ENTER THE SERVICE—TROUBLE ABOUT ARMS—CAUSE
OF SECESSION
The company was drilled from time to time, but was not armed until it
entered the service about the 1st of May, 1861, at Lynchburg, Va.,
enlisting for one year. It was mustered into service by (then) Col.
Jubal A. Early, as one of the ten companies of the Twenty-eighth
Regiment of Virginia Infantry, Col. Robt. T. Preston, commanding. At
that time there were about eighty-five men in the company, made up of
the young men from several miles around Pigeon Run. I had one brother,
Geo. W., called "Coon"; a brother-in-law, Robt. M. Cocke, and many
kinsmen and connections in the company; the young Joneses, the Hobsons,
the Baileys, and others were relations of myself or wife. We were all
friends and neighbors, and many were former schoolmates. Most of them
young unmarried men, many in their teens. I had been married not quite
five months when the war came on.
None of the officers or men had any military education, but little
training in drilling and none in camp life, and were all, officers and
men, quite green and inexperienced in military affairs generally. But we
all knew how to handle guns and how to shoot straight.
These young men made as brave and faithful soldiers as any in the army;
always ready to do their duty, to go wherever ordered; standing firm in
action. But I think none of them liked to fight just for the fun of it;
I did not for one, I well know. It was of this class of men that the
army of Northern Virginia was made up.
That army was composed of the very pick and flower of the Southern
youth, and made a name and fame that will live always.
At the beginning of the war, at Manassas, Gen. G. T. Beauregard issued a
general order, in which he said that strict military rules of discipline
would not be enforced, that the general commanding would depend upon the
good breeding of the men, rather than harsh military discipline, to
insure good order and efficiency in the army. This kind of discipline
prevailed all through the war. General Grant soon after he met Lee in
the Wilderness said in a dispatch to Washington that the Rebel army was
very hard to drive, so well was it disciplined. It was not discipline
that made this army so effective, but rather the courageous and
patriotic spirit of the men who carried the guns.
TROUBLE ABOUT ARMS
As before said, the company had not been armed up to the time of
enlistment. The company was organized as a rifle company; we expected to
be armed with the "Mississippi Rifle."
Soon after we got to Lynchburg it was learned that rifles could not be
procured, the only arms available being old flint-lock muskets changed
to percussion. All guns in those days were muzzle-loaders; the
breech-loaders had not been invented.
We were much disappointed, and many of the men very much disgruntled, at
the prospects of going to war with those antiquated, cumbersome and
inferior arms. Other companies were in the same predicament, and many of
the men threatened to disband and go home. The companies had not yet
been mustered into service. It was a very critical time in the military
experience of all. The companies were formed in line and addressed by
some of their officers. Captain Clement made a speech to his company,
and I spoke briefly and earnestly to my comrades, telling them that the
State of Virginia was doing the very best she could to arm and equip her
soldiers, that they might go forth to meet the invaders of her sacred
soil; that it was our duty to go to the front with the best arms
available, even if armed with nothing but "rocks and sticks," and closed
by calling on every man who was willing to go to war under the existing
circumstances to follow. I marched out through the camp; the whole
company following.
THE CAUSE OF SECESSION
I had fully determined if the company disbanded to join another
immediately, as I knew it was the duty of every son of Virginia to
enlist under her banner when called. I have never been of any other mind
since, and if it were all to do over again I should act in the same
manner. I never thought of deserting to the enemy during the war nor
since. While I was not an original secessionist and voted for the Union
candidates for the Convention, yet when the North determined to wage war
on the South; when Lincoln called on Virginia for her quota of troops to
coerce the seceding States, and when Virginia seceded, it did not take
me two seconds to cast my lot with Virginia and the other Southern
States. Here I took my stand then, now and forever, and will never give
aid in any way to those who were enemies to my State and section, many
of whom are still haters and traducers of the Southern people, the
avowed purpose at the close of the war being to put the negro, the late
slave, over the white people of the South, to rule and govern as brave
and chivalrous a people as ever lived on God's green earth. To make the
highest type of the Anglo-Saxon subject to the African! Ye gods! What a
crime was attempted! And for a time the outrage was in force. This, if
nothing else, justified the South in its attempt at separation from the
North. The people of the South had gotten tired of the sectional and
domineering, hectoring spirit of the North, especially the New England
Yankees, manifested in many ways before the war, and determined to sever
the bonds that bound them together; peacefully if they could, forcibly
if they must. They did not want war, but the North forced the issue. The
question of slavery in the Southern States was not an issue at the
beginning of the war, as many believe.
