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 a 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 successes to the North--An interview with General
Grant.
It was on this march in the Carolinas that General Sherman sent for me
to come to army headquarters. We were two days away from Columbia. I was
ashamed to go in my prison rags, so I waited. The next day the request
was repeated, and Major Nichols of the staff came and said, "But you
must go, it is an order." And I went. The General was sitting by a
little rail fire in front of his tent, reading a newspaper, when we
approached his bivouac in the woods. I was introduced. He at once told
me how pleased he had been with my song, that I had written in prison
about his army. Devine had given him a copy at that time when he halted
his column to greet us by the door-step at Columbia. "Our boys shall all
sing this song," he said; "and as for you, I shall give you a position
on my staff. Tomorrow you will be furnished a horse and all that you
need; and you must mess with me."
It would be very hard to express my feelings at this sudden transition
from a prisoner in rags to a post at the headquarters of the great
commander. I was almost overcome, but General Sherman's extreme kindness
of manner and speech at last put me partly at my ease. Shortly a big
colored man, in a green coat, announced dinner. "Come," said the
General, pushing me ahead of him into a tent, where a number of
handsomely uniformed staff officers stood around a table waiting his
approach. I was still in my rags. I could not help noticing the curious
glances of the fine gentlemen, who doubtless were wondering what General
Sherman had picked up now.
My embarrassment was extreme. The commander however soon told them who I
was, gave me the seat at his right hand, and almost his entire
conversation at the table was directed to me. The officers of the staff
quickly took the General's cue, and I was soon an object of interest,
even to them.
He directed a hundred questions to me as to the general treatment of
war prisoners in the South, and he, as well as the staff, interested
themselves in all the details of my escape. Telling the story very soon
relieved me of my embarrassment as to my clothes. The horrible tales of
Southern prison pens, however, was nothing new to General Sherman, for
he related to me some of the awful things he had heard of Andersonville
while his army was at Atlanta.
"At one time," said he, "I had great hopes of rescuing all of them at
one quick blow. I gave General Stoneman a large body of cavalry, with
directions to raid down about Macon. This raid was to go farther, and,
by a quick, secret dash capture Andersonville and release every prisoner
there. It was a chance to do the noblest deed of the war, but it all
failed miserably. Stoneman had not fully obeyed orders, and, instead of
releasing a whole army of suffering captives, he got captured himself,
and, with him, a lot of my best cavalry."
It happened that I saw General Stoneman the very day he was brought to
the prison. My narrative of how by desperately bold and violent cursing
he denounced and defied his captors, and everything in Rebeldom, greatly
amused Sherman and all at the table.
Stoneman's awful language and flashing eyes did indeed fairly
intimidate the officer in charge. Evidently he thought he had captured a
tiger. It was a wonder Stoneman was not killed.
The conversation about the prisoners continued. Twenty-five thousand of
them were starving and dying in Andersonville. "It is one of the awful
fates of war," said the General. "It can't be helped; they would have
been better off had all been killed on the battlefield; and one almost
wishes they had been." After a pause, he continued. "At times, I am
almost satisfied it would be just as well to _kill all prisoners_." The
remark, to me, a prisoner just escaped, seemed shocking. I am sure he
noticed it, for he soon added: "They would be spared these atrocities.
Besides, _the more awful you can make war the sooner it will be over_."
It would, after all, be a mercy.
"_War is hell, at the best_," he went on, half in anger, and using an
expression common to him.
For the moment I thought him heartless, but other remarks made to me,
and to the staff, soon told us that whatever the cruelties imposed on
him as a commander, they were executed with heart-pain and only as plain
duty for the salvation of his own army. He even talked of how glad he
would be to be out of the whole bloody business, once the Union were
restored. But if the rebellion continued all his life, he would stay and
fight it out.
When the dinner was over each looked about him to find some garment to
give me. This one had an extra coat, that one a pair of trousers, and
another one a hat. In short I was quickly attired in a rather
respectable uniform.
This matter was just about ended when a beautiful woman was conducted to
Sherman, to ask protection for her home, that was in his line of march.
She was "true blue Union," despite her surroundings. In a moment the
whole atmosphere about the tent was changed. The red-handed warrior, who
a moment before was ready to kill even prisoners, suddenly became the
most amiable, the most gallant and knightly looking man I ever saw.
