immediate commander of the expedition, General Seymour, did
not altogether believe in its objects. Marching inland, he dispersed
some small detachments of Confederate soldiers and captured some guns.
He then pushed forward for Suwanee River to destroy the bridges and
the railroad, and prevent communication between East and West Florida.
Meanwhile the Confederate general, Joseph Finegan, had been collecting
troops to oppose the expedition, concentrating them at Lake City, and
got together a force about equal to Seymour's. On the 20th of February
Seymour moved out from his camp on St. Mary's River to engage the
enemy, who threw forward some troops to meet him. They met near
Olustee, and a battle ensued, which was fought on level ground largely
covered with open pine forests. Seymour massed his artillery in the
centre, and opened from it a fierce fire which was very effective. He
then endeavored to push forth his infantry on both flanks, and at the
same time the whole Confederate line was advanced. The Seventh New
Hampshire and Eighth United States colored regiment, being subjected
to a very severe fire, gave way. The fire of the Confederates was then
concentrated largely on the artillery, and so many men and horses fell
in the short time that five of the guns had to be abandoned. The
Confederate reserves were then brought up to a point where they could
put in a cross-fire on the National right, and at the same time the
whole Confederate line was advanced again. The National line now
slowly gave way, and at length was in full retreat; but there was no
pursuit. The Confederate loss was nine hundred and forty men; the
National loss was one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one.
[Illustration: A UNION TRANSPORT ON THE SUWANEE RIVER.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL GUY V. HENRY.]
[Illustration: REAR-ADMIRAL JOHN A. DAHLGREN.]
An escort of eight hundred men, who had charge of the wagon train with
commissary stores for the garrison at Petersburg, was suddenly
attacked, January 29th, near Williamsport, by several detachments of
Confederates who rushed in from different directions. There was a
stubborn fight, which lasted from three o'clock in the afternoon until
dark. When at last the Confederates, after several repulses,
succeeded, they had lost about one hundred men killed and wounded, and
the Nationals had lost eighty.
On the 17th of January, a Confederate force made a sudden and
determined assault upon the National lines near Dandridge, Tenn. But
the Nationals, though surprised, stubbornly stood their ground, and a
division of cavalry under Col. D. N. McCook charged the enemy and
decided the fate of the conquest. The National loss in this affair was
about one hundred and fifty men, nearly half of which fell upon the
First Wisconsin Regiment.
A body of National cavalry, commanded by General Sturgis, attacked the
Confederate force on January 27th, near Fair Gardens, ten miles east
of Sevierville. The fight lasted from daylight until four o'clock in
the afternoon, the Confederates being slowly pushed back, when finally
the National cavalry drew their sabres and charged with a yell,
completely routing {437} the enemy, and capturing two guns and more
than one hundred prisoners.
Early in February, a detachment of the Seventh Indiana Regiment
entered Bolivar under the supposition that it was still occupied by
National troops, and were surprised to find there a large detachment
of Confederates. When they learned that these were Mississippi troops,
the Indianians, shouting, "Remember Jeff Davis," made a furious attack
and drove out the Confederates in confusion, killing, wounded, or
capturing a large number of them.
At Powell's River bridge, February 22d, there was an engagement
between five hundred Confederates and two companies of the
Thirty-fourth Kentucky infantry. The Confederates made four successful
charges upon the bridge, and were repelled every time. Finally they
were driven off, leaving many horses, arms, saddles, etc., on the
field. A participant says: "The attack was made by the infantry, while
the cavalry prepared for a charge. The cavalry was soon in line moving
on the bridge. On they came in a steady solid column, covered by the
fire of their infantry. In a moment the Nationals saw their perilous
position, and Lieutenant Slater called for a volunteer to tear up the
boards and prevent their crossing. There was some hesitation, and in a
moment all would have been lost had not William Goss leaped from the
intrenchments, and running to the bridge, under the fire of about four
hundred guns, thrown ten boards off into the river, and returned
unhurt. This prevented the capture of the whole force."
Shelby's Confederate force was attacked on January 19th at a point on
the Monticello Railroad, twenty miles from Pine Bluff, by a National
force under Colonel Clayton, which in course of two hours drove the
Confederates seven miles and completely routed them. Clayton's men had
marched sixty miles in twenty-four hours.
An expedition commanded by Col. C. C. Andrews of the Third Minnesota
infantry ascended White River and marched thirty miles to Augusta,
from which place he set out April 1st in search of a Confederate force
under Colonel McCrae. It proved that McCrae's forces were divided into
scattered detachments, which were successively overtaken and defeated
by Colonel Andrews. At Fitzhugh's Woods, however, a large force of the
enemy was concentrated, and attacked Colonel Andrews's men in a sharp
fight that lasted more than two hours. Andrews took a good position,
and thwarted every effort of the enemy to carry it or flank it, when
at last they gave up and retired. He lost about thirty men, and
estimated the enemy's loss at a hundred.
In the middle of February, the Confederates made a determined attempt
to capture the fort at Waterproof, La. First, about eight hundred
cavalry drove in the pickets and assaulted the garrison, who might
have been overcome but for the assistance of the gunboat _Forest
Rose_, Captain Johnson, which with its rapid fire sent many shells
into the ranks of the Confederates, and after a time drove them away.
This proceeding was repeated later in the day with the same result.
Next day the Confederates, largely reinforced, tried it again. Before
the fight was over the ram _Switzerland_ arrived and took part in it,
and the result was the same as on the previous day.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL W. L. McMILLEN.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL S. D. STURGIS.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: SLAVES GOING TO JOIN THE FEDERAL ARMY.]
{438} [Illustration: "THE COUNTERSIGN."
"'Halt! Who goes there?' My challenge cry,
It rings along the watchful line;
'Relief!' I hear a voice reply;
'Advance and give the Countersign!'"]
{439}
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE FINAL BATTLES.
SHERMAN MARCHES THROUGH THE CAROLINAS--JOHNSTON RESTORED TO
COMMAND--COLUMBIA BURNED--CHARLESTON EVACUATED--CAPTURE OF FORT
FISHER--BATTLE OF AVERYSBORO--BATTLE OF BENTONVILLE--SCHOFIELD JOINS
SHERMAN--A PEACE CONFERENCE--BATTLE OF WAYNESBORO'--SHERIDAN'S RAID ON
THE UPPER JAMES--LEE PLANS TO ESCAPE--FIGHTING BEFORE
PETERSBURG--BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS--LEE'S LINES BROKEN--RICHMOND
EVACUATED--LEE'S RETREAT--HIS SURRENDER--GRANT'S GENEROUS
TERMS--SURRENDER OF THE OTHER CONFEDERATE ARMIES.
After Sherman's army had marched through Georgia and captured
Savannah, he and General Grant at first contemplated removing it by
water to the James, and placing it where it could act in immediate
connection with the Army of the Potomac against Petersburg and
Richmond. But several considerations soon led to a different plan. One
was, the difficulty of getting together enough transports to carry
sixty-five thousand men and all their equipage without too much delay.
A still stronger one was the fact that in a march through the
Carolinas General Sherman's army could probably do more to help
Grant's and bring the war to a speedy close than if it were suddenly
set down beside it in Virginia. The question of supplies, always a
vital one for an army, had become very serious in the military affairs
of the Confederacy. The trans-Mississippi region had been cut off long
ago, the blockade of the seaports had been growing more stringent,
Sheridan had desolated the Shenandoah Valley, Sherman had eaten out
the heart of Georgia. And now if that same army, with its increased
experience and confidence, should go through South and North Carolina,
living on the country, Lee's position in the defences of Richmond
would soon become untenable for mere lack of something for his army to
eat. Sherman's military instinct never failed him; and, after tarrying
at Savannah three weeks, he gathered up his forces for another stride
toward the final victory. Turning over the city on January 18, 1865,
to Gen. John G. Foster, who was in command on the coast, he issued
orders on the 19th for the movement of his whole army.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ALFRED H. TERRY.]
[Illustration: A BOMB PROOF, FORT FISHER.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL N. M. CURTIS.]
The right wing was concentrated at Pocotaligo, about forty miles north
of Savannah, and the left at Robertsville, twenty miles west of
Pocotaligo. After some delay caused by the weather and the necessity
for final preparations, the northward march was begun on the 1st of
February. Sherman had sent out rumors that represented both Charleston
and Augusta as his immediate goal; but instead of turning aside for
either of those cities, he pushed straight northward, on a route
midway between them, toward Columbia.
This march, though not so romantic as that through Georgia, where a
great army was for several weeks hidden from all its friends, was
really much more difficult and dangerous, and required greater skill.
In the march from Atlanta to the sea, the army moved parallel with the
courses of the rivers, and found highways between them that it was not
easy for any but a large force to obstruct or destroy. But in the
march through the Carolinas, all the streams, and some of them were
rivers, had to be crossed. A single man could burn a bridge and stop
an army for several hours. Moreover, after the disasters that befell
General Hood at Franklin and Nashville, public sentiment in the
Confederacy had demanded the reinstatement of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston,
and that able soldier had been placed in command of whatever remained
of Hood's army, to which were added all the scattered detachments and
garrisons that were available, and with this force he took the field
against his old antagonist. Of course he was not able now to meet
Sherman in anything like a pitched battle; but there was no telling
how a sudden blow {440} might fall upon an army on the march. Another
danger, which was seriously contemplated by Sherman, was that Lee,
instead of remaining in his intrenchments while his source of supply
was being cut off, might with his whole army slip away from Grant and
come down to strike Sherman somewhere between Columbia and Raleigh.
With a caution that admirably balanced his boldness, Sherman arranged
to have the fleet coöperate with him along the coast, watching his
progress and establishing points where supplies could be reached and
refuge taken if necessary. He even sent engineers to repair the
railroads that, starting from the ports of Wilmington and Newbern,
unite at Goldsboro', and to collect rolling-stock there. He intended,
when once under way, to push through to Goldsboro', four hundred and
twenty-five miles, as rapidly as possible.
Wheeler's cavalry had been considerably reduced by its constant
efforts to delay the march through Georgia, and Wade Hampton's,
heretofore with the Army of Northern Virginia, was now sent down to
its assistance. They felled trees in the roads, and attempted to make
a stand at Salkehatchie River; but Sherman's men made nothing of
picking up the trees and casting them one side, while the force at the
river was quickly brushed away. The South Carolina Railroad was soon
reached, and the track was destroyed for miles. Then all the columns
pushed on for Columbia. Sherman expected to meet serious opposition
there, for it was the capital of the State; but the Confederate
leaders were holding their forces at Charleston and Augusta,
confidently expecting those cities to be attacked, and nothing but
Hampton's cavalry was left to take care of Columbia. The main
difficulty was at the rivers, where the Confederates had burned the
bridges, which Sherman's men rapidly rebuilt, and on the 17th the
National troops entered the city as Hampton's cavalry left it. Bales
of cotton piled up in the streets were on fire, there was a high wind,
and the flakes of cotton were flying through the air like a
snow-storm. In spite of all efforts of the soldiers, the fire
persistently spread at night, several buildings burst into a blaze,
and before morning the heart of the city was a heap of ruins. There
has been an acrimonious dispute as to the responsibility for this
fire. It seems probable that Hampton's soldiers set fire to the
cotton, perhaps without orders, and it seems improbable that any one
would purposely set fire to the city. At all events, Sherman's men did
their utmost to extinguish the flames, and that general gave the
citizens five hundred head of cattle, and did what he could to shelter
them. He did destroy the arsenal purposely, and tons of powder, shot,
and shell were taken out of it, hauled to the river, and sunk in deep
water. He also destroyed the foundries and the establishment in which
the Confederacy's paper money was printed, large quantities of which
were found and carried away by the soldiers.
That same day, the 18th, Charleston was evacuated by the Confederate
forces under General Hardee, and a brigade of National troops
commanded by General Schimmelpfennig promptly took possession of it.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL ADELBERT AMES AND STAFF.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL NATHAN GOFF, JR.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL ALBERT M. BLACKMAN.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOSEPH C. ABBOTT.]
On the 20th, leaving Columbia, Sherman's army bore away for
Fayetteville, the right wing going through Cheraw, and the left
through Lancaster and Sneedsboro', and threatening {441} Charlotte and
Salisbury. The most serious difficulty was met at Catawba River, where
the bridges were destroyed, the floods interfered with the building of
new ones, and there was a delay of nearly a week. In Cheraw was stored
a large amount of valuable personal property, including fine furniture
and costly wines, which had been sent from Charleston for
safe-keeping. Most of this fell into the hands of the invading army.
Here also were found a large number of arms and thirty-six hundred
barrels of powder; and here, as at Columbia, lives were lost by the
carelessness of a soldier in exploding the powder.
Fayetteville was reached on the 11th of March, and here communication
was opened with Gen. Alfred H. Terry, whose men had captured Fort
Fisher, below Wilmington, after a gallant fight, in January, and later
the city itself, thus closing that harbor to blockade-runners. In
taking the fort, Terry's men had fought their way from traverse to
traverse, and the stubborn garrison had only yielded when they
literally reached the last ditch. All this time the Confederate
forces, somewhat scattered, had hung on the flanks of Sherman's column
or disposed themselves to protect the points that were threatened. But
now they knew he was going to Goldsboro', and accordingly they
concentrated in his front, between Fayetteville and that place.
At Averysboro', thirty-five miles south of Raleigh, on the 16th of
March, the left wing suddenly came upon Hardee's forces intrenched
across its path. The left flank of the Confederates was soon turned,
and they fell back to a stronger position. Here a direct attack was
made, but without success, and Kilpatrick's cavalry was roughly
handled by a division of Confederate infantry. General Slocum then
began a movement to turn the flank again, and in the night Hardee
retreated. Each side had lost five hundred men.
Averysboro' is about forty miles west of Goldsboro'. Midway between is
Bentonville, where on the 19th the left wing again found the enemy
intrenched across the way, this time in greater force, and commanded
by General Johnston. Thickets of blackjack protected the flanks, and
it was ugly ground for fighting over. Slocum's men attacked the
position in force as soon as they came upon it. They quickly broke the
Confederate right flank, drove it back, and planted batteries to
command that part of the field. On the other flank the thickets
interfered more with the organization of both sides, the National
troops threw up intrenchments, both combatants attacked alternately,
and the fighting was very bloody. After nightfall the Confederates
withdrew toward Raleigh, and the road was then open for Sherman to
march into Goldsboro'. At Bentonville, the last battle fought by this
army, the National loss was sixteen hundred and four men, the
Confederate twenty-three hundred and forty-two. At Goldsboro' Sherman
was joined by Schofield's corps, which had been transferred thither
from Thomas's army.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD O. C. ORD.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE A. CUSTER.]
Several attempts to negotiate a peace were made during the winter of
1864-65, the most notable of which took place early in February, when
Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, accompanied
by John A. Campbell and Robert M. T. Hunter, applied for permission to
pass through Grant's lines for the purpose. They were conducted to
Fort Monroe, met President Lincoln and Secretary Seward on a steamer
in Hampton Roads, and had a long and free discussion. The Confederate
commissioners proposed an armistice, with the hope that after a time,
if trade and friendly relations were resumed, some sort of settlement
or compromise could be reached without more fighting. But Mr. Lincoln
would consent to no peace or armistice of any kind, except on
condition of the immediate {442} disbandment of the Confederate armies
and government, the restoration of the Union, and the abolition of
slavery. With these points secured, he was willing to concede
everything else. Mr. Stephens, trying to convince Mr. Lincoln that he
might properly recognize the Confederacy, cited the example of Charles
I. of England negotiating with his rebellious subjects. "I am not
strong on history," said Lincoln; "I depend mainly on Secretary Seward
for that. All I remember about Charles is, that he lost his head." The
Confederate commissioners were not authorized to concede the
restoration of the Union, and thus the conference ended with no
practical result.
Late in February General Sheridan, at the head of ten thousand
cavalry, moved far up the Shenandoah Valley, and at Waynesboro' his
third division, commanded by General Custer, met Early's force on the
2d of March. In the engagements that ensued, Early was completely
defeated, and about fifteen hundred of his men were captured, together
with every gun he had, and all his trains. Sheridan then ruined the
locks in the James River Canal, destroyed portions of the railroads
toward Lynchburg and Gordonsville, and rode down the peninsula to
White House, crossed over to the James and joined Grant, taking post
on the left of the army, and occupying Dinwiddie Court House on the
29th.
[Illustration: GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN.]
Grant and Lee had both been waiting impatiently for the roads to dry,
so that wagons and guns could be moved--Lee, because he saw that
Richmond could not be held any longer, and was anxious to get away;
Grant, because he was anxious to begin the final campaign and prevent
Lee from getting away. The only chance for Lee to escape was by
slipping past Grant's left, and either joining Johnston in North
Carolina or taking a position in the mountainous country to the west.
But Grant's left extended too far westward to permit of this without
great hazard. To compel him to contract his lines, drawing in his
left, Lee planned a bold attack on his right, which was executed in
the night of the 24th. Large numbers of deserters had recently left
the {443} Confederate army and walked across to Grant's lines,
bringing their arms with them, and this circumstance was now used for
a ruse. At a point where the hostile lines were not more than a
hundred yards apart, some of General Gordon's men walked out to the
National picket-line as if they were deserters, seized the pickets,
and sent them back as prisoners. Then a column charged through the
gap, surprised the men in the main line, and captured a section of the
works. But General Parke, commanding the Ninth Corps, where the
assault was delivered, promptly made dispositions to check it. The
Confederates were headed off in both directions, and a large number of
guns were soon planted where they could sweep the ground that had been
captured. A line of intrenchments was thrown up in the rear, and the
survivors of the charging column found themselves where they could
neither go forward, nor retreat, nor be reinforced. Consequently they
were all made prisoners. This affair cost the Confederates about four
thousand men, and inflicted a loss of two thousand upon the National
army.
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL ROMEYN B. AYRES.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY E. DAVIES, JR.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL AUGUST V. KAUTZ. MAJOR-GENERAL
GODFREY WEITZEL.]
Grant, instead of contracting his lines, was making dispositions to
extend them. Three divisions under Gen. E. O. C. Ord were brought from
his right, before Richmond, in the night of the 27th, and placed on
his extreme left, while a movement was planned for the 29th by which
that wing was to be pushed out to the Southside Railroad. When the day
appointed for the movement arrived, heavy rains had made the ground so
soft that the roads had to be corduroyed before the artillery could be
dragged over them. But the army was used to this sort of work, and
performed it with marvellous quickness. Small trees were cut down, and
rail fences disappeared in a twinkling, while the rude flooring thus
constructed stretched out over the sodden road and kept the wheels of
the guns from sinking hopelessly in the mire and quicksands.
{444} [Illustration: SHERIDAN AND HIS GENERALS RECONNOITRING AT FIVE
FORKS (DINWIDDIE COURT-HOUSE).]
Grant's extreme left, where the critical movement was to be made, was
now held by his most energetic lieutenant, General Sheridan, with his
magnificent cavalry. By Grant's orders, Sheridan made a march through
Dinwiddie Court House, to come in upon the extreme Confederate right
at Five Forks, which he struck on the 31st. He had no difficulty in
driving away the Confederate cavalry; but when a strong infantry force
was encountered he was himself driven back, and called upon Grant for
help. Grant sent the Fifth Corps to his assistance; but it was
unusually slow in moving, and was stopped by the loss of a bridge at
Gravelly Run, so that it was midday of April 1st before Sheridan began
to get it in hand. Lee had strengthened the force holding Five Forks;
but Sheridan was determined to capture the place, and when his troops
were all up, late in the afternoon, he opened the battle on a
well-conceived plan. {445} Engaging the enemy with his cavalry in
front, he used the Fifth Corps as if it were his immense right arm,
swinging it around so as to embrace and crush the Confederate force.
With bloody but brief fighting the manoeuvre was successful; Five
Forks was secured, and more than five thousand prisoners were taken.
Sheridan's loss was about one thousand. In the hour of victory came
orders from Sheridan relieving Warren of his command, because of that
officer's slowness in bringing his corps to the attack. Whether this
harsh action was justified or not, it threw a blight upon the career
of one of the best corps commanders that the Army of the Potomac ever
had, and excited the regret, if not the indignation, of every man that
had served under him.
Judging that Lee must have drawn forces from other parts of his line
to strengthen his right, Grant followed up the advantage by attacking
Lee's centre at daybreak the next morning, Sunday, April 2d, with the
corps of Wright and Parke, the Sixth and Ninth. Both of these broke
through the Confederate lines in the face of a musketry fire, took
large portions of them in reverse, and captured three or four thousand
prisoners and several guns. The Second Corps, under Gen. Andrew A.
Humphreys, and three divisions under General Ord, made a similar
movement, with similar success; Sheridan moved up on the left, and the
outer defences of Petersburg were now in the possession of the
National forces, who encircled the city with a continuous line from a
point on the Appomattox River above to one below. Two strong
earthworks, Forts Gregg and Whitworth, salient to the inner
Confederate line, still held out. But Foster's division of the
Twenty-fourth Corps carried Fort Gregg after a costly assault, and
Fort Whitworth then surrendered. In the fighting of this day the
Confederate general A. P. Hill was killed.
General Lee now sent a telegram to Richmond, saying that both cities
must be evacuated. It was received in church by Mr. Davis, who quietly
withdrew without waiting for the service to be finished. As the signs
of evacuation became evident to the people, there was a general rush
for means of conveyance, and property of all sorts was brought into
the streets in confused masses. Committees appointed by the city
council attempted to destroy all the liquor, and hundreds of
barrelfuls were poured into the gutters. The great tobacco warehouses
were set on fire, under military orders, and the iron-clad rams in the
river blown up; while a party of drunken soldiers began a course of
pillaging, which became contagious and threw everything into the
wildest confusion. The next morning a detachment of black troops from
Gen. Godfrey Weitzel's command marched into the city, and the flag of
the Twelfth Maine Regiment was hoisted over the Capitol.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL A. H. COLQUITT, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WADE HAMPTON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL G. W. C. LEE, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL STEPHEN ELLIOTT, JR., C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM MAHONE, C. S. A.]
When Lee, with the remnant of his army, withdrew from Richmond and
Petersburg, he fled westward, still keeping up the organization,
though his numbers were constantly {446} diminishing by desertion,
straggling, and capture. Grant was in close pursuit, striving to head
him off, and determined not to let him escape. He moved mainly on a
parallel route south of Lee's, attacking vigorously whenever any
portion of the hostile forces approached near enough. Some of these
engagements were very sharply contested; and as the men on both sides
had attained the highest perfection of destructive skill, and were not
sheltered by intrenchments, the losses were severe, and the seventy
miles of the race was a long track of blood. There were collisions at
Jetersville, Detonville, Deep Creek, Sailor's Creek, Paine's Cross
Roads, and Farmville; the most important being that at Sailor's Creek,
where Custer broke the Confederate line, capturing four hundred
wagons, sixteen guns, and many prisoners, and then the Sixth Corps
came up and captured the whole of Ewell's corps, including Ewell
himself and four other generals. Lee was stopped by the loss of a
provision train, and spent a day in trying to collect from the
surrounding country something for his famished soldiers to eat.
[Illustration: DEFENCE OF FORT GREGG, PETERSBURG.]
When he arrived at Appomattox Court House, April 9th, a week from the
day he set out, he found Sheridan's dismounted cavalry in line across
his path, and his infantry advanced confidently to brush them away.
But the cavalrymen drew off to the right, and disclosed a heavy line
of blue-coated infantry and gleaming steel. Before this the weary
Confederates recoiled, and just as Sheridan was preparing to charge
upon their flank with his cavalry a white flag was sent out and
hostilities were suspended on information that negotiations for a
surrender were in progress. Grant had first demanded Lee's surrender
in a note written on the afternoon of the 7th. Three or four other
notes had passed between them, and on the 9th the two commanders met
at a house in the village, where they wrote and exchanged two brief
letters by which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia was
effected; the terms being simply that the men were to lay down their
arms and return to their homes, not to be molested so long as they did
not again take up arms against the United States. The exceeding
generosity of these terms, to an army that had exacted almost the last
life it had power to destroy, was a surprise to many who remembered
the unconditional surrender that General Grant had demanded at
Vicksburg and Fort Donelson. But he considered that the war was over,
and thought the defeated insurgents would at once return to their
homes and become good citizens of the United States. In pursuance of
this idea, he ordered that they be permitted to take their horses with
them, as they "would need them for the ploughing." The starving
Confederates were immediately fed by their captors; and, by General
Grant's orders, cheering, firing of salutes, and other demonstrations
of exultation over the great and decisive victory were immediately
stopped. The number of officers and men paroled, according to the
terms of the surrender, was twenty-eight thousand three hundred and
sixty-five.
The next day General Lee issued, in the form of a general order, a
farewell address to his army in which he lauded them in unmeasured
terms, to the implied disparagement of their conquerors, and assured
them of his "unceasing admiration of their constancy and devotion to
their country." It seems not to have occurred to the general that he
had no army, for it had been taken away from him, and no right to
issue a military document of any kind, for he was a prisoner of war;
and he certainly must have forgotten that the costly court of last
resort, to which he and they had appealed, had just decided that their
country as he defined it had no existence.
General Johnston, who was confronting Sherman in North Carolina,
surrendered his army to that commander at Durham Station, near
Raleigh, on the 26th of April, receiving the same terms that had been
granted to Lee; and the surrender of all the other Confederate armies
soon followed, the last being the command of Gen. E. Kirby Smith, at
Shreveport, La., on the 26th of May. The number of Johnston's
immediate command surrendered and paroled was thirty-six thousand
eight hundred and seventeen, to whom were added fifty-two thousand
four hundred and fifty-three in Georgia and Florida.
{447} [Illustration: THE McLEAN HOUSE WHERE GENERAL LEE SURRENDERED TO
GENERAL GRANT.]
[Illustration: THE SURRENDER OF GENERAL LEE.]
{448}
CHAPTER XLIV.
PEACE.
THE WAR GOVERNORS--CIVILIAN PATRIOTS--THE SUDDEN FALL OF THE
CONFEDERACY--CAPTURE OF MR. DAVIS--CHARACTER OF THE
INSURRECTION--MAGNANIMITY OF THE VICTORS--THE ASSASSINATION
CONSPIRACY--LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS--LINCOLN IN
RICHMOND--THE GRAND REVIEW--THE HOME-COMING--LESSONS OF THE WAR.
No account of the war, however brief, can properly be closed without
some mention of the forces other than military that contributed to its
success. The assistance and influence of the "war governors," as they
were called--including John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, William A.
Buckingham of Connecticut, Edwin D. Morgan of New York, William
Dennison of Ohio, and Oliver P. Morton of Indiana--was vital to the
cause, and was acknowledged as generously as it was given. There was
also a class of citizens who, by reason of age or other disability,
did not go to the front, and would not have been permitted to, but
found a way to assist the Government perhaps even more efficiently.
They were thoughtful and scholarly men, who brought out and placed at
the service of their country every lesson that could be drawn from
history; practical and experienced men, whose hard sense and knowledge
of affairs made them natural leaders in the councils of the people;
men of fervid eloquence, whose arguments and appeals aroused all there
was of latent patriotism in their younger and hardier countrymen, and
contributed wonderfully to the rapidity with which quotas were filled
and regiments forwarded to the seat of war. There were great numbers
of devoted women, who performed uncomplainingly the hardest hospital
service, and managed great fairs and relief societies with an
enthusiasm that never wearied. And there were the Sanitary and
Christian Commissions, whose agents went everywhere between the dépôt
in the rear and the skirmish-line in front, carrying not only whatever
was needed to alleviate the sufferings of the sick and wounded, but
also many things to beguile the tedious hours in camp and diminish the
serious evil of homesickness.
It was a common remark, at the time, that the Confederacy crumbled
more suddenly in 1865 than it had risen in 1861. It seemed like an
empty shell, which, when fairly broken through, had no more stability,
and instantly fell to ruins. It was fortunate that when the end came
Lee's army was the first to surrender, since all the other commanders
felt justified in following his example. To some on the Confederate
side, especially in Virginia, the surrender was a surprise, and came
like a personal and irreparable grief. But people in other parts of
the South, especially those who had seen Sherman's legions marching by
their doors, knew that the end was coming. Longstreet had pronounced
the cause lost by Lee's want of generalship at Gettysburg; Ewell had
said there was no use in fighting longer when Grant had swung his army
across the James; Johnston and his lieutenants declared it wrong to
keep up the hopeless struggle after the capital had been abandoned and
the Army of Northern Virginia had laid down its weapons, and so
expressed themselves to Mr. Davis when he stopped to confer with them,
in North Carolina, on his flight southward. He said their fortunes
might still be retrieved, and independence established, if those who
were absent from the armies without leave would but return to their
places. He probably understood the situation as well as General
Johnston did, and may have spoken not so much from judgment as from a
consciousness of greater responsibility, a feeling that as he was the
first citizen of the Confederacy he was the last that had any right to
despair of it.
Nevertheless, he continued his flight through the Carolinas into
Georgia; his cabinet officers, most of whom had set out with him from
Richmond, leaving him one after another. When he had arrived at
Irwinsville, Ga., accompanied by his family and Postmaster-General
Reagan, their little encampment in the woods was surprised, on the
morning of May 11th, by two detachments of Wilson's cavalry, and they
were all taken prisoners. In the gray of the morning the two
detachments, approaching from different sides, fired into each other
before they discovered that they were friends, and two soldiers were
killed and several wounded. Mr. Davis was taken to Savannah, and
thence to Fort Monroe, where he was a prisoner for two years, after
which he was released on bail--his bondsmen being Cornelius
Vanderbilt, Horace Greeley, and Gerrit Smith, a life-long
abolitionist. He was never tried.
The secession movement had been proved to be a rebellion and nothing
else--although the mightiest of all rebellions. It never rose to the
character of a revolution; for it never had possession of the capital
or the public archives, never stopped the wheels of the Government for
a single day, was suppressed in the end, and attained none of its
objects. But although it was clearly a rebellion, and although its
armed struggle had been maintained after all prospect of success had
disappeared, such was the magnanimity of the National Government and
the Northern people that its leaders escaped the usual fate of rebels.
Except by temporary political disabilities, not one of them was
punished--neither Mr. Davis nor Mr. Stephens, nor any member of the
Confederate cabinet or congress; neither Lee nor Johnston, nor any of
their lieutenants, not even Beauregard who advocated the black flag,
nor Forrest who massacred his prisoners at Fort Pillow. Most of the
officers of high rank in the Confederate army were graduates of the
Military Academy at West Point, and had used their military education
in an attempt to destroy the very government that gave it to them, and
to which they had solemnly sworn allegiance. Some of them, notably
General Lee, had rushed into the rebel service without waiting for the
United States War Department to accept their resignations. But all
such ugly facts were suppressed or forgotten, in the extreme anxiety
of the victors lest they should not be sufficiently magnanimous toward
the vanquished. There was but a single act of capital punishment. The
keeper of the Andersonville stockade was tried, convicted, and
executed for cruelty to prisoners. His more guilty superior, General
Winder, died two months before the surrender. Two months after that
event, the secessionist that had sought the privilege of firing the
first gun at the flag of his country, committed suicide rather than
live under its protection. The popular cry that soon arose was,
"Universal amnesty and universal suffrage!"
No such exhibition of mercy has been seen before or since. Four years
previous to this war, there was a rebellion against the authority of
the British Government; six years after it, there was one against the
French Government; and in both instances the conquered insurgents were
punished with the utmost severity. In our own country there had been
several minor insurrections preceding the great one. In such of these
as were aimed against the institution of slavery--Vesey's, Turner's,
and {449} Brown's--the offenders suffered the extreme penalty of the
law; in the others--Fries's, Shays's, Dorr's, and the whiskey
war--they were punished very lightly or not at all.
[Illustration: THE LAST MEETING OF THE CONFEDERATE CABINET.]
[Illustration: JEFFERSON DAVIS. (From a photograph taken in 1881.)]
The general feeling in the country was of relief that the war was
ended--hardly less at the South than at the North. After the surrender
of the various armies, the soldiers so recently in arms against each
other behaved more like brothers than like enemies. The Confederates
were fed liberally from the abundant supplies of the National
commissariat, and many of them were furnished with transportation to
their homes in distant States. Some of them had been absent from their
families during the whole war.
If the people of the North had any disposition to be boisterous over
the final victory, it was completely quelled by the shadow of a great
sorrow that suddenly fell upon them. A conspiracy had been in progress
for a long time among a few half-crazy secessionists in and about the
capital. It culminated on the night of Good Friday, April 14, 1865.
One of the conspirators forced his way into Secretary Seward's house
and attacked the Secretary with a knife, but did not succeed in
killing him. Mr. Seward had been thrown from a carriage a few days
before, and was lying in bed with his jaws encased in a metallic
frame-work, which probably saved his life. The chief conspirator, an
obscure actor, made his way into the box at Ford's Theatre where the
President and his wife were sitting, witnessing the comedy of "Our
American Cousin," shot Mr. Lincoln in the back of the head, jumped
from the box to the stage with a flourish of bravado shouting "_Sic
semper tyrannis!_" and escaped behind the scenes and out at the stage
door. The dying President was carried to a house across the street,
where he expired the next morning. As the principal Confederate army
had already surrendered, it was impossible for any one to suppose that
the killing of the President could affect the result of the war.
Furthermore, Mr. Lincoln had long been in the habit of going to the
War Department in the evening, and returning to the White House,
unattended, late at night; so that an assassin who merely wished to
put him out of the way had abundant opportunities for doing so, with
good chances of escaping and concealing his own identity. It was
therefore perfectly obvious that the murderer's principal motive was
the same as that of the youth who set fire to the temple of Diana at
Ephesus. And the newspapers did their utmost to give him the notoriety
that he craved, displaying his name in large type at the head of their
columns, and repeating about him every anecdote that could be recalled
or manufactured. The consequence was that sixteen years later the
country was disgraced by another Presidential assassination, mainly
from the same motive; and, as the journalists repeated their folly on
that occasion, we {450} shall perhaps have still another by and by.
Mr. Lincoln had grown steadily in the affections and admiration of the
people. His state papers were the most remarkable in American annals;
his firmness where firmness was required, and kindheartedness where
kindness was practicable, were almost unfailing; and as the successive
events of the war called forth his powers, it was seen that he had
unlimited shrewdness and tact, statesmanship of the broadest kind, and
that honesty of purpose which is the highest wisdom. Moreover, his
lack of all vindictive feeling toward the insurgents, and his steady
endeavor to make the restored Union a genuine republic of equal
rights, gave tone to the feelings of the whole nation, and at the last
won many admirers among his foes in arms. In his second inaugural
address, a month before his death, he seemed to speak with that
insight and calm judgment which we only look for in the studious
historian in aftertimes. "Neither party expected for the war the
magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even
before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier
triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the
same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against
the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just
God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's
faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both
could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. If we
shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in
the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives
to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by
whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from
those divine attributes which the believers in a loving God always
ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it
continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and
fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said,
'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we
are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and
with all nations."
[Illustration: JEFFERSON DAVIS'S BODYGUARD.]
A day or two after the evacuation of Richmond, Mr. Lincoln walked
through its smoking and disordered streets, where the negroes crowded
about him and called down all sorts of uncouth but sincere blessings
on his head. He had lived to enter the enemy's capital, lived to see
the authority of the United States restored over the whole country,
and then was snatched away, when the people were as much as ever in
need of his genius for the solution of new problems that suddenly
confronted them.
The funeral train retraced the same route over which Mr. Lincoln had
gone to Washington from his home in Springfield, Ill., four years
before; and to the sorrowful crowds that were gathered at every
station, and even along the track in the country, it seemed as if the
light of the nation had gone out forever.
The armies returning from the field were brought to Washington for a
grand review before being mustered out of service. The city was
decorated with flags, mottoes, and floral designs, and the streets
were thronged with people, many of whom carried wreaths and bouquets.
The Army of the Potomac was reviewed on May 23d, and Sherman's army on
the 24th, the troops marching in close column around the Capitol and
down Pennsylvania Avenue to the music of their bands. As they passed
the grand stand at the White House, where President Johnson and his
{451} cabinet reviewed them, the officers saluted with their swords,
and commanders of divisions dismounted and went upon the stand.
The armies were quickly disbanded, and each regiment, on its arrival
home, was given a public reception and a fitting welcome. The men were
well dressed and well fed, but their bronzed faces and their tattered
and smoky battle-flags told where they had been. It was computed that
the loss of life in the Confederate service was about equal to that in
the National. Their losses in battle, as they were generally on the
defensive, were smaller, but their means of caring for the wounded
were inferior. Thus it cost us nearly six hundred thousand lives and
more than six thousand million dollars to destroy the doctrine of
State sovereignty, abolish the system of slavery, and begin the career
of the United States as a nation.
The home-coming at the North was almost as sorrowful as at the South,
because of those that came not. In all the festivities and rejoicings
there was hardly a participator whose joy was not saddened by missing
some well-known face and form now numbered with the silent three
hundred thousand. Grant was there, the commander that had never taken
a step backward; and Farragut was there, the sailor without an equal;
and the unfailing Sherman, and the patient Thomas, and the intrepid
Hancock, and the fiery Sheridan, and the brilliant Custer, and many of
lesser rank, who in a smaller theatre of conflict would have won a
larger fame. But where was young Ellsworth?--shot dead as soon as he
crossed the Potomac. And Winthrop--killed in the first battle, with
his best books unwritten. And Lyon--fallen at the head of his little
army in Missouri, the first summer of the war. And Baker--sacrificed
at Ball's Bluff. And Kearny at Chantilly, and Reno at South Mountain,
and Mansfield at Antietam, and Reynolds at Gettysburg, and Wadsworth
in the Wilderness, and Sedgwick at Spottsylvania, and McPherson before
Atlanta, and Craven in his monitor at the bottom of the sea, and
thousands of others, the best and bravest--all gone--all, like Latour,
the immortal captain, dead on the field of honor, but none the less
dead and a loss to their mourning country. The hackneyed allegory of
Curtius had been given a startling illustration and a new
significance. The South, too, had lost heavily of her foremost
citizens in the great struggle--Bee and Bartow, at Bull Run; Albert
Sidney Johnston, leading a desperate charge at Shiloh; Zollicoffer,
soldier and journalist, at Mill Spring; Stonewall Jackson, Lee's right
arm, at Chancellorsville; Polk, priest and warrior, at Lost Mountain;
Armistead, wavering between two allegiances and fighting alternately
for each, and Barksdale and Garnett--all at Gettysburg; Hill, at
Petersburg; and the dashing Stuart, and Daniel, and Perrin, and
Dearing, and Doles, and numberless others. The sudden hush and sense
of awe that impresses a child when he steps upon a single grave, may
well overcome the strongest man when he looks upon the face of his
country scarred with battlefields like these, and considers what blood
of manhood was rudely wasted there. And the slain were mostly young,
unmarried men, whose native virtues fill no living veins, and will not
shine again on any field.
[Illustration: RICHMOND AFTER THE EVACUATION--SHOWING THE EFFECT OF
THE FIRE. (From a War Department photograph.)]
{452} [Illustration: GRAND REVIEW OF THE ARMY, WASHINGTON, MAY 23-24,
1865.]
It is poor business measuring the mouldered ramparts and counting the
silent guns, marking the deserted battlefields and decorating the
grassy graves, unless we can learn from it all some nobler lesson than
to destroy. Men write of this, as of other wars, as if the only thing
necessary to be impressed upon the rising generation were the virtue
of physical courage and contempt of death. It seems to me that is the
last thing that we need to teach; for since the days of John Smith in
Virginia and the men of the _Mayflower_ in Massachusetts, no
generation of Americans has shown any lack of it. From Louisburg to
{453} Petersburg--a hundred and twenty years, the full span of four
generations--they have stood to their guns and been shot down in
greater comparative numbers than any other race on earth. In the war
of secession there was not a State, not a county, probably not a town,
between the great lakes and the gulf, that was not represented on
fields where all that men could do with powder and steel was done, and
valor was exhibited at its highest pitch. It was a common saying in
the Army of the Potomac that courage was the cheapest thing there; and
it might have been said of all the other armies as well. There is not
the slightest necessity for lauding American bravery or impressing it
upon American youth. But there is the gravest necessity for teaching
them respect for law, and reverence for human life, and regard for the
rights of their fellow-men, and all that is significant in the history
of our country--lest their feet run to evil and they make haste to
shed innocent blood. I would be glad to convince my compatriots that
it is not enough to think they are right, but they are bound to know
they are right, before they rush into any experiments that are to cost
the lives of men and the tears of orphans, in their own land or in any
other. I would warn them to beware of provincial conceit. I would have
them comprehend that one may fight bravely, and still be a perjured
felon; that one may die humbly, and still be a patriot whom his
country cannot afford to lose; that as might does not make right, so
neither do rags and bare feet necessarily argue a noble cause. I would
teach them that it is criminal either to hide the truth or to refuse
assent to that which they see must follow logically from ascertained
truth. I would show them that a political lie is as despicable as a
personal lie, whether uttered in an editorial, or a platform, or a
President's message, or a colored cartoon, or a disingenuous ballot;
and that political chicanery, when long persisted in, is liable to
settle its shameful account in a stoppage of civilization and a
spilling of life. These are simple lessons, yet they are not taught in
a day, and some whom we call educated go through life without
mastering them at all.
It may be useful to learn from one war how to conduct another; but it
is infinitely better to learn how to avert another. I am doubly
anxious to impress this consideration upon my readers, because history
seems to show us that armed conflicts have a tendency to come in
pairs, with an interval of a few years, and because I think I see, in
certain circumstances now existing within our beloved Republic, the
elements of a second civil war. No American citizen should lightly
repeat that the result is worth all it cost, unless he has considered
how heavy was the cost, and is doing his utmost to perpetuate the
result. To strive to forget the great war, for the sake of sentimental
politics, is to cast away our dearest experience and invite, in some
troubled future, the destruction we so hardly escaped in the past.
There can be remembrance without animosity, but there cannot be
oblivion without peril.
[Illustration: AN EXPLODED GUN IN THE DEFENCE OF RICHMOND.]
THE FIRST UNITED STATES FLAG RAISED IN RICHMOND AFTER THE WAR.
BY MRS. LASALLE CORBELL PICKETT, Wife of Major-General George E.
Pickett, C. S. A.
The first knell of the evacuation of Richmond sounded on Sunday
morning while we were on our knees in St. Paul's Church, invoking
God's protecting care for our absent loved ones, and blessings on our
cause.
The intense excitement, the tolling of the bells, the hasty parting,
the knowledge that all communication would be cut off between us and
our loved ones, and the dread, undefined fear in our helplessness and
desertion, make a nightmare memory.
General Ewell had orders for the destruction of the public buildings,
which orders our Secretary of War, Gen. J. C. Breckenridge, strove
earnestly but without avail to have countermanded. The order, alas!
was obeyed beyond "the letter of the law."
The terrible conflagration was kindled by the Confederate authorities,
who applied the torch to the Shockoe warehouse, it, too, being classed
among the public buildings because of the {454} tobacco belonging to
France and England stored in it. A fresh breeze was blowing from the
south; the fire swept on in its haste and fury over a great area in an
almost incredibly short time, and by noon the flames had transformed
into a desert waste all the city bounded by Seventh and Fifteenth
Streets, and Main Street and the river. One thousand houses were
destroyed. The streets were filled with furniture and every
description of wares, dashed down to be trampled in the mud or buried
where they lay.
At night a saturnalia began. About dark, the Government commissary
began the destruction of its stores. Soldiers and citizens gathered in
front, catching the liquor in basins and pitchers; some with their
hats and some with their boots. It took but a short time for this to
make a manifestation as dread as the flames. The crowd became a
howling mob, so frenzied that the officers of the law had to flee for
their lives, reviving memories of 1781, when the British under Arnold
rode down Richmond Hill, and, invading the city, broke open the stores
and emptied the provisions and liquors into the gutters, making even
the uninitiated cows and hogs drunk for days.
All through the night, crowds of men, women, and children traversed
the streets, loading themselves with supplies and plunder. At
midnight, soldiers drunk with vile liquor, followed by a reckless
crowd as drunk as themselves, dashed in the plate-glass windows of the
stores, and made a wreck of everything.
About nine o'clock on Monday morning, terrific shell explosions, rapid
and continuous, added to the terror of the scene, and gave the
impression that the city was being shelled by the retreating
Confederate army from the south side. But the explosions were soon
found to proceed from the Government arsenal and laboratory, then in
flames. Later in the morning, a merciful Providence caused a lull in
the breeze. The terrific explosion of the laboratory and of the
arsenal caused every window in our home to break. The old plate-glass
mirrors, built in the walls, were cracked and shattered.
Fort Darling was blown up, and later on the rams. It was eight o'clock
when the Federal troops entered the city. It required the greatest
effort to tame down the riotous, crazed mob, and induce them to take
part in the struggle to save their own. The firemen, afraid of the
soldiers who had obeyed the orders to light the torch, would not
listen to any appeals or entreaties, and so the flames were under full
headway, fanned by a southern breeze, when the Union soldiers came to
the rescue.
The flouring mills caught fire from the tobacco houses, communicating
it to Cary and Main Streets. Every bank was destroyed. The War
Department was a mass of ruins; the _Enquirer_ and _Dispatch_ offices
were in ashes; and the county court-house, the American Hotel, and
most of the finest stores of the city were ruined.
Libby Prison and the Presbyterian church escaped. Such a reign of
terror and pillage, fire and flame, fear and despair! The yelling and
howling and swearing and weeping and wailing beggar description.
Families houseless and homeless under the open sky!
I shall never forget General Weitzel's command, composed exclusively
of colored troops, as I saw them through the dense black columns of
smoke. General Weitzel had for some time been stationed on the north
side of the James River, but a few miles from Richmond, and he had
only to march in and take possession. He despatched Major A. H.
Stevens of the Fourth Massachusetts cavalry, and Major E. E. Graves of
his staff, with about a hundred mounted men, to reconnoitre the roads
and works leading to Richmond. They had gone but a little distance
into the Confederate lines, when they saw a shabby, old-fashioned
carriage, drawn by a pair of lean, lank horses, the occupants waving a
white flag. They met this flag-of-truce party at the line of
fortifications, just beyond the junction of the Osborne turnpike and
New Market road. The carriage contained the mayor of Richmond--Colonel
Mayo--Judge Meredith of the Supreme Court, and Judge Lyons. The fourth
worthy I cannot recall. Judge Lyons, our former minister to England,
and one of the representative men of Virginia, made the introductions
in his own characteristic way, and then Colonel Mayo, who was in
command of the flag-of-truce party, handed to Major Stevens a small
slip of wall paper, on which was written the following: "It is proper
to formally surrender to the Federal authorities the city of Richmond,
hitherto capital of the Confederate States of America, and the
defences protecting it up to this time." That was all. The document
was approved of, and Major Stevens most courteously accepted the terms
for his commanding general, to whom it was at once transmitted, and
moved his column upon the evacuated city, taking possession and saving
it from ashes.
His first order was to sound the alarm bells and to take command at
once of the fire department, which consisted of fourteen substitute
men, those who were exempt from service because of disease, two steam
fire engines, four worthless hand engines, and a large amount of hose,
destroyed by the retreating half-crazed Confederates. His next order
was to raise the stars and stripes over the Capitol. Quick as thought,
two soldiers, one from Company E and one from Company H of the Fourth
Massachusetts cavalry, crept to the summit and planted the flag of the
nation. Two bright, tasteful guidons were hoisted by the halyards in
place of the red cross. The living colors of the Union were greeted,
while our "Warriors' banner took its flight to meet the warrior's
soul."
That flag, whose design has been accredited alike to both George
Washington and John Adams, was raised over Virginia by Massachusetts,
in place of the one whose kinship and likeness had not, even after
renewed effort, been entirely destroyed. For by the adoption of the
stars and bars (three horizontal bars of equal width--the middle one
white, the others red--with a blue union of nine stars in a circle) by
the Confederate Congress in March, 1861, the Confederate flag was made
so akin and so similar to that of the nation, as to cause confusion;
so in 1863 the stars and bars was supplanted by a flag with a white
field, having the battle flag (a red field charged with a blue
saltier, on which were thirteen stars) for a union. This, having been
mistaken for a flag of truce, was altered by covering the outer half
of the field beyond the union with a vertical red bar. This was the
last flag of the Confederacy.
Richmond will testify that the soldiers of Massachusetts were worthy
of the honor of raising the first United States flag over her
Capitol--the Capitol of the Confederacy--and also to the unvarying
courtesy of Major Stevens, and the fidelity with which he kept his
trust.
{455}
HUMOROUS INCIDENTS OF THE WAR.
_The illustrations of this chapter are exact reproductions of cartoons
published during the war in various newspapers and periodicals._
FUN FROM ENLISTMENT TO HONORABLE DISCHARGE--RECRUITS' EXCUSES--BULL
RUN PLEASANTRIES--GREENHORNS IN CAMP--FUN WITH THE AWKWARD
SQUAD--OFFICERS LEARNING THEIR BUSINESS--SENTRIES AND SHOULDER
STRAPS--STORIES OF GRANT, LINCOLN, BUTLER, SHERMAN, ETC.--DUTCH,
IRISH, AND DARKY COMEDY--EXPEDIENTS OF THE HOMESICK--ARMY
CHAPLAINS--HOSPITAL HUMOR--GRANT'S "PIE ORDER"--"THROUGH
VIRGINIA"--YANKEE GOOD NATURE AND PLUCK A BETTER STIMULANT THAN
WHISKEY.
[Illustration]
The hardships of campaigning, the sufferings of the hospital, the
horrors of actual combat--none of these sufficed to keep down the
irrepressible spirit of fun in the American soldier. From the day of
his enlistment to the day of his discharge he did not cease to look
upon the funny side of every situation, and the veterans of to-day
talk more about the humor of the war than of privations and pitched
battles. Wits in and out of the army said and did clever things, some
of which have passed into the proverbs and idioms of the American
people; and more than one distinguished "American humorist" laid the
foundation of his reputation in connection with the war.
Humorous situations began at the very recruiting office, or the
citizens' meeting which stimulated recruiting, and continued to the
end of the service. It was at one of the meetings held in a New
England village that the wife of a spirited citizen, whose patriotism
consisted in brave words, said to him: "I thought you said you were
going to enlist to-night." Well, he had thought better of it. "Take
off those breeches, then, and give them to me, and I will go myself."
There was not much prospect of "peace" for him in a life at home after
that; so he went to the front. Countless excuses were offered by
candidates for the draft in the hope of proving themselves physically
disqualified for service. The man who had one leg too short was let
off; but the man behind him, who pleaded that he had "both legs too
short," failed to prove a double incapacity, and he wore the blue, and
that creditably.
[Illustration: MANAGER LINCOLN. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I regret to say
that the Tragedy, entitled _The Army of the Potomac_, has been
withdrawn on account of Quarrels among the leading Performers, and I
have substituted three new and striking Farces or Burlesques, one,
entitled _The Repulse at Vicksburg_, by the well-known, popular
favorite, E. M. STANTON, Esq., and the others, _The Loss of the
Harriet Lane_ and _The Exploits of the Alabama_--a very sweet thing in
Farces, I assure you--by the Veteran Composer, GIDEON WELLES."
(_Unbounded Applause by the_ COPPERHEADS.)]
Officers who tarried too long in Washington on their way to the front
were not seldom rendered uncomfortable by the remarks made to them or
in their hearing. One who was eager for news from the first battle of
Bull Run bought an "extra" of a newsboy who was calling, "All about
the battle!" Glancing over it, he shouted after the boy: "Here! I
don't see any battle in this paper." "Don't you?" said the boy. "Well,
you won't see any battle if you loaf around this hotel _all_ the
time." It was of the battle of Bull Run that a wit said, it was so
popular it had to be repeated the very next year, to satisfy the
public demand for it. And one of the participants in this first
experience of the new army said: "At Bull Run we were told that the
eyes of Washington were upon us; when we knew very well that what we
were most anxious about was to get our eyes on Washington." It was
said of the soldiers on both sides in that battle, that their guns
trembled in their hands, so that if the enemy was dodging he was
almost certain to be hit, and that the conclusion arrived at by the
rearward experiments of both armies was that a soldier may retreat
successfully from almost any position if only he starts in time. Thus
the pleasantry of the day turned to account the "baptism of fire" of
some of the bravest troops that ever wore blue or gray.
Once in camp, the school-boy spirit revelled in larks of every
description. A few weeks of experience developed military manners and
prepared the recruit to enjoy the greenness of the newer comers. On
drill, a new recruit was sure to get his toes exactly where a "vet"
wanted to drop the butt of his musket as he ordered arms, and if there
was a mud-puddle within a yard of him he was sure to "dress" into it.
The new men were sent to the officers' quarters on the most absurd
errands, usually in quest of some luxury which, fresh from the
comforts of home, they still regarded as a necessity. The drilling of
the awkward squad was a never-ending source of amusement; for some men
are constitutionally incapable of moving in a machine-like harmony
with others, and these were continually out of {456} place. One of
them was a loose-jointed fellow from, say, Nantucket, who was so
thorough a patriot that he was always longing for home, and he met
every hardship and discouragement with a sigh and the wish that he was
back in Nantucket. He was exceedingly awkward at drill. He seemed to
make every movement on the "bias." One day, in responding to a
command, he figured it out so badly as to find himself all alone,
several yards away from the rest of the squad. All at sea, he said:
"Captain, where ought I to be now?" The captain, thoroughly out of
patience, shouted back: "Why, _back in Nantucket_, gol darn you!"
There was the Irishman who said he had spent two years in the cavalry
learning to turn his toes _in_, and two years in the infantry learning
to turn his toes _out_. "Divil take such a sarvice," said he; "there's
no plazing the blackguards, anyhow."
The drill jokes were not all on the men. The officers, who at the
beginning were nonmilitary citizens like their soldiers, had their
business to learn. Indeed, it was not an easy matter at first to
preserve thorough discipline, because of the frequent equality, in
military knowledge, between the officers and the men. It was said that
the American soldier was perfectly willing to endure hardships, to
fight, and if necessary to die, for his country; but the hardest thing
for him to submit to was to be bossed around by his superior officer,
who might, like enough, be his next-door neighbor at home. One
captain, who had abandoned railroading for the war, in his excitement
over the necessity of halting his men suddenly, true to his former
calling, shouted out, "Down brakes!" And another, who had forgotten
the command for breaking ranks, dismissed his company with the order,
"Adjourn for rations!" It was a Georgian commandant of a Home Guard
who, while showing his men off before a visiting officer, invented his
own tactics on the basis of "common sense." His first order after
falling in was, "In two ranks, git!" It was not long before he had his
men pretty well mixed up; but, equal to the occasion, he shouted,
"Disentangle to the front, march!" which was as effective as anything
in "Hardee's Tactics." Drill sergeants were often peremptory fellows,
and they sometimes called on their men to perform difficult feats. One
under-sized sergeant had much trouble with an Irish recruit, whose
enormous height had given him the habit of looking _down_, and he
could not keep his chin up to the military angle. Finally the sergeant
reached up to the Irishman's chin (for which he had to stand on
tip-toe) and poked it up, saying, "That's the place for it; now don't
let us see your head down again."--"Am I always to be like this,
sergeant?" asked the recruit. "Yes, sir."--"Then I'll say good by to
yez, sergeant, for I'll niver see yez again." It was a very fresh
recruit who was found on his sentry post sitting down and cleaning his
gun, which he had taken entirely to pieces. The officer who discovered
him rebuked him sternly and asked, "Are you the sentinel
here?"--"Well, I'm a sort of a sentinel."--"Well, I'm a sort of
officer of the day."--"All right," said the undismayed recruit, "just
hold on till I get my gun together, and I'll give you a sort of a
salute."
[Illustration: Four cartoons.]
The military rule that a sentry must challenge everybody, and not pass
unchallenged even those whom he knew to be all right, was often as
slow in taking possession of the officers' minds as those of the least
experienced of the men. A full-uniformed lieutenant, much disgusted at
the "Who goes there?" of one of his own company on guard, expressed
his sentiments by indignantly exclaiming, "Ass!" To which the sentry
promptly responded, "Advance, Ass, and give the countersign!" Not
infrequently general officers and high dignitaries had experiences
with the guards of their own camps. It is said that every great
general in history has been halted by a guard, the approach of a
well-known superior officer giving the sentry an opportunity of
showing off his discipline. General McClellan was not only halted on a
certain occasion, but forced to dismount and call up the officer of
the guard before a sentry would let him pass. General Sherman, who
used to see for himself what was going on among his men, under the
incognito afforded by a rather unmilitary dress, once interfered with
a teamster who was pounding a mule, and told him who he was. "Oh,
that's played out!" said the mule driver; "every man that comes along
here {457} with an old brown coat and a stove-pipe hat claims to be
General Sherman." This suggests the story of a mule driver in the army
who was swearing at and kicking a span of balky mules, when the
general, who was annoyed at his profanity, ordered him to stop. "Who
are you?" said the mule driver. "I'm the commander of the brigade,"
said the general. "I'm the commander of these mules, and I'll do as I
please, or resign, and you can take my place!" The general passed on.
Even the President of the United States had his encounter with a
guard, and was for a short time kept waiting outside General Grant's
tent under the order, suggested by his somewhat clerical appearance,
"No sanitary folks allowed inside!"
Lincoln always made friends among the soldiers. On one occasion he
came on some men hewing logs for a hospital, and remarking, with a
reminiscence of his rail-splitting days, that he "used to be pretty
good on the chop," made the chips fly for a while like a veteran
lumberman. The President's half-pathetic saying, that he had "no
influence with this administration," has passed into history; but less
familiar is his remark, when some one applied to him for a pass to go
into Richmond, and he said, "I don't know about that; I have given
passes to about two hundred and fifty thousand men to go there during
the last two years, and not one of them has got there yet."
[Illustration: GENERAL POPE.]
Ben Butler was credited with a lawyer-like disinclination to be
cross-questioned when he gave orders. Word was brought to him that his
favorite horse, "Almond-eye," had fallen into a ravine and been
killed, and he called an orderly and told him to go to the ravine and
skin the horse. "What, is Almond-eye dead?" asked the man. "Never you
mind whether he is or not," said the general, "you obey orders." The
man came back in about two hours and reported that he had finished.
"Has it taken you all this time to skin a horse?" asked Butler. "Oh,
no; it took me half an hour to catch him," was the reply. "You don't
mean to say you killed him?" shouted the irate general. "My orders
were to skin him," said the soldier, "and I obeyed them without asking
any questions."
Officers and men alike showed much wit in their way of dealing with
impossible or unwelcome orders. A lieutenant protested against an
order to take a squad of men across a swamp where he knew the depth
was enough to drown every man of them. He was sternly rebuked by his
superior, who ordered him peremptorily to make the crossing, telling
him that his requisition would be honored for whatever he might
require for the purpose. So he made a requisition for "twenty men
eighteen feet long to cross a swamp fifteen feet deep."
We will give another of the many similar stories. After a long march a
captain ordered, as a sanitary precaution, that the men should change
their under-shirts. The orderly sergeant suggested that half of the
men had only one shirt each. The captain hesitated a moment and then
said: "Military orders must be obeyed. Let the men, then, change with
each other."
Orders against unauthorized foraging were very strict. A youthful
soldier was stopped on his way into camp with a fine goose slung over
his shoulder, and he was required to account for it. "Well," said he,
"I was coming through the village whistling 'Yankee Doodle,' and this
confounded rebel of a goose came out and hissed me; so I shot it."
"Where did you get that turkey?" said the colonel of the ---- Texas
regiment to one of his amiable recruits that came into camp with a
fine bird.
"Stole it," was the laconic reply.
"Ah!" said the colonel, triumphantly, to a bystander, "you see my boys
may steal, but they won't lie."
During a battle the interest in the work was so intense as to leave
small room for fear, either of the enemy or of superior officers. An
Irish private was ordered to take up the colors when the color-bearer
was shot down. "By the holy St. Patrick, colonel," said he, "there's
so much good shooting here, I haven't a minute's time to waste fooling
with that thing."
The desire to get home for a few days developed much ingenuity among
the enlisted men. "What do you want, Pat?" asked General Rosecrans, as
he rode along the line, inquiring into the wants of his men. "A
furlough!" said Pat. "How long has your sister been dead?" asked a
sympathetic comrade of a soldier who had obtained a leave on account
of the family trouble. "About ten years," was the cool reply. General
Thomas asked a man who applied for leave to go and see his wife how
long it was since he had seen her. "Over three {458} months," was the
answer. "Three months!" exclaimed the general; "why, I haven't seen my
wife for three _years!_" "That may be," said the soldier, "but you
see, general, me and my wife ain't o' that sort."
The "intelligent contraband," the irrepressible darky, is one of the
few types of mankind that furnish as much fun in real life as on the
stage. He was a source of constant amusement in the army. A colored
refugee from the Confederate lines brought word, as the only news
worth mentioning (referring to himself), that "a man in Culpeper lost
a mighty valuable nigger this mornin'." The driver of a commissary
wagon exemplified the general non-combativeness of his race, when, in
describing his emotions during an attack on the train, he said he felt
"like every hair of his head was a bugle, an' dey was all a-playin'
'Home, Sweet Home.'" An officer tried to induce his servant, who was a
refugee, to enlist, saying he must trust the Lord to keep him safe.
"Well," he said, "I _did_ trust de Lord when I was tryin' to get into
de Union lines, but I dun dare resk Him again!"
The army chaplain now and then ran against the rough soldier wit. One
of them, who took a practical view of his responsibility for the souls
of his regiment, welcomed some recruits with the suggestion that,
having joined the army of their country, they should now also join the
army of the Lord. "What bounty does He give?" was the irreverent
rejoinder. Even in hospital the disposition to look on the humorous
side of life--or of death--never forsook men. One who had lost three
fingers held up the maimed member and sorrowfully regretted that he
"never could hold a full hand again." A pale-faced sufferer in a
hospital near a large city was asked by a visiting lady if she could
not do something for him. No. Could she not bathe his head? "You may
if you want to very much," he replied; "but if you do, you will be the
fourteenth lady that has bathed my head this morning." It was an Irish
surgeon who remarked that "the man who has lost his finger makes more
noise about it than the man who has lost his head." A nurse was
shocked one morning to find two attendants noisily hammering and
sawing at one end of a ward where a very sick man was lying. In reply
to her questions, they said they were making a coffin. "Who for?"
"Him"--pointing to the sick man. "Is he going to die?" she asked, much
distressed. "The doctor says he is, an' _I guess he knows what he give
him!_" It was a Confederate guerilla who comforted himself, while
lying on his hospital cot, with the reflection, "I reckon I killed as
many of them as they did of me."
A soldier was wounded by a shell at Fort Wagner. He was going to the
rear. "Wounded by a shell?" some one asked. "Yes," he coolly answered.
"I was right under the durned thing when the bottom dropped out."
The occurrences in the enemy's country, and stories that originated
there, furnished no small portion of the humor that was current during
the war. "Where does this road lead to?" asked the lieutenant in
command of a reconnoitering party. "It leads to h----!" was the surly
reply of the unregenerate rebel thus interrogated. "Well, by the
appearance of the inhabitants of this country, I should judge that I'm
most there," was the retort. An old man in Georgia was called upon to
declare which side he took, and, uncertain as to the identity of his
captors, he said: "I ain't took no side; but both sides hev took me!"
It must have been his wife who said: "I ain't neither Secesh nor
Union--jest Baptist."
The devotion of Southern women to the Confederacy has often been
remarked. One of the minor officers of the army, who marched with
Sherman to the sea, and who states that he tramped, all told, at least
two thousand miles during the war through the South, says that he saw
many Southern men who were loyal to the Union, and who regretted the
secession of their respective States, but he saw only one Southern
woman whom he even suspected to be Union in sentiment. He saw this
woman during a foraging expedition in connection with the march to the
sea. He had charge of a squad of thirteen men who had marched through
the woods some distance away from the army. As they rounded a sharp
curve in the road, they suddenly came upon a house almost covered with
foliage. In front of the house, and only a few yards from the men, was
a woman picking up chips. Her back was toward the soldiers, and she
had not noticed their approach. The commanding officer motioned to his
men to stop, and, tip-toeing up to the side of the woman, he put his
arm around her waist and kissed her. Stepping back a pace or two, he
waited for the bitter denunciation and abuse that he was sure would
come. The woman, however, straightened herself up, looked at the
officer for a moment, and then said slowly: "You'll find me right here
every morning a-picking up chips." The officer said he strongly
suspected that she was disloyal to the South.
[Illustration: FUN IN CAMP.]
A military peculiarity of General Bragg's was touched on in the remark
that, when he died and approached the gate of heaven and was invited
in, the first thing he'd do would be to "fall back." Gen. W. T.
Sherman never seemed to suit the Confederates, no matter what he did.
One of the {459} prisoners who fell into the hands of his army gave
the following graphic expression of the Southern idea of the general:
"Sherman gits on a hill, flops his wings and crows; then he yells out:
'Attention, creation! by kingdoms, right wheel, _march!_' And then we
git!" It was a solitary relic left behind after one of Sherman's
advances, that, communing with himself, said: "Well, I'm badly whipped
and somewhat demoralized, but no man can say I am scattered."
Among the humorous miscellanies of the war, General Grant's "pie
order" must have an immortal place. It was during Grant's early
campaign in Eastern Missouri that a lieutenant in command of the
advance guard inspired the mistress of a wayside house with
exceptional alacrity in supplying the wants of himself and men by
announcing himself to be Brigadier-General Grant. Later in the day the
general himself came to the same house and was turned away with the
information that General Grant and staff had been there that morning
and eaten everything in the house but one pumpkin pie. Giving her half
a dollar, he told her to keep that pie till he sent for it. That
evening the army went into camp some miles beyond this place, and at
the dress parade that was ordered, the following special order was
published:
"HEADQUARTERS, ARMY IN THE FIELD.
"SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. --.
"Lieutenant Wickfield, of the --th Indiana Cavalry, having on this day
eaten everything in Mrs. Selvidge's house, at the crossing of the
Ironton and Pocahontas and Black River and Cape Girardeau roads,
except one pumpkin pie, Lieutenant Wickfield is hereby ordered to
return with an escort of one hundred cavalry and eat that pie also.
"U. S. GRANT,
"_Brigadier-General Commanding_."
Virginia mud and Virginia swamps were celebrated by the invention of
the response to the question, "Did you go through Virginia?" "Yes--in
a number of places;" and the exclamation of the trooper who was
fording a stream flanked by miles of swamp on either side: "Blowed if
I don't think we have struck this stream lengthwise."
It is impossible here to attempt more than a suggestion of the
combination of good nature and pluck that, all through the dreadful
days of the war, rendered hardships endurable, lent courage to the
faint-hearted, and cheered the low-spirited. "The humor of the war"
was no mere ebullition of school-boy fun; it was as potent a factor in
accomplishing the results of the war as powder and shot--a stimulant
that carried men over hard places better than whiskey.
WAR HUMOR IN THE SOUTH.
THE BADINAGE OF THE ARMY--NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS--"PICKIN' A CHUNE"
FROM A BASS DRUM--SWEARING THAT WAS "PLUM NIGH LIKE PREACHIN'"--WHAT
IS A "BEE-LINE"?--FUN AMONG THE NEGROES--STONEWALL JACKSON'S
BODY-SERVANT--WOMEN IN SEWING SOCIETIES AND AT THE BEDSIDES OF THE
WOUNDED.
[Illustration]
Southern soldiers, like their Northern opponents, soon found that
humor was a safety valve--a diversion from the graver thoughts that,
in their lonely hours, lingered around the wife, mother, and children
in the distant home. Withal, it was a spontaneous good humor, such as
Washington Irving calls the "oil and wine of a merry meeting," where
the companionship was contagious and the jokes small, but the jollity
was abundant. It might not have been as polished as that of Uncle Toby
or Corporal Trim, nor as philosophical as Dickens makes the
observations of the elder Mr. Weller and his son "Sam," but it
exemplified human nature in the rough, and overflowed harmlessly.
[Illustration: GENERAL HOOKER.]
Those who have had occasion to make the comparison have, without
doubt, observed salient points of difference between the styles of
badinage prevalent in the Northern and Southern armies. Your
Southerner was no respecter of persons. He seized on any feature of an
individuality that presented a ludicrous side. If a stranger was
unusually long or short, or lean or fat, he was sure to be a target
for ridicule.
Passing through Frederick in the first Maryland campaign (1862), a
good-natured-looking citizen, who evidently had not been able to tie
his shoestrings for a number of years, stood on his doorstep watching
us as we passed. "Hi, there! Hog-killing time, boys," suddenly
astonished his ears, and was the signal for an instant fire of playful
chaff. "Aint he swelled powerful?" "Must have swallowed a bass drum."
"I say, stranger, buttermilk or corn-fed?" "Does it hurt much?" "What
hurt?" ventured the fat man, quizzically. "Why, totin' them rations
around with yer all day." In a minute or two the old gentleman, very
red in the face, carried his abdominal rotundity into the house, but
quickly reappeared with a demijohn in each hand. "Here, boys!" he
exclaimed, "wash your mouths out with some of this applejack, and have
a bit of mercy on a fat man." It is needless to say that the boys
promptly cheered their vote of thanks.
{460} [Illustration: THE OLD JOHN ROSS HOUSE, NEAR RINGGOLD,
GA.--MISSIONARY RIDGE ON THE RIGHT. (From a Government photograph.)]
The colonel of a South Carolina regiment, having returned from his
furlough with a pair of high top boots--boots were then worth seven or
eight hundred {461} dollars--had the temerity to run the gauntlet of a
neighboring brigade, and heard comments like these: "I say, mister,
better git out'r them smokestacks; know you're in thar 'cause we kin
see yer head stickin' out." "Boys, the kern'l 's gone into winter
quarters." "What mout be the price o' them nail kags?" etc. An officer
wearing noticeably bushy whiskers was unfeelingly invited to "come out
from behind that bunch of har! 'Taint no use t' say yer aint in thar,
'cause yer ears is workin' monstrous powerful." It was rarely safe,
under these circumstances, to answer with either wit or abuse.
