all clear before them, they came on without a check until, when
nearly opposite where our men of the Fifth squadron were lying in the
woods, they caught the fire of the entire squadron, which emptied a
good many saddles, and was the last shot probably fired that night.
The Federal cavalry kept on toward the town, and the squadron, under
cover, drew deeper into the woods, and moved round the town and went
into camp, but did not join the main body until next morning. The
enemy kept on until they got into, or nearly into the town, but again
fell back, establishing their line somewhere between the town and the
depot. Our outside picket was in the town.
We went into camp about one o'clock in the morning, on the Richmond
side of the town, in the woods--General Gary riding to General
Gordon's headquarters to report before lying down.
_April 9th._--The sun rose clear on this the last day, practically, of
the Southern Confederacy. It was cool and fresh in the early morning
so near the mountains, though the spring must have been a forward one,
as the oak trees were covered with their long yellow tassels.
We gathered the brigade on the green on the Richmond side of the
village, most of the men on foot, the horses not having come in. About
eight o'clock a large portion of our regiment had their horses--they
having been completely cut off the night before by the charge of
Custar's cavalry on the turnpike, and were carried, to save them, into
a country cross-road. Then the "Hampton Legion" got theirs. My
impression is that the Twenty-fourth Virginia lost the most or a good
many of their horses. The men built fires, and all seemed to have
something to eat, and to be amusing themselves eating it. The woods on
the southern and eastern side swarmed with the enemy and their
cavalry--a portion of it was between us and the "James River," which
was about twelve miles distant. General Fitz Lee's division of cavalry
lay over in that direction somewhere; General Longstreet with General
Gordon was in and on the outer edge of the town, on the Lynchburg
side, and so we waited for the performance to commence.
Looking at and listening to the men you would not have thought there
was anything special in the situation. They turned all the
responsibility over to the officers, who in turn did the same to those
above them--the captain to the colonel, the colonel to the brigadier,
and so on.
Colonel Haskell had not yet returned--having sent in all the horses he
had gotten, and was still after the balance. About nine or ten
o'clock, artillery firing began in front of General Longstreet, and
the blue jackets showed in heavy masses on the edge of the woods.
General Gary riding up, put everything that had a horse in the saddle,
and moved us down the hill, just on the edge of the little creek that
is here the "Appomattox," to wait under cover until wanted. Two of our
young men, who had some flour and a piece of bacon in their
haversacks, had improvised a cooking utensil out of a bursted
canteen, and fried some cakes. They offered me a share in their meal,
of which I partook with great relish. I then lay down, with my head,
like the luxurious Highlander, upon a smooth stone, and, holding my
horse's bridle in my hand, was soon in the deep sleep of a tired man.
But not for long, for down came the general in his most emphatic
manner--and those who know Gary know a man whose emphasis can be
wonderfully strong when so minded. "Mount, men, mount!" I jumped up at
the sharp, ringing summons with the sleep still in my eyes, and found
myself manoeuvring my horse with his rear in front. We soon had
everything in its right place, and rode out from the bottom into the
open field, about two hundred and fifty strong, to see the last of it.
Firing was going on, artillery and small arms, beyond the town, and
there was General R.E. Lee himself, with Longstreet, Gordon, and the
rest of his paladins.
When we rode into the open field we could see the enemy crowding along
the edge of the woods--cavalry apparently extending their line around
us. We kept on advancing towards them to get a nearer view of things,
and were midway on the Richmond side between the town and a large
white house with a handsome grove around it. In the yard could be seen
a body of cavalry, in number about our own; we saw no other troops
near. Two or three hundred yards to the right of the house an officer,
apparently of rank, with a few men--his staff, probably--riding well
forward, halted, looking toward the town with his glass. Just as he
rode out General Gary had given the order to charge the party in the
yard. Some one remarked that it looked like a flag of truce. "Charge!"
swore Gary in his roughest tones, and on we went. The party in the
yard were taken by surprise; they had not expected us to charge them,
as they were aware that a parley was going on (of which, of course, we
knew nothing), and that there was a suspension of hostilities.
We drove them through the yard, taking one or two prisoners--one
little fellow, who took it very good-humoredly; he had his head tied
up, having got it broken somewhere on the road, and was riding a mule.
We followed up their retreat through the yard, down a road, through
the open woods beyond, and were having it, as we thought, all our own
way--when, stretched along behind the brown oaks, and moving with a
close and steady tramp, was a long line of cavalry, some thousands
strong--Custar's division--our friends of last night. This altered the
complexion of things entirely; the order was instantly given to move
by the left flank--which, without throwing our back to them, changed
the forward into a retrograde movement.
The enemy kept his line unbroken, pressing slowly forward, firing no
volley, but dropping shots from a line of scattered skirmishers in
front was all we got They, of course, knew the condition of things,
and seemed to think we did not. We fell back toward a battery of ours
that was behind us, supported, I think, by a brigade of North Carolina
infantry. We moved slowly, and the enemy's skirmishers got close
enough for a dash to be made by our acting regimental adjutant--in
place of Lieutenant Capers, killed the night before--Lieutenant Haile,
who took a prisoner, but just as it was done one of our
couriers--Tribble, Seventh regiment--mounted on a fine black horse,
bareheaded, dashed between the two lines with a handkerchief tied upon
a switch, sent by General Gordon, announcing the "suspension of
hostilities."
