WITH FIRE AND SWORD
[Illustration]
[Illustration: W. T. Sherman]
[Illustration: S. H. M. Byers.]
With Fire and Sword
BY
MAJOR S. H. M. BYERS
OF GENERAL SHERMAN'S STAFF
Author of "Sherman's March to the Sea," "Iowa
in War Times," "Twenty Years in
Europe," and of other books
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1911
Copyright, 1911, by
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I 11
My enlistment in the Union Army--The "Bushwhackers" of Missouri--The
Quantrells and the James Brothers--Cutting a man's head off--My
first adventure in the war--Capturing a guerrilla.
CHAPTER II 22
We leave Missouri and go South--The prisoners of Donelson--The taking
of New Madrid--"Kindly bury this unfortunate officer"--Quaker guns
at Shiloh--The killing of the colonel.
CHAPTER III 29
Iuka, the fiercest battle of the war, 217 men out of 482 of my
regiment are shot--The awful rebel charge at Corinth--Moonlight on
the battlefield--Bushels of arms and legs--Tombstones for
fireplaces--One of Grant's mistakes.
CHAPTER IV 40
An unlucky campaign led by General Grant--Holly Springs burned up--The
first foragers--Some modern Falstaffs--Counting dead men.
CHAPTER V 49
The laughable campaign of the war--An army floating among the tree
tops of the Yazoo Pass.
CHAPTER VI 54
Grant's new plan at Vicksburg--Running the Vicksburg batteries--An
hour and a half of horror--The batteries are passed--The most
important event in the war.
CHAPTER VII 63
Crossing the Mississippi on gunboats and steamers--Battle of Port
Gibson--How General Grant looked to a private soldier--A boy from
Mississippi--Fights at Raymond--Battle of Jackson in a
thunderstorm--Digging his brothers' grave--Grant in battle--Saving a
flag--How men feel in battle--An awful spectacle--The critical
moment of General Grant's life--A battlefield letter from him to
Sherman.
CHAPTER VIII 87
Assaults on the walls of Vicksburg--Logan in battle--An army mule--A
promotion under the guns of Vicksburg--A storm of iron hail at
Vicksburg--The Vicksburg clock--The town surrenders--The glad
news--Reading my first order to the regiment--My regiment put on
guard in the captured city--Eight days' furlough in four years of
war.
CHAPTER IX 102
Sherman's army floats across the Tennessee River at
midnight--Washington at the Delaware nothing compared to this--We
assault Missionary Ridge--An awful battle--My capture.
CHAPTER X 111
In Libby Prison--Life there--"Belle Isle"--All prisons bad--The great
escape--"Maryland, My Maryland."
CHAPTER XI 119
Escaping from Macon--An adventure in Atlanta--In the disguise of a
Confederate soldier--My wanderings inside the Confederate army and
what I experienced there--I am captured as a spy--How I got out of
it all.
CHAPTER XII 137
Under fire of our own guns at Charleston--Trying to capture a railway
train--The secret band--Betrayed--The desolation of Charleston.
CHAPTER XIII 144
Living in a grave--An adventure in the woods of South Carolina--Life
in the asylum yard at the capital of South Carolina--The song of
"Sherman's March to the Sea"--How it came to be written--Final
escape--The burning up of South Carolina's capitol.
CHAPTER XIV 174
The army in the Carolinas--General Sherman sends for me--Gives me a
place on his staff--Experiences at army headquarters--Sherman's life
on the march--Music at headquarters--Logan's violin--The General's
false friend--The army wades, swims, and fights through the
Carolinas--I am sent as despatch bearer to General Grant--A strange
ride down the Cape Fear River in the night--General Terry--Learn
that my song "The March to the Sea" is sung through the North, and
has given the campaign its name--I bring the first news of Sherman's
success to the North--An interview with General Grant.