Our soldiers had little respect for what were known as
"bombproofs"--the fellows who had easy positions in the rear. On one
occasion a smartly dressed young officer belonging to this kindred
cantered up to a depot where a regiment of men were awaiting transfer.
As soon as they saw him they began whooping: "Oh, my! aint he pooty!"
"Say, mister, whar'd ye git that biled shut?" "Does yer grease that
har with ham fat, or how?" And so they plied the poor fellow with all
manner of questions concerning his age, occupation, religious and
political convictions, that were calculated to make a man feel
uncomfortable. One feather, however, broke the camel's back. A long,
cadaverous specimen of humanity, who had evidently been making a
comical survey of the victim--his handsome uniform, and well-polished
boots--taking a step or two forward as if to show his intense
interest, solemnly drawled out: "Was yer ra-a-ly born so, or did they
put yer together by corntract? Strikes me yer must have got yere in a
drove or ben picked afore you was ripe." Then somebody suggested that
"sich a nice-lookin' rooster ought to git down and scratch for a
wurrum"; and amid the laughter that followed, he was glad to put spurs
to his horse and gallop out of hearing.
[Illustration: GENERAL BEAUREGARD.]
[Illustration: THIS LITTLE JOKER FOR PRESIDENT.]
[Illustration: GENERAL McDOWELL.]
[Illustration: A BITTER "DRAUGHT."]
Cavalrymen were called by the infantry "buttermilk rangers," and the
musicians came in for more than their share of good-natured chaff.
Rather than be tormented, the latter would sometimes leave the line of
march and go through the fields, thus avoiding the frequent invitation
to "give us a toot on yer old funnel," or "brace up with yer
blow-pipe." One day a bass drummer, plodding along, was attracted by a
pitiful voice coming from a group of men resting by the roadside:
"Mister, oh, mister, please come yere?" Turning in the direction, he
found it proceeded from a woe-begone-looking Mississippian, whose
sickly appearance was well calculated to arouse the sympathy of a
tender-hearted musician. "Well, what can I do for you?" said the man
with the drum. "Oh, a heap, a heap. I've got a powerful misery, and I
thought as how you mout set down yere and pick a chune for a sick man
on that ar thing you tote around on your stomach." Shouts of laughter
told him that he was "sold," and he never heard the last of the
applications for the soothing tones of "that ar thing."
This drollery of expression cropped out even amid the turmoil and
excitement of the battlefield. The story is told of a young fellow who
was under fire at Manassas for the first time, one of those hundreds
of thousands on both sides behind whose inexperience was too much
pride of character to permit them to show the white feather, and whose
fear of the contempt of their comrades, as well as of the disgrace at
home, made them good fighters. He had become pretty well warmed up and
was doing excellent service when suddenly he caught sight of a rabbit
loping across the field between the lines. Dropping his gun, as he was
about to shoot, he looked dolefully at the little animal for an
instant and then yelled with honest pathos: "Go it, cotton tail, go
it. I'm ez skeered ez you be, an' ef I hadn't a reputation to lose I'd
run too."
At the battle of Kinston, N. C., Gen. N. E. Evans, of South Carolina,
familiarly known in the old army as "Shanks," posted a body of raw
militia at the crossing of a creek, but they were met by a severe fire
and forced to give way. In the disorder that followed, the general
caught one of the fugitives and with a number of emphatic adjectives
demanded: "What are you running away for, you blank, blank coward? You
ought to be ashamed of yourself." "I ain't runnin' away, gineral, I'm
jes' skeered. Why, them fellers over thar are shootin' bullets at us
big {462} as watermillions, boo-hoo-hoo! One on 'em went right peerst
my head--right peerst--an' I want ter go home."
"Well, why didn't you shoot back, sir? You are crying like a baby."
"I know it, gineral, I know it, boo-hoo! and I wish I was a baby, and
a gal baby too, and then I wouldn't have ben cornscripted."
[Illustration: TRIBUNE--HERALD--TIMES.]
This reminds us of another North Carolina story. During the Rebellion
the staff of General Wise was riding through a rather forlorn part of
that State, and a young Virginian of the staff concluded to have a
little fun at the expense of a long-legged specimen of the genus
_homo_ who wore a very shabby gray uniform and bestrode a worm fence
at the roadside. Reining in his horse, he accosted him with "How are
you, North Carolina?"
"How are you, Virginia?" was the ready response.
The staff officer continued: "The blockade on turpentine makes you
rather hard up, don't it? No sale for tar now?"
"Well--yes--" was the slow response. "We sell all our tar to Jeff
Davis now."
"The thunder you do! What on earth does the President want of your
tar?"
North Carolina answered, "He puts it on the heels of Virginians to
make them stick on the battlefield."
The staff rode on.
Speaking of General Evans, an incident is recalled concerning his
brother-in-law, Gen. Mart Gary, who succeeded Wade Hampton in the
command of the Hampton Legion. Gary employed many phrases, especially
in battle, that are not often heard in polite society. His old
body-servant, commenting on this habit, gave the following description
of the manner in which his master stormed and swore at some
disobedience of orders during one of the fights.
"I golly, massa, but de way de ole man moub about dat day was
'scrutiatin'. He went dis away an' he went dat away wabin his sword
like a scythe blade. He went yere and he went dar; but to hear de ole
man open battery on de hard wuds in de langidge and jes' frow um
aroun'--frow um aroun' loose--I declar, boss, it were plum nigh like
preachin'."
[Illustration: LINCOLN SIGNING THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. (From a
Southern war etching.)]
At first, the necessity for discipline was not recognized by the raw
Southern volunteers, and instances of the verdancy which prevailed
were common. When a picket guard at Harper's Ferry, where our first
troops assembled, was being detailed for duty, one of the men stoutly
protested against any such arrangement, because, as he remarked,
"What's the use of gwine out thar t' keep ev'rybody off? We've all kim
here t' hev a fight with the Yankees, and ef yer keep fellers out thar
t' skeer 'em off, how in thunder are we gwine to hev a scrimmage?"
An officer, while inspecting the sentinel lines one day, asked a
picket what he would do if he saw a body of men coming. "Halt 'em, and
demand the countersign, sir!" "But suppose they wouldn't halt?" "Then
I'd shoot." "Suppose they didn't stop then, what would you do?" "I
reckon I'd form a line, sir." "A line? What kind of a line?" "A
bee-line straight for camp, and run like thunder!"
{463} A young lieutenant, fresh from a country drill ground and sadly
ignorant of the tactics of Hardee or Scott, didn't know exactly what
to do when the commanding officer ordered him one morning to "mount
guard." He marched off with his squad of men, however, and about an
hour afterwards was found sitting under a tree and talking to some one
in the branches. "Well, lieutenant, have you mounted guard?" "Oh, yes,
sir," was the cool reply; "got 'lev'n up this tree and t'others 'r'
over yander roost'n' in another."
[Illustration: UNIVERSAL ADVICE TO ABRAHAM: "DROP 'EM!"]
The Southern negroes also furnished abundant humor of their peculiar
kind. During the occupation of Yorktown, Va., a shell entering camp
made a muddle of a lot of pots and kettles. Mingo, the cook, at once
started off for a safe place in the rear. On the way he was met by one
of his brother servants, who inquired: "Wot's de matter, Mingo? Whar's
yo' gwine wid such a hurrification?"
"'Ain't gwine nowhar p't'c'lar; jis' gittin' outen de way dem waggin
hubs dey's t'rowin' at us."
"Eh, eh, Mingo, I 'spects dat's a sign you's a wicked nigger, for ef
yo' was a good Chrishun yo' nebber be skeer by dem shell. Ef yo'
listen to de Good Book, yo' find dat Massa up yander am pintin' eb'ry
one ob em, an' know 'zactly whar to drap um!"
"Da' mebbe so, mebbe so; but yo' can't fool dis chile. Hear me,
Jupiter. Dar's too much powder in dem t'ings for the good Lor' to
meddle wid 'em, and dis chile ain't gwine ter bu'n hisself, needer.
And dar's dem Minnie bullets, too. When dey come flyin' troo de air
singin' de chune, whar is yer, whar is yer? I ain't gwine for to stop
and say whar I is fur de bessest cotton patch in the lan'. I'se a
twenty-two-hundred-dollar nigger, Jupiter, an' I'se gwine t' tek keer
ob what b'long t' massa."
It is said that the body-servant of Stonewall Jackson always knew when
he was about to engage in a battle. Some one asked him how he came to
be so much in the confidence of his master. "Lor', sir," was the
reply, "de gin'rul nebber tell me nuffin'. De way I know is dis: massa
say he prayer twice a day--mornin' an' night; but w'en he git up two
or t'ree time in de night to pray, den I begin to pack de haversack de
fus' t'ing, ca'se I know dere'll be de ole boy to pay right away."
In the early part of the war there was much equality between the
officers and privates. Many of the latter were socially and
intellectually superior to the former. In the course of an altercation
one day, a subordinate made an irritating remark, when his captain
exclaimed: "If you repeat that, I'll lay down my rank and fight you."
"Lay down your rank!" was the indignant response. "That won't make you
a gentleman. A coward ought to fight with straps on his shoulders, but
it takes a gentleman to fight for eleven dollars a month!"
[Illustration: GENERAL JOHNSTON.]
The women of the South furnished what may be called the nerve-force of
the war. From the very beginning they made it disgraceful for any man
of fighting age to stay at home without sufficient cause. Their
earliest associations were soldiers' sewing societies. Yet not all of
the ladies were at first adepts in fashioning men's attire, and
sometimes comical results followed. Stockings failed to match, and
buttons would be sewed on the wrong side of a man's shirt or breeches.
In one instance a friend of the writer turned over to the matron
president of her society in Charleston a pair of trousers with one
leg. "Why, what in the world did you make that thing for?" was asked
by the old lady. "Oh--er--er, why, that's for a one-legged soldier, of
course," gasped the young patriot in her confusion. "That's all right,
Miss Georgia; very thoughtful, very thoughtful. But," looking at them
quizzically through her spectacles, "Miss Georgia, you've got 'em
buttoned up behind."
After the battle of Leesburg, Va., a group of ladies visited the
wounded, and seeing one of the latter prone upon his stomach, the
sympathetic question was asked, as would be quite natural: "Where are
you hurt?" The man, an Irishman, pretended not to hear, and replied:
"Purthy well, I thank ye, mum." "But where were you wounded?" again
fired away one of the ladies. "Faith, it's nothing at all, at all,
that I want, leddies. I think I'll be on me way to Richmond in about
tin days," again answered Pat, with a peculiarly distressed look, as
if he wished to avoid further conversation on a delicate subject.
Thinking that he was deaf, an old lady, who had remained in the
background, now put her mouth down to his ear and shouted:
"We--want--to--know--where--you--are--hurt--where--you--are--wounded--
so--we--can--do--something--for--you!"
Pat, evidently finding that if the bombardment continued much longer
he would have to strike his flag, concluded to do so at once, and with
a face as rosy as a boiled lobster and a humorous twinkle in his eye
replied: "Sure, leddies, it's not deaf that I am; but since ye're
determined to know where I've been hurted, it's--it's where I can't
sit down to take my males. The rascally bullet entered the behind o'
me coat!"
Sudden locomotion followed, and the story circulated among the fair
sex like quicksilver on a plate of glass; but while Paddy had plenty
of sympathy, the pestered him with no more questions of "Where are you
hurt?"
HENRY W. B. HOWARD.
{464}
INDIVIDUAL HEROISM AND THRILLING INCIDENTS.
KINDNESS TO FEDERAL PRISONERS BY MEMBERS OF THE FIFTY-FOURTH VIRGINIA
REGIMENT--AN ORATION ON PATRIOTISM--THE LAST WORDS OF AN HEROIC
SOLDIER--HE DIES FOR US--MATCHING GALLANT AND CHIVALROUS DEEDS OF
PREVIOUS WARS--AN INCIDENT OF GETTYSBURG--HOW GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
GAVE AID AND COMFORT TO HIS ENEMY, GENERAL BARLOW--WOMEN WHO DARED AND
SUFFERED FOR THE FLAG--MRS. BROMWELL, A BRAVE COLOR-BEARER IN TIME OF
DANGER--A MODERN ANDRÉ--THE SULTANA DISASTER--THE HERO OF BURNSIDE'S
MINE.
AN ORATION ON PATRIOTISM.
I have listened to the best speakers our country has possessed in the
thirty years which have elapsed since the war, but not one of them has
made the impression on my mind which a few words, falling from the
lips of a private soldier, did away back in 1862.
It was the night of the 30th of August, 1862, and I, with others, was
lying in the Van Pelt farmhouse, on the field of the Second Bull Run.
The time of night I do not know. I had been semi-unconscious from the
joint effect of chloroform and amputations. The room in the old
farmhouse in which I lay was crowded with desperately wounded men, or
boys, for some of us were not nineteen years of age--one hundred and
seventy odd men in and around the house. With returned consciousness,
sometime in the night, I became aware of voices near me.
I turned my head as I lay on the floor, and next beyond me I saw the
dim light of a kerosene lamp on the floor. I soon made out that some
one was kneeling by a wounded man and examining his wounds. I heard
the injunction given, "Tell me honestly, doctor, what my chance is."
He had been shot in the abdomen, and all too soon came the verdict,
"My poor fellow you will not see another sunrise." I heard his teeth
grate as he struggled to control himself, and then he spoke: "Doctor,
will you do me a favor?"--"Certainly," was the response; "what is
it?"--"Make a memorandum of my wife's address and write her a line
telling her how and when and where I die." Out came the surgeon's
pencil and memorandum book, and made note of the name and address. I
did not remember them the next day, or since. I only recall it was
some town in Michigan.
[Illustration: WE DRANK FROM THE SAME CANTEEN.]
It appeared that the dying soldier was a man of some property, and in
the clearest manner he stated his advice to his wife as to the best
way to handle it. All this was noted down, and then he paused; and the
surgeon, anxious, it is to be presumed, to get along to others who so
sorely needed his aid, said, "Is that all, my friend?"--"No," he
replied falteringly; "that is not all. I have two little boys. Oh, my
God!" Just this one outburst from an agonized heart, and then,
mastering his emotion, he drew himself hastily up, resting on his
elbows, and said: "Tell my wife, doctor, that with my dying breath I
charge her to so rear our boys that if, when they shall have come to
years of manhood, their country shall need their services, even unto
death, they will give them as fully as, I trust under God, their
father gives his life this night." That was all. He sank back,
exhausted, and the surgeon passed along. In the gray of the morning,
when I roused enough to be aware of what was transpiring around me, I
glanced toward him. A cloth was over his face, and soon his silent
form was carried out. I repeat, I have heard the best speakers of my
time, but after all these years I still {465} pronounce the dying
utterances of that unknown soldier as the grandest oration on
patriotism I have ever listened to.
HE DIED FOR US.
As I stir the memories of those days, there comes to mind one
experience which, even after the lapse of all these years, stirs me
deeply. For over three hundred years English history has been enriched
by the recital of the chivalrous act of Sir Philip Sidney, who,
stricken with a mortal wound at Zutphen, and being offered a drink of
water, took the cup, but, when about to raise it to his lips, saw the
eyes of a wounded private soldier fixed longingly thereon. With all
the grace and courtliness which had at any time characterized him when
treading the salon of Queen Elizabeth, the gallant knight handed him
the refreshing draught, saying, "Friend, thy necessities are greater
than mine, drink." The private drank, and the knight died.
I have a pride in the belief that in our four years of bloody strife
we matched the most gallant, chivalrous deeds that previous history
has recorded. It was my good fortune to meet and participate in the
beneficence of a lineal descendant, in spirit, if not in blood, of Sir
Philip Sidney, albeit he was garbed in the uniform of a private
soldier of the Union army. Some of us who were lying there in the Van
Pelt farmhouse, after the battle of the Second Bull Run, and who had
suffered amputations, were carried out of the house and placed in a
little tent in the yard. There were six of us in the tent, and we six
had had seven legs amputated. Our condition was horrible in the
extreme. Several of us were as innocent of clothing as the hour we
were born. Between our mangled bodies and the rough surface of the
board floor there was a thin rubber blanket. To cover our nakedness,
another blanket. I was favored above the others in that I had a short
piece of board set up slanting for a pillow. Between us and the fierce
heat of that Virginia sun there was but the poor protection of the
thin tent-cloth. There were plenty of flies to pester us and irritate
our wounds. Our bodies became afflicted with loathsome sores, and,
horror indescribable! maggots found lodging in wounds and sores, and
we were helpless. Cremation made converts in those hours.
A very few attendants had been detailed to stay behind with us when it
was apparent we must fall into the enemy's hands, but they were
entirely inadequate in point of numbers to minister to our wants. Heat
and fever superinduced an awful thirst, and our moans were for water,
water, and very often there was none to give us water.
We lay there one day when there was none to answer our cry; but
outside of our tent the ground was strewn with wounded men, one among
whom was Christ-like in his humanitarianism. Sorely wounded in his
left side, torn by a piece of a shell, he could not rise and go and
get us drink, but it always seemed to us that, like his prototype of
more than three centuries ago, he said in the depths of his great
heart, "Their necessities are greater than mine," for he could crawl
and we could not. Some little distance across the grass he saw where
some apples had fallen down from the branches overhead. Every motion
must have been agony to him, yet he deliberately clutched at the
grass, dragged himself along until he was in reach of the apples, some
of which he put in the pockets of his army blouse, and then turning,
and keeping his bleeding side uppermost, he dragged himself back to
our tent and handed out the apples.
As I lay nearest, I took them from him one by one and passed them
along till we each had one, and I had just set my teeth in the last
one he handed in, and it tasted as delicious as nectar, when, hearing
an agonizing moan at my right, I turned my head on my board pillow,
and saw our unknown benefactor, his hands clutched, his eyes fixed in
the glare of death; a tremor shook his figure, and the eternal peace
of death was his.
This was all we ever knew of him. His name and condition in life were
a sealed book to us. I saw that he was unkempt of hair, unshaven of
beard; his clothes were soiled with dirt and stained with blood--not
at all such a figure as you would welcome in your parlor or at your
dinner table; but this I thought as I gazed at the humble tenement of
clay from which the great soul had fled, that in that last act of his
he had exhibited so much of the purely Christ-like attribute in the
effort to reach out and help poor suffering humanity, that in the last
day when we shall be judged for what we have been and not for what we
may have pretended to have been, I had rather take that man's chance
at the judgment bar of God than that of many a gentleman in my circle
of acquaintance of much greater pretensions.
AN INCIDENT OF GETTYSBURG.[1]
[Footnote 1: The account here given of this interesting incident is
taken from an article by Capt. T. J. Mackey, of the Confederate army,
recently published in _McClure's Magazine_.]
Though never a war was fought with more earnestness than our own late
war between the North and the South, never a war was marked by more
deeds of noble kindness between the men, officers and privates, of the
contending sides. Serving at the front during the entire war as a
captain of engineers of the Confederate army, many such deeds came
under my own personal attention, and many have been related to me by
eye-witnesses. Here is one especially worthy of record:
The advance of the Confederate line of battle commenced early on the
morning of July 1, 1863, at Gettysburg. The infantry division
commanded by Major-Gen. John B. Gordon, of Georgia, was among the
first to attack. Its objective point was the left of the Second Corps
of the Union army. The daring commander of that corps occupied a
position so far advanced beyond the main line of the Federal army,
that, while it invited attack, it placed him beyond the reach of ready
support when the crisis of battle came to him in the rush of charging
lines more extended than his own. The Confederate advance was steady,
and it was bravely met by the Union troops, who for the first time
found themselves engaged in battle on the soil of the North, which
until then had been virgin to the war. It was "a far cry" from
Richmond to Gettysburg, yet Lee was in their front, and they seemed
resolved to welcome their Southern visitors "with bloody hands to
hospitable graves." But the Federal flanks rested in air, and, being
turned, the line was badly broken, and, despite a bravely resolute
defence against the well-ordered attack of the Confederate veterans,
was forced to fall back.
{466} [Illustration: CONFEDERATE INTRENCHMENTS ON THE BATTLEFIELD OF
NEW HOPE CHURCH, GA. (From a War Department photograph.)]
Gordon's division was in motion at a double quick, to seize and hold
the vantage ground in his front from which the opposing line had
retreated, when he saw directly in his path the apparently dead body
of a Union officer. He checked his horse, and then observed, from the
motion of the eyes and lips, that the officer was still living. He at
once dismounted, and, seeing that the head of his wounded foeman was
lying in a depression {467} in the ground, placed under it a near-by
knapsack. While raising him at the shoulders for that purpose, he saw
that the blood was trickling from a bullet-hole in the back, and then
knew that the officer had been shot through the breast. He then gave
him a drink from a flask of brandy and water, and, as the man revived,
said, while bending over him, "I am very sorry to see you in this
condition. I am General Gordon. Please tell me who you are. I wish to
aid you all I can."
The answer came in feeble tones: "Thank you, general. I am
Brigadier-General Barlow, of New York. You can do nothing for me; I am
dying." Then, after a pause, he said, "Yes, you can. My wife is at the
headquarters of General Meade. If you survive the battle, please let
her know that I died doing my duty."
General Gordon replied: "Your message, if I live, shall surely be
given to your wife. Can I do nothing more for you?"
After a brief pause, General Barlow responded: "May God bless you!
Only one thing more. Feel in the breast pocket of my coat--the left
breast--and take out a packet of letters."
As General Gordon unbuttoned the blood-soaked coat, and took out the
packet, the seemingly dying soldier said: "Now please take out one,
and read it to me. They are from my wife. I wish that her words shall
be the last I hear in this world."
Resting on one knee at his side, General Gordon, in clear tones, but
with tearful eyes, read the letter. It was the missive of a noble
woman to her worthy husband, whom she knew to be in daily peril of his
life, and with pious fervor breathed a prayer for his safety, and
commended him to the care of the God of battles. As the reading of the
letter ended, General Barlow said: "Thank you. Now please tear them
all up. I would not have them read by others."
General Gordon tore them into fragments and scattered them on the
field "shot-sown and bladed thick with steel." Then, pressing General
Barlow's hand, General Gordon bade him good-by, and, mounting his
horse, quickly joined his command.
He hastily penned a note on the pommel of his saddle, giving General
Barlow's message to his wife, but stated that he was still living,
though seriously wounded, and informing her where he lay. Addressing
the note to "Mrs. General Barlow, at General Meade's headquarters," he
handed it to one of his staff, and told him to place a white
handkerchief upon his sword, and ride in a gallop toward the enemy's
line, and deliver the note to Mrs. Barlow. The officer promptly obeyed
the order. He was not fired upon, and, on being met by a Union officer
who advanced to learn his business, he presented the note, which was
received and read, with the assurance that it should be delivered
instantly.
Let us turn from Gettysburg to the capital, Washington, where, eleven
years later, General Gordon held with honor, as now, a seat as senator
of the United States, and was present at a dinner party given by
Orlando B. Potter, a representative in Congress from the State of New
York.
Upon Mr. Potter's introducing to him a gentleman with the title of
General Barlow, General Gordon remarked: "Are you a relative of the
General Barlow, a gallant soldier, who was killed at Gettysburg?"
The answer was: "I am the General Barlow who was killed at Gettysburg,
and you are the General Gordon who succored me!" The meeting was
worthy of two such brave men--every inch American soldiers.
I should add, that, on receiving her husband's note, which had been
speedily delivered, Mrs. Barlow hastened to the field, though not
without danger to her person, for the battle was still in progress.
She soon found her husband, and had him borne to where he could
receive surgical attendance.
Through her devoted ministrations he was enabled to resume his command
of the "Excelsior Brigade," and add to the splendid reputation which
it had achieved under General Sickles, its first commander.
[Illustration: RETREAT OF LEE'S ARMY AFTER GETTYSBURG.]
AN INTERESTING INCIDENT.
It was a curious fact during the war, that, however savage and hostile
the armies and the troops might be in action, there was a certain
friendly relation subsisting between individuals on the {468} opposing
sides, and even between special commands. The semi-intercourse between
the picket lines is a familiar story; it was based principally on an
agreement that the popping over of an occasional poor devil who
happened to be exposed was not compensated for by any material
military gain, so the pickets were generally suffered to perform their
lonesome vigil without being shot like squirrels. But there was also a
touch of the common humanity in this intercourse, which went beyond
mere military conventions. A pleasant episode of warfare in Tennessee
marked the kindly relation that sometimes was established between
regiments. The Third Ohio Regiment were among the prisoners after a
certain engagement, and when they entered a Tennessee town, on their
way to the prisons in Richmond, they were visited, through curiosity,
by a number of the Fifty-fourth Virginia, who wanted to see how the
Yankees liked it to be hungry and tired and hopeless. The melancholy
picture that met their gaze was enough to touch their hearts, and it
did so. They ran back to their camp, and soon returned reinforced by
others of their regiment, all bringing coffee (and kettles to boil it
in), corn-bread, and bacon; and with these refreshments, which were
all they had themselves, they regaled the hungry prisoners, mingling
with them and doing all they could to relieve their distress, and the
next morning the prisoners departed on their weary way, deeply
grateful for the kindness of their enemies, and vowing never to forget
it. It was not long before the opportunity came to them to show that
they remembered it. In due time they were exchanged, and, returning to
service, they found themselves encamped near Kelly's Ferry, on the
Tennessee River. When Missionary Ridge was stormed, a lot of prisoners
were taken from the Confederates, and among the number was the
Fifty-fourth Virginia, and they were marched nine miles to Kelly's
Ferry. It happened that at the landing there were some of the Third
Ohio, and they asked what regiment this was. The answer, "The
Fifty-fourth Virginia," had a most surprising effect on them. They
left the spot on the run, and rushing up to their camp they shouted
out to the boys, "The Fifty-fourth Virginia is at the ferry!" If they
had announced the appearance of a hostile army in force, they could
not have started up a greater or a quicker activity in the camp. The
men ran about like mad, loaded themselves up with every eatable thing
they could lay their hands on--coffee, bacon, sugar, beef, preserved
fruits, everything--and started with a yell for the ferry, where they
surrounded and hugged the Virginians like so many reunited
college-mates, and spread before them the biggest feast they had seen
since the Old Dominion seceded from the Union.
[Illustration: JAMES RIVER, BELOW DUTCH GAP.]
THE "SULTANA" DISASTER.
The Mississippi steamer _Sultana_ called at Vicksburg, April 25, 1865,
on her journey from New Orleans to St. Louis, receiving on board
nineteen hundred and sixty-four Union prisoners from Columbia,
Salisbury, Andersonville, and elsewhere, who had been exchanged in
regular manner, or set free through the surrender or flight of their
jailers.
[Illustration: COURT HOUSE, PETERSBURG, VA.]
Being anxious to proceed North, the poor fellows gave little heed to
the fact that the _Sultana_ was already carrying a heavy load of
passengers and freight, and that workmen were busy repairing her
boilers as she lay at the wharf. So great was the swarm that when they
came to lie down for sleep every foot of available space on all the
decks, and even the tops of the cabins and the wheel-house, was
occupied by a soldier wrapped in his blanket, and making light of his
uncomfortable berth in anticipation of a speedy arrival home.
From Vicksburg the _Sultana_ steamed to Memphis, and there took on
coal, leaving the wharf at one A.M. on the 27th. The next news of her
received at that port came from the lips of survivors snatched from
the rushing current of the river. When about eight miles above
Memphis, one of her boilers had blown up, with frightful effect. To
add to the horror, the woodwork around the engines had been set on
fire by the accident, and the steamer burned to the water's edge,
compelling all who had been spared by the explosion to leap overboard
for safety.
The force of the explosion hurled hundreds of the sleeping soldiers
into the air, killing many, mangling others; while others again,
terribly scalded, fell into the water and were swallowed up by the
resistless tide, never again to rise. The few survivors {469} who had
escaped all these perils finally reached the Arkansas shore, which,
owing to the unusual high waters, was a long distance from the
channel.
Among the soldiers on board were thirty commissioned officers, of whom
only three were rescued. The dead at the scene of the accident
numbered fifteen hundred, nearly all of them soldiers belonging to
Western States. The heaviest loss in any one regiment fell to the One
Hundred and Fifteenth Ohio, which numbered eighty-three victims on the
list. The One Hundred and Second Ohio counted seventy, and the Ninth
Indiana cavalry was represented by seventy-eight.
A catastrophe of similar character, not quite so appalling in results,
had occurred on the Atlantic coast only three weeks previous. The
steamer _General Lyon_, from Wilmington, bound for Fortress Monroe,
burned to the water's edge off Cape Hatteras, on the night of March
31st. Out of five hundred on board, over four hundred of them
soldiers, only twenty escaped. Among the lost were eleven officers and
one hundred and ninety-five men belonging to the Fifty-sixth Illinois,
with nearly two hundred released Union prisoners.
[Illustration: "CROW'S NEST," AN ARMY OBSERVATORY, NEAR PETERSBURG.
(From a War Department photograph.)]
THE HERO OF BURNSIDE'S MINE.
In the ranks of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania, the regiment which
placed the powder magazine of Burnside's mine, at Petersburg,
underneath the doomed Confederate fort, was a sergeant known as Harry
Reese.
He had been the first to propose the mine seriously. Permission to
construct it having been granted at headquarters, he, with a score of
his fellows, all experienced coal miners, set to work with their
ordinary camp tools, and, under cover of night, in one month
excavated, concealed from the enemy's eyes, eighteen thousand cubic
feet of earth, creating a tunnel nearly six hundred feet long. On two
occasions Reese, by personal effort, saved the enterprise from
failure; once when the shaft opened into a bed of quicksand, and again
when the army engineers through faulty measurements located the
powder-chamber outside the limits of the fort to be destroyed, instead
of directly under it.
Finally came the hour for the explosion. The troops stood ready to
charge into the breach, and the long fuse was ignited by Reese, who,
with a group of his mining companions, stayed at the mouth of the
shaft, awaiting the result. Generals and aids anxiously studied their
watch-dials, that would show the flight of moments beyond the
appointed time. Grant telegraphed from army headquarters over his
special field-wire: "Is there any difficulty in exploding the mine?"
and again: "The commanding general directs, if your mine has failed,
that your troops assault at once."
The mine had failed. Daylight was spreading over the trenches, and the
enemy were alert even to the point of expecting an assault.
Reese drew his soldier's clasp dirk, and, turning to a comrade, said:
"I am going into the mine. If it don't blow up, give me time to reach
the splice in the fuse, and then come to me with fresh fuse and
twine." He creeps into the shaft with resolute caution, following up
the tell-tale streak of black ashes, which shows that the fuse has
surely burned its way toward the powder-cells in the chamber beyond.
It may reach there any second, {470} and then! At last, just ahead of
him, the brave miner sees a stretch of fuse outwardly uncharred. A
fine thread of flame may be eating through its core, nevertheless, one
spark of which is enough to set the terrible train ablaze. Reese knows
this, for a man accustomed to handling powder cannot for an instant
lose consciousness of its quick and awful violence when the connecting
flash is struck. He knows his peril, yet presses on, and with his
blade severs the fuse beyond the charred streak. Danger for that
moment is over.
The delay had been caused by a splice wound so tightly that the fire
could not eat through freely. He made a new short fuse, relit the
flashing string, and escaped to the mouth of the tunnel, just as the
magazine chambers exploded, spreading a mass of ruins where the
armament of Lee had stood grim and threatening in the morning light
but a moment before.
The fort thus destroyed was occupied by Capt. R. G. Pegram's Virginia
battery, and the trenches--which means the system of walled ditches,
bomb proofs, and other shelter for troops on both sides of the
battery--by the Eighteenth and Seventy-second South Carolina infantry.
These men, numbering several hundred, lay sound asleep, all except the
sentinels. The battery and the sections of work adjoining were hoisted
into the air, and two hundred and eighty-eight officers and soldiers
were buried in the débris, while their comrades who escaped injury
fled in confusion, leaving a defenceless gap in the line twenty or
thirty rods wide, into which Burnside's corps charged without a
moment's hesitation.
The Union advance was promptly met by a sharp fire from the
Confederate reserves, and the fight which ensued in the breach is
known as the battle of the Crater.
THE ARKANSAS BOY SPY.
When the Confederate army abandoned Little Rock in 1863, one of its
military operators, David O. Dodd, stayed back and lived some time in
the Union lines. He was a lad of seventeen. Shortly after the town was
Unionized he left there, ostensibly to go to Mississippi, but returned
in a few days and lingered about in his old haunts. A second time he
passed out of the picket lines, unrestrained until he reached the
outposts, where the guards, searching him, discovered some curious
pencil marks in a memorandum book carried openly in his pocket.
He was arrested, and at headquarters the marks were shown to be
telegraphic dots and dashes that gave a full description of the Union
fortifications and the distribution of forces about the city. His act
was that of a spy, and his life was the forfeit. Having admitted that
he had accomplices, he was offered pardon if he would betray them. A
last appeal was made at the scaffold by his friends and relatives, but
he firmly put the temptation aside and signalled the executioner to do
his duty. Then the drop fell, carrying him and his secret to another
world. My informant, who witnessed the hanging, declared that the lad
met his doom with the coolness of a stoic, while the spectators,
chiefly soldiers, wept like children.
WOMEN WHO DARED AND SUFFERED FOR THE FLAG.
War calls women to weep, not to take up the sword in battle, yet to
such lengths does their devotion run that the place of danger finds
them on hand unasked. On the Union side in the civil war military
heroines came from every class and from every stage of civilization.
Of those who put on uniforms the record is hard to trace, but their
dead and mangled forms on countless battlefields proved that the
American amazon was no myth. Not to speak of these, there were women
who openly faced all the terrors and hardships of war. Michigan seems
to have eclipsed the record in this class of heroines.
When the Second Michigan volunteers started for the seat of war in
1861, Annie Etheridge, a young woman just out of her teens,
volunteered as daughter of the regiment. Her dress was a riding habit,
and she wore a military cap as a badge of her calling. A pair of
pistols rested in her holsters for use in emergencies. Annie served
four years, part of the time with the Fifth Michigan, and always in
the Army of the Potomac. Her service was the relief of wounded on the
field, which means under fire. General Kearny presented her with the
"Kearny badge" for her devotion to his wounded at Fair Oaks. Once
while bandaging a wound for a New York boy a Confederate shell killed
him under her hands.
Though not called on to fight, Annie had spirit enough to make a
battle hero. At Chancellorsville she went to the outposts with the
skirmishers, and was ordered back to the lines. The enemy was already
shooting at the pickets. On the way back she passed a line of low
trenches where the Union soldiers lay concealed, and spurning the
thought that the affair must end in a retreat, she turned her face to
the front and called out to the men, "Boys, do your duty and whip
those fellows!" A hearty cheer was the response, and "those fellows"
poured a volley into the hidden trenches. Annie was hit in the hand,
her skirt was riddled, and her horse wounded. At Spottsylvania she
turned a party of retreating soldiers back to their place in the ranks
by offering to lead them into battle. No one but a miscreant could
spurn that call.
The other Michigan heroines were Bridget Divers, of the First cavalry,
an unknown in the Eighth and in the Twenty-fifth regiments who passed
as Frank Martin, and Miss Seelye who served in the Second as Frank
Thompson. "Thompson" and "Martin" wore men's disguise. Bridget Divers
was the wife of a soldier, and performed deeds of daring in bringing
wounded from the field, under fire.
Two Pennsylvania regiments carried women into battle in men's
disguise--Charles D. Fuller, of the Forty-sixth, and Sergt. Frank
Mayne, of the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth. "Mayne" was killed. The
Fifth Rhode Island Regiment produced a heroine in Mrs. Kady Brownell,
wife of a sergeant. She is credited with having been a skilful shooter
with a rifle and also a brave color-bearer in time of danger. The
wives of officers were accorded great freedom of action at the front,
and many a gallant and noble deed was called forth by devotion to
husband first and incidentally to the cause. Madame Turchin, wife of
the Illinois general, went into battle and rescued wounded men,
besides cheering and inspiring the soldiers of the general's command.
Gen. Francis C. Barlow, of New York, was accompanied by his wife, who
attended the wounded on the field. This devoted woman served at the
front until 1864, and died of fever contracted in the hospitals at
Petersburg.
A MODERN ANDRÉ.
Lieut. S. B. Davis, of the Confederate service, probably came the
nearest of any officer on either side to playing the rôle of the André
of the Rebellion. He did not, it is true, lose his life in an attempt
to negotiate for the surrender of an enemy's fortress, as did the
noted British spy; but he was sentenced to be {471} hanged for
complicity, under disguise, in negotiations between citizens of the
United States and Confederate officials in Richmond and in Canada for
the delivery of the States of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and certain
military positions on the lakes, into the power of organized and armed
emissaries of the South, led by Confederate officers.
[Illustration: A COMPANY OF SHERMAN'S VETERANS.]
Lieutenant Davis was but twenty-four, a native of Delaware, a State
that did not secede, and entered into the part he played on his own
motion; that is, he volunteered to act as a messenger between Richmond
and Canada. He was provided with a British passport under an assumed
name, had his hair dyed, and put on citizen's dress. The regular route
of communication between Richmond and Canada was by steamer, viâ
Bermuda; but for some reason never yet explained Davis went from
Richmond to Baltimore, and from there to Columbus, O., where he
certainly communicated with people of suspicious character at the
time.
From Columbus he went to Detroit, and from there to Windsor, Canada,
where he met the notorious Jacob Thompson and other Confederate
emissaries.
There were many points about the young man to give him peculiar
fitness for his work; there was also a fatally weak spot in his
harness. He was well bred and of prepossessing appearance. A native of
Delaware, he could mingle with Northern people without arousing
suspicion. He was a distant relative of Jefferson Davis, and had the
respect and confidence of the Confederate chieftains. Too young to
have attained prominence before the war, and never having served in
the regular army, his personality was not likely to be known on the
Union side of the lines. But he had served a long time on the staff of
General Winder, commander at Andersonville prison, where many Union
soldiers had seen him often.
Fortune favored him in his daring enterprise until his arrival, on
what proved to be his final trip southward from Canada, at Newark, O.
He was travelling in the passenger cars of the Baltimore and Ohio
railroad; had passed safely through Columbus and other public centres
most dangerous to him.
At Newark two Union soldiers entered the car where the disguised
Confederate sat. They had been in Andersonville prison, and after
eying their fellow passenger for a time one ex-prisoner whispered in
his comrade's ear, "There is Lieutenant Davis, of Andersonville!"
Both arose, and, approaching Davis, one called out bluntly to the
stranger, "Aren't you Lieutenant Davis?"
"No, sir; my name is Stewart," was the prompt reply.
"Yes, you are Lieutenant Davis, and you had charge of the prison when
I was in Andersonville," persisted the soldier. A crowd of passengers
quickly surrounded the parties, and seeing that his stubborn
cross-questioners would not be convinced, the Confederate yielded, and
said:
"Well, boys, you've got me. I am Lieutenant Davis."
The provost marshal of Newark was summoned, and the prisoner was
speedily hurried to the common jail. A search of his person failed to
disclose any secret papers, and he was left in the main room with a
number of ordinary county criminals. Soon after the military had left
the place the stranger was seen to remove from inside his coat-lining
a number of despatches and drawings upon white silk, and to burn them
in the fire which was blazing in an open stove. The link that would
have removed all doubt as to his purposes and condemned him to the
gallows was thus hopelessly destroyed; but a court martial held that
his presence in the Union lines in disguise constituted the offence
for which the penalty is death. When the evidence was all in and the
case clear against him, the prisoner rose, facing the officers and
witnesses, every one wearing the colors of his mortal enemies, and
some of them scarred with the conflicts in which he and his own had
been pitted against them. There was no reason to expect mercy, and he
did not ask it.
After stating his case briefly, he looked over his accusers and
judges, and said: "I do not fear to die. I am young and would like to
live, but I deem him unworthy who should ask pity of his foemen. Some
of you have wounds and scars; I can show them, too. You are serving
your country as best you may; I have done the same. I can look to God
with a clear conscience; {472} and whenever the chief magistrate of
this nation shall say, 'Go,' whether upon the scaffold or by the
bullets of your soldiery, I will show you how to die."
The sentence was that he be confined in the military prison at Johnson
Island, in Lake Erie, until the 17th of February, 1865, then "to be
hung by the neck until he is dead."
During the night of the 16th of February, when all preparations had
been made, and Davis had, as he believed, beheld the last sunset on
earth, a reprieve came from President Lincoln. He was placed in a
dungeon at Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, and before the reprieve ended
the war closed. Then the authorities permitted him to go free. To the
end he kept the secret of his mission to Ohio.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE FLAGS AND MARKERS OF THE FOURTEENTH REGIMENT
NEW YORK ARTILLERY.
ENGAGEMENTS IN WHICH THE REGIMENT, WITH THESE FLAGS, TOOK PART.
WILDERNESS, VA., May 5-7, 1864.
SPOTTSYLVANIA C. H., May 10-19, 1864.
NORTH ANNA RIVER, VA., May 23-26, 1864.
TOCOPOTOMY CREEK, VA., May 30, 1864.
BETHESDA CHURCH, VA., May 31, 1864.
SHADY GROVE ROAD, VA., June 2, 1864.
COLD HARBOR, VA., June 3-12, 1864.
PETERSBURG FRONT, VA., June 16-18, 1864.
SIEGE OF PETERSBURG, FIRST, June 19 to August 19, 1864.
CRATER, VA., July 30, 1864.
BLIELL'S STATION, VA., August 19, 1864.
WELDON RAILROAD, VA., August 21, 1864.
PEEBLES FARM, VA., September 29, 1864.
POPLAR SPRINGS CHURCH, VA., September 30, 1864.
SIEGE OF PETERSBURG, SECOND, November 29, 1864 to April 3, 1865.
FORT HASKELL, VA., March 25, 1865.
FORT STEADMAN, VA., March 25, 1865.
CAPTURE OF PETERSBURG, VA., April 3, 1865.
APPOMATTOX, VA., April 9, 1865, Surrender of Lee and
his Army of Northern Virginia.]
REMINISCENCES OF THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.
BY GENERAL JOHN T. MORGAN, C. S. A.
The battle of Bull Run--the first battle of Manassas--was a great and
decided victory for the Confederate army, and aroused the pride and
enthusiasm of the Southern people as no other event ever did. Yet
there is a painful recollection in every mind that it was the first
act in an awful drama, the first great field upon which the hosts of
the North and the South measured arms and opened the series of great
tragedies of the civil war, in which millions of men perished.
If that had been the last battle of the war instead of the first, and
if it had been accepted as the final arbitrament of the questions that
could not have been settled otherwise, I would still recall its
incidents with pride, but also with sadness. But the glory of it would
have scarcely compensated for its sacrifices.
I doubt if any humane person can recall without pain even the most
gratifying victories of a great war in which he was a participant. The
excessive toil and anxiety are only made tolerable, and the suffering
and waste of human life can only be endured, for the sake of our
interest in the cause that demands such victims for the altar of
sacrifice.
Yet war, like other intense passions, often becomes a consuming
desire, as the hope of victory verges upon the recklessness of
despair. My earlier impressions of civil war may be illustrated by a
few personal incidents connected with the first battle of Manassas.
With the exception of a few "regulars" in either army, every
experience of actual warfare was then entirely new to the soldiery,
and not a man in any position failed to seriously question his heart
as to its fortitude in the approaching crisis of battle. None,
perhaps, were about to march upon that great and open field who did
not overdraw the pictures of danger and distress that he would be
called to meet. It was a relief from this excessive tension that
enabled men of highly nervous condition to quiet their emotions and to
engage in battle like trained veterans, when its realities were found
to be less harrowing than they expected.
It is probable that no two armies of trained soldiers ever confronted
each other with a less daunted spirit than the hundred thousand proud
men who, in almost full view of the extended lines of each army,
marched steadily into action across the open fields about Manassas.
For many miles the view was uninterrupted.
The approaches of the martial hosts, in line after line of supporting
columns, under the fire of artillery that covered the field with the
bluish haze of battle, were marked with an air of firm defiance, which
spoke of the cause at stake, and of a contest for principles which, as
they were felt to be involved, commanded the devotion of each army. It
was not a flag or a government for which either army was fighting, but
a dispute about rights under the Constitution of a common country. War
under such circumstances is always desperate, and too often becomes
ferocious. When men make war as political or religious partisans, they
often forget the honorable zeal of the true soldier and lend
themselves as the instruments of vengeance. We had not then reached
that stage of hostility. On this field there met in battle many
thousands of the best and most {473} enlightened men of a great
nation, all Americans, and all inspired with the love of a common
country, and many in the opposing ranks were of the same families.
They were gallant and chivalric men, and their fierce onsets left the
field thickly strewn with dead and wounded. Almost every man who fell
had some personal history in which whole communities felt a proud and
grateful interest. The survivors in such armies could not be cruel.
As the incidents of the battle were narrated in the camps of the
victors, and by parties returning from the pursuit of McDowell's
shattered forces, it was clearly manifested that it was political
antagonism and not sectional animosity that had brought on the war.
When the death or capture of some leading Federal officer was
announced, respectful silence was observed and personal sympathy was
manifested with sincerity; but, when the capture of a leading
politician or of a member of Congress was announced, the wildest
rejoicing was heard in the crowds of delighted listeners.
That was a grand field of battle, and it was occupied by armies that
were all the more eager for war because they did not then realize its
terrible significance.
Few strategic surprises were possible on such a field, and none were
attempted. An approaching column could be seen, as it was headed
toward a point of attack, when it was miles away; and the clouds of
dust, rolling up in vast volume, indicated its strength. Then,
suddenly, arose the opposing cloud, and presently both were illumined
with flashes of artillery, and roared with the spiteful din of
musketry, in their quickened dash, and were clamorous with hoarse
cheers from thousands of sturdy men. A few crashing volleys; the
swaying back and forth of the lines, as repeated charges were met and
repulsed--and the field was won and lost by some impulse, in which all
seemed to share at the same moment, that was as much a mystery to the
victors as it was to the vanquished. It was what is called "a square
stand-up fight" in an open field, without military defences; and the
result was a notable victory of the soldiers engaged, not a victory
won by superior strategy or gallant leadership. The battle ended late
in the afternoon, and by nightfall, the successful army was in
bivouac, while the beaten army was in flight for Washington,
unpursued. The rain began to fall in floods as the night came on,
adding to the misery of the wounded of both armies, who were treated
with every possible kindness. To a novice in warfare, the battlefield
was a fearful scene, as the bright morning of the next day dawned upon
it, with the dead scattered over it, lying beside dead horses, broken
artillery, muskets, wagons, and shattered trees. It was the silent
reproach of havoc and death upon the fierce injustice of a resort to
war as the arbiter of differences of opinion as to civil government,
which had been exaggerated to such awful conclusions, and could not,
after all, be in any wise settled by such means. Peace and wiser
judgment finally came out of the thousand succeeding conflicts, but
were not created by them. They were only made possible by the failure
of war to convince anybody of errors.
[Illustration: AQUEDUCT BRIDGE, POTOMAC RIVER.]
Taking a half-dozen cavalry and a brother officer along, we moved, at
daylight, under orders given to me to follow and reconnoitre the army
that had moved off in column at the close of the battle, but was
supposed to have camped not far away. We soon found that nothing
remained of that army but the evidences of panic which had overtaken
almost every command. The wounded had, in some cases, been left to
their own resources, and, at bridges that were broken, there were
piled in wild confusion, dead men and horses, guns and caissons,
wagons and sutlers' goods, tents, muskets, drums, ambulances, spring
wagons, and the lighter vehicles that had brought the picnic parties
from Congress to witness the consummation of their "policy." It was to
them a sudden and frightful adjournment, _sine die_.
As we rode over the field, gray-haired fathers and mothers from the
nearer homes in Virginia were already there looking for their dead or
wounded sons. All was silent save the moanings of the sufferers, and
the subdued chirrup of little wrens as they sought for their mates.
The birds seemed as sad as the venerable seekers for their loved ones.
The dead seemed to preserve their personal characteristics, and the
tense strain of the conflict was settled upon their features. In most
cases, death on the battlefield is instantaneous and painless, and the
latest thoughts seem to linger on the faces of the dead.
As we rode along the farm lanes where the rail fences had {474} been
torn away as they were crossed and recrossed by charging columns, we
found, not widely separated, the victims of the bayonet. Several had
fallen in this close combat.
One of them was a very handsome man, clean-shaven, and dressed in a
neat uniform as a private in the Federal army. He was about thirty
years old. On his shirt bosom there was a single spot of blood. He sat
almost erect, his back propped in a corner of the fence, with his blue
eyes wide open, and his mouth was firmly closed, and his gun and hat
near by him. His form and face were majestic, and his pallid brow,
with the hair gracefully swept back, was a splendid picture of the
serenity of death, almost as expressive as life, and the most earnest
plea for peace that I had ever contemplated.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN T. MORGAN, C. S. A.]
On the opposite side of the lane was a Confederate soldier--an
Irishman--whom a ball had killed. Evidently he had received a mortal
wound, and had sat down to die in an angle of the fence, and rested on
a small log he found there. He was also leaning against the fence,
which held him up in a position that seemed very life-like. His hat
was on his head and sheltered his face which was slightly bowed to the
front. In his mouth he held his pipe, with a very short stem, in a way
that was quite natural and suggestive of his race. His wound was in
the thigh, and while he was bleeding to death, he had doubtless sought
comfort in his pipe.
A beautiful photograph was in the side pocket of the Federal soldier,
near the fatal blood-spot on his shirt bosom. We thought we could
readily trace his dying thoughts to that dear friend. We left him with
his friend's picture where we found it, to find, in another spot, a
mile distant, a living proof that it is love and not hatred that
survives death, and commands the heart's last tribute of devotion.
The body of an oak tree that was heavily clad in foliage had been cut
through with cannon shot until the top had fallen over and formed a
thick mass of branches and leaves on the ground. There was a copse of
undergrowth near by, into which we saw a man dart like an arrow as we
rode up. From the tree-top came low moanings, as from one who feared
discovery, and yet could not stifle his voice when spasms of pain
returned upon him. It proved to be a field officer of a New Jersey or
Delaware regiment, whose thigh had been crushed by a cannon shot in
the battle.
His servant had laid him in the tree-top, with leaves and a horse
blanket for a bed, and was guarding him. When the servant saw us halt,
he came out timorously from his hiding, and was weeping and pleading
for the life of his master. I said to him, "What do you take us
for?"--"But be you not rebels?" he said. I answered, "We are called
rebels, and yet your kindred."--"Be you Christian men?" I said that
was our faith. "And you will be merciful to the major?" I replied, "I
am a major, and have no ill-will toward majors, even if they are
enemies." The major, hearing our conversation, invited us to dismount
and come to him. We went to his hiding-place, and found him pale with
loss of blood, and in great anguish.
Seeing that we were Confederate officers, he said, "I wish to give you
my parole."--"We need none from you," I replied; "our friendship has
been broken, and renewed very suddenly by your wounds, it seems, and
you are our guest."--"Are you Virginians?"--"No, we are Alabamians,
and this is our home, as it is yours, for we are all Americans."--"A
home I have invaded," he said, "and I don't know why. I wish this war
had never occurred; but I longed for it, in my thoughtless anger, and
here I must meet death."
He said, "I am a lawyer."--"So are we," I replied. "I am a
Mason."--"So are we," I replied. "Thank God," he exclaimed, "I may yet
see my wife before I die. She came to Washington with me, and I parted
with her at Longbridge, three days ago, as we crossed the Potomac."
I assured him that I would inform his wife of his condition, through
the first flag of truce that went over the lines, and that she should
have safe-conduct to join him. Taking our hands, he prayed God to
bless us; and turning to his servant, whose astonishment was now
greater than his fear, he said, "Sam, get me the bread and the
canteen, and give me some whiskey. Maybe if I eat and take a
stimulant, I may live to see her." It was a hard, rough crust of
corn-bread, which he munched with energy, and the canteen contained a
few spoonfuls of common whiskey, a part of which he drank. I said,
"This business is urgent, and we will gallop to your lines with your
message."--"Yes," he said, "a race for a life, that has but one hope,
that I may see her--my wife--before I die." We soon met a surgeon at a
field hospital--a few blankets on which wounded soldiers were
stretched--and he went at once to the sufferer in the tree-top. The
message was despatched, and the loving wife came to find that, after
one last kiss from his conscious lips, she was a widow indeed.
The glory of our victory was saddened to my heart by the reflection
that the blood that enriched the fields was American, and was poured
out from hearts that were alike and equally patriotic. Yet the
sacrifice was voluntary, and may have been needed to demonstrate again
the devotion of the American people to what they believe to be their
duty in the defence of their liberties as they understand them, and in
the enforcement of our laws as they are written.
This grand result, which seems to be perfectly assured, and this
demonstration of American manhood is worth all that it has cost.
The battle of Bull Run was the last political battle of the civil war.
It set Congress to passing vain resolutions to stop the war, and to
reconcile the people and the States. After that awful event, war for
the sake of war, and not for peace or justice, swept over the land and
raged with unheard-of fury, until the sheer power of numbers
prevailed, and peace came from exhaustion, but not from a broken
spirit.
{475} [Illustration: PICKING UP THE WOUNDED, FIFTY-SEVENTH NEW YORK
AMBULANCE CORPS.]
[Illustration: BOMBARDMENT OF THE CONFEDERATE LINES BY FORT PICKENS,
SANTA ROSA ISLAND, PENSACOLA BAY.]
{476}
THE MEASURE OF VALOR.
So far as valor is to be measured by dangers voluntarily encountered
and losses sustained, the American citizen may justly compare with
pride the incidents and statistics of the great civil war with those
of any modern conflict in Europe. In our chapter on Gettysburg the
close resemblance between that battle and Waterloo--in the numbers
engaged on each side and the losses--has been pointed out. When
comparison is made of the losses of regiments and other organizations,
in particular engagements, the larger figures are with the Americans.
The charge of the British Light Brigade, at Balaklava, in 1854, has
been celebrated in verse by Tennyson and other poets, and is alluded
to over and over again as if it were the most gallant achievement in
modern warfare. Every time that some old soldier chooses to say he is
one of the survivors of that charge, the newspapers talk about him as
a wonder, report his words and publish his portrait. Yet that exploit
sinks into insignificance when compared with the charge of the First
Minnesota Regiment at Gettysburg. The order for the charge at
Balaklava was a blunder, blunderingly obeyed; it accomplished nothing,
and the total loss to the Light Brigade was thirty-seven per cent. At
Gettysburg, on the second day, General Hancock observed a gap in the
National line, and saw that Wilcox's Confederate Brigade was pushing
forward with the evident intention of passing through it. He looked
about for troops to close the gap, and saw nothing within immediate
reach but the First Minnesota, though others could be brought up if a
little time could be gained. Riding up to Colonel Colville, he said:
"Do you see those colors?" pointing at the Confederate flag. "Take
them!" Instantly the regiment dashed forward and charged the brigade;
there was a short, fierce fight, and the regiment lost eighty-two per
cent. of its numbers in killed and wounded, but the onset of the enemy
was stayed, the desired time was gained, and even the colors were
captured and brought off. In the Franco-German war of 1870 the
heaviest loss sustained by any German regiment in a single battle was
a fraction more than forty-nine per cent. In the National service
during the civil war there were sixty-four regiments that sustained a
loss of over fifty per cent. in some single action, and in the
Confederate service there were fifty-three, making a hundred and
seventeen American regiments that, in this respect, surpassed the
German regiment of highest record.
[Illustration: PICKETT'S CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG.]
{477} [Illustration: COLONEL G. T. ROBERTS. Killed at Baton Rouge,
La.]
[Illustration: COLONEL JAMES H. PERRY. Died from wounds received at
Fort Pulaski.]
[Illustration: COLONEL ULRIC DAHLGREN. Killed at Walkerton,
Va.--Kilpatrick's Raid on Richmond.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT JOHN T. GREBLE. Killed at Big Bethel.]
There were thirteen battles in which one side or the other (in most
instances each) lost more than 10,000 men, taking no account of the
great capitulations like Fort Donelson and Vicksburg. And in the least
of these nearly 1,900 men were shot dead on the field. The greatest
losses on both sides were sustained at Gettysburg. Next in order
(aggregating the losses on both sides[1]) come Spottsylvania, 36,800;
the Wilderness, 35,300; Chickamauga, 34,600; and Chancellorsville,
30,000. But each of these battles occupied more than one day. The
bloodiest single day was September 17, 1862, at the Antietam, where
the National army lost 2,108 men killed and 9,549 wounded, with about
800 missing. The Confederate loss cannot be stated with exactness.
General Lee's report gives only consolidated figures for the whole
campaign, including Harper's Ferry and South Mountain, as well as the
main battle; and these figures fall short by a thousand (for killed
and wounded alone) of those given by his division commanders, who also
report more than 2,000 missing. On the other hand, McClellan says that
"about 2,700 of the enemy's dead were counted and buried upon the
battlefield of Antietam," while "a portion of their dead had been
previously buried by the enemy." Averaging these discrepant figures,
and bearing in mind that there were no intrenchments at the Antietam,
we may fairly put down the losses as equal on the two sides, which
would give a total, on that field in one day, of 4,200 killed and
19,000 wounded. The number of prisoners was not large.
[Footnote 1: As there are discrepancies in all the counts, only the
round numbers are given here.]
The heaviest actual loss that fell upon any one regiment in the
National service in a single engagement was that sustained by the
First Maine heavy artillery (acting as infantry) in the assault on the
defences of Petersburg, June 18, 1864, when 210 of its men were killed
or mortally wounded, the whole number of casualties being 632 out of
about 900 men. This regiment was also the one that suffered most in
aggregate losses in battle during the war, its killed and wounded
amounting to 1,283. Over nineteen per cent. were killed. Another
famous fighting regiment was the Fifth New Hampshire infantry, which
had 295 men killed or mortally wounded in battle, the greatest loss,
69, occurring at Cold Harbor, June 1, 1864. Its first colonel, Edward
E. Cross, was killed while leading it in the thickest of the second
day's fight at Gettysburg. Another was the One Hundred and Forty-first
Pennsylvania, which lost three-quarters of its men at Gettysburg, and
at Chancellorsville lost 235 out of 419. At the second Bull Run
(called also Manassas), the One Hundred and First New York lost 124
out of 168; the Nineteenth Indiana lost 259 out of 423; the Fifth New
York lost 297 out of 490; the Second Wisconsin lost 298 out of 511;
and the First Michigan lost 178 out of 320. At Antietam the Twelfth
Massachusetts lost 224 out of 334. It had lost heavily also at
Manassas, where Col. Fletcher Webster (only son of Daniel Webster) was
killed at its head. It lost, altogether, 18 officers in action.
Another famous Massachusetts regiment was the Fifteenth, which at
Gettysburg lost 148 men out of 239, and at the Antietam, 318 out of
606, and, out of a total enrolment of 1,701, lost during the war in
killed and wounded 879. Another Massachusetts regiment distinguished
by hard fighting was the Twentieth, which General Humphreys
compliments as "one of the very best in the service." Its greatest
loss, in killed (48), was at Fredericksburg, where it was in the
brigade that crossed the river in boats, to clear the rifle-pits of
the sharp-shooters that {478} were making it impossible to lay the
pontoon bridges. This regiment had the task of clearing the streets of
the town, and as it swept through them it was fired upon from windows
and house-tops. The other regiments that participated in this exploit
were the Seventh Michigan, the Nineteenth Massachusetts, and the
Eighty-ninth New York. Some nameless poet has made it the subject of
one of the most striking bits of verse produced during the war:
They leaped in the rocking shallops,
Ten offered, where one could go,
And the breeze was alive with laughter,
Till the boatmen began to row.
In silence how dread and solemn!
With courage how grand and true!
Steadily, steadily onward
The line of the shallops drew.
'Twixt death in the air above them,
And death in the waves below,
Through ball and grape and shrapnel
They moved, my God, how slow!
And many a brave, stout fellow,
Who sprang in the boats with mirth,
Ere they made that fatal crossing
Was a load of lifeless earth.
And many a brave, stout fellow,
Whose limbs with strength were rife,
Was torn and crushed and shattered--
A helpless wreck for life.
The Twentieth lost 44 men killed at Gettysburg, 38 at Ball's Bluff, 36
in the Wilderness, 20 at Spottsylvania, and 20 at the Antietam. During
its whole service it had 17 officers killed, including a colonel, a
lieutenant-colonel, two majors, an adjutant, and a surgeon. The story
that Dr. Holmes tells in "My Hunt after the Captain" relates his
adventures in the track of this regiment just after the battle of the
Antietam.
[Illustration: AFTER THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE AT GETTYSBURG.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL R. S. GARNETT, C. S. A. Killed near
Carrick's Ford, Va.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL ROBERT HATTON, C. S. A. Killed at
Stone River.]
Among the Vermont regiments, the one that suffered most in a single
action was the Eighth, which at Cedar Creek lost sixty-eight per cent.
of its numbers engaged. The First Heavy Artillery from that State,
acting most of the time as infantry, with a total enrolment of 2,280,
lost in killed and wounded 583. The Second Infantry, with a total
enrolment of 1,811, lost 887. Its heaviest loss was at the Wilderness,
where, out of 700 engaged, 348 (about half) were disabled, including
the colonel and lieutenant-colonel killed. And a week later, at
Spottsylvania, nearly half of the remainder (123) were killed or
wounded. The Fourth Infantry, at the Wilderness, went into the fight
with fewer than 600 men, and lost 268, including seven officers killed
and ten wounded. In the fight at Savage Station, the Fifth Vermont
walked over a regiment that had thrown itself on the ground and
refused to advance any farther, pressed close to the enemy, and was
taken by a flank fire of artillery that struck down 44 out of the 59
men in one company. Yet the regiment held its ground, faced about, and
silenced the battery. It lost 188 men out of 428.
In the second and third years of the war, several regiments of heavy
artillery were raised. It was said that they were intended only to
garrison the forts, and there was a popular belief that their purpose
was to get into the service a large number of men who were not quite
willing to subject themselves to the greater risks incurred by
infantry of the line. But after a short period of service as heavy
artillery, most of them were armed with rifles and sent to the front
as infantry, and many of them ranked among the best fighting
regiments, and sustained notable losses. The First Maine and First
Vermont have been mentioned already. The Second Connecticut heavy
artillery, the first time it went into action, stormed the
intrenchments at Cold Harbor with the bayonet, and lost 325 men out of
1,400, including the colonel. At the Opequan it lost 138, including
the major and five line officers; and at Cedar Creek, 190. The
Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Fourteenth New York heavy artillery
regiments all distinguished themselves similarly. The Seventh, during
one hundred days' service in the field as infantry (Grant's overland
campaign), lost 1,254 men, only a few of whom were captured. The
Eighth lost 207 killed or mortally wounded, at Cold Harbor alone, with
more than 200 others wounded. Among the killed were eight officers,
including Col. Peter A. Porter (grandson of Col. Peter B. Porter, of
the war of 1812), who fell in advance of his men. Its total loss in
the war was 1,010 out of an enrolment of 2,575. The Ninth had 64 men
killed at Cedar Creek, 51 at the Monocacy, 43 at Cold Harbor, and 22
at the Opequan. Its total loss in killed and wounded was 824 in an
enrolment of 3,227. This regiment was commanded, a part of the time,
by Col. William H. Seward, Jr. The Fourteenth had 57 men killed in the
assault on Petersburg, 43 at Cold Harbor, 30 in the trenches {479}
before Petersburg, 26 at Fort Stedman, 22 at the mine explosion, and
16 at Spottsylvania. It led the assault after the mine explosion, and
planted its colors on the captured works. Its total loss in killed and
wounded was 861, in an enrolment of 2,506. In comparing these with
other regiments, it must be remembered that their terms of service
were generally shorter, because they were enlisted late in the war.
The Fourteenth, for instance, was organized in January, 1864, which
gave it but fifteen months of service, and it spent its first three
months in the forts of New York harbor; so that its actual experience
in the field covered somewhat less than a year. In that time one-third
of all the men enrolled in it were disabled; and if it had served
through the war at this rate, nothing would have been left of it. This
explanation applies equally to several other regiments.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL PRESTON SMITH, C. S. A. Killed at
Chickamauga.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES B. GORDON, C. S. A. Killed at
Yellow Tavern, Va.]
The State of New York furnished one-sixth of all the men called for by
the National Government. Of Fox's "Three Hundred Fighting Regiments"
(those that had more than 130 men killed during the war), New York has
59--nine more than its proportion. The Fifth Infantry, known as
Duryea's Zouaves, met with its heaviest loss, 297 out of 490, at
Manassas, and lost 162 at Gaines's Mill. This regiment was commanded
at one time by Gouverneur K. Warren, afterward famous as a corps
commander, and General Sykes pronounced it the best volunteer
regiment that he had ever seen. The Fortieth had 238 men killed in
battle, and lost in all 1,217. Its heaviest losses were in the
Seven Days' battles, 100; Fredericksburg, 123; Gettysburg, 150;
and the Wilderness, 213. The Forty-second lost 718 out of 1,210
enrolled, its heaviest loss, 181, being at the Antietam. The
Forty-third lost 138 at Salem Church, and 198 in the Wilderness, its
colonel, lieutenant-colonel, and major all being killed there. The
Forty-fourth, originally called "Ellsworth Avengers," was composed of
picked men from every county in the State. It lost over 700 out of
1,585 enrolled. At Manassas, out of 148 men in action, it lost 71. It
was a part of the force that seized Little Round Top at Gettysburg.
The Forty-eighth was raised and commanded by a Methodist minister,
James H. Perry, D.D., who had been educated at West Point. He died in
the service in 1862. The regiment participated in the assault on Fort
Wagner, and lost there 242 men. At Olustee it lost 244. Its total loss
was 859 out of an enrolment of 2,173. The Forty-ninth had two colonels
a lieutenant-colonel, and a major killed in action. The Fifty-first
New York and Fifty-first Pennsylvania carried the stone bridge at the
Antietam, the New York regiment losing 87 men, and the Pennsylvanians
120. The Fifty-second New York lost 122 men at Fair Oaks, 121 in the
siege of Petersburg, and 86 at Spottsylvania. It was a German
regiment, and two Prussian officers on leave of absence fought with it
as line officers at Spottsylvania and were killed in the terrible
struggle at the bloody angle. The Fifty-ninth went into the battle of
the Antietam with 321 men, fought around the Dunker Church, and lost
224, killed or wounded, including nine officers killed. The
Sixty-first lost 110 killed or wounded at Fair Oaks, out of 432; 106
in the siege of Petersburg, and 79 at Glendale. Francis C. Barlow and
Nelson A. Miles were two of its four successive colonels. One company
was composed entirely of students from Madison University. The
Sixty-third, an Irish regiment, lost 173 men at Fair Oaks, 98 at
Gettysburg, and 59 at Spottsylvania. The Sixty-ninth, another Irish
regiment, lost more men killed and wounded than any other from New
York. At the Antietam, where it contended at Bloody Lane, eight
color-bearers were shot. The Seventieth lost 666 men in a total
enrolment of 1,462. Its heaviest loss, 330, was at Williamsburg.
Daniel E. Sickles was its first colonel. The Seventy-sixth lost 234
men out of 375 in thirty minutes at Gettysburg. In the Wilderness it
lost 282. The Seventy-ninth was largely composed of Scotchmen. It lost
198 men at Bull Run, where Colonel Cameron (brother of the Secretary
of War) fell at its head. At Chantilly six color-bearers were shot
down, when General Stevens (who had been formerly its colonel) seized
the flag and led the regiment to victory, but was shot dead. The
Eighty-first lost 215 men at Cold Harbor, about half the number
engaged. The Eighty-second, at the Antietam, lost 128 men out of 339,
and at Gettysburg 192 out of 305, including its colonel. The
Eighty-third lost 114 men at the Antietam, 125 at Fredericksburg, 115
in the Wilderness, and 128 at Spottsylvania. The Eighty-fourth, a
Brooklyn zouave regiment, lost 142 men at Bull Run, 120 at Manassas,
and 217 at Gettysburg, where, with the Ninety-fifth, it captured a
Mississippi brigade. The Eighty-sixth lost 96 men at Po River, and
over 200 in the Wilderness campaign. The Eighty-eighth, an Irish
regiment, lost 102 men at the Antietam, and 127 at Fredericksburg. The
Ninety-third lost 260 men in the Wilderness, out of 433. The
Ninety-seventh at Gettysburg lost 99 men, and captured the colors and
382 men of a North Carolina regiment. The One Hundredth lost 176 men
at Fair Oaks, 175 at Fort Wagner, and 259 at Drewry's Bluff. The One
Hundred {480} and Ninth lost 140 men at Spottsylvania, and 127 in the
assault on Petersburg. Benjamin F. Tracy, Secretary of the Navy in
President Harrison's cabinet, was its first colonel. The One Hundred
and Eleventh lost 249 men at Gettysburg, out of 390, and again at the
Wilderness it lost more than half of the number engaged. The One
Hundred and Twelfth lost 180 men at Cold Harbor, including its colonel
killed, and it lost another colonel in the assault on Fort Fisher. The
One Hundred and Twentieth, at Gettysburg, lost 203 men, including
seventeen officers killed or wounded. The One Hundred and
Twenty-first, at Salem Church, lost 276 out of 453, and at
Spottsylvania it lost 155. On both occasions it was led by Emory
Upton, afterward general. Its total of killed and wounded in the war
was 839, out of an enrolment of 1,426. The One Hundred and
Twenty-fourth lost at Chancellorsville 204 out of 550, and at
Gettysburg 90 out of 290. The One Hundred and Twenty-sixth lost at
Gettysburg 231 men, including the colonel, who was killed, and another
colonel was killed before Petersburg. The One Hundred and
Thirty-seventh lost 137 at Gettysburg, where it formed a part of the
brigade that held Culp's Hill. At Wauhatchie it lost 90, and in the
Battle above the Clouds 38 more. The One Hundred and Fortieth lost 133
men at Gettysburg, where it formed part of the force that occupied
Little Round Top at the critical moment, and helped to drag up
Hazlett's battery. Its colonel was killed in this struggle. In the
Wilderness it lost 255, and at Spottsylvania another colonel and the
major were killed. The One Hundred and Forty-seventh was in the
brigade that opened the battle of Gettysburg, and there lost 301 out
of 380 men. The One Hundred and Forty-ninth was one of the regiments
that saw service both at the East and the West. It lost 186 men at
Chancellorsville, and at Lookout Mountain lost 74 and captured five
flags. In the Atlanta campaign it lost 136 out of 380 men. The One
Hundred and Sixty-fourth, an Irish regiment, participated in the
assault at Cold Harbor and carried the works in its front, but at the
cost of 157 men, including the colonel and six other officers killed.
