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.