OFF TO CHARLESTON--PASSING THROUGH THE RICE SWAMPS--TWO EXTREMES OF
SOCIETY--ENTRY INTO CHARLESTON--LEISURELY WARFARE--SHELLING THE CITY AT
REGULAR INTERVALS--WE CAMP IN A MASS OF RUINS--DEPARTURE FOR FLORENCE.
The train started in a few minutes after the close of the conversation
with the old Georgian, and we soon came to and crossed the Savannah
River into South Carolina. The river was wide and apparently deep; the
tide was setting back in a swift, muddy current; the crazy old bridge
creaked and shook, and the grinding axles shrieked in the dry journals,
as we pulled across. It looked very much at times as if we were to all
crash down into the turbid flood--and we did not care very much if we
did, if we were not going to be exchanged.
The road lay through the tide swamp region of South Carolina, a
peculiar and interesting country. Though swamps and fens stretched in
all directions as far as the eye could reach, the landscape was more
grateful to the eye than the famine-stricken, pine-barrens of Georgia,
which had become wearisome to the sight. The soil where it appeared,
was rich, vegetation was luxuriant; great clumps of laurel showed
glossy richness in the greenness of its verdure, that reminded us of
the fresh color of the vegetation of our Northern homes, so different
from the parched and impoverished look of Georgian foliage. Immense
flocks of wild fowl fluttered around us; the Georgian woods were almost
destitute of living creatures; the evergreen live-oak, with its queer
festoons of Spanish moss, and the ugly and useless palmettos gave
novelty and interest to the view.
The rice swamps through which we were passing were the princely
possessions of the few nabobs who before the war stood at the head
of South Carolina aristocracy--they were South Carolina, in fact, as
absolutely as Louis XIV. was France. In their hands--but a few score
in number--was concentrated about all there was of South Carolina
education, wealth, culture, and breeding. They represented a pinchbeck
imitation of that regime in France which was happily swept out of
existence by the Revolution, and the destruction of which more than
compensated for every drop of blood shed in those terrible days. Like
the provincial ‘grandes seigneurs’ of Louis XVI’s reign, they were
gay, dissipated and turbulent; “accomplished” in the superficial
acquirements that made the “gentleman” one hundred years ago, but are
grotesquely out of place in this sensible, solid age, which demands
that a man shall be of use, and not merely for show. They ran horses
and fought cocks, dawdled through society when young, and intrigued
in politics the rest of their lives, with frequent spice-work of
duels. Esteeming personal courage as a supreme human virtue, and
never wearying of prating their devotion to the highest standard of
intrepidity, they never produced a General who was even mediocre; nor
did any one ever hear of a South Carolina regiment gaining distinction.
Regarding politics and the art of government as, equally with arms,
their natural vocations, they have never given the Nation a statesman,
and their greatest politicians achieved eminence by advocating ideas
which only attracted attention by their balefulness.
Still further resembling the French ‘grandes seigneurs’ of the
eighteenth century, they rolled in wealth wrung from the laborer by
reducing the rewards of his toil to the last fraction that would
support his life and strength. The rice culture was immensely
profitable, because they had found the secret for raising it more
cheaply than even the pauper laborer of the of world could. Their lands
had cost them nothing originally, the improvements of dikes and ditches
were comparatively, inexpensive, the taxes were nominal, and their
slaves were not so expensive to keep as good horses in the North.
Thousands of the acres along the road belonged to the Rhetts,
thousands to the Heywards, thousands to the Manigault the Lowndes, the
Middletons, the Hugers, the Barnwells, and the Elliots--all names too
well known in the history of our country’s sorrows. Occasionally one
of their stately mansions could be seen on some distant elevation,
surrounded by noble old trees, and superb grounds. Here they lived
during the healthy part of the year, but fled thence to summer resort
in the highlands as the miasmatic season approached.
The people we saw at the stations along our route were melancholy
illustrations of the evils of the rule of such an oligarchy. There was
no middle class visible anywhere--nothing but the two extremes. A man
was either a “gentleman,” and wore white shirt and city-made clothes,
or he was a loutish hind, clad in mere apologies for garments. We
thought we had found in the Georgia “cracker” the lowest substratum of
human society, but he was bright intelligence compared to the South
Carolina “clay-eater” and “sand-hiller.” The “cracker” always gave
hopes to one that if he had the advantage of common schools, and could
be made to understand that laziness was dishonorable, he might develop
into something. There was little foundation for such hope in the
average low South Carolinian. His mind was a shaking quagmire, which
did not admit of the erection of any superstructure of education upon
it. The South Carolina guards about us did not know the name of the
next town, though they had been raised in that section. They did not
know how far it was there, or to any place else, and they did not care
to learn. They had no conception of what the war was being waged for,
and did not want to find out; they did not know where their regiment
was going, and did not remember where it had been; they could not tell
how long they had been in service, nor the time they had enlisted for.
They only remembered that sometimes they had had “sorter good times,”
and sometimes “they had been powerful bad,” and they hoped there would
be plenty to eat wherever they went, and not too much hard marching.