The One Hundred and Seventieth, another Irish regiment, lost 99 men at
the North Anna and 136 in the early assaults on Petersburg. Its total
of killed and wounded during the war was 481 out of 1,002 enrolled.
[Illustration: COLONEL FLETCHER WEBSTER. Only son of Daniel
Webster--Killed at Second Bull Run.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM P. SANDERS. Killed at
Knoxville, Tenn.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL HENRY BOHLEN. Killed at Freeman's
Ford.]
Thus runs the record to the end. These regiments are not exceptional
so far as the State or the section is concerned. Quite as vivid a
picture of the perils and the heroism of that great struggle could
have been presented with statistics concerning the troops of any other
States. Looking over all the records, one discovers no difference in
the endurance or fighting qualities of the men from different States.
For instance, the Eighth New Jersey lost, at Chancellorsville, 125 men
out of 268; and in the same battle the Twelfth New Jersey lost 178;
while at Gettysburg less than half of the regiment made a charge on a
barn filled with sharp-shooters, and captured 99 men. The Fifteenth
New Jersey had 116 men killed, out of 444, at Spottsylvania. The
Eleventh Pennsylvania, at Fredericksburg, lost 211 killed or wounded
out of 394, and in its whole term of service it had 681 men disabled
in an enrolment of 1,179; and the Twenty-eighth lost 266 men at the
Antietam. The Forty-ninth Pennsylvania had 736 men disabled, in an
enrolment of 1,313, its heaviest loss being at Spottsylvania, where it
participated in the charge at the bloody angle and lost 260 men,
including its colonel and lieutenant-colonel killed. The
Seventy-second lost 237 at the Antietam, and 191 at Gettysburg, where
it was in that part of the line aimed at by Pickett's charge. The
Eighty-third Pennsylvania suffered heavier losses in action than any
other regiment, save one, in the National service. At Gaines's Mill it
lost 196, at Malvern Hill 166, at Manassas 97, and at Spottsylvania
164. At Gettysburg it formed part of the force that seized Little
Round Top. Its total losses were 971 in an enrolment of 1,808. The
Ninety-third, like a regiment previously mentioned, was raised and
commanded by a Methodist minister. It rendered specially gallant
service at Fair Oaks, the Wilderness, and Spottsylvania. The One
Hundred and Nineteenth made a gallant charge at Rappahannock Station,
capturing guns, flags, and many prisoners, and losing 43 men. It
fought at the bloody angle of Spottsylvania, and there and in the
Wilderness lost 231 out of 400, including two {481} regimental
commanders killed. The One Hundred and Fortieth was in the wheat-field
at Gettysburg, and there lost 241 men out of 589. Its total killed and
wounded numbered 732 in an enrolment of 1,132.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN W. N. GREENE, OF THE ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND NEW
YORK REGIMENT, Capturing the Battle Flag of the Twelfth Georgia
Regiment at Chancellorsville.]
Delaware, a slave State, contributed its quota to the armies that
fought for the Union. At the Antietam its First Regiment lost 230 men
out of 650. At Gettysburg it was among the troops that met Pickett's
charge.
Maryland, another slave State, contributed many good troops to the
Union cause. Its Sixth Regiment lost 174 men at Winchester, and 170 in
the Wilderness.
The Seventh West Virginia lost 522 men killed or wounded, in an
enrolment of 1,008.
The Seventh Ohio lost, at Cedar Mountain, 182 out of 307 men. At
Ringgold all its officers except one were either killed or wounded. At
Chickamauga the Fourteenth lost 245 men out of 449. At Jonesboro it
carried the works in front of it by a brilliant charge, but at heavy
loss. The Twenty-third, at South Mountain and Antietam, lost 199 men.
Two of its four successive colonels were William S. Rosecrans and
Rutherford B. Hayes.
It was not in the famous battles alone that heavy regimental losses
were sustained. At Honey Hill, an action seldom mentioned, the
Twenty-fifth Ohio had 35 men killed, with the usual proportion of
wounded; and at Pickett's Mills, hardly recorded in any history, the
Eighty-ninth Illinois lost 154.
The Fifth Kentucky, at Stone River, lost 125 out of 320 men, and at
Chickamauga 125. It was commanded by Lovell H. Rousseau, an eminent
soldier. Its total loss was 581, in an enrolment of 1,020. The
Fifteenth, at Perryville, lost 196 men, including all its field
officers killed. Its "boy colonel," James B. Forman, was killed at
Stone River. Its total killed and wounded numbered 516, in an
enrolment of 952.
The Fourteenth Indiana lost 181 men at the Antietam, out of 320. At
Gettysburg it formed part of the brigade that annihilated the
Louisiana Tigers. The Nineteenth suffered, during its whole term of
service, a loss of 712 killed and wounded, in an enrolment of 1,246.
The Twenty-seventh lost 616 from an enrolment of 1,101.
{482} [Illustration: SCENE OF MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES B. McPHERSON'S
DEATH, ATLANTA, GA., JULY 22, 1864. (From a War Department
photograph.)]
The Eleventh Illinois lost, at Fort Donelson, 339 men out of 500. It
was commanded by W. H. L. Wallace, who was {483} afterward a
brigadier-general and fell at Shiloh. The Twenty-first lost 303 men at
Stone River, and 238 at Chickamauga. Its first colonel was Ulysses S.
Grant. The Thirty-first lost 176 at Fort Donelson. Its first colonel
was John A. Logan. The Thirty-sixth lost 212 at Stone River. The
Fortieth lost 216 at Shiloh, and gained special credit for keeping its
place in the line after its ammunition was exhausted. The Fifty-fifth
lost 275 at Shiloh out of 512. The Ninety-third lost 162 at Champion
Hill, and 89, including its colonel, at Mission Ridge.
The First Michigan lost, at Manassas, 178 out of 240 men, including
the colonel and fifteen other officers. The Fourth lost 164 at Malvern
Hill, including its colonel. At Gettysburg it was in the wheat-field,
and lost 165 men. Here a Confederate officer seized the regimental
colors and was shot by the colonel, who the next moment was bayoneted
by a Confederate soldier, who in his turn was instantly killed by the
major. This regiment had three colonels killed in action. The
Twenty-fourth, at Gettysburg, lost 363 men, including the colonel and
twenty-one other officers, out of 496.
The Second Wisconsin lost 112 men at the first Bull Run and 298 at the
second, including its colonel killed; and the Seventh had a total loss
in killed and wounded of 1,016 from an enrolment of 1,630; and the
Twenty-sixth lost 503 from an enrolment of 1,089.
The Fifth Iowa lost 217 men at Iuka, and the Seventh, at Belmont, lost
227 out of 410. At Pea Ridge the Ninth lost 218 out of 560. In the
assault on Vicksburg the Twenty-second lost 164, and was the only
regiment that gained and held any portion of the works. Of a squad of
twenty-one men that leaped inside and waged a hand-to-hand fight,
nineteen were killed.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. W. SILL. Killed at Stone River.]
[Illustration: COLONEL JOHN W. LOWE. Killed at Carnifex Ferry.]
The Eleventh Missouri had a total loss of 495 from an enrolment of
945. Its heaviest loss was in the assault on Vicksburg, 92. Joseph A.
Mower, afterward eminent as a general, was at one time its colonel.
The Twelfth Missouri lost 108 in the assault on Vicksburg, and the
Fifteenth lost 100 at Chickamauga. General Osterhaus was the first
colonel of the Twelfth.
The First Kansas lost 106 men killed and wounded at Wilson's Creek.
The losses in the cavalry were not so striking as those of the
infantry, because they were seldom so heavy in any one engagement. But
the cavalry were engaged oftener, sometimes in a constant running
fight, and the average aggregate of casualties was about the same as
in other arms of the service.
In the artillery there were occasionally heavy losses when the enemy
charged upon a battery and the gunners stood by their pieces. At Iuka,
Sands's Ohio battery had 105 men, including drivers. It was doing very
effective service when two Texas regiments charged it, and 51 of its
men were killed or wounded. It was captured and recaptured. Seeley's
battery at Chancellorsville lost 45 men, and at Gettysburg 25.
Campbell's lost 40 at the Antietam, and Cushing's 38 at Gettysburg.
The Fifth Maine battery lost 28 at Chancellorsville, 28 at Cedar
Creek, and 23 at Gettysburg.
The colored regiments, which were not taken into the service till the
third year of the war, suffered quite as heavily as the white ones.
They lost over 2,700 men killed in battle (not including the mortality
among their white officers), and, with the usual proportion of
wounded, this would make their total of casualties at least 12,000.
The regimental losses in the Confederate army were at least equal to
those in the National, and were probably greater, for the reason that
for them "there was no discharge in that war." Every organization in
the National service was enlisted on a distinct contract to serve for
a definite term--three months, nine months, two years, or three
years--and when the term expired, the men were sent home and mustered
out. But when a man was once mustered into the Confederate army, he
was there till the end of the war, unless he deserted or was disabled.
But no records are available from which complete statistics can be
compiled. And in May, 1863, General Lee issued an order forbidding
commanders to include in their reports of casualties in battle any
wounds except such as disabled the men for further service, and also
forbidding them to mention the number of men engaged in an action.
This makes any mathematical comparison with the casualties in the
National armies impossible; and without information as to the number
engaged, the percentage of loss, which is the true test, cannot be
computed. Still, there were a considerable number of regiments the
statistics of which were recorded and have been preserved. The
heaviest loss known in any Confederate regiment was that of the
Twenty-sixth North Carolina, at Gettysburg. It went into the fight
with somewhat more than 800 men, and lost 588 killed or wounded,
besides 120 missing. One company went into the first day's battle with
three officers and 84 men, and all but one man were either killed or
wounded. Another North Carolina regiment, the Eleventh, went in on the
first day with three officers and 38 men, and two of the officers and
34 men were killed or wounded. At Fair Oaks, the Sixth Alabama lost
373 out of 632, and the Fourth North Carolina, 369 out of 687. At
Gaines's Mill the First South Carolina lost 319 out of 537; and at
Stone River the Eighth Tennessee lost 306 out of 444. {484} The
heaviest percentage of loss, so far as known, was that of the First
Texas, at the Antietam, 82 per cent. In that same battle the Sixteenth
Mississippi lost 63 per cent.; the Twenty-seventh North Carolina, 61
per cent.; the Eighteenth and Tenth Georgia, each 57 per cent.; the
Seventeenth Virginia, 56 per cent.; the Fourth Texas, 53 per cent.;
the Seventh South Carolina, 52 per cent.; the Thirty-second Virginia,
45 per cent.; and the Eighteenth Mississippi, 45 per cent. Some of the
losses at Chickamauga were equally appalling. The Tenth Tennessee lost
68 per cent.; the Fifth Georgia, 61 per cent.; the Second and
Fifteenth Tennessee, 60 per cent.; the Sixteenth Alabama and the Sixth
and Ninth Tennessee, each 58 per cent.; the Eighteenth Alabama, 56 per
cent.; the Twenty-second Alabama, 55 per cent.; the Twenty-third
Tennessee, 54 per cent.; the Twenty-ninth Mississippi and the
Fifty-eighth Alabama, each 52 per cent.; the Thirty-seventh Georgia
and the Sixty-third Tennessee, each 50 per cent.; the Forty-first
Alabama, 49 per cent.; the Twentieth and Thirty-second Tennessee, each
48 per cent.; and the First Arkansas, 45 per cent. And these losses
include very few prisoners. At Gettysburg, besides the regiments
already mentioned, the heaviest losers among the Confederates were:
the Second North Carolina, 64 per cent.; the Ninth Georgia, 55 per
cent.; the Fifteenth Georgia, 51 per cent.; and the First Maryland, 48
per cent. At Shiloh the Sixth Mississippi lost 70 per cent. At
Manassas the Twenty-first Georgia lost 76 per cent.; the Seventeenth
South Carolina, 67 per cent.; the Twenty-third South Carolina, 66 per
cent.; the Twelfth South Carolina and the Fourth Virginia, each 54 per
cent.; and the Seventeenth Georgia, 50 per cent. At Stone River the
Eighth Tennessee lost 68 per cent.; the Twelfth Tennessee, 56 per
cent., and the Eighth Mississippi, 47 per cent. At Mechanicsville the
Forty-fourth Georgia lost 65 per cent. At Malvern Hill the Third
Alabama lost 56 per cent.; the Forty-fourth Georgia, 46 per cent.; and
the Twenty-sixth Alabama, 40 per cent.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL GEORGE D. BAYARD. Killed at
Fredericksburg.]
[Illustration: COLONEL EDWARD E. CROSS. Killed at Gettysburg.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOHN H. WHITE. Killed at Fort
Donelson.]
[Illustration: COLONEL C. FRED. TAYLOR. Killed at Gettysburg.]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-COLONEL EDWARD CARROL. Killed at the Battle
of the Wilderness.]
[Illustration: COLONEL E. E. ELLSWORTH. Killed at Alexandria, Va.]
Some writers have asserted that the Confederate troops were better led
than the National, and that this is proved by the greater loss of
commanding officers. But the statistics do not bear out any such
assertion. On each side one army commander was killed--Gen. J. B.
McPherson and Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston. On each side three corps
commanders were killed--National, Generals Mansfield, Reynolds, and
Sedgwick; Confederate, Jackson, Polk, and A. P. Hill. On the National
side fourteen division commanders were killed, and on the Confederate,
seven. In comparing losses of brigade commanders, it should be
explained, that in the Confederate service, as soon as a man was put
in command of a brigade he was made a brigadier-general, but the
National government was more chary of rank, and often left a colonel
for a long time at the head of a brigade. Counting such colonels who
{485} actually fell at the head of their brigades as brigadiers, we
find that eighty-five brigade-commanders were killed on the National
side, and seventy-three on the Confederate.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-COLONEL THOS. S. MARTIN. Killed at the
Second Battle of Bull Run.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ISRAEL B. RICHARDSON. Killed at
Antietam.]
On any other subject, the figures that crowd this chapter would be
"dry statistics," but when we remember that every unit here presented
represents a man killed or seriously injured, a citizen lost to the
Republic--and not only that, but its loss of the sons that should have
been born to these slaughtered men--every paragraph acquires a deep,
though mournful interest. We may well be proud of American valor, but
we should also feel humiliated by the supreme folly of civil war.
* * * * *
NOTE.--For the statistics of this chapter, we are largely indebted to
Col. William F. Fox's admirable compilation of "Regimental Losses in
the American Civil War" (Albany, 1893).
LAST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY.[1]
BY GEN. JOHN B. GORDON. C. S. A.
[Footnote 1: This article was dictated by Gen. John B. Gordon to the
late Henry W. Grady, and prepared by him for publication. It appeared
originally in the Philadelphia _Times_. It is reprinted here by
permission, after revision and correction by General Gordon.]
I will give you from my personal knowledge the history of the
struggles that preceded the surrender of General Lee's army, the
causes that induced that surrender--as I had them from General
Lee--the detailed account of the last assault ever made upon the
Federal lines in pursuance of an offensive purpose, and a description
of the last scenes of the bloody and terrible civil war. This history
has never been published before. No official reports, I believe, were
ever made upon the Confederate side; for after the battle of Hare's
Hill, as the attack upon Fort Steadman was called, there was not an
hour's rest until the surrender. From the 25th of March, 1865, until
the 9th day of April, my men did not take their boots off, the roar of
cannon and the rattle of musketry was scarcely stilled an instant, and
the fighting and marching was continuous. Hence no report of these
operations was ever made.
You will remember the situation of affairs in Virginia about the first
of March, 1865. The Valley campaign of the previous summer, which was
inaugurated for the purpose of effecting a diversion and breaking the
tightening lines about Richmond and Petersburg, and from which so much
had been expected, had ended in disaster. Grant had massed an enormous
army in front of Petersburg and Richmond, and fresh troops were
hurrying to his aid. Our army covered a line of over twenty miles, and
was in great distress. The men were literally starving. We were not
able to issue even half rations. One-sixth of a pound of beef a day, I
remember, was at one time the ration of a portion of the army, and the
men could not always get even that. I saw men often on their hands and
knees, with little sticks, digging the grains of corn from out of the
tracks of horses, and washing it and cooking it. The brave fellows
were so depleted by the time Grant broke our lines, that the slightest
wound often killed them. A scratch on the hand would result in
gangrene and prove fatal. The doctors took me to the hospitals and
showed me men with a joint on their fingers shot off, and their arms
gangrened up to the elbows. "The men are starved," they said, "and we
can do little for them."
A TERRIBLE SITUATION.
The sights that I saw as I walked among these poor, emaciated, hungry
men, dying of starved and poisoned systems, were simply horrible. Our
horses were in no better condition; many of them were hardly able to
do service at all. General Lee had gone in person into Petersburg and
Richmond, and begged the citizens to divide what little they had with
his wretched men. The heroic people did all that they could. Our sole
line of supplies was the railroad running into North Carolina and
penetrating into "Egypt," as we called Southwest Georgia, which was
then the provision ground for our armies. Such was the situation. My
corps (Stonewall Jackson's old corps), after severe and heroic work in
the Valley campaign, had been ordered back to Petersburg and placed
upon the right wing of the army. I had general instructions to protect
the flank of the army, prevent General Grant from turning it, and,
above all, to protect the slender line of road from which solely we
received our scanty supplies. We were almost continually engaged in
fighting, making feints, and protecting our skirmish lines, which the
enemy were feeling and pressing continually. Before daylight on the
morning of the 2d of March, 1865, General Lee sent for me. I mounted
my horse at once and rode to the general's headquarters. I reached the
house in which he was staying at about four o'clock in the morning. As
I entered the room to which I had been directed, I found General Lee
alone. I shall never forget the scene. The general was standing at the
fireplace, his head on his arm, leaning on the mantelpiece--the first
time I ever saw him looking so thoroughly dejected. A dim lamp was
burning on a small centre-table. On the table was a mass of official
reports. General Lee remained motionless for a moment after I opened
the door. He then looked up, greeted me with his usual courtesy,
motioned me to the little table, and, drawing up a chair, sat down. I
sat opposite him. "I have sent for you, General Gordon," he said, "to
make known to you the condition of our affairs and to confer with you
as to what we had best do." The night was fearfully cold. The fire and
lamp both burned low {486} as General Lee went on to give me the
details of the situation. "I have here," he said, "reports sent in
from my officers to-night. I find, upon careful examination, that I
have under my command, of all arms, hardly forty-five thousand men.
These men are starving. They are already so weakened as to be hardly
efficient. Many of them have become desperate, reckless, and
disorderly as they have never been before. It is difficult to control
men who are suffering for food. They are breaking open mills, barns,
and stores in search of food. Almost crazed from hunger, they are
deserting from some commands in large numbers and going home. My
horses are in equally bad condition. The supply of horses in the
country is exhausted. It has come to be where it is just as bad for me
to have a horse killed as a man. I cannot remount a cavalryman whose
horse dies. General Grant can mount ten thousand men in ten days, and
move around your flank. If he were to send me word to-morrow that I
might move out unmolested, I have not enough horses to move my
artillery. He is not likely to send this message, however; and yet,"
smiling, "he sent me word yesterday that he knew what I had for
breakfast every morning. I sent him word that I did not think this
could be so, for if he did know he would surely send me something
better. But, now, let us look at the figures. I have, as I have shown
you, not quite 45,000 men. My men are starved, exhausted, sick. His
are in the best condition possible. But beyond this there is Hancock,
at Winchester, with a force of probably not less than 18,000 men. To
oppose this force I have not a solitary vidette. Sheridan, with his
terrible cavalry, has marched almost unmolested and unopposed along
the James, cutting the railroads and canal. Thomas is approaching from
Knoxville with a force I estimate at 30,000, and to oppose him I have
a few brigades of badly disciplined cavalry, amounting to probably
3,000 in all. General Sherman is in North Carolina, and, with
Schofield's forces, will have 65,000 men. As to what I have to oppose
this force, I submit the following telegram from General Johnston. The
telegram reads: 'General Beauregard telegraphed you a few days ago
that, with Governor Vance's Home Guards, we could carry 20,000 men
into battle. I find, upon close inspection, that we cannot muster over
13,000 men.'" (This, General Gordon said, was, as nearly as he could
recollect, General Johnston's telegram.) "So there is the situation. I
have here, say, 40,000 men able for duty, though none of my poor
fellows are in good condition. They are opposed directly by an army of
160,000 strong and confident men, and converging on my little force
four separate armies, numbering, in the aggregate, 130,000 more men.
This force, added to General Grant's, makes over a quarter million. To
prevent these from uniting for my destruction there are hardly 60,000
men available. My men are growing weaker day by day. Their sufferings
are terrible and exhausting. My horses are broken down and impotent. I
am apprehensive that General Grant may press around my flank and cut
our sole remaining line of supplies. Now, general," he said, looking
me straight in the face, "what is to be done?" With this he laid his
paper down and leaned back in his chair.
[Illustration: A MORTAR MOUNTED ON A FLAT CAR, UNITED STATES MILITARY
RAILROAD.]
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
I replied: "Since you have done me the honor to ask my opinion, I will
give it. The situation as you portray it is infinitely worse than I
had dreamed it was. I cannot doubt that your information is correct. I
am confident of the opinion, therefore, that one of two things should
be done, and at once. We must either treat with the United States
Government for the best terms possible, or we should concentrate all
our strength at one point of Grant's line--selecting some point on the
right bank of the Appomattox--assault him, break through his lines,
destroy his pontoons, and then turn full upon the flank of his left
wing, sweep down it and destroy it if possible, and then join General
Johnston in North Carolina by forced marches, and, combining our army
with his, fall upon Sherman."
"And what then?"
"If we beat him or succeed in making a considerable battle, then treat
at once for terms. I am forced to the conclusion, from what you say,
sir, that we have no time for delay."
"So that is your opinion, is it?" he asked, in a tone that sent the
blood to my face. I ought to have remembered that it was a way that
General Lee had of testing the sincerity of a man's opinion by
appearing to discredit it.
"It is, sir," I replied; "but I should not have ventured it, had it
not been asked; and since you seem to differ from the opinion I hold,
may I ask you what your opinion is?"
At once his manner changed, and, leaning forward, he said, blandly: "I
entirely agree with you, general."
"Does President Davis and the Congress know these facts? Have you
expressed an opinion as to the propriety of making terms, to President
Davis or the Congress?"
General Lee replied to this question: "General Gordon, I am a soldier.
It is my duty to obey orders."
"Yes," I replied; "but if you read the papers, General Lee, you can't
shut your eyes to the fact that the hopes of the Southern people are
centred in and on your army, and if we wait until we are beaten and
scattered {487} into the mountains before we make an effort at terms,
the people will not be satisfied. Besides, we will simply invite the
enemy to hunt us down all over the country, devastating it wherever
they go."
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, C. S. A.]
General Lee said nothing to this for some time, but paced the floor in
silence, while I sat gloomily enough, as you may know, at the fearful
prospect. He had, doubtless, thought of all I said long before he sent
for me. I don't wish you to understand that I am vain enough to
believe for a moment that anything I said induced him to go to
Richmond the next day. As I said before, he had probably decided on
his course before he sent for me, and only feigned a difference of
opinion or hesitation in order to see with what pertinacity I held my
own. He did go to Richmond, and on his return sent for me again, and
in reply to my question as to what had occurred, he said:
"Sir, it is enough to turn a man's hair gray to spend one day in that
Congress. The members are patriotic and earnest, but they will neither
take the responsibility of acting nor will they clothe me with
authority to act. As for Mr. Davis, he is unwilling to do anything
short of independence, and feels that it is useless to try to treat on
that basis. Indeed, he says that, having failed in one overture of
peace at Hampton Roads, he is not disposed to try another."
"Then," said I, "there is nothing left for us but to fight, and the
sooner we fight the better, for every day weakens us and strengthens
our opponents."
It was these two conferences that led to the desperate and almost
hopeless attack I made upon the 25th of March on Grant's lines at Fort
Steadman and Hare's Hill, in front of Petersburg. My corps was, as I
tell you, at that time on the extreme right of General Lee's army,
stretching from Hatcher's Run, southward along the Boydton plank road.
He proposed to transfer my corps to lines in and around Petersburg,
and have me familiarize myself with the strong and weak points, if
there were any _weak_ ones, on Grant's line near the bank of the
Appomattox River. He ordered my command into Petersburg to replace the
troops which were there. I spent a week examining Grant's lines,
learning from deserters and men captured the names of the Federal
officers and their commands in the front. At last I selected a point
which I was sure I could carry by a night assault. I so reported to
General Lee. It was in the last degree a desperate undertaking,
as you will presently see; but it was the best that could be
suggested--better than to stand still. Almost hopeless as it was, it
was less so than the certain and rapid disintegration, through
starvation and disease and desertion, of the last army we could ever
organize. The point on my line from which I decided to make the
assault was Colquitt's salient, which had been built by Governor
Colquitt and his men and held by them, when, to protect themselves,
they had to move under covered ways and sleep burrowed in the ground
like Georgia gophers. I selected this point because the main lines
here were closest together, being not more than two hundred yards
apart, I should say, while the picket lines were so close that the
Confederate, and the Federals could easily converse. By a sort of
general consent the firing between the pickets nearly ceased during
the day, so that I could stand upon my breastworks and examine General
Grant's. It is necessary that you should know precisely the situation
of the lines and forts, as I can illustrate by a rough diagram:
[Illustration: _A_, Colquitt's salient. _B_, the main line of Federal
intrenchment, with Fort Steadman in the centre and two other forts
flanking it. _C_, line of Federal reserves to support Fort Steadman
and the troops in the main trenches. _D_, second line of Federal
forts, so arranged as to command Fort Steadman and the main line of
intrenchments, should these be broken.]
{488} A STRONG POSITION.
You can see at a glance how desperately strong was even this, the
weakest point on Grant's line. It was close to Colquitt's salient
where the fearful mine was sprung called the Crater. The whole
intervening ground between Fort Steadman and Colquitt's salient, over
which I had to make the assault, was raked not only by a front fire,
but by flank fires from both directions from the forts and trenches of
the main line, _B_. An attack, therefore, by daylight would have been
simply to have the men butchered, without any possibility of success,
so that nothing but a night attack was to be thought of. Between the
main line of trenches and forts and the rear line of forts, _D_, was a
heavy line of Federal reserves, _C_, and the rear forts were placed
with such consummate engineering skill as to command any point on that
portion of Grant's line which might be captured. It was, therefore,
necessary to capture or break through the reserves and take the rear
line of forts as well as the front. This rear line of forts was so
protected by abatis in front that the whole of General Lee's army
could not have stormed them by a front attack, and the only
possibility of securing them was to capture them from the rear, where
there was an opening. This could only be done by stratagem, if it
could be done at all.
I finally submitted a plan of battle to General Lee, which he approved
and ordered executed. It was briefly this: To take Fort Steadman by
direct assault at night, then send a separate body of men to each of
the rear forts, who, claiming to be Federals, might pass through the
Federal reserves and take possession of the rear line of forts as if
ordered to do so by the Federal commander; next, then to press with my
whole force to the rear of Grant's main line and force him out of the
trenches, destroy his pontoons, cut his telegraph wires, and press
down his flank. Of course, it was a most desperate and almost hopeless
undertaking, and could be justified only by our desperate and hopeless
condition if we remained idle. We both recognized it as the forlornest
of forlorn hopes. Let me particularize a little more. The obstructions
in front of my own lines had to be removed, and removed silently, so
as not to attract the attention of the Federal pickets. Grant's
obstructions had to be removed from the front of Fort Steadman. These
obstructions were of sharpened rails, elevated to about breast high,
the other end buried deeply in the ground, the rails resting on a
horizontal pole and wrapped with telegraph wire. They could not be
mounted or pushed aside, but had to be cut away with axes. This had to
be done immediately in front of the guns of Fort Steadman. These guns
were at night doubly charged with canister, as I learned from Federal
prisoners. The rush across the intervening space between the lines had
to be made so silently and swiftly as to take the fort before the
gunners could fire. The reserves had to be beaten or passed and the
rear line of forts taken before daylight. All this had to be
accomplished before my main forces could be moved across and placed in
position to move on Grant's flank, or rather left wing.
THE PLAN OF ATTACK.
My preparations were these: I called on my division commanders for a
detail of the bravest men in their commands. To rush over the Federal
pickets and into the fort and seize the Federal guns, I selected a
body of only one hundred men, with empty rifles and fixed bayonets. To
precede these, to clear an opening to the fort, I selected fifty of
the most stalwart and brave men I could find, and armed them with axes
to cut clown the obstructions in front of the fort. They were ordered
to remove my own abatis, rush upon the Federal obstructions, and cut
away a brigade front. The one hundred with empty rifles and fixed
bayonets were to follow immediately, and this one hundred and fifty
men were not to falter or fire, but to go into Fort Steadman, if they
had to do it in the face of the fire from all the forts. Immediately
after these axemen and the one hundred had cleared the way and gained
the fort, three other squads of one hundred each were to rush across,
pass through Fort Steadman, and go pell-mell to the rear, and right
through the Federal reserves, crying as they went: "The rebels have
carried our lines in front, captured Fort Steadman, and we are ordered
by General McLaughlin, Federal commander of Fort Steadman, to go back
to the rear forts and hold them against the rebels." I instructed each
commander of these last squads as to what particular fort he was to
enter; and a guide, who had been raised on the ground, was placed with
each of these three squads, or companies, who was to conduct them
through the reserves and to the rear of the forts. If they were halted
by the Federal reserves, each commander was instructed to pass himself
off as one of the Federal officers whose names I had learned. I
remember that I named one commander of one of the companies
Lieutenant-Colonel Pendergrast, of a Pennsylvania regiment--I think
that was the name and regiment of one of the Federal officers in my
front. As soon as Fort Steadman should be taken, and these three
bodies of one hundred men each had succeeded in entering the rear
forts, the main force of infantry and cavalry were to cross over. The
cavalry was to gallop to the rear, capture the fugitives, destroy the
pontoons, cut down the telegraph wires, and give me constant
information, while the infantry was to move rapidly down Grant's
lines, attacking and breaking his division in detail, as they moved
out of his trenches. Such, I say, was the plan of this most desperate
and last aggressive assault ever made by the Confederate army.
General Lee had sent me, in addition to my own corps, a portion of
Longstreet's corps (Pickett's division) and a portion of A. P. Hill's
and a body of cavalry. During the whole night of the 24th of March I
was on horseback, making preparations and disposing of troops. About
four o'clock in the morning I called close around me the fifty axemen
and four companies, one hundred each, of the brave men who were
selected to do this hazardous work. I spoke to them of the character
of the undertaking, and of the last hope of the cause, which was about
to be confided to them. Around the shoulders of each man was bound a
white strip of muslin, which Mrs. Gordon, who sat in a room not far
distant listening for the signal gun, had prepared, as a means of
recognition of each other. The hour had come, and when everything was
ready I stood on the breastworks of Colquitt's salient and ordered two
men to my side, with rifles, who were to fire the signal for attack.
The noise of moving our own obstructions was going on and attracted
the notice of a Federal picket. In the black darkness his voice rang
out:
"Hullo there, Johnny Reb! what are you making all that fuss about over
there?"
The men were just leaning forward for the start. This sudden call
disconcerted me somewhat; but the rifleman on my right came to my
assistance by calling out in a cheerful voice:
"Oh! never mind us, Yank; lie down and go to sleep. We are just
gathering a little corn; you know rations are mighty short over here."
There was a patch of corn between our lines, some of it still {489}
hanging on the stalks. After a few moments there came back the kindly
reply of the Yankee picket, which quite reassured me. He said:
"All right, Johnny; go ahead and get your corn. I won't shoot at you."
As I gave the command to forward, the man on my right seemed to have
some compunctions of conscience for having stilled the suspicions of
the Yankee picket who had answered him so kindly, and who the next
moment might be surprised and killed. So he called out to him:
"Look out for yourself now, Yank; we're going to shell the woods."
This exhibition of chivalry and of kindly feelings on both sides, and
at such a moment, touched me almost as deeply as any minor incident of
the war. I quickly ordered the two men to "Fire."
Bang! Bang! The two shots broke the stillness, and "Forward!" I
commanded. The chosen hundred sprang forward, eagerly following the
axemen, and for the last time the stars and bars were carried to
aggressive assault.
FORT STEADMAN TAKEN.
In a moment the axemen were upon the abatis of the enemy and hewing it
down. I shall never know how they whisked this line of wire-fastened
obstructions out of the way. The one hundred overpowered the pickets,
sent them to the rear, rushed through the gap made by the axemen up
the slope of Fort Steadman, and it was ours without the firing of a
single gun, and with the loss of but one man. He was killed with a
bayonet. The three companies who were to attempt to pass the reserves
and go into the rear forts followed and passed on through Fort
Steadman. Then came the other troops pouring into the fort. We
captured, I think, nine pieces of artillery, eleven mortars, and about
six hundred or seven hundred prisoners, among whom was General
McLaughlin, who was commanding on that portion of the Federal line.
Many were taken in their beds. The prisoners were all sent across to
our lines, and other troops of my command were brought to the fort. I
now anxiously awaited to learn the fate of the three hundred who had
been sent in companies of one hundred each to attempt the capture of
the three rear forts. Soon a messenger reached me from two officers
commanding two of these chosen bodies, who informed me that they had
succeeded in passing right through the line of Federal reserves by
representing themselves as Federals, and had certainly gone far enough
to the rear for the forts, but that their guides had abandoned them or
been lost, and that they did not know in what direction to move. It
was afterward discovered, when daylight came, that these men had gone
further out than the forts, and could have easily entered and captured
them if the guides had not been lost, or had done their duty. Of
course, after dawn they were nearly all captured, being entirely
behind the Federal reserves.
[Illustration: CITY POINT, VIRGINIA. (From a war-time photograph.)]
{490} [Illustration: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT.]
{491} [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL MATTHEW W. RANSOM, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL THOS. L. ROSSER, C. S. A.]
FAILURE OF THE ATTACK.
In the mean time, the few Federal soldiers who had escaped from the
fort and intrenchments we had captured had spread the alarm and
aroused the Federal army. The hills in the rear of Grant's lines were
soon black with troops. By the time it was fairly daybreak the two
forts on the main line flanking Fort Steadman, the three forts in the
rear, and the reserves, all opened fire upon my forces. We held Fort
Steadman, and the Federal intrenchments to the river, or nearly so.
But the guides had been lost, and as a consequence the rear forts had
not been captured. Failing to secure these forts, the cavalry could
not pass, the pontoons could not be destroyed, and the telegraph wires
were not cut. In addition to these mishaps, the trains had been
delayed, and Pickett's division and other troops sent me by General
Lee had not arrived. The success had been brilliant so far as it had
gone, and had been achieved without loss of any consequence to our
army; but it had failed in the essentials to a complete success or to
a great victory. Every hour was bringing heavy reinforcements to the
Federals and rendering my position less and less tenable. After a
brief correspondence with General Lee, it was decided to withdraw. My
loss, whatever it was, occurred in withdrawing under concentrated fire
from forts and infantry. The fighting over the picket lines and main
lines from this time to the surrender was too incessant to give me an
opportunity to ascertain my loss. It was considerable; and although I
had inflicted a heavy loss upon the enemy, I felt, as my troops
reëntered Colquitt's salient, that the last hazard had been thrown,
and that we had lost.
I will give you here the last note I ever received from General Lee,
and one of the last he ever wrote in his official capacity. It is as
follows:
4.30 P.M., HEADQUARTERS, _March_ 24, 1865.
GENERAL: I have received yours of 2.30 P.M., and telegraphed for
Pickett's division, but I do not think it will reach here in time;
still we will try. If you need more troops, one or both of Heth's
brigades can be called to Colquitt's salient, and Wilcox's to the
Baxter road. Dispose of the troops as needed. I pray that a merciful
God may grant us success, and deliver us from our enemies.
Very truly,
R. E. LEE, _General_.
GEN. J. B. GORDON.
P. S.--The cavalry is ordered to report to you at Halifax Road and
Norfolk Railroad (iron bridge) at three A.M. to-morrow. W. F. Lee to
be in vicinity of Monk's Corner at six A.M.
R. E. L.
THE DEATH STRUGGLE.
I had very little talk with General Lee after our withdrawal. I
recognized that the end was approaching, and of course he did. It will
be seen from his semi-official note, quoted above, that he became very
much interested in the success of our movement. While he had known as
well as I that it was a desperate and forlorn hope, still we had hoped
that we might cut through and make a glorious dash down the right and
seek Johnston in North Carolina. The result of the audacious attempt
that had been made upon his line, and its complete success up to the
time that it was ruined by a mischance, was to awaken General Grant's
forces into more aggressive measures. A sort of respite was had, for a
day, after the night attack on Fort Steadman, and then the
death-struggle began. Grant hurried his masses upon our starved and
broken-down veterans. His main attack was made upon our left, A. P.
Hill's corps. Grant's object was to turn our flanks, and get between
us and North Carolina. The fighting was fearful and continuous. It was
a miracle that we held our lines for a single day. With barely six
thousand men I was holding six miles of line. I had just one thousand
men to the mile, or about one to every two yards. Hill and Longstreet
were in not much better trim, and some part of this thin line was
being forced continually. The main fight was on my line and Hill's, as
General Longstreet was nearer Richmond. Heavy masses of troops were
hurled upon our line, and we would have to rally our forces at a
certain point to meet the attack. By the time we would repel it, we
would find another point attacked, and would hurry to defend that. Of
course, withdrawing men from one part of the line would leave it
exposed, and the enemy would rush in. Then we would have to drive them
out and reëstablish our line. Thus the battle raged day after day. Our
line would bend and twist, and swell and break, and close again, only
to be battered against once more. Our people performed prodigies of
valor. How they endured through those terrible, hopeless, bloody days,
I do not know. They fought desperately and heroically, although they
were so weakened through hunger and work that they could scarcely
stand upon their feet and totter from one point of assault to another.
But they never complained. They fought sternly, grimly, as men who had
made up their minds to die. And we held our lines. Somehow or
other--God only knows how--we managed day by day to wrest from the
Federals the most of our lines. Then the men, dropping in the
trenches, would eat their scanty rations, try to forget their hunger,
and snatch an hour or two of sleep.
THE EVACUATION OF PETERSBURG.
Our picket lines were attacked somewhere every night. This thing went
on till the morning of the 2d of April. Early that day it became
evident that the supreme moment had come. The enemy attacked in
unusually heavy force, and along the line of mine and Hill's corps. It
became absolutely necessary to {492} concentrate a few men at points
along my line, in order to make a determined resistance. This left
great gaps in my line of breastworks, unprotected by anything save a
vidette or two. Of course, the Federals broke through these undefended
passes, and established themselves in my breastworks. At length,
having repulsed the forces attacking the points I defended, I began
reëstablishing my line. My men fought with a valor and a desperate
courage that has been rarely equalled, in my opinion, in military
annals. We recaptured position after position, and by four o'clock in
the afternoon I had reëstablished my whole line except at one point.
This was very strongly defended, but I prepared to assault it. I
notified General Lee of my purpose and of the situation, when he sent
me a message, telling me that Hill's lines had been broken, and that
General Hill himself had been killed. He ordered, therefore, that I
should make no further fight, but prepare for the evacuation which he
had determined to make that night. That night we left Petersburg.
Hill's corps, terribly shattered and without its commander, crossed
the river first, and I followed, having orders from General Lee to
cover the retreat. We spent the night in marching, and early the next
morning the enemy rushed upon us. We had to turn and beat them back.
Then began the most heroic and desperate struggle ever sustained by
troops--a worn and exhausted force of hardly four thousand men, with a
vast and victorious army, fresh and strong, pressing upon our heels!
We turned upon every hilltop to meet them, and give our wagon-trains
and artillery time to get ahead. Instantly they would strike us, we
invariably repulsed them. They never broke through my dauntless
heroes; but after we had fought for an hour or two, we would find huge
masses of men pressing down our flanks, and to keep from being
surrounded I would have to withdraw my men. We always retreated in
good order, though always under fire. As we retreated we would wheel
and fire, or repel a rush, and then stagger on to the next hill-top,
or vantage ground, where a new fight would be made. And so on through
the entire day. At night my men had no rest. We marched through the
night in order to get a little respite from fighting. All night long I
would see my poor fellows hobbling along, prying wagons or artillery
out of the mud, and supplementing the work of our broken-down horses.
At dawn, though, they would be in line ready for battle, and they
would fight with the steadiness and valor of the Old Guard.
[Illustration: APPOMATTOX COURT-HOUSE. (From a War Department
photograph.)]
THE LAST COUNCIL OF WAR.
This lasted until the night of the 7th of April. The retreat of Lee's
army was lit up with the fire and flash of battle, in which my brave
men moved about like demigods for five days {493} and nights. Then we
were sent to the front for a rest, and Longstreet was ordered to cover
the retreating army. On the evening of the 8th, when I had reached the
front, my scout George brought me two men in Confederate uniform, who,
he said, he believed to be the enemy, as he had seen them counting our
men as they filed past. I had the men brought to my campfire, and
examined them. They made a most plausible defence, but George was
positive they were spies, and I ordered them searched. He failed to
find anything, when I ordered him to examine their boots. In the
bottom of one of the boots I found an order from General Grant to
General Ord, telling him to move by forced marches toward Lynchburg
and cut off General Lee's retreat. The men then confessed that they
were spies, and belonged to General Sheridan. They stated that they
knew that the penalty of their course was death, but asked that I
should not kill them, as the war could only last a few days longer,
anyhow. I kept them prisoners, and turned them over to General
Sheridan after the surrender. I at once sent the information to
General Lee, and a short time afterward received orders to go to his
headquarters. That night was held Lee's last council of war. There
were present General Lee, General Fitzhugh Lee, as head of the
cavalry, and Pendleton, as chief of artillery, and myself. General
Longstreet was, I think, too busily engaged to attend. General Lee
then exhibited to us the correspondence he had had with General Grant
that day, and asked our opinion of the situation. It seemed that
surrender was inevitable. The only chance of escape was that I could
cut a way for the army through the lines in front of me. General Lee
asked me if I could do this. I replied that I did not know what forces
were in front of me; that if General Ord had not arrived--as we
thought then he had not--with his heavy masses of infantry, I could
cut through. I guaranteed that my men would cut a way through all the
cavalry that could be massed in front of them. The council finally
dissolved with the understanding that the army should be surrendered
if I discovered the next morning, after feeling the enemy's line, that
the infantry had arrived in such force that I could not cut my way
through.
NEARING THE END.
My men were drawn up in the little town of Appomattox that night. I
still had about four thousand men under me, as the army had been
divided into two commands and given to General Longstreet and myself.
Early on the morning of the 9th I prepared for the assault upon the
enemy's line, and began the last fighting done in Virginia. My men
rushed forward gamely and broke the line of the enemy and captured two
pieces of artillery. I was still unable to tell what I was fighting; I
did not know whether I was striking infantry or dismounted cavalry. I
only knew that my men were driving them back, and were getting further
and further through. Just then I had a message from General Lee,
telling me a flag of truce was in existence, leaving it to my
discretion as to what course to pursue. My men were still pushing
their way on. I sent at once to hear from General Longstreet, feeling
that, if he was marching toward me, we might still cut through and
carry the army forward. I learned that he was about two miles off,
with his face just opposite from mine, fighting for his life. I thus
saw that the case was hopeless. The further each of us drove the enemy
the further we drifted apart, and the more exposed we left our wagon
trains and artillery, which were parked between us. Every line either
of us broke only opened the gap the wider. I saw plainly that the
Federals would soon rush in between us, and then there would have been
no army. I, therefore, determined to send a flag of truce. I called
Colonel Peyton of my staff to me, and told him that I wanted him to
carry a flag of truce forward. He replied:
"General, I have no flag of truce."
I told him to get one. He replied:
"General, we have no flag of truce in our command."
Then said I, "Get your handkerchief, put it on a stick, and go
forward."
"I have no handkerchief, General."
"Then borrow one and go forward with it."
He tried, and reported to me that there was no handkerchief in my
staff.
"Then, Colonel, use your shirt!"
"You see, General, that we all have on flannel shirts."
At last, I believe, we found a man who had a white shirt. He gave it
to us, and I tore off the back and tail, and, tying this to a stick,
Colonel Peyton went out toward the enemy's lines. I instructed him to
simply say to General Sheridan that General Lee had written me that a
flag of truce had been sent from his and Grant's headquarters, and
that he could act as he thought best on this information. In a few
moments he came back with some one representing General Sheridan. This
officer said:
"General Sheridan requested me to present his compliments to you, and
to demand the unconditional surrender of your army."
"Major, you will please return my compliments to General Sheridan, and
say that I will not surrender."
"But, General, he will annihilate you."
"I am perfectly well aware of my situation. I simply gave General
Sheridan some information on which he may or may not desire to act."
THE FLAG OF TRUCE.
He went back to his lines, and in a short time General Sheridan came
forward on an immense horse, and attended by a very large staff. Just
here an incident occurred that came near having a serious ending. As
General Sheridan was approaching I noticed one of my sharp-shooters
drawing his rifle down upon him. I at once called to him: "Put down
your gun, sir; this is a flag of truce." But he simply settled it to
his shoulder and was drawing a bead on Sheridan, when I leaned forward
and jerked his gun. He struggled with me, but I finally raised it. I
then loosed it, and he started to aim again. I caught it again, when
he turned his stern white face, all broken with grief and streaming
with tears, up to me, and said: "Well, General, then let him keep on
his own side." The fighting had continued up to this point. Indeed,
after the flag of truce, a regiment of my men, who had been fighting
their way through toward where we were, and who did not know of a flag
of truce, fired into some of Sheridan's cavalry. This was speedily
stopped, however. I showed General Sheridan General Lee's note, and he
determined to await events. He dismounted, and I did the same. Then,
for the first time, the men seemed to understand what it all meant,
and then the poor fellows broke down. The men cried like children.
Worn, starved, and bleeding as they were, they had rather have died
than have surrendered. At one word from me they would have hurled
themselves on the enemy, and have {494} cut their way through or have
fallen to a man with their guns in their hands. But I could not permit
it. The great drama had been played to its end. But men are seldom
permitted to look upon such a scene as the one presented here. That
these men should have wept at surrendering so unequal a fight, at
being taken out of this constant carnage and storm, at being sent back
to their families; that they should have wept at having their starved
and wasted forms lifted out of the jaws of death and placed once more
before their hearthstones, was an exhibition of fortitude and
patriotism that might set an example for all time.
THE END.
Ah, sir, every ragged soldier that surrendered that day, from the
highest to the lowest, from the old veteran to the beardless boy,
every one of them, sir, carried a heart of gold in his breast! It made
my heart bleed for them, and sent the tears streaming down my face, as
I saw them surrender the poor, riddled, battle-stained flags that they
had followed so often, and that had been made sacred with the blood of
their comrades. The poor fellows would step forward, give up the
scanty rag that they had held so precious through so many long and
weary years, and then turn and wring their empty hands together and
bend their heads in an agony of grief. Their sobs and the sobs of
their comrades could be heard for yards around. Others would tear the
flags from the staff and hide the precious rag in their bosoms and
hold it there. As General Lee rode down the lines with me, and saw the
men crying, and heard them cheering "Uncle Robert" with their simple
but pathetic remarks, he turned to me and said, in a broken voice:
"Oh, General, if it had only been my lot to have fallen in one of our
battles, to have given my life to this cause that we could not save!"
I told him that he should not feel that way, that he had done all that
mortal man could do, and that every man and woman in the South would
feel this and would make him feel it. "No, no!" he said, "there will
be many who will blame me. But, General, I have the consolation of
knowing that my conscience approves what I have done, and that the
army sustains me."
In a few hours the army was scattered, and the men went back to their
ruined and dismantled homes, many of them walking all the way to
Georgia and Alabama, all of them penniless, worn out, and well-nigh
heartbroken. Thus passed away Lee's army; thus were its last battles
fought, thus was it surrendered, and thus was the great American
tragedy closed, let us all hope, forever.
[Illustration: GENERAL LEE LEAVING THE McLEAN HOUSE AFTER THE
SURRENDER.]
[Illustration: A SOUTHERN PLANTER'S RESIDENCE IN RUINS.]
{495}
CAMP LIFE.
BY GENERAL SELDEN CONNOR.
A MAJORITY OF SOLDIERS IN THE UNION ARMY WERE YOUNG MEN--THE WAR A
COLOSSAL PICNIC--THE ATTRACTIONS OF CAMP LIFE FOR YOUNG MEN--DRILLING
AND GUARD DUTY--STYLES OF TENTS USED IN THE ARMY--LOG HUTS FOR WINTER
QUARTERS--A NEW USE FOR WELL-SEASONED FENCE RAILS--RISE AND FALL OF A
LIGHT "TOWN OF CANVAS"--GENUINE LOVE FOR HARD-TACK--THE TRIALS AND
DANGERS OF AN ARMY SUTLER--DRAMATIC AND MINSTREL ENTERTAINMENTS IN
CAMP--HORSE-RACING AND THE "DERBY" OF THE ARMY OF THE
POTOMAC--CARD-PLAYING AND OTHER GAMES--CAMPS OF NORTHERN SOLDIERS KEPT
IN BETTER CONDITION THAN THOSE OF SOUTHERN SOLDIERS--FENCING, BOXING,
AND DRILLING--STUDYING GEOLOGY.
From one point of view the war for the Union was a colossal picnic.
Not that it was in the spirit of a summer holiday, with pure gayety of
heart, that a million of the bravest and best of the country took to
the tented field to interpose their lives between their country and
all that would do her harm. No soldiers were ever more impressed with
the serious nature of the contest for which they had enlisted than
were those of '61. But the "men" who composed the Union armies were by
far and away a majority very young men; they were then really "the
boys" in the sight of all the world, as they are now to each other
when veteran comrades meet and "Bill" greets "Joe," and the wrongs of
time are forgotten in the vividness of their memories of the time when
they wore the blue livery and ate the very hard bread of Uncle Sam.
They were real human boys, like those of to-day, and as the boys of
'76 very likely were; and so, mingled with the glow of patriotic ardor
in their breasts, and the determination to do their duty whatever
might betide, there was a keen sense of the novelty of the soldier's
life. They had read of wars and soldiers from Cæsar to Zack Taylor,
and were filled with the traditional pride of American citizens in the
heroism and exploits of the men who achieved independence. The greater
number of them had recollections, more or less clear, of cheering for
Buena Vista and Resaca de la Palma. But wars were "old, unhappy,
far-off things," entirely out of date, inconsistent alike with "the
spirit of the times" and "the principles of free popular government."
"The American boys of this peaceful age would never be called
upon"-- But, hark! the drum! Partings were sad, with home, kindred,
friends. The old life-plans with all their courses, ambitions, hopes,
and dreams, were temporarily turned to the wall. There was no room for
regrets or forebodings. Duty called, and their country's flag waved
its summons to them. War's dangers were before them; but there were in
prospect also the experience of a soldier's life, the zest of the
sharp change from the dull monotony of peaceful pursuits to the stir
and novelty of the camp. They took up the new life with a kind of
"fearful joy." It had its drawbacks, but on the whole it had many and
strong attractions to lusty and imaginative youth. "It amuses me,"
said a veteran of the Mexican war to a company just enlisted in a
three-months regiment under the President's first call for troops, "to
hear you boys talk about coming home when your term of service is out.
When you once follow the drum you are bound to keep on just as long as
the music lasts." The boys found that the veteran was right. At the
conclusion of their three months' service they reënlisted almost, if
not quite, to a man, and most of them became officers.
[Illustration: PUNISHMENT INFLICTED FOR MINOR OFFENCES.]
It did not quite suit the dignity of the young soldiers, as free and
independent American citizens, to yield implicit obedience to any man,
and especially to be "bossed" by officers who, as their neighbors, had
no claim to superiority, and to have all their incomings and outgoings
regulated by the tap of the drum. When they realized, as they were not
long in doing, that officers as well as men had to obey at their
peril, and that good discipline was essential to their well-being and
efficiency as soldiers, they accepted the situation, and rendered a
ready and dutiful obedience.
The secret of the charm of the soldier's life is not far to seek. The
soldier is care-free, absolved from that "pernicious liberty of
choice" which makes ordinary life weary and anxious, and his
responsibility is limited to his well-defined line of duty. Above all,
the bond of sympathy is closer than in any other form of association.
To pursue the same routine, to go to bed and rise up at a common call,
to be served with the same food, drink, and clothes by a common
master, to share the same hardships and perils, to own one leadership,
and to be engaged in a common purpose with hundreds of thousands of
others, constitutes in the {496} highest degree that unity which
Cicero found to be the essence of friendship, the bond of nearness and
dearness known to the soldier as "comradeship." Allied to this
feeling, and aiding to exalt the soldier's profession, is that "esprit
de corps" which fills his heart with pride in his company, his
regiment, corps, and army. As a rider feels that he shares the sinewy
strength of the steed under him, so the soldier, though a unit among
thousands, exults in the dread power and beauty of the bounding column
or long line of which he forms a part; in the order and precision
which transform a multitude of individuals into one terrible engine.
The Roman citizen was not more proud of his country than the Union
soldier was of his army. A soldier of the Army of the Potomac writes
in a home letter dated April, 1863: "I have just taken a ride of about
fifteen miles through the army. It is really a sight worth while to go
through this vast army and see how admirably everything is conducted.
The discipline is fine, the men look healthy and are in the best
possible spirits, and the cleanliness of the camps and grounds is a
model for housewives." The delights of the gypsy-like way of living of
the soldier had a large part in forming the bright side of the new
vocation. It seemed good to turn from the comforts and luxuries of
easeful homes, and go back to the simple and nomadic habits of the
hardy primitive man; to live more closely with Nature, and be subject
to her varying moods; to have the sod for a couch, and the winds for a
lullaby, and to be constantly familiar with the changing skies from
early morning through the day and the watches of the night. The pork
and beef boiled in the kettles hung over the campfire, the beans
cooked in Dutch ovens buried in the embers, owed their sweet savor to
the picturesque manner of the cooking as well as to uncritical
appetites sharpened by living in the open air, and by plenty of
exercise, drilling, guard duty, and "fatigue." And what feast could
compare with the unpurchased chicken broiled on the coals, sweet
potatoes roasted in the ashes--trophies of his "bow and spear" in
foraging--and his tin cup of ration coffee; the product of the
marauder's own culinary skill, over his private fire, served "à la
fourchette" and smoking hot; with perhaps the luxury of a soft
hoe-cake, acquired by barter of some "auntie," in lieu of the daily
hard bread!
Not least among the fascinations of the soldier's life is the
uncertain tenure he has of his camp. He has no local habitation. He
may flatter himself that the army is going to remain long enough to
make it worth his while to provide the comforts and conveniences
within the compass of his resources and ingenuity, and when he has
fairly established himself and contemplates his work with complacency,
the ruthless order comes to "break camp," and down goes his beautiful
home as if it were but a child's house of blocks. He grumbles a little
at the sacrifice, but the prospect of fresh scenes and adventures is
sufficient solace of his disappointment, and he cheerfully makes
himself at home again at the next halt of his regiment.
In the matter of habitation the soldier did not pursue the order of
the pioneer who begins with a brush lean-to, then builds a log house,
and continues building nobler mansions as his labors prosper and
fortune smiles, until, maybe, a brownstone front shelters him. The
home of the soldier of the War for the Union was, like the bumble-bee,
"the biggest when it was born." In 1861 the volunteer regiments were
generally fitted out, before leaving their respective States, with
tents, wagons, mess furniture, and all other "impedimenta," according
to the requirements of army regulations. The tents commonly furnished
for the use of the rank and file were the "A" and the "Sibley"
patterns. The "A" was wedge-shaped, as its name indicates, and was
supposed to quarter five or six men. The "Sibley" was a simple cone,
suggested by the Indian "tepee," with an opening at the apex for
ventilation and the exit of the smoke of the fire, for which provision
was made in the centre of the tent by the use of a tall iron tripod as
a foundation for the pole. It comfortably accommodated fifteen or
sixteen men, lying feet to the pole, and radiating thence like the
spokes of a wheel. This tent, improved by the addition of a curtain,
or wall, is now in use by the regular army, and it is known as the
"conical wall tent." Officers were provided with wall tents, canvas
houses, two to each field or staff officer above the rank of captain,
one to each captain, and one to every two subaltern officers. Each
company had a "cook tent," and the cooking was done over a fire in the
open. The fires of the cooks of companies from the northern lumbering
regions could always be distinguished by the "bean holes," in which
the covered iron pot containing the frequent "pork and beans," the
favorite and distinctive article of Yankee diet, was buried in hot
embers and, barring removal by unauthorized hands, allowed to remain
all night. The lumberman and the soldier declare that he who has not
eaten them cooked in this manner does not really "know beans." The
regimental camp of infantry was arranged according to regulations,
with such modifications as the nature of the ground might make
desirable. The company "streets" were at right angles with the "color
line" or "front" on which the regiment was formed, and began ten paces
in rear of it. The tents of the "rank and file" of each company were
pitched on both sides of its street. In rear of them, with an interval
of twenty paces between the lines, and in successive order, was the
line of "kitchens," the line of non-commissioned staff, sutler and
police guard, the line of company officers, and the line of field and
staff officers. In the rear of the camp were the baggage train and
officers' horses.
The first winter of the Army of the Potomac was to a large part of the
army one of much suffering from cold. The hills of Virginia, along the
Potomac, are anything but tropical in the winter. The frequent light
snows and rains, followed by thawy, sunny days, produced a moisture in
the air which, combined with winds from the mountains, struck a chill
to the very marrow of the bones of even the men from the far North
accustomed to a much lower temperature but in a dry atmosphere. The
commander of the army gave no encouragement to the building of winter
quarters, and the prevailing impression was that the army must remain
on the _qui vive_, ready to move on slight notice whenever the
commander (or the enemy) might give the word. There was plenty of fine
timber in the section of country occupied by the army, and it would
have been an easy matter to the skilled axemen and mechanics in which
most regiments abounded, and entailing comparatively slight expense,
to build log huts that would have housed them in comfort and saved
many a stout soldier for the impending days of battle. Some commands,
either by special permission or taking the responsibility upon
themselves, did build huts, and were snugly and warmly housed for
months, while their less fortunate or unenterprising neighbors were
shivering under their canvas. The rude fireplaces made of stones, with
the tenacious Virginia mud for mortar, having chimneys of sticks and
clay, or barrels, served fairly well to heat a well-chinked hut; but
their small, sputtering fires could make but little impression on the
temperature of a space which had only a thin cotton barrier as a
defence against the keen wintry blasts. The unnecessary hardships of
such exposure inflicted {497} severe loss on the army, especially in
those regiments which had been visited in the autumn by that scourge
common to new levies, the measles. That disease, though not dangerous
in itself, leaves its subjects in an enfeebled condition for a long
time after apparent recovery, and incapable of withstanding exposures
and ailments ordinarily regarded as slight. In the camps of regiments
which had been afflicted with it, the burial party marching with slow
and solemn step to the wail of the dirge was an all too frequent
ceremony through the long winter, and far from inspiriting to young
soldiers, while the number of the dead was as great as that of the
slain in a hard-fought battle. Perhaps the relentless necessities
attending the hasty gathering and organization of a great army made it
difficult or impossible to bestow upon convalescents the care
necessary to preserve their lives; but, leaving aside the question of
humanity, an intelligent self-interest should have induced the
responsible head of the army to make every effort to guard against
such deplorable impairment of the strength of his command as arose
from causes which seem to have been preventable. If the men who
perished miserably on the bleak hillsides of Virginia, and who never
had a chance to strike a blow for the cause that was so dear to them,
had been sent where they could have received proper care and
treatment, the number of these restored to health and strength would
have constituted a powerful reinforcement in the following campaign
where the cry for help was raised so lustily.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL CORPS--AMBULANCE DRILL.]
The mistake of the first winter was not repeated. The fact was
recognized that the army must go into winter quarters, and timely and
adequate preparations to encounter the rigors of the season were made
by the whole army. An officer writing from "Camp near White Oak
Church, Virginia," in the winter of 1862-63, says: "We have fixed up
our camp so that it is quite comfortable. Each squad of four men has
its hut, made by digging into the ground a foot or two and then
placing on the ground at the sides several logs, and roofing with
their shelter tents. At the side they dig a fireplace, and build a
chimney outside with sticks and mud. It is Paddy-like, but much more
comfortable than no house at all. My 'house' is very nice; it is built
up with split hardwood logs about four feet above the ground, and on
this foundation my wall tent is pitched, making {498} a room nine by
nine, with walls six feet high. At one end there is a fine fireplace,
which does not smoke at all. I told Captain C., who was just in, that
if I had a cat on the hearth it would be quite domestic." The general
style of architecture throughout the army was the same; but there were
wide differences in the manner of construction and the details of the
work. The huts of some commands were rudely built and without
uniformity, giving to the camp a mean and squalid appearance, while
other camps were very attractive with their rows of solid and
trim-looking structures, as like each other as the houses of a builder
in a city addition.
The real soldiering and camping began when, after a period of
stripping for the campaign by sending the sick to hospitals and all
unnecessary baggage to the rear for storage, of outfitting with all
the required clothing, arms, equipments, and ammunition, and of
repeated inspections and reviews to make sure that everybody and
everything was in readiness, the troops were drawn out of winter
quarters and put on the march toward the enemy. Every man had to be
his own pack animal and carry upon his shoulders and hips his
food--rations for one day or a week, according to the nature of the
enterprise in hand and the prospect of making a connection with the
wagon trains; drink in his canteen; cartridges--a cartridge box full
and oftentimes as many more as could be crowded into knapsacks and
pockets; and, lastly, his lodging, a woollen blanket and one of
rubber, and the oblong piece of cotton cloth which was his part of the
"shelter tent." This tent was invented by the French and had long been
in use by them. It is one of the most useful articles of the soldier's
equipment. It is but a slight addition to his burden, and a very great
one to his comfort. Two or more comrades, by buttoning their several
sections together, and the use of a few slight sticks, or sticks and
cord, can speedily prepare a very effective protection against the
dew, the wind, and "the heaviest of the rain." Generally three
comrades joined their sections to form a tent; two sections made the
sides and one an end, the other end either remaining open to admit the
heat of a fire or being closed by a rubber blanket. When four men
tented together, which they could do by "packing close," the extra
section was used instead of the rubber blanket, and then the squad was
very thoroughly housed.
Schiller's word-picture of a military camp vividly recalls to the
soldier one of the most characteristic and impressive pictures of his
army life:
"Lo there! the soldier, rapid architect!
Builds his light town of canvas, and at once
The whole scene moves and bustles momently.
With arms and neighing steeds, and mirth and quarrel,
The motley market fills: the roads, the streams,
Are crowded with new freights; trade stirs and hurries.
But on some morrow morn, all suddenly,
The tents drop down, the horde renews its march.
Dreary and solitary as a churchyard
The meadows and down-trodden seed-plot lie,
And the year's harvest is gone utterly."
[Illustration: A NEW RECRUIT BEING INITIATED.]
The rise and fall of "the light towns of canvas," movable cities that
attended the progress of the army, seemed wonderful and magical.
Imagine a broad plantation stretching its sunny acres from river to
forest, a vast and lonely area with no signs of human occupancy
anywhere, except, perhaps, the toil-bent figures of a few bondservants
of the soil at their tasks in the fields, under the eye of the
overseer, lending by the unjoyous monotony of their labor an air of
gloom and melancholy to the oppressive loneliness of the scene.
Suddenly and quietly from the road at the edge of the forest a few
horsemen ride into the open, a banneret bearing some cabalistic device
fluttering over them, closely followed by a rapidly moving column of
men whose gleaming muskets indicate afar off their trade; and
presently, when the centre of the regiment breaks into view and Old
Glory appears in all its beauty against the background of dark forest,
it announces to all who may behold that one of the grand armies of the
Republic is on the march. As the regiment emerges in the easy marching
disorder of "route step" and "arms at will," it seems to be a confused
tide of men flowing steadily along and filling the whole roadway. A
few sharp orders ring out, and the throng is transformed almost
instantly to a solid military machine; officers take their posts,
"files cover," arms are carried uniformly, the cadence step is
taken--"short on the right" that the men may "close up" to the proper
distance--and, under the guidance of a staff officer, the regiment
marches to its assigned camping-ground, where it is brought to a
front, arms are stacked, and ranks broken. With whoops and cries
expressing their gratification that the day's march is over and a rest
is in prospect, the released soldiers scatter, unstrapping their
irksome knapsacks and throwing them off with sighs of relief, and
betake themselves to the preparation of their temporary home. If there
be any prize which these old campaigners have discovered as with wise
prevision and hawk-like ken they surveyed their environment in
marching to the camping-ground--a comely fence of well-seasoned rails,
for instance--they "make a break" for it on the instant of their
deliverance from the restraint of discipline, and with a unanimity and
alacrity that give little hope of a share to the slow-footed, and fill
the hearts of the incoming regiment, not yet released, with envy and
unavailing longing. When the scramble is over, and the foragers have
swarmed in like ants, laden with their plunder, each squad with
practised skill proceeds to its domestic duties. One man pitches the
"dog tent," and utilizes any {499} material that may be at hand for
making the couch dry and soft. Another, laden with the canteens,
explores the hollows and copses for the cool spring of which he has
had tantalizing visions on the dusty march. The rest build the fire,
if one is needed for warmth, or for cooking in case the wagons
containing the company mess kettles and rations are not with the
command or have not come up, and therefore every man is left to boil
his coffee and fry his pork to his own taste, and lend a hand whenever
needed. Every man is expected to contribute of the best that the
country affords, and not to be nice as to the method of acquisition,
to eke out the plain fare of the marching ration. Foraging in
Virginia, except to the cavalry, was not a very prosperous pursuit
after the country had been occupied a few months by the army. There
was, however, game almost anywhere for those emancipated from vulgar
prejudices in the matter of diet, as De Trobriand's Zouaves appear to
have been, for he says of them that they "discovered the nutritive
qualities of the black snake." The _menu_ including a black snake hash
suggests a wide range of possibilities. By the time the first arrivals
have leisure to look about them, the plain far and near is covered
with tents: the "rapid architect" has done his work, and the "light
town" is established.
Perhaps before the next morning's sun was high in the heavens the town
had disappeared like a scene conjured up by a magician, leaving the
plain to resume its wonted loneliness so strangely interrupted.
The routine of camp-life so absorbed the time of the soldier that
there was little left to hang heavy on his hands. The odd minutes
between drills, roll-calls, police and fatigue duty, could be well
utilized in cleaning his musket and equipments, washing and mending
his clothes, darning his stockings, procuring fuel, improving his
quarters, writing home, and re-reading old letters. After a hard
night's duty on camp guard or picket, with sleep on the instalment
plan, it was luxury to lie warm and make up the arrears undisturbed by
fear of the dread summons, "Fall in, second relief." Very restful it
was, too, to stretch out at full length on the spring bunk, made of
barrel staves across poles, with a knapsack for a pillow, and indulge
in the fragrant briarwood, conversing with comrades of home and
friends, or discussing the gossip of the camp. In spring and summer
camps each tent commonly had an arbor of foliage for a porch, and when
there swung in its shelter a shapely hammock ingeniously woven of
withes and grapevines, attached to spring poles driven into the earth,
and filled with the balmy tips of cedar boughs, the extreme of
sybaritish appointments was attained. It was always in order to hunt
for "something to eat," not perhaps so much to appease absolute hunger
as to vary the tiresome monotony of the regulation diet. Desirable
articles of food were acquired in all ways recognized by civilized
peoples as legitimate: by purchase, by barter, and by--right of
discovery. In camp and all accessible places on the march the sutler
tempted appetites weary of hard-tack and pork, with dry ginger cakes,
cheese, dried fruits, and apples in their season. Sardines, condensed
milk, and other tinned food preparations were so expensive that they
could not be indulged in to a great extent. The canning industry was
then in its infancy. If it had then attained its present development,
and all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and meats had been accessible to
the soldier, he would have been in full sympathy with the Arizona
miner who said to his "pard," as they were consuming the customary
flapjacks and bacon, "Tom, I hope I shall strike it rich; I should
just like to strike it rich."--"Well, Bill, s'pose you should strike
it rich, what then?"--"If I should strike it rich, Tom, I'd live on
canned goods _one_ six months."
[Illustration: THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC--FIRST YEAR IN WINTER QUARTERS.
(From a War Department photograph.)]
Although the old soldier would growl about his hard-tack and feign to
have slight regard for it, the sincerity of his attachment was
attested by an incident occurring in a command which halted for a few
days, after the battle of Gettysburg, at a rural town in Pennsylvania.
It was far from the base of supplies, and the commissary's supplies
had become exhausted, and he was obliged to purchase flour and issue
it to the companies. Having no facilities for baking, they had their
flour made into bread at the farmhouses in their vicinity. The bread
was fairly good and there was plenty of it; nevertheless, when the
wagons appeared laden with the familiar boxes of veteran "squares,"
cheers went up all along the line as if for a victory or the return of
missing comrades.
{500} [Illustration: LANDING REINFORCEMENTS FOR FORT PICKENS, FLORIDA,
JUNE, 1861.]
{501} The sutler was an institution of the camp not to be overlooked.
When transportation was safe and not expensive, he kept a general
store of everything that officers and men required or could be tempted
to buy, save such articles as were prohibited by the Council of
Administration which had the general oversight of his business. Where
carriage was difficult and dangerous, a choice of articles had to be
made in order to supply those most needed. Tobacco and matches were
easily first in order of selection. Soldiers of the Army of the
Potomac will remember the blue-ended matches that left such a track
behind when struck; they touched nothing they did not adorn.