In the presidential election of 1860, the right of the slaveholder to
take his slaves—property recognized by the Constitution and laws of the
land—into the territories, was an issue made by the Republican party,
but no question as to slavery where it already existed, was involved. On
the other hand, Lincoln, in his inaugural address on the 4th of March,
1861, expressly declared that he had no authority to interfere with
slavery in the States, and no intention of doing so. And not until the
promulgation of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, which went into
effect on the 1st of January, 1863, made without shadow of right or law,
and in direct violation of his solemn declaration and oath of office,
was this issue raised, as a war measure, to strengthen the Union cause,
which was then on the wane, among the abolitionists at home and abroad.
The New England Yankees, who first imported the negro to America, and
who had sold their slaves to the Southern planters, because slave labor
was unprofitable at the North, and who had engaged in the African slave
trade until this was prohibited by law, at the instigation of the South
and against the protest of New England shipping interests which was
largely engaged in the African slave trade, and had become rabid
abolitionists, now demanded emancipation as the price of their loyalty
to the Union cause.
France had all the while been friendly inclined towards the South, and
was urging England to join her in the recognition of the Southern
Confederacy as an independent nation. England, who had years before
abolished slavery in all her provinces, and was known to be a nation of
abolitionists, was now appealed to, and urged to stand for emancipation
in not recognizing the independence of the South. The cotton factories
of England were closed, the Southern ports being blockaded, the
operatives were clamoring for work or food; bread riots prevailed in the
manufacturing cities, the people urging the recognition of the South, so
that the ports could be opened and cotton, work, and food procured.
Henry Ward Beecher and other abolitionists went to England, faced and
spoke to these howling mobs, appealing to them in behalf of the Union
cause and the Southern slaves. Not so much, I opine, for the good of the
slaves as for the success of the Union cause. They all knew if the
Southern ports were opened the South would be victorious.
These are the true facts and the reasons for Lincoln's emancipation
proclamation, as I verily believe, and well known at the time. New
England was always jealous of the South, opposed everything that would
extend the influence and power of the Southern States: fought bitterly
the acquisition of the Louisiana territory and also the annexation of
Texas, because it would tend to destroy the "balance of power," as they
called it; and one of these states, Massachusetts, threatened to
withdraw from the Union, boldly claiming the right so to do. As all
know, New England was the manufacturing section of the country—the
South, the agricultural section. New England wanted to control the
policy of the government as to the tariff, and thereby protect their
industries, and could not brook the extension of Southern influence and
power against their protection policy. They still to this day maintain
this policy, but now we are beginning to hear the rumblings of
discontent in the West, and I am curious to know what will be the
result. I know one thing—that the Yankees of New England will hold on to
their pet policies, "like grim death to a dead nigger." What the great
West will do, future events only can develop. The North has held the
West in political slavery, by abusing and vilifying the South, and by
waving the "bloody shirt"; but that old rag is about worn out. I repeat,
I am curious to know the result, and want to live to see the end of it.
We remained in Lynchburg until about the 1st of June, 1861, doing camp
duty and drilling. Several of the company, including my brother and
myself, had negro cooks the first year, after which, few, if any,
remained, except ours, who stayed until the last. Rations became too
scarce to divide with cooks, so the men did their own cooking, forming
messes of from four to six and eight men to a mess, cooking by turns
when in camp. We also had two or three company cooks detailed from the
company, who did much of the cooking when not in permanent camp, one of
whom, Isaac Walthall, acted as company commissary, drawing the rations
from the regimental commissary and distributed them to the messes, when
in camp, or cooking them and distributing to men when in line of battle
or near the enemy.
Our camp equipments, as far as cooking facilities were concerned, were
very poor, and never much better.
At first, we had only sheet-iron pans and boilers, called camp kettles,
which did very well for boiling beef, but the sheet-iron pans were very
poor for baking bread and frying meat. No wonder the biscuits were
called "sinkers," being burned on the outside, tough and clammy through
and through. We afterwards got ovens and skillets, "spiders," as the Tar
Heels called them, and had better bread. We were in camp in a grove west
of College Hill, which was afterwards the fair grounds, and is now
Miller Park.