Then they wondered “whar a feller’d be likely to make a raise of a
canteen of good whisky?”
Bad as the whites were, the rice plantation negros were even worse,
if that were possible. Brought to the country centuries ago, as
brutal savages from Africa, they had learned nothing of Christian
civilization, except that it meant endless toil, in malarious swamps,
under the lash of the taskmaster. They wore, possibly, a little more
clothing than their Senegambian ancestors did; they ate corn meal, yams
and rice, instead of bananas, yams and rice, as their forefathers did,
and they had learned a bastard, almost unintelligible, English. These
were the sole blessings acquired by a transfer from a life of freedom
in the jungles of the Gold Coast, to one of slavery in the swamps of
the Combahee.
I could not then, nor can I now, regret the downfall of a system of
society which bore such fruits.
Towards night a distressingly cold breeze, laden with a penetrating
mist, set in from the sea, and put an end to future observations by
making us too uncomfortable to care for scenery or social conditions.
We wanted most to devise a way to keep warm. Andrews and I pulled our
overcoat and blanket closely about us, snuggled together so as to make
each one’s meager body afford the other as much heat as possible--and
endured.
We became fearfully hungry. It will be recollected that we ate the
whole of the two days’ rations issued to us at Blackshear at once, and
we had received nothing since. We reached the sullen, fainting stage
of great hunger, and for hours nothing was said by any one, except an
occasional bitter execration on Rebels and Rebel practices.
It was late at night when we reached Charleston. The lights of the
City, and the apparent warmth and comfort there cheered us up somewhat
with the hopes that we might have some share in them. Leaving the
train, we were marched some distance through well-lighted streets, in
which were plenty of people walking to and fro. There were many stores,
apparently stocked with goods, and the citizens seemed to be going
about their business very much as was the custom up North.
At length our head of column made a “right turn,” and we marched away
from the lighted portion of the City, to a part which I could see
through the shadows was filled with ruins. An almost insupportable
odor of gas, escaping I suppose from the ruptured pipes, mingled with
the cold, rasping air from the sea, to make every breath intensely
disagreeable.
As I saw the ruins, it flashed upon me that this was the burnt district
of the city, and they were putting us under the fire of our own guns.
At first I felt much alarmed. Little relish as I had on general
principles, for being shot I had much less for being killed by our own
men. Then I reflected that if they put me there--and kept me--a guard
would have to be placed around us, who would necessarily be in as much
clanger as we were, and I knew I could stand any fire that a Rebel
could.
We were halted in a vacant lot, and sat down, only to jump up the next
instant, as some one shouted:
“There comes one of ’em!”
It was a great shell from the Swamp Angel Battery. Starting from a
point miles away, where, seemingly, the sky came down to the sea, was
a narrow ribbon of fire, which slowly unrolled itself against the
star-lit vault over our heads. On, on it came, and was apparently
following the sky down to the horizon behind us. As it reached the
zenith, there came to our ears a prolonged, but not sharp,
“Whish--ish-ish-ish-ish!”
We watched it breathlessly, and it seemed to be long minutes in running
its course; then a thump upon the ground, and a vibration, told that
it had struck. For a moment there was a dead silence. Then came a loud
roar, and the crash of breaking timber and crushing walls. The shell
had bursted.
Ten minutes later another shell followed, with like results. For awhile
we forgot all about hunger in the excitement of watching the messengers
from “God’s country.” What happiness to be where those shells came
from. Soon a Rebel battery of heavy guns somewhere near and in front
of us, waked up, and began answering with dull, slow thumps that made
the ground shudder. This continued about an hour, when it quieted
down again, but our shells kept coming over at regular intervals with
the same slow deliberation, the same prolonged warning, and the same
dreadful crash when they struck. They had already gone on this way for
over a year, and were to keep it up months longer until the City was
captured.
The routine was the same from day to day, month in, and month out,
from early in August, 1863, to the middle of April, 1865. Every few
minutes during the day our folks would hurl a great shell into the
beleaguered City, and twice a day, for perhaps an hour each time, the
Rebel batteries would talk back. It must have been a lesson to the
Charlestonians of the persistent, methodical spirit of the North. They
prided themselves on the length of the time they were holding out
against the enemy, and the papers each day had a column headed:
“390th DAY OF THE SIEGE,”
or 391st, 393d, etc., as the number might be since our people opened
fire upon the City. The part where we lay was a mass of ruins. Many
large buildings had been knocked down; very many more were riddled
with shot holes and tottering to their fall. One night a shell passed
through a large building about a quarter of a mile from us. It had
already been struck several times, and was shaky. The shell went
through with a deafening crash. All was still for an instant; then it
exploded with a dull roar, followed by more crashing of timber and
walls. The sound died away and was succeeded by a moment of silence.
Finally the great building fell, a shapeless heap of ruins, with
a noise like that of a dozen field pieces. We wanted to cheer but
restrained ourselves. This was the nearest to us that any shell came.