CHAPTER XV 198
Washington City in the last three days of the war--Look, the
President!--_The last man of the regiment._
PREFACE
In war some persons seek adventures; others have them in spite of
themselves. It happened that the writer of this book belonged to a
regiment that seemed to be always in the midst of great experiences. It
was, in fact, one of the few regiments that absolutely fought themselves
out of existence. It was mustered in a thousand strong; it lost seven
hundred and seventy-seven men by death, wounds, and disease. The
fragment that was left over was transferred to a cavalry command. When
the writer finally escaped from prison, after many months of confinement
and many thrilling adventures both in prison and in the army of the
enemy, he was mustered out as a "supernumerary officer." His command had
ceased to exist. He was literally the _last man of the regiment_. Of the
eighty of his regiment who had been taken to prison with him all but
sixteen were dead. Of the nine captured from his own company all were
dead but one.
While with his command he had served as a private soldier, as sergeant,
and as adjutant. On escaping from prison he was for a time on General
Sherman's staff and was selected to run down the Cape Fear River and
carry the great news of Sherman's successes to the people of the North.
He kept a diary every day in the four years of war and adventure. The
substance of the facts related here is from its pages; occasionally they
are copied just as they are there set down. The book is not a history of
great army movements, it is simply a true tale of the thrilling
experiences of a subordinate soldier in the midst of great events.
With Fire and Sword
CHAPTER I
My enlistment in the Union Army--The "Bushwhackers" of Missouri--The
Quantrells and the James Brothers--Cutting a man's head off--My
first adventure in the war--Capturing a guerrilla.
I am writing down these sketches of adventures of mine from a daily
journal or diary kept by me throughout the four years of the Civil War.
Its pages are crumpled and old and yellow, but I can read them still.
Fate so arranged it that I was the very first one to enlist in my
regiment, and it all came about through a confusion of names. A
patriotic mass-meeting was held in the court-house of the village where
I lived. Everybody was there, and everybody was excited, for the war
tocsin was sounding all over the country. A new regiment had been
ordered by the governor, and no town was so quick in responding to the
call as the village of Newton. We would be the very first. Drums were
beating at the mass-meeting, fifes screaming, people shouting. There was
a little pause in the patriotic noise, and then someone called out,
"Myers to the platform!" "Myers! Myers! Myers!" echoed a hundred other
voices. Mr. Myers never stirred, as he was no public speaker. I sat
beside him near the aisle. Again the voices shouted "Myers! Myers!"
Myers turned to me, laughed, and said, "They are calling you, Byers,"
and fairly pushed me out into the aisle. A handful of the audience
seeing Myers would not respond, did then call my own name, and both
names were cried together. Some of the audience becoming confused called
loudly for me. "Go on," said Myers, half-rising and pushing me toward
the platform.
I was young,--just twenty-two,--ambitious, had just been admitted to the
bar, and now was all on fire with the newly awakened patriotism. I went
up to the platform and stood by the big drum. The American flag, the
flag that had been fired on by the South, was hanging above my head. In
a few minutes I was full of the mental champagne that comes from a
cheering multitude. I was burning with excitement, with patriotism,
enthusiasm, pride, and my enthusiasm lent power to the words I uttered.
I don't know why nor how, but I was moving my audience. The war was not
begun to put down slavery, but what in the beginning had been an
incident I felt in the end would become a cause.
The year before I had been for many months on a plantation in
Mississippi, and there with my own eyes had seen the horrors of slavery.
I had seen human beings flogged; men and women bleeding from an
overseer's lash. Now in my excitement I pictured it all. I recalled
everything. "And the war, they tell us," I cried, "is to perpetuate this
curse!" In ten minutes after my stormy words one hundred youths and men,
myself the first, had stepped up to the paper lying on the big drum and
had put down our names for the war.
We all mustered on the village green. Alas, not half of them were ever
to see that village green again! No foreboding came to me, the
enthusiastic youth about to be a soldier, of the "dangers by flood and
field," the adventures, the thrilling scenes, the battles, the prisons,
the escapes, that were awaiting me.
Now we were all enthusiasm to be taken quickly to the front, to the
"seat of war." We could bide no delay. Once our men were on the very
point of mobbing and "egging" our great, good Governor Kirkwood, because
for a moment he thought he would be compelled to place us in a later
regiment. However, we were immediately started in wagons for the nearest
railroad, fifty miles away.