By this time the enterprising adjutant had in turn been made prisoner.
As soon as the orders were understood everything came to a
stand-still, and for a while I thought we were going to have, then and
there, a little inside fight on purely personal grounds.
An officer--a captain--I presume the captain in command of the party
in the yard that we had attacked and driven back upon the main
body--had, I rather expect, been laughed at by his own people for his
prompt and sudden return from the expedition he had set out on.
He rode up at once to General Gary, and with a good deal of heat (he
had his drawn sabre in his hand) wanted to know what he, Gary, meant
by keeping up the fight after there had been a surrender. "Surrender!"
said Gary, "I have heard of no surrender. We are South Carolinians,
and don't surrender. [Ah! General, but we did, though.] Besides, sir,
I take commands from no officers but my own, and I do not recognize
you or any of your cloth as such."
The rejoinder was about to be a harsh one, sabres were out and trouble
was very near, when an officer of General Custar's staff--I should
like to have gotten his name--his manner was in striking contrast to
that of the bellicose captain, who seemed rather to belong to the
snorting persuasion--he, with the language and manner of a thorough
gentleman, said, "I assure you, General, and I appreciate your
feelings in the matter, that there has been a suspension of
hostilities, pending negotiations, and General Lee and General Grant
are in conference on the matter at this time."
His manner had its effect on General Gary, who at once sheathed his
sabre, saying, "Do not suppose, sir, I have any doubt of the truth of
your statement, but you must allow that, under such circumstances, I
can only receive orders from my own officers; but I am perfectly
willing to accept your statement and wait for those orders." (Situated
as we were, certainly a wise conclusion.) Almost on the instant
Colonel Blackford, of the engineers, rode up, sent by General Gordon,
with a Federal officer, carrying orders to that effect.
We drew back to the artillery and infantry that were just behind us,
and formed our battered fragments into regiments.
Desperate as we knew our condition to be since last night's affair,
still the idea of a complete surrender, which we began now to see was
inevitable, came as an awful shock. Men came to their officers with
tears streaming from their eyes, and asked what it all meant, and
would, at that moment, I know, have rather died the night before than
see the sun rise on such a day as this.
And so the day wore on, and the sun went down, and with it the hopes
of a people who, with prayers, and tears, and blood, had striven to
uphold that falling flag.
It was all too true, and our worst fears were fully justified by the
result. The suspension of hostilities was but a prelude to surrender,
which was, when it came to a show of hands, inevitable.
General Lee's army had been literally pounded to pieces after the
battle of "Five Forks," around Petersburg, which made the evacuation
of Richmond and the retreat a necessity. When General Longstreet's
corps from the north bank joined it, the "army of Northern Virginia,"
wasted and reduced to skeleton battalions, was still an army of
veteran material, powerful yet for attack or defence, all the more
dangerous from its desperate condition. And General Grant so
recognized and dealt with it, attacking it, as before stated, in
detail; letting it wear itself out by straggling and the disorganizing
effect of a retreat, breaking down of men and material. The infantry
were almost starved.
It was not until the fourth day from Richmond, at the high bridge on
the "Appomattox," the battle of Sailor's Creek was fought, in which,
with overwhelming masses of cavalry, artillery and infantry, our
starved and tired men were ridden down, and General Grant destroyed,
in military parlance, the divisions of Kershaw, Ewell, Anderson and
Custis Lee.
The fighting next day was of the same desultory character as before,
and the day after there was no blow struck until we encountered with
the artillery Custar's cavalry, at the depot of Appomattox
Court-house, as has been described--all their energies being directed
toward establishing their "cordon" around that point.
The terms of the surrender, and all about it, are too well known to go
over in detail here--prisoners of war on parole, officers to retain
side arms, and all private property to be respected, that was
favorable to our cavalry, as in the Confederate service the men all
owned their horses, though different in the United States army, the
horses belonging to Government.
General Gary, true to the doctrine he had laid down in his discussion
with the irate captain, that "South Carolinians did not surrender,"
turned his horse's head, and, with Captain Doby and one or two others,
managed to get that night through the "cordon" drawn around us, and
succeeded in reaching Charlotte, North Carolina, which became, for a
time, the headquarters of the "Southern Confederacy"--the President
and his Cabinet having established themselves there.
Colonel Haskell, who had been separated from us the night before,
while gathering up the horses of the brigade, by the charge of cavalry
on the turnpike, and had joined and been acting with General Walker
and his artillery, came in about two o'clock. All the Confederate
cavalry at Appomattox, some two thousand or twenty-five hundred, were
under his command as ranking officer.
The brigade crossed the road and bivouacked in the open field near the
creek, within a few hundred yards of the town. Our infantry, and what
was left of the artillery, was scattered along the road for two or
three miles toward Richmond--the enemy swarming in every direction
around us, and occupying the town as headquarters.