The sutlers of German-American regiments were expected to accomplish
the impossible in order to supply lager, Rhine wine, and bolognas.
Whenever a fresh stock of such goods had been received, the crowd
around the sutler's tent mustered in far greater numbers than appeared
at the parade of the regiment. It was popularly considered very
desirable to have a German regiment in a brigade. In one respect the
sutler's business was a safe one: he could collect at the paymaster's
table the sums due him, if he took care not to give men credit in
excess of the proportion of their pay permitted by regulations. On the
other hand, his profits were in danger of diminution from many
quarters. In camp the sutler and his clerks could not always
distinguish, among a crowd of customers coming and going, who paid and
who did not; storehouses were slight and penetrable, and marauders
were watchful and cunning. Those commands were very exceptional that
were in Falstaff's condition, "heinously unprovided with a thief." On
the march, dangers to the sutler's stock multiplied. To say nothing of
ordinary risks attending carriage over bad roads, and of the watchful
guerilla, there was always an uneasy feeling in the breast of the
purveyor when most surrounded by men in friendly uniform, that there
might be "unguarded moments" when the cry, "Rally on the sutler,"
would be followed by a speedy division of his goods, leaving him
lamenting. Personally the sutler was generally a prudent and tactful
man, and gained the goodwill of his customers by an obliging
disposition and a readiness to take a joke even if it was a little
rough and at his expense. When the command was in the field he made
himself especially serviceable as a medium of communication with the
"base," and many and various were the commissions he was called upon
to execute.
[Illustration: SOLDIERS' WINTER HUTS--TWO VIEWS.]
Camp life had its diversions in addition to the many interesting and
enjoyable features of the daily round of duties. Military life in
itself is necessarily spectacular, abounding in scenes of animation
and display. He must be of an unsusceptible nature and void of
enthusiasm who is indifferent to the splendid pageantry which attends
the business of war; whose senses are not pleased and imagination
excited by charging squadrons, batteries dashing across the field with
a rumble and clang suggestive of the thunderbolts they bear, and by
"heavy and solemn" battalions moving with perfect order and precision
to the stormy music of martial airs, with banners flying, rows of
bright arms reflecting the rays of the sun in streams of silver light,
and horses proudly caracoling in excited enjoyment of the music, the
glitter, and the movement.
Such spectacles thrill the breast of the soldier with pride in his
profession, and cause him to feel that
"All else to noble hearts is dross,
All else on earth is mean."
The daily ceremonies of "guard mounting" and "dress parade," and the
frequent reviews and brigade and division drills, afforded splendid
entertainments, entirely gratuitous except the contribution of
personal services. Candor compels the admission that the soldier
sometimes considered the show dear at the price. When weather and
ground were favorable, the men played the game that then passed for
"ball"--not so {502} warlike an affair as the present contest by that
name--and pitched quoits, using horse-shoes, when attainable, for that
purpose. The Virginia winter often afforded material for snowballing,
and there were occasions when whole regiments in order of battle were
pitted against each other in mimic warfare, filling the air with snowy
pellets, and Homeric deeds were done. Theatrical and minstrel
entertainments were given by "native talent," and were liberally
patronized. The first warm days of spring opened the season of
horse-racing. The "Derby" of the Army of the Potomac was St. Patrick's
Day. Running and hurdle races were held on a grand scale. The fine
horses and their dashing riders, the grand stand filled with generals
and staff officers, visiting dignitaries and ladies, the band composed
of many regimental bands consolidated for the occasion and pouring
forth a perfect Niagara of sound, mounted officers and soldiers in
thousands occupying the central space of the track, and General
Meagher, in the costume of "a fine old Irish gentleman," presiding as
grand patron of the races--all combined, with the military accessories
of glittering uniforms and comparisons, to make a scene of unusual
animation and brilliancy. For "fireside games" the various inventions
played with the well-thumbed pack of cards were greatly in favor.
Sometimes it was a simple, innocent game "just to pass away the time."
At other times it was a serious contest resulting to the unfortunate
in "passing away" all that was left him of his last pay and perhaps an
interest in his next stipend. The colored retainers and camp followers
were generally votaries of the goddess of chance and were skilled in
getting on her blind side. One day Major Blank, a gallant officer of
the staff, was showing a friend some tricks with cards. Bob, his
colored boy, was apparently very busy brushing up the quarters and
setting things to rights, paying no attention to the exhibition. The
next day the major saw his retainer counting over a whole fistful of
greenbacks. "Why, Bob," said he, "where did you get all that money?"
Bob, looking up with a grin and a chuckle: "I'se down ter de cavalry
last night, major, and dem fellers down dar didn't know nuffin 'bout
dat little trick wid de jacks what you's showin' to de cunnel." Bob
had tasted the sweets of philosophy, and proved that "knowledge is
power." The colored "boys" who came into camp when the army was in the
enemy's country, for the purpose of gazing at the "Linkum" soldiers,
or marching along with them in any capacity that would give them
rations, gave much entertainment to their hosts by their simplicity,
their stolidness, or their accomplishments as whistling, singing, or
dancing darkies. The morning after "Williamsburg," half a dozen boys
from some plantation in the vicinity came near several officers
grouped about a fire. "Good morning, boys," said Captain C., "where
did you all come from?"--"We come from Marsa Jones's place, right over
yer," said the spokesman. "We h'ar de fightin' goin' on yes'erday, an'
we jes come over dis mornin' to see about it and see you all."--"Do
you think, boys," resumed the captain, "that it is quite the polite
thing to wear such clothes as you have on when you come to visit
gentlemen of President Lincoln's army?"--"Dese yer's de bes' close we
got," was the earnestly uttered reply. "You must certainly have better
hats than those?"--"No! no! no!" came in chorus, "we has only one hat
to w'ar."--"It is a shame," said the captain, drawing a memorandum
book from his pocket with a business-like air and poising his pencil,
"that such good-looking boys as you are should only have one hat, and
such bad ones at that; I must send back to Fortress Monroe and have
some hats sent up for you. What kind of a hat do you want?" addressing
himself to the spokesman. "I wants a low-crowned hat, massa," was the
quick and earnest response; and then each boy in turn eagerly
expressed his personal preference, "I wants a wide-rimmed hat," "I
wants a hat ter fit me," etc., until the order was completed and
apparently taken down by the guileful scribe. Their confidence made
the deceit so easy as to greatly dull the point of the practical joke.
Maybe they never questioned the good faith of their generous friend,
and ascribed the non-delivery of the hats to other causes than his
neglect.
It was not often that a camp had such a sensational and pleasurable
incident as that which occurred to the First Vermont volunteer
infantry, a three months' regiment, at Newport News, in the summer of
1861. The Woodstock company formed a part of the detachment of that
regiment, which participated in the unfortunate expedition to Big
Bethel; and on the return of the company, private Reuben Parker was
missing. The company had been somewhat broken up in making an attack
in the woods. Several men remembered seeing Parker, who was a brave
fellow and a skilled rifleman, somewhat in advance of the rest of the
company, busily loading and firing. Some were even quite sure they had
seen him fall. Days and weeks having passed without his appearance or
any further news of him, there seemed no doubt about his fate, and he
was reported "killed in action." Funeral services were held at his
home in Vermont, and his wife and children put on mourning for the
lost husband and father. One day the surprising and joyful report
spread swiftly through the camp, that Parker was alive and had
returned. He came from Richmond under the escort of two Louisiana
"tigers," sent in for exchange. He had been taken prisoner uninjured
and carried to Richmond, where he enjoyed the distinction of being the
first Yankee captive exhibited in that city, and the first occupant of
"the Libby." Parker was the lion of the day for many days after his
return to the company, and his accounts of the colloquies he held with
curious rebels, and of the insults and revilings he was subjected to
in prison, made him in great request among his comrades. His case was
the first of the instances occurring in the war when Southern prisons
"yawned" and yielded "their dead unto life again."
Mr. H. V. Redfield, whose home in Lower East Tennessee was visited
several times by both the Union and the Confederate armies, observed
and noted some of the differing characteristics of the two sides. It
was the opinion of his neighbors that they would see none of the
soldiers throughout the war, because they "could not get their cannon
over the mountains." But it was not long before they learned to their
cost that mountains offered no insurmountable obstacles to modern
armies, or to their artillery either.
The first time that it dawned upon the inhabitants of this section
that there was a possible fighting chance for the North, and that one
Southern soldier was not necessarily equal to five from the North, was
after the Confederate defeat at Mill Spring, Ky., where Zollicoffer
was killed. The Confederate panic was so complete and so lasting, that
some of the refugees ran fully one hundred and fifty miles from the
scene of battle before they dared stop to take their breath and rest.
They arrived wild-eyed and in confusion, and not only to the men
themselves, but to all the neighborhood, it was an "eye-opener" as to
the fact that there was a war on hand that was likely to last until
there had been some hard fighting on both sides.
It was not long after this that General Floyd, the disloyal Secretary
of War, who had done so much before his resignation {503} to prepare
the South for the conflict, came to Lower Tennessee in his flight from
Fort Donelson. He sent for the Northern men in the town, and told
them, in explanation of his flight from Donelson, that he would "never
be captured in this war. I have a long account to settle with the
Yankees, and they can settle it in hell!"
The Southern soldiers were always prone to talk back at their
officers, lacking the discipline which was quickly established in the
Union army; and when they suffered defeat they took it as a personal
disappointment, for which they meant to get even with the Yanks after
the war; and they also had a bad habit of laying the responsibility
for every reverse on the shoulders of their superiors. When General
Bragg retreated through Tennessee, his men were greatly cast down,
though they insisted that their retreat did not mean that they were
whipped, which they insisted they were not. "It is bad enough," said
one of the soldiers, "to run when we are whipped; but d--n this way of
beating the Yankees and then running away from them!" One of them was
asked where they were retreating to. "To Cuba," he said angrily, "if
old Bragg can get a bridge built across from Florida." A horse trade
was proposed on this retreat, between two soldiers whose horses were
pretty well spent, and a farmer who was willing to exchange fresher
ones for these and a bonus. One of the soldiers objected to the horse
that was offered to him, because it had a white face that the enemy
could see for a mile. "Oh, that's no objection," said his companion;
"it's the other end of Bragg's cavalry that is always toward the
Yankees."
At the beginning of the war the Confederate cavalry was rather the
better mounted, because so many of the men owned their own horses; but
as the original supply gave out, and the renewing of the mounts became
a question of the respective ability of the governments to furnish the
best animals, this difference changed in favor of the Northern
cavalry. Also, at the beginning the Confederates were by far the best
riders, as might be expected of a race of men who spent much time in
the saddle before the war. But it was not long before the Union
cavalryman learned to ride, too, and then, with better horses, better
equipments, and better fodder, the efficiency of the cavalry of the
North was superior.
Before the war had gotten very far along, the greater facility of the
Union Government for equipping, subsisting, and generally preparing
its army, brought about a contrast between the two hostile armies
distinctly favorable to that of the North. The Union men were better
fed. To be sure, the Confederates had plenty of tobacco, while often
the Union troops were rather short of that luxury, and were ready to
make trades with the pickets of the enemy in order to secure it. But
the Unionists had plenty of coffee, and that good, while coffee was an
item that quickly disappeared from the Southern bill of fare. Meat and
flour also became scarce, and through a good many campaigns corn-meal
was the staple of the Confederate diet. The advantage of having coffee
appeared in some cases to be a distinct military advantage. The story
is told of a man who had volunteered in the Confederate army, and had
been captured, paroled, and sent home. The Union army presently
encamped near his home, and his two boys went down to camp to take a
look around; and when some friends whom they met there regaled them
with all the crackers and coffee they wanted, they made up their minds
to enlist under Uncle Sam just to get an amount and quality of "grub"
to which they had long been strangers. The old man was much disturbed,
and went down to see what he could do to get the boys out of the
scrape. But he found that he himself was like the man who said he
could "resist anything except temptation," for his first taste of the
Yankee coffee seduced him from his allegiance to the Stars and Bars,
and he, too, enlisted for the war. This story is vouched for as a
fact, illustrating the seductive power of a good commissariat for the
enticement of recruits.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT LINCOLN VISITING CAMP.]
The Northern soldier was the best clothed, and the clothing was
uniform, which could not be said of that of the Southern soldier, who,
although he was supposed to be dressed in gray or butternut, was
really dressed in whatever he could pick up, which often did not
include overcoats or oil-blankets. Supplied with good materials, and
plenty of them, the Northern soldier was expected to take care of
them, and he did so. But the Confederate soldier seldom took care to
keep his weapons bright and free from dirt and rust. The Confederate
lacked thoroughness in his camp housekeeping; he almost never fixed up
the little comfortable arrangements that characterized a Union camp,
if occupied for any length of time, nor did he "police" his camp
carefully, to keep it neat or even clean, the lack of ordinary
cleanliness being so marked as really to contribute materially to
losses through {504} disease. The way in which the Union soldier made
even a temporary camp homelike was well described by an army
correspondent, Benjamin F. Taylor:
"No matter where or when you halt them, they are at once at home. They
know precisely what to do first, and they do it. I have seen them
march into a strange region at dark, and almost as soon as the fires
would show well they were twinkling all over the field, the Sibley
cones rising like the work of enchantment everywhere, and the little
dog-tents lying snug to the ground, as if, like the mushrooms, they
had grown there, and the aroma of coffee and tortured bacon suggesting
creature comforts, and the whole economy of life in canvas cities
moving as steadily on as if it had never been intermitted. The
movements of regiments are as blind as fate. Nobody can tell to-night
where he will be to-morrow, and yet with the first glimmer of morning
the camp is astir, and the preparations begin for staying there
forever. An axe, a knife, and a will are tools enough for a soldier
house-builder. He will make the mansion and all its belongings of red
cedar, from the ridge-pole to the forestick, though a couple of
dog-tents stretched from wall to wall will make a roof worth thanking
the Lord for. Having been mason and joiner, he turns cabinetmaker;
there are his table, his chairs, his sideboard; he glides into
upholstery, and there is his bed of bamboo, as full of springs and
comfort as a patent mattress. He whips out a needle and turns tailor;
he is not above the mysteries of the saucepan and camp-kettle; he can
cook, if not quite like a Soyer, yet exactly like a soldier, and you
may believe that he can eat you hungry when he is in trim for it.
Cosey little cabins, neatly fitted, are going up; here is a boy making
a fireplace, and quite artistically plastering it with the inevitable
red earth; he has found a crane somewhere, and swung up thereon a
two-legged dinner-pot; there a fellow is finishing out a chimney with
brick from an old kiln of secession proclivities; yonder a
bower-house, closely interwoven with evergreen, is almost ready for
the occupants; the avenues between the lines of tents are cleared and
smoothed--'policed,' in camp phrase; little seats with cedar awnings
in front of the tents give a cottage-look, while the interior, in a
rude way, has a genuine homelike air. The bit of looking-glass hangs
against the cotton wall; a handkerchief of a carpet just before the
bunk marks the stepping-off place to the land of dreams; a violin case
is strung to a convenient hook, flanked by a gorgeous picture of some
hero of somewhere, mounted upon a horse rampant and saltant, 'and what
a length of tail behind!'
"The business of living has fairly begun again. There is hardly an
idle moment; and save here and there a man brushing up his musket,
getting that 'damned spot' off his bayonet, burnishing his revolver,
you would not suspect that these men had but one terrible errand. They
are tailors, they are tinkers, they are writers; fencing, boxing,
cooking, eating, drilling--those who say that camp life is a lazy life
know little about it. And then the reconnoissances 'on private
account;' every wood, ravine, hill, field, is explored; the
productions, animal and vegetable, are inventoried, and one day
renders them as thoroughly conversant with the region round about as
if they had been dwelling there a lifetime. Soldiers have
interrogation points in both eyes. They have tasted water from every
spring and well, estimated the corn to the acre, tried the
watermelons, bagged the peaches, knocked down the persimmons, milked
the cows, roasted the pigs, picked the chickens; they know who lives
here and there and yonder, the whereabouts of the native boys, the
names of the native girls. If there is a curious cave, a queer tree, a
strange rock anywhere about, they know it. You can see them with
chisel, hammer, and haversack, tugging up the mountain, or scrambling
down the ravine, in a geological passion that would have won the right
hand of fellowship from Hugh Miller, and home they come with specimens
that would enrich a cabinet. The most exquisite fossil buds just ready
to open, beautiful shells, rare minerals, are collected by these rough
and dashing naturalists."
[Illustration: AN OLD-FASHIONED TRAINING DAY.]
In the larger equipments of the army there was again a superiority in
those of the North. Their wagon trains were better, the wagons of a
uniform style, and they were marked with the name of regiment and
brigade, so that there never was any doubt as to where a stray wagon
belonged. The Confederate wagons were of all sorts and shapes and
sizes, a job lot, ill-matched, ill-kept, and ill-arranged, and the
harnesses were patchwork of inferior strength.
Residents of the South observed with pain one distinction between the
armies, which reminds one of Henry W. Grady's remark about General
Sherman, that he was a smart man, "but mighty careless about fire."
Encamped in a Southern community, a Southern army was careful not to
forage promiscuously, or appropriate to its own uses the various
provisions and live-stock of the non-combatant people who lived near.
But the Northern troops had a feeling that they were in the enemy's
{505} country and that they were entitled to live on it. There were
orders against unauthorized foraging; but the temptation to bring into
camp an occasional chicken, sundry pigs, cows, vegetables, and in some
cases even money and jewelry, is said by Southern residents to have
sometimes overcome a soldier here and there; so that the visit of a
Northern army was the signal for the good people of the neighborhood
to get as much of their belongings out of sight as possible. What was
taken in this way was taken without the formality of a request, of
payment, or of a receipt given, except when the victim claimed to be a
loyal Unionist. The Southern soldiers usually paid for what they took,
even if it was in Confederate script; but the Northern pillagers did
not do even that. Those who recall and chronicle this habit, admit
that it was due in great measure to the foreign element in the
Northern army, and to the recruits from the large cities, elements
which in the Confederate army were comparatively scarce.
The practical jokes that were played on some of the Southern farmers
illustrate the tendency on the part of the Northern soldier to "do" a
rebel. One farmer drove into a Union camp with a forty-gallon barrel
of cider, which he sold by the quart to the men, over the side of his
wagon. He was astonished to find that his barrel was empty after he
had sold only about twenty quarts, and on investigating the cause, he
discovered that while he was engaged in peddling the cider over the
side board, some soldiers had put an auger through the bottom of his
wagon and into the barrel, and had drawn the rest off into their
canteens. Another trader lost the contents of a barrel of brandy which
he had stored in a shanty overnight, in a similar manner; while
several farmers concluded that it was in vain to go to the Yankee camp
with wagon loads of apples or other fruit, unless they had a
detachment to guard every side of the wagon, for while they dealt fair
over one side, their stock would disappear over the other. One who had
suffered in this way came to the conclusion that "the Yankees could
take the shortening out of a gingercake without breaking the crust."
SOUTHERN SPIES AND SCOUTS IN THE WAR.
BY F. G. DE FONTAINE.
THE INGENIOUS DEVICE OF A WOMAN--DESPATCHES CONCEALED UNDER THE HIDE
OF A DOG--"DEAF BURKE," THE MAN OF MANY DISGUISES--FREQUENT
COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE LINES--BISCUIT A MEDIUM OF
CORRESPONDENCE--DEATH OF COON HARRIS AT SHILOH--A BOLD UNION SPY--AN
EXECUTION AT FRANKLIN, TENN.
The secret service or "spy" system of the South did not differ greatly
from that of the North. There may have been in that section a lack of
available gold with which to pay expenses when desirable information
was required, but there was certainly no absence of courage or
patriotism on the part of those who were willing to risk their lives
or imprisonment in the event of capture. This was especially true of
Southern women; and those who are familiar with their achievements in
this field of war will bear witness to the shrewdness, persistence,
and fidelity with which they often pursued their dangerous
investigations.
One or two incidents will illustrate. It was of the utmost importance
to General Beauregard, in 1862, to learn the strength of McClellan's
army and whatever facts might relate to his suspected designs on
Centreville, Va. For this mission a woman was chosen. She was a young
widow whose husband had been killed at the second battle of Manassas;
a Virginian of gentle birth; prior to the war a resident of
Washington, and a frequent visitor in the society circles of
Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Making her way across the
lines, she promptly entered upon her task, and through trusty agents
was soon enabled to obtain a complete roster of the Federal army,
together with much valuable information concerning its probable
movements. She was absent two months.
Returning at the end of this time, she crossed the Potomac opposite
Dumfries, Va., an outpost then under the command of Col. (afterward
Gen.) Wade Hampton, and the fair spy was promptly forwarded to the
Confederate headquarters at Centreville. Her baggage consisted of a
small grip-sack and a tiny Scotch terrier. Warmly welcomed by
Beauregard, she proceeded with true womanly volubility to entertain
him with a description of her adventures and their result. The general
patiently permitted the lingual freshet to flow on without
interruption, supposing that when she got tired she would produce the
expected despatches from other secret agents in the North. But the
little woman's tongue seemed to be hung in the middle and to wag at
both ends; moreover, she was too pretty to be abruptly silenced by the
polite creole commander.
Finally, unable to restrain his anxiety any longer, he said, "Well,
Mrs. M., I shall be glad to see your papers."--"I didn't dare to bring
them on my person," was the reply; "it was unsafe. In fact, I have
been suspected and searched already, and so I familiarized myself with
their contents. You see it is fortunate that I have a good memory." At
this remark, Beauregard showed his chagrin, and frankly told the lady
he could place but little reliance on her memory of so many figures
and details, and therefore that her mission had proved of little use.
Listening to his scolding with a demure air, and looking at him with a
mischievous twinkle in her eye, she called her dog: "Here, Floy!" The
Skye terrier jumped in her lap. "General, have you a knife about you?"
The knife was produced. Then she turned the animal over on its back,
and, to the amazement of Beauregard, deliberately proceeded to rip him
open. In less time than it takes to tell the story, she held in one
hand the precious papers and in the other the skin of the Skye
terrier, while prancing about the floor was a diminutive black-and-tan
pup overjoyed at his relief from an extra cuticle.
The shrewd woman had sewed the despatches between the two skins in a
manner that defied detection, and under the very noses of the Federal
outposts had brought through the lines some of the most important
information transmitted during the war. It is needless to say that
Beauregard was delighted, and it was but a little while after this
incident that McClellan advanced on Centreville only to find deserted
camps, batteries of "Quaker guns," and the Confederate army falling
back toward Richmond and Yorktown.
* * * * *
Combining in his person the qualities of scout, sharp-shooter,
dare-devil, and spy, a Texan known as "Deaf Burke" made himself famous
among the higher officers of Longstreet's corps during the early part
of the war. Like Terry of Texas, afterward notorious in California,
Adams of Mississippi, Mason of Virginia (brother of the United States
senator who with Slidell of {506} Louisiana, became the subject of
international complications with England), and many other daring
spirits, he was at first merely a volunteer or independent fighter
subject to no orders; but his temerity in passing the lines, mingling
in disguise with Union officers and soldiers, and his adroitness in
securing valuable information quickly brought him to the notice of Lee
and Longstreet. He was about forty-five years of age, a natural mimic
and dialectician--could talk to you like a simpleton from the
backwoods, or a thoroughbred gentleman--and he never lost his nerve.
Not far from the Potomac, the writer met him in the garb of a Quaker,
but only recognized him at night when incidentally he became a tent
mate. Then it was learned that he had just returned from Washington,
where during the preceding three weeks he had mingled among Southern
sympathizers and secured the information for which he had been sent.
Prior to this, disguised as an old farmer living in Fairfax County,
Va., he had driven a load of wood across the Federal lines. In one of
the logs were concealed the despatches intended for headquarters.
Later in the war, when transferred to the West, he distinguished
himself as one of twelve sharp-shooters chosen to handle as many
Whitworth rifles that had been imported; and still later was killed in
battle among the Texans, of whom it was his pride to be considered
one.
The comparative ease with which communications were established
between the lines is further illustrated by an incident. General
Rosecrans and a portion of his staff, when in Tennessee, occupied a
mansion not far from the outposts of the two armies. The hostess, Mrs.
Thomas, was the wife of a Confederate colonel whose regiment was but a
few miles distant. Her negro cook made excellent biscuit, which had
become the subject of frequent comment at the table, the general being
especially pleased. Mrs. Thomas taking advantage of this circumstance,
and her acquaintance with him, suggested the propriety of sending some
of the warm breakfast to their mutual friend--her husband. Rosecrans
readily agreed, and under his own flag of truce, and through one of
his own orderlies, a package of biscuit was duly forwarded to Colonel
Thomas with an open letter from his wife. Two hours later, the
Confederate officer was in possession of all the available secrets at
Federal headquarters, and for weeks afterward the bake oven was the
mute agent of communications, some of which proved important to the
Southern commanders. The housewife had enclosed her tissue-written
missives in the pastry, and the ruse was not discovered until after
the war, when the story was told to mutual friends.
In the category of Southern women who in one way or another made their
way through the lines, might be included many who carried to the
Confederacy supplies of quinine and other articles that could be
easily concealed on the person. It is safe to say that hundreds passed
backward and forward across the borders of Virginia and Maryland, and
with but rare exception their native shrewdness enabled them to escape
the vigilance of the pickets on guard.
The bravery of Northern spies in the South is a theme not to be
forgotten in this connection. Before General Sherman in his "March to
the Sea" reached the several cities through which he was to pass, one
or more of his secret agents was sure to be found mingling sociably
among the residents. In Savannah, a gentleman appeared as a purchaser
of the old wines for which that city was once famous, and remained
undiscovered until the end came. In Charleston, news was communicated
to the Union officers through the medium of two or three whites and of
negroes who made their way to the islands on the coast, and there met
and delivered to waiting boats' crews the papers consigned to their
care. In Columbia, S. C., an officer wearing the uniform of the
Confederate navy visited the best families for more than a month;
escorted young ladies to fairs held for the benefit of army hospitals
and other entertainments, and made himself generally popular. One of
these newly made acquaintances was the daughter of the mayor. After
Sherman entered, and the conflagration that destroyed the city was in
progress, he repaired to her house and tendered his services. Then for
the first time she learned the truth of the saying that she had
"entertained an angel unawares." He aided materially in saving the
property of the family and affording desired protection.
[Illustration: PAULINE CUSHMAN. (A Federal Spy.)]
[Illustration: BELL BOYD. (A Confederate Spy.)]
The task of a spy in the army was not so easy. It was full of personal
danger. Success meant the praise of his superiors and possible
promotion. Failure might mean an ignominious death. After the battle
of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing as it is sometimes known, one Coon
Harris, a Tennesseean, went through the Confederate army without
detection, but in a skirmish a few days afterward he was captured
while acting as guide to a column moving to attack a weak point in the
Confederate lines. Bragg was in command, and the poor fellow had but a
short shrift. Tried by a drum-head court martial, he was sentenced to
be shot at daylight.
In his calm demeanor he illustrated how a brave man animated by a high
principle can die. There was no pageantry, no clergyman with his last
rites, no nothing, save a handful of curious spectators following a
rude army wagon wherein, on a rough box called by courtesy a coffin,
sat unbound a middle-aged farmer in his butternut suit, riding to his
death. Not the closest observer could have discovered any difference
in coolness between him and a bystander. Arriving at the place of
execution he jumped lightly from the wagon, lingered a moment to see
his coffin removed, and then sauntered carelessly down the little
valley to the tree beneath which he was to meet his fate.
{507} The ceremony was brief. The officer in charge of the shooting
squad asked him if he had any final message to leave. "Yes," was the
reply; "tell my family that my last thoughts were of them, and that I
died doing my duty to my State and country!" Then his arms were
pinioned, the faded brown coat was buttoned across his breast, and he
sat down upon his coffin. A handkerchief was tied over his eyes, and
voluntarily he laid his head back against the tree. Even now,
preserving his remarkable self-possession, he called for a piece of
tobacco, and, chewing upon it vigorously, occupied several seconds in
adjusting his head to the bark of the tree, as one would fit himself
to a pillow before going to sleep. Then he quietly said, "Boys,
ready!"
A file of eight men stepped forward until within ten paces of the
doomed man; the order was given to "Fire!" and with a splash of
brains, and a trickling rivulet of blood down his hairy breast, the
soul of the brave man passed into the keeping of the Creator.
During the first march of the Confederate army into Maryland, a
handsome young fellow, one Charles Mason, who gave his home as
Perrysville, Penn., boldly intercepted a courier who was carrying an
order. "What division do you belong to?" he inquired. "Longstreet's,"
was the reply; "what's yours?" asked the courier. "Jackson's." The
presence of a gray uniform favored this statement, and the two rode
together. The courier, however, observed a disposition on the part of
his companion to drop behind, and suddenly was confronted by a pistol
and a demand for the delivery of his despatches. Not being promptly
forthcoming, the spy fired, secured the papers, and galloped away. The
Confederate lived long enough to describe his assailant and make his
identification certain.
A few hours afterward the man became a victim to his own daring.
Riding up to the head of a column, he said to the general in command:
"I am from General Jackson; he desires me to request you to halt and
await further orders."--"I am not in the habit of receiving my orders
from General Jackson," answered the officer; "what command do you
belong to?" Hesitating an instant, the spy said: "To the Hampton
Legion." "In whose brigade and division is that?" continued the
general. The pretended courier confessed that he had forgotten. Taken
into custody, a search revealed his true character. On his person were
found shorthand and other notes, a pair of lieutenant's shoulder
straps, and other evidences of his calling. A drum-head court martial
was promptly convened, and he was sentenced to be hanged then and
there. He met his fate stoically, and without other expressed regret
save that, since his mission had been a failure, he could not die the
death of a soldier.
"On June 9, 1863," wrote a correspondent of the Nashville _Press_,
"two strangers rode into the Union camp, at Franklin, Tenn., and
boldly presented themselves at Colonel Baird's headquarters. They wore
Federal regulation trousers and caps, the latter covered with white
flannel havelocks, and carried side arms. Both showed high
intelligence. One claimed to be a colonel in the United States army,
the other a major, and they represented that they were inspecting the
outposts and defences. Official papers purporting to be signed by
General Rosecrans, and also from the War Department at Washington,
seemed to confirm this statement. So impressive was their manner, in
fact, that Colonel Baird, at the request of the elder officer, loaned
him fifty dollars, the plea being that they had been overhauled by the
enemy and had lost their wardrobe and purses.
"Just before dark they left camp, saying they were going to Nashville,
and started in that direction. Suddenly, said Colonel Baird, in
describing the occurrence, the thought flashed upon him that they
might be spies; and turning to Colonel Watkins, of the Sixth Kentucky
cavalry, who was standing near by, he ordered him to go in pursuit.
Being overtaken, they were placed under arrest, and General Rosecrans
was informed by telegraph. He quickly answered that he knew nothing of
the men, and had given no passes of the kind described.
"With this evidence in hand their persons were searched, and various
papers still further showing their guilt were found. On the major's
sword was found etched the name, 'Lieutenant W. G. Peter, Lieutenant
Confederate Army.' They then confessed.
"Colonel Baird at once telegraphed the facts to General Rosecrans, and
asked what should be done. The reply was: 'Try them by a drum-head
court martial, and if found guilty, hang them immediately.' The court
was convened, and before daylight the prisoners knew they must die. A
little after nine o'clock that morning the whole garrison was
marshalled around the place of execution, the guards, in tribute to
their gallantry, being ordered to march with arms reversed. The
unfortunate men made no complaint of the severity of their punishment,
but regretted, as brave men might do, the ignominy of being hung, and
a few hours afterward both were buried in the same grave."
The history of the war on both sides is full of similar instances of
daring, and since the curtain has fallen upon the bloody drama, and
the voices of passion are hushed amid the anthems of peace, it is no
longer in the hearts of true Americans to withhold the honor that
belongs to all our heroes, whether they wore the blue or the gray.
{508} [Illustration: A GROUP OF CONFEDERATE OFFICERS.
BRIGADIER-GENERAL RANDALL LEE GIBSON. MAJOR-GENERAL ARNOLD ELZEY.
BRIGADIER-GENERAL ROGER A. PRYOR. BRIGADIER-GENERAL THOMAS L.
CLINGMAN. BRIGADIER-GENERAL EPPA HUNTON. BRIGADIER-GENERAL A. R.
LAWTON. BRIGADIER-GENERAL M. W. GARY. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIMON B.
BUCKNER. MAJOR-GENERAL M. B. YOUNG. MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY W. ALLEN.
MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM SMITH.]
NORTHERN SPIES AND SCOUTS IN THE WAR.
BY HENRY W. B. HOWARD.
IS THE RÔLE OF A SPY DISHONORABLE?--THE SPY A NECESSARY ELEMENT IN A
CAMPAIGN--REMARKABLE HEROISM--ONE OF GENERAL GRANT'S SPIES--HOW HE
ESCAPED BEING BURIED ALIVE--THE FIGHT OF A SPY WITH A BLOODHOUND--THE
PERILOUS ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN LEIGHTON, OF MICHIGAN--THE VARIED AND
THRILLING ADVENTURES OF COL. L. C. BAKER--HIS EXPERIENCES AS A YANKEE
SPY IN RICHMOND--MISS EMMA EDMONDS, A NOTED NORTHERN SPY--PASSING
THROUGH THE CONFEDERATE LINES DISGUISED AS A NEGRO BOY--A FEMALE UNION
SPY IN THE CONFEDERATE CAVALRY.
Military writers have not been entirely agreed as to whether the rôle
of spy is an honorable part to play in warfare. Much stress has been
laid on the necessarily disgraceful nature of a calling that can
justly subject one to the hangman. The ignominy of this punishment is
held to relieve all soldiers from the _duty_ of service as spies, even
under orders, and in consequence all spies are necessarily volunteers.
But it is agreed, on the other hand, that the death penalty which is
inevitable for the detected spy is intended, not as a punishment for
the individual, but as a measure of preventing the spy from carrying
on his work, so full of danger to his enemy. This lack of personal
responsibility is so well understood, that a spy successful in his
expedition is not liable to death after its completion, and {509} if
subsequently captured in battle may not be executed for having
previously been a spy.
But however at variance they may be as to the nature of his calling,
all critics are of one mind in regarding the work of the spy an
absolutely necessary element in the conduct of a campaign by the
commander. Without it, he would be at a loss as to the most essential
facts that must govern his movements. The strength of the enemy, the
nature and advantages of his position, the best approaches to it, the
ground commanded by his batteries, as well as his intentions--all
these and many other details must be in some degree known to a
commander who would direct his troops with safety or success. Some of
this information he can pick up from resident non-combatants; some he
can wrest from his unwilling prisoners; some he can purchase from
treacherous members of the force opposing him. But for most of it he
is absolutely dependent on the brave men in his own command who are
willing, for the sake of their cause, to risk the death that awaits
the spy caught in the enemy's country.
These men certainly cannot be regarded with the contempt which a
commander feels for the mere tools of whose treachery, cupidity, or
indifference he avails himself while scorning the instrument. And, if
not that, then they must be regarded as heroic even beyond those of
their fellows who are as brave as lions on the field of battle. For
their mission is a solitary one, and they have none of the cheering
companionship and stimulating emulation that bring courage for the
charge. Instead of being under fire for a few brief moments or hours,
their nerves are on the rack for days and weeks. With no commanding
officer to obey as he orders them here or there, they are thrown on
their own resources in the most perilous and trying situations. They
must avoid dangerous meetings, disarm suspicions, turn aside
questions, invent lies by the hundred without having one contradict
another. A constant play of quick wits, steady nerves, and, at the
right moment, prompt and courageous physical force, elevates the work
of a spy to a fine art, in comparison with which the mere enthusiastic
bravery of the battlefield is child's play. Darkly threatening
throughout all this perilous work is the imminent and ever-present
risk of detection, with its certainty of a death, not glorious like
that of those who fall in the hand-to-hand conflict, not the ordinary
fortune of war like that of the sharp-shooter's victim brought down at
long range, not even invested with the pathos of a death, however
sudden, among sympathizing comrades--but the death of a dog, promptly
dealt out, without a friendly face among the spectators.
A good illustration of the consummate skill, coolness of head, and
strength of will and nerve required in this duty was given by a scout
named Hancock, attached to General Grant's army in Virginia. He had
failed to escape detection, and was sent under guard to Castle
Thunder, in Richmond. His situation was most perilous; but this did
not prevent his utilizing his innate joviality to lighten the life of
his fellow-prisoners, and bringing his wonderful power of facial
expression to bear on the great object of his own escape. In the midst
of one of his songs in the prison he suddenly threw up his hands with
a cry, fell to the ground in a heap, and lay there so obviously dead
that the post surgeon--not over-solicitous to keep a Yankee above
ground--pronounced him a case for the grave-digger, and he was bundled
into a pine coffin and started on his last journey. But when the
driver reached the burying-place, the coffin was empty. Hancock had
dexterously slid from the wagon, and, it being night, had joined the
followers on foot without detection. When the driver reported back to
the prison, the trick was suspected, and a sharp lookout was ordered,
which he evaded in the most unexpected way. He went direct to the best
hotel in Richmond and registered from Georgia, had a good night's
rest, and spent the following day, in the character of a government
contractor, in learning what he wanted to know about the city. He was
twice arrested by the guards, and escaped the first time through the
intervention and identification of the hotel clerk. The second time he
was returned to the prison, where for seven days he concealed his
identity by assuming a squint and a distortion of feature, which he
abandoned when he learned that imprisonment was all he had to fear, as
by that time the war was virtually over. Ten days later he was set at
liberty with his fellow-prisoners.
The peril of a spy's career is not intermittent, like that of active
fighting; it is continuous. A moment may give him his liberty or may
bring him face to face with death. An unnamed scout of the Army of the
Potomac--so many of these heroic men are even to this day unnamed--had
collected his intelligence in the enemy's country, and had arrived
close to the stream beyond which were the Union lines. In the darkness
of the night, with the sense of danger keen within him, he groped his
way along the shore, seeking the skiff he had concealed there for his
return. To his horror it dawned on him that he had missed his landmark
and could not find the boat. There he stood, the evidences of his
calling unmistakably on him, knowing that he had been suspected and
followed, and realizing that only a few minutes were his in which to
complete his escape. Nothing could exceed the mental agony of the next
quarter hour. Under stress of danger he had just let himself into the
water, determined to attempt to swim the wide stream as a forlorn
hope, when suddenly the baying of a bloodhound dashed even this faint
hope from him, and presently the crackling of twigs announced the near
approach of the savage pursuer. But there were evidences that for the
moment the dog was at fault, and in mere desperation the hunted man
waded beneath the overhanging banks where he might sell his life as
dearly as possible. Something struck against his breast. He could not
restrain a cry as he seized what proved to be his missing boat. In an
instant he had clambered in and cast off the line, when a sudden gleam
of moonlight breaking through the clouds revealed at the other end of
the log to which the boat had been moored the crouching figure of the
bloodhound, poising for a spring. Simultaneously with the leap of the
dog, the skiff darted out into the stream. A blow with the oar aimed
at the head of the animal nearly upset the fragile craft and was
easily eluded by the dog, which, swimming forward, laid its forepaws
on the gunwale and attempted to seize the edge of the boat with his
teeth. The situation was desperate. Laying aside his revolver, a shot
from which would have drawn a volley from the shore, the brave scout
seized his bowie-knife, and with one frenzied stroke cut the throat of
the bloodhound, severing its neck clean to the back. The dog sank from
sight, and the man was free! A few minutes' quiet pulling landed him
on the further shore, whence a brief walk brought him to camp, to tell
his adventures and turn in his stock of information.
Perhaps as thrilling an experience as ever was reported was that which
fell to the lot of Captain Leighton, formerly of a Michigan battery,
but led by the fascination of adventure into scout and spy duty. It
was brief, but so charged with peril and nerve-tension that in a few
short hours he seemed to have lived days, and needed a long sleep
after it, as though he had been awake for a week. In a single
afternoon he left his own camp and rode into the enemy's country,
passing two pickets, killed a {510} guard, listened to the council of
war in the tent of the rebel general, fought his way back through the
pickets, who now knew his mission, set off the signal agreed on, and
rode to safety on his unusually fleet horse. The first picket he met
on his way out was misled by supposing him to be a spy of their own
returning with information, and from them he got what sounded like the
countersign, but was not, as he discovered when, riding on, he
attempted with it to pass the sentry near the rebel general's tent.
The sentry pulled trigger on him, but the cap snapped on the musket,
there was a hand-to-hand scuffle not a hundred yards from the camp,
and the sentry was stabbed to the heart. Clad in the sentry's uniform,
under cover of the night, he heard from the very lips of the general
and his council the secret he was in search of--that the enemy would
mass on the left wing to meet the attack of the morrow--sauntered
carelessly about as the council dispersed, and then mounted his superb
gray and was off. It was a perilous ride, for every picket he had
passed in the afternoon fired on him as he rode through, and it was
indeed a charmed life that escaped their bullets. The last picket he
had to pass--the same that had mistaken him for a rebel scout--was
numerous, and met him with a volley, followed up by a sharp attack
with sabres and revolvers. Shooting, stabbing, slashing, and swearing
like a fiend, wounded and wounding, he fought his way through them,
and then fled onward, reeling in his saddle with excitement and loss
of blood, until, arrived at the hollow stump where his rockets were
concealed, he set them both off (thus giving the desired information
to his own commander). Then, emptying his revolver at his nearest
pursuer, he again rode away, unharmed further by the shots that
followed him like hail. What added to the bravery of this deed was the
fact that he knowingly went out to replace a scout who had been killed
the night before on the very same mission.
[Illustration: JOHN WILKES BOOTH.]
[Illustration: REDUCED FACSIMILE OF POSTER ISSUED BY THE WAR
DEPARTMENT.]
All spies were not so fortunate as to complete their expeditions in
one day. Sometimes, although in comparative safety, they were unable
to get out of the enemy's territory for many days. An Illinois
private, named Newcomer, who had just missed some important battles,
was accustomed to vary the monotony of his camp life in Alabama by
making secret trips after information overnight. This work suited him
so well that he determined on a more extensive expedition among the
guerilla cavalry that he learned from a negro lay some miles below the
Union camp. His first bold act was to crawl into a corn-crib where a
number of these men lay sleeping, their horses picketed outside, and,
feeling around, he calmly drew a good revolver from the belt of one of
the unconscious sleepers, having the good luck to wake none of them
up. He had provided himself with a forged certificate of discharge
from the rebel army, by means of which he was by some unsuspecting
Southern sympathizers put in communication with a Southern agent for
the purchase of stores, named Radcliffe, who was known to everybody in
and about Franklin, Tenn., and who vouched for him throughout his stay
among the Confederates. He took on the character of one seeking office
in the rebel army, and as a seller of contraband articles obtained
from the North. In this guise, turning up at Radcliffe's house as
occasion required, he explored the situation and reported back to his
superiors at Nashville. Before he got back he had serious trouble in
getting away from Shelbyville, for lack of a pass. A good-natured
crowd, to whom he had dispensed the contents of his whiskey flask,
were willing to help him away, but stuck at telling the provost
marshal that they knew him; but it was finally managed by writing his
name on the collective pass on which they travelled. Lagging behind
them on the road, he turned off in the direction he wanted to go, only
to fall into the hands of one of Morgan's bands of scouts, who swore
he was a Yankee, and actually had the halter around his neck to hang
him on the spot, when he succeeded in persuading them to take him back
to Radcliffe for identification, where he was released, and {511} then
was furnished by Radcliffe with a written voucher on which he
succeeded in making his way, after many exciting and perilous
adventures, to his commander. He brought him the important news,
confided to him by a rebel who took him for a fellow spy, of a
projected attack on the Union fleet on the river, and steps were taken
that saved the ships.
Perhaps the most varied experience was that of Col. L. C. Baker, who
organized the secret service, and performed himself every duty, from
that of actual spy to that of chief of the national police, beginning
with a personal expedition to Richmond and ending with the capture of
Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln. His first Richmond
trip was made in July, 1861, under cover of a general movement of
Southern sympathizers away from the North. General Scott himself sent
him to obtain information concerning the strength and disposition of
troops in the Confederate capital. His greatest difficulty at the
outset was to get through the Northern lines without betraying his
errand, and three times he was sent back to General Scott as a
Southern spy. Finally he got through, and, armed with letters to
prominent residents of Richmond, he was promptly forwarded on his way,
but was carefully turned over to Jefferson Davis himself, who kept him
under guard while he made up his mind whether the stranger was a spy
or the "Mr. Munson" he pretended to be with business in Richmond.
Succeeding in getting satisfactorily identified through a sort of
"bunco" self-introduction to a man from Knoxville, where he claimed to
have lived, he was paroled and turned loose in Richmond. When he had
picked up the information he desired, he began his efforts to get back
to Washington with his precious news. A pass to visit Fredericksburg
enabled him to leave Richmond, but an attempt to go further on the
same pass only got him into the hands of a patrol. But he soon not
only eluded his sleepy guard, but rode off on the sentry's horse as
well. Followed and surrounded in a negro cabin where he had stopped to
rest, he managed to hide under a haystack, where he narrowly escaped
the searching sabre-thrust of his pursuers, and then made again for
the Potomac. Hunger induced him to risk introducing himself to two
German pickets guarding the bank on the Confederate side of that
river, and they hospitably kept him in their tent overnight, though
they watched him closely and made him a semi-prisoner. The watches of
the night he consumed in vain endeavors to crawl out of the tent while
his captors slept; but they slept "with one eye open," as it were, and
it was not until dawn that he managed unobserved to get down to the
river-bank, secure the pickets' boat with its single broken oar, and
push for liberty out into the stream. The men were quickly after him,
however, and he had to shoot one of them to save himself, while the
other ran for assistance. The detachment that quickly reached the
shore made the water about his craft uncomfortably lively with their
bullets; but he fortunately managed to paddle out of range without
being hit, and after a row of four miles, which was the width of the
river at that point, he reached the Maryland shore and made his way to
Washington.
The papers with which Baker had been intrusted at Richmond gave him
much information involving Northern traitors who were aiding the
Southern cause, and for some time he was engaged in the work of
bringing them to justice. But he occasionally returned to special
duty, as he did in the autumn of 1863, when, after Pope's defeat by
Lee, great solicitude was felt for the safety of Banks's army, the
whereabouts of which even was unknown, and in ignorance of Lee's
success Banks was supposed to be seeking a junction with Pope. Baker
undertook to carry informing despatches to Banks, and to bring that
officer's report back to Washington. Mounted on the famous race-horse
"Patchen," he succeeded in reaching Banks near Manassas without
adventure, but his return trip was full of peril. Conscious of the
great importance of haste, he started straight for the rebel lines
between himself and Washington, and after riding two miles to the
eastward he caught sight of the hostile army near the old Bull Run
battlefield. To save time, instead of making a detour to avoid them,
he halted and awaited an opportunity of slipping through, availing
himself of the detached order of march in which the enemy was
proceeding. A break in the column soon gave him this chance, and
although he knew that he would become a target for every marksman that
saw him, the intrepid Baker nerved himself for a quick and desperate
dash and gave spurs to his splendid steed. Lying close to Patchen's
neck, he flew like an arrow within thirty feet of a squad of infantry,
but had the good luck to bring both himself and his horse through
without harm from the bullets that whistled thick about them. A squad
of cavalry quickly took up the pursuit; but, tired as he was, Patchen
soon distanced all but a few who were particularly well mounted. For
nine miles the chase continued, the pursuers dropping off until only
three remained, when fatigue began to tell on both horse and rider.
Then, turning a low hill, Baker wheeled sharply about and concealed
himself in a clump of pines, while his pursuers rode past unconscious
of his presence. But they soon discovered that there was no longer any
one in front of them. Returning, one of them was apprised of Baker's
whereabouts by a slight movement of the latter's horse, and the crisis
of the adventure was at hand. Baker shot down one Confederate
cavalryman, and then turned sharply off the path to avoid the other
two, who were now on their way back. But, although he passed them, it
was not without their seeing him, and, firing their carbines, they
renewed the pursuit. Spurring Patchen to a final burst of speed, Baker
plunged into the swollen waters of Bull Run, hoping to get across
before his pursuers could reach the bank and fire at him in
mid-stream. This he accomplished, and had even clambered up the almost
perpendicular bank beyond by the time the rebels had plunged in to
follow him over. Before Baker could fire on them the Union pickets,
attracted by the shots, came running to the edge of the bluff. Baker
shouted out his errand, and the pickets with a volley emptied one of
the Confederate saddles, while the remaining pursuer escaped to tell
the tale. This was a pretty close call for Baker, but it was typical
of the scout's experience, and illustrated well the many serious
chances taken by every successful seeker after information in the
enemy's territory.
The spies of the war were not all men. Many women on both sides did
effective secret work for the cause they espoused. Perhaps this agency
was more common among the Southern than the Northern sympathizers.
Residence in the North was free from the necessity of accounting for
one's presence and business as rigidly as in the South; and not only
in Washington and the border towns, but in all the cities of the
North, the rebels had fair emissaries who kept them pretty well
informed of passing events. Among the Northern women who did good
service during the war, both as spy and nurse, was Miss Emma Edmonds.
After spending several months in the hospitals of the Army of the
Potomac, she volunteered to take the place of a spy who had been
executed at Richmond. Disguised as a colored boy, she soon found
herself within the rebel lines, where she joined a gang of negroes who
were carrying provisions to {512} the pickets, and afterward working
on the fortifications at Yorktown. After doing a man's day's work, she
used her evening liberty in making a careful inspection of the
defences, counting the guns, etc., and picked up much other
information through the free discussion of what was going on, common
in the rebel army among both officers and men. Her opportunity to get
back to the Union lines came when, on visiting the pickets with their
evening meal, she was for a time stationed on the post of a picket who
had just been shot; for while the adjacent pickets had their backs
turned, she slipped away into the darkness, carrying her valuable
information with her. Later on she made another secret expedition,
this time in the guise of an Irish female peddler. Her first
experience on this trip was the discovery of a wounded and dying
Confederate officer in a deserted house, and the mementos and messages
for home which he confided to her proved to be her passport to the
rebel headquarters. She had already gained from the pickets and the
men about the camp the information she was seeking, and was quite
ready to return, when she was sent, mounted, to guide a detachment to
bring back the dead officer's body from the house near her own lines,
and thus was fairly started on her way. The expedition of the
detachment was a somewhat perilous one for them, and they sent her
farther down the road to watch for Yankees and give them timely
warning of the approach of any from the Union side. Not seeing any
Yankees in that vicinity, she kept on until she did--and then she was
safe back in her own quarters, and the Union troops were soon able to
cross the Chickahominy with a pretty fair knowledge of the enemy's
dispositions and purposes.
Miss Edmonds had a strange career for a woman. She kept with the Union
advance, varying her womanly ministrations in camp and field hospital
with occasional duty as an orderly and on secret service. She entered
the Confederate lines, now as a contraband, now as a rebel soldier. In
the latter character she was impressed into the Confederate cavalry
and went into action, where she managed to change sides during the
fight and to wound the rebel officer who had conscripted her. After
this adventure her secret service had perforce to be confined to the
Union lines, for she had become pretty well known in all the disguises
she could assume.
The experiences of all scouts and spies can be well understood from
the instances that have now been given. Their work was most important,
and their days were filled with thrilling adventure, most fascinating
to adventurous spirits. Many of them never lived to tell their story,
but received the prompt justice of a drum-head court martial and a
short shrift. Their performances rose often to the height of heroism,
and their prowess, when they found themselves in close quarters,
equalled anything ever done on the battlefield.
[Illustration: CONFEDERATE MONUMENT AND CEMETARY, RICHMOND, VA.]
{513}
IMPORTANT HISTORY SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE GROUP OF SHERMAN AND HIS
GENERALS. (See page 30.)
This picture was to consist of General Sherman, his two
army-commanders, and the four corps-commanders in charge at the close
of the war.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL OLIVER O. HOWARD.]
It does not, however, contain the portrait of General Blair, who was
absent on a short leave. At the time the photograph was taken, I
[General Howard] was no longer connected with General Sherman's army.
My picture was included for the following reason:
After the army's arrival near Washington, I was assigned to other
duty, and General Logan took my place in command of the Army of the
Tennessee. When the group was made up, as I had been so long
identified with that army, General Sherman desired me to be included.
General Logan was seated for the picture where I would have sat, had
there been no late change of commanders. In all the field operations
from Atlanta to the sea, and from Savannah through the Carolinas to
Raleigh, and on to Washington, I was denominated "the right wing
commander," and General Slocum "the left wing commander." The division
of cavalry under Kilpatrick was sometimes independent of either wing,
but usually reported for orders to one wing or the other, as Sherman
directed.
The right wing was the "Army of the Tennessee;" the left wing, the
"Army of Georgia." In the field service, from Atlanta on, each wing
had two army corps, as follows: the right wing, the Fifteenth and
Seventeenth; the left wing, the Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps. When
General Logan passed to the charge of the Army of the Tennessee,
General Hazen was assigned to command the Fifteenth Corps. Though
absent, General Blair retained the Seventeenth Corps. After our march,
for some reason--I think for Mower's promotion--Gen. A. S. Williams
had been relieved from the Twentieth Corps, and General Mower assigned
to his place. The Fourteenth Corps, which Gen. George H. Thomas had so
long and so ably commanded, was during all that march under the
direction of Gen. Jefferson C. Davis.
* * * * *
It may be of interest, while inspecting this noted picture, to recall
something characteristic of the men who compose it. Let us begin with
the junior officer of the group.
MAJOR-GENERAL JEFFERSON C. DAVIS.
General Davis, promoted to a volunteer appointment from the regular
army, became early conspicuous as a successful commander in Missouri
and other Western fields. For example, he captured one thousand
prisoners at Milford, repelled Confederate attack upon Sigel's centre
at Pea Ridge, commanded a division at Stone River, and took as
prisoners one hundred and fourteen of Wheeler's raiders.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JEFFERSON C. DAVIS.]
In August, 1862, ill-health constrained him to leave the front for a
short time, when he visited his home in Clarke County, Ind. The
northward movement of the Confederates against Louisville subsequently
caused him to hasten to that city and volunteer his services to
General Nelson.
This general, William Nelson, a native of Kentucky, was a middle-aged
naval officer at the breaking out of the war. His experience in
Mexico, his strong character as a loyal Kentuckian, had caused his
transfer to the army. Among undisciplined masses of volunteers he had
already done wonders. He attained special distinction as a division
commander under Buell at the fiercely contested battle of Shiloh; but
with all his patriotism, energy, and capability, he was a martinet in
discipline, very often giving great offence by his rough language and
impatient ways.
Gen. Jefferson C. Davis had hardly come in contact with Nelson when he
was subjected to treatment that offended him greatly.
Davis was of slender build, while Nelson was a large and powerful man.
Davis endeavored, without success, to get an apology from Nelson for
hard words and mistreatment. Abbott, in his History of the Civil War,
shows how he was met:
"Here he (Davis) was outrageously insulted by General Nelson, and
after demanding an apology and receiving only reiterated abuse, he
(Davis) shot him on the stairs of the Galt House. General Nelson died
in a few hours. General Davis was arrested, but was soon released,
sustained by the almost universal sympathy of the public and of the
army."
In subsequent years it was my lot to be on duty with General Davis. He
reported to me and was under my command while pursuing the
Confederates under Bragg, just after the battle of Missionary Ridge,
November 25, 1863. His method of covering his front and flanks with
skirmishers, and holding his troops well in hand for the prompt
deployment, greatly pleased me. He was one of those officers
constantly on the _qui vive_, impossible {514} to surprise, difficult
to defeat, and ever ready, at command, effectively to take the
offensive. He succeeded to the Fourteenth Corps because Gen. John M.
Palmer, offended at a decision of General Sherman, resigned the
position. While Davis was a just man, he was strongly prejudiced
against negroes, often, in his conversations, declaiming against them.
But subsequent to the war, when commanding the State of Kentucky,
acting as Assistant Commissioner for Freedmen, he took strong grounds
against all lawless white men who sought to do them injury. In 1874,
when a confusion of counsels had caused endless complications during
the Modoc War in Southern Oregon, General Davis was, as a final
resort, selected and despatched to the scene of operations. His
unfailing courage and steady action soon ended the war. The Modocs
were conquered, taken prisoners, and their savage and treacherous
leaders punished.
I had many a conversation with General Davis. He would lead me when we
were alone, in a few minutes, according to the bias of his heart, to
the subject of his difficulty with Nelson. Though others exculpated
him, his own heart never seemed to be at rest. It was more to himself
than to others the one cloud in his otherwise unblemished, patriotic
career.
MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM B. HAZEN
entered the military academy one year after me (1851), so that I was
associated with him there for three years. As a young man, he was very
thin of flesh, so much so as to cause remark. The first time I saw him
after graduation, he was on a visit to West Point, in 1860. He had
been in many Indian engagements in Texas and New Mexico, and had been
brevetted for gallant conduct in battle; his arm at that time was in a
sling, he having been wounded with an arrow.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM B. HAZEN.]
A most wonderful change had taken place in his personal appearance.
Instead of a young man of cadaverous build, he was large, fleshy,
handsome. As a cadet he had been very retiring; now quite the
opposite--in fact, he soon became remarkable among us for his bold
frontier stories and an increased self-esteem.
Such was Hazen at the breaking out of the war. He went to the front in
Kentucky, commanding the Forty-first Ohio Volunteers. During the
series of operations and battles in which he was engaged, he
maintained in his commands unusual neatness of attire and excellent
discipline, and received for himself four brevets for gallant and
meritorious service; the last being that of major-general in the
regular army. Probably his most distinguished effort, one which called
the especial attention of General Sherman to his merit, was the
taking, under my orders, of Fort McAllister, December 13, 1864. He at
that time had charge of a division, assisted in building a long bridge
over the Ogeechee, crossed with his men, and, pushing on rapidly
southward, completely environed Fort McAllister from sea-shore to
sea-shore. General Sherman, with myself, more inland, were watching
his operations in plain view from a rice-mill on the other side of the
Ogeechee. The sudden and persistent attack, the exploding of numerous
torpedoes, the tremendous vigor of the defence, afforded us an
exciting scene, which ended in a much-needed victory; for this fort at
the mouth of the river was the last obstruction between our army and
the supplies which were coming from the sea. This success of Hazen
caused me to recommend him for further promotion to the command of the
Fifteenth Army Corps; and this was his crowning honor in the great
war.
MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH A. MOWER.
I found General Mower in command of the First Division Sixteenth Army
Corps (a little later, of a division in the Seventeenth Army Corps,
under General Blair); that was when I came to the Army of the
Tennessee at Atlanta. He was already well known in that army. In
conversation around campfires staff-officers spoke of him in this way:
"Mower is a rough diamond;" "He is rather a hard case in peace;" "He
cannot be beaten on the march;" "You ought to see him in battle."
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL J. A. MOWER.]
These expressions indicate somewhat the character of the man. About
six feet in height, well proportioned and of great muscular strength,
probably there was no officer in our picture group who was better
fitted in every way for hard campaigning. On one occasion during the
march through the Carolinas, as we approached the westernmost branch
of the Edisto, all the country had apparently been swept by the
inhabitants clean of supplies. The cattle and horses had been driven
eastward beyond the river, and all food carried off or hidden. As I
approached a house near the river crossing, I saw General Mower and
his staff apparently in conversation with the owner, who had, for some
purpose, remained behind his fleeing people in his almost empty
tenement. Mower was asking him questions: these the man at first
evaded, or answered derisively. Then, becoming angry at Mower's
persistence, he refused to tell anything. The general, just as I was
passing through the gate, said to an orderly, in his deep, strong,
decisive voice: "Orderly, fetch a rope!" He did not intimate what he
proposed to do with the rope, but one {515} glance at Mower's face was
sufficient for the stranger. He immediately became courteous, and gave
Mower all the information he desired as to the roads, bridges, and
neighboring country. A few days later I was with Mower's division when
he fought his way across the main stream near Orangeburgh. His energy
in leading his men through swamps, directing them while they were
cutting the cypresses, making temporary bridges, wading streams,
constructing and carrying the canvas boats, ferrying the river, and
appearing with marvellous rapidity upon the enemy's right or left
flank on the open fortified bluff of the eastern shore, drew my
attention more than ever to Mower's capabilities. I remember when we
stood together inside the first captured work, while our men were
rushing for the railroad above and below the city, Mower dismounted,
and looking at me with his face full of glad triumph, said: "_Fait
accompli!_ General, _fait accompli!_"
At Bentonville, the 20th and 21st of March, 1865, I saw Mower ride
into battle. As he approached the firing, the very sound of it gave
him a new inspiration; his muscular limbs gripped his horse, and he
leaned forward apparently carrying the animal with him into the
conflict. He was the only officer I ever saw who manifested such
intense joy for battle. At last, having brought his division through
the woods and a little beyond the left flank of the Confederate
commander (General Johnston), Mower and one or two of his staff
dismounted, so as to work himself with his men through a dense thicket
where he could not ride. The point sought in Johnston's left rear was
just gained by the indomitable Mower, when General Sherman called us
off, saying "that there had been fighting enough." Concerning this
event, General Sherman, in his "Memoirs," makes a significant remark:
"The next day (21st) it began to rain again, and we remained quiet
till about noon, when General Mower, ever rash, broke through the
rebel line, on his extreme left flank, and was pushing straight for
Bentonville and the bridge across Mill Creek. I ordered him back, to
connect with his own corps; and lest the enemy should concentrate on
him, ordered the whole rebel line to be engaged with a strong skirmish
fire."
MAJOR-GENERAL FRANCIS PRESTON BLAIR, JR.,
whose biography is in every public library, is too well known to
require a detail of introduction.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL FRANCIS P. BLAIR, JR.]
As early as 1843 he formed a law partnership with his brother
Montgomery, in the city of St. Louis, Mo.; here he worked till his
health gave way. Requiring a change of climate, he went to New Mexico.
While he was there General Kearney, as soon as the Mexican war came
on, began operations which ended in his grand march to the Pacific
coast. Young Blair was a volunteer aid, and by his intelligence and
energy gave that general the effective help which he needed. This
short service in the Mexican war was enough to beget in Blair a taste
for military reading and study; so that, being in St. Louis at the
fever period of the outbreak of the great rebellion in 1861, he was
not unprepared for the double part he was soon called upon to play.
Having been elected and sent to Congress in 1858, previously having
had a term in the Missouri Legislature, in both as a "Freesoiler," he
threw all his political ability and knowledge upon the side of the
Union. As a military man, he promptly acted and greatly helped in
organizing and raising troops. Probably it is due to his energy more
than to anything else that St. Louis and Missouri were kept to the
Union. Mr. Lincoln, who had the greatest confidence in Blair,
commissioned him a brigadier-general in August, 1862. He performed
thereafter no obscure part in all those battles along the Mississippi,
which ended in the capture of Vicksburg. He was rapidly advanced from
command of a brigade to that of a division and corps in Grant's Army
of the Tennessee. His name and able work are identified with both the
Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps.
The first time I saw General Blair was on November 25, 1863; it was in
the evening after Sherman's first hot charge up the rough steeps on
the north end of Missionary Ridge. Part of my command had participated
in the bloody work of the day, and General Grant had detached the
remainder of my corps from General Thomas on the straight front, and
sent us around to strengthen Sherman. It was an informal council of
war in the woods, by a small campfire, where I met for the first time
Generals Tom Ewing, Jefferson C. Davis, and Blair. The latter, who was
obliged at times to go to civil duties in Congress, had then, as I was
told, just returned from Washington. He brought to us the latest
messages from Mr. Lincoln. He had on a light blue soldier's overcoat;
it was distinguished by a broad, elegant fur collar. In repose and in
photograph, Blair's countenance might pass one as ordinary; but as
soon as he spoke it was suffused with light and animation. He was five
feet ten, and not fleshy. He walked about the fire, and with his ready
talk, never too serious, kept Sherman and all the party, for such a
sad night, in fair humor; for our best men had been stopped short of
the coveted tunnel, and many of them were driven with heavy losses
down the rugged slopes. The whole man so impressed me that night, that
I never forgot him. During the march to the sea, in skirmish,
campaign, and battle, Blair was often with me; many a day's journey we
rode side by side.
{516} [Illustration: THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA, JULY 22, 1864--FULLER'S
DIVISION RALLYING AFTER BEING FORCED BACK BY THE CONFEDERATES.]
His mind was replete with knowledge. As we, talking together, recalled
the battles of the Revolution in the Carolinas, and often differed in
discussing them, Blair would say: "Well, general, let us go to
Sherman; he never forgets anything!" I may add that the reference was
always the settlement of the question, for Sherman's historic
knowledge was unfailing. Blair's forte was the law. I knew fairly well
the army regulations; but Blair always went back of the regulations to
the statute law and {517} the Constitution. His mind was a
compendium--one always at hand for me; and it was pleasant to consult
him, for he never took advantage in an ungenerous manner of the
superiority of his knowledge, but ever, without abating his most loyal
service, gave me the information I desired.
During the great march through Georgia and the Carolinas the necessity
of "foraging liberally on the country," of destroying property, as
cotton in bales, factories of all kinds, store-houses, and other
buildings of a public and private nature, troubled General Blair very
much. The conduct of bummers, camp-followers, and of many robbers, who
preceded or followed in the wake of the armies in their destruction
and depredation of private dwellings, vexed him still more. One day in
May, 1865, as we were nearing North Carolina, Blair was riding with me
for the day. After a period of silence, he said: "General, I am
getting weary of all this business. Can't we do something to bring it
to a close? All this terrible waste and destruction and bloodshed
appear to me now to be useless." I do not remember my reply, but I do
recall a visit I made to General Sherman about that time, when I urged
him not to destroy the works at Fayetteville Arsenal, N. C. I said:
"General, the war will soon be over; this property is ours [that is,
the Government's]. Why should we destroy our own property?" The
general replied with some little asperity to the effect: "They
[meaning the Confederates] haven't given up yet. They shall not have
an arsenal here!" In this matter General Blair's sentiment and mine
had agreed.
At another time, noticing that Wheeler's (or Hampton's) cavalry were
burning the cotton to prevent its falling into our hands, and that we
were burning cotton to cripple the Confederate revenue, General Blair
remarked: "Both sides are burning cotton; somebody must be making a
mistake!"
These growing sentiments in genuine sympathy with the suffering people
of the Carolinas, were Blair's thus early, and account, in a measure,
for his subsequent political course; for, as Hammersley says:
"Brave and gallant soldier as he was, and uncompromisingly hostile as
he was to the enemies of his country, when the war was over, and the
Southern army had laid down their arms, he at once arrayed himself
against those who were in favor of continuing to treat Southern people
as enemies, and with voice and pen constantly urged the adoption of a
liberal and humane policy. From this time he united with the
Democratic party."
Blair died in July, 1875. He was of a jovial turn and convivial, but I
think he enjoyed the relief of fun and frolic more than the pleasures
which attend high living. Like his father and his brother, he was a
man of marked ability; he had great acquirements; he was a determined
enemy, but an unswerving and generous friend. In political life his
course seemed to lack consistency; but when judged from an unpartisan
bias, his was, we may be sure, the outward manifestation of a
persistent, patriotic spirit.
MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN.
A young man received a musket-shot wound through both thighs; he
repaired to the doctor to have his wound dressed, and asked if he
could have it dressed at once, so that he might return to the fight.
The surgeon told him he was in no condition to admit of his return,
but should go to the hospital. The youth remarked that he had fired
twenty-two rounds after he was wounded, and thought he could fire as
many more if his wound were dressed. Finding it impossible to detain
him, the doctor dressed the wound, and the young man returned to his
comrades in the struggle, dealing out his ammunition to good account
until the day was over, as if nothing had happened to him.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN.]
This brave young man afterwards became Gen. John A. Logan. He had such
a striking face that, once seen, it was never forgotten. There was the
straight and raven hair, that, thrown back from his forehead, was long
enough to cover his ears, and make vertical lines just behind his
eyes. There were the broad brow, the firm round chin, and strong neck.
There was the broad, well-cut mouth, always crowned by a dark, heavy
mustache. But the features first seen, and never forgotten, were those
black eyes with brows and lashes to match. At times those eyes were
gentle, pleasant, winning; at times they were cold and indifferent;
but at the least excitement they would quicken, and under provocation
flash fire. Logan's whole figure, not above five feet nine, was
closely knit. His true portrait is everywhere caught by the
photographer, the caricaturist, the painter; but we seldom meet with a
portraiture of the man that animated that splendid tenement. Abbott
compares him with McPherson and contrasts him with Hood. He says:
"When Logan was McPherson's successor on the field of Atlanta,
rivalling his predecessor in bravery, patriotism, and military
ability." ... When speaking of him and Hood, he says: "General Logan
was by no means his inferior in impetuous daring, and far his superior
in all those intellectual qualities of circumspection, coolness, and
judgment requisite to constitute a general."
I hardly think that one who knew both would speak just that way of
Hood and Logan. The fact is, the two men were very much alike. Both
were impetuous, both brave, and both able generals. Hood was put into
the place of General Johnston by Davis with orders to fight
desperately; had Logan been sent to Nashville to relieve General
Thomas when it was contemplated, he would have done precisely as did
Hood--he would have fought, and at once. He might have been
defeated--as Thomas was not. Before Sherman threw his forces upon
Hood's communications, Logan was greatly depressed concerning the
proposed plan. "How can it succeed?" he asked. But when the first
battle came on, all his pluck, forethought, energy, Samson-like, came
to him. Permit me to repeat my words at the time concerning him, just
after that action:
"I wish to express my high gratification with the conduct of the
troops engaged. I never saw better conduct in battle. {518} General
Logan, though ill and much worn out, was indefatigable, and the
success of the day is as much attributable to him as to any one
man...."
As I now estimate General Logan, I think him like Napoleon's Marshal
Murat. He was made for battle; the fiercer, the better it seemed to
suit his temper; but the study of campaigns and military strategy was
not his forte. His personal presence was not only striking, but almost
resistless. The power of love and hate belonged to his nature. If a
friend, like Andrew Jackson, he was a friend indeed; but if an enemy,
it was not comfortable to withstand him. Logan had a good loyal heart;
he sincerely loved his country and her institutions. He is justly
enrolled as a hero and patriot.
MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY WARNER SLOCUM.
In the very beginning of Slocum's career, one characteristic becomes
noticeable from his earliest childhood--he always had a wholesome
object in view; so that, when he attained one elevation, he fixed his
eye steadily upon another still higher, and bent his energies to
attain it.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY WARNER SLOCUM.]
Early in life he cherished a desire for a cadetship at West Point;
this desire was gratified in 1848. Sheridan speaks in his "Memoirs" of
his (Slocum's) studious habits and willingness to aid others. I was
myself at the academy and remember his strong character when the
pro-slavery sentiment at West Point was so great as to lessen the
popularity of any one even suspected of entertaining abolition views.
He fearlessly and openly expressed himself as an opponent to human
slavery.
General Slocum graduated high in his class; saw service in the
Seminole wars in Florida, and remained stationed in the South until
1857, when, having studied law, he resigned to practise his profession
in Syracuse, N. Y., being a representative at Albany in 1859, and
instructor of militia from 1859 to 1861. When Fort Sumter fell he
tendered his services, and was given the command of the Twenty-seventh
New York Volunteers, which he led in a charge at Bull Run, where he
was severely wounded. In August, 1861, he was made brigadier-general
of volunteers, and took a brigade in General Franklin's division. When
Franklin passed to the command of a corps, Slocum took the division.
His work was noticeable on the Peninsula, at Yorktown, West Point,
Gaines's Mill, Glendale, and Malvern Hill, and on each occasion he
received the praise of his commanders. At South Mountain his division
drove the enemy from its position with such a rush as to prevent any
chance of rallying, which act brought him still more commendation. It
was Slocum who led the advance of Franklin's corps to the field of
Antietam, and enabled us to recover and hold much ground that had been
taken from us in the first struggle.
By October of 1862 Slocum's manifest ability had given him the Twelfth
Corps, with which his name is so closely identified. In the
Chancellorsville campaign it was Slocum who made the march around
Lee's left, and showed himself the "cool, self-poised, and prompt
commander that he had always been, and which made him distinguished
even in the brilliant group of generals of which he was a member." It
would require the whole history of Gettysburg to fairly portray
Slocum's part there. The most impressive incident of that battle to me
was Slocum's own battle on the 3d day of July, 1863. For five anxious
hours Slocum commanded the field to our right; that dreadful struggle
went on until Ewell with Early's and Edward Johnson's large divisions
was forced to give up and abandon his prize of the night before.
Slocum's resolute insistence, on the 2d, upon leaving Greene and his
brigade as a precaution when General Meade ordered the Twelfth Corps
to be sent to his (Meade's) left, with Greene's marvellous night
battle, and more still, Slocum's organized work and engagement of the
following morning, in my judgment prevented Meade losing the battle of
Gettysburg.
The disaster at Chickamauga took Slocum's corps from the Rappahannock
to Tennessee. Soon after his arrival he was sent to command the
district of Vicksburg, where his work consisted of expeditions to
break up bridges and railroads and to repel rebel raids. When the
death of General McPherson, Slocum's department commander, at Atlanta,
caused so many changes, Slocum was brought to that city to command the
Twelfth Corps. When, a little later, we swung off on Hood's
communications, Slocum being located south of the Atlanta crossing of
the Chattahoochee River, it was his quick perception that recognized
the significance of the final explosions, and it was he who pushed
forward over the intervening six miles and took possession of that
citadel of Georgia; and it was his despatch to his watchful commander,
thirty miles away, that inspired that brief proclamation, "Atlanta is
ours, and fairly won!"
In the march to the sea and through the Carolinas, General Sherman had
given to Slocum the left wing, the Army of Georgia. He crossed the
Savannah River when the high waters made it most difficult, pushing
and fighting through the swamps of the Carolinas. He fought the battle
of Averysboro, and later took a leading part at Bentonville, where
Johnston, the toughest Confederate of them all, surrendered, and we
turned our faces homeward.
At the close of the war General Slocum resigned from the army and
engaged in civil pursuits, adding to his magnificent military
reputation a civil repute for ability, honesty, and probity in
business as well as in political affairs.
GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN.
With regard to the central figure of this group, General Sherman
himself, libraries are so full of his characteristic work and worth
that I will simply add to the above sketches a few items. Those have
been chosen which are the more personal. It is said that when his
father gave him the name of the great Indian chief, Tecumseh, he
remarked: "Who knows but this child may be a fighter?" It is indeed
remarkable how often {519} names are prophetic. A fighter he was, but
one thoroughly equipped with that most valuable weapon to a general,
namely, such knowledge of history as to make him an authority to all
of us. Any disputed point we carried to him; we relied upon his being
able to set us right. Indeed, one of his most marked characteristics
was his quick perception and exceedingly retentive memory. This he
evidenced in many ways; years after he ascended the Indian River in
Florida he remembered with minute distinctness what he saw, from the
shape of the inlet to the roosting pelicans along the mangrove
islands. Talking with him before the battle of Kenesaw Mountain, I
found him so conversant with the Chattahoochee Valley and the roads to
and from Marietta, and all the features of that region, that I was
astonished, and asked him where he had gotten such valuable
information. He said he had gained it twenty years before, when
travelling through the country as a member of a board of officers
detailed to appraise horses lost in the Florida war. During his
service in the South before the war he travelled much, and appears to
have remembered ever after, with wonderful distinctness, the features
of the country.
[Illustration: (hand written) W. T. Sherman.]
Sherman was, above all, pure in his patriotism and free from thought
of self. When, from his position at the Military Seminary in
Louisiana, he saw the conflict coming, he wrote: "I accepted this
position when the motto of the seminary, inserted in marble over the
main door, was, 'By the liberality of the General Government of the
United States.'--'The Union'--'Este perpetua.' ... If Louisiana
withdraws from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my allegiance
to the old Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives;" adding,
"for on no account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to
or in defiance of the old government of the United States." When his
clear perception of the magnitude of the struggle before us made him
declare to Secretary Cameron that it "was nonsense to carry on a
picayune war; that sixty thousand men were needed for immediate work
to clear Kentucky and Tennessee; and two hundred thousand men to
finish the war in that quarter;" and when the supposed extravagance of
his demands led to the suspicion that his mind was unbalanced, thus
placing him under a cloud, no selfish thought seems to have occurred
to him. Instead of dwelling upon the injustice done him, he devoted
all his knowledge, his wonderful energy and skill, to aiding General
Grant; and, further, while under this cloud he gathered and sent
forward to Grant much-needed supplies and men. He put order among
quartermasters and commissaries anew, equipped new commands, and
pushed them, never thinking of himself, to the front. This energy and
generosity General Grant promptly acknowledged; and it was here, after
the battle of Fort Donelson, that the celebrated Army of the Tennessee
was born.
General Sherman's organizing powers have been tested by results.
Doubtless his brilliant genius gave more or less inspiration to his
subordinates, and his magnetic influence lifted up to prominence some
very common men; yet, no proof-sustaining bridge can be condemned! He
generously gave both confidence and scope to his officers, just as
Grant had given confidence and scope to him; and such sunshine
develops men and makes them strong. His memory was phenomenal; he had
acquired knowledge with intense rapidity, from observation and from
books, from childhood to age; and by a thousand tests he showed that
he had forgotten nothing that he had once learned. Who could estimate
the number of officers and men he knew at the close of the war? And at
the time of his death thousands claimed his personal recognition.
He led his quartermasters in their plans and estimates for his army;
he was quicker than his chief commissary in figuring the rations for a
month's supply; he was equal to the great engineering general in
everything that pertains to the construction of railroads and the
running of trains; he was more than a match for his Confederate
adversaries in field correspondence with them at Atlanta--a
correspondence rapid and pungent, which involved laws of war and of
nations.
When the Hon. Thomas Ewing, in kindness to General Sherman's family,
offered to adopt a child, his choice fell upon Tecumseh. Mr. Ewing's
testimony, after a little experience with him as a member of his
family, is, "That he was a lad remarkable for accuracy of memory and
straightforwardness."
When truthfulness is the corner-stone of a character--all things being
equal--we have reason to anticipate a strong superstructure. How this
was realized in Sherman, the world knows.
Loyalty to family, loyalty to friends, loyalty to society about him,
loyalty to duty and country, he quickly observed in another. And this
loyalty was a marked characteristic of his own great soul.
OLIVER OTIS HOWARD,
_Major-General U. S. Army_.
GOVERNOR'S ISLAND, N. Y., _July_ 6, 1894.
{520}
PRISONS AND ESCAPES.
BY GEORGE L. KILMER.
ESCAPE OF THREE WAR CORRESPONDENTS FROM SALISBURY PRISON--SEVENTY
PRISONERS ESCAPED, BUT ONLY FIVE REACHED THE NORTH--LONG AND PERILOUS
JOURNEY THROUGH THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY--"OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEATH, OUT OF
THE MOUTH OF HELL"--A LEAP FOR LIBERTY--FOUR UNION PRISONERS ESCAPED
NEAR CHARLESTON, S. C.--JOURNEY THROUGH SWAMPS AND OVER MOUNTAINS TO
TENNESSEE--ESCAPES FROM ANDERSONVILLE--TUNNELLING UNDER THE
STOCKADE--REMARKABLE ESCAPE OF THE CONFEDERATE GENERAL MORGAN--COLONEL
ROSE'S TUNNEL AT LIBBY PRISON.
Albert D. Richardson and Junius Henri Browne, war correspondents of
the _New York Tribune_, were taken prisoners from a Union vessel that
attempted to pass the Confederate batteries at Grand Gulf, Miss. After
passing some time in Castle Thunder and Libby Prison, Richmond, they
were sent to Salisbury, N. C., as a punishment for endeavoring to
escape, and while there, W. T. Davies of the _Cincinnati Gazette_
united his fortunes with the _Tribune_ men.
[Illustration: LIBBY PRISON, RICHMOND, VA. (From a war-time
photograph.)]
Again and again plans to obtain their freedom were frustrated by some
trifle, until desperation spurred them to the most daring attempts,
but these also ended in failure. One day a body of prisoners, led by
Robert E. Boulger of the Twenty-fourth Michigan, rushed upon a guard
relief, seized their muskets, and attacked the sentinels on their
posts. In their haste, all rushed to one point and attempted to pass
the fence; but a couple of field-pieces and the muskets of the reserve
guard turned upon that one point, quelled the insurrection in three
minutes, killing and wounding one hundred men. A scheme of tunnelling
was then proposed and pushed far toward success, but the prison
commandant took alarm and posted a second line of guards, one hundred
feet outside the stockade, and that rendered egress by tunnels out of
the question. After spending ten months in the Salisbury prison,
Richardson and his two companions determined to take heavy risks in
order to get out and make their way to the mountains of East
Tennessee. The outlook, according to the statistics of escapes during
their experiences in that prison, was not at all promising, for out of
seventy prisoners that had passed the guard, but five had reached the
North. The others had been retaken or had been shot in the mountains.
By extraordinary good luck the trio passed the guards on the night of
December 17, 1864. All three were on duty at the time in the hospital,
and Davies and Browne held passes permitting them to go outside the
first line of sentinels to a Confederate dispensary for supplies. This
privilege had been enjoyed so long that they were allowed to go on
sight. The night of the escape, Browne loaned his pass to Richardson,
and with Davies walked coolly out to the dispensary. Richardson
describes his exit as follows:
"A few minutes later, taking a box filled with the bottles in which
the medicines were usually brought, and giving it to a {521} lad who
assisted me in my hospital duties, I started to follow them. As if in
great haste, we walked rapidly toward the fence. When we reached the
gate, I took the box from the boy and said to him, for the benefit of
the sentinel, of course: 'I am going outside to get these bottles
filled. I shall be back in fifteen minutes, and want you to remain
right here to take and distribute them among the hospitals. Do not go
away.' The lad, understanding me perfectly, replied, 'Yes, sir,' and I
attempted to pass the sentinel by mere assurance. He stopped me with
his musket, demanding:
"'Have you a pass, sir?'
"'Certainly I have a pass,' I replied with all the indignation I could
assume. 'Have you not seen it often enough to know it by this time?'
"Apparently a little dumbfounded, he modestly replied: 'Perhaps I
have; but they are strict with us, and I am not quite sure.'"
The sentinel examined the document which was all right in Browne's
hands, but all wrong in Richardson's. But he did not know the
difference, and told Richardson to pass on. Once outside he met
several Confederate officials who knew him, and knew too that he was
out of his place, but the "peculiarly honest and business-like look of
that medicine box" threw them off their guard. Instead of entering the
dispensary, Richardson hid his box and slipped under a convenient
shelter. At dark his friends joined him, and the three passed the
outer guard without difficulty. For the _Tribune_ men this was the end
of twenty months of captivity. The first night and day were passed in
the barn of a friendly citizen within one mile of the prison. The
second night, a Confederate lieutenant belonging to the Sons of
America, an order of Southerners who secretly aided the Union, met
them and gave them full directions how and where to reach friends on
their journey. Then they set out on their long winter tramp, poorly
clad, and weak from long confinement.
The main guide of the refugees was a railroad running west, but they
were often obliged to leave the line to avoid crowded settlements, and
were frequently lost in making those detours. In such emergencies they
relied upon chance friends among the slaves to direct them aright.
On the morning of the seventh day of their escape, they found that
they had made fifty miles of their direct journey. December 30th they
crossed the Yadkin River, now getting into a region where Union homes
were plenty. Communications had to be opened with women, as the men
were "lying out" in order to avoid impressment by the hated
Confederacy; and, after allaying all suspicion, our refugees found
these people of great service.
"The men of the community were walking arsenals. Each had a trusty
rifle, one or two navy revolvers, a great bowie-knife, a haversack,
and a canteen."
Guided and fed by the friends they found here, the three reached
Tennessee early in January; but their perils were not yet over, for
the mountains were constantly patrolled by Confederate guerillas. Once
they had to pass within a quarter of a mile of a notorious rendezvous,
called Little Richmond. An invalid arose from his bed and guided them
past the danger at the risk of his life. On another occasion their
guide, the celebrated Dan Ellis, aroused the party from sleep with the
startling announcement: "We have walked right into a nest of rebels.
Several hundred are within a few miles, and eighty in this immediate
vicinity!"
They scattered in various directions, Richardson and his party--for
others had joined them--being led by a young woman who often performed
this service, though her name, Melvina Stephens, was never revealed
until the war had closed.
On the 14th of January, 1865, the _Tribune_ printed this despatch from
its long-lost correspondent:
"KNOXVILLE, TENN., _January_ 13, 1865.
"Out of the jaws of death; out of the mouth of hell.
"ALBERT D. RICHARDSON."
He had travelled three hundred and forty miles since leaving the
prison, twenty-seven days before.
{522} [Illustration: GUARDING CONFEDERATE PRISONERS. (From a War
Department photograph.)]
Of the thousands of prisoners held by either side during the four
years of the war, those who escaped and succeeded in reaching their
own lines were exceedingly few, although the attempts at escape were
numerous, and a good many got away from the prisons only to be brought
back captives again in a few days. The most notable adventure of this
kind was an escape from Libby Prison by a hundred and eight officers
in February, 1864. In that crowded prison, which was an old tobacco
warehouse, the prisoners had little to do but play checkers on squares
of the floor marked out with their pocket knives, play cards, tell
stories, and devise plans for escape. One of them discovered a way of
getting into the basement, and, by removing stones, making a hole
through the eastern foundation wall. With a few assistants he then
proceeded to dig a tunnel across the breadth of the yard. The earth
that was taken out was dumped in a dark corner of the cellar where it
never attracted attention. The work had to be carried on very
secretly, not only to escape the notice of the guards, but even to
prevent the knowledge of it from reaching any prisoner who might not
be trustworthy. When the tunnel was about ten yards long a slight
opening was made to the surface of the ground for light and
ventilation; and an old shoe thrown out at this opening in the night,
and resting near it upon the surface, enabled the tunnellers, looking
from the windows of the prison in the daytime, to get their bearings
and determine how much farther they must dig in order to pass under
the fence. When all was done the night of February 9th was fixed for
the escape. One of the officers who passed through the tunnel says of
himself and two companions: "Each man had an entire suit of clothes, a
double suit of underclothes, the pair of boots in which he stood on
entering the prison, an overcoat, and a cap. In common we possessed a
coil of rope, a diminutive hatchet, one pint of brandy, a half pint of
extract of Jamaica ginger, two days' scant rations of dried meat and
hard bread, one pipe, and a bit of tobacco. The tunnel was about
fifty-three feet long, and so small in diameter that in order to pass
through it was necessary to lie flat on one's face, propelling with
one hand and the feet, the other hand being thrown over the back to
diminish the breadth of the shoulders and carry overcoat, rations,
etc. Early in the evening, as I was seated at the card table, Randolph
tapped me on the shoulder. 'The work is finished,' he said. 'The first
party went through soon after dark; there is no time to lose.' Every
one knew it then. We possessed only the advantage of being perfectly
cool and having a plan agreed upon. The excitement in the prison was
of the wildest kind. Parties were formed, plans arranged, farewells
exchanged, all in less time than one can describe. We dropped one by
one into the cellar. I remember well the instructions: 'Feet first;
back to the wall; get down on your knees; make a half face to the
right, and grasp the spike in the wall below with your right hand;
lower yourself down; feel for the knotted rope below with your legs.'
Then one had but to {523} drop in the loose straw shaken from hospital
beds to be in the cellar. To walk across that foul pit in the dark was
no easy matter; but it was soon accomplished, and together we crouched
at the entrance of the tunnel. Only one at a time; and as about three
minutes were consumed in effecting the passage, progress was quite
slow. Of our party Randolph was the first to enter. 'I'm going. Wait
till I get through before you start.' It seemed that his long legs
would never disappear; but a parting kick in the face, as he wriggled
desperately in, quite reassured me. When a cool blast of air drawing
through the tunnel gave the welcome assurance that the passage was
clear, in I went. So well did the garment of earth fit, that at
moments my movements corresponded somewhat to those of a bolt forcing
its way through a rifled gun. Breath failed when I was about
two-thirds through, but a score or more of vigorous kicks brought me
to the earth's surface where Randolph awaited my coming. With sundry
whispered instructions about getting out without making undue noise
and without breaking my skull against the bottom of a board fence, he
then crept away toward the street, keeping in the shadow of a high
brick wall, leaving me to assist in turn and instruct the colonel, who
could now be heard thundering through the tunnel. Dirty but jubilant,
we were soon standing in the shadow of a low brick arch, outside of
which a sentinel paced backward and forward, coming sometimes within
two yards of our position. One after another stole out of the archway,
and we met, as agreed, at the corner of the second street below. Arm
in arm, whistling and singing, we turned and struck out, strong and
hopeful, for home and liberty." The one hundred and eight men who
escaped through this tunnel followed different plans and routes for
getting within the National lines, but the greater part of them were
recaptured. The party of which the officer just quoted was one, after
twelve days of journeying through swamps and by-ways, fed and guided
by the friendly negroes, at length reached the National lines on the
Pamunkey.
[Illustration: RUINS OF CHARLESTON, S. C.]
A LEAP FOR LIBERTY[1]
[Footnote 1: Rewritten (by permission) from Captain Drake's narrative
as printed in the private history of the Ninth New Jersey Volunteers.]
On the morning of October 6, 1864, a party of six hundred captive
Union officers were put on board of a train of box-cars to be
transported from the jail yard at Charleston to prison quarters at
Columbia. Among the number was Capt. J. Madison Drake, of the Ninth
New Jersey volunteers, who had been a prisoner of war five months and
an inmate during that time of three different prisons--Libby, Macon,
Ga., and Charleston. Although he had been foiled in many attempts to
escape, he resolved on one more effort, and, having received warning
of the trip to Columbia, induced three fellow-prisoners to join him:
Capt. H. H. Todd, Eighth New Jersey; Capt. J. E. Lewis, Eleventh
Connecticut; and Capt. Alfred Grant, Nineteenth Wisconsin. While the
train was crawling slowly on toward Columbia, the bold projector of
the scheme managed to remove the gun-caps from the nipples of the
muskets of several guards {524} on the car where the four friends
were; and as soon as dusk came on, the party at a signal took their
daring leap. They landed in a cypress swamp on Congaree River, and
found themselves waist deep in water and mud. A volley of shots from
all the guards followed the fugitives, but no one was hurt, as the
train was running under good headway. A night and a day were passed in
the swamp, and although the barking of dogs and shouting of men
indicated that pursuers had been sent out, the runaways were not
disturbed. The second night a bright new moon arose, and they started
on a systematic journey toward the Union lines in Tennessee.
Before leaving Charleston, one of the party had found a school map of
South Carolina, and with this guide a course had been studied out.
They decided to hug the swamps and woods by day, and at night use the
fields and roads, and spend as little time as possible in sleep until
the mountains of North Carolina were reached. Their chief guide-mark
in South Carolina was the Wateree River.
At the end of a week their rations had all been consumed, and in
desperation the wanderers began to think of food to the exclusion of
all else. Captain Drake says that in these times they heartily yearned
for the government "hard tack" and the contractor's beef they had so
often anathematized on the march and in camp.
But fortune will favor the bold, and one night, as they halted on a
roadside to debate whether it should be a quest for bread or for a
road to liberty, a dark form came shambling along the road, and in the
moonlight they saw at a distance that it was an old negro with a
basket on his arm. Without ceremony the famished men crowded around
the old man, and finding that he had in his basket a "pone" of
corn-bread, they seized it and began to devour it ravenously. After a
time the situation was explained, and when the negro learned who the
highwaymen were, he supplied a quantity of meal and salt, and sent
them on their way mentally resolved to cultivate acquaintance with
colored folks as often as possible.
Not until several hundred miles had been placed between their fainting
feet and Charleston did the hapless fugitives feel a sense of freedom.
Often their fears and alarms were causeless, but they suffered loss of
vitality all the same. Sometimes seeming misfortunes proved to be
blessings. One night a pack of dogs chased them into a crowded
village, and they took refuge in a graveyard vault. There Captain
Drake found a copy of a local newspaper, warning the people to be on
guard for escaped Union prisoners. The escaped prisoners themselves
got the benefit of the hint. At another time some Confederate
cavalrymen chased them on the high-road, and they escaped by getting
into a dense wood, where the horses couldn't follow. While wandering
about, they fell in with a loyal mountaineer, who took them to his
home, fed them, and directed them to other Unionists.
Many of the men met with in the mountains were of the class known as
"lyers out," deserters from the Confederate army, and fugitive
conscripts. A hundred or more of these men were persuaded to join
Drake's party on their tramp toward the Union lines. Thus reinforced
with guides and armed companions, the prospects of the runaway
prisoners began to brighten. But they were not out of the woods by a
long way, as the sequel proved.
When the fugitives drew near the Union lines the danger of capture
increased, for a cordon of mountain rangers patrolled the region to
head off any fortunate ones who got thus far on the journey homeward.
The mountains were simply barren wastes, the few cabins had to be
shunned, and the only food to be obtained was wild game which the
rifles of the "lyers out" brought down. In the uplands the poor
fellows were hounded by "rangers," and in the valleys mounted
Confederates dashed about on all sides.
At length the party reached the vicinity of Bull's Gap, a railway pass
through the mountains, and guarded by Union troops as an outpost of
Knoxville. The chief scout announced that the gap was fifteen miles
from the foot of the hill whence it was first sighted, and that, once
reached, the refugees would be safe. The news stimulated the men anew,
and they started down the mountain with their eyes riveted on the gap,
for fear, as Drake says, it would take wings and flee. Alas! alas! The
unexpected happens in war if nowhere else.
The gap didn't exactly take wings and flee, but the ubiquitous General
Breckenridge, with an army at his back, fell like a thunderbolt upon
the Union garrison at the pass, defeated and routed the entire force
and hurled them backward at mounted double-quick pace toward
Knoxville; and, presto! the gap was closed in the very faces of the
yearning-eyed, broken-bodied pilgrims. Think of it--at the end of
those terrible weeks of endurance and suffering, to find a hostile
army springing across the path at a bound, and its scouts and patrols
beating every byway and bush in the region for the luckless strays of
the fleeing enemy!
A young woman of the mountains volunteered to scout toward the gap and
bring news to the refugee camp. She simply learned that Breckenridge
was sweeping the country of Union troops and marching upon Knoxville.
At the same time it was discovered that a band of Confederate
partisans were on the trail of the fugitives, and to escape this new
danger they found comparative shelter in a ravine. Two of the men who
had leaped from the car with Drake, Captains Todd and Grant, ventured
out to obtain rations, which were sadly needed, as they were all
living on dry corn. During the night mounted men attacked the bivouac,
and the refugees scattered, every man for himself. At the end of a
week they fell in with a cavalry patrol, and were once more, after
forty-nine days' wandering, under the protection of the Stars and
Stripes.
ATTEMPTS AT ESCAPE FROM ANDERSONVILLE.
Escapes from Andersonville, except through the portals of death--that
is, complete escape to the Union lines--were exceedingly rare.
Hundreds, through one device or another, succeeded in getting outside
of the stockade, but the prison was so strongly surrounded with guards
and forts and quarters occupied with zealous attendants, that it was
difficult for a prisoner to elude the detective on the outside even
when he had succeeded in passing the main barrier. Adding to this the
existence of the deep swamps and vast forests just beyond the camp
precincts, in which a stranger to the locality would be only too sure
to lose his way, it will be seen that to enter Andersonville was
indeed to leave "all hope behind." The favorite method of attempting
escape was by tunnelling, for the great extent of the camp area, some
twenty-five acres, and its crowded condition, made the work of
excavation, without danger of discovery by the guards and keepers,
comparatively easy. Another favorable circumstance was the fact that
prisoners were allowed to dig wells to supply drinking water, and the
grounds were everywhere dotted with piles of fresh earth that had been
thrown up in consequence.
{525} In order to excavate a tunnel, the prisoners contemplating
escape would commence a lateral shaft a few feet below the mouth of
one of these wells, located near the stockade; and as the work was
done at night, the earth thus removed was carried in small quantities
and deposited on the piles of fresh earth thrown out from the newly
sunken wells. The tools used were of the rudest kind--tin plates,
cups, and knives with which to loosen the earth, and bare hands to
scoop it into the haversacks, or bags improvised from clothes and
pieces of blanket; and in this manner these tunnels were frequently
extended, not only beyond the stockade, but even beyond the outer line
of prison guards. Yet, although hundreds passed out--as many as one
hundred escaped through one tunnel in a single night, late in
1864--they were invariably brought back; sometimes through the
treachery of spies, who mingled with the prisoners, and at other times
by hunters with their dogs, who were constantly patrolling the
vicinity of the camp, and, in fact, the entire region, in search of
deserters from the Confederate army and runaway slaves, as well as
fugitive prisoners. Not one well-authenticated case of a prisoner
getting out through a tunnel, and making his way North, is to be found
on record.
[Illustration: NATIONAL CEMETARY, RICHMOND, VA.]
Another method of escape from the enclosure was by strolling beyond
the sight of the guards when allowed to go out to the forests for
wood; some, again, tried hiding in the huge boxes used for bringing
prisoners into the camp, and many were missed from their quarters who
had succeeded for the time being in misleading their guards, but
eventually the fugitives turned up elsewhere; while such as enlisted
in the Confederate army, this being their last hope of escape, soon
reappeared, either as willing prisoners or deserters.
One tunnel, which had been carried under and beyond the stockade, was
broken into by a severe flood, and the stockade undermined, which
opened the celebrated "providential spring."
In August, 1864, when prisoners were dying from the use of unwholesome
drinking water, a heavy thunder storm flooded the little brook that,
running through the enclosure, passed in and out under the stockade.
The rushing element not only broke in the roof of the tunnel, but
loosened a quantity of earth which, since the construction of the
stockade, had dammed up a copious stream of clear, fresh water, its
original course passing right through the prison quarters. Some
attributed the reopening to the action of lightning, while others
looked upon it as a direct interposition of Heaven for their relief.
But, whatever the cause, it supplied the prisoners with an abundance
of good water through the remainder of their stay, and is still in
existence.
{526} MORGAN'S ESCAPE.
The account of the capture and escape of General Morgan as here given
is condensed from an article by Samuel B. Taylor, originally published
in the Cincinnati _Tribune_.
In the summer of 1863, General Morgan's command made, through Southern
Ohio, one of those raids which were the most daring and successful in
the history of modern and ancient warfare. In that instance he did not
meet with his usual great success, for his raid terminated, in July of
that year, with the capture of himself and sixty-eight of his officers
and men. By order of General Burnside, he and a number of his officers
were confined in the Ohio Penitentiary, at Columbus.
"We were each placed in a separate cell, in the first and second range
or tier of cells on the south side of the east wing of the prison.
These cells were let into a solid block of masonry, one hundred and
sixty feet long and twenty-five feet thick. They opened into a hall
twelve feet wide and one hundred and sixty feet in length. Then, as
now, the prison buildings and their yard were enclosed by a solid
stone wall thirty feet high and four feet in thickness, and level on
top.
"We at length became so desperate from confinement that we determined
to escape, no matter at what hazard. But how was escape to be
effected?
"From five o'clock P.M. till seven A.M. we were locked in our cells,
with no means of communication. Through the day we were allowed to
roam about the large hall on to which our cells opened and to converse
freely with each other, though there was an armed sentry at either end
of this hall, through which the regular keepers of the prison passed
at frequent and regular intervals. We discussed every possible and
impossible plan of escape, as we thought, but could hit upon none that
seemed feasible.
"We had been some three months in durance vile, when, in consequence
of an insult that was offered to one of our number, Capt. Thomas A.
Hines, by the deputy warden, a plan was evolved by which we did
finally succeed in making our escape. Captain Hines retired to his
cell about eight o'clock A.M., vowing that food should not pass his
lips and that sleep should not rest upon his eyelids until he had
thought out some plan of escape that should be practicable.
"About a quarter to twelve o'clock he came to me and said that he had
hit upon a plan which he thought would do. At all events he was
determined to try it. He then informed me that he had noticed that the
walls of his cell, instead of being damp, as they naturally would have
been from the fact that they were built upon a level with the ground
outside, were perfectly dry. From this he concluded that there must be
an air chamber beneath. Now, if such should be the case, Captain
Hines's plan was to run a tunnel from it through the foundation into
the yard, and then to escape over the prison wall.
"The cells were built in five tiers. Some of our party occupied the
lowest or ground tier, while others, including General Morgan himself,
occupied the second tier. Of course only those in the ground tier
could escape by means of Captain Hines's plan, and in order for
General Morgan to do so it would be necessary to have him exchange
cells with some one in the tier below. The plan of Captain Hines was
communicated to General Morgan and the other officers that afternoon,
and after being fully discussed, it was decided that not more than
seven of those on the lower tier could escape, because the greater the
number the greater would be the danger of discovery. We arranged to
have the work begin in the cell of Captain Hines, and in order to
prevent the usual daily inspection being made of it, he asked
permission to thereafter sweep it himself. The permission was granted,
and he kept it so scrupulously clean that after a few mornings no
inspection was made of it. Work was therefore begun in his cell on the
morning of November 4th. With two small table-knives, obtained from
sick comrades in the hospital, Captain Hines cut through six inches of
cement, removed six layers of brick, concealing them in his bed tick,
and came to an air chamber six feet in height. The work was carried on
under his cot.
"Having progressed thus far, Captain Hines now mounted guard at the
door of his cell, while the work was carried on by the rest of us. He
pretended to be deeply engrossed in study, but in reality he was
watching every movement of the guards and keepers. If one approached,
he gave us warning by a system of taps on the floor. One tap meant to
stop work, two to proceed, and three to come out.
"We cut a tunnel at right angles from the air chamber through the
foundation wall of the cell block five feet, through twelve feet of
grouting to the outer wall of the east wing of the prison, then
through this wall six feet in thickness, and then four feet up near
the surface of the yard in an unfrequented place. Our tunnel
completed, it only remained to make an entrance from the cell of each
man who was to escape into the air chamber. This could only be done by
working from the air chamber upward.
"To do this we must have something to measure with in order to locate
the spots at which to make these holes. We secured a measuring line by
involving the warden in a dispute about the length of the hall,
Captain Hines abstracting it long enough, after the hall had been
measured, to answer our purpose. The chamber being very dark, we
obtained matches and candles from our sick comrades in the hospital.
"It was very essential to our purpose that we should have an accurate
knowledge of the prison yard and the wall inclosing it, but the
windows of the hall were too high to afford us a view. Fortunately the
warden ordered the walls and ceiling of the hall to be swept, and a
long ladder being brought for that purpose, I offered the warden a
wager that I could go hand over hand to its top, rest for a moment,
and then descend in the same way. He took me up, and having been
famous all my life for feats of strength and agility, I readily won
the bet. While resting at the top of the ladder I made a thorough
survey of the yard. There was a double gate to the outer wall south of
the wing in which we then were and almost at right angles from its
eastern end. Of this double gate, the outer portal was solid as the
wall itself, while the inner was of wooden uprights four inches apart.
By means of this latter gate we might ascend to the top of the prison
wall. For that purpose we made a rope of our bed ticking, and fastened
it to a grappling iron made out of the poker of the hall stove.
"All our money had been taken by our captors, but we obtained a fresh
supply from friends in the South, secreted in the cover of an old book
sent through the mail. An old convict, who was often sent into the
city on errands by the warden, procured us a newspaper, from which we
learned that a train left for Cincinnati--whither we were bound--at
1.15 o'clock A.M. At midnight the guards made a round of the cells,
and we determined to start at that hour. I was to descend into the air
chamber and notify the others by a tap under the floor of each cell.
"The evening of November 27th being dark and cloudy, we determined to
try our luck that night. When we were locked up for the night, General
Morgan contrived to change places with his brother, who occupied one
of the lower cells, and who greatly resembled him in face and form.
Every man arranged the stool, {527} with which each cell was supplied,
in his bed to look like a sleeping man when the guard should thrust
his lantern through the cell door a few minutes later.
"I had General Morgan's gold watch, and punctually at midnight I broke
with my boot-heel the thin layer of cement which separated my cell
from the air chamber, and passing along the latter gave a tap under
the floor of each of the others, who soon joined me. We crawled
through our tunnel, and, breaking the thin layer of earth which
separated its end from the surface, we were soon in the prison yard.
Over the wooden gate, which I had seen from the ladder, we threw our
grappling iron, and by its bed-ticking rope drew ourselves up till we
stood on the wing wall, whence we readily passed to the outside wall
in full view of freedom.
"The top of the latter wall was so broad as to form a walkway for the
guards, who were stationed there during the day, but who at night were
placed inside the walls. This walkway was supplied with sentry boxes,
and in one of these we divested ourselves of the garments we had
soiled in passing through the tunnel, each man having provided for
this by wearing two suits. With one of the knives used in tunnelling,
General Morgan then cut the rope running along the wall to the
warden's office bell. Fastening our grappling iron to the railing
running along the edge of the wall, we descended to the ground
outside, and were free once more, though at that very moment the
prison guards were sitting around a fire not sixty yards away.
"We now separated, and in parties of two and three made our way to the
railroad station, and took the train for Cincinnati. During the
journey General Morgan sat beside a Federal major in full uniform, and
was soon on the best of terms with him. Our route lay directly past
the prison whence we had just come, and, as we whizzed by it, the
Federal officer said to our leader:
"'That is where the rebel General Morgan is now imprisoned.'
"'Indeed,' said General Morgan; 'I hope they will always keep him as
safely as they have him now.'
"At Dayton our train was delayed for over an hour, and this made it
unsafe for us to go on to Cincinnati, as we had intended, because we
should now be unable to reach the city until long after seven o'clock
in the morning, and by that time our escape was certain to be
discovered and telegraphed all over the country, and we should be
watched for in every large city in which there was any possibility of
our going. We therefore alighted from the train as it was passing
through Ludlow Ferry, a suburb of the city, and we quickly ferried
across the Ohio River into Kentucky. There we found many kind friends,
who aided us with hospitality, money, concealment when necessary,
horses, and arms. The adventures, the dangers, hardships, hairbreadth
escapes from capture, and serious and laughable incidents through
which each one of us passed in making our way back into the
Confederate lines, would fill an immense volume. For the purposes of
this article, it must suffice to say that ultimately we all succeeded
in rejoining our comrades at the front, though one or two of our
number were recaptured before they could do so, but they again
succeeded in escaping.
"What transpired in Columbus after the discovery of our escape we did
not learn until long afterward. Then we found that we had created one
of the greatest--if not the very greatest--sensations of the war. Our
escape had been effected in such a seemingly impossible manner, and
was so absolutely without parallel in the history of prison escapes,
that the people of the North refused to believe that it had been
accomplished without collusion on the part of some of our keepers. It
is no wonder that they thought so, for everything in connection with
the affair happened so fortunately for us that it really seemed as if
we must have had some assistance from some one within the prison. The
way in which we obtained the line with which to measure for the holes
in the cell floors, the way I obtained a view of the prison yard, the
way in which General Morgan and his brother changed cells on the night
of our escape, all of which I have detailed before, would certainly
seem impossibilities without connivance. Then, when it is considered
that the digging of the tunnel consumed over three weeks, and that the
keepers were almost constantly passing over where it was going on, it
seems incredible that they never became aware of it.
"Nevertheless, there was never any bribery even attempted. It seemed
as though fate or Providence or some controlling power had decreed
that we were to escape, and directed everything to that end. The only
bribery was that practised upon the old convict I have mentioned, to
induce him to bring us a newspaper, contrary to the warden's rules,
that we might find out about the trains for Cincinnati, and the
convict in question had not the slightest idea what we wanted it for.
I believe Warden N. L. Merion was perfectly loyal to the Union."
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL O. E. BABCOCK.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL EDW. R. S. CANBY.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL C. M. CLAY.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL ANSON G. McCOOK.]
{528}
UNION AND CONFEDERATE RAIDS AND RAIDERS.
BY GEORGE L. KILMER.
BEALL, THE LAKE RAIDER--ANDREWS AND HIS DISGUISED RAIDERS--LIEUTENANT
CUSHING'S BOAT RAIDS--KILPATRICK'S RAID BY RICHMOND--MORGAN'S KENTUCKY
RAID--RAIDING A CITY.
The secret enterprise which placed Lieutenant Davis in a dungeon cell
and nearly cost him his life had a deeply tragic ending for John Y.
Beall, the young Virginian, executed at Fort Columbus, New York
Harbor, the 24th of February, 1865. Beall was the chief promoter and
the leader of the Lake Erie raid in the fall of 1864, but technically
the offence for which he suffered was that of a spy. The judge
advocate of the court which condemned him spoke of the prisoner as one
"whom violent passions had shorn of his nature's elements of
manliness, and led him to commit deeds which to have even suspected
him of at an earlier stage in his career would have been a calumny and
a crime."
Beall had been wounded in the Confederate service early in the
conflict. As master in the navy, he had led for a time the daring,
reckless life of a "swamp angel" in the lower Potomac, destroying the
Union commerce in Chesapeake Bay and its adjacent waters.
While thus engaged, he planned a lake raid, but failed to get his
government to sanction the project until 1864, when the Northwestern
Confederacy movement made it necessary for Jacob Thompson and his
co-conspirators in Canada to have a foothold upon Union soil along the
border.
One of Thompson's cherished plans was an uprising of the notorious
Sons of Liberty at Chicago, during the Democratic national convention
in August, 1864. About this time Beall arrived at Sandusky, O., with
authority to proceed on his raiding enterprise. Thompson had prepared
the way for him by a careful investigation of the lake defences,
through an emissary located at Sandusky--Capt. Charles H. Cole,
formerly of Morgan's raiders. Cole was supplied with means to
entertain and bribe such Union officials as might be of service to the
Confederacy; and he finally concluded that the control of the lakes
could be secured by the capture of the gunboat _Michigan_, the sole
defender of the waters, and the liberation of the Confederate
prisoners at Camp Douglas, Chicago, and at Johnson's Island in
Sandusky Bay.
Thompson gave Cole authority to capture the _Michigan_, and appointed
Beall to aid him. It was arranged between Cole and Beall that the
former would remain in Sandusky and coöperate by bribing some of the
men on the _Michigan_, and by preparing the prisoners on Johnson's
Island for an outbreak. The _Michigan_ lay off the island. The date
was fixed for the night of September 19th, and Beall went to Canada to
organize a force, hazarding everything, as will be seen, on the
success of his confederate, who, at the decisive moment, when Beall's
attacking party should arrive off Sandusky, was to make rocket signals
from Johnson's Island that the expected aid was a certainty.
Beall secured the services of nineteen Confederate refugees, chiefly
escaped prisoners of war harbored in Canada, and the party disguised
in civilian dress took passage on a steamer plying between Sandusky
and Detroit, carrying in their baggage a supply of revolvers and
hatchets. At the proper time, the captain in his office, and the mate
at the wheel, were told to vacate their stations, revolvers were
suddenly brandished right and left to intimidate the officers and men,
and Beall as spokesman declared, "I take possession of this boat in
the name of the Confederate States."
Under his direction the vessel was put about and headed for Middle
Boss Island, in Ohio waters, where the passengers and regular crew
were set ashore.
From the island Beall bore his vessel directly for the gunboat
_Michigan_, steamed up within cannon range, and awaited a rocket
signal. When the hour passed and no signal came, he decided to risk
everything, board the gunboat at all hazards, and strike for Johnson's
Island. In his crisis an unlooked-for event dashed his high resolves
suddenly to the ground. The crew of the _Philo Parsons_ mutinied. The
absence of the shore signals was interpreted by them as a warning that
the plot had been discovered; and, although Beall argued and pleaded,
the men insisted that the death penalty awaited them if captured, and
they felt certain that such would be the end of it all. Their boat was
then run to the Canada shore, abandoned, and destroyed.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JUDSON KILPATRICK. (Afterward
Major-General.)]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL NATHAN B. FORREST, C. S. A.]
The scene now changes to Union soil. On the night of the 15th of
December, 1864, the engineer on an eastern-bound express train on the
Erie railroad, between Buffalo and Dunkirk, saw a railroad rail across
the track, in front of his engine, just in time to reverse and strike
the obstruction at reduced speed without severe damage. The next night
two policemen at the New York Central depot, Niagara City, arrested
two suspicious men who were about to take the cars for Canada. Beall
was one of them, and, though he made some attempt to deny his
identity, he was sent to New York City and accused of the lake raid
and of the attempt at train wrecking. The clerk of the _Philo
Parsons_, and {529} one of the passengers, and also a confederate in
the attempt on the train, identified him, and furnished ample evidence
for a case.
The train-wrecking enterprise was doubtless a last resort by Beall to
secure funds for the prosecution of his plans on the lake. Five men
were engaged in it. The party lay hidden near the track when the train
struck, and seeing that the damage was only trifling they hastened to
Buffalo and secreted themselves. Subsequently the arrest of Beall took
place, purely on suspicion.
He was arraigned on two charges--violation of the laws of war and
acting as a spy. His defence was that his acts had been justifiable
acts of war; and, if confined to his attempt on the gunboat _Michigan_
and the Johnson's Island prison, the plea might have had weight. But
every circumstance likely to weigh in his favor, his education, his
noble bearing, his manly conduct toward the captives on the _Philo
Parsons_, was lost sight of in the appalling railroad horror that had
been planned with such cool deliberation, and with no purpose evident
other than robbery--robbery at the sacrifice of innocent lives.
A most deplorable tragedy brought about by the spy system, or what was
analogous to that, and involving the execution of six Ohio
soldiers,[1] also the imprisonment of sixteen others, who barely
escaped the gallows, is the story of the Andrews railroad raid, or
bridge-burning expedition, in Georgia, in the spring of 1862.
[Footnote 1: George D. Wilson, Marion A. Ross, and Perry G. Shadrack,
Second Ohio; Samuel Slavens and Samuel Robinson, Thirty-third Ohio;
and John Scott, Twenty-first Ohio.]
During General Buell's occupancy of Central Tennessee, before the
armies marched to Shiloh, he had occasionally employed the services of
a spy, named James J. Andrews, who carried on a contraband trade in
quinine, and in the course of his travels across the border often
managed to pick up information valuable to the Union generals. At his
solicitation, Buell permitted a detail from three regiments belonging
to General Sill's brigade, the Thirty-third, Twenty-first, and Second
Ohio, to set out with him, disguised in civilian's dress. They were to
burn the railway bridges east and west of Chattanooga, and thus
isolate that important town, possibly insuring its speedy capture. The
soldiers were given to understand that they took their lives in their
hands, but none declined the dangerous honor. Guided by Andrews, they
started from Shelbyville, April 7th, and in five days made their way
to Marietta, Ga., losing but two of their number on the road. At
Marietta two more disappeared, leaving Andrews with eighteen soldiers
and a civilian volunteer to undertake the hazardous work mapped out by
the leader, which was to capture an engine with a few cars attached,
board them, and speed westward, firing the bridges as they passed.
Securing tickets at Marietta, they entered a westbound train as
ordinary passengers. At Big Sandy station, where the trainmen took
breakfast, these _pseudo_ passengers left their seats, and two of
them, William Knight and Wilson Brown, professional engineers, leaped
into the cab. The coupling bolt of the third car from the tender was
pulled, and the remainder of the party scrambled on board as best they
could. Off sped the stolen train in full view of scores of astonished
bystanders and railroad men. What made the deed doubly risky was the
fact that a camp of Confederate soldiers had been established at Big
Sandy since Andrews's last visit there, and the station was surrounded
by armed men. In fact, a sentinel, musket in hand, stood within a few
yards of the engine, watching the whole proceeding, but too dazed to
act or sound the alarm. But this amazement was short-lived. The
railroad men were prompt to give chase, first with a hand-car,
afterward with a chance engine picked up on the road. The raiders were
delayed by eastward trains, it being a single-track line; but with
singular good fortune ran over half the distance to Chattanooga,
having stopped to cut telegraph wires and remove rails, in order to
baffle their pursuers. The attempt to fire bridges failed. It was
raining, and the would-be incendiaries had provided no combustibles
beyond what the train supplied. In the meanwhile their pursuers picked
up a car-load of armed men, and came up with the runaway train west of
Dalton, where the fuel of the stolen engine gave out, bringing the
raiders to a dead stop. Andrews gave the word, "Save who can," and all
sprang for the woods, but were captured within a few days. Taken
within the enemy's lines in citizen's dress, a court-martial
pronounced them spies worthy of death. Andrews, with six of the
soldiers, also the citizen volunteer, were executed at Atlanta. The
others, including the two Marietta delinquents who had been arrested
and identified, were thrown into dungeons; but preferring death in any
form to the fate which seemed to await them, they succeeded one day in
overpowering their guards, and so escaping to the woods. Eight of the
party made their way North, while the other six were recaptured and
held until the spring of 1863, when they were exchanged for a like
number of Confederate soldiers held by the Union authorities, to
answer for a similar offence.
[Illustration: JAMES J. ANDREWS.]
Cushing was not picturesque in figure, though marked by strong
individual peculiarities. His height was five feet ten inches, his
form slender, his face grave and thoughtful. With steps springy and
quick, prominent cheek bones, a piercing eye and restless habit, he
seemed to his associates like some spirited Indian in the garb of a
paleface.
{530} [Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL ELY S. PARKER.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL HORACE CAPRON.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL W. A. GORMAN.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL CHRISTOPHER C. AUGUR.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAMES B. FRY.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL CHARLES K. GRAHAM.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL THOMAS C. DEVIN.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL NELSON A. MILES.]
[Illustration: COLONEL HORACE PORTER.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL GERSHOM MOTT.]
In July, 1862, a lieutenant's straps were given him for acts of
bravery performed in his routine duties with the blockading squadron
off North Carolina. Four months later, at the age of twenty, he
commanded his first expedition, a gunboat raid into New River Inlet,
waters wholly in the possession of active enemies. His vessel, the
_Ellis_, stranded within range of the Confederate batteries, but he
brought his crew and equipments off in schooners captured before the
disaster. A few weeks later he entered Little River at night with
twenty-five men, in {531} a cutter, dispersed the gunners of a shore
battery by land assault, and got out with the loss of one man. Cushing
sometimes volunteered, and at others was chosen, for these fugitive
exploits.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT WILLIAM B. CUSHING.]
In the summer of 1863 it was known on the blockading fleet that the
Confederates possessed a couple of rams and some torpedo boats in Cape
Fear River around Wilmington; and on the night of June 25 Cushing set
out from his ship _Monticello_ in a cutter, with two officers and
fifteen men, and crossed the bar, passing some forts and the town of
Smithville without discovery. On the way his boat nearly collided with
a blockade runner putting to sea, and also with a Confederate
guard-boat. The night was dark until the cutter was abreast of a
fortified bluff known as the Brunswick batteries, when the moon
suddenly emerged from a cloud and disclosed the strange craft to the
enemy's sentinels on shore. Shots were fired at the cutter, and the
garrison was alarmed. Cushing directed his men to pull to the opposite
shore and proceed up the river. When within seven miles of Wilmington
the boat was hidden in a marsh, and the party lay all next day within
sight of passing blockade runners.
After dark the cutter took to the wave and captured two rowboats
filled with men, who proved to be fishermen from Wilmington. Cushing
impressed them for guides and reconnoitred all the batteries and forts
on the river. He discovered that the ram _Raleigh_ was a hopeless
wreck, the ram _North Carolina_ useless because her draught didn't
admit of passing the bar to attack the Union blockading fleet, and
that the Confederate torpedo boats had been destroyed during a scare.
On the way to sea the cutter was headed off by a gunboat and several
small boats filled with men. It was night and the moon shone, and
Cushing managed to turn and double on his pursuers until he got a
start on them, and by vigorous rowing dashed into the breakers at the
Carolina shoal, where the enemy dare not follow. The cutter was so
heavy that she outrode the breakers and escaped to the fleet. On this
raid two days and three nights were spent in the enemy's territory.
In the month of February, 1864, the Administration at Washington
proposed a cavalry raid to Richmond. One object was to circulate,
within the Confederate lines, the President's amnesty proclamation,
offering full pardon and a restoration of rights to any individuals,
or to States, that might wish to return to their allegiance. Another
was the release of the Union prisoners in Belle Isle and Libby
prisons. The expedition was intrusted to Kilpatrick, who was to have a
picked force of four thousand cavalrymen and a horse battery.
It was believed in the Union camps that a surprise could be effected,
and with this end in view, Kilpatrick set out one Sunday night, the
28th of February, for the lower fords of the Rapidan. Reaching
Spottsylvania unmolested, he sent out from here a detachment of five
hundred men, under Col. Ulric Dahlgren, toward the Virginia Central
Railroad, instructing him to enter Richmond from the south, while he
himself should attack from the north. Through the treachery or
ignorance of a negro guide engaged by Dahlgren, his column failed to
find a ford in the James River, which was a serious drawback, because
he had intended to enter Richmond from the rear, the weakest point. On
March 1st, Dahlgren was eight miles west of Richmond on the James, and
Kilpatrick at Atlee's station, eight miles north, the distance between
them being only about twelve miles. Kilpatrick, however, was returning
from his raid, and the two forces were destined to remain apart and
receive severe handling from enemies now swarming about them.
Kilpatrick had passed the outer defences of Richmond by one o'clock of
the 1st, but on approaching the inner line he was met by infantry and
artillery. Skirmishing continued for several hours, the object of the
Union leader being to prolong the situation until he should hear
Dahlgren on the opposite side of the city. Finally, as he saw
Confederate troops moving in large bodies, he withdrew to Atlee's to
pass the night.
The Confederate cavalry command of Gen. Wade Hampton was strung along
the railroad between Lee's army and Richmond, and Gen. Bradley T.
Johnson, leading a brigade under him, had learned of Kilpatrick's
march and telegraphed to Richmond on the 29th that a raid was abroad.
He also had notified the troops all along the line, and both himself
and Hampton followed in Kilpatrick's path, about a day behind him. On
the night of the 1st Hampton attacked Kilpatrick's camp at Atlee's and
drove him out. The following morning Kilpatrick started down the
Peninsula toward White House, on the Pamunkey.
On the day of Kilpatrick's farthest advance Dahlgren had drawn to
within five miles of the city and then retired. After dark of that day
he, too, started to move down the peninsula along the Pamunkey.
Placing the main body in reserve, Dahlgren rode on ahead with the
advance guard, and on the next night fell into ambush prepared by a
number of cavalry officers who were at their homes in the vicinity on
recruiting service or leave of absence.
A challenge to halt Dahlgren answered by a threat, and the commander
of the Confederate outpost gave the order instantly to fire. At the
first volley Dahlgren fell dead. His men were surrounded and held
until daylight, when the whole party of survivors surrendered.
The chief victim of this raid, Colonel Dahlgren, was the son of
Admiral John A. Dahlgren, and at his death was twenty-two years old.
Early in the war he had served as an artillerist with Generals Sigel,
Frémont, and Pope in northern Virginia. On the retreat of Lee from
Gettysburg toward the Potomac, Dahlgren was at the front under
Kilpatrick, leading about one hundred men, and in the encounter with
Stuart at Hagarstown, July 6th, he received a wound in the foot that
cost him his leg. Having been commissioned colonel in the cavalry
service, he returned to the front wearing a cork leg, but was obliged
to depend on crutches. He volunteered for the expedition in which he
lost his life.
Morgan the raider had given the North an exhibition of his boldness
before he entered upon that celebrated ride across Ohio in 1863. On
the 13th of July, 1862, President Lincoln telegraphed from Washington
to the Union commander in the far West, "They are having a stampede in
Kentucky. Please look to it."
The whole trouble was caused by Colonel Morgan, with a couple of
cavalry regiments, and a clever telegraph operator {532} named
Ellsworth. Ellsworth tapped the wires between Nashville and
Louisville, and sent a bogus despatch to the Union authorities in the
latter city, stating that Morgan was operating around the former,
when, in reality, he was riding northward toward the heart of
Kentucky. Moving along the railroad lines, Union operators were
everywhere surprised at their keys and compelled to serve the raider's
commands, while Ellsworth manipulated the wires. In this way the Union
forces ahead on the line of march were ordered out of the road, or
drawn off by false alarms, and Morgan was able to get exact knowledge
as to the location and numbers of the Union garrisons. At Georgetown,
only sixty miles from Cincinnati, he halted for two days, producing,
by means of the wires, a terrible scare in Lexington, and drawing all
the Union forces to that region. He himself then moved southward to
cross into Tennessee, Ellsworth managing to counteract the Union
orders for pursuit during the retreat by his bogus telegrams. So the
raiders finished their long ride without once encountering an armed
foe.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD S. HANCOCK.]
Forrest marched to Memphis on his memorable raid in August, 1864, with
a detachment of his choicest cavalry, numbering fifteen hundred men.
The leader of the advanced guard was his brother, Captain W. H.
Forrest, and into his hands the general gave the difficult task of
opening the main road to the town. Captain Forrest approached the
outer pickets about daylight on Sunday morning, knocked the
challenging vidette senseless with the handle of his sabre, and with
ten athletic followers disarmed the reserves on the nearest post. A
musket accidentally discharged during the _mêlée_ aroused others near
by, and the entire main camp of ten thousand soldiers stretching
around the city soon caught the alarm.
Nothing daunted, Forrest galloped his men into the heart of the
stronghold, bent upon creating a panic for ulterior purposes of his
own, and he succeeded. Captain Forrest's band, followed by another
detachment, dashed down the main street to the Gayo House, riding over
an artillery camp on the way, and leaped their horses up the steps
into the office and dining-hall. Still another body, led by Colonel
Jesse Forrest, rode to the headquarters of the Union commandant,
General Hurlbut, who escaped capture by the merest accident. In a few
moments all Memphis was in an uproar; and the raiders, moving in five
isolated bodies, were overpowered in detail and compelled to unite
before they could cut their way out. But Forrest had effected his
purpose, and the glory of the exploit compensated him for the haste
with which he was obliged to abandon the hazardous game.
[Illustration: CONFEDERATE ARTILLERY CAPTURED AT ATLANTA.]
{533}
WOMAN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CAUSE.
At the close of the chapter on the Sanitary and Christian Commissions
we have given some account of the work of a few of the women whose
service was connected with or similar to that of those organizations.
It would require many pages to tell the entire story of the
contribution of the loyal women to the cause of the Union--a most
noble story, however monotonous and repetitious. It is impossible to
publish the records of all who served thus, any more than to treat of
every citizen who stepped into the ranks and, as a simple private,
gave his life for his country. But a specific account of what was done
by some of them will give the reader a more vivid idea of the great
price that was paid for the unity of our country and the perpetuation
of our government than can be conveyed by any general statement. It is
the story of women who did not urge their brothers and lovers to go to
the field without themselves following as far and as closely as the
law would let them, and sharing in the toils, the privations, and
sometimes even the peculiar perils, of war. Many of them lost their
lives, directly or indirectly, in consequence of their labors.
"On fields where Strife held riot,
And Slaughter fed his hounds,
Where came no sense of quiet,
Nor any gentle sounds,
They made their rounds.
"They wrought without repining,
And, weary watches o'er,
They passed the bounds confining
Our green, familiar shore
Forevermore."
It is claimed for Mrs. Almira Fales, of Washington, that she was the
first woman in the United States to perform any work for the comfort
of the soldiers during the Rebellion. In December, 1860, when South
Carolina had seceded and she saw that war was very probable, if not
certain, she began the preparation of lint and hospital stores, in
anticipation of the hostilities that did not break out until the next
April. Her husband was employed by the Government, and her sons
entered the army. During the war she emptied seven thousand boxes of
hospital stores, and distributed to the sick and wounded soldiers
comforts and delicacies to the value of one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. She spent several months at sea attending to the wounded on
hospital ships, and during the seven days' battles she was under fire
on the Peninsula. One of her sons was killed in the battle of
Chancellorsville. It was said that she was full of a quaint humor, and
her visits to the hospitals never failed to awaken smiles and bring
about a general air of cheerfulness.
[Illustration: Mrs. Nellie M. Taylor. Miss Clara H. Barton. Miss
Hattie A. Dada. Mrs. Mary B. Wade.]
Mrs. Harris, wife of John Harris, M.D., of Philadelphia, was one of
the earliest volunteers in the work, and one who had, perhaps, the
widest experience in its various branches. She is described as a pale
and delicate woman, and yet she endured very hard service in the cause
of her country. At the beginning of the war she became corresponding
secretary of the Ladies' Aid Society of Philadelphia, but very soon
she went to the field as its correspondent and one of its active
workers. In the spring of 1862 she accompanied the Army of the Potomac
to the Peninsula, and spent several weeks in the hospitals at Fort
Monroe. After the battle of Fair Oaks she went on board a transport
that was given to the wounded, and she thus describes what she saw
there: "There were eight hundred on board. Passage-ways, state-rooms,
floors from the dark and foetid hold to the hurricane deck, were all
more than filled; some on mattresses, some on blankets, others on
straw; some in the death-struggle, others nearing it, some already
beyond human sympathy and help; {534} some in their blood as they had
been brought from the battlefield of the Sabbath previous, and all
hungry and thirsty, not having had anything to eat or drink, except
hard crackers, for twenty-four hours. When we carried in bread, hands
from every quarter were outstretched, and the cry, 'Give me a piece,
oh, please! I have had nothing since Monday.' Another, 'Nothing but
hard crackers since the fight,' etc. When we had dealt out nearly all
the bread, a surgeon came in and cried, 'Do please keep some for the
poor fellows in the hold, they are so badly off for everything.' So
with the remnant we threaded our way through the suffering crowd, amid
such exclamations as, 'Oh! please don't touch my foot!' or, 'For
mercy's sake, don't touch my arm!' another, 'Please don't move the
blanket, I am so terribly cut up,' down to the hold, in which were not
less than one hundred and fifty, nearly all sick, some very sick. It
was like plunging into a vapor bath, so hot, close, and full of
moisture, and then in this dismal place we distributed our bread,
oranges, and pickles, which were seized upon with avidity. And here
let me say, at least twenty of them told us next day that the pickles
had done them more good than all the medicine they had taken." In the
autumn of 1863, just after the battle of Chickamauga, she went to the
West and began work at Nashville among the refugees. Afterward, at
Chattanooga, she labored in the hospitals until her strength was
overtaxed, and for several weeks her life was despaired of. Coming
again to the East, in the spring of 1864, she was with the Army of the
Potomac in its bloody campaign through the Wilderness, and afterward
with the Army of the Shenandoah. In the spring of 1865 she visited
North Carolina to care for the released prisoners of Andersonville and
Salisbury.
Mrs. Eliza C. Porter, of Chicago, after her eldest son had enlisted,
devoted herself to the work, first taking charge of the Sanitary
Commission rooms in that city, and in the spring of 1862 going to the
army hospitals. At Cairo, she and other women were accustomed to work
from four o'clock in the morning until ten at night. They went to the
front at Pittsburgh Landing, and not only labored in the hospitals,
but did much for refugees and escaped slaves, and established schools
for the blacks. In a letter written from a field hospital near
Chattanooga, in January, 1864, she says: "The field hospital was in a
forest, about five miles from Chattanooga; wood was abundant, and the
camp was warmed by immense burning 'log heaps,' which were the only
fire-places or cooking-stoves of the camp or hospitals. Men were
detailed to fell the trees and pile the logs to heat the air, which
was very wintry. And beside them Mrs. Bickerdyke made soup and toast,
tea and coffee, and broiled mutton without a gridiron, often
blistering her fingers in the process. A house in due time was
demolished to make bunks for the worst cases, and the brick from the
chimney was converted into an oven, when Mrs. Bickerdyke made bread,
yeast having been found in the Chicago boxes, and flour at a
neighboring mill, which had furnished flour to secessionists through
the war until now. Great multitudes were fed from these rude kitchens.
Companies of hungry soldiers were refreshed before those open
fire-places and from those ovens. On one occasion a citizen came and
told the men to follow him; he would show them a reserve of beef and
sheep which had been provided for General Bragg's army, and about
thirty head of cattle and twenty sheep was the prize. Large potash
kettles were found, which were used over the huge log fires, and
various kitchen utensils for cooking were brought into camp from time
to time, almost every day adding to our conveniences. The most
harrowing scenes are daily witnessed here. A wife came on yesterday
only to learn that her dear husband had died the morning previous. Her
lamentations were heart-breaking. 'Why could he not have lived until I
came? Why?' In the evening came a sister, whose aged parents had sent
her to search for their only son. She also came too late. The brother
had gone to the soldier's grave two days previous. One continued wail
of sorrow goes up from all parts of this stricken land."
[Illustration: MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE.]
[Illustration: MISS MARGARET E. BRECKENRIDGE.]
[Illustration: MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY.]
Mrs. Mary Bickerdyke, mentioned in Mrs. Porter's letter, was a widow
in Cleveland, Ohio, at the opening of the war, and immediately gave
herself to the work. Leaving her two little boys at home, she went to
the front and made herself useful in the hospitals at Savannah,
Chattanooga, and other points. She was a woman of great energy and
courage, and it is said that, in carrying on her work for the sick and
wounded soldiers, she used {535} to violate military rules without the
least hesitation, in order to obtain what she wanted. On one occasion,
when she found that an assistant surgeon had been off on a drunken
spree and had not made out the special diet list for his ward, leaving
the men without any breakfast, she not only denounced him to his face
but caused him to be discharged from the service. Going to General
Sherman to obtain reinstatement, the surgeon was asked: "Who caused
your discharge?" "Why," said he, "I suppose it was Mrs. Bickerdyke."
"If that is the case," said General Sherman, "I can do nothing for
you. She ranks me." Finding great difficulty in obtaining milk,
butter, and eggs for her hospital in Memphis, she resolved to
establish a dairy of her own. She therefore went to Illinois, and in
one of its farming regions obtained stock, by begging, until she had
two hundred cows and one thousand hens, which she took to Memphis,
where the commanding general gave her an island in the Mississippi, on
which she established her dairy. Her clothing was riddled with holes
from sparks at the open fires where she cooked for the field
hospitals, and some ladies in Chicago sent her a box of clothing for
herself, which included two elegant nightdresses trimmed with ruffles
and lace. Using only some of the plainest garments, she traded others
with secessionist women of the vicinity for delicacies for the
hospital. The two nightdresses she reserved to sell in some place
where she thought they would bring a higher price; but on the way to
Kentucky she found two wounded soldiers in a miserable shanty for whom
nothing had been done, and, after attending to their wounds and
finding that they had no shirts, she gave them the nightdresses,
ruffles, lace, and all.
Miss Margaret Elizabeth Breckenridge was a native of Philadelphia, but
was closely related to the well-known Breckenridge family of Kentucky.
She entered upon hospital service at the West in the spring of 1862,
and served constantly as long as her health and strength permitted. In
June, 1864, while she was prostrated by illness, the news came that
her brother-in-law, Col. Peter A. Porter, had been killed in the
battle of Cold Harbor, and this proved a greater shock than she could
bear. She had been especially helpful in cheering up the soldiers in
the hospitals and writing letters for them. One very young soldier who
lay wounded said to her: "Where do you come from? How could such a
lady as you are come down here to take care of us poor, sick, dirty
boys?" "I consider it an honor to wait on you," she said, "and wash
off the mud you waded through for me." Another man said: "Please write
down your name and let me look at it, and take it home, to show my
wife who wrote my letters and combed my hair and fed me. I don't
believe you're like other people."
Mrs. Stephen Barker, who was a sister of the attorney-general of
Massachusetts, and whose husband was chaplain of a regiment from that
State, gave nearly the whole four years of the war to hospital duty,
mostly in and around Washington, where at one time she had charge of
ten hospitals, which she carefully inspected herself with perfect
regularity. In her report she says: "I remember no scenes in camp more
picturesque than some of our visits have presented. The great open
army wagon stands under some shade-tree, with the officer who has
volunteered to help, or the regular field agent, standing in the midst
of boxes, bales, and bundles. Wheels, sides, and every projecting
point are crowded with eager soldiers, to see what the 'Sanitary' has
brought for them. By the side of the great wagon stands the light
wagon of the lady, with its curtains all rolled up, while she arranges
before and around her the supplies she is to distribute. Another eager
crowd surrounds her, patient, kind, and respectful as the first,
except that a shade more of softness in their look and tone attest the
ever-living power of woman over the rough elements of manhood. In
these hours of personal communication with the soldier she finds the
true meaning of her work. This is her golden opportunity, when by look
and tone and movement she may call up, as if by magic, the pure
influences of home, which may have been long banished by the hard
necessities of war. Quietly and rapidly the supplies are handed out
for companies A, B, C, etc., first from one wagon, then the other, and
as soon as a regiment is completed the men hurry back to their tents
to receive their share, and write letters on the newly received paper,
or apply the long-needed comb or mend the gaping seams in their now
'historic garments.' When at last the supplies are exhausted, and
sunset reminds us that we are yet many miles from home, we gather up
the remnants, bid good-by to the friendly faces, which already seem
like old acquaintances, promising to come again to visit new regiments
to-morrow, and hurry home to prepare for the next day's work. Every
day, from the first to the twentieth day of June, our little band of
missionaries has repeated a day's work such as I have now described."
Miss Amy M. Bradley, a native and resident of Maine, who had been for
some years a teacher, volunteered as a nurse at the very beginning of
the war and went out with the Fifth Maine regiment, many of the
soldiers in which had been her pupils. She became noted for the
efficiency and good condition of the hospitals over which she
presided, and in December, 1862, was sent to what the soldiers called
Camp Misery, on the opposite side of the Potomac from Washington, as a
special relief agent of the Sanitary Commission. This camp, as its
name indicated, was in a deplorable condition; but she immediately
instituted reforms which rapidly improved it. She not only obtained
supplies for the invalids and others who were there, but brought about
a system of transfer by which more than two thousand of them were sent
where they could be taken care of more comfortably, and she was
especially efficient in setting right the accounts of men who were
suffering from informality in their papers. In eight months she
procured the reinstatement of one hundred and fifty soldiers who had
been unjustly dropped from the rolls as deserters, and secured their
arrears of pay for them.
Miss Arabella Griffith was a native of New Jersey, and at the
beginning of the war was engaged to Francis C. Barlow, a promising
young lawyer. On April 19, 1861, Mr. Barlow enlisted as a private; on
the 20th they were married, and on the 21st he went with his regiment
to Washington. A week later Mrs. Barlow followed him, and still later
she joined in the hospital work of the Sanitary Commission. The day
after the battle of Antietam she found her husband badly wounded, and
when, in the spring, he went to the field again, she accompanied him.
At Gettysburg he was again wounded and was left within the enemy's
lines, but she by great effort managed to get him within the Union
lines, where she took care not only of him, but many others of the
wounded men in that great battle. In the spring of 1864 she was again
in the field, hard at work in the hospitals that were nearest the
front. A friend who knew her at this time writes: "We call her 'The
Raider.' At Fredericksburg she had in some way gained possession of a
wretched-looking pony and a small cart, with which she was continually
on the move, driving about town or country in search of such
provisions or other articles as were needed for the sick and wounded.
The surgeon in charge had on one occasion assigned to us the task of
preparing a building, which had been taken for {536} a hospital, for a
large number of wounded who were expected immediately. It was empty,
containing not the slightest furniture, save a large number of
bed-sacks, without material to fill them. On requisition a quantity of
straw was obtained, but not nearly enough, and we were standing in a
mute despair when Mrs. Barlow came in. 'I'll find some more straw,'
was her cheerful reply, and in another moment she was urging her tired
beast toward another part of the town where she remembered having seen
a bale of straw earlier in the day. Half an hour afterward it had been
confiscated, loaded upon the little wagon, and brought to the
hospital." Her health became so impaired in the field that, in July,
1864, she died. Her husband, meanwhile, had risen to the rank of
brigadier-general, and was known as one of the most gallant men in the
army. Surgeon W. H. Reed, writing of her, said: "In the open field she
toiled with Mr. Marshall and Miss Gilson, under the scorching sun,
with no shelter from the pouring rains, with no thought but for those
who were suffering and dying all around her. On the battlefield of
Petersburg, hardly out of range of the enemy and at night witnessing
the blazing lines of fire from right to left, among the wounded, with
her sympathies and powers both of mind and body strained to the last
degree, neither conscious that she was working beyond her strength nor
realizing the extreme exhaustion of her system, she fainted at her
work, and found, only when it was too late, that the raging fever was
wasting her life away. Yet to the last her sparkling wit, her
brilliant intellect, her unfailing good humor, lighted up our moments
of rest and recreation."