Beauty, that can draw a soldier with a single hair, had ensnared the
great commander. He had become a gentle knight. The whole army if need
be, would stand stock still to do her one little favor. I now recall how
long after the war I noticed a hundred times this perfectly knightly
gallantry of Sherman toward all women.
This one particular woman seemed a hundred times more beautiful, more
fascinating, there in the green wood alone, with an army of a hundred
thousand strangers about her, when, pointing her hand toward a great
banner that swung in the wind between two tall pines, she smiled and
cried: "General Sherman, THAT IS MY FLAG TOO." There was a clapping of
hands from all of us, and any one of us would have been glad to be sent
as the protector of her home.
The great army was now marching, or rather swimming and wading, in the
direction of Fayetteville, N. C. There were heavy rains and the country,
naturally swampy, was flooded everywhere. I soon learned from the staff
where the army had already been. After the end of the march to the sea
and the capture of Savannah, Sherman had started in with sixty thousand
men, to treat South Carolina in the manner he had treated Georgia--march
through it and desolate it. His proposed march northward from Savannah
was regarded by the Southern generals as an impossibility. The obstacles
were so great as to make it a hundred times as difficult as his march
from Atlanta to the sea. But he led a great army of picked veterans,
accustomed to everything, whose flags had almost never known defeat.
Their confidence in their general and in themselves was simply absolute.
So far, in their march from Savannah they had hesitated at nothing.
It was midwinter, and yet that army had often waded in swamps with the
cold water waist deep, carrying their clothes and their muskets on their
heads. Half the roads they followed had to be corduroyed, or their
horses would all have been lost in the bottomless mire and swamps. Often
their artillery was for miles pulled along by the men themselves, and
that in the face of the enemy, hidden behind every stream, and ready to
ambush them at every roadside. Over all these infamous wagon roads,
across all these bridgeless rivers and endless swamps, our army now
dragged with it a train of sixty-nine cannon, twenty-five hundred
six-mule wagons, and six hundred ambulances. The tremendous obstacles
they encountered before reaching Columbia they were again to encounter
beyond. Not a bridge was left on any creek or river in the Carolinas.
Roads were built of poles and logs through swamps ten miles wide.
Sherman's army had few rations and no tents. The foragers brought in all
the food they could pick up near the line of march. The little rubber
blankets the soldiers carried were their sole protection from storm.
They were almost shoeless. There were not a dozen full tents in the
army. Officers used tent flies sometimes, but oftener simply rolled
themselves up in their blankets, as their men did. At army headquarters
we had but one large tent, used generally for dining under; so we
usually slept in deserted cabins at the roadside.
I recall one fearfully stormy night when the General and his staff had
all crept into a little church we found in the woods. The General would
not accept the bit of carpet one of us had improvised into a bed for him
on the pulpit platform. "No," he said, "keep that for some of you young
fellows who are not well." He then stretched himself out on a wooden
bench for the night. I think he never removed his uniform during the
campaign. Day and night he was alert, and seemed never to be really
asleep. We of the staff now had little to do save carrying orders
occasionally to other commanders.
General Sherman did most of his own writing, and he wrote a rapid,
beautiful hand. We had breakfast by the light of the campfire almost
every morning, and were immediately in the saddle, floundering along
through the mud, always near to, or quite at, the head of the army. At
noon we always dismounted and ate a simple lunch at the roadside,
sometimes washed down by a little whisky. Now and then some one of the
army, recognizing the General riding past, would give a cheer that would
be taken up by brigades and divisions a mile away. There seemed to be
something peculiar about this Sherman cheer, for soldiers far off would
cry out: "Listen to them cheering Billy Sherman."
On the 3d of March we took Cheraw, and twenty-four cannon, also nearly
four thousand barrels of gunpowder. That day General Logan, General
Howard, General Kilpatrick, General Hazen, and many other notables came
to headquarters. There was a jolly time of rejoicing.
Here General Logan, who could play the violin, entertained them by
singing my song of "Sherman's March to the Sea," accompanying his voice
with the instrument. A dozen famous generals joined in the chorus. After
the singing, Logan insisted that I should also recite the poem. I did
so, meeting with great applause from the very men who had been the
leaders in the great "March." Alas! save one or two, they are now all
dead.
Among the captures that day had been eight wagonloads of fine, old wine.
It was now distributed among the different headquarters of the Union
army, and as a result some of the said headquarters were pretty nearly
drunk. One of our staff, at dinner the next day, attempted to explain
his condition of the day before. "Never mind explaining," said General
Sherman crustily, and without looking up, "but only see that the like of
that does not happen again; that is all." That staff officer was a very
sober man the rest of the campaign.