There was only one section of the City in reach of our guns and this
was nearly destroyed. Fires had come to complete the work begun by
the shells. Outside of the boundaries of this region, the people felt
themselves as safe as in one of our northern Cities to-day. They had
an abiding faith that they were clear out of reach of any artillery
that we could mount. I learned afterwards from some of the prisoners,
who went into Charleston ahead of us, and were camped on the race
course outside of the City, that one day our fellows threw a shell
clear over the City to this race course. There was an immediate and
terrible panic among the citizens. They thought we had mounted some
new guns of increased range, and now the whole city must go. But the
next shell fell inside the established limits, and those following
were equally well behaved, so that the panic abated. I have never
heard any explanation of the matter. It may have been some freak of
the gun-squad, trying the effect of an extra charge of powder. Had our
people known of its signal effect, they could have depopulated the
place in a few hours.
The whole matter impressed me queerly. The only artillery I had ever
seen in action were field pieces. They made an earsplitting crash when
they were discharged, and there was likely to be oceans of trouble for
everybody in that neighborhood about that time. I reasoned from this
that bigger guns made a proportionally greater amount of noise, and
bred an infinitely larger quantity of trouble. Now I was hearing the
giants of the world’s ordnance, and they were not so impressive as a
lively battery of three-inch rifles. Their reports did not threaten
to shatter everything, but had a dull resonance, something like that
produced by striking an empty barrel with a wooden maul. Their shells
did not come at one in that wildly, ferocious way, with which a missile
from a six-pounder convinces every fellow in a long line of battle
that he is the identical one it is meant for, but they meandered over
in a lazy, leisurely manner, as if time was no object and no person
would feel put out at having to wait for them. Then, the idea of firing
every quarter of an hour for a year--fixing up a job for a lifetime,
as Andrews expressed it,--and of being fired back at for an hour at
9 o’clock every morning and evening; of fifty thousand people going
on buying and selling, eating, drinking and sleeping, having dances,
drives and balls, marrying and giving in marriage, all within a few
hundred yards of where the shells were falling-struck me as a most
singular method of conducting warfare.
We received no rations until the day after our arrival, and then they
were scanty, though fair in quality. We were by this time so hungry
and faint that we could hardly move. We did nothing for hours but lie
around on the ground and try to forget how famished we were. At the
announcement of rations, many acted as if crazy, and it was all that
the Sergeants could do to restrain the impatient mob from tearing
the food away and devouring it, when they were trying to divide it
out. Very many--perhaps thirty--died during the night and morning. No
blame for this is attached to the Charlestonians. They distinguished
themselves from the citizens of every other place in the Southern
Confederacy where we had been, by making efforts to relieve our
condition. They sent quite a quantity of food to us, and the Sisters of
Charity came among us, seeking and ministering to the sick. I believe
our experience was the usual one. The prisoners who passed through
Charleston before us all spoke very highly of the kindness shown them
by the citizens there.
We remained in Charleston but a few days. One night we were marched
down to a rickety depot, and put aboard a still more rickety train.
When morning came we found ourselves running northward through a pine
barren country that resembled somewhat that in Georgia, except that the
pine was short-leaved, there was more oak and other hard woods, and the
vegetation generally assumed a more Northern look. We had been put into
close box cars, with guards at the doors and on top. During the night
quite a number of the boys, who had fabricated little saws out of case
knives and fragments of hoop iron, cut holes through the bottoms of the
cars, through which they dropped to the ground and escaped, but were
mostly recaptured after several days. There was no hole cut in our car,
and so Andrews and I staid in.
Just at dusk we came to the insignificant village of Florence, the
junction of the road leading from Charleston to Cheraw with that
running from Wilmington to Kingsville. It was about one hundred and
twenty miles from Charleston, and the same distance from Wilmington.
As our train ran through a cut near the junction a darky stood by the
track gazing at us curiously. When the train had nearly passed him he
started to run up the bank. In the imperfect light the guards mistook
him for one of us who had jumped from the train. They all fired, and
the unlucky negro fell, pierced by a score of bullets.
That night we camped in the open field. When morning came we saw, a few
hundred yards from us, a Stockade of rough logs, with guards stationed
around it. It was another prison pen. They were just bringing the dead
out, and two men were tossing the bodies up into the four-horse wagon
which hauled them away for burial. The men were going about their
business as coolly as if loading slaughtered hogs. One of them would
catch the body by the feet, and the other by the arms. They would give
it a swing--“One, two, three,” and up it would go into the wagon. This
filled heaping full with corpses, a negro mounted the wheel horse,
grasped the lines, and shouted to his animals:
“Now, walk off on your tails, boys.”
The horses strained, the wagon moved, and its load of what were once
gallant, devoted soldiers, was carted off to nameless graves. This was
a part of the daily morning routine.
As we stood looking at the sickeningly familiar architecture of the
prison pen, a Seventh Indianian near me said, in tones of wearisome
disgust:
“Well, this Southern Confederacy is the d---dest country to stand logs
on end on God Almighty’s footstool.”