Mrs. Nellie M. Taylor (May Dewey) was a native of Watertown, New York,
but settled with her husband in New Orleans. There, on the breaking
out of the war, she was subjected to all kinds of persecution because
she was a Unionist. On one occasion a mob assembled around her house,
where she was watching at the bedside of her dying husband, and the
leader said: "Madam, we give you five minutes to decide whether you
are for the South or for the North. If at the end of that time you
declare yourself for the South, your house shall remain; if for the
North, it must come down." "Sir," she answered, "I will say to you and
your crowd that I am, always have been, and ever shall be, for the
Union. Tear my house down if you choose!" The mob seemed to be a
little ashamed of themselves at this answer, and finally dispersed
without destroying the house. Seven times before the capture of the
city by the National forces her home was searched by self-constituted
committees of citizens, who every time found the National flag
displayed at the head of her bed; and on one occasion she was actually
fired at from a window. Mrs. Taylor gave a large part of her time
during the war to hard work in the hospitals, and in addition she
spent many of her earnings for the benefit of the sick and wounded
soldiers.
In the spring of 1862, Governor Harvey, of Wisconsin, visited General
Grant's army with medicines and other supplies for the wounded from
his State, and just after the battle of Shiloh he was accidentally
drowned there. His widow, Cordelia P. Harvey, devoted herself to the
work in which he had lost his life, and served faithfully in the
hospitals of that department. One of her most valuable achievements
consisted in persuading the government to establish general hospitals
in the Northern States, where suffering soldiers might be sent and
have a better chance of recovery than if kept in the hospitals further
south.
Mrs. Sarah R. Johnston was a native of North Carolina, and at the
beginning of the war was teaching at Salisbury, in that State. When
the first prisoners were brought to the town for confinement in the
stockade there, the secessionist women turned out in carriages to
escort them through the town, and greeted them with contemptuous
epithets as they filed past. The sight of this determined Mrs.
Johnston to devote herself to the work of ameliorating their
condition. This subjected her to all sorts of insults from her
townspeople and broke up her school; but she persevered, nevertheless,
and earned the gratitude of many of the unfortunate men who there
suffered from the studied cruelty of the Confederate government. She
made up her carpets and spare blankets into moccasins, which she gave
to the prisoners as they arrived; and when they stood in front of her
house waiting their turn to be mustered into the prison, she supplied
them, as far as she could, with bread and water, for in many instances
they had been on the railroad forty-eight hours with nothing to eat or
drink. The prisoners were not permitted to leave their ranks to assist
her in obtaining the water, all of which had to be drawn from a well
with an old-fashioned windlass. On one occasion a Confederate sergeant
in charge told her that if she attempted to do anything for the
Yankees or come outside her gate, he would pin her to the earth with
his bayonet. Paying no attention to this, she took a basket of bread
in one hand and a bucket of water in the other, and walked past him on
her usual errand. The sergeant followed her and touched her upon the
shoulder with the point of his bayonet, whereupon she turned and asked
him why he did not pin her to the earth, as he had promised to. Some
of the Confederate soldiers called out: "Sergeant, you can't make
anything out of that woman; you had better leave her alone." And then
he desisted.
[Illustration: MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE.]
[Illustration: MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND.]
Mrs. Mary Morris Husband, of Philadelphia, was a {537} granddaughter
of Robert Morris of Revolutionary fame. When her son, who had enlisted
in the Army of the Potomac, was seriously ill on the Peninsula, she
went there to take care of him, and what she saw determined her to
give her services to the country as a nurse. She was on one of the
hospital transports at Harrison's Landing when the Confederates
bombarded it, but kept right on with her work as if she were not under
fire. She was at Antietam immediately after the battle, and remained
there two months in charge of the wounded, sleeping in a tent in all
kinds of weather and attending the hospital with perfect regularity.
She contrived an ensign for her tent by cutting out the figure of a
bottle in red flannel and sewing it upon a piece of calico, this
bottle flag indicating the place where medicines were to be obtained.
In the severe winter of 1862-63 she often left her tent several times
in the night and visited the cots of those who were apparently near
death, to make sure that the nurses did not neglect them; and when
diphtheria appeared in the hospital and many of the nurses left from
fear of it, she remained at her post just as if there were no such
thing as a contagious disease. It is said that in several instances
where she believed a soldier had been unjustly condemned by
court-martial, she obtained a pardon or commutation of his sentence by
laying the case directly before President Lincoln.
[Illustration: MRS. HENRIETTA L. COLT.]
[Illustration: MISS EMILY E. PARSONS.]
[Illustration: MRS. R. H. SPENCER.]
Miss Katherine P. Wormeley, known of late as a translator of Balzac's
works, is a native of England. Her father, born in Virginia, was an
officer in the British Navy. Her mother was a native of Boston. At the
beginning of the war Miss Wormeley was living at Newport, R. I., and
almost at once she enlisted in the work of aid for the soldiers. When
the hospital transport service was organized, in the summer of 1862,
she was one of the first volunteers for that branch of the service.
Later she had charge of a large hospital in Rhode Island, which held
two thousand five hundred patients.
Among others who volunteered for the hospital transport service were
Mrs. Joseph Howland, whose husband was colonel of the Sixteenth New
York regiment, and her sister, Mrs. Robert S. Howland, whose husband
was a clergyman working in the hospitals. The latter Mrs. Howland, who
died in 1864, was the author of a short poem, entitled "In the
Hospital," which has become famous.
"I lay me down to sleep, with little thought or care
Whether my waking find me here--or there!
A bowing, burdened head, that only asks to rest,
Unquestioning, upon a loving breast.
My good right hand forgets its cunning now;
To march the weary march I know not how.
I am not eager, bold, nor strong--all that is past;
I am ready not to do at last, at last.
My half-day's work is done, and this is all my part--
I give a patient God my patient heart;
And grasp His banner still, though all the blue be dim:
These stripes, as well as stars, lead after Him."
These two ladies had two unmarried sisters, Jane C. and Georgiana M.
Woolsey, who also were in the service. Miss Georgiana Woolsey wrote
some entertaining letters from the seat of war, in one of which she
tells of some women in Gettysburg who, like Jennie Wade, kept at their
work of making bread for the soldiers while the battle was going on.
One of them had refused to leave the house or go into the cellar until
a third shell passed through the room, when, having got the last loaf
into the oven, she ran down the stairs. "Why did you not go before?"
she was asked. "Oh, you see," she answered, "if I had, the rebels
would 'a' come in and daubed the dough all over the place." These
ladies were cousins of Miss Sarah C. Woolsey, who is now, under her
pen-name of Susan Coolidge, well known as a writer for the young. She
also served for some time in the hospitals.
Anna Maria Ross, of Philadelphia, was known as a most energetic worker
in the hospitals, chiefly in what was called the Cooper Shop Hospital
of Philadelphia, of which she was principal until, from overwork and
anxiety, she died in December, 1863.
Miss Mary J. Safford, a native of Vermont, was living in Cairo, Ill.,
when the war began, and at once enlisted in the work of aid for the
soldiers. Immediately after the battle of Shiloh {538} she went to the
front with a large supply of hospital stores, and labored there day
and night for three weeks, when she came North with a transport loaded
with wounded men. She is said to have been the first woman in the West
to engage in this work. The hardships that she endured caused a
disease of the spine, and at the end of a year and a half she broke
down, and had to be sent to Europe for treatment.
Mrs. Annie Wittenmeyer, of Iowa, was appointed sanitary agent for that
State, and is said to have been the originator of the diet kitchens
attached to the hospitals. The object of these was to have the food
for the wounded and sick prepared in a skilful manner and administered
according to surgeons' orders, and they were a very efficient branch
of the hospital service.
Another Iowa woman who devoted herself to the service was Miss
Melcenia Elliott. She served in the hospitals in Tennessee, and
afterward in St. Louis had charge of the Home for Refugees. Here she
established a school, and instituted many reforms in the direction of
cleanliness and industry. It is related that in Memphis, when she was
refused admission to one of the hospitals where a neighbor's son was
ill, she every night scaled a high fence in the rear of the building
and managed to get into the ward where she could attend to the poor
boy until he died.
Miss Clara Davis, of Massachusetts, was one of the earliest
volunteers, and she was so assiduous in her labors and so cheerful in
her manners in the hospital that the soldiers came to look upon her
with most profound admiration and affection. One of them was heard to
say, "There must be wings hidden beneath her cloak." Her labors were
mainly with the Army of the Potomac, and she continued them until an
attack of typhoid fever made further work of the kind impossible.
Mrs. R. H. Spencer, of Oswego, N. Y., whose husband enlisted in the
One Hundred and Forty-seventh New York regiment, followed that
organization to the front, and made herself useful as a nurse and
hospital attendant. On the march toward Gettysburg she rode a horse
which carried, besides herself, bedding, cooking utensils, clothing,
and more than three hundred pounds of supplies for the sick and
wounded. While that great battle was in progress, Mrs. Spencer, a part
of the time actually under fire, established a field hospital in which
sixty wounded men were treated. One day she discovered a townsman of
her own who had been shot through the throat, and whose case was
pronounced hopeless by the surgeon, as he could swallow nothing. Mrs.
Spencer took him in hand, and asked him if he could do without food
for a week. The man, who was young and strong, gave signs that he
could. "Then," said she, "do as I tell you, and you shall not die."
She procured a basin of pure cold water, and directed him to keep the
wound continually wet, which he did, until in a few days the
inflammation subsided and the edges of the wound could be closed up.
After which she began to feed him carefully with broth, and every day
brought further improvement until he entirely recovered. When the
ammunition barge exploded at City Point a piece of shell struck her in
the side, but inflicted only a heavy bruise.
Mrs. Harriet Foote Hawley, wife of Gen. Joseph R. Hawley, of
Connecticut, did much work in the hospitals on the Carolina coast,
whither she had gone in the first instance to engage in teaching the
freedmen. At Wilmington, where typhoid fever broke out, she remained
at her post when many others were frightened away. In the last month
of the war she was injured on the head by the overturning of an
ambulance, and this rendered her an invalid for a long time.
Miss Jessie Home, a native of Scotland, entered the service as a
hospital nurse at Washington and continued there for two years, making
many friends and doing a vast amount of good, until, from overwork,
she was struck down by disease.
Mrs. Sarah P. Edson entered the service during the first year of the
war, and was assigned to the general hospital at Winchester, Va. In
the spring of 1862 she was with McClellan's army on the Peninsula, and
after the battle of Williamsburg, learning that her son was among the
wounded, she walked twelve miles to find him, apparently dying, where,
with other wounded men, he was greatly in need of care. She worked
night and day to alleviate their sufferings, and brought something
like cleanliness and order out of the dreadful condition in which she
found them. In the ensuing summer she passed through a long and severe
illness in consequence of her labors. On her recovery she formed a
plan for the training of nurses, and, after her experiment had been
tried, an official of the medical department declared "that it was
more than a success, it was a triumph."
Miss Maria M. C. Hall, of Washington, was associated with Mrs. Fales
in hospital work, and went through the four years of it with unfailing
energy and enthusiasm. She finally became general superintendent of
the Naval Academy Hospital at Annapolis. After the war she wrote: "I
mark my hospital days as my best ones, and thank God for the way in
which He led me into the good work, and for the strength which kept me
through it all."
Mrs. A. H. Gibbons was a daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, the famous
Quaker philanthropist, and wife of James Sloane Gibbons, who wrote the
famous song, "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
more." With her eldest daughter (afterward Mrs. Emerson) she went to
Washington in the autumn of 1861, and entered upon hospital service.
One day they discovered a small hospital near Falls Church, where
about forty men were ill of typhoid fever, and one young soldier, who
seemed to be at the point of death, appealed to them, saying: "Come
and take care of me, and I shall get well; if you do not come, I shall
die." Finding that the hospital was in a wretched condition, they got
leave to take it in charge, and presently had it in excellent order,
with a large number of the patients recovering. These ladies were on
duty at Point Lookout for over a year, and there they were obliged to
oppose and evade the officers in various ways, in order to assist the
escaped slaves, whom these officers were only too ready and anxious to
return to slavery. While they were engaged in this work, their home in
New York was sacked by the mob in the draft riots.
Mrs. Jerusha R. Small, of Cascade, Iowa, followed her husband, who
enlisted at the beginning of the war, and became a nurse in the
regimental hospitals. At the battle of Shiloh, the tent in which she
was caring for a number of wounded men, among whom was her husband,
was struck by shells from the enemy's guns, and she was obliged to get
her patients away as fast as she could to an extemporized hospital
beyond the range of fire. After the most arduous service, extending
over several weeks with no intermission, she was struck down by
disease and died. To one who said to her in her last hours, "You did
wrong to expose yourself so," she answered, "No, I feel that I have
done right. I think I have been the means of saving some lives, and
that of my dear husband among the rest; and these I consider of far
more value than mine, for now they can go and help our country in its
hour of need." She was buried with military honors.
Another lady who accompanied her husband to the field was {539} the
wife of Hermann Canfield, colonel of the Seventy-first Ohio regiment,
who was killed in the battle of Shiloh. After taking his body to their
home, she returned to the army and continued her hospital service
until the close of the war.
When the Rev. Shepard Wells and his wife were driven from East
Tennessee because of their loyalty to the government, they went to St.
Louis, where he engaged in the work of the Christian Commission, and
she entered the hospital and became superintendent of a special diet
kitchen, which did an immense amount of work for the cause.
[Illustration: MISS MARY J. SAFFORD.]
Mrs. E. C. Witherell, of Louisville, Ky., was another of those who
devoted themselves to the merciful and patriotic work in the hospitals
at the expense of their lives. She was head nurse on a hospital
steamer in the Mississippi until she was stricken down with fever and
died in July, 1862. Still another of those was Miss Phebe Allen, a
daughter of Iowa, who served in a hospital at St. Louis until she died
in the summer of 1864. Mrs. Edwin Greble, mother of Lieut. John T.
Greble, who was killed in the battle of Big Bethel, and of another son
who died in the army, of fever, devoted herself to hospital service
and to preparing garments and blankets for the soldiers.
Mrs. Isabella Fogg, of Maine, was another of those who pushed their
way into the service before it was organized, and found some
difficulty in so doing. But she got there at last, and took part in
the hospital transport service in the waters of Chesapeake Bay. After
the battle of Chancellorsville, she was serving in a temporary
hospital at United States Ford when it was shelled by the
Confederates. Her son was in the Army of the Shenandoah, and was badly
wounded in the battle of Cedar Creek. While performing her duties on a
Western hospital boat, in charge of the diet kitchen, she fell through
a hatchway and received injuries that disabled her for life.
Mrs. E. E. George, of Indiana, when she applied for a place in the
service, was refused on the ground that she was too old. But in spite
of her advanced years she insisted upon enlisting in the good cause,
and in Sherman's campaign of 1864 she had charge of the Fifteenth Army
Corps hospital, and in the battles before Atlanta she was several
times under fire. The next spring she was on duty at Wilmington,
N. C., when eleven thousand prisoners released from Salisbury were
brought there in the deplorable condition that was common to those who
had been in Carolina in Confederate stockades. Her incessant labors in
behalf of those unfortunate men prostrated her, and she died.
Large numbers of the troops raised in the Eastern and Middle States
passed through Philadelphia on their way to the seat of war, and some
philanthropic ladies of that city established a refreshment saloon
where meals were furnished free to soldiers who were either going to
the front or going home on furlough or because disabled. Among the
most assiduous workers here was Mary B. Wade, widow of a sea captain,
who, despite her seventy years, was almost never absent, night or day,
through the whole four years.
Another widow who gave herself to the cause was Henrietta L. Colt
(_née_ Peckham), a native of Albany County, N. Y., whose husband was a
well-known lawyer. She labored in the Western hospitals and on the
river hospital steamers, looking especially after the Wisconsin men,
as she was for some time a resident of Milwaukee. She wrote in one of
her letters: "I have visited seventy-two hospitals, and would find it
difficult to choose the most remarkable among the many heroisms I
every day witnessed. I was more impressed by the gentleness and
refinement that seemed to grow up in the men when suffering from
horrible wounds than from anything else. It seemed to me that the
sacredness of the cause for which they offered up their lives gave
them a heroism almost superhuman."
[Illustration: MRS. MARIANNE F. STRANAHAN.]
Among the great fairs that were held for the benefit of the Sanitary
Commission, that in Brooklyn, N. Y., was one of the most successful.
It paid into the treasury of the Commission three hundred thousand
dollars and furnished supplies valued at two hundred thousand more.
This was the work of the Brooklyn Women's Relief Association, of which
Mrs. James S. T. Stranahan was president. Her efforts in this work
broke down her health, and she died in the first year after the war.
Miss Hattie A. Dada, of New York, was one of the women who volunteered
as nurses immediately after the first battle of Bull Run. From that
date she was continually in service till the war closed--her time
being about equally divided between the Eastern and Western armies.
After General Banks's retreat in the Shenandoah Valley, she and Miss
Susan E. Hall, remaining with the wounded, became prisoners to the
Confederates and were held about three months. From that time these
two ladies were inseparable, their last two years of service being in
the scantily furnished hospitals at Murfreesboro, Tenn., one of the
most difficult fields for such work.
At the beginning of the war, Miss Emily E. Parsons, daughter of Prof.
Theophilus Parsons, of Cambridge, Mass., entered a hospital in Boston
as pupil and assistant to educate herself for work among the soldiers.
A year and a half later she volunteered and was sent to Fort Schuyler,
near New York. Early in 1863 she went to St. Louis, where she served
in the hospitals {540} and on the hospital steamers. The Benton
Hospital, under her superintendence, became famous for its efficiency
and its large percentage of recoveries.
Next after the men who commanded armies, the name of Gen. James B.
Ricketts is one of the most familiar in the history of the war. When
he was gravely wounded at Bull Run and taken prisoner, his wife
managed to make her way to him, sharing his captivity, and by careful
nursing saved his life. He was exchanged in December, 1861, and his
wife afterward devoted herself to the care of the wounded in the Army
of the Potomac.
Mrs. Jane R. Munsell, of Maryland, entered upon the service when she
saw the wounded of the battle of Antietam, and devoted both her life
and her property to it until she died of the incessant labor.
Besides these women who served in the hospitals, there were others who
performed quite as important work in organizing the means of
supply--in holding fairs, in obtaining materials and workers and
superintending the manufacture of garments and other necessary
articles, and forwarding them to the right places at the right time.
One of the foremost of these was Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, a native of
Boston, who afterward became eminent as a pulpit orator. She organized
numerous aid societies in the Northwestern States, made tours of the
hospitals in the Mississippi valley, to find out what was needed and
how the supplies were being disposed of, and was most active in
getting up and carrying through to success the great Northwestern
Sanitary Fair in Chicago. There was hardly a city in the North in
which one or more similar women did not rise to the occasion and do
similar work, though on a smaller scale.
NOTE.--For many of the facts related in this chapter we are indebted
to Dr. L. P. Brackett's excellent volume on "Woman's Work in the Civil
War."
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTED BY THE SANITARY
COMMISSION.]
{541}
INDEX.
Besides the usual abbreviations for titles and given names of persons,
and for names of States, N stands for National or Federal, C for
Confederate, port. for portrait, inf. for infantry, cav. for cavalry,
art'y for artillery.
"A" tents, 496.
Abbott, John S. C., quoted, 513, 517.
----, Joseph C., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 440.
----, ----, N capt., 22d Ill., 117.
Abb's Valley, W. Va., captured, 339.
Abercrombie, John J., N brig.-gen., Falling Waters, 111;
port., 159.
Abingdon, Va., 223.
Acquia, Va., 165.
Acton, Thomas C., New York draft riots, 285.
----, ----, N maj., killed, Lookout Mountain, 313.
Adams, Charles Francis, U. S. minister to England, letter from Sec'y
Sumner, 372-314;
instructed by Lincoln, 374.
----, John, C brig.-gen., killed, 430.
----, John Quincy, President of the U. S., quoted on slavery, 183.
----, of Mississippi, C spy, 505.
----, ----, N aid to Force, Atlanta, 389.
Advance on Petersburg, The, 397-400.
Aiken's Landing, Va., 322.
Alabama secedes, 9;
14th inf. captured by Sherman, 386.
---- regimental losses, 6th, 16th, 22d, 58th, 41st, 3d, 26th inf.,
483, 484.
----, C cruiser, 371;
destroyed by "Kearsarge," 372;
ill., 373;
Sumner's letter, 374.
Albemarle, C ram, Plymouth, N. C., 434;
destroyed by Cushing, 435.
Albemarle Sound, N. C., 67, 71, 72.
Alcott, Louisa M., port., 324;
hospital services, 326.
Alden, James, N rear-adm., Mobile Bay, 393.
Aldie, Va., skirmishes, 250, 267.
Alexander, Barton S., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 147.
----, E. Porter, C brig.-gen., port., 265.
Alexandria, La., 375.
----, Va., 25, 49, 52, 165, 353, 402.
Allatoona Pass, Ga., 385;
ill., 421.
Alleghany Mountains, 75, 100.
Allen, Henry W., C maj.-gen., port., 508.
----, Phebe, Miss, 539.
Allen's Farm, Va., action, 158.
"All quiet along the Potomac to-night," Mrs. Ethel Lynn Beers, 126.
American Hotel, Richmond, Va., 454.
Ames, Adelbert, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 440.
Anderson, Charles, N col., Lebanon, Tenn., 229.
----, Rev. Galusha, 41.
----, George B., C brig.-gen., killed, Antietam, 180.
----, George T., C brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 259;
Spottsylvania, 358.
----, John T., C col., residence destroyed by Hunter, 319.
----, Joseph R., C brig.-gen., 319.
----, J. Patton, C maj.-gen., La Vergne, Tenn., 227.
----, Paulding, C, Munfordville, 115.
----, Richard H., C lieut.-gen., Antietam, 180;
port., 195;
Shenandoah, 406.
----, Robert, N b'v't maj.-gen., ports., 7, 11;
sent to command Charleston Harbor, 10;
moves from Moultrie to Sumter, 12;
defends, 15;
surrenders and evacuates Sumter, 17, 18;
takes command in Kentucky, 41.
----, ----, N pvt., Gettysburg, 260.
Andersonville, Ga., prison camps, 321, 323, 390, 524, 525;
ill., 315.
André, a modern (S. B. Davis, C lieut.), 470-472.
Andrew, John A., gov. of Mass., port., 18;
early equips State militia, 23;
influence, 448.
Andrews, Christopher C., N b'v't maj.-gen., Fitzhugh's Woods, Ark.,
437.
----, James J., N spy, port., 529;
execution, 529.
Annapolis, Md., 24.
Anthony, Daniel R., N col., attitude toward slavery, 185.
Antietam, Md., battle, 177-179, 350;
map of battle, 179;
Sanitary Commission, 325, 406;
losses at battle, 477.
Antietam campaign, The, 175-180.
Anti-slavery standard, 128.
Apache Cañon, N. M., battle, 233, 234.
Appalachicola, Fla., 10.
Appomattox C. H., Va., ill., 492;
Sheridan stops Lee's retreat at, 446;
Lee surrenders at, 446;
McLean house, where Lee surrendered, ills., 447, 494.
Aqueduct Bridge, Potomac River, ill., 473.
Arago, N ship, 18.
Archer, James J., C brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 251, 267.
Arkadelphia, Ark., engagement, 343.
Arkansas secedes, 35;
guerilla warfare, 79;
1st cav., Fayetteville, 344;
1st (C) inf. losses, 484.
----, C gunboat, destroyed, 270.
Arkansas Post, Ark., captured by McClernand, 272, 273.
Arlington Heights, Va., 25.
Armistead, Lewis A., C brig.-gen., Malvern Hill, 159;
Antietam, 180;
killed, Gettysburg, 257, 451.
Armstrong, ----, C capt., killed, Belmont, 122.
----, Frank C., C brig.-gen., port., 210;
Britton's Lane, Tenn., 227.
Army organization, North and South, 47-49.
Arnold, W. A., N capt., Bristoe Sta., Va., 334.
Arthur, Chester A., President of the U. S., Porter relief bill vetoed,
170.
Asboth, Alexander, N b'v't maj.-gen., Pea Ridge, 80;
port., 81.
Ashby, Henry, C col., Somerset, Ky., 339.
----, Turner, C brig.-gen., Bolivar Heights, 113;
Winchester, 216;
killed, Harrisonburg, 216.
Ashby's Gap, Va., 333.
Aspinwall, William H., 15.
Astor House, New York, ill., 228.
Atlanta, Ga., 307, 353;
Sherman's campaign, 383-390;
"Gate City," 387;
occupied by Sherman, 390;
ills. of battle, 384, 516;
military depot, 419;
shops and depot destroyed, 421;
ill. of works, 424, 426;
ill., 428.
----, C ironclad, surrendered to Du Pont, 289, 290.
Atlanta campaign, The, 383-390.
Atlantic Monthly, quoted, 395, 425-427.
Atlee's Station, Va., Kilpatrick's raid, 531.
Augur, Christopher C., N maj.-gen., defence of Washington, 403;
port., 530.
Augusta, Ga., 10, 389.
Averell, William W., N b'v't maj.-gen., 317;
Kelly's Ford, 332;
cavalry raid, Va. and W. Va., 333;
port., 335;
Winchester, Va., 404;
Shenandoah, 406, 407;
Crockett's Cove, W. Va., 433.
Avery, ----, N lieut., Tranter's Creek, N. C., 218.
Averysboro', N. C., battle, 441.
Ayres, Romeyn B., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 443.
Babcock, Orville E., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 527.
Bacon, A. G., N capt., killed, Sacramento, 115.
Badeau, Adam, N brig.-gen., port., 277.
Bahama Channel, 63.
Bahia, Brazil, "Florida" captured, 372.
Bailey, Joseph, N b'v't maj.-gen., Grand Ecore, La., 381, 382.
----, Theodorus, N commodore, at N. O., port., 93, 95.
Bailey's dam, Red River, ill., 380, 381, 382.
Baird, Absalom, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 307.
Baker, Edward D., N col., killed, Ball's Bluff, 109;
port., 110, 451.
Baker, L. C., N col., captures Booth, 511;
adventures, 511.
Balaklava, charge, compared with Gettysburg, 476.
Bald Hill (Atlanta), battle, 387, 388.
Baldwin, Philemon P., N col., killed, Chickamauga, 299.
----, Judge, quoted, 315.
Balloons, 162.
Ball's Bluff, Va., battle, 109, 110.
Baltic, N transport, 15, 17.
Baltimore, Md., 6th Mass. regiment attacked in, 5, 23;
Republican convention, 412.
Baltimore and Ohio R. R., 28, 45, 47, 320, 337, 406.
Banks, Nathaniel P., N maj.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 154;
Pope's campaign, 163-168;
Cedar Mountain, 164;
Shenandoah Valley, 216;
Port Hudson, 276, 308, 345;
under Grant, 351, 353;
Shreveport, 375;
ill., 377;
Sabine Cross Roads, 377;
port., 378;
Pleasant Hill, 378-381.
Banks's Ford, Chancellorsville, 243.
Barboursville, W. Va., 113.
Barker, Mrs. Stephen, 535.
Barksdale, William, C brig.-gen., killed, Gettysburg, 254, 259, 451.
Barlow, Arabella G. (Mrs. Francis C.), hospital services and death,
326, 467, 470, 535.
----, C. J., quoted, 317.
----, Francis C., N maj.-gen., Chancellorsville, 245;
port., 255;
Spottsylvania, 359;
Bethesda Church, 365;
Cold Harbor, 365;
Gettysburg anecdote, 465-467, 479.
Barnard, John G., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 159;
quoted, 162.
Barnes, James, N b'v't maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 259.
----, Joseph K., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 414.
Barnett's Ford, Va., 335.
Barney, N gunboat, 348.
Barnum, Henry A., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 414.
Barron, Samuel, C flag officer, 68.
Bartlett, Joseph J., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 192, 398.
----, William C., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 386.
Bartlett's Mills, Va., 336.
Barton, Clara, Fort Wagner, 291;
hospital services, 326;
port., 533.
----, Seth M., C brig.-gen., port., 281.
----, William B., N col., 220.
Bartow, F. S., C col., at Bull Run, 55, 451.
Bate, William B., C maj.-gen., port., 314.
Bates, Edward, N attorney-gen., port., 6.
----, Samuel P., Hooker's comments on Chancellorsville, 243.
Batesville, Ark., action, 343.
Baton Rouge, La., 10, 270, 274.
Battery Gregg, Morris Island, 290, 294.
---- Lamar, 219.
---- Reynolds, Fort Wagner, ill., 291.
---- Robinette, Corinth, 207.
Battle Creek, Ala., 301.
"Battle Cry of Freedom, The," George F. Root, 138.
"Battle Hymn of the Republic, The," Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, 127.
Battle of Chattanooga, The, 305-314.
---- of Mobile Bay, The, 391-396.
Baxter, Henry, N b'v't maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 252;
port., 255;
Wilderness, 357.
Bayard, George D., N brig-.-gen., Cedar Mountain, 164;
Harrisonburg, 216;
killed, Fredericksburg, 196;
port., 484.
Bayou Lafourche, La., 382.
---- Teche, La., operations, 345, 347.
Beall, John Y., C, Lake Erie raid, 528.
----, Richard L. T., C brig.-gen., port., 265.
Bean, William S., N quar.-mas.-sergt., Chickamauga, 303.
Beaufort, N. C., 72, 87, 193.
Beauregard, P. G. T., C lieut.-gen., port., 15;
attacks and captures Sumter, 15-17, 49;
in command C troops, 52;
at Bull Run, 53, 54, 57;
Corinth, 100;
Shiloh, 101-108;
succeeded by Bragg, 200, 206;
comment on Secessionville, 219;
comment on the "Black Flag," 235;
siege of Charleston, 289;
cartoon, 461.
Beaver, James A., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 368.
Beaver Dam Creek, Va., battle, 155.
Bee, Barnard E., C brig.-gen., port., 60;
at Bull Run, 53, 55, 451.
Beech Grove, Ky., 73.
Beecher, Henry Ward, Rev., at Sumter, 17, 18;
in England, 66;
port., 186.
Beekman, ----, N capt., Hawes's Shop, Va., 363, 364.
Beers, Mrs. Ethel Lynn, "All quiet along the Potomac to-night," 126.
----, ----, N maj., Jonesville, Va., 433.
Beginning of bloodshed, The, 29-36.
Beiral, ----, N capt., Ball's Bluff, 110.
Belle Isle, Va., prison camps, 321, 323, 531.
Belle Plain, Va., ill., 352, 362.
Belleville, O., action, 297.
Bellis, ----, N lieut., Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Bellows, Henry W., Rev., Sanitary Commission, 324-327;
port., 326.
Belmont, Mo., engagement, 122.
Bendix, John E., N b'v't brig.-gen., at Big Bethel, 45.
Benedict, Lewis, N col., killed, Pleasant Hill, 379.
Benham, Henry W., N b'v't maj.-gen., W. Va., 113, 114;
Charleston Harbor, 219.
Benjamin, Judah P., C atty.-gen., sec'y of war, sec'y of state, port.,
26;
order concerning prisoners, 316.
Bennett, James Gordon, cartoon, 462.
----, ----, police officer, New York draft riots, 285.
Benning, Henry L., C brig.-gen., Wilderness, 357.
Benton, William P., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 392.
Bentonville, N. C., battle, 441.
Berdan, Hiram, N b'v't maj.-gen., Manassas Gap, Va., 333;
port., 336.
Bermuda Hundred, Va., occupied by Butler, 397.
Berry, Hiram G., N maj.-gen., killed, Chancellorsville, 242, 246;
port., 245.
----, ----, N capt., 318.
Berryville, Va., 334, 406.
Bethesda Church, Va., action, 365.
Bickerdyke, Mary A., Mrs., 534;
port., 534.
Bidwell, Daniel D., N brig.-gen., killed, Cedar Creek, Va., 410.
Bienville, N gunboat, 71.
Big Bethel, Va., 24;
battle of, 45;
ill., 46.
Big Black River, Miss., engagement, 275;
ill., 278.
Big Creek Gap, Tenn., action, 225.
Big Hill, Ky., battle, 224.
Big Mound, Dak., engagement, 348.
Big Sandy, Ga., Andrews's raid, 529.
Big Sandy River, Ky., 73.
Billings, ----, N paymaster, recaptured, 322.
Birge, Henry W., N b'v't maj.-gen., Irish Bend, La., 345.
Birkenhead, Eng., "Alabama" built, 371.
Birney, David B., N maj.-gen., Chantilly, 169;
Fredericksburg, 195;
Gettysburg, 252-265;
port., 255;
Robertson's Tavern, Va., 336;
Spottsylvania, 362;
advance on Petersburg, 397;
port., 401.
----, James G., port., 187.
Bissell, Josiah W., N col., Island No. 10, 99.
Black Chapter, The, 315-323.
"Black Flag, The," Paul Hamilton Hayne, 133.
Black flag displayed, 316.
Black Walnut Creek, Mo., 122.
Blackburn's Ford (Bull Run), 53, 54;
ill., 167.
Blackman, Albert M., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 440.
Blackwood's Magazine, England, 268.
Blair, Austin, gov. of Mich., port., 18.
----, Francis P., Jr., N maj.-gen., 38, 41;
Vicksburg campaign, 272;
Atlanta campaign, 387, 513;
(sketch), 515;
port., 515.
----, Montgomery, N Postmaster-gen., port., 6;
criticised by Gurowski, 236, 237.
----, ----, Rev., murdered, 315.
Blake, Henry N., N capt., 171;
Chancellorsville, 245;
quoted, 353.
Blakeslee, ----, N lieut., quoted, 434.
Blenheim, battle of, 104.
Blenker, Louis, N brig.-gen., 49;
port., 53;
at Bull Run, 60, 143.
Blockade of Southern ports, 67.
Bloodgood, Abraham, 84.
Bloody Lane, Antietam, 178.
Blooming Gap, W. Va., battle, 217.
Blount's Farm, Ala., engagement, 295.
Blountsville, Tenn., action, 341.
Blue's Gap, W. Va., action, 216.
Blunt, G. W., 15.
----, James G., N maj.-gen., Old Fort Wayne, Ark., 231, 232;
Cane Hill, Ark., 232, 233;
Prairie Grove, Ark., 233;
Fort Smith, Ark., 344.
Boggs, Charles S., N rear-adm., at N. O., port., 93.
Bohlen, Henry, N brig.-gen., port., 480.
Bolivar, Mo., 119.
----, Tenn., 206;
skirmish, 227, 437.
---- Heights, Va., 109;
engagement, 111.
Bolton, Miss., 275.
Bond, F. S., N maj., Chickamauga, 301.
Bonham, Milledge L., C brig.-gen., 52;
at Bull Run, 53.
"Bonnie Blue Flag, The," Harry McCarthy, 136, 413.
Boomer, George B., N col., Iuka, 204.
Booneville, Mo., action, 41, 405.
Boonsborough, Md., 175;
battle, 176.
Booth, John Wilkes, port., 510;
reward offered for arrest, 510;
captured, 511.
----, Lionel F., N maj., killed, Fort Pillow, 320.
Border States, 36-47.
Boston Mountains, Ark., 80;
engagement, 232.
Boteler, A. R., residence burned, 319.
Bottom's Bridge, Va., 433.
Bottsford, ----, N lieut., Clark's Hollow, W. Va., 218.
Boulger, Robert E., N pvt. 23d Mich. inf., 520.
Bowers, Theodore S., N col., port., 31.
Bowling Green. Ky., 75, 76, 209;
evacuated, 223.
Bowne, ----, N lieut., Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Boyd, Belle, C spy, port., 506.
Boynton, H. V. N., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 302.
Bracht, ----, N maj., 18th Ky., Mt. Sterling, 224.
Bradford, W. F., N maj., killed, Fort Pillow, 320.
Bradley, Amy, hospital services, 326, 535.
Bradley, ----, N maj., Big Mound, Dak., 348.
Bradyville, Tenn., action, 340.
Bragg, Braxton, C gen., Corinth, 100;
port., 104, 192;
succeeds Beauregard, 200;
Perryville, 201, 203, 206;
Murfreesboro', 209-213, 223, 295;
Chickamauga, 297-303;
Chattanooga, 305-311;
superseded by Johnston, 311, 342, 350;
anecdote, 458;
retreat through Tenn., anecdote, 503.
Branch, L. O'Brien, C brig.-gen., at Newbern, 72;
killed, Antietam, 180.
Brandy Station, Va., battle, 249.
Brannan, John M., N b'v't maj.-gen., 219, 220;
Chickamauga, 302.
Breckenridge, ----, C maj., Kelly's Ford, Va., 332.
----, Margaret E., Mrs., port., 534, 535.
Breckinridge, John C., C maj.-gen., 43;
Presidential candidate, 117;
Murfreesboro', 210;
port., 213;
Baton Rouge, 270, 403;
Newmarket, Va., 433;
sec'y of war, 453;
Bull's Gap, Tenn., 524.
----, Rev. Robert J., 41.
Breese, S. L., N naval comr., port., 370.
Breshwood, ----, N capt., 10.
Bridgeport, Ala., 301, 305.
Bright, John, 66.
Bristoe Station, Va., destroyed by Jackson, 166;
engagement, 333, 334.
Bristol, Tenn., action, 341.
Britton's Lane, Tenn., action, 227.
Brockway, ----, N lieut., Gettysburg, 255.
Brooke, John R., N b'v't brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 259;
Cold Harbor, 367.
Brooklyn, N cruiser, New Orleans, 90-93;
Mobile Bay, 391-393.
Brooks, E. P., N lieut., recaptured, 322.
----, ----, N lieut., Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Brough, John, gov. of Ohio, port., 18, 287.
Brown, B. Gratz, 41.
----, Egbert B., N brig.-gen., Springfield, Mo., 344.
----, John, invasion of Va., 7, 448;
ill., "Last moments," 21;
port., 182.
----, Joseph E., gov. of Ga., port., 420;
at odds with Davis, 420, 425.
----, Theodore F., N b'v't maj., Bristoe Sta., Va., 334.
----, ----, N lieut., Kelly's Ford, Va., 332.
----, Wilson, Andrews's raid, 529.
Browne, Junius Henri, N correspondent, adventures, 520-523.
----, William M., C col., port., 450.
Brownell, Francis E., N, 25.
----, Henry Howard, "Bay Fight," 395, 396.
----, Mrs. Kady, N pvt., 5th R. I. inf., 470.
Brownlow, Rev. William G., 44;
imprisoned, 316.
Brown's Ferry (Chattanooga), 305.
Bruinsburg, Miss., 274, 276, 279.
Brunswick Batteries, 531.
Brush Knob, Tenn., 313.
Buchanan, Franklin, C adm. in command of "Merrimac," 83, 85;
port., 87;
Mobile Bay, 391, 392.
----, James, President of the U. S., 9, 14, 19, 36;
attitude toward slavery, 183.
----, T. McKean, N comr., killed, Bayou Teche, 345.
Buchanan, Va., devastated by Hunter, 319.
Buckingham, C. P., N brig.-gen., port., 414.
----, William A., gov. of Conn., port., 18;
influence, 448.
Buckner, Simon B., C lieut.-gen., Fort Donelson, 76, 79;
port., 80, 508.
Buell, Don Carlos, N maj.-gen., 100;
Shiloh, 101-104;
port., 104;
Munfordville, 115;
Perryville, 201;
superseded by Rosecrans, 203, 209;
Bowling Green, 223, 307.
----, J. T., N col., Independence, Mo., 231.
Buffalo Mountain, W. Va., engagement, 114.
Buffington's Ford, O., battle, 297.
Buford, John, N maj.-gen., Pope's campaign, 163, 164;
Cedar Mountain, 164;
Brandy Sta., Va., 249;
port., 250;
Gettysburg, 251-268;
Manassas Gap, Va., 333;
Rappahannock Sta., 335.
----, Napoleon B., N maj.-gen., Corinth, 206;
Union City, Tenn., 226.
Bull Pasture Mountain, battle, 216.
Bull Run, Va., 1st battle, ill., 50, 51-61;
effects of battle, 62;
2d battle, 168-171;
ills., 170, 171;
Sanitary Commission, 325;
reminiscences of battle, 472-474;
anecdotes, 464-465.
---- (stream), 52, 53, 54, 55, 60, 61;
ill., 167.
Bull's Bay, S. C., 69.
Bull's Gap, Tenn., 524.
Bummers, Sherman's, 423;
ill., 430.
Bunker Hill, Mass., 190.
----, W. Va., engagement, 111.
Burials, military, 497.
"Burke, Deaf," C spy, anecdote, 505.
Burnett's Ford, Va., 165.
Burns, John, Gettysburg, 259;
ill. of residence, 267.
Burnside, Ambrose E., N maj.-gen., 49;
ports., 53, 72;
at Bull Run, 55, 57;
N. C. expedition, 72;
ills., 74, 75, 163;
Antietam campaign, 176-179;
port. with staff, 191;
succeeds McClellan, 193;
Fredericksburg campaign, 193-197;
on the N. C. coast, 218;
superseded by Hooker, 241, 308;
Knoxville, 311, 342;
in command Dept. of the Ohio, 341;
East Tenn., 342, 348, 351;
Annapolis, 354;
Wilderness, 355, 356;
Spottsylvania, 358-361;
North Anna, 362, 363;
advance on Petersburg, 398, 399.
Burnside's campaign, 191-200.
---- mine, Petersburg, 469.
Burnsville, Miss., 204, 205.
Bussey, Cyrus, N b'v't maj.-gen., Canton, Miss., 342, 343.
Butler, Benjamin F., N maj.-gen., in command 8th Mass. regiment, 24,
28;
ports., 43, 66;
service in Md., 43;
at Big Bethel, 45;
in command Fortress Monroe, 45, 49;
expedition to Hatteras, 68;
at N. O., 90, 95;
"woman order," 96, 97;
refusal to return slaves, 185;
outlawed by Pres. Davis, 235;
commands Army of the James, 351, 365;
under Grant, 353, 368;
advance on Petersburg, 397;
Bottom's Bridge, Va., 433;
cartoon, 456;
anecdote, 457.
Butler, Mo., battle, 231.
Butterfield, Daniel, N maj.-gen., port., 259;
Gettysburg, 259, 263.
----, ----, N capt., Romney, 113.
"Butternuts" (Confederate soldiers), 105.
Byrnes, ----, N col., killed, Cold Harbor, 367.
Cabell, William L., C brig.-gen., Devil's Backbone, Ark., 344.
Cadwalader, George, N maj.-gen., at Harper's Ferry, 47.
Cairo, Ill., 73, 76, 99, 122, 223.
----, Tenn., 227.
Caldwell, Charles H. B., N lieut., 10;
at N. O., 92.
----, John C., N b'v't maj.-gen., Bristoe Station, 334.
Calhoun, John C., 41.
Calhoun, Ky., 115.
----, N gunboat, Bayou Teche, La., 345.
California, Sanitary Commission, 325.
---- regiment, 71st Pa. inf., 109.
"Call All" (author unknown), 132.
Cameron, Simon, N sec'y of war, 48, 143;
authorizes Sanitary Commission, 324.
----, ----, N col., killed, 479.
Camp Douglas, Chicago, Ill., prison camp, ill., 322, 528.
---- Lyon, Mo., 117.
---- Wildcat, Ky., engagement, 73, 114.
Camp life, 495-505;
pitching and striking, 498;
sports in, 501-502;
sutlers, 501;
winter in, 496-498;
ills., 501.
Campaign of Shiloh, 99-109.
Campbell, John A., C peace com'r, 441.
Campbell's Battery, losses, 483.
Campbell's Station, Tenn., battle, 342.
Camps, arrangement of, 496.
Canada, hostile to the United States, 66.
Canby, Edward R. S., N maj.-gen., Ft. Craig, N. M., 233;
port., 527.
Candy, Charles, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 389.
Cane Hill, Ark., battle, 232.
Canfield, Mrs. Hermann, 539.
Canton, Miss., engagement, 342, 343.
Cape Girardeau, Mo., 73, 118;
action, 230.
---- Hatteras, N. C., 67, 87, 469.
Capron, Horace, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 530.
Capture of New Orleans, 88-98;
ill., 95.
Carlin, William P., N b'v't maj.-gen., Fredericktown, Mo., 118;
Perryville, 201.
Carlisle, Pa., occupied by Lee, 250, 251, 252.
---- Barracks, Pa., 27, 28.
Carmody, John, N sergt., 15.
Carnifex Ferry, W. Va., engagement, 113.
Carondelet, N gunboat, Island No. 10, 99.
Carpenter, Daniel, New York draft riots, 285, 286.
Carr, Eugene A., N b'v't maj.-gen., Pea Ridge, 80;
Milliken's Bend, La., 240.
----, Joseph B., N b'v't maj.-gen., Robertson's Tavern, Va., 336.
Carroll, Edward, N lt.-col., port., 484.
----, Samuel S., N b'v't maj.-gen., Blooming Gap, 217;
Gettysburg, 254, 255;
Wilderness, 357;
Spottsylvania, 362;
port., 367.
Carson, Christopher, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 342.
Carter, James E., N col., Big Creek Gap, Tenn., 225;
Blountsville, Tenn., 341.
----, L., Rev., murdered, 315.
----, ----, N capt., Point Pleasant, W. Va., 337.
----, ----, N capt., killed, Winchester, 407.
Carthage, Mo., action at, 41.
Casement, John S., N col., 429.
Casey, Silas, N maj.-gen., port., 152;
Peninsular campaign, 144-156.
Cass, Lewis, U. S. sec'y of state, 9, 36.
Cassville, Ga., occupied by Johnston, 385.
Castle Pinckney, S. C., 9, 12, 35.
Catlett's Station, Va., 165, 166.
Catlin, Isaac S., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 368.
Causes of the war, 5, 7;
ill., 181.
Cavander, Rev. M., murdered, 315.
Caves as dwellings, Vicksburg, 280-282.
Cayuga, N gunboat, at N. O., 93, 95.
Cedar Creek, Va., battle, 410, 411.
Cedar Mountain, Va., battle, 164, 354.
Cemetery Ridge, Gettysburg, 252, 256;
ill., 266, 368.
Centreville, Va., 53, 54, 60, 61;
evacuated, 143, 154, 169.
Chain Bridge, D. C., ill., 349.
Chalmers, James R., C brig.-gen., Colliersville, Tenn., 306;
Fort Pillow, 320.
Chalmette batteries, N. O., 95.
Chamberlain, Joshua L., N b'v't maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 254.
Chambersburg, Pa., occupied by Lee, 250, 251;
burned by Early, 317, 319, 320, 404, 405.
Champion's Hill, Miss., battle, 275.
Chancellorsville, 241-247.
----, Va., occupied by Hooker, 241;
battle, 241-247, 353;
_Map_, 243;
ills., 244, 246, 358, 470;
losses, 477;
capture of flag at, ill., 481.
Chapman, Sam., Rev., C cav., Warrenton Junction, 331.
Characteristics, comparative, Northern and Southern soldiers, 502-505.
Charles City Cross Roads, Va., battle (ill., 157), 158.
Charleston, Mo., engagement, 117;
engagement, 230.
----, S. C., State flag raised, 9;
arsenal seized by rebels, 10;
bombarded by Gillmore, N, 18;
N operations against, 219;
siege, 288-294;
ill., 288, 307, 385;
bombarded, 435;
evacuated, 440;
in ruins, ill., 523.
---- Harbor, 5, 10, 12, 18, 35, 71.
----, W. Va., 113.
Charleston and Memphis R. R., 312.
Charlestown, Va., actions, 334.
----, W. Va., 319.
Charlotte, N. C., 43, 307, 441.
Charlottesville, Va., 409.
Chartres, Duc de, ports., 142, 147.
Chase, Salmon P., N sec'y of the treasury, port., 6, 49;
management of finances, 415-417;
cartoon, 463.
Chatfield, John L., N col., killed, Fort Wagner, 290.
Chattanooga, Tenn., engagement, 226;
campaign, 295-304;
ill., 304;
battle, 305-314, 350, 383, 420, 425.
Chattanooga campaign, The, and battle of Chickamauga, 295-304.
Cheat Mountain, W. Va., skirmish, 114.
Cheat River Valley, W. Va., 45.
Cheatham, Benjamin F., C maj.-gen., port., 427.
Cheraw, S. C., 440.
Cherbourg, France, 371;
battle between "Kearsarge" and "Alabama," 372.
Cherokee Indians, 80, 81;
Shirley's Ford, Mo., 231;
Cane Hill, 232;
Tennessee, 317.
Chesapeake Canal, 406, 409.
Chester, Pa., 190.
Chestnut, James, Jr., C brig.-gen., 17;
port., 450.
Chewalla, Tenn., 207.
Chicago, Ill., Camp Douglas, ill., 322;
Democratic convention, 413, 528.
Chickahominy, Va., battle, 155, 156.
Chickamauga, Ga., 100;
battle, 298-303;
ills., 300, 308, 405;
losses, 477.
Chickasaw, N monitor, Mobile Bay, 391, 392.
---- Indians, 81.
Chipman, Norton P., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 409.
Chivington, John M., N maj., Apache Cañon, 233, 234.
Choctaw Indians, 81.
Christian Commission, 326, 354, 448.
Churchill, T. J., C maj.-gen., surrendered to McClernand, Arkansas
Post, 273.
Cincinnati, O., approached by Morgan, 297.
----, N gunboat, sunk, Vicksburg, 281.
"Circus," "Thomas's," 383.
City Hall, New Orleans, La., ill., 96.
City Point, Va., fortified by Butler, 397;
ills., 397, 400, 489.
Clark, Charles, C brig.-gen., killed, Baton Rouge, 270.
----, John S., N b'v't brig.-gen. on Banks's staff, 166.
----, William T., N brig.-gen., port., 345.
----, ----, N lieut., 5th Kan. cav., Pine Bluff, Ark., 344.
Clarksburg, Tenn., 229.
Clark's Hollow, W. Va., engagement, 218.
Clay, Cassius M., N maj.-gen., port., 527.
----, Henry, 41.
Clayton, Powell, N brig.-gen., port., 341;
Pine Bluff, Ark., 344.
----, ----, N col., Pine Bluff, Tenn., 437.
Cleburne, Patrick R., C maj.-gen., port., 303;
Atlanta, 389;
killed, 429.
Cleveland, Grover, President of the U. S., Porter relief bill signed,
170.
Cleveland, O., Frémont convention, 412.
Cleves, ----, N capt., killed, Fort Wagner, 290.
Clifton, Ga., 390.
Clingman, Thomas L., C brig.-gen., port., 508.
Clopper, John Y., N maj., Memphis, Mo., 231.
Cloud, ----, N col., Devil's Backbone, Ark., 344.
Cloyd's Mountain, Va., battle, 433.
Cluseret, Gustave P., N col., Harrisonburg, 216.
Cobb, Howell, U. S. sec'y of the treasury, 9;
C maj.-gen., port., 177.
----, Thomas R. R., C brig.-gen., killed, Fredericksburg, 196.
Coburn, John, N b'v't brig.-gen., 295;
Thompson's Sta., Tenn., 340.
Cochran, ----, N lieut., Fort Wagner, 292.
Cochrane, John, N brig.-gen., nominated for vice-president, 412.
Cocke, Philip St. G., C brig.-gen., at Bull Run, 53, 55.
Cockrell, Francis M., C brig.-gen., port., 392.
Cockspur Island, 185, 220.
Coggswell, Leander W., N col., Spottsylvania, 361.
----, William, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 423.
Cold Harbor, Va., battle, 155, 156;
battle, 365-368, 387.
Cole, Charles H., C capt., Lake Erie raid, 528.
----, Henry A., N maj., 433.
Colliersville, Tenn., action, 301.
Collins, Napoleon, N naval comr., port., 370.
Colorado, N frigate, at N. O., 90, 91.
Colored Orphan Asylum, New York, draft riot, 286.
Colored soldiers, employment of, 235-240.
---- troops, Butler, Me., 231;
in Confederate service, 235;
in National service, 237;
in Revolutionary War, 237-240;
losses among, 483.
Colquitt, Alfred H., C brig.-gen., port., 445.
Colquitt's salient, Ft. Steadman, 487.
Colston, R. E., C brig.-gen., port., 399.
Colt, Henrietta L., Mrs., port., 537, 540.
Columbia, Ky., captured by Morgan, 297.
----, S. C., prisons, 321;
Sherman occupies, 440;
burned, 440.
----, Tenn., 226.
Columbus, Ky., 75, 99, 122, 223, 271.
Colville, William, Jr., N col. 1st Minn. inf., charge at Gettysburg,
476.
Colyer, Vincent, Christian Commission, 326.
Commerce, Miss., 348.
Commercial, Cincinnati, O., 211.
Concord, N. H., riot, 317.
Confederate Cruisers, The, 371-375.
---- prisoners, guarding, ill., 522.
---- States of America, founded, 5;
seat of government established at Montgomery, Ala., removed to
Richmond, Va., 9, 49;
ill. of flag, 9;
recognized as belligerents by France and England, 63;
conscription act, 200.
Congress, members of, captured at Bull Run, 473.
----, N cruiser, destroyed by "Merrimac," 84.
Connecticut _Infantry_, 7th, Tybee Island, 220;
8th, Suffolk, 329;
10th, Fort Wagner, 291;
13th, Irish Bend, 345;
16th, Antietam, 180, Suffolk, 329;
25th, Irish Bend, 347;
2d heavy art'y losses, 478.
Connor, Selden, N brig.-gen., _Article_, 495-505.
Conrad's Ferry, Potomac River, 109.
Contraband of war, ill., 184, 185.
Cooking in camp, 496.
Cotton, C war steamer, Bayou Teche, La., 345.
Cony, Samuel, gov. of Me., port., 18.
Cooke, Jay, financial agent, 416.
----, Philip St. George, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 368.
Cooper, James H., N capt., 158.
----, Samuel, C adj.-gen., 49;
port., 318.
Copperheads, 36.
Corcoran, Michael, N brig.-gen., port., 336.
Corinth, Miss., 100;
evacuation, 108;
battle, 206-209;
ill., 209, 308.
Corse, John M., N b'v't maj.-gen., Colliersville, Tenn., 306;
Chattanooga, 314;
defends Allatoona, 420;
port., 422.
Corwin, N gunboat, 154, 234.
Cotton-gin, Eli Whitney's, 5.
Couch, Darius N., N maj.-gen., Fredericksburg, 198; port., 242.
Courier, Charleston, quoted, 435.
----, Louisville, Ky., 63, 182.
Cowan, Dr., C, Munfordville, 115.
Cox, Henry, Rev., 63.
----, Jacob D., N maj.-gen., Great Kanawha, 113;
port., 114;
Franklin, Tenn., 429.
----, Samuel S., M. C., opposed to negro soldiers, 236.
----, ----, N, Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Crabb, ----, N col., Springfield, Mo., 344.
Craig, James, N brig.-gen., port., 345.
----, ----, N lieut., Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Crampton's Gap, Md., 176, 179.
Craven, Tunis A. M., N naval capt., killed, Mobile Bay, 391, 393;
port., 393, 451.
Crawford, Dr. S. Wiley, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 11;
at Sumter, 11, 15;
Antietam, 180.
----, Samuel J., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 347;
Spottsylvania, 362.
Creigh, David S., 317, 318.
"Crescent City" (New Orleans), 88.
Crew, ----, N capt., killed at Butler, Mo., 231.
Crippen, Benjamin, N sergt., Gettysburg, ill., 258.
Crittenden, George B., C maj.-gen., at Mill Springs, Ky., 73;
port., 108.
----, Thomas L., N maj.-gen., port., 108;
Murfreesboro', 227;
Chickamauga, 298.
----, ----, M. C., 190.
Croatan Sound, N. C., 71, 72.
Crocker, Marcellus M., N brig.-gen., Corinth, 207;
Vicksburg campaign, 274, 275.
Crockett's Cove, W. Va., fight, 433.
Cromwell, ----, N maj., killed, Gettysburg, 266.
Crook, George, N maj.-gen., Antietam, 179, 317;
defeated by Early, 404, 405;
Shenandoah, 409, 410;
Cloyd's Mountain, 433;
port., 435.
Cross, Edward E., N col., killed, Gettysburg, 254, 477;
port., 484.
Cross Keys, Va., action, 216.
---- Lanes, engagement, 113.
Crow's Nest observatory, Petersburg, ill., 469.
Cruft, Charles, N b'v't maj.-gen., Murfreesboro', 212;
Richmond, Ky., 225.
Crump's Landing, 100, 101, 107, 108.
Cub Run, Va., 61.
Cullum, George W., N brig.-gen., port., 101.
Culpeper, Va., 163;
ill., 164, 193, 249, 250, 353.
---- C. H., Va., 164, 166.
---- Mine Ford, Va., 335, 355.
Cumberland, Md., 320.
----, Army of the, commanded by Rosecrans, 209;
_Map_ of operations, 297;
commanded by Thomas, 305, 383, 390.
----, N sloop, 29, 83;
destroyed by "Merrimac," 84.
---- Ford, Tenn., 225.
---- Gap, Tenn., 114, 227;
surrendered, 341.
Cummings Point, Morris Island, 12, 15, 290, 292.
Curtin, Andrew G., gov. of Pa., port., 18.
Curtis, N. Martin, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 439.
----, Samuel R., N maj.-gen., in Mo., 79;
Pea Ridge, 80;
port., 81.
Cushing, Alonzo H., N lieut., killed, Gettysburg, 259;
ill., 263.
----, William B., N comr. "Barney," 348;
destroys ram "Albemarle," 435;
adventures, 529, 531;
port., 531.
Cushing's Battery, losses, 483.
Cushman, Pauline, N spy, port., 506.
Custer, George A., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 79;
cavalry superiority, 250;
Gettysburg, 268;
Robertson's Tavern, 335;
port., 356;
Hawes's Shop, 363, 364, 405;
Shenandoah Valley, 406, 410;
Trevilian Station and Louisa C. H., Va., 433;
Waynesboro', 442;
Sailor's Creek, 446, 451.
Cutler, Lysander, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 398.
Cynthiana, Ky., action, 223.
Dabney, ----, C, 164, 165.
Dada, Hattie A., Miss, port., 533, 540.
Dahlgren, John A., N rear-adm., port., 289, 436;
siege of Charleston, 290, 294;
Florida, 436, 531.
----, Ulric, N col., killed, Richmond raid, 531.
Daily News, London, Eng., 65.
Dallas, Ga., 385.
Dalton, Ga., 311;
occupied by Johnston, 353, 383, 390, 529.
Dana, Charles A., N asst. sec'y of war, port., 65.
----, Napoleon J. T., N maj.-gen., Antietam, 180.
Dandridge, Tenn., fight, 436.
Daniel, Junius, C brig.-gen., killed, Spottsylvania, 362, 451.
Dauphin Island (Mobile Bay), 391.
Davies, Henry E., Jr., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 443.
----, Thomas A., N b'v't maj.-gen., 49;
Corinth, 206, 207.
----, W. T., N correspondent, adventures, 520-523.
Davis, Benjamin F., N col., killed, Brandy Sta., Va., 249.
----, Charles Henry, N rear-adm., port., 270;
Vicksburg, 270.
----, Clara, Miss, 538.
----, Jefferson, calls for troops, 22;
port., 26;
early military advantages, 48;
at Bull Run, 60, 209;
outlaws Butler and proclaims against negro soldiers, 235;
letter from Lee after Gettysburg, 268;
"Neckties," 375;
distrust of Johnston, 383;
message to Lincoln, 412;
at odds with Gov. Brown, 420, 425;
evacuates Richmond, 445;
flight and capture, 448;
port., 449;
refuses to treat for peace, 487.
----, Jefferson C., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 11;
at Sumter, 11, 15;
ports., 30, 513;
Pea Ridge, 80;
Chickamauga, 301;
Atlanta, 390;
(sketch), 513;
shoots Gen. William Nelson, 513;
ass't com'r for freedmen, 514;
in Modoc War, 514, 515.
----, John, N sailor, 72.
----, Joseph R., C brig.-gen., port., 450.
----, S. B., C lieut. and spy, 470-472.
----, ----, N col., Fair Oaks, 148, 150, 176.
Dawes, Rufus R., N b'v't brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 260.
Dawson, ----, C lieut.-col., Ripley, Tenn., 340.
Day, Nicholas W., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 409.
Day-Book, Norfolk, Va., 217.
Day's Gap, Ala., action, 295.
Dearing, James, C brig.-gen., mentioned, 451.
Debutts, ----, C cav., Warrenton Junction, 331.
Decatur, Ala., Sherman escapes capture, 375.
----, Ga., 389.
De Courcey, John F., N col., Tazewell, Tenn., 227.
Deep Bottom, Va., 398, 399.
Deep Creek, Va., fight, 446.
De Fontaine, F. G., C correspondent, 134;
_Article_, 505-508.
De Lacey, William, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 362.
Delaware, 1st (N) inf. losses, 481.
---- Indians, ill., 214.
Dent, Frederick T., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 414.
Democratic members of Congress, opposed to negro soldiers, 236.
---- party, in political alliance with the South, 9;
sustains the Union, 36;
favors slavery, 183;
antagonizes Lincoln, 249;
opposed to the war, 283, 284, 315;
convention, 413.
---- press, denounces emancipation, 185, 189;
opposes negro soldiers, 236;
opposed to the war, 283, 284;
denounces draft in New York, 285.
Denmark, Tenn., 227.
Dennis, Elias S., N b'v't maj.-gen., Britton's Lane, Tenn., 227.
Dennison, William, gov. of Ohio, influence, 448.
De Russy, Gustavus A., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 196.
Deshler, James, C brig.-gen., killed, Chickamauga, 299.
Dispatch, Richmond, Va., 348.
Detonville, Va., fight, 446.
Devens, Charles, N b'v't maj.-gen., Ball's Bluff, 109;
port., 110;
Cold Harbor, Va., 365.
Devil's Backbone, Ark., action, 344.
---- Den, Gettysburg, ill., 257.
Devin, Thomas C., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 356;
port., 530.
Dew, Thomas R., 33.
Dewey, Daniel P., N lieut., killed, Irish Bend, 347.
Diana, C gunboat, Irish Bend, La., 345, 347.
----, N gunboat, Bayou Teche, La., 345.
Dickinson, Daniel S., proposed for vice-president, 412.
Dinwiddie C. H., 441, 443;
Sheridan reconnoitering at, ill., 444.
Dispatch, Richmond, Va., 454.
Disraeli, Benjamin, quoted, 269.
District of Columbia, enrollment for defence of Washington, 20.
Divers, Bridget, N pvt. 1st Mich. cav., 470.
Dix, Dorothea L., hospital services, 326.
----, John A., N maj.-gen., U. S. Sec'y of the Treasury, his "shoot
him on the spot" order, 10;
port., 14;
fac-simile of order, 14, 48.
Dixie, Albert Pike, 131;
port., 131, 413.
Dodd, David O., C boy spy, 470.
Dog Walk, Ky., action, 225.
Doles, George, C brig.-gen., killed, Cold Harbor, 368, 451.
Donaldsonville, La., destroyed by Farragut, 271, 345.
Doubleday, Abner, N maj.-gen., port., 11;
at Sumter, 11, 15;
Fredericksburg, 195;
Gettysburg, 251-259;
port., 254.
Dougherty, ----, N col., 22d Ill., 117.
Douglas, Stephen A., 36.
----, ----, Rev., murdered, 315.
Dover, Tenn., action, 295.
Dow, Neal, N brig.-gen., port., 276.
Draft Riots, The, 283-287.
Drake, J. Madison, N capt., 523;
_Article_, 523.
Dranesville, Va., 109;
engagement, 113.
Drayton, Percival, N capt., port., 393.
Drayton, Thomas F., C brig.-gen., at Port Royal, 71;
port., 72.
Dred Scott decision, 7, 186.
Drury's Bluff, Va., action, 397, 398.
Dry Valley road, Chickamauga, 301.
Duffié, Alfred N., N brig.-gen., port., 257.
Dug Spring, Mo., action at, 41.
Dumont, Ebenezer, N brig.-gen., at Philippi, 45.
Duncan, Johnson K., C brig.-gen., at N. O., 90.
Dunham, C. L., N col., Parker's Cross Roads, Tenn., 229.
Dunker Church, Antietam, 177, 178.
Dunning, ----, N col., Blue's Gap, 216.
Dunn's Bayou, La., action, 382.
Dunton, Jacob, Christian Commission, 326.
DuPont, Samuel F., N rear-adm., 69;
port., 71;
siege of Charleston, 289, 290, 348.
Durkee, ----, N col., Fair Oaks, 150.
Duryea, Abram, N b'v't maj.-gen., 24;
port., 35;
at Big Bethel, 45.
Duryea's Zouaves, 5th N. Y., 24;
at Big Bethel, 45;
losses, 479.
Dustin, Daniel, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 423.
Dutch Gap, Va., 397.
Dutton's Hill, Ky., action, 339.
Duval, Isaac H., N b'v't maj.-gen., Winchester, Va., 407.
Dwight, William, N brig.-gen., ill., 343.
Dye, ----, N, killed, Hawes's Shop, Va., 365.
Eads, James B., 392.
Earle, C. W., N lieut., Chickamauga, 303.
Early, Jubal A., C lieut.-gen., 49, port., 60;
Bull Run, 53, 59;
burning of Chambersburg, 319, 320;
Robertson's Tavern, Va., 336;
Spottsylvania, 359;
Bethesda Church, 365;
Cold Harbor, 365;
threatens Washington, 402-404;
Shenandoah Valley, 402, 405-411;
Waynesboro', 442.
Eaton, Amos B., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 414.
Edenton, N. C., 72.
Edmonds, Emma, Miss, N spy and nurse, adventures, 511, 512.
Edson, Sarah P., Miss, 538.
Edward's Ferry, Va., 109;
engagement, 111, 250, 268.
Edwards Station, Miss., 275.
Effects of battle of Bull Run, 62-66.
Egan, Thomas W., N b'v't brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 265.
Eggleston, ----, N corp., Gettysburg, 260.
"Egypt" (Southwest Georgia), 485.
Elizabeth City, N. C., 72.
Ellet, Charles Rivers, N col., port., 274.
Elliott, Melcenia, Miss, 538.
----, Stephen, Jr., C brig.-gen., port., 445.
Ellis, A. Van Horn, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 261;
killed, Gettysburg, 266.
----, Daniel, N guide, 521.
----, John W., gov. N. C., 43.
Ellis, N tugboat, stranded, 529.
Ellsworth Avengers, 44th N. Y. inf., losses, 479.
Ellsworth, Elmer E., N col., port., 25, 484;
killed, 25, 451.
----, ----, Morgan's raid, 532.
Ely's Ford, Va., 335, 355.
Elzey Arnold, C maj.-gen., port., 508.
Emancipation, 181-191.
---- Proclamation, 187, 189, 412, 413.
Emmet, ----, N lieut., Meagher's staff, Fredericksburg, 199.
Emmitsburg Road, Gettysburg, 263.
Emory, William H., N maj.-gen., Sabine Cross Roads, 378;
Pleasant Hill, 378;
port., 382.
Employment of colored soldiers, 235-240.
England recognizes Confederates as belligerents, 63;
sympathy with the South, 65, 269;
sympathy with the Union, 189;
violation of neutrality laws, 372-375.
Enquirer, Richmond, Va., 454.
Erben, Henry, N lieut.-comr., port., 370.
Ericsson, John, N capt., port., 84.
Ericsson, N ironclad ("Monitor"), 85.
Essex, U. S. vessel, 76, 90.
----, N gunboat, Ft. Henry, 76, 393.
Estrella, N gunboat, Bayou Teche, La., 345.
Etheridge, Annie, N dau. of regt., 470.
Evans, J. J., N capt., Mt. Sterling, 223.
----, Nathan G., C brig.-gen., at Bull Run, 53, 55;
Secessionville, 219;
port., 281, 461.
----, ----, N aid to Force, Atlanta, 389.
Evening Post, New York, 128.
Everett, Edward, speech at Gettysburg, 269.
Ewell, Richard S., C lieut.-gen., 49;
at Bull Run, 53;
Peninsular campaign, 154;
Groveton, 167;
2d Bull Run, 173;
Cross Keys, 216;
Culpeper, 249;
Shenandoah Valley, 250;
Gettysburg, 251-256;
port., 265;
Wilderness, 354;
Spottsylvania, 362, 368;
captured, Sailor's Creek, Va., 446;
foresees the end, 448, 453.
Ewing, Charles T., N brig.-gen., port., 435.
----, Hugh, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 307.
----, Thomas, 519.
----, Thomas, Jr., N b'v't maj.-gen., 515.
Examiner, Richmond, Va., 33;
quoted, 431.
Excelsior Brigade, Gettysburg, 265;
Manassas Gap, Va., 333.
Fagan, James F., C maj.-gen., port., 341.
Fair Gardens, Tenn., fight, 436.
Fair Oaks, Va., battle, 146;
ill., 154, 390, 470.
Fairchild, ----, N col., Atlanta, 389.
Fairfax, Donald M., N rear-adm., port., 290.
Fairfax C. H., Va., 169;
raided by Mosby, 331.
Fairmont, W. Va., engagement, 337.
Fales, Almira, Mrs., 533, 538.
Falling Waters, Va., engagement, 111.
Falmouth, Va., 193.
Farley, Porter, N adjt., Gettysburg, 260.
Farmville, Va., fight, 446.
Farnam, Noah L., N col., 24.
Farnsworth, Elon J., N brig.-gen., killed, Gettysburg, 259;
port., 261, 268.