While we were lying there in Cheraw we heard an awful explosion; the
very earth shook. I supposed it to be an earthquake until a messenger
brought word that a lot of captured gunpowder had exploded and killed
and wounded twenty soldiers.
As we were crossing on our pontoons over the Pedee River at Cheraw I
noticed a singular way of punishing army thieves. An offender of this
kind stood on the bridge, guarded by two sentinels. He was inside of a
barrel that had the ends knocked out. On the barrel in big letters were
the words: "I am a thief." The whole army corps passed close by him. An
occasional man indulged in some joke at his expense, but the body of
soldiers affected not to see him. The day we entered Cheraw General
Sherman and his staff rode through the country alone for ten miles,
going across from one column to another. It was a hazardous ride, as the
whole country was full of guerrillas. But nothing of note happened to
us.
On the 8th of March the headquarters staff was bivouacked in the woods
near Laurel Hill. The army was absolutely cut off from everywhere. It
had no base; it was weeks since Sherman had heard from the North or
since the North had heard from him. Now he resolved to try to get a
courier with a message through to Wilmington, at the seaside. An
experienced spy by the name of Pike was selected to float down the Cape
Fear River to ask the commander to try to send a tugboat up, to
communicate with the army. I did not know then that the next one to run
down Cape Fear River would be myself.
In four days we had taken Fayetteville and its wonderful arsenal, built
years before by the American people, and where now half the war supplies
of the Rebel army were made.
When the General and his staff first rode into Fayetteville headquarters
were established in the arsenal. The General, wishing to look about the
town for an hour or so, left me in charge. The other officers rode away
with him. Very shortly a well-dressed, fine-looking old Southerner came
to me and complained that his home was being disturbed by some of our
soldiers. He was, he said, an old West Point friend of General
Sherman's. While waiting the return of the commander, he regaled me with
incidents of their early days together in the North and with his
intimacies with one who would now doubtless be overwhelmed with joy at
seeing him. He begged me to observe what would be his reception when the
General should come. Impressed by his conversation, I at once sent a
soldier or two to guard his home.
Shortly after General Sherman rode in through the arsenal portal and
dismounted. The Southerner advanced with open arms, and for a moment
there was a ray of pleasure illuminating Sherman's face. Then he went
and leaned against a column, and, turning to the Southerner, said, "Yes,
we were long together, weren't we?" "Yes," answered the Southerner,
delighted. "You shared my friendship, shared my bread, even, didn't
you?" continued Sherman. "Indeed, indeed!" the Southerner replied, with
increasing warmth. The General gave the Southerner a long, steady,
almost pathetic look, and answered, "You have betrayed it all; me, your
friend, your country that educated you for its defense. You are here a
traitor, and you ask me to be again your friend, to protect your
property, to send you these brave men, some of whose comrades were
murdered by your neighbors this very morning--fired on from hidden
houses by you and yours as they entered the town. Turn your back to me
forever. I will not punish you; only go your way. There is room in the
world even for traitors." The Southerner turned ashy white and walked
away from us in silence. Sherman sat down with the rest of us to our
noonday lunch. We sat about the portal on stones, or barrels, or
whatever happened to answer for seats. The General could scarcely eat.
Never had I seen him under such emotion; the corners of his mouth
twitched as he continued talking to us of this false friend. The hand
that held the bread trembled and for a moment tears were in his eyes.
For a little while we all sat in silence, and we realized as never
before what treason to the republic really meant. The General spoke as
if he, nor we, might ever live through it all.
Very soon General Howard rode in to complain anew of the outrages
committed on our troops by men firing from windows as they passed along
the streets. Two or three soldiers had been killed. "Who did this
outrage?" cried Sherman, in a loud and bitter voice, "Texans, I think,"
answered General Howard. "Then shoot some Texan prisoners in
retaliation," said Sherman sternly. "We have no Texans," replied Howard,
not inclined, apparently, to carry out the serious, but just order.
"Then take other prisoners, take any prisoners," continued General
Sherman. "I will not permit my soldiers to be murdered." He turned on
his heel and walked away. Howard mounted and rode into the town. What
happened, I do not know.
On Sunday morning General Sherman asked me to take a walk with him
through the immense arsenal of Fayetteville before he should blow it up.