At the town of Burlington, on the 15th of July, 1861, we were mustered
into the service as Company B of the Fifth Iowa Infantry. Our colonel,
W. H. Worthington, was a military martinet from some soldier school in
Kentucky. His sympathies were with his native South. Why he was leading
a Northern regiment was a constant mystery to his men.
The regiment spent scant time in Burlington, for in a little while we
were whisked down the Mississippi River in a steamer to St. Louis, and
soon joined the army of Frémont, organizing at Jefferson City to march
against General Price, who was flying toward Springfield with the booty
he had gained in his capture of Mulligan and his men at Boonville. Now
all began to look like war. Missouri was neither North nor South; she
was simply hell, for her people were cutting one another's throats, and
neighboring farmers killed each other and burned each other's homes. The
loyal feared to shut their eyes in sleep; the disloyal did not know if a
roof would be above their heads in the morning. Brothers of the same
family were in opposing armies, and the State was overrun by Southern
guerrillas and murderers. The Quantrells, the James Brothers, and other
irregular and roaming bands of villains rode everywhere, waylaying,
bushwhacking, and murdering.
We followed General Price's army to the Ozark Mountains, marching day
and night--the nights made hideous by the burning of homes on the track
of both the armies, while unburied corpses lay at the roadside. We
marched half the nights and all the days and just as we got close enough
to fight, the Washington politicians caused Frémont to be removed from
his command. Frémont had been ahead of his time. He had freed some
slaves, and the dough-faced politicians were not yet ready for action of
that character.
The campaign had been to no purpose. Some of our regiment, indignant at
the removal of their general, had to be guarded to prevent mutiny and
disorder. Now we turned about and made the long march back to the
Missouri River. Half that cold winter was spent near Syracuse, in
guarding the Pacific Railway. We lived in wedge tents, and spite of the
cold and snow and storm, our squads by turn tramped for miles up and
down the railroad in the darkness every night. What terrible tales, too,
we had in our little tents that winter, of the deeds of Quantrell's men.
It did not seem possible that the South could set loose a lot of
murderers to hang on the skirts of our army, to "bushwhack" an honorable
foe, burn villages, destroy farms, and drive whole counties into
conditions as frightful as war was in the Middle Ages. Only savage
Indians fought that way. Yet Quantrell's band of murderers was said to
be on the payroll of the Confederate States. Here and there, however,
his guerrilla outlaws met with awful punishment, and horrible incidents
became the order of the day and night.
I recall now how a prize was once offered by one of our commanders for
the head of a certain man among those desperate murderers, a desperado
with a band of men that knew no mercy. His troop of riders had
ambuscaded almost scores of our soldiers, and innocent farmers who did
not happen to like his ways were strung up to trees as unceremoniously
as one would drown a kitten. The offered prize of a thousand dollars
stimulated certain of our men in taking chances with this beast of the
Confederacy, and a corporal of our cavalry learned of the desperado's
occasional visits at night to his home, only a dozen miles away from
where we were camped. Several nights he secretly watched from a thicket
near the cabin for the bandit's return. Once in the darkness he heard a
horse's hoofs, and then a man dismounted and entered at the door. The
evening was chilly, and a bright fire in the open fireplace of the cabin
shone out as the man entered.
The corporal, who had disguised himself in an old gray overcoat, knocked
for entrance, and pretended to be a sick Confederate going on a furlough
to his home not far away. He was cautiously admitted and given a seat by
the open fire. He had no arms, and to the bandit and his wife his story
of sickness and a furlough seemed probable enough. The two men and the
one woman sat in front of the fireplace talking for an hour. The
corporal, with the guerrilla sitting within a few feet of him, thought
of the prize, and of his comrades murdered by this man. But what could
he do? Suddenly the thought came, "I must kill or be killed." Outside
there was only darkness and silence; inside the cabin, the low voices of
these three people and the flickering fire.