Farnum, ----, N col., Manassas Gap, 333.
Farragut, David G., rear-adm., 33;
at N. O., 90-97;
port., 93, 221;
Vicksburg, 270-273;
Port Hudson, 276, 350, 375;
port., 391;
Mobile Bay, 391-395, 451.
Farron, C., N naval eng., Mobile Bay, 393.
Faunce, John, N naval capt., port., 370.
Fayal, Azores, "Alabama," 371.
Fayetteville, Ark., engagement, 344.
----, N. C., 43, 440-441;
arsenal destroyed, 517.
----, W. Va., engagement, 218, 339.
Fenton, William M., N col., Secessionville, 219;
Wilmington Island, 221, 223.
Fernandina, Fla., 69.
Ferrero, Edward, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 339;
Knoxville, 342.
Final Battles, The, 439-447.
Finegan, Joseph, C brig.-gen., wounded, Cold Harbor, 368;
Olustee, Fla., 436.
Finley, Clement A., N b'v't brig.-gen., attitude toward Sanitary
Commission, 324.
First U. S. Flag raised in Richmond after the War, The, 453-454.
First Union Victories, 66-82.
Fisher, Joseph W., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 429.
Fisher's Hill, Va., 406;
battle, 409.
Fishing Creek, Ky., battle, 73.
Fisk, Clinton B., N b'v't maj.-gen., 41.
Fitzgerald, Louis, N lieut.-col., 24.
----, ----, arrested, 316.
Fitz Hugh, Norman R., C maj., captured, 164.
Fitzhugh's Woods, Ark., fight, 437.
Five Forks, Va., battle, 443;
Sheridan reconnoitering at, ill., 444.
Fleetwood, Va., battle, 249.
Fletcher, Thomas C., gov. of Md., port., 18.
Flint, W. H., N capt., killed, 331.
Florence, S. C., prison camps, 321, 415.
Florida secedes, 9.
----, C cruiser, captured, Bahia, Brazil, 372.
Floyd, John B., U. S. sec'y of war, 9, 10, 20, 48;
C brig.-gen., Fort Donelson, 77, 79;
port., 80;
W. Va., 113, 114;
explains flight from Donelson, anecdote, 503.
Flusser, Charles W., N comr., killed, 435.
Flynn, ----, N capt., Libby Prison, 348, 349.
Fogg, Mrs. Isabella, 539.
Folly Island, Charleston Harbor, 290.
Foote, Andrew H., N rear-adm., Ft. Henry, 76;
Island No. 10, 99;
port., 100.
Foraging, 499, 504.
Foraker, Joseph B., N capt., port., 429.
Force, Manning F., N b'v't maj.-gen., Vicksburg campaign, 277;
quoted, 316;
Bald Hill, Atlanta, 389;
port., 390.
Ford's Theatre, Washington, D. C., President Lincoln assassinated,
449.
Foreign relations, 65, 66, 371.
Forest City, Minn., attacked by Indians, 234.
---- Queen, N vessel, destroyed, 348.
---- Rose, N gunboat, Waterproof, La., 437.
Forman, James B., N col., killed, Stone River, 481.
Forrest, Jesse, C col., raid, 532.
----, Nathan B., C lieut.-gen., Fort Donelson, 79;
Sacramento, 115;
Lexington, 225;
Murfreesboro', 226;
La Vergne, 227;
Trenton, Tenn., 229;
Parker's Cross Roads, Tenn., 229;
destroys railroads, 271;
Dover, 295;
Fort Pillow, 320;
Fort Donelson, 340;
defeats Smith, 375;
port., 528;
raid, 532.
----, W. H., C capt., raid, 532.
Forsyth, George A., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 409.
Fort Barrancas, Fla., 35.
---- Bartow, N. C., 72.
---- Beauregard, S. C., 71, 292.
---- Butler, La., 382.
---- Clark, N. C., ill., 68, 69.
---- Columbus, N. Y., Beall executed, 528.
---- Craig, N. M., battle, 233.
---- Darling, Va., 454.
---- De Russy, La., captured, 375.
---- Donelson, Tenn., 75, 76;
attack on, 77;
surrender of, 79;
ill., 82, 295;
attacked by Wheeler and Forrest, 340.
---- Fisher, bomb-proof, ill., 439;
captured, 441.
---- Gaines, Ala., 391.
---- Gregg, Petersburg, Va., 445;
defence of, ill., 446.
---- Halleck, Idaho, engagement, 348.
---- Hamilton, New York Harbor, 17.
---- Hatteras, N. C., 68;
ill., 69.
---- Henry, Tenn., 75;
surrender of, 76, 77.
---- Hindman, Ark., captured by McClernand, 272, 273.
---- Jackson, La., 35, 90, 93;
ill., 94, 95, 221.
---- Johnson, Charleston Harbor, 11.
---- King, Tenn., 312.
---- Lincoln, colored inf., ill., 239.
---- McAllister, Ga., 348;
captured, 423, 514.
---- McRae, Fla., 35.
---- Monroe, Va., commanded by Butler, 45, 49;
ill., 66, 68, 74, 143, 162, 163, 185, 349, 368, 397;
peace conference, 441;
President Davis a prisoner, 448.
---- Morgan, Ala., 35, 391-393.
---- Moultrie, S. C., cut, 7;
abandoned by Anderson, seized by rebels, 10, 12, 15, 35, 229, 289,
292.
---- Negley, Tenn., 312.
---- Pickens, Fla., 10;
ill., 415;
landing reinforcements at, ill., 500.
---- Pillow, Tenn., 226, 307;
captured, 320.
---- Pulaski, Ga., 25, 185, 220;
bombarded, 221;
ill., 222, 289.
---- Ridgley, Minn., besieged by Indians, 234.
---- St. Philip, La., 35, 90, 93;
ill., 94, 95, 221.
---- Smith, Ark., occupied by Blunt, 344.
---- Steadman, attack on, 485, 487;
positions at, diagram, 487;
obstructions, 488;
taken, 489.
---- Stevens, D. C., action, 403, 404.
---- Sumter, S. C., ills., 4, 7;
occupied by Anderson, 11;
preparations for defence, 12;
bombarded, 15;
surrendered and evacuated, 17;
destroyed by Gillmore, 18, 289-294;
recapture celebrated, 18, 35.
---- Wagner, S. C., 24;
colored troops, 237, 239;
assaulted, 290-294;
Sanitary Commission, 325.
---- Walker, S. C., ill., 70, 71.
---- Warren, Mass., 63.
---- Whitworth, Petersburg, Va., 445.
---- Wood, Tenn., 312, 313.
Forty Thieves, 316.
Foster, Abby Kelly, 18.
----, Emery, N maj., Warrensburg, Mo., 230.
----, John G., N maj.-gen., ports., 11, 73;
at Sumter, 11;
N. C. expedition, 72;
advance on Petersburg, 398;
port., 401;
in command of Savannah, 439.
----, Robert S., N b'v't maj.-gen., port. with staff, 334.
----, Stephen Collins, "Old folks at home," 134;
port., 134.
----, ----, N maj., Lone Jack, Mo., 231.
Fox, Gustavus V., N capt., port., 11, 15.
Fox's, Col. William F., "Three Hundred Fighting Regiments," quoted,
479.
---- "Regimental Losses in the American Civil War," credited, 485.
France, war with Austria, 23;
recognizes Confederates as belligerents, 63;
unfriendly to the United States, 66.
Franco-German war, losses in, 476.
Franklin, William B., N maj.-gen., port., 49;
at Bull Run, 55, 57;
Peninsular campaign, 141-158;
port., 150;
2d Bull Run, 169;
Antietam campaign, 176-179;
Burnside's campaign, 193, 195;
Sabine Cross Roads, 377;
Pleasant Hill, 379.
Franklin, La., engagement, 345.
----, Tenn., engagement, 295, 340, 341;
battle, _Map_, 426, 427, 429, 430, 510.
Frazier's Farm, Va., 159.
Frederick, Md., 175, 250, 268.
Fredericksburg, Va., 144, 150;
ill., 193;
battle, 195-200;
taken by Sedgwick, 241, 242, 243, 362, 363, 477.
Fredericktown, Mo., engagement, 118.
Free Soil party, 9.
Fremantle, Arthur James, British army, Gettysburg incident, 268.
Frémont, John C., N maj.-gen., candidate for presidency, 9;
commands in Missouri, 79, 118;
Peninsular campaign, 154, 163;
attempts at emancipation, 182, 185;
Shenandoah Valley, 216, 217;
port., 218;
nominated for president, 412;
withdraws, 413;
arraigns administration, 415.
Frémont's Body Guard, Springfield, Mo., 118-121.
French, William H., N maj.-gen., Fredericksburg, 195-198, 250;
Rappahannock Sta., 334, 335;
Robertson's Tavern, 336;
port., 339.
Frontier, Army of, 231.
Fry, Jacob, N col., Trenton, Tenn., 229.
----, James B., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 530.
----, Speed S., N brig.-gen., 73;
port., 77.
----, ----, C maj., Vicksburg, 282.
----, ----, murdered, 316.
Fugitive Slave Law, 185.
Fuller, Charles D., N (female) pvt. 46th Pa. inf., 470.
----, John W., N b'v't maj.-gen., division rallying at Atlanta, ill.,
516.
Gadsden, Ala., 295.
Gaines's Mill, Va., Battle, 155, 156.
Gainesville, Va., 53, 54.
Gallatin, Tenn., action, 227.
Galveston, Texas, captured by Magruder, 348;
"Hatteras" sunk, 372.
Gamble, Hamilton R., N gov. of Mo., 41.
Gantt, E. W., C maj.-gen., port., 146.
Gardner, John L., N b'v't brig.-gen., 10.
----, ----, N capt., Edward's Ferry, 111.
----, ----, N lieut., Butler, Mo., 231.
Garfield, James A., N maj.-gen., in Ky., 73;
port., 79;
Pound Gap, 223;
Chickamauga, 299, 301.
Garland, Samuel, Jr., C brig.-gen., killed at South Mountain, 176.
Garnett, Richard B., C brig.-gen., killed, Gettysburg, 259, 451.
----, Robert S., C brig.-gen., 49;
killed in W. Va., 45.
Garrett, ----, C col., Plymouth, N. C., 218, 219.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 18;
port., 190.
Gary, M. W., C maj.-gen., 462;
port., 508.
Gazette, Cincinnati, O., 201;
correspondent taken prisoner, 520.
Geary, John W., N b'v't maj.-gen., Bolivar Heights, 111;
port., 306;
Chattanooga, 308, 313;
occupies Savannah, 423.
Geible, ----, N sergt., killed, Gettysburg, 255.
General Lyon, N transport, burned, 469.
General officers killed, 484, 485.
Geneva, Switzerland, court of arbitration, 375.
George, Mrs. E. E., 540.
Georgetown, D. C., 403.
----, Ky., Morgan's raid, 532.
Georgia secedes, 9;
50th inf., Antietam, 180;
13th inf., Wilmington Island, 223;
hopes of her secession from the Confederacy, 420;
militia recalled by Gov. Brown, 420;
spirit of tolerance in, 423;
legislative peace resolutions, 431.
---- regimental losses, 10th, 18th, 5th, 37th, 9th, 15th, 21st, 17th,
44th inf., 484.
----, C cruiser, 372.
Georgia Central R. R., destroyed, 422.
Gerdes, F. H., lieut. U. S. Coast Survey, 91.
Germania Ford, Va., 335, 336, 355, 357.
Germans in Mo. loyal to the Union, 117.
Germantown, Tenn., 306.
----, Va., 169.
Getty, George W., N b'v't maj.-gen., Suffolk, Va., 331;
Wilderness, 457;
Cedar Creek, 411.
Gettysburg, 249-269.
----, Pa., approached by Lee, 250;
battle, 251-269;
_Map_, 251;
ills., 260, 264, 266, 351;
compared with Waterloo, 259;
cemetery dedicated, 269;
Sanitary Commission, 327, 361, 368, 387;
incident of battle, 465;
Lee's retreat, ill., 467;
charge of 1st Minn. inf. compared with Balaklava, 476;
losses at battle, 259, 477.
Gibbon, John, N maj.-gen., South Mountain, 176;
port., 180;
Fredericksburg, 195;
port., 255;
Gettysburg, 259;
advance on Petersburg, 400.
Gibbons, Mrs. A. H., 538.
----, James Sloane, "We are coming, Father Abraham," 128.
Gibbs, Alfred, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 406.
Gibraltar, "Sumter" abandoned, 372.
Gibson, Horatio G., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 347.
----, Randall Lee, C brig.-gen., port., 508.
----, ----, C aide, 164.
Gilbert, Charles C., N brig.-gen., Perryville, 201.
Gilchrist, ----, C, 32.
Gill, George W., b'v't brig.-gen., port., 167.
Gillis, ----, N capt., 15.
Gillmore, Quincy A., N maj.-gen., destroys Sumter, 18;
Ft. Pulaski, 220, 221;
port., 289;
siege of Charleston, 290-294;
Somerset, Ky., 339, 340.
Gilmer, Jeremy F., C maj.-gen., port., 314.
Gilmore, James R., "Edmund Kirke," peace mission, 412.
----, Patrick S., "When Johnny comes marching home," 136.
Gilson, Helen L., hospital services and death, 327.
Gist, S. R., C brig.-gen., killed, 430.
Gladden, Adley H., C brig.-gen., killed at Shiloh, 101.
Gladstone, William E., favors the Confederacy, 269.
Glazier, Willard, N capt., siege of Charleston, 204.
Glendale, Va., 159.
Godwin, A. C., C brig.-gen., killed, Winchester, 407.
Goff, Nathan, Jr., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 440.
Goldsboro' N. C., 441.
Goldsborough, Louis M., N rear-adm., N. C. expedition, 72;
port., 73.
Gooding, Michael, N col., Perryville, 201.
----, Oliver P., N b'v't maj.-gen., Bayou Teche, La., 347, 348.
Goodyear. W., N sergt., Millen, Ga., prison, 415.
Goose Creek, Va., ill., 410.
Gordon, George H., N b'v't maj.-gen., ports., 167, 389.
----, John B., C lieut.-gen., 403;
Cedar Creek, Va., 411;
ports., 445, 487;
Gettysburg anecdote, 465-467;
_Article_, 485-494;
Petersburg, 485;
advises Lee to surrender, 486, 493;
attacks Ft. Steadman and Hare's Hill, 487;
captures the fort, 489;
abandons it, 491;
gives up Union spies to Sheridan, 493;
refuses to surrender to Sheridan, 493;
prevents rifleman from shooting Sheridan, 493.
----, Mrs. John B., Petersburg, 488.
Gordonsville, Va., 163, 164, 193, 433.
Gorman, Willis A., N brig.-gen., port., 530.
Gosport Navy Yard, destruction of ships, 28, 29;
cut, 36.
Goss, William, N pvt., Powell's River bridge Tenn., 437.
Govan, Daniel C., C brig.-gen., captured, Atlanta, 390.
Governor's Island, New York Harbor, 14.
"Grafted into the Army," Henry C. Work, 137.
Graham, Charles K., N b'v't maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 265;
port., 530.
Granberry, H. B., C brig.-gen., killed, 430.
Grand Ecore, La., 379, 381.
---- Gulf, Miss., action, 274.
Granger, Gordon, N maj.-gen., attack on Van Dorn, 295;
Chickamauga, 299-302;
port., 301;
Knoxville, 311;
Franklin, Tenn., 341;
Mobile, 391.
----, Moses M., N col., Cedar Creek, Va., 411.
Grant, Alfred, N capt., 523.
----, Ulysses S., N gen., ports., 31, 107, 490;
Cairo, 73;
Ft. Henry, 75;
Ft. Donelson, 76-79;
Pittsburg Landing, 100;
Shiloh, 101-108;
Belmont, 122;
review of Porter case, 170;
comment on battle of Iuka, 204;
Jackson, 206;
comment on battle of Corinth, 207;
Vicksburg campaign, 270-279, 295;
in command military division of the Mississippi, 305;
Chattanooga, 305-309;
Christian Commission, 326, 342, 350;
appointed lieut.-gen., 351;
Wilderness, 354-357;
port., 356;
Spottsylvania, 358-362;
North Anna, 362;
Cold Harbor, 365, 368, 369;
escapes capture, 375;
plans for Sherman's Atlanta campaign, 383, 387;
plans capture of Mobile, 391;
advance on Petersburg, 397-400;
defence of Washington, 402-404;
sends Sheridan to the Shenandoah, 405, 406;
despatch to Sheridan after Winchester, 409;
final campaign against Lee, 442-446, 451;
"pie order," 459;
col. of 21st Ill. inf., 483, 491.
Grapevine bridge, 147;
ill., 160.
Gravelly Run, Va., 443.
Graves, E. E., N col., 105;
Richmond, 454.
Great Kanawha Valley campaign, 113.
Greble, John T., N lieut., killed at Big Bethel, 45.
----, Mrs. Edwin, 539.
Greeley, Horace, port., 186;
correspondence with President Lincoln, 186;
peace conference, 412;
gives bail for Davis, 448;
cartoon, 462.
Green, Thomas, C brig.-gen., killed, Pleasant Hill, 379.
----, ----, N ord.-sergt., Plymouth, N. C., 218, 219.
Green River, 115.
Greene, Samuel D., N comr., 85;
port., 87.
----, W. N., N capt., at Chancellorsville, ill., 481.
Greencastle, Pa., 176.
Gregg, David McM., N b'v't maj.-gen., Brandy Sta., Va., 249;
Gettysburg, 267;
Robertson's Tavern, Va., 335;
Hawes's Shop, 363;
port., 435.
----, John Irvin, N b'v't maj.-gen., Middleburg, Va., 267;
Gettysburg, 268;
port., 356.
----, Maxcy, C brig.-gen., Antietam, 180;
killed, Fredericksburg, 196.
Gresham, Walter Q., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 386.
Grierson, Benjamin H., N maj.-gen., cavalry raid, 274.
Griffin, Charles, N maj.-gen., port., 57;
at Bull Run, 55, 57, 59.
----, Simon G., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 401.
Grose, William, N b'v't maj.-gen., Murfreesboro', 212;
Chattanooga, 308.
Grover, Cuvier, N b'v't maj.-gen., 2d Bull Run, 172, 173;
Irish Bend, La., 345;
port., 378.
Groveton, Va., battle, 167-168.
Guenther, Francis L., N lieut., Murfreesboro', 210, 212.
Guerilla warfare, 79, 215, 223, 227-231, 316, 331, 345.
Guinea Station, Va., 362.
Gulf, Dept. of the, N, 185.
Gurowski, Adam, Polish count, criticisms, 236, 237.
Guyandotte, W. Va., 113.
Hagerstown, Md., 176, 177.
Haines, Alanson A., N chap., Spottsylvania, 361.
----, Thomas, N capt., Harrisonburg, 216.
Haines's Bluff, Miss., 271, 272, 273, 275.
"Hairpins," "Sherman's," 375.
Hall, A. S., N col., Milton, Tenn., 295;
Statesville and Vaught's Hill, Tenn., 340, 341.
----, Charles S., "John Brown's Body," 136.
----, Maria M. C., Miss, 538.
----, Norman J., N col., at Sumter, 11.
----, R. H., capt. U. S. art'y, Ft. Craig, N. M., 233.
----, Susan E., Miss, 540.
----, ----, N surg., Spottsylvania, 361.
Halleck, Henry W., N maj.-gen., commands in Mo., 73, 75;
port., 79;
supersedes Frémont, 79;
Corinth, 108;
gen.-in-chief, 163, 169, 175, 197;
plans for East Tenn., 203, 250, 270, 271;
despatch to Rosecrans, 305;
letter to Grant, 307, 308, 362, 368;
despatch to Grant, 405.
Halltown, Va., 111;
occupied by Sheridan, 406.
Hamburg, S. C., 322.
Hamilton, Andrew J., N brig.-gen., port., 315;
quoted, 315.
----, Charles S., N maj.-gen., Iuka, 203, 204;
Corinth, 206, 207.
----, Schuyler, N maj.-gen., Island No. 10, 99;
port., 101.
----, William, N naval lieut., Mobile Bay, 392.
Hamlin, Hannibal, Vice.-Pres. of the U. S., 316, 412.
Hammersley, L. C., quoted, 517.
Hammond, William A., N brig.-gen., port., 414.
Hampton, Frank, C lieut.-col., killed, Brandy Sta., Va., 249.
----, Wade, C lieut.-gen., Gettysburg, 259;
opposes Sherman in S. C., 440;
port., 445, 462, 531.
Hampton Roads, Va., 29, 68, 69, 72;
"Monitor" and "Merrimac," 83-87, 91;
"Florida" sunk, 372.
Hancock, Winfield S., N maj.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 143;
port., 173;
Fredericksburg, 195-199;
Gettysburg, 252-265;
port., 255;
Wilderness, 354-356;
Spottsylvania, 358-361;
North Anna, 362, 363;
Cold Harbor, 365;
advance on Petersburg, 397-400, 451;
Gettysburg, 476;
Winchester, 486;
port., 532.
----, ----, N spy, anecdote, 509.
Hankinson's Ferry, Miss., engagement, 274.
Hanover, Pa., engagement, 268.
---- Junction, Va., 144, 362, 363.
---- Old Church, Va., engagement, 151.
Hanson, Roger W., C brig.-gen., killed, Murfreesboro', 211.
Hardee, William J., C lieut.-gen., Corinth, 100;
Shiloh, 103;
port., 105;
Pine Mountain, 386;
evacuates Savannah, 423;
evacuates Charleston, 440;
Averysboro', 441.
"Hardee's Tactics," 23, 456.
Harding, Abner C., N brig.-gen., Dover, 295;
Ft. Donelson, 340.
Hare's Hill, battle (Ft. Steadman), 485, 487.
Harker, Charles G., N brig.-gen., killed, Kenesaw Mountain, 387.
Harland, Edward, N brig.-gen., Suffolk, Va., 331.
Harney, William S., N b'v't maj.-gen., 28;
port., 29, 39, 49.
Harper, Kenton, C maj.-gen., Va. militia, 28.
Harper's Ferry, Va., U. S. arsenal seized by John Brown, 7;
ill., 13;
destroyed by N garrison, 27;
ill., 36;
operations about, 47;
destroyed and deserted by C, 47, 111;
_Map_ of vicinity, 141;
ill., 174;
Antietam campaign, 175-180, 192, 250, 403, 406;
anecdote, 462.
Harriet Lane, N gunboat, Ft. Sumter, 15;
Galveston, 348.
Harris, "Coon," N spy, executed, 506.
----, Elisha, Sanitary Commission, 324, 325.
----, Isham G., gov. Tenn., 44, 227.
----, Matthias, N chap., 12, 18.
----, Mrs. John, 533.
Harrisburg, Pa., approached by Lee, 250.
Harrison, Benjamin, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 423.
----, M. La Rue, N b'v't brig.-gen., Fayetteville, Ark., 344.
Harrisonburg, Va., action, 216;
occupied by Sheridan, 409.
Harrison's Island, Potomac River, 109.
---- Landing, Va., 160, 163.
Harrodsburg, Ky., 201.
Harrold, Daniel C., reward offered for arrest, 510.
"Harry Birch," N merchantman, ill., 76.
Harsen, Dr., Sanitary Commission, 324.
Hart, Orson H., N brig.-gen., port., 150.
----, Peter, 17, 18.
Hartford, N cruiser, New Orleans, 90-93;
Mobile Bay, 391-395;
ill., 394.
Hartranft, John F., N b'v't maj.-gen., Antietam, 179.
Hartsuff, George L., N maj.-gen., port., 297.
Hartsville, Mo., engagement, 344, 345.
----, Tenn., captured by Morgan, 229.
Harvey, Cordelia P., Mrs., port., 534, 536.
Hatch, Edward, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 337;
Wyatt's, Miss., 343.
----, John P., N b'v't maj.-gen., 163.
Hatteras, Cape, "General Lyon" burned near, 469.
----, N steamer, sunk by "Alabama," 372.
---- Inlet, N. C., 67, 72.
Haupt, Hermann, N brig.-gen., port., 167.
Havana, Cuba, 63.
Hawes's Shop, Va., action, 363, 364.
Hawkins, Morton L., N lieut., Winchester, Va., 407.
----, Rush C., N b'v't brig.-gen., N. C. expedition, 72.
Hawkins's Zouaves, 72, 218.
Hawley, Harriet F., Mrs., 538.
Haxall's Landing, Va., 159, 368.
Hayes, Rutherford B., N b'v't maj.-gen., South Mountain, 176;
Clark's Hollow, 218;
port., 219;
Winchester, 407;
Cedar Creek, 411, 481.
Hayne, Paul Hamilton, "The Black Flag," 133.
Hays, Alexander, N b'v't maj.-gen., Bristoe Sta., Va., 334;
Robertson's Tavern, Va., 336;
killed, Wilderness, 357;
port., 361.
----, Harry T., C brig.-gen., Antietam, 180;
port., 363.
----, William, N brig.-gen., port., 401.
Hazel Grove, Chancellorsville, 242.
---- Run, Fredericksburg, 199.
Hazen, William B., N maj.-gen., ports., 30, 514;
Murfreesboro', 212;
Fort McAllister, Ga., 423, 513, 514;
(sketch), 514.
Hazlett, Charles E., N lieut., killed, Gettysburg, 254, 260, 261.
Heath, Herman H., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 401.
Heg, Hans C., N col., killed, Chickamauga, 299.
Heintzelman, Samuel P., N maj.-gen., port., 49;
Bull Run, 54, 55;
Peninsular campaign, 143;
Pope's campaign, 168;
port., 262.
Helena, Ark., engagement, 344.
Helm, Benjamin H., C brig.-gen., killed, Chickamauga, 299.
Helper, Hinton R., "Impending crisis," 182.
Henry, Guy V., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 436.
Henry house, Bull Run, 57;
ills., 58, 60, 165.
Hensie, ----, murdered, 316.
Herbert, ----, C brig.-gen., Iuka, 206.
Herron, Francis J., N maj.-gen., Prairie Grove, Ark., 233.
Heth, Henry, C maj.-gen., port., 399;
defence of Petersburg, 400.
Hickman, Ky., 226.
Hicks, Thomas H., gov. Md., 43.
Higginson, Thomas W., N col., writes on negro soldiers, 239.
Hill, Ambrose P., C lieut.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 154-162;
port., 158;
Antietam campaign, 176-179;
Chancellorsville, 242;
Culpeper, 249;
Shenandoah Valley, 250;
Bristoe Sta., Va., 334;
Wilderness, 354;
defence of Petersburg, 398, 400;
killed, 445, 451, 491, 492.
----, Daniel H., C lieut.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 154-159;
port., 158;
Antietam campaign, 176.
----, Joshua, 425.
----, Sylvester G., N b'v't brig.-gen., killed, 430.
Hillier, case of, 315.
Hilton Head, S. C., 69;
ill., 70, 71, 185, 219.
Hindman, Thomas C., C maj.-gen., Shiloh, 101;
Prairie Grove, 233.
Hines, Thomas A., C capt., imprisoned, 526.
Hinks, Edward W., N b'v't maj.-gen., 25;
after Ball's Bluff, 110;
port., 114;
advance on Petersburg, 397.
Hitching. J. H., N brig.-gen., killed, Cedar Creek, Va., 410.
Hodgesville, Ky., action, 115.
Hodge's Mills, N. C., 218.
Hoff, H. K., N rear-adm., port., 370.
Hogg, ----, N lieut.-col., killed, Bolivar, Tenn., 227.
Hoke, Robert F., C maj.-gen., Plymouth, N. C., 317, 433-434.
Holden, William W., peace candidate, N. C., 420.
Hollins, George N., C commodore, 99.
Holly Springs, Miss., captured by Van Dorn, 271.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, comment on Brownell, 395;
at Antietam, 478.
----, Theophilus H., C lieut.-gen., at Bull Run, 53;
Helena, Ark., 344.
----, ----, N capt., mangled by hounds, 322.
Holt, Joseph, N sec'y of war, 14, 20, 48.
Home, Jessie, Miss, 538.
Homestead bill, vetoed by Buchanan, 183.
Hood, John B., C gen., Antietam, 177;
Gettysburg, 252, 254;
Chickamauga, 303;
port., 383;
Atlanta campaign, 385-390;
supersedes Johnston, 387;
protests to Sherman, 419;
pursued by Sherman, 420;
Nashville, 427;
Franklin, Tenn., 427-430;
Nashville, 430;
compared with Logan, 517.
Hooker, Joseph, N maj.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 143;
port., 150;
Groveton, 168;
2d Bull Run, 169;
Antietam campaign, 176-180;
Burnside's campaign, 193-196;
port., 241;
supersedes Burnside, 241;
Chancellorsville, 241-243;
Culpeper, 249;
relieved of command, 250, 263;
in Tenn., 305;
Lookout Mountain, 308, 309, 313, 331, 332, 358;
Resaca, Ga., 385;
near Marietta, 386;
Peach Tree Creek, 387;
retired, 390;
cartoon, 459.
Horseshoe Ridge, Chickamauga, 299.
Hospital corps, ambulance drill, ill., 497.
Hough, Daniel, N artilleryman, 17.
Hovey, Alvin P., N b'v't maj.-gen., Champion's Hill, Miss., 275.
Howard, Henry W. B., _Articles_, 455-459, 507-512.
----, Oliver O., N maj.-gen., 49;
ports., 30, 57, 513;
at Bull Run, 55, 57;
Chancellorsville, 241-245;
Gettysburg, 251, 252;
Chattanooga, 314;
Atlanta, 390;
commands Army of the Tenn., 390;
in march to the sea, 422-430;
_Article_, 513-519.
Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, "Battle Hymn of the Republic," 127.
Howland, Mrs. Joseph, 537.
----, Mrs. Robert S., 537.
Hubbard, ----, N maj., Roan's Tanyard, Mo., 230.
Hudson, Mo., 122.
Huey, Pennock, N b'v't brig.-gen., Chancellorsville, 242.
Huger, Benjamin, C maj.-gen., 49;
Fair Oaks, 147, 150;
port., 155.
Hughes, John, archbishop, Roman Catholic Church, 36.
----, ----, C guerilla, killed at Independence, Mo., 231.
Humes, Thomas W., Rev., quoted, 316.
Humonsville, Mo., engagement, 230.
Humorous Incidents of the War, 455-459.
Humphreys, Andrew A., N maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 252-263, 445.
Hunt, Henry J., N b'v't maj.-gen., Fredericksburg, 195;
Gettysburg, 257, 263, 265;
port., 262.
----, Lewis C., N brig.-gen., port., 159.
Hunter, Andrew, port., 183;
arrested and residence burned, 319.
----, David, N maj.-gen., port., 49;
at Bull Run, 54, 55, 163;
attempts at emancipation, 182, 185;
Ft. Pulaski, 221;
depredations in Shenandoah Valley, 317-319, 368, 402;
succeeded by Sheridan, 405, 406.
----, D. C., C col., Charleston, Mo., 117.
----, R. M. T., C peace com'r, 441.
Huntersville, Va., raided, 114.
Hunton, Eppa, C brig.-gen., port., 508.
Huntsville, Ala., peace meeting, 431.
----, Mo., 230.
Hurlbut, Stephen A., N maj.-gen., Shiloh, 100;
port., 105;
Corinth, 207-209;
Vicksburg campaign, 273, 308;
Memphis, 340;
Meridian, 375, 532.
Husband, Mary M., Mrs., port., 536, 537.
Hutchinson family, singers, 182.
Hutchinson, Minn., attacked by Indians, 234.
Illinois _Infantry_, 11th, Lexington, 225;
17th, Frederickstown, 118;
19th, Chattanooga, 314;
20th, Vicksburg, 277, Atlanta, 389;
22d, Charleston, 117;
23d, Lexington, 118;
30th, Vicksburg, 279, Atlanta, 389;
31st, Atlanta, 389;
49th, Pleasant Hill, 379;
56th, "Gen'l Lyons" disaster, 469;
58th, Pleasant Hill, 379;
73d, 412;
74th, Murfreesboro', 211;
83d, Dover, 295;
88th, 96th, 115th, Chickamauga, 299.
---- _Cavalry_, 2d, Bolivar, 227;
7th, Charleston, 230;
9th, Rocky Crossing, 342;
20th, Ripley, 340.
---- regimental losses, 11th and 89th inf., 481;
21st, 31st, 36th, 40th, 55th, 93d inf., 483.
Illinois Central R. R., 140, 193.
Imboden, John D., C brig.-gen., 27;
Gettysburg, 259;
accusation against Hunter, 317-319;
Charlestown, Va., 334;
Newmarket, Va., 433;
port., 434.
"Impending Crisis," Helper's, 182.
Incidents, Thrilling, 464-472.
Independence, Mo., engagement, 230;
surrendered, 231.
Indian Territory, Dept. of, 81.
Indiana _Infantry_, 3d, Shirley's Ford, 231;
6th, Hodgesville, 115, Chickamauga, 299;
7th, Bolivar, 437;
16th, Richmond, 224;
20th, Manassas Gap, 333;
32d, Munfordville, 115;
33d, Camp Wildcat, 114;
48th, Iuka, 204;
51st, 348;
55th, Richmond, 224;
68th, Chickamauga, 299;
69th and 71st, Richmond, 224;
89th, Pleasant Hill, 379.
---- 9th cav., in "Sultana" disaster, 469;
19th inf. loss at Bull Run, 477.
---- regimental losses, 14th inf., 481;
19th inf., 481;
27th inf., 481.
Indianola, N gunboat, Vicksburg, 277.
Indians, in Confederate service, 80, 231;
uprising in Northwest, 234, 348;
Tennessee, 317.
Individual Heroism and Thrilling Incidents, 464-472.
Infantry, U. S., 8th (colored), Olustee, Fla., 436.
Ingalls, Rufus, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 398.
----, ----, N quar.-gen., 156.
Ingersoll, Robert G., N col., Corinth, 207;
Lexington, Ky., 225.
Ingraham, Duncan N., C commodore, siege of Charleston, 289.
Innes, W. P., N col., Murfreesboro', 211.
Iowa _Infantry_, 5th, Iuka, 204;
7th, Belmont, 122;
10th and 16th, Iuka, 204;
23d, Milliken's Bend, 240;
39th, Parker's Cross Roads, 229.
---- 1st cavalry, Jackson, 230.
---- regimental losses, 5th, 7th, 9th, 22d, 483.
Ireland, ----, N col., Lookout Mountain, 313.
Irish Bend, La., battle, 345, 347;
ills., 346, 376.
"Irish Brigade," (23d Ill. inf.), Lexington, 118;
(63d, 69th, and 88th N. Y. inf.), Fredericksburg, 197-199.
"Iron Brigade," Gettysburg, 251.
Ironside, English vessel, 87.
Irving, Washington, quoted, 459.
Irwinsville, Ga., President Davis captured, 448.
Island No. 10, ill., 98, 99, 226, 307.
Iuka, Miss., battle, 203-206.
Iverson, Alfred, C brig.-gen., 33;
Gettysburg, 252.
Ives, Joseph C., C col., port., 450.
Jacinto, Miss., 204, 205.
Jackson, Conrad F., N brig.-gen., killed, Fredericksburg, 196.
----, Claiborne F., gov. of Mo., 37;
efforts to make the State secede, 38;
proclaims invasion of State by U. S. troops, 39.
----, James S., N brig.-gen., killed, Perryville, 201.
----, Thomas J., "Stonewall," C lieut.-gen., Harper's Ferry, 28, 47,
49;
Bull Run, 53, 55, 111;
prayer in camp, ill., 130;
Peninsular campaign, 143-162, 163;
Cedar Mountain, 164;
Sulphur Springs, 166;
Groveton, 167, 168;
2d Bull Run, 168, 169;
Manassas Junction, 171;
Antietam campaign, 175-177;
Shenandoah Valley, 193, 216;
killed, Chancellorsville, 242;
port., 245;
advocates the black flag, 316, 451;
anecdote, 463.
Jackson, Miss., 270, 274;
captured, 275;
evacuated, 342, 375.
----, Mo., action, 230.
----, Tenn., 206, 207, 271.
Jackson's Ford, Chancellorsville, 243.
Jacob's Ford, Va., 335, 336.
Jacques, James F., N col., peace mission, 412.
James, Army of the, commanded by Butler, 351, 365;
Grant's left wing, 351;
advance on Petersburg, 397.
James Island, Charleston Harbor, 292, 293.
---- River, ill., 468.
---- River Canal, locks destroyed, 442.
Jamestown, Va., 144.
Janeway, ----, N maj., Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Jardine, Edward, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 285.
Jefferson, Va., 166.
Jefferson City, Mo., 39, 118.
Jenkins, Albert G., C brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 259;
killed, 433.
----, Micah, C brig.-gen., killed, Wilderness, 356.
----, Thornton A., N rear-adm., port., 393.
Jetersville, Va., fight, 446.
"John Brown's Body," Charles S. Hall, 136.
John Cabin Bridge, near Washington, ill., 404.
John Ross house, near Ringgold, Ga., ill., 460.
Johns, Thomas D., N b'v't brig.-gen., Romney, 113.
Johnson, Andrew, mil. gov. Tenn., 44, 226;
port., 227;
nominated for vice-president, 412;
reviews armies in Washington, 450.
----, Bradley T., C brig.-gen., burning of Chambersburg, 319, 403;
Penn. raid, 404;
port., 411, 531.
----, Bushrod R., C maj.-gen., port., 80.
----, Reverdy, 43.
----, Richard W., N b'v't maj.-gen., captured at Gallatin, Tenn., 227.
----, William P., C col., port., 450.
----, ----, N capt., 105.
----, ----, N capt., comdg. gunboat Forest Rose, Waterproof, La., 437.
Johnson's Island, Lake Erie, prison, 528.
Johnston, Albert Sidney, C gen., Corinth, 100;
killed at Shiloh, 101;
port., 104, 451.
----, Edward, C maj.-gen., captured, Spottsylvania, 359, 362.
----, James D., C comr., Mobile Bay, 392.
----, Joseph E., C gen., Harper's Ferry, 28, 47, 49;
port., 55;
Bull Run, 54, 57, 59, 62;
Peninsular campaign, 140-146, 151;
Jackson, Miss., 275, 276, 342;
295;
supersedes Bragg, 311;
Dalton, Ga., 353;
port., 383;
Atlanta campaign, 383-390;
Dalton, 383;
Resaca, 385;
Kenesaw Mountain, 387;
superseded by Hood, 387;
blamed by Davis, 420;
reinstated, 439;
opposes Sherman in the Carolinas, 439-441;
surrender to Sherman at Durham Sta., N. C., 446;
foresees the end, 448;
cartoon, 463.
----, Robert D., C brig.-gen., wounded, Spottsylvania, 362.
----, Sarah R., Mrs., 536.
Joinville, Prince de, port., 142.
Jones, Catesby, C com., 85.
----, David R., C maj.-gen., at Bull Run, 53, 175.
----, Edward F., N b'v't brig.-gen., 23.
----, John B., quoted, 413.
----, John M., C brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 259;
port., 361.
----, Roger, N lieut., 27.
----, Samuel, C maj.-gen., Rocky Gap, Va., 333;
port., 335;
Fairmont, W. Va., 337;
Jonesville, Va., 433.
----, W. H., 10.
Jones Island, Ga., 220.
Jonesboro', Ga., 390, 422.
Jonesborough, Miss., 209.
Jonesville, Va., fight, 433.
Jordan, ----, N col., captured, 295.
Journal, Chicago, Ill., 311.
----, Louisville, Ky., 209.
----, Wilmington, quoted, 431.
Journal of Commerce, New York, 33.
Kanawha, State of (West Virginia), 45.
Kane, George P., 24.
Kansas _Infantry_, 1st, losses, 483;
2d, Cane Hill, 232;
6th, Independence, 230;
7th, 185;
11th, Cane Hill, 232;
1st colored reg., Butler, 231.
---- 5th cavalry, Pine Bluff, 344.
Kautz, August V., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 443.
Kearney, Philip, N maj.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 143-158;
Pope's campaign, 166-168;
port., 168;
killed, Chantilly, Va., 169, 451, 470.
Kearsarge, N cruiser, ill., 371;
destroys "Alabama," 372;
ill., 373.
Keenan, Peter, N maj., Chancellorsville, 242;
port., 245.
Keifer, J. Warren, N b'v't maj.-gen., Wilderness, 357.
Kelley, Benjamin F., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 39;
at Philippi, 45;
Romney, 113, 216.
Kellogg, Robert H., N sergt.-maj., Andersonville prison, 321;
Florence, S. C., 415.
----, ----, N capt., recaptured, 322.
Kelly, James, N corp., killed, Gettysburg, 260.
----, Patrick, N col., Fredericksburg, 199.
Kelly's Ferry, Tenn., anecdote, 468.
---- Ford, Va., 165, 166;
action, 332;
action, 334, 335.
Kelton, John C., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 176.
Kemper, James L., C maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 259.
Kendrick, Rev. J. Ryland, quoted, 423.
Kenesaw Mountain, Ga., ill., 366;
occupied by Johnston, 385, 386;
battle, 387.
Kennedy, John A., draft riots in New York, 285.
Kentucky, refuses to secede, 35;
struggle for, 41;
_infantry_, 4th, 73;
5th, losses, 481;
8th, Lookout Mountain, 314;
15th, Perryville, 201, losses, 481;
18th, Mr. Sterling, 224, Richmond, 225;
34th, Powell's River bridge, 437;
_cavalry_, 7th, Big Hill, 224;
8th, Rural Hills, 229.
Keokuk, N ironclad, siege of Charleston, 289.
Kerns, Mark, N capt., 158.
Kernstown, Va., action, 216.
Kettle Run, Va., action, 331.
Key West, Fla., 91.
Keyes, Erasmus D., N maj.-gen., 49;
at Bull Run, 55, 57;
Peninsular Campaign, 143;
port., 150.
Kilmer, George L., _Articles_, 520-532.
Kilpatrick, Judson, N maj.-gen., cavalry superiority, 250;
Gettysburg, 259;
Aldie, Va., 267, 268;
Rappahannock Sta., 335;
Atlanta, 390, 405;
in march to the sea, 422;
Averysboro', 441, 513;
port., 528, 531.
Kimball, Nathan, N b'v't maj.-gen., Kernstown, 216;
port., 422.
King, Edward A., N col., killed, Chickamauga, 299.
----, E. M., N lieut., port., 274.
----, Rufus, N brig.-gen., Groveton, 167.
Kingston, Ga., 385.
----, Tenn., 308.
Kinsman, N gunboat, Bayou Teche, La., 345.
Kinston, N. C., 461.
Kirk, Edward N., N brig.-gen., killed, Murfreesboro', 211.
Kirkland, William W., C brig.-gen., wounded, Cold Harbor, 368.
Kittridge, Walter, "Tenting on the old camp-ground," 139.
Kline, ----, N drum sergt., Spottsylvania, 361.
Knight, William, Andrews's raid, 529.
Knowles, ----, N quar.-mas., Mobile Bay, 391.
Knoxville, Tenn., 73, 308, 311;
siege, 342.
Kreutzer, William, N col., Fair Oaks, 147;
Cold Harbor, 365.
Lafayette, Ga., 297, 298.
La Grange, Tenn., 274.
Lake Borgne, La., 91.
---- Providence, La., 273;
ill., 274.
Lamont, ----, C cav., Tom's Brook, Va., 410.
Lamphere, ----, N lieut., Richmond, Ky., 224.
Lampson, R. H., N lieut.-comr., "Mount Washington," 348.
Lancaster, Mo., 122.
----, S. C., 440.
Lander, Frederick W., N brig.-gen., Blooming Gap, 217, 218.
Landrum, J. J., N lieut.-col., Cynthiana, 223.
Lane, James H., C brig.-gen., wounded, Cold Harbor, 368.
Last Confederate Council of War, 492.
Last Days of the Confederacy, 485-494.
Latane, William, C capt., 151.
Lauman, Jacob G., N b'v't maj.-gen., Jackson, Miss., 342.
La Vergne, Tenn., 211;
engagement, 227.
Law, E. McIver, C maj.-gen., wounded, Cold Harbor, 368.
Lawler, Michael K., N b'v't maj.-gen., Big Black River, Miss., 275.
Lawrence, Kan., plundered by Quantrell, 345.
----, Mills, Mo., 344.
Lawrenceburg, Ky., action, 225.
Lawson, ----, N surg.-gen., death, 324.
Lawton, Alexander R., C brig.-gen., Antietam, 180;
port., 508.
Leap for Liberty, A, 523-524.
Lebanon, Ky., captured by Morgan, 297.
----, Tenn., engagement, 229.
Le Clerc, ----, N capt., port., 142.
Ledbetter, ----, C col., 316.
Ledlie, James H., N brig.-gen., advance on Petersburg, 399.
Lee, Albert L., N brig.-gen., port., 382.
----, Edmund I., residence destroyed by Hunter, 319.
----, Fitzhugh, C maj.-gen., 164;
port., 265;
Trevilian Sta., Va., 433, 493.
----, G. W. C., C maj.-gen., port., 165, 445, 450.
----, Robert E., C lieut.-gen., ports., 17, 165, 183, 487;
commands Va. troops, 28;
resigns from U. S. service, 35;
commands in W. Va., 44, 49, 114;
Peninsular campaign, 143-162;
operations against Pope, 163-171;
Antietam campaign, 175-180;
Winchester, 191;
Fredericksburg, 193-197, 217;
Chancellorsville, 241-246;
Gettysburg, 249-269;
letter to Pres. Davis after Gettysburg, 268;
retreat through Shenandoah Valley, 333;
Rappahannock Sta., 334, 335;
Robertson's Tavern, 336, 342, 350, 351;
Orange C. H., Va., 353;
Wilderness, 354-357;
Spottsylvania, 358-362;
Cold Harbor, 365, 368, 369;
defence of Petersburg, 397-400, 406;
plans to escape Grant, 442;
withdraws in retreat from Richmond and Petersburg, 445;
surrenders to Grant at Appomattox C. H., 446;
farewell address to his army, 446;
surrender to Grant, ill., 447;
begs for rations in Richmond and Petersburg, 485;
discouragement in March, 1865, 486;
orders Gordon into Petersburg, 487;
last council of war, 493;
at Appomattox, ill., 494.
----, Wm. H. F., C maj.-gen., port., 399.
----, ----, C col., 17.
Leesburg, Va., 109;
battle anecdote, 463.
LeFavour, Heber, N b'v't brig.-gen., Chickamauga, 303.
Lefferts, Marshall, N col., 7th N. Y. regiment, 24, 25;
port., 33.
Le Gendre, Charles W., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 276.
Leggett, Mortimer D., N maj.-gen., Bald Hill, Atlanta, 387, 388;
port., 414.
Leggett's Hill (Atlanta), battle, 387.
Leighton, ----, N capt., adventures as a spy, 509.
LeRoy, William E., N comr., Mobile Bay, 392.
Letcher, John, gov. of Va., 9, 32, 33;
port., 165;
quoted, 316;
residence burned by Hunter, 318, 319.
Lewis, J. E., N capt., 523.
Lewisburg, W. Va., 113, 317, 318.
Lexington, Mo., 109;
battle, 118;
ill., 116.
----, Tenn., captured by Forrest, 225, 229.
----, Va., devastated by Hunter, 318, 319.
----, N gunboat, Shiloh, 101;
Fort Donelson, 340;
Grand Ecore, La., 381.
Libby Prison, ills., 320, 520;
321, 323, 348, 349, 454;
tunnel and escape, 521, 531.
Liberty Gap, Tenn., action, 297.
Liberty party, 259.
Lick Creek, Shiloh, 100.
Licking River, 115.
Lincoln, Abraham, ports., frontispiece, 6;
elected President of the U. S., 9;
first call for troops, 18, 35;
reviews 7th N. Y. reg., 25;
inaugural address, 29;
proclaimed rebellion, 35;
early military embarrassments, 48;
calls for more troops, 49;
Peninsular campaign, 143;
port., 147;
hatred of slavery, 182;
correspondence with Horace Greeley, 186;
emancipation proclamation, 187, 189;
visits McClellan, 191;
criticised by Gurowski, 236, 237;
letter to Hooker, 241;
address at Gettysburg, 269;
letter to Grant at Vicksburg, 277;
attitude toward Sanitary Commission, 324;
appoints Grant lieut.-gen., 351;
instructions to Minister Adams, 374;
port., 402;
exposed to fire, Fort Stevens, 404;
letter to Grant about Shenandoah, 405;
despatch to Sheridan after Winchester, 409;
renominated for president, 412;
re-elected, 415;
receives peace commission at Ft. Monroe, 441;
assassinated, 449;
2d inaugural address quoted, 450;
cartoons, 455-463;
anecdotes, 457;
visits camp, 503.
Little, Henry, C brig.-gen., killed, Iuka, 204, 206.
Little Rock, Ark., 35, 470.
Little Round Top, Gettysburg, 252;
ill., 253, 260, 261.
Livermore, Mary A., Mrs., port., 536, 540.
Logan, John A., N maj.-gen., ports., 30, 517;
Champion's Hill, Miss., 275;
Vicksburg, 279, 307, 316;
Atlanta, 389, 390, 483, 513;
(sketch), 517.
Logan's Cross Roads, Ky., 73.
London Morning Advertiser, London, Eng., quoted, 269.
Lone Jack, Mo., engagement, 231.
Long Bridge, D. C., ill., 22, 62.
----, Va., 368.
Longfellow, Henry W., from "Building of the Ship," 35;
port., 190;
quoted on slavery, 184.
Longstreet, James, C lieut.-gen., 49;
at Bull Run, 53;
port., 55;
Fair Oaks, 150;
Peninsular campaign, 154-162;
Thoroughfare Gap, 166, 167;
Groveton, 168;
Antietam campaign, 175-180;
Culpeper, 193;
Fredericksburg, 195, 197;
Culpeper, 249, 250;
Gettysburg, 252-268;
port., 265;
Chickamauga, 298-302, 308;
in Va., 311;
Suffolk, Va., 329;
Knoxville, 342, 351;
Wilderness, 354-357;
wounded, ill., 358;
Spottsylvania, 358, 368;
foresees the end, 448;
Ft. Steadman, 488, 491;
covers Lee's retreat, 492.
Lookout Mountain, Tenn., 263, 303-314;
ills., 304, 309, 310;
battle, 308-313.
Loomis, Cyrus O., N b'v't brig.-gen., Perryville, 201;
Murfreesboro', 210, 212;
Lookout Mountain, 314.
Loomis's Battery, ill., 205.
"Lorena" (author unknown), 133.
Loring, William W., C maj.-gen., Fayetteville, W. Va., 218.
Losses, at Gettysburg and Waterloo, 259, 476;
in Franco-German War, 476;
highest percentage of, in National and Confederate regiments, 476;
comparative, at Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, Wilderness, Chickamauga,
Chancellorsville, and Antietam, 477;
of separate regiments, 477-485.
Lost Mountain, Ga., occupied by Johnston, 385;
abandoned, 386.
Loudoun Heights, Va., 111.
Louisa C. H., Va., fight, 433.
Louisiana secedes, 9;
18th inf., Shiloh, 101;
3d inf., Iuka, 206;
"Tigers," Gettysburg, 254.
Louis Napoleon, unfriendly to the United States, 66, 375.
Louisville, Ga., 422.
----, Ky., 209, 307, 383.
Love, ----, N capt., 84.
Lovell, Mansfield, C maj.-gen., at N. O., port., 96.
Lowe, John W., N col., 113;
killed at Gauley River, 114;
port., 483.
----, T. S. C., balloonist, port., 154, 162.
----, ----, C col., killed, Fredericktown, Mo., 118.
Lowell, Charles R., Jr., N brig.-gen., killed, Cedar Creek, Va., 410.
----, James Russell, quoted on slavery, 183.
"Loyal Mountaineers," quoted, 316.
Lubbock, Francis R., C col., port., 450.
Luray Valley, Va., 409.
Lynch, William F., N b'v't brig.-gen., Pleasant Hill, 379.
----, ----, C, killed, Belmont, 122.
Lynchburg, Va., 319.
Lyon, H. B., C brig.-gen., port., 434.
----, Nathaniel, N brig.-gen., port., 38;
captures disloyal camp, Mo., 38;
defeats McCulloch, Dug Spring, Mo., 41;
is by him defeated at Wilson's Creek, Mo., and killed, 41;
property bequeathed to U. S. government, 41, 451.
Lyons, ----, Judge, Richmond, 454.
Lytle, William H., N brig.-gen., Perryville, 201;
killed, Chickamauga, 299, 301.
McAllister, Robert, N b'v't maj.-gen., Wilderness, 357.
McArthur, John, N b'v't maj.-gen., Corinth, 206, 207.
McCall, George A., N brig.-gen., Ball's Bluff, 109;
Peninsular campaign, 154-158.
McCarthy, Harry, "The Bonnie Blue Flag," 136.
McCauley, Charles S., N commodore, 28.
McCausland, John, C brig.-gen., burning of Chambersburg, 319, 320,
404.
McClellan, George B., N maj.-gen., ports., 15, 140;
Philippi and Rich Mountain, 45;
in command Army of the Potomac, 45, 109;
W. Va., 113;
general-in-chief, 140;
Peninsular campaign, 140-162;
port., 147;
"Little Mac," "Young Napoleon," 160;
Harrison's Landing, 163;
Antietam campaign, 175-180;
attitude toward slavery, 182, 183;
inaction after Antietam, 191, 192;
succeeded by Burnside, criticised by Gurowski, 236, 237, 365, 368,
369;
nominated for President, 413;
defeated, 415;
cartoon, 456;
anecdote, 456.
----, Mrs. George B., port., 140.
----, H. B., C major, 164.
McClelland, U. S. revenue cutter, 10.
McClernand, John A., N maj.-gen., 49;
Fort Donelson, 77;
Shiloh, 100, 101;
port., 108;
Columbus, Ky., 223;
Vicksburg campaign, 270-276.
McCook, Alexander McD., N maj.-gen., port., 205;
Murfreesboro', 210;
Chickamauga, 298-301.
----, Anson G., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 527.
----, Daniel, N pvt., killed, Buffington's Ford, 297.
----, Daniel, N brig.-gen., Chickamauga, 302;
killed, Kenesaw Mountain, 387.
----, D. N., N col., Dandridge, Tenn., 436.
----, Edward M., N b'v't maj.-gen., Perryville, 201;
port., 389;
Newnan, Ga., 390.
McCulloch, Ben, C brig.-gen., Dug Spring and Wilson's Creek, 41;
port., 45;
killed at Pea Ridge, 80, 81.
McCullough, ----, C col., Bolivar, Tenn., 227.
McDonald, ----, N color-sergt., Fort Wagner, 292.
McDowell, Irwin, N maj.-gen., 24, 49;
port., 51;
at Bull Run, 53, 54, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63;
Peninsular campaign, 141-160;
Pope's campaign, 167-169;
cartoon, 461.
McDowell, Va., engagement, 216.
McGowan, Samuel, C brig.-gen., wounded, Spottsylvania, 362.
McIntire, ----, N, Somerset, Ky., 340.
McIntosh, James, C brig.-gen., killed at Pea Ridge, 80.
----, John B., N b'v't maj.-gen., Shenandoah Valley, 406.
McKean, Thomas J., N b'v't maj.-gen., Corinth, 206, 207.
McKinstry, Justus, N brig.-gen., port., 230.
McLaughlin, N. B., N b'v't brig.-gen., captured at Ft. Steadman, 489.
McLaws, Lafayette, C maj.-gen., Antietam campaign, 175-177;
port., 177.
McLean, Nathan C., N brig.-gen., port., 422.
McLean House, Appomattox, where Lee surrendered, ills., 447, 494.
McMahon, Martin T., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 367.
McMichael, ----, N maj., Chickamauga, 301.
McMillen, W. L., N brig.-gen., port., 437.
McMinnville, Tenn., 305.
McNeil, John, N b'v't maj.-gen., Cape Girardeau, Mo., 230.
McPherson, James B., N maj.-gen., 107, 108;
Corinth, 207;
port., 210;
Vicksburg campaign, 273, 275;
Meridian, Miss., 375;
Atlanta campaign, 383-390;
Resaca, 383, 385;
killed, 390;
ill., 388, 451;
scene of death of, ill., 482;
compared with Logan, 517.
----, William, 41.
McRae, Alex., capt., U. S. cav., killed, Ft. Craig, N. M., 233.
Mackey, T. J., C capt., _Article_, 465.
Macon, Ga., 390, 422.
Madison, Ga., 425-427.
Madison University, Hamilton, N. Y., company recruited from, 479.
Magenta, Italy, 23, 169.
Magoffin, Beriah, gov. of Ky., 41.
Magruder, John B., C maj-gen., port., 45;
at Big Bethel, 45, 49;
Peninsular campaign, 143-162;
captures Galveston, 348.
Mahone, William, C maj.-gen., port., 445.
Maine _Infantry_, 3d and 4th, Manassas Gap, 333;
5th and 6th, Rappahannock Sta., 335;
12th, Richmond, 445;
20th, Gettysburg, 254;
Rappahannock Sta., 335.
---- 1st art'y, losses, 477;
5th bat'y, Winchester, 407, losses, 483.
Majthenyi, ----, N adj., 121.
Mallory, Stephen R., C sec'y of the navy, port., 36.
----, W. B., C capt., 185.
Malsbury, ----, N, Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Malvern Hill, Va., battle, 159;
ill., 156.
Manassas, C ram, at N. O., 93;
ill., 94.
Manassas Gap, Va., battle, 333, 472.
Manassas Gap Railroad, 168.
Manassas Junction, Va., 45, 52, 53, 54, 60, 140;
evacuated, 143, 166, 167, 171.
Manhattan, N monitor, Mobile Bay, 391.
Mansfield, Joseph K. F., N maj.-gen., port., 49, 52, 53;
Antietam, 177-180;
killed, Antietam, 180, 451.
Manson, Mahlon D., N brig.-gen., Richmond, Ky., 224, 225.
March to the Sea, The, 419-430.
"Marching through Georgia," Henry C. Work, 129.
Marietta, Ga., Atlanta campaign, 385, 520.
Marion County, Tenn., secessionists assessed by Negley, 226.
Marmaduke, John S., C maj.-gen., Cape Girardeau, Mo., 230;
port., 231;
Cane Hill, Ark., 232, 233;
Prairie Grove, Ark., 233;
Pine Bluff, Ark., 344;
Springfield, Mo., 344.
Marsh, Jason, N col., Murfreesboro', 211.
Marshall, Humphrey, C brig.-gen., Big Sandy River, 73, 223;
port., 225.
----, William R., N b'v't brig.-gen., Big Mound, Dak., 348.
----, ----, N corp., Bolivar Heights, 111.
Marston, Gilman, N brig.-gen., Cold Harbor, 367.
Martin, Frank, N (female) pvt., 8th and 25th Mich. inf., 470.
----, Thomas S., N lieut.-col., port., 485.
Martindale, William F., N capt., Shepherdstown, W. Va., 319.
Martinsburg, W. Va., engagement, 111, 175, 176, 406, 407.
Marye's Hill, Va., ill., 194;
battle, 195, 197.
Maryland, struggle for, 43;
invaded by Lee, 175;
2d inf., Antietam, 179;
slavery abolished, 415;
6th (N) inf., losses, 481;
1st (C) inf., losses, 484.
Maryland Heights, Md., 403.
Mason, Charles, N spy, executed, 507.
----, James M., 63;
port., 65.
----, of Virginia, C spy, 505.
Massachusetts _Infantry_ regts., 6th, attacked in Baltimore, 5, 23,
ill., 32;
8th, 24, 25;
11th, Pope's campaign, 171, Chancellorsville, 245;
13th, Bolivar Heights, 111;
15th, Ball's Bluff, 110;
19th, 110, Fredericksburg, 195, 478;
20th, Fredericksburg, 195, sundry battles, 477-478;
38th, Bayou Teche, 348;
54th, Fort Wagner, 239, 290.
---- _Cavalry_, 4th, Richmond, 454.
----, regimental losses, infantry, 12th, Antietam and Manassas, 477;
15th, 477.
Massanutten Mountain, Va., C signal station, 411.
Matchett, Charles G., N capt., Franklin, Tenn., 341.
Matthias, Charles L., N col., Iuka, 204.
Maxey, Samuel B., C brig.-gen., port., 318.
May, ----, C col., mayor of Richmond, 454.
----, ----, N lieut.-col., Rural Hills, Tenn., 229.
Mayfield, Ky., 223.
Mayne, Frank, N (female) sergt., 126th Pa. inf., 470.
Maysville, Mo., battle, 232.
Meade, George G., N maj.-gen., 2d Bull Run, 169;
Fredericksburg, 195;
supersedes Hooker, 250;
Gettysburg, 251-269;
port., 252;
portrait group, 268;
pursues Lee, 333;
Rappahannock Sta., 334;
Robertson's Tavern, Va., 335, 336;
Mine Run, Va., 337;
Wilderness, 354, 358;
Cold Harbor, 365, 368;
advance on Petersburg, 397.
----, Richard K., N 2d lieut., port., 11;
at Sumter, 12;
joins C, 11.
----, ----, N col., killed, Cold Harbor, 367.
Meagher, Thomas F., N brig-.-gen., Antietam, 180;
port., 196;
Fredericksburg, 197, 502.
Measure of Valor, The, 476-485.
Mechanicsville, Va., Peninsular campaign, 144-155.
Mecklenburg, N. C., 190.
Meigs, Montgomery C., N brig.-gen., port., 23, 49.
Memminger, C. G., N sec'y of the treasury, port., 26.
Memphis, Mo., engagement, 230, 231.
----, Tenn., 206, 270, 271, 273, 306, 340;
Smith's raid, 375.
Memphis and Charleston Railroad, 100.
Mendon, Mass., 190.
Meredith, Solomon, N b'v't maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 251.
----, ----, Judge, Richmond, 454.
Meridian, Miss., captured by Sherman, 375.
Merion, N. L., warden Ohio penitentiary, 527.
Meriwether, ----, C lieut.-col., killed, Sacramento, 115.
Merrill, Lewis, N b'v't brig.-gen., Hartsville, Mo., 344, 345.
Merrimac, N frigate, 28, 29;
as C ironclad, ill., 83;
destroys "Cumberland" and "Congress," 84;
battle with "Monitor," ill., 85, 86, 87;
destroyed, 217.
Merritt, Wesley, N maj.-gen., 268;
Robertson's Tavern, 335;
port., 356, 405;
Shenandoah Valley, 406-410.
Metacomet, N gunboat, Mobile Bay, 392.
Metcalfe, Leonidas, N col., Big Hill, 224.
Mexico, French forces in, 66, 382.
Miami, N gunboat, Plymouth, N. C., 434.
Michigan _Infantry_, 1st, loss at Bull Run, 477;
2d and 5th, 470;
7th, 11th, 478;
8th, Secessionville, 219;
Wilmington Island, 221, 470;
9th, Murfreesboro', 226;
12th, 105;
22d, Chickamauga, 303;
25th, 470;
losses--1st, 4th and 24th, 483;
9th engineers, Murfreesboro', 211;
1st cav., 470;
4th cav., Murfreesboro', 211.
----, N gunboat, Lake Erie raid, 528, 529.
Middle Boss Island, Lake Erie, 528.
Middleburg, Va., action, 250, 267.
Miles, Dixon S., N b'v't brig.-gen., 49;
Harper's Ferry, 175, 176.
----, Nelson A., N maj.-gen., advance on Petersburg, 400, 479;
port., 530.
----, W. Porcher, C capt., 17.
Milford, Mo., 122.
Military railroad, ill., 486.
Mill Springs, Ky., battle, 73, 76;
ill., 78.
Milledgeville, Ga., 422.
Millen, Ga., prison camps, 321, 415, 423.
Miller, John F., N b'v't maj.-gen., Liberty Gap, 297.
----, M. M., N capt., Milliken's Bend, 240.
Milliken's Bend, La., battle, 240, 271, 277.
Milroy, Robert H., N maj.-gen., Buffalo Mountain, 114;
McDowell, 216;
port., 217;
Winchester, Va., 250.
Milton, Tenn., battle, 295, 340.
Mine Run, Va., action, 336, 337, 353.
Minnesota, 3d inf., Fitzhugh's Woods, Ark., 437;
1st inf., charge at Gettysburg compared with Balaklava, 476.
----, N cruiser, 68, 85.
Minor Engagements of the first year, 109-122.
Minor Events of the second year, 215-234.
of the third year, 329-349.
of the fourth year, 431-437.
Mint, New Orleans, La., 95, 97.
Minty, Robert H. G., N b'v't maj.-gen., Murfreesboro', 211.
Missionary Ridge, Tenn., 263;
ill., 296, 303-312;
battle, 309, 311, 405.
Mississippi secedes, 9;
6th inf., Shiloh, 101;
2d inf., Gettysburg, 260.
----, regimental losses, 16th, 18th, 29th, 6th, 8th inf., 484.
----, N cruiser at N. O., 90, 91, 93;
ill., 94.
----, military division of the, commanded by Grant, 305.
Mississippian, Jackson, Miss., quoted, 316.
Missouri, struggle for, 35, 38;
guerilla warfare, 79;
minor engagements, 117-122.
---- _Infantry_, 6th Vicksburg, 272;
11th, Iuka, 204;
13th and 14th, Lexington, 118;
25th, 105;
26th, Iuka, 204.
---- _Cavalry_, 1st, Sugar Creek, 231;
7th, Warrensburg, 230;
18th, Rocky Crossing, 342.
----, regimental losses, (N) 11th inf., 483;
12th inf., 483;
13th inf., 483.
---- compromise, 7.
----, Dept. of (N), 73.
Mitchel, Ormsby M., N maj.-gen., Bowling Green, 76.
Mitchell, Robert B., N brig.-gen., Perryville, 203;
port., 205;
Chickamauga, 299.
Mitchell's Ford (Bull Run), 53.
Mizner, John K., N b'v't brig.-gen., Iuka, 203.
Moale, Edward, 11.
Mobile, Ala., 307, 353, 375, 391-395.
Mobile Bay, defences, 391;
battle, 391-396;
ill., 396.
Mobile and Ohio R. R., 100, 375.
Moccasin Point, Tenn., 312, 314.
Mohain, ----, Capt., port., 142.
Molineaux, Edward L., N b'v't maj.-gen., 24.
Monitor, N ironclad, invented by Ericsson, 84;
battle with "Merrimac," ill., 85, 86;
foundered, ill., 88.
"Monitor" and "Merrimac," 83-87.
Monocacy, Md., battle, 402, 403.
Monongahela River, 113.
Montauk, N monitor, destroys the "Nashville," 348.
Montgomery, Ala., seat of C government, 9, 32, 33, 526-532.
Monticello, N cruiser, 531.
Monticello, Ga., 427.
Moore, Absalom B., N col., Hartsville, Tenn., 229.
----, Thomas O., gov. of La., port., 96.
----, ----, N capt., Ripley, Tenn., 340.
Moorefield, W. Va., action, 337.
Moorehead City, N. C., 72.
Morell, George W., N maj.-gen., port., 180.
Morgan, Edwin D., gov. of N. Y., port., 18;
influence, 448.
----, George W., N brig.-gen., Vicksburg campaign, 272.
----, John H., C brig.-gen., Murfreesboro', 209;
port., 211;
Cynthiana, Ky., 223;
Hartsville, Tenn., 229;
Milton, Tenn., 295;
raid into Ohio, 297;
port., 297;
Vaught's Hill, Tenn., 340;
Snow Hill, Tenn., 341;
Crockett's Cove, W. Va., 433, 526-532.
----, Mrs. John H., port., 211.
----, John T., C brig.-gen., port., 427, 474;
_Article_, 472-474.
----, ----, N maj., Pleasant Hill, La., 379.
Morgan's Escape, 526, 527.
Morris, George U., N lieut., port., 84.
----, William H., N brig.-gen., port., 357.
----, ----, col., killed, Cold Harbor, 367.
Morris Island, Charleston harbor, 5, 12, 14, 15, 288-294.
Morton, Oliver P., gov. of Ind., port., 18;
influence, 448.
Morton's Ford, Va., 335.
Mosby, John S., C col., 164;
operations in Va., 331;
quoted, 331, 332;
port., 332.
Moss, Lemuel, Christian commission, 326.
Mott, Gershom, N maj.-gen., Spottsylvania, 359;
port., 530.
----, Samuel R., N b'v't brig.-gen., Chancellorsville, 246.
Moultrieville, S. C., 11.
Mount Roan, Va., 335.
Mount Sterling, Ky., 223, 224.
Mount Vernon, action, Ala., 10, 35.
Mount Washington, N gunboat, 348.
Mountjoy, ----, N cav., Warrenton Junction, 331.
Mouton, Alfred, C brig.-gen., killed, Sabine Cross Roads, 377.
Mower, Joseph A., N maj.-gen., ports., 30, 514;
Iuka, 204;
Pleasant Hill, 379, 483.
Mullany, J. R. M., N naval com., Mobile Bay, 393.
Mulligan, James A., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 117;
Lexington, Mo., 118.
Munfordville, Ky., battle, 115;
ill., 112, 200.
Munsell, Mrs. Jane R., 540.
Munson, Gilbert D., N col., Bald Hill, Atlanta, 389.
Murfreesboro', Tenn., battle, 209-213;
ill., 202;
_Map_, 211;
captured by Pillow, 226, 227, 295, 298, 340, 405.
Murphy, R. C., N col., Holly Springs, 271.
Murray, ----, N maj., 3d Ky. Cavalry, 115.
"My Maryland," James Ryder Randall, 131, 413.
Naglee, Henry M., N brig.-gen., ports., 159, 552.
Nag's Head, N. C., 72.
Nashville, Tenn., 79, 209, 226, 307, 308, 340, 383;
battle, _Map_, 426.
----, C cruiser, ill., 76;
destroyed, Fort McAllister, Ga., 348.
Nashville and Chattanooga R. R., 209.
Nassau, West Indies, 288.
Natchitochez, La., 379.