We were gone an hour, and I was surprised at his great familiarity with
all the machinery and works of the immense establishment. He talked
constantly and explained many things to me. Never more than at that time
was I impressed with the universal knowledge, the extraordinary genius,
of the man. There seemed to be nothing there he did not understand. On
our way back to headquarters I heard him give the order to destroy
everything, to burn the arsenal down, blow it up, to leave absolutely
nothing, and he added the prayer that the American government might
never again give North Carolina an arsenal and forts to betray. He was
very angry now at those who had used the United States property in their
desire to destroy the government itself. He had seen nothing in the war
that seemed so treasonable, unless it was the base ingratitude of those
who entered the service of the Rebellion after having been educated at
West Point at the Government's expense.
Pretty soon he said to me: "If I can get any kind of a boat up here, I
am going to have you try to reach Wilmington with dispatches." Almost at
that minute a steam whistle sounded in the woods below us. "There it
is," said the General joyfully. "Pike got through." Very soon someone
came running to say a communication had come from the seashore; a little
tug had run the Rebel gauntlet all the way from Wilmington.
We went in to lunch and the General announced to the staff his intention
of sending me down the river, and off to General Grant with dispatches.
This chance to get word of his movements and his successes to General
Grant and the North was of vast importance, and it moved him greatly. He
left his lunch half finished and commenced writing letters and reports
to the commander-in-chief. That evening at twilight General Sherman
walked with me down to the riverside where the little tug lay waiting.
"When you reach the North," he said, putting his arm around me, "don't
tell them we have been cutting any great swath in the Carolinas; simply
tell them the plain facts; tell them that the army is not lost, but is
well, and still marching." So careful was I as to his injunctions, that
even the newspapers at Washington never knew how the great news from
Sherman reached the North.
I did not know then, starting down the river with my message, that it
was to be seven years before I was again to see the face of my beloved
commander.
The Cape Fear River was flooded at this time, a mile wide, in places
even more, and though its banks were lined with guerrillas there could
not be great danger, if we could stay in the middle of the stream,
unless our little boat should get wrecked in the darkness by floating
trees or by running into shallow places. The lights were all put out.
The pilot house and the sides of the boat were covered by bales of
cotton, to protect us against the Rebel bullets. My dispatches to
General Grant were carefully sewed up inside my shirt, and were
weighted, so that I could hastily sink them in the river should we be
captured. A half dozen refugees from Columbia joined us. Among them was
the Mrs. C----, whose property Devine and I had tried to save the night
of the fire. It was a curious and dangerous voyage down that roaring,
flooded river for a woman to be undertaking in the darkness, but this
woman had now undertaken many dangers. Another of my companions on that
strange voyage was Theodore Davis, a corresponding artist of _Harper's
Weekly_. We kept the boat in the channel as far as we could guess it,
and, for the rest, simply floated in the darkness. We went through
undiscovered; not a shot fired at us. Before daylight, so swift had been
the current, we were in Wilmington.
General Terry had just taken Wilmington and was in command of the city.
Some of my dispatches were for him. He was still in bed, in one of the
fine residences of the place, but instantly arose and urged me to jump
into bed and get some rest while he should arrange to get me immediate
transportation to Grant. I slept till nine, and when I came down to the
drawing-room, now used as headquarters, General Terry asked if perhaps
it were I who wrote the song about Sherman's March from Atlanta seaward.
It had been sung at the theater the night before, he said. I was much
gratified to have him tell me that the whole army had taken it up. "Tens
of thousands of men," he said, "were singing it." I knew, as already
told, that an exchanged prisoner had brought the song through the Rebel
lines in an artificial leg he wore, but it was an agreeable surprise to
now learn of its sudden and tremendous success.
General Terry impressed me as the handsomest soldier I had seen in the
army--McPherson, the commander of my own corp, only excepted. He was,
too, a refined and perfect gentleman. Looking at him I thought of the
cavaliers of romance. Here was real knighthood, born and bred in the
soil of the republic. The laurels for his heroic capture of Fort Fisher
were fresh on his brow.