The articles of capitulation were signed next morning under the famous
"apple tree," I suppose; what we saw of it was this: General Lee was
seen, dressed in full Confederate uniform, with his sword on, riding
his fine grey charger, and accompanied by General Gordon, coming from
the village, and riding immediately in front of where we were lying.
He had not been particularly noticed as he had gone toward the town,
for, though with the regiment, I have no recollection of his doing so.
As soon as he was seen it acted like an electric flash upon our men;
they sprang to their feet, and, running to the roadside, commenced a
wild cheering that roused our troops. As far as we could see they came
running down the hill sides, and joining in, along the ground, and
through the woods, and up into the sky, there went a tribute that has
seldom been paid to mortal man. "Faithful, though all was lost!"
The Federal army officers and men bore themselves toward us as brave
men should. I do not recollect, within my personal observation, a
single act that could be called discourteous--nor did I hear of one.
On the other hand, much kindness and consideration were exhibited when
circumstances made it warrantable--such as previous acquaintance, as
was common among the officers of the old army, or a return of kindness
when parties had been prisoners in our hands, as was the case with a
portion of the Seventh regiment when it was the cavalry battalion of
the Holcomb Legion, under Colonel Shingler, and the Fifth Pennsylvania
cavalry.
Regular rations were issued to men and horses. An apology was offered,
on one occasion, by the Federal Quartermaster, for not serving out
horse feed, as General F. Lee's division of cavalry, who were, as I
mentioned before, outside, up in the James River direction, had cut
off a wagon train that held their provender, so we had to send out a
forage detail in the neighborhood, with a pass from General Sheridan,
to get through the Federal troops that filled the woods for miles
around, for their name was legion. We stacked eight thousand stands of
arms, all told; artillery, cavalry, infantry stragglers, wagon-rats,
and all the rest, from twelve to fifteen thousand men. The United
States troops, by their own estimate, were 150,000 men, with a
railroad connecting their rear with Washington, New York, Germany,
France, Belgium, Africa, "all the world and the rest of man-kind," as
General Taylor comprehensively remarked, for their recruiting stations
were all over the world, and the crusade against the South, and its
peculiar manners and civilization, under the pressure of the "almighty
American dollar," was as absolute and varied in its nationality as was
that of "Peter the Hermit," under the pressure of religious zeal, upon
Jerusalem.
Success had made them good natured. Those we came in contact with were
soldiers--fighting men--and, as is always the case, such appreciate
their position and are too proud to bear themselves in any other way.
They, in the good nature of success, were more willing to give than
our men, in the soreness of defeat, to receive.
The effect of such conduct upon our men was of the best kind; the
unexpected consideration shown by the officers and men of the United
States army towards us; the heartiness with which a Yankee soldier
would come up to a Confederate officer and say, "We have been fighting
one another for four years; give me a Confederate five dollar bill to
remember you by," had nothing in it offensive.
They were proud of their success, and we were not ashamed of our
defeat; and not a man of that grand army of one hundred and fifty
thousand men but could, and I believe would, testify, that, on purely
personal grounds, the few worn-out half-starved men that gathered
around General Lee and his falling flag held the prouder position of
the two. Had the politicians left things alone, such feelings would
have resulted in a very different condition of things.
Those of us who took serious consideration of the state of affairs,
felt that with our defeat we had as absolutely lost our country--the
one we held under the Constitution--as though we had been conquered
and made a colony of by France or Russia. The right of the
strongest--the law of the sword--was as absolute at "Appomattox" that
day as when Brennus, the Gaul, threw it in the scale at the ransom of
Rome.
So far, it was all according to the order of things, and we stood on
the bare hills men without a country. General Grant offered us, it was
said, rations and transportation--each man to his native State, now a
conquered province, or to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Many would not have
hesitated to accept the offer for Halifax and rations; but, in distant
Southern homes were old men, helpless women and children, whose cry
for help it was not hard to hear. So, in good faith, accepting our
fate, we took allegiance to this, our new country, which is now called
the "United States," as we would have done to France or Russia.
With all that was around us--the destruction of the "Army of Northern
Virginia," and certain defeat of the Confederacy as the result--no one
dreamed of what has followed. The fanaticism that has influenced the
policy of the Government, to treat subject States, whose citizens had
been permitted to take an oath of allegiance, accepted them as such,
and promised to give them the benefit of laws protecting person,
property and religion, as the dominant party in the United States has
done--exceeds belief.
To place the government of the States absolutely in the hands of its
former slaves, and call their "acts" "laws;" to denounce the slightest
effort to assert the white vote, even under the laws, treason; and,
finally, force the unwilling United States soldier to use his bayonet
to sustain the grossest outrages of law and decency against men of his
own color and race! This has gone on until, lost in wonder as to what
is to come next, the southern white man watches events, as a tide that
is gradually rising and spreading, and from which he sees no avenue of
escape, and must, unless an intervention almost miraculous takes
place, soon sweep him away.