National finances (The), 415-417.
Naval Academy, U. S., 25, 47.
Navy, the condition at the opening of the war, 66.
"Neckties, Jeff Davis's," 375.
Negley, James S., N maj.-gen., Falling Waters, 111;
port., 226;
Sweeden's Cove, 226;
Nashville, 227.
Nelson, William, N maj.-gen., Shiloh, 101, 103, 513;
Richmond, Ky., 225;
port., 226;
killed by Gen. Jeff. C. Davis, 513.
Nelson's Farm, Va., 159.
Neosho, N gunboat, Grand Ecore, La., 381.
Newark, O., arrest of (C) Lieut. S. B. Davis, 471.
New Berne, N. C., 67, 72, 193.
New Carthage, La., 274.
Newcomer, ----, N private, spy, 510.
New Era, N gunboat, Fort Pillow, 320.
New Hampshire _Infantry_--5th, losses in battle, 477;
Antietam, 178, 179;
6th, Antietam, 178, 179;
7th, Olustee, 436;
9th, Spottsylvania, 361;
10th, Cold Harbor, 367;
13th, Fredericksburg, 199.
New Hope Church, Ga., battle, 385;
ill., 466.
New Hope Church, Va., 335.
New Ironsides, N frigate, Fort Wagner, 292, 293.
New Jersey, 15th infantry, Spottsylvania, 361;
1st cavalry, Harrisonburg, 216;
Hawes's shop, 363, 364;
2d cavalry, 348;
infantry losses--8th, 12th, 15th, 480.
New Lisbon, O., Morgan's surrender, 297.
New Madrid, Mo., 99.
New Market, Va., 159, 433.
New Mexico, invaded, 233, 234.
Newnan, Ga., 390.
New Orleans, La., 10, 35, 83;
important to Confederacy, 88;
ill., 89;
defences, 90;
determination of U. S. to capture, 91;
captured, 96, 270, 307, 350, 375, 391, 395.
Newport News, Va., 45.
Newton, John, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 192.
Newtown, near Kernstown, Va., 216.
New Ulm, Minn., Indian massacre, 234.
New York _Infantry_ regts., 1st, 2d, 3d, Big Bethel, 25;
4th, Kelly's Ford, 332;
5th (Duryea's) Zouaves, Big Bethel, 45;
6th, 25;
7th, Big Bethel, 45;
8th, 9th, 25;
11th, draft riots, 287;
22d, ill., 176;
40th, Gettysburg, 254, 260;
42d, Ball's Bluff, 109;
43d, 479;
44th, ill. of camp, 48, port. group officers, 287;
45th, Tybee Island, 220;
48th, 220;
51st, Antietam, 179;
57th, ambulance corps, ill., 475;
63d, 69th, Fredericksburg, 198, 199;
71st, 25;
81st, 85th, Fair Oaks, 147;
89th, Suffolk, 329, 478;
92d, Fair Oaks, 147;
95th, 479;
98th, Fair Oaks, 147, 150, Cold Harbor, 365, 367;
112th, Suffolk, 329;
118th, Cold Harbor, 367;
121st, Rappahannock Sta., 335;
124th, Gettysburg, 254, 260;
125th, Rappahannock Sta., 335;
140th, Gettysburg, 254, 260;
_Cavalry_, 1st, Shepherdstown, 319;
5th, Warrenton Junc., Va., 331;
8th, Brandy Sta., 249;
_Artillery_, 14th, battle flags, ill., 472, Petersburg Crater, 479;
regimental losses, inf., 5th (Duryea's Zouaves), Bull Run, 477, 479;
40th, 42d, 44th (Ellsworth Avengers), 48th, 49th, 51st, 52d, 59th,
61st, 63d, 69th, 70th, 76th, 79th, 81st, 82d, 83d, 84th, 86th,
88th, 93d, 97th, 100th, 479;
101st, 477;
109th, 111th, 112th, 120th, 121st, 124th, 126th, 137th, 140th,
147th, 149th, 164th, 170th, 480;
regimental losses, heavy art'y, 7th, 8th, 9th, 14th, 478;
furnished one-sixth of all troops, 479.
New York, N. Y., departure 7th reg., 24;
ill., 33;
mass meeting in Union Square, 236;
draft riots, 285-287;
Sanitary commission, 324.
Niagara Falls, N. Y., peace conference, 412.
Nichols, Edward T., N naval com'r, port., 370.
----, Geo. Ward, N maj., quoted, 422.
Nicholls, Francis T., C brig.-gen., port., 260.
Nields, Henry C., N actg. ensign, Mobile Bay, 392, 393.
Nims, Ormond F., N capt., Sabine Cross Roads, 377.
Nolen, ----, N capt., Charleston, Mo., 230.
Norfolk, Va., 28, 83, 87;
surrenders to Wool, 217.
Norfolk and Petersburg R. R., 398.
North Anna, Va., 362, 363.
North Atlantic squadron, 234.
North Carolina secedes, 35, 43;
1st inf., Tranter's Creek, 218;
proposes to secede from Confederacy, 316;
peace movement in, 420;
regimental losses, 26th, 11th, 4th inf., 483;
27th, 2d inf., 484.
North Carolina, C ram, 531.
Northrop, Lucius B., C com.-gen., brutality, 320, 321.
Nugent, Robert, N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 196;
Fredericksburg, 198, 199.
Nullification Act of S. C., 7.
O'Brien, FitzJames, N capt., 24;
fatally wounded, Blooming Gap, 217.
----, Henry J., N col., killed, New York draft riots, 287.
Oglesby, Richard J., N maj.-gen., port., 276.
Ohio _Infantry_, 3d, Perryville, 201, anecdote, 468;
4th and 5th, Blue's Gap, 216;
6th, Kelly's Ford, 332;
7th, Cross Lanes, 113;
8th, Blooming Gap, 217;
9th, Logan's Cross Roads, 73;
10th, Perryville, 201, Murfreesboro', 211;
14th and 17th, Camp Wildcat, 114;
20th, Vicksburg, 277, 279;
23d, Clark's Hollow, 218, South Mountain, 176;
25th, Huntersville, 114;
34th, Fayetteville, 218, Winchester, 407;
40th, Lookout Mountain, 313;
62d and 67th, Fort Wagner, 291, 292;
78th, Atlanta, 389;
82d, McDowell, 216;
92d, Shiloh, 107;
93d, Lebanon, 229;
96th, Chickamauga, 303;
102d, Sultana disaster, 469;
107th, Gettysburg, 255;
108th, Hartsville, 229;
115th, Sultana disaster, 469;
122d, Cedar Creek, 411.
----, 5th cavalry, Rocky Crossing, 342.
----, losses, 7th inf., 481;
23d inf., 481;
25th inf., 481;
Sands's batt'y, 483.
Ohio, Army of the, commanded by Schofield, 383.
"Old Folks at Home," Stephen Collins Foster, port., 134.
Old Fort Wayne, Ark., battle, 232.
Olden, Charles S., gov. of N. J., port., 18.
Oliver, John M., N b'v't maj.-gen., Corinth, 206.
Olmstead, Charles H., N col., Fort Pulaski, 220, 221.
Olmsted, Frederick Law, sanitary commission, 325.
Olustee, Fla., colored troops, 237;
battle, 436.
O'Meara, ----, N col., killed, Chattanooga, 314.
"On to Richmond," 52, 140.
Oneida, N gunboat, New Orleans, 90, 93;
ill., 94;
Mobile Bay, 393.
Opdyke, Emerson, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 302.
Opequan, Va., 406;
battle, 407, 409.
Orange and Alexandria R. R., 166, 250, 334.
Orange Court House, Va., Lee's headquarters, 353.
Orchard Knob, Tenn., ill., 296, 312, 313.
Ord, Edward O. C., N maj.-gen., Dranesville, 113;
Iuka, 203-205;
port., 207;
Corinth, 207;
Vicksburg, 276;
Southside R. R., Va., 443, 445.
O'Bierne, James R., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 552.
O'Rorke, Patrick H., N lieut., Ft. Pulaski, 221;
killed, Gettysburg, 254, 261;
port., 261.
Osage Island, Mo., battle, 231.
Ossipee, N gunboat, Mobile Bay, 392.
Osterhaus, Peter J., N maj.-gen., port., 423, 483.
Ould, Robert, C col., 322.
Overend, W. H., artist, 394.
Overland campaign, The, 350-369.
Owasco, N steamer, Galveston, 348.
Owen, Joshua T., N brig.-gen., port., 357.
----, Robert Dale, 189.
Owl Creek, Shiloh, 100, 103.
Oxford, Va., 362.
Ozark, Mo., 344.
Pactolus, N. C., 218.
Paducah, Ky., 76, 320.
Paine, Halbert E., N b'v't maj.-gen., attitude toward slavery, 185.
Paine's Cross Roads, Va., fight, 446.
Paintsville, Ky., 73.
Palmer, Innis N., N b'v't maj.-gen., Fair Oaks, 150;
port., 159.
----, James S., N commodore, Mobile Bay, 392.
----, John M., N maj.-gen., Murfreesboro', 212;
port., 226;
La Vergne, Tenn., 227, 229, 514.
Palmerston, Lord, favors the Confederacy, 269.
Palmetto flag, cut 9;
raised at Charleston, 9.
Pamlico Sound, N. C., 67.
Paris, France, treaty, 374.
----, Va., 267.
Paris, Comte de, ports., 142, 147.
Parke, John G., N maj., North Carolina expedition, 72;
port., 73;
advance on Petersburg, 399;
near Petersburg, 443, 445.
Parker, Ely S., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 530.
----, Foxhall A., N comr., Mobile Bay, 392.
----, Reuben, N pvt., 1st Vt. inf., adventure of, 502.
Parker's Cross Roads, Tenn., battle, 229, 230.
---- Store, Va., 335.
Parrott, E. A., N col., Dog Walk, 225.
Parsons, Charles C., N lieut., Perryville, 201;
Murfreesboro', 212.
----, Emily E., Miss, port., 537, 539.
Pass à l'Outre, Miss. River, La., 91.
Patrick, Marsena R., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 180.
Patriotism, Oration on, 464.
Patterson, Joseph, Christian commission, 326.
----, Robert, N maj.-gen., at Harper's Ferry, 47;
at Bull Run, 54;
port., 57;
Bunker Hill, 111.
Patton, W. T., C col., 113.
Paul, Gabriel R., N maj.-gen., port., 257;
Gettysburg, 259.
Paulding, Hiram, N rear-admiral, 29;
port., 370.
Pawnee, N cruiser, 15, 29.
Paxton, E. F., C brig.-gen., killed, Chancellorsville, 242.
Pea Ridge, Ark., battle of, 80;
ill., 81, 231.
Peabody, Everett, N col., 105.
Peace, 448-454;
convention, 182;
negotiations, 441.
Peach Tree Creek, Ga., battle, 387.
Peck, John J., N maj.-gen., Suffolk, Va., 329.
Pegram, John C., C maj.-gen., in W. Va., 45, 49;
port., 204;
Somerset, Ky., 339;
Wilderness, 357.
----, R. G., C capt. art. at Petersburg mine, 470.
Pelham, John, C artillery, killed, Kelly's Ford, Va., 333.
Pelouze, Louis H., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 406.
Pemberton, John C., C lieut.-gen., supersedes Van Dorn, 209, 271;
Vicksburg, 274-280;
port., 275.
Pender, William D., C maj.-gen., killed, Gettysburg, 259.
Pendleton, George H., nominated for vice-president, 413.
----, William C., C brig.-gen., 493.
Peninsula Campaign (The), 140-162.
Pennsylvania _Infantry_, 3d and 16th, Kelly's Ford, 332;
27th, 24;
28th, Bolivar Heights, 111;
34th, Kelly's Ford, 332;
46th, 470;
49th, Rappahannock Sta., 335;
51st, Antietam, 178, 179;
51st, losses, 479;
63d, Manassas Gap, 333;
71st, Ball's Bluff, 109;
81st, Antietam, 178, 179;
85th, 322;
104th, Fair Oaks, 146-150;
119th, Rappahannock Sta., 335;
126th, 470;
141st, losses, 470;
_Cavalry_, 1st, Hawes's Shop, 363;
7th, Murfreesboro', 211;
8th, Chancellorsville, 242;
15th, Murfreesboro', 211;
losses, 11th inf., 480;
28th inf., 480;
49th inf., 480;
72d inf., 480;
83d inf., 480;
93d inf., 480;
119th inf., 480;
140th inf., 481.
Penrose, William H., N brig.-gen., port., 406.
Pensacola, Fla., 10, 393;
bombardment, ill., 475.
Pensacola, N sloop, at N. O., 90, 91, 93.
Perkins, George H., N naval capt., New Orleans, 95;
Mobile Bay, 392.
Perrin, Abner, C brig.-gen., killed, Spottsylvania, 362, 451.
----, James H., N col., 479.
Perryville, Ky., battle, 201, 307, 405.
Peter, W. G., C lieut., executed as a spy, 507.
Petersburg, Va., 353, 368, 387;
approached by Grant, 397-400;
map of vicinity, 399;
explosion of mine, 399;
ill., 400, 402, 406;
fighting before, 443;
outer defences taken, 445;
evacuated, 445, 492;
Court House, ill., 468;
Burnside's Mine, 469;
Crow's Nest observatory, ill., 469.
Peterson, Margaret Augusta, hospital services and death, 327;
port., 327.
Pettigrew, J. Johnston, C brig.-gen., port., 155.
Peyton, ----, C col., 493.
Phelps, S. Ledyard, N lieut.-com., Peninsular campaign, 154.
----, Thomas S., N rear-adm., 156;
survey of Potomac River, 234.
Philadelphia, Tenn., action, 342.
Philippi, W. Va., battle, ill., 39, 45.
"Philippi races," 45.
Phillips, Jesse L., N b'v't brig.-gen., Rocky Crossing, Miss., 342.
----, Wendell, port., 190.
Philo Parsons, Lake steamer, captured by raiders, 528, 529.
Pickens, Francis W., gov. S. C., 14.
Picket, N gunboat, exploded, 219.
Pickett, George E., C maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 257-268;
port., 263, 387.
----, Mrs. Lasalle Corbell, article, 453, 454.
Pierce, E. W., N b'v't brig.-gen., at Big Bethel, 45.
----, Franklin, president of the U. S., 36;
attitude toward slavery, 183;
opposed to the war, 284.
Pierpont, Francis H., gov. W. Va., 45;
port., 48.
Pierre Bayou, Miss., 274.
Pike, Albert, C brig.-gen., 80, 81;
"Dixie," 131;
port., 131.
Piketon, Mo., 122.
Pillow, Gideon J., C brig.-gen., 41;
Fort Donelson, 79;
port., 80.
Pilot Knob, Mo., 118;
ill., 119.
Pin Indians, 81.
Pine Bluff, Ark., engagement, 344.
----, Tenn., fight, 437.
Pine Mountain, Ga., occupied by Johnston, 385;
Polk killed, 386.
Pinkerton, Allan, port., 233.
Pinney, Oscar F., N capt., Perryville, 201.
Pipe Creek, near Gettysburg, 251, 252, 263.
Pittsburgh Landing, Tenn., 100;
ill., 102, 107.
Pittsburgh, N gunboat, Island No. 10, 99.
Pleasant Hill, La., battle, 378, 379.
Pleasonton, Alfred, N maj.-gen., Chancellorsville, 242;
Brandy Sta., Va., 249;
Aldie, Va., 250;
port., 250;
Gettysburg, 251;
Upperville, Va., 267.
Plummer, Joseph B., N brig.-gen., at New Madrid, 99;
Fredericktown, Mo., 118.
Plymouth, N. C., 67;
engagement, 218, 219, 317;
captured by Gen. Hoke, 433-434.
----, N frigate, 29.
Pocahontas, N vessel, 15.
----, Miss., 207.
Pocotaligo, S. C., 220, 439.
Poe, Orlando M., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 552.
Poindexter, ----, C col., Roan's Tanyard, Mo., 230.
Point of Rocks, Va., 28, 397.
Point Pleasant, W. Va., action, 337.
Polk, James K., President of the U. S., attitude toward slavery, 183.
----, Leonidas, C lieut.-gen., 99;
port., 100;
Shiloh, 103, 209;
Chickamauga, 298, 303;
Meridian 375;
Atlanta campaign, 385;
killed, Lost Mountain, 386, 451.
Pollard, E. A., quoted, 213, 316.
Pope, John, N maj.-gen., 79;
New Madrid, 99;
Island No. 10, 100;
port., 163;
commands Army of Va., 163;
campaign, 163-173;
map of operations, 166, 358;
cartoon, 457.
Pope's campaign, 163-173.
Poplar Grove Church, ill., 350.
Port Gibson, Miss., action, 274.
Port Hudson, La., 240, 270, 271, 273;
surrendered, 276, 308, 345, 391.
Port Republic, Va., action, 216;
occupied by Early, 409.
Port Royal, S. C., 60, 71, 289.
Porter, Andrew, N brig.-gen., 49;
at Bull Run, 55, 57.
----, David, commodore U. S. navy, 76, 90.
----, David D., N rear-adm., port., 90;
at N. O., 90-95;
Baton Rouge, 270;
Vicksburg campaign, 271-277;
Alexandria, La., 375;
Grand Ecore, La., 381, 382.
----, Eliza C., Mrs., 534.
----, Fitz-John, N maj.-gen., at Harper's Ferry, 47;
Peninsular campaign, 155-162;
Pope's campaign, 168-170;
port., 168;
court-martialed, 169;
Antietam, 178.
----, Horace, N b'v't brig.-gen., Fort Pulaski, 221;
Chickamauga, 302;
port., 530.
----, Peter A., N col., killed, 478.
----, William D., N commodore, Fort Henry, 76;
port., 270.
----, ----, N col., killed, Cold Harbor, 367.
Porterfield, G. A., col., Va. vols., 44.
Portsmouth, Va., 217, 329.
----, N vessel, at N. O., 90, 92.
Posey, Carnot, C brig.-gen., Bristoe Sta., Va., 334.
Potomac, Army of the, commanded by McClellan, 45, 165, 169, 175;
commanded by Burnside, 193;
commanded by Hooker, 241;
commanded by Meade, 250;
pursues Lee, 258;
Grant's headquarters, 351, 353;
organization, 354;
advance on Petersburg, 397;
defence of Washington, 402;
review in Washington, 450;
in winter quarters, ill., 499.
---- River, surveyed, 234;
aqueduct bridge, ill., 473.
Potter, Robert B., N maj.-gen., Antietam, 179;
port., 401.
----, ----, N col., Tranter's Creek, N. C., 218.
Potter House, Atlanta, Ga., ill., 428.
Pound Gap, Ky., action, 223.
Powell, William H., N b'v't maj., 105.
----, ----, 33.
----, ----, N col., Wytheville, Va., 339.
Powell's River Bridge, Tenn., fight, 437.
Prairie Grove, Ark., battle, 233.
Preble, George H., N commodore, port., 370.
Preliminary Events, 5-18.
Preliminary Operations in the West, 375-382.
Prentiss, Benjamin M., N maj.-gen., Shiloh, 100-107;
port., 105;
speech on negro soldiers, 239;
Helena, Ark., 344.
Preparation for Conflict, 19-29;
in the North, 23, 35, 36.
Presidential Election (The), 412-415.
Press, Nashville, quoted, 507.
Preston, John S., C brig.-gen., port., 318.
----, William, C maj.-gen., port., 281.
Prestonburg, Ky., 73.
Price, Sterling, C maj.-gen., 39, 41;
port., 45;
in Mo., 79, 118, 122;
in Ark., 80;
Iuka, 203-206;
Corinth, 206;
Helena, Ark., 344.
Prince, Henry, N brig.-gen., port., 335;
Robertson's Tavern, Va., 336.
Princeton, W. Va., 218.
Prisons and Escapes, 520-527.
Pryor, Roger A., C brig.-gen., 17;
port., 508.
Pulaski Monument, Savannah, Ga., ill., 115.
Putnam, Douglas, Jr., N col., 107.
----, Haldimand S., N col., killed, Fort Wagner, 290.
Quantrell, W. C., C guerilla, Independence, Mo., 230;
Warrensburg, Mo., 230;
Lawrence, Kan., 345.
Quarantine Station, La., 95.
"Queen Caroline," 154.
Quinby, Isaac F., N brig.-gen., Vicksburg campaign, 273.
Raccoon Ford, Va., 164, 166, 336.
Radcliffe, ----, C supply agent, 510, 511.
Raids and Raiders, Union and Confederate, 528-532.
Rains, Gabriel J., C brig.-gen., port., 277.
----, James E., C brig.-gen., port., 158;
killed, Murfreesboro', 211;
Tazewell, Tenn., 227.
Raleigh, N. C., 441.
---- Court House, W. Va., 339.
----, C gunboat, 531.
Ramsay, George D., N brig.-gen., port., 414.
----, Joseph G., N lieut., killed at Bull Run, 59.
Ramseur, Stephen D., C maj.-gen., wounded, Spottsylvania, 362, 403;
killed, Cedar Creek, Va., 410.
Randall, A. W., Gov. of Wis., port., 18.
----, James Ryder, "My Maryland," 131;
"Boy Major," 333.
Randol, Alanson M., b'v't brig.-gen., 158.
Rankin's Hotel, Cynthiana, Ky., 223.
Ransom, Matthew W., C maj.-gen., port., 491.
----, Robert, Jr., C maj.-gen., Antietam, 180;
port., 195.
----, Thomas E. G., N b'v't maj.-gen., 316;
Sabine Cross Roads, 378.
----, ----, N lieut.-col. 22d Ill., 117.
Rappahannock Ford, Va., 166.
---- Station, Va., 166;
action, 334, 335.
Raritan, N cruiser, 29.
Rations, Confederate, short, in March, 1865, 485.
Raum, Green B., N brig.-gen., port., 311.
Rawlins, John A., N b'v't maj.-gen., 107, 108;
ports., 31, 552.
Raymond, Henry J., Republican convention, 412;
cartoon, 462.
----, Miss., action, 274, 278.
Reagan, John H., C postmaster-genl., port., 26;
captured with Davis, 448.
Realf, Richard, N lieut., Chickamauga, 301.
Reams Station, Va., action, 400.
"Rebels" (author unknown), 132.
Rectortown, Va., fight, 433.
Red River Expedition, 375-382.
Redfield, H. V., quoted, 502.
----, Jas., N lt.-col., killed, 420.
Redwood, Minn., destroyed by Indians, 234.
Reese, Harry, N sgt. at Burnside's Mine, Petersburg, 469.
Refusal of Governors of certain States to furnish troops, 36, 37.
Register, Baltimore, Md., 33.
Reilly, James W., N brig.-gen., 429.
Remington, ----, N lieut., Gettysburg, 260.
Reminiscences of the Battle of Bull Run, 472-474.
Reno, Jesse L., N maj.-gen., N. C. expedition, 72;
port., 73;
Pope's campaign, 164-169;
killed, South Mountain, 176, 451.
Renshaw, W. B., N com'der, killed, Galveston, 348.
Republican, Lynchburg, Va., quoted, 316.
Republican Party, convention, 412.
Resaca, Ga., battle, 383, 385.
Review of the Army, 450;
ill., 452.
Reynolds, John F., N maj.-gen., Cheat Mountain, 114;
Pope's campaign, 166, 168;
port., 250;
killed, Gettysburg, 251-267, 451;
monument, 552.
----, Joseph J., N maj.-gen., Chickamauga, 298, 299.
Rhode Island, 1st inf., 25, 193;
Kelly's Ford, 332;
5th inf., 470.
Rice, James C., N brig.-gen., killed, Spottsylvania, 362.
Rich Mountain, W. Va., action, 45.
Richardson, Albert D., N correspondent, adventures, 520-523.
----, Israel B., N maj.-gen., 49;
at Bull Run, 54;
killed, Antietam, 180;
port., 485.
----, William P., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 414.
Richmond, Ky., 200;
battle, 224, 342.
----, Miss., 275.
----, Va., seat of C government, 9, 33;
ill. of capitol, 28, 140-162, 163, 164, 193, 197, 307;
Libby Prison, ills., 320, 520;
prison camps, 321, 354-369, 387, 397-399;
map of vicinity, 399, 402, 406;
visit of peace commissioners, 412;
evacuated, 445;
warehouses fired, ironclads blown up, 445;
occupied by Gen. Weitzel, 445;
ill., 451;
U. S. flag raised, 454;
C cemetery, ill., 512;
N cemetery, ill., 525.
----, N cruiser, at N. O., 90, 93.
Ricketts, James B., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 57;
at Bull Run, 55, 57, 59;
Thoroughfare Gap, 167;
defence of Washington, 402.
----, R. Bruce, N capt., Gettysburg, 254, 255.
Riddle, William, N maj., Gettysburg, 267.
Riggen, ----, N private, killed, Gettysburg, 255.
Ripley, Roswell S., C brig.-gen., at Port Royal, 71;
Antietam, 180.
Ripley, Miss., 206.
----, Tenn., action, 340.
Ritchie, John, N b'v't brig.-gen., Shirley's Ford, Mo., 231.
Roanoke Island, N. C., 71;
map, 75, 193.
---- Sound, N. C., 71.
Roan's Tanyard, Silver Creek, Mo., engagement, 230.
Robbins, Walter R., N b'v't brig.-gen., Hawes's Shop, Va., 363, 364.
Roberts, Benjamin S., N b'v't maj.-gen., Ft. Craig, N. M., 233.
Robertson's Tavern, Va., action, 335, 336.
Robertsville, S. C., 439.
Robinson House, Bull Run, ill., 165.
Robinson, James S., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 386.
----, John C., N b'v't maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 252;
port., 363.
----, Samuel, N spy, executed, 529.
Rock Creek, Gettysburg, 252, 254.
Rockbridge (Va.) cavalry, 319.
Rocky Crossing, Miss., battle, 342.
Rocky Gap, Va., engagement, 333.
Rodes, Robert E., C maj.-gen., port., 146;
Antietam, 180;
Robertson's Tavern, 336;
Ft. Stevens, D. C., 403;
killed, Winchester, 407;
port., 411.
Rodgers, C. R. P., N rear-adm., port., 69.
----, John, N rear-adm., port., 69;
siege of Charleston, 290.
Rodman, Isaac P., N brig.-gen., killed, Antietam, 180.
Rogersville, Ky., battle, 224, 225.
Rolla, Mo., 79.
Rome, Ga., 307, 308.
Romney, W. Va., engagements, 113, 216.
Root, George F., "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," 125;
"The Battle Cry of Freedom," 138.
Rosa, Rudolph, N col., Tybee Island, 220.
Rosecrans, William S., N maj.-gen., in W. Va., 45, 113;
ports., 114, 204;
Iuka, 203-205;
Corinth, 206-209;
supersedes Buell, 203, 209;
Murfreesboro', 209-212, 215;
Chickamauga, 297-303;
superseded by Thomas, 305, 308;
anecdote, 457, 481;
deceived by Mrs. Col. Thomas in Tennessee, anecdote, 506.
Rosengarten, Joseph G., N maj., Gettysburg, 266.
Ross, Anna M., Miss, 538.
----, John, chief Cherokee Indians, 81.
----, Marion A., N spy, executed, 529.
Rosser, Thomas L., C maj.-gen., Wilderness, 356;
Tom's Brook, Va., 410;
Rectortown, Va., 433;
port., 491.
Rossville, Ga., 299, 301.
Rough and Ready, Ga., 422.
Round Mountain, Ala., iron-works burned, 296.
Round Top, Gettysburg, 252, 263, 265.
Rousseau, Lovell H., N maj.-gen., 41;
Perryville, 201;
port., 205;
Murfreesboro', 212, 213.
Rober, Tenn., action, 340.
Rowan, Stephen C., N vice-adm., 15;
N. C. expedition, 72;
port., 73;
siege of Charleston, 293.
Rowlett's Station, Ky. (see Munfordville).
Royall, William B., N capt., 151.
Rubadeau, ----, N sergt., killed, Spottsylvania, 361.
Ruffin, Edmund, 15.
Ruger, Thomas H., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 386.
Ruggles, Daniel, C brig.-gen., Shiloh, 103;
Rocky Crossing, Miss., 342.
Runyon, Theodore, N brig.-gen., 49.
Rural Hills, Tenn., engagement, 229.
Russell, David A., N b'v't maj.-gen., Rappahannock Sta., 335;
killed, Winchester, 407;
port., 411.
----, John, Lord, favors the Confederacy, 269.
----, ----, Earl, neutrality discussion, 372, 373.
Russia, friendly to the United States, 66.
Sabine Cross Roads, La., battle, 377, 378.
Sacramento, Ky., engagement, 115.
Safford, Mary J., Miss, 538;
port., 539.
Sailor's Creek, Va., engagement, 446.
St. Helena Island, S. C., 69, 71.
St. Joseph, Mo., 38.
St. Louis, Mo., 37;
loyal Germans, 41, 392.
St. Louis and Cincinnati R. R., 140.
St. Luke's Hospital, New York, draft riot, 285.
St. Michael's Church, Charleston, S. C., ill., 294.
St. Peter's Church, near White House, Va., ill., 155.
Salem, Mo., 122.
Salem Heights, Va., battle, 243.
Salisbury, N. C., prison camps, 321, 440, 520.
Salkehatchie River, S. C., fight, 440.
Sanders, William P., N brig.-gen., killed, Knoxville, 342;
port., 480.
----, ----, N col., Somerset, Ky., 340.
Sandford, ----, N b'v't maj.-gen., at Harper's Ferry, 47.
Sandusky, O., Lake Erie raid, 528.
Sanitary and Christian Commissions (The), 324-328.
Sanitary Commission, 324-328;
port., group officers, 326;
ill. of headquarters, 327, 448;
ill. of hospital, 540.
San Jacinto, N frigate, 63;
ill., 63.
Santa Fé, N. M., 233.
Satraps, 283.
Savage's Station, Va., battle, 158.
Savannah, Ga., 32;
Pulaski Monument, ill., 115, 220, 289, 290, 423;
riot, 436, 439;
President Davis a prisoner, 448.
----, Tenn., 101.
Sawyer, Charles C., "When this cruel war is over," 127.
----, Henry W., N capt., Libby Prison, 348, 349.
Saxton, Rufus, N b'v't maj.-gen., 239;
port., 414.
Scales, Alfred M., C brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 259.
Scarytown, W. Va., 113.
Schenck, Robert C., N maj.-gen., 49;
Bull Run, 55;
Shenandoah Valley, 216;
port., 217.
----,----, N sergt., killed, Spottsylvania, 361.
Schiller, J. C. F. von, quoted, 498.
Schimmelpfennig, Alex., N brig.-gen., occupies Charleston, 440.
Schoepf, Albin, N brig.-gen., Camp Wildcat, 73, 114.
Schofield, John M., N maj.-gen., 41;
Atlanta campaign, 383-387;
port., 385;
with Thomas at Nashville, 421;
Franklin, 427-430;
joins Sherman at Goldsboro', 441.
Schurz, Carl, N maj.-gen., port., 254.
Schuyler, Philip, Jr., N maj., 24.
Scott, John, N spy, executed, 529.
----, John S., C col., Somerset, Ky., 339, 340.
----, Thomas M., C brig.-gen., port., 341.
----, Winfield, N b'v't lieut.-gen., port., 12, 20, 38, 48, 49, 52,
53, 54;
retires, 140;
attitude toward Sanitary Commission, 324.
Scribner, Benjamin F., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 302.
Searcy Landing, Little Red River, Ark., engagement, 231.
Secession, contemplated, 7;
begun by South Carolina, ordinances by other States, 9.
Secessionville, S. C., battle, 219;
ill., 221.
"Secret History of the Confederacy," quoted, 316.
Sectional feeling a cause of the war, 7.
Sedgwick, John, N maj.-gen., Antietam, 178, 180;
Fredericksburg, 241, 242, 243;
port., 242;
Salem Heights, 243;
Gettysburg, 252, 259, 262;
Rappahannock Sta., 334, 335;
Wilderness, 354;
Spottsylvania, 358;
killed, 359;
ill., 360, 451.
Seeley's Battery, losses, 483.
Seelye, Miss ("Frank Thompson"), N private 2d Mich. inf., 470.
Selma, Ala., 375.
Seminary Ridge, Gettysburg, 251-256.
Semmes, Paul J., C brig.-gen., killed, Gettysburg, 259.
----, Raphael, C rear-adm., 9;
commands "Alabama," 371;
battle with "Kearsarge," 372;
port., 372.
Sequatchie Valley, Tenn., 226.
Serrell, Edward W., N b'v't brig.-gen., siege of Charleston, 294.
Seven Days, 160.
Seven Pines, Va., battle, 146.
Sevierville, Tenn., fight near, 436.
Seward, William H., N Secy. of State, port., 6, 65;
emancipation, 189;
criticised by Gurowski, 237, 283;
letter to Minister Adams, 372-374, 375;
with Lincoln at Ft. Monroe, 441;
attacked by an assassin, 449.
----, William H., Jr., N brig.-gen., port., 362, 478.
Seymour, Horatio, Gov. of New York, opposed to the war, 284;
port., 285;
speech to rioters, 287;
Democratic convention, 413.
----, Thomas H., proposed for president, 413.
----, Truman, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 11;
at Sumter, 11;
2d Bull Run, 169;
Wilderness, 357;
Olustee, Florida, 436.
Shackelford, James M., N brig.-gen., East Tenn., 341.
Shadrack, Perry G., N spy, executed, 529.
Shady Grove Church, Spottsylvania, 359.
Shaler, Alexander, N b'v't maj.-gen., 24;
port., 35;
Wilderness, 357.
Sharpsburg, Md., Antietam campaign, 175-179.
Shaw, Jas., Jr., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 552.
----, Robert G., N col., port., 238;
commands first colored regiment, 239;
killed, Fort Wagner, 24, 239, 290;
courage, 291.
----, William T., N col., Pleasant Hill, 379.
----, ---- N lieut., Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Shelby, Joseph O., C brig.-gen., 437.
Shelbyville, Tenn., 510, 529.
Shenandoah, C cruiser, 372.
----, Army of the, commanded by Sheridan, 405.
---- City, Va., 111.
---- Valley, 143-152, 163, 193;
campaign, 216;
invaded, 250;
Lee's retreat, 333, 353, 368, 402;
Sheridan's operations, 405-411;
map, 407.
Shepherdstown, W. Va., 177, 180, 250, 319.
Sheridan, Philip H., N maj.-gen., Perryville, 201;
port., 203;
Murfreesboro', 210;
cavalry superiority, 250;
Chickamauga, 299, 301;
Chattanooga, 309;
Wilderness, 354-356;
port., 356;
Todd's Tavern, 358;
Yellow Tavern, 359;
North Anna, 363;
Cold Harbor, 365;
Shenandoah Valley, 404-411;
port., 408;
Trevilian Station and Gordonsville, Va., 433;
raid on the upper James, 442;
Five Forks, 443-445;
reconnoitering at Five Forks, ill., 444;
stops Lee's retreat at Appomattox C. H., 446, 451;
on the James, 486;
quoted, 518.
---- in the Shenandoah, 405-411.
Sherman, Thomas W., N b'v't maj.-gen., 69;
port., 71.
----, William T., N gen., ports., 30, 519;
under first fire, 39, 49;
at Bull Run, 55, 57;
Shiloh, 100-108;
Vicksburg campaign, 271-275;
Chattanooga, 305-314;
Knoxville, 342;
under Grant, 351-353;
quoted, 358;
Meridian, Miss., 375;
"Hairpins," 375;
Atlanta campaign, 383-390;
Resaca, 385;
Kenesaw Mountain, 387;
plans, capture of Mobile, 391, 397;
"March to the Sea," 419-430;
correspondence with Gen. Hood and mayor of Atlanta, 419;
instructions for the march, 422;
march through the Carolinas, 439-441;
receives Johnston's surrender at Durham Station, 446;
army reviewed in Washington, 450, 451;
anecdotes, 456, 458, 513, 517;
quoted, 515;
(sketch), 518.
---- and his generals, history suggested by picture, group of,
513-519.
Shields, James, N b'v't maj.-gen., 143;
port., 152;
Winchester, 216;
Port Republic, 216, 217;
port., 219.
Shiloh, Tenn., battle, 101-109;
map, 104.
---- Church, 101;
ill., 103.
Ship Island, Miss., 91;
ill., 92.
Shipping Point, Potomac River, ill., 146.
Shirley's Ford, Spring River, Mo., engagement, 231.
Shreveport, La., 270, 271;
capture attempted by Banks, 375;
Gen. Kirby Smith surrenders the last Confederate army at, 446.
Shufeldt, Robert W., N naval com'd., port., 370.
Sibley, Henry H., C brig.-gen., port., 231;
Fort Craig, N. M., 233.
----, ----, N brig.-gen., Indian campaign, 234.
Sibley tents, 496.
Sickles, Daniel E., N maj.-gen., Chancellorsville, 241-246;
Gettysburg, 252-266;
port., 262, 361, 479.
Siege of Charleston, The, 288-294.
Sigel, Franz, N maj.-gen., Carthage, 41;
Pea Ridge, 80;
Pope's campaign, 163-168;
port., 168, 172;
under Grant, 353;
Newmarket, W. Va., 433.
Signal Hill, Chattanooga, 313.
---- Station, near Washington, ill., 431.
Sill, Joshua W., N brig.-gen., killed, Murfreesboro', 211;
port., 483, 529.
Silver Creek, Mo., engagement, 230.
Simpson, ----, N col., Charlestown. Va., 334.
Sioux Indians, atrocities, 234.
Slack, William Y., C brig.-gen., Pea Ridge, 80.
Slater, ----, N lieut., 437.
Slavens, Samuel, N spy, executed, 529.
Slavery, a cause of the war, 5, 182.
Slemmer, Adam J., N b'v't brig.-gen., 10.
Slidell, John, 63;
port., 65.
Slocum, Henry W., N maj.-gen., port., 30, 518;
Chancellorsville, 243, 250;
Gettysburg, 252;
succeeds Hooker, 390;
Atlanta, 390, 420;
in march to the sea, 422;
Averysboro', 441;
Bentonville, 441, 513;
(sketch), 518.
Small, Jerusha R., Mrs., 539.
Smith, Andrew J., N maj.-gen., Alexandria, La., 375;
Pleasant Hill, 378, 379.
----, A. J., N maj., Cedar Creek, Va., 411.
----, Caleb B., N Secy. of the Interior, port., 6.
----, Charles F., N maj.-gen., 75;
Fort Donelson, 77;
port., 79;
Shiloh, 100.
----, Edmund Kirby, C gen., invades Ky., 223, 224;
Richmond, Ky., 224;
port., 225;
Pleasant Hill, 379;
surrender at Shreveport, La., 446.
----, Gerrit, gives bail for Davis, 448.
----, Giles A., N maj.-gen., Atlanta, 389.
----, Goldwin, 66.
----, Gustavus W., C maj.-gen., Fair Oaks, 150, 151;
port., 427.
----, Joseph, N rear-adm., port., 84.
----, Morgan L., N brig.-gen., Atlanta, 389.
----, Patrick, N private, Bayou Teche, La., 348.
----, Preston, C maj.-gen., killed, Chickamauga, 299.
----, T. Kilby, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 378;
Pleasant Hill, 379.
----, William, C maj.-gen., port., 508.
----, William F., N maj.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 143;
Cold Harbor, 365;
advance on Petersburg, 397.
----, William Sooy, N brig.-gen., raid from Memphis, 375.
----, ----, N lieut., Lookout Mt., 313.
----, ----, N ensign, recaptured, 322.
Smyth, Thomas A., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 357.
Snake Creek Gap, Ga., 385.
Sneedsboro', S. C., 440.
Snicker's Gap, Va., 406.
Snow Hill, Tenn., battle, 295, 341.
Snyder, George W., N 1st lieut., port., 11;
at Sumter, 11.
Solferino, Italy, 23, 169.
Somerset, Ky., action, 339, 340.
Sons of America, 521.
Sons of Liberty, 528.
Soule, Pierre, 96.
South Carolina, Nullification Acts of, 7;
secedes, 9;
1st inf., Antietam, 180;
colored regiment, 185;
8th C inf. captured, 406;
18th and 72d inf. at Petersburg mine, 470.
----, regimental losses, 1st inf., 483;
7th, 17th, 23d, 12th inf., 484.
South Carolina railroad destroyed, 440.
South Mountain, Md., battle, 176.
Southampton, Eng., 372.
Southern life under blockade, 425.
Southfield, N gunboat, Plymouth, N. C., 434.
Southside Railroad, Va., 443.
Southwest Pass, Miss. River, La., 91.
Speed, ----, N lieut., quoted, 429.
Spencer, R. H., Mrs., port., 537, 538.
Sperryville, Va., 163.
Spies and scouts, Northern, 507-512.
----, Southern, 505-507.
Spinola, Francis B., N brig.-gen., Manassas Gap, 333.
Spottsylvania, Va., 358;
battle, 359-362, 470;
losses at, 477;
Kilpatrick's raid, 531.
Sprague, William, gov. of R. I., port., 18.
Spring Place, Ga., 385.
Springfield, Ill., 38.
----, Mo., 41, 79;
engagement, 118-121;
ill., 120;
action, 344.
Springfield Landing, La., 379.
Stafford, ----, N sergt., Gettysburg, 255.
Stahel, Julius X., N maj.-gen., Cross Keys, 216;
port., 218, 268.
Standard, Raleigh, N. C., quoted, 431.
Stanley, David S., N b'v't maj.-gen., Iuka, 203, 204;
Corinth, 206, 207;
Murfreesboro', 211;
port., 212;
Snow Hill, Tenn., 295, 305, 341;
Bradyville, 340;
Atlanta campaign, 386;
with Thomas at Nashville, 421.
Stannard, George J., N b'v't maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 259, 262.
Stannard's Battery, Camp Wild Cat, 114.
Stansbury Hill, Fredericksburg, 199.
Stanton, Edwin M., N sec'y of war, port., 6, 48, 143, 154, 295, 349,
405;
cartoon, 463;
offers reward for arrest of Booth and accomplices, 510.
Star of the West, N vessel, 5, 14.
"Star Spangled Banner," 122.
Starke, William E., C brig.-gen., killed, Antietam, 180.
State sovereignty, a cause of the war, 5, 7, 35.
Statesville, Tenn., action, 340.
Staunton, Va., devastated by Hunter, 317, 318;
by Torbert, 409.
Steadman, N capt., 71.
Stedman, Griffin A., Jr., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 362.
Steedman, James B., N maj.-gen., port., 301;
Chickamauga, 302, 303.
Steel, ----, N maj., Warrenton Junction, 331.
Steele, Frederick, N maj.-gen., Vicksburg campaign, 271.
Steele's Bayou, Miss., 273.
Stein, ----, C, killed, Prairie Grove, 233.
Steinwehr, Adolph von, N brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 252;
port., 255.
Stephens, Alexander H., C vice-pres., port., 28;
speech against secession, 31;
speech defending slavery, 32;
writing about effect of Lincoln's proclamation of rebellion, 35;
speech, Charlotte, N. C, 307;
peace commissioner, 441.
----, Malvina, N guide, 521.
Stevens, Aaron F., N b'v't brig.-gen., Fredericksburg, 199.
----, Alanson J., N lieut., Gettysburg, 254.
----, Atherton H., Jr., N maj., 454.
----, Isaac I., N maj.-gen., killed, Chantilly, Va., 169 and 479;
Secessionville, 219.
----, Thaddeus, M. C., financial proposition, 416.
Stevensburg, Va., 165.
Stevenson, Carter L., C maj.-gen., port., 275.
----, Thomas G., N brig.-gen., killed, Spottsylvania, 362.
Stewart, Alexander P., C lieut.-gen., port., 313.
----, George H., C brig.-gen., captured, Spottsylvania, 359, 362.
----, William C., N color-bearer, Lebanon, Tenn., 229.
----, ----, N lieut., Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Stiles, Israel N., N b'v't brig.-gen., 429.
Stimers, ----, engineer, "Monitor," 85.
Stimpson, ----, N, Bolivar Heights, 111.
Stiner, J. H., balloonist, 162.
Stokes, James H., N capt., Murfreesboro', 212.
Stone, Charles P., N brig.-gen., 20, 22;
port., 29;
at Harper's Ferry, 47;
Ball's Bluff, 109;
Sabine Cross Roads, 377.
----, Ray, N b'v't brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 251.
Stone Bridge (Bull Run), 52, 53, 54, 55, 60;
ill., 172.
---- House (Bull Run), ill., 58.
---- River, Tenn., battle, 209-213;
ill., 202;
_Map_, 211, 308.
Stoneman, George, N maj.-gen., Warrenton, Va., 331;
captured, Clifton, Ga., 390.
Stoner, ----, N ensign, recaptured, 322.
Stoughton, Charles B., N b'v't brig.-gen., captured, Fairfax C. H.,
Va., 331.
Stovall, Marcellus A., N brig.-gen., port., 303.
Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher, port., 189.
Strahl, Oscar F., N brig.-gen., killed, 430.
Stranahan, Mrs. James S. T., port., 539, 540.
Strasburg, Va., 28, 409, 410.
Streight, Abel D., N b'v't brig.-gen., raid in Ala. and capture, 295.
Stringham, Silas H., N rear-adm., port., 66, 68.
Strong, George C., N maj.-gen., killed, Fort Wagner, 290.
----, George T., Sanitary Commission, 325.
----, William E., N b'v't brig.-gen., ports., 277, 418.
Stuart, George H., Christian Commission, 326.
----, James E. B., C lieut.-gen., at Bull Run, 60;
Bunker Hill, 111;
Peninsular campaign, 150-152;
port., 158;
operations against Pope, 164-166, 192;
Chancellorsville, 242;
Culpeper, 249;
Aldie, Va., 250;
Gettysburg, 259, 267, 268;
in Va., 232;
Wilderness, 354;
Yellow Tavern, 359, 451.
----, ----, N lieut.-col., Chattanooga, 314.
Sturgis, Russell, 15.
----, Samuel D., N b'v't maj.-gen., 41;
Antietam, 179;
Fair Gardens, Tenn., 436;
port., 437.
Sudley Ford (Bull Run), 54, 55, 61.
---- Mill (Bull Run), 167;
ill., 169.
---- Road (Bull Run), 54, 55, 57.
---- Springs, Va., 169.
Suffolk, Va., _Map_ of vicinity, 141;
actions, 329, 331.
Sugar Creek, Ark., 80;
action, 231.
Sugar Valley, Ga., occupied by McPherson, 385.
Sullivan, Jeremiah C., N brig.-gen., Iuka, 203.
Sullivan's Island, Charleston harbor, 11, 292.
Sully, Alfred, N b'v't maj.-gen., Whitestone Hill, Dak., 348.
Sulphur Springs, Va., 166, 333.
Sultana, N steamer, fatal explosion, 468.
Summerton (Chattanooga), 314.
Sumner, Charles, port., 189, 375.
----, Edwin V., N maj.-gen., 49;
Peninsular campaign, 143-158;
port., 152;
2d Bull Run, 169;
Antietam, 177-179;
port., 192;
Burnside's campaign, 193.
Sumter, C cruiser, abandoned, Gibraltar, 372.
Surratt, John H., reward offered for arrest, 510.
Surrender of Lee, ill., 447.
Susquehanna, N cruiser, 68.
Swamp Angel, 294.
Sweeden's Cove, Ala., engagement, 226.
Sweeting, Harry, C cav., Warrenton Junction, 331.
Switzerland, N ram, Waterproof, La., 437.
Sykes, George, N maj.-gen., at Bull Run, 55;
Gettysburg, 252, 265, 266;
quoted, 479.
Tacony, C cruiser, 372.
Talbot, Theodore, N 1st lieut., port., 11;
at Sumter, 11.
Taliaferro, William B., C brig.-gen., 28;
port., 293.
Tallahassee, C cruiser, 372.
Tammany regiment, N. Y., 42d inf., 109.
Taney, Roger B., U. S. chief-justice, 43, 186, 284.
Taneytown, Md., 252.
Taylor, Benjamin F., correspondent, describes battle Lookout Mt.,
311-314;
quoted, 504.
----, C. Fred., N col., port., 484.
----, Frank E., N lieut., Pleasant Hill, La., 378.
----, Nellie M., Mrs., port., 533, 536.
----, Richard, C lieut.-gen., Sabine Cross Roads, La., 377;
Pleasant Hill, 379;
port., 381.
----, Samuel B., quoted, 526.
----, Walter H., C maj., port., 165.
Tazewell, Tenn., action, 227.
Tecumseh, N monitor, Mobile Bay, 391-393.
Templeman, ----, C cav., killed, Warrenton Junction, 332.
Tennessee, struggle for, 35, 44;
1st cav., Murfreesboro', 211;
terrorism in, 317.
----, regimental losses, 8th inf., 483, 484;
10th, 2d, 15th, 6th, 9th, 23d, 63d, 20th, 32d, 12th, inf., 484.
----, C ironclad, Mobile Bay, 391, 392.
----, Army of the, commanded by McPherson, 383;
commanded by Howard, 390.
----, Army and dept. of, C 387.
"Tenting on the old camp-ground," Walter Kittridge, 139, 413.
Tents used in camp, 496.
----, "A," 496.
----, dog, 498.
----, shelter, 498.
----, Sibley, 496.
----, wall, 496.
Terrill, William R., N brig.-gen., killed, Perryville, 201.
Terry, Alfred H., N maj.-gen., port., 290, 439;
siege of Charleston, 292;
Fort Fisher, 441;
joins Sherman, 441.
----, B. F., C col., killed, Munfordville, 115.
----, of Texas, C spy, 505.
Texas, annexation of, 7;
secedes, 9;
3d inf., Iuka, 206;
1st inf., losses, 484;
4th inf., losses, 484.
Thoburn, Joseph, N col., killed, Cedar Creek, Va., 410.
Thomas, George H., N maj.-gen., port., 49;
at Mill Springs, Ky., 73;
Falling Waters, 111;
Murfreesboro', 210, 263;
port., 298;
Chickamauga, 298-302;
supersedes Rosecrans, 305;
Chattanooga, 308, 309;
Atlanta campaign, 383-387;
"Circus," 383;
Peach Tree Creek, 387;
organizes an army at Nashville, 421, 430, 451;
anecdote, 457, 513.
----, Lorenzo, N b'v't maj.-gen., 49;
address on colored soldiers, 238, 239.
----, Mrs. Col. (C), of Tenn., deceives Gen. Rosecrans, anecdote, 506.
Thompson, Francis W., N lieut.-col., Bull Pasture Mountain, 216.
----, Frank (Miss Seelye), N (female) pvt., 2d Mich. inf., 470.
----, George, 18.
----, Jacob, U. S. sec'y of the interior, 9;
conspires with (C) Lieut. S. D. Davis, 471, 528.
----, M. Jeff., C brig.-gen., Fredericktown, Mo., 118;
Charlestown, Mo., 230;
port., 231.
Thompson's Station, Tenn., engagement, 340.
Thoroughfare Gap, Va., 166, 167.
Tilghman, Lloyd, C brig.-gen., at Ft. Henry, 75, 76;
port., 275;
killed, Champion's Hill, Miss., 275.
Times, London, Eng., 62, 87, 196.
----, Wheeling, Va., 33.
Todd, H. H., N capt., 523.
Todd's Tavern, Va., engagement, 358.
Toland, John T., N col., Fayetteville, W. Va., 218;
killed, Wytheville, Va., 339.
Tom's Brook, Va., action, 410.
Toombs, Robert, C sec'y of state, port., 26;
C brig.-gen., Antietam, 180.
Topliff, E. A., N pvt., Parker's Cross Roads, 230.
Torbert, Alfred T. A., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 405;
Shenandoah Valley, 406-410;
Trevilian Sta., Va., 433.
Torrence, ----, N maj., Roan's Tanyard, Mo., 230.
Totten, Joseph G., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 35, 49.
Tourtellotte, John E., N b'v't brig.-gen., at Allatoona, 420.
Towns, ----, N capt., 318.
Townsend, Edward D., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 29, 49.
----, Frederick, N b'v't brig.-gen., at Big Bethel, 45.
Tracy, Benjamin F., N b'v't brig.-gen., 480.
"Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," George F. Root, 125.
Tranter's Creek, N. C., battle, 218.
Trebra, ----, N lieut.-col., 32d Ind., 115.
Trent, British steamer, 63;
ill., 63, 65.
Trent affair, 63, 65.
Trenton, Tenn., captured by Forrest, 229.
Trevilian Station, Va., ill., 432.
Tribune, Cincinnati, quoted, 526.
----, New York, N. Y., 186;
office attacked by rioters, 286;
correspondents captured, 520.
Trobriand, P. Regis de, N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 262;
Gettysburg, 265, 266.
Trobriand's (de) Zouaves, 499.
Trumbull, Henry C. (Rev.), captured, Ft. Wagner, 291, 292.
Tullahoma, Tenn., 297.
Tunnel, Libby Prison, 521.
Tunnel Hill, Ga., fortified by Johnston, 383.
Turchin, John B., N brig.-gen., port., 311.
----, Mrs. John B., 470.
Turkey Bend, Va., 159.
Turner, Nat, insurrection, 448.
----, R. R., C maj., keeper Libby Prison, port., 321.
Turner's Gap, Md., 176, 177.
Tuscaloosa, Ala., 316.
Tuscarora, N gunboat, Gibraltar, 372.
Twiggs, David E., U. S. brig.-gen., 35, 49.
Tybee Island, Ga., 220, 221.
Tyler, Daniel, N brig.-gen., 49;
at Bull Run, 53, 54, 55.
----, Erastus B., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 57.
----, Robert O., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 362;
Spottsylvania, 362;
Cold Harbor, 367;
defence of Washington, 402.
Tyler, N gunboat, Shiloh, 101;
Helena, Ark., 344.
----, Tex., prison camps, 321.
Union City, Tenn., 225;
action, 226.
Union Mills Ford (Bull Run), 52.
Union Square, New York, N. Y., mass meeting, 236.
United States Ford, Chancellorsville, 246.
Upperville, Va., action, 250, 267.
Upton, Emory, N b'v't maj.-gen., Spottsylvania, 359;
port., 367, 480.
Ute Indians, Ft. Halleck, Idaho, 348.
Vallandigham, Clement L., M. C., opposes emancipation, 190;
opposition to Lincoln, 283;
banishment, 284;
port., 285;
Democratic convention, 413.
Valparaiso, 90.
Van Allen, James H., N brig.-gen., port., 247.
Van Buren, Dr., Sanitary Commission, 324.
Vance, Robert B., C brig.-gen., port., 213.
----, Zebulon C., gov. N. C., quoted, 420.
Van Cleve, Horatio P., N b'v't maj.-gen., Chickamauga, 301.
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, gives bail for Davis, 448.
Van Dorn, Earl, C maj.-gen., Pea Ridge, 80;
port., 81, 203;
Corinth, 206, 207;
superseded by Pemberton, 209;
Holly Springs, Miss., 271;
Franklin, Tenn., 295, 341.
Van Gilder, ----, N ord.-sergt., Spottsylvania, 361.
Van Pelt farmhouse, Bull Run, hospital, 464-465.
Van Wyck, Charles H., N brig.-gen., port., 147.
Varuna, N cruiser, at N. O., 93;
ill., 94.
Vaught's Hill, Tenn., action, 340, 341.
Verdiersville, Va., 164.
Vermilion Bayou, La., ills. of battle, 330, 343;
battle, 347.
Vermont, 1st and 5th cav., Kettle Run, Va., 331;
8th inf., losses at Cedar Creek, 478;
1st hvy. art'y, losses, 478;
2d inf., losses, 478;
4th inf., losses in Wilderness, 478;
Newport News, anecdote, 502.
Vesey, Denmark, insurrection, 448.
Vicksburg, Miss., campaign, 270-282;
_Map_, 271;
ill., 280, 295, 307, 308, 322, 350, 375.
---- campaign, The, 270-282.
Viele, Egbert L., N brig.-gen., 24;
Norfolk, 217;
port., 221.
Vienna, Va., 52.
Vigintal crop, the, 33.
Vincent, Strong, N brig.-gen., Gettysburg, 252, 261;
killed, 254.
Virginia, invaded by John Brown, 7;
secedes, 9, 33;
measures for defence, 27;
slave industry, 32;
struggle for, 44;
C 1st cav., Kelly's Ford, 332;
N 13th inf., Point Pleasant, 337;
C 54th inf., anecdote, 468.
----, regimental losses, 17th, 32d, 4th inf., 484.
----, C ironclad (see "Merrimac").
----, Army of, 163.
----, Northern, Army of, C, Gettysburg, 262;
retreat, 334, 335, 353;
organization, 354, 387;
surrender to Grant, 446.
Virginia and Tennessee R. R., 316;
destroyed, 433.
Virginia Central R. R., 362, 363, 409, 531.
Virginia Military Institute burned by Hunter, 318;
cadets, 433.
Vollmer, David, C, killed, Belmont, 122.
Von Borcke, ----, C, 164.
Von Gilsa, Leopold, N col., Chancellorsville, 245.
Voris, Alvin C., N b'v't maj.-gen., Fort Wagner, 291.
Wabash, N cruiser, 68, 71.
Wade, Jennie, killed, Gettysburg, 259;
port., 267, 538.
----, Mary E., Mrs., port., 533.
Wadsworth, James S., N b'v't maj.-gen., Gettysburg, 267;
killed, Wilderness, 356, 451.
Wagner, George D., N brig.-gen., Franklin, Tenn., 427.
Wagons, army, 504.
Wainwright, J. M., N comr., killed, Galveston, 348.
Walke, Henry, N rear-adm., Island No. 10, 99;
port., 273.
Walker, J. Bryant, N capt., Atlanta, 389.
----, John G., C maj.-gen., Harper's Ferry, 175;
port., 177, 220.
----, Leroy P., C sec'y of war, port., 26.
----, W. H. T., C maj.-gen., wounded, Spottsylvania, 362.
----, ----, C col., Belmont, 122.
----, ----, imprisoned, 316.
----, ----, N capt., Atlanta, 389.
Wallace, Lew, N maj.-gen., Fort Donelson, 77;
Crump's Landing, 100;
Shiloh, 101-108;
port., 104;
defence of Washington, 402, 403.
----, William H. L., N brig.-gen., Shiloh, 100, 101, 481.
Waller, Francis A., N corp., Gettysburg, 260.
Wampler, ----, imprisoned, 316.
Wapping Heights, Va., battle, 333.
War Democrats, 36.
---- humor in the South, 459-463.
---- in the West, 200-214.
---- songs, 123-139.
Ward, William T., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 423.
Ware, W. W., 349.
Waring, George E., Jr., N col., Batesville, Ark., 343.
Warner, ----, N maj., Gettysburg, 266.
----, ----, C capt., 320.
Warren, Gouverneur K., N maj.-gen., Big Bethel, 45;
2d Bull Run, 169;
Gettysburg, 252-265;
port., 257;
Bristoe Sta., Va., 334;
Mine Run, 337;
Wilderness, 354;
Spottsylvania, 358-361;
North Anna, 362;
advance on Petersburg, 400;
relieved, 445, 479.
Warrensburg. Mo., 118;
engagement, 230.
Warrenton, Va., 193-197.
Warrenton Junction, Va., 168;
attacked by Mosby, 331;
Grant escapes capture, 375.
Warrenton Turnpike (Bull Run), 52, 53, 55, 57, 60, 167;
ill., 172.
Warrior, English vessel, 87.
Warwick River, Va., 143.
Washburne, Elihu B., M. C., tribute to Hancock, 261, 262.
Washington, John A., C col., killed at Cheat Mountain, 114.
----, J. B., C aide, port., 79.
Washington, D. C., C sympathizers, 19;
measures for defence, 20, 22;
N troops arrive, 25;
Peninsular campaign, 140-162;
threatened by Early, 402-404.
----, N. C., 67, 218;
battle, 219.
Washington College, Va., threatened by Hunter, 318.
Washington in Danger, 402-404.
Waterloo and Gettysburg compared, 259.
Waterproof, La., fight, 437.
Watkins, Louis D., N b'v't brig.-gen., 507.
Wauhatchie, Tenn., action, 305, 313.
Waynesboro, Va., action, 409;
engagement, 442.
"We are coming, Father Abraham," James Sloane Gibbons, 128, 413.
Wead, ----, N col., Cold Harbor, Va., 365;
killed, 367.
Weatherby, ----, N lieut., Vicksburg, 279.
Webb, Alexander S., N b'v't maj.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 150-160;
Gettysburg, 257, 259, 263;
Bristoe Sta., Va., 334;
Robertson's Tavern, 336;
Spottsylvania, 362.
Webster, Fletcher, N col., killed, 477;
port., 480.
----, Joseph D., N b'v't maj.-gen., Shiloh, 101, 108.
----, ----, N maj., 25th Ohio, 114.
Weed, Stephen H., N brig.-gen., killed, Gettysburg, 254, 261.
Weehawken, N monitor, siege of Charleston, 289.
Weekly Spectator, London, Eng., 65.
Weitzel, Godfrey, N maj.-gen., Franklin, La., 345;
Vermillion Bayou, La., 347;
port., 443;
occupies Richmond, Va., 445, 454.
Weldon R. R., Va., actions, 398, 400.
Welles, Gideon, N sec'y of the navy, port., 6;
49, 91.
Wells, George D., N brig.-gen., killed, Cedar Creek, Va., 410.
Wessells, Henry W., N brig.-gen., Plymouth, S. C., 433-434.
Westfield, N vessel, destroyed, Galveston, 338.
West Liberty, Ky., action, 114, 115.
West Point, Va., 158.
West Tennessee, Army of, 206.
West Virginia, admitted to the Union, 9;
formation of, 44, 45;
cleared of Confederate troops, 113, 114;
3d inf., Bull Pasture Mountain, 216;
7th inf., Blooming Gap, 217.
----, Army of, Shenandoah Valley, 411;
7th inf. losses, 481.
Wharton, John A., C maj.-gen., Snow Hill, Tenn., 341.
Wheeler, Joseph, C lieut.-gen., Murfreesboro', 211;
port., 212;
Dover, 295;
Rover, Tenn., 340;
Fort Donelson, 340;
Vaught's Hill, 340;
Atlanta, 389, 390;
Confederate cavalry, 423;
opposes Sherman in S. C., 440.
Wheeling, W. Va., 44, 45.
"When Johnny comes marching home," Patrick S. Gilmore, 136.
"When this cruel war is over," Charles C. Sawyer, 127, 413.
Whig, Richmond, quoted, 431.
Whilldin, ----, capt., 349.
Whipple, Amiel W., N maj.-gen., killed, Chancellorsville, 242, 247.
Whitaker, Walter C., N b'v't maj.-gen., Chickamauga, 299;
Lookout Mountain, 313.
White, John H., N lieut.-col., port., 484.
----, Julius, N b'v't maj.-gen., Harper's Ferry, 176.
----, Mathew X., C capt., murdered, 319.
----, ----, N maj., Springfield, Mo., 118, 119.
White Oak Swamp, Va., battle, 158.
White House, Va., Peninsular campaign, 144-162;
ill., 153;
365, 368, 531.
Whiteside, Tenn., ill. of bridge, 338.
Whitestone Hill, Dak., engagement, 348.
Whiting, William, quoted on emancipation, 190, 191.
----, W. H. C., C maj.-gen., Peninsular campaign, 155.
Whitney, Eli, cotton-gin, 5.
Whittier, John G., from "Brown of Ossawatomie," 21, 182;
port., 190.
Wickham, William C., C brig.-gen., port., 434.
Wickliffe, ----, M. C., 190.
Wiedrick, Michael, N capt., Gettysburg, 254.
Wilcox, Cadmus M., C maj.-gen., port., 195;
Gettysburg, 476.
Wilcox's Landing, Va., 468.
Wild, ----, C cav., Warrenton Junction, 331.
Wilderness, 335, 336, 353;
ill., 354;
battle, 355-357;
_Map_, 355, 387;
losses, 477.
Wilderness Tavern, Va., Grant's headquarters, 355.
Wilkes, Charles, N capt., 63, 65;
port., 65.
Wilkeson, Frank, quoted, 358.
Willard's Hotel, Washington, D. C., 25.
Willcox, Orlando B., N maj.-gen., at Bull Run, 55, 57;
port., 401.
William Aiken, U. S. revenue cutter, 10.
William and Mary College, 33.
Williams, Alpheus S., N b'v't maj.-gen., 513.
----, E. C., N ensign, Red River expedition, 382.
----, John S., C brig.-gen., port., 336.
----, Thomas, N brig.-gen., attitude toward slavery, 185;
killed, Baton Rouge, 270.
----, ----, N lieut., Ft. Halleck, Idaho, 348.
Williamsburg, Va., battle, 143-144.
Williamsport, Md., 250;
fight, 436.
Williston, Edward B., N lieut., Trevilian Sta., Va., 433.
Willoughby Run, Gettysburg, 251.
Willoughby's Point, Va., 217.
Willow Springs, Miss., engagement, 274.
Wilmington Island, Ga., engagement, 223.
Wilson, C. H., N lieut., Wilmington Island, 223.
----, George D., N spy, executed, 529.
----, Henry, 190.
----, James H., N maj.-gen., cavalry superiority, 250;
North Anna, 363;
Long Bridge, 368;
Shenandoah, 407;
Nashville, 430;
captures Davis, 448.
----, ----, N capt., Lookout Mountain, 304.
Wilson Small, N transport, 327.
Wilson's Creek, Mo., battle, 41;
ill., 42.
Winchester, Tenn., 226.
----, Va., 47, 54, 59, 113, 143, 191;
engagement, 216;
captured by Ewell, 250, 403;
action, 404, 406;
battle, 407, 409;
Sheridan's ride, 410, 411.
Winder, Charles S., C brig.-gen., killed, Cedar Mountain, 164.
----, John H., C brig.-gen., port., 318;
Libby Prison, 321, 349;
Andersonville, 390;
death, 448.
Winnebago, N monitor, Mobile Bay, 319.
Winslow, John A., N naval capt., port., 371;
commands "Kearsarge" and destroys "Alabama," 372;
port., 372.
Winthrop, Theodore, N maj., 24;
port., 35;
killed, Big Bethel, 45, 451.
Wisconsin _Infantry_, 1st, Dandridge, 436;
2d, losses, Bull Run, 477;
3d, Bolivar Heights, 111;
4th, 185;
5th, Rappahannock Sta., 335;
6th and 7th, Gettysburg, 259;
12th, Atlanta, 389;
15th, Chickamauga, 299;
16th, Atlanta, 389;
5th art'y, Perryville, 201.
----, regimental losses, 2d inf., 483;
7th inf., 483;
20th inf., 483.
Wise, Henry A., C brig-gen., in W. Va., 113;
gov. of Va., port., 183.
Witherell, Mrs. E. C., 539.
Withers, Jones M., C maj.-gen., port., 108.
Wittenmeyer, Annie, Mrs., 538.
Wolford, Frank, N col., Somerset, Ky., 340.
----, F. T., N col., Philadelphia, Tenn., 342.
Woman's Contribution to the Cause, 533-540.
Women's Central Association of Relief, 324.
Wood, Robert C., N b'v't brig.-gen., Sanitary Commission, 324.
----, Thomas J., N maj.-gen., Chickamauga, 298-302;
Chattanooga, 309;
Atlanta campaign, 386.
Woodford, Stewart L., N b'v't brig.-gen., port., 290.
Woods, Charles R., N b'v't maj.-gen., port., 311;
Atlanta, 389.
Woodsonville, Ky. (see Munfordville).
Woodstock company, 1st Vt. inf., anecdote, 502.
Wool, John E., N maj.-gen., port., 23, 49;
captures Norfolk, 217.
Woolsey, Georgia M., Miss, 538.
----, Jane C., Miss, 538.
Worden, John L., N rear-adm., N. C. expedition, 72;
"Monitor," 85;
port., 87;
destroys the "Nashville," 348.
Work, Henry C., "Marching through Georgia," 129;
"Grafted into the Army," 137.
Wormeley, Katherine P., Miss, 537.
Wright, Ambrose R., C maj.-gen., Antietam, 180.
----, Horatio G., N maj.-gen., Secessionville, 219;
Rappahannock Sta., 335;
Spottsylvania, 359, 362;
North Anna, 362, 363;
Cold Harbor, 365;
advance on Petersburg, 398;
defence of Washington, 404;
port., 405;
Cedar Creek, 410, 411, 445.
Wyatt's, Miss., action, 343.
Wyndham, Percy, N col., Harrisonburg, 216;
port., 218.
Wynkoop, ----, N lieut., Hawes's Shop, Va., 364.
Wytheville, Va., action, 339.
Yankee, N steam-tug, 29.
Yates, Richard, gov. of Ill., port., 18.
Yazoo City, Miss., 273.
Yazoo Pass, Miss., 273.
Yellow Medicine, Minn., destroyed by Indians, 234.
Yellow Tavern, Va., action, 359.
York, Pa., occupied by Lee, 250, 251.
Yorktown, Va., 143;
ills. of battery, 149, 151, 463.
Young, Francis G., N capt., Ball's Bluff, 110.
----, Pierce M. B., C maj.-gen., port., 508.
----, ----, N adjt., Gettysburg, 255.
----, ----, N eng. corps, Pleasant Hills, La., 379.
Young Men's Christian Association, 325.
Young's Branch (Bull Run), 55, 57.
Zagonyi, Charles, N maj., cav., Springfield, Mo., 118-121;
port., 121.
Zelitch, ----, N ensign, Mobile Bay, 393.
Zollicoffer, Felix K., C brig.-gen., Camp Wild Cat, 73, 114;
killed, Fishing Creek, 73;
port., 77, 451.
Zook, Samuel K., N b'v't maj.-gen., killed, Gettysburg, 254;
port., 261.
Zouaves, "Duryea's," 24;
"Chicago," 25;
"Fire," 25, 61;
"Hawkins'," 72, 218;
ill., 198.
{551} [Illustration: (handwritten) A. Lincoln.]
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