The corporal glanced about him. There was no gun to be seen that he
could seize. The guerrilla's big revolver hung at his belt. While
sitting thus, a bit of burning wood rolled out onto the hearth. The
guerrilla stooped over to put it in its place. Instantly the corporal
saw his chance and, springing for the iron poker at the fireside, dealt
the guerrilla a blow on the head that stretched him dead on the cabin
floor. In an instant his big jackknife was out of his pocket and in the
presence of the screaming wife the brute severed the man's head from his
body. Then he left the cabin, mounted his horse in the thicket, and in
the darkness carried his ghostly trophy into camp. It is a horrible ride
to think of, that dozen miles, with the bleeding head of a murdered man
on the saddle bow.
So the awful things went on all that winter in Missouri. As for myself,
I was tramping about as a corporal, helping in a small way to keep the
great railroad free from marauders and in possession of the Union army.
I don't know how it happened, but one morning our colonel, who had
always treated me with extreme gruffness, though he well knew I did my
duties with patriotic zeal, sent for me to come to his tent. I was a
little alarmed, not knowing what was about to happen to me. The colonel
called me by name as I entered, saluting him cap in hand, and for once
he actually smiled.
"Corporal," he said dryly, as if suddenly regretting his smile, "I have
noticed that you always did the duty assigned you with promptness. I
need a quartermaster sergeant. You are the man."
I was almost paralyzed with astonishment and pleasure. I stood stock
still, without a word of gratitude. At last, recovering myself, I
explained that I had enlisted expecting to fight, and not to fill some
easy position with the trains.
"If I could only be allowed to find a substitute," I ventured to say,
"in case of a fight, so I might share the danger with my comrades, I
would like the promotion."
Again the colonel tried to smile. "You probably will change your mind;
you will find excitement enough," he remarked, dismissing me.
I was hardly installed in my new post when to my surprise I was ordered
by the colonel to take a good horse and ride twelve miles across the
lone prairies and carry a message to a command at the village of Tipton.
Instantly my mind was excited with the hopes of an adventure. I don't
know, even now, just why I was selected for the venturesome undertaking.
I knew there was scarcely a road and not a house in the whole distance.
I knew, too, the whole country was full of murderous guerrillas. But
nevertheless I was full of elation. This was the kind of a thing I had
hoped for when I enlisted.
Light flakes of snow were falling when, with exultant spirits, I started
from the camp. The trip outward proved uneventful, for nothing happened
to me on my way. As I was returning, however, at a point halfway across
the prairie I was surprised to see a man in gray, probably a guerrilla,
ride out of a long slough or hollow to my left and gallop into the road
directly ahead of me. He was in complete gray uniform, wore a saber, and
had revolvers at his saddle bow. The man glanced back at me, and I saw
him reaching for his pistols. "Here comes my first fight in the war," I
thought instantly, "out here alone on the prairie." Save my one
half-loaded revolver, strapped to my waist, I was unarmed. The stranger,
without firing, galloped faster. I, too, galloped faster, the distance
between us remaining about the same. Each of us now had a pistol in his
hand, but it looked as if each were afraid to commence the duel. If the
stranger checked his horse to give him breath, I checked mine. If he
galloped again, I, too, put spurs to my animal. Imagining that other
guerrillas must be lurking quite near, I was not over-anxious to bring
on the engagement, and I suppose the armed man felt much the same way,
for he could not have thought that I was in such a place absolutely
alone. So neither fired. We just looked at each other and galloped.
Finally we approached a little wood, and in a twinkling he turned into a
path and was out of sight. I did not care to follow him to his
hiding-place just then, and quickly galloped to our camp a few miles
off.
Before midnight that night I, with a dozen of my regiment, surrounded
the little wood and a cabin secreted in its center. Approaching, we
looked into the windows, and, sure enough, there, roasting his feet in
front of an open fire, sat my rider of the day. When three of us
suddenly entered the house and demanded his surrender he sprang for a
rifle that stood like a poker by the fireside, aimed it at me, and
shouted "Never! Surrender yourself." A bayonet that instant against his
breast brought him to terms, however. There followed a little farewell
scene between him and his wife, who poured bottles of wrath on the heads
of the "bluecoats," and our captive--my captive--was hurried to the
guardhouse at the camp. It had been a perfectly bloodless encounter, but
next morning it turned out that I had by chance captured one of the most
dangerous guerrillas in Missouri.