Before noon an ocean steamer, the _Edward Everett_, was ordered to take
me at once to Fortress Monroe. Two of my army friends went along. The
captain, leaving on so short notice, had provided his ship with
insufficient ballast, and to me, a landsman, the vessel's lurchings were
very astonishing. I had never seen the ocean before, and it was not long
till I wished I might never see it again. To add to my alarm, a fierce
tempest sprang up as we passed around Cape Hatteras, and the danger was
no longer imaginary, but very real. The few passengers on the boat might
as well have been dead, so far as any self-help was to be thought of in
case of disaster. Even the captain was very seasick, and, altogether,
passengers and crew were badly scared. For many hours it was nothing but
a fierce blow and a roll about on the mad waters. All things come to an
end; so did this storm, and at last we reached Fortress Monroe, where I
was hurriedly transferred by some sailors in a yawl over to a boat that
had already started up the James toward Richmond. Our captain had
signaled that he had a dispatch bearer from the Carolinas. We had not
gone far until we passed the top of a ship's mast sticking a few feet
above the water. It was the mast of the _Cumberland_, that had gone down
in her fight with the _Merrimac_ with as brave a crew as ever manned a
war boat.
The steamer I was now on was crowded with officers in bright uniforms,
apparently returning to their regiments. I wondered if all the Eastern
army had been home on a furlough. I could not help contrasting to myself
this ship full of sleek, brightly uniformed officers with the
rough-clad soldiers and officers of the army of Sherman. Sherman's
foragers and veterans of the March to the Sea might have cut an awkward
figure alongside these gay youths just from Washington.
In the afternoon the ship came to at City Point, and I climbed up the
bank of the river bluff for perhaps a hundred feet, and was soon
directed to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the United
States armies.
When I reached the open door of Grant's famous little cabin a young
officer asked me to come in, and was introducing me to the chief of
staff, Rawlins, who stood there with some letters in his hands. That
instant General Grant showed his face at the door in the back of the
room. I knew who it was at once. He stepped forward to where General
Rawlins was speaking with me, listened to the conversation a moment, and
without any formal introduction, smiled, took me by the hand and led me
into the back room of the cabin shutting the door behind us. He asked me
to sit down, but I first proceeded to rip the dispatches out of my
clothing, and with intense interest watched his features while he sat on
a camp stool by the window, his legs crossed, and read Sherman's letter.
I could see the glow of silent satisfaction as he glanced along the
lines that told of his great lieutenant's successes in the South. He
glanced at another letter I held in my hand. "It is for the President,"
I said. "He will be here yet to-night," he answered. "His boat must now
be coming up the bay."
Then General Grant questioned me as to all I knew about Sherman's army,
the character of the opposition he had met, the condition of his
soldiers, their clothing, the roads, the weather. He also asked me how I
had reached him with the dispatches, coming all the way from the
interior of North Carolina. He seemed to have thought for a moment that
I had come across Virginia on foot. He wanted to know of me again about
the terrible treatment of prisoners in the South. What I told him only
"confirmed," he said, what he had heard from a hundred sources.
Very shortly he heard the voice of General Ord in the outer room.
"Come in here, Ord," he said, holding the door open. "Come in and hear
the news from Sherman. Look at that, listen to this," and again he went
through Sherman's letter, reading parts of it aloud. "Good! Good!" cried
Ord, fairly dancing about the cabin, his spurs and saber jingling. "I
was really getting afraid." "Not I, not I, not a bit," exclaimed Grant
enthusiastically, as he rose to his feet. "_I knew my man. I knew
General Sherman._"
I was astonished now at the simple and perfectly frank manner with which
General Grant talked to me about the situation of the army. I had
ventured to ask if there was any outlook for the immediate fall of
Richmond or a battle.
"Very great," he answered. "I am only afraid Lee may slip out before we
can get a great blow at him. Any hour this may happen." Just then there
was cannonading. I wondered if a fight were commencing somewhere in the
line already. General Grant did not change a muscle in his face. "Send
out and see what the firing is," he said to an officer quietly, and then
as quietly continued talking, asking me to tell him all I knew of a
recent escapade of Kilpatrick and his cavalry. It happened that I knew
all about it. Only a couple of weeks before Kilpatrick and his
headquarters had been surprised in bed at a bivouac on the flank of
Sherman's army, and were surrounded and some were captured. By a heroic
struggle the cavalry leader had escaped his captors, had instantly
rallied his troops there in the dark woods and given the bold Rebels a
little drubbing. The next day I had been with Sherman at headquarters
and listened to Kilpatrick's recital of his adventure. My own narration
of the night's cavalry fight, reciting how the cavalrymen and his aids
dashed about with nothing on but their shirts, made General Grant smile
very audibly. "I had expected the whole thing to be about as you say,"
he exclaimed, in a grateful way, "but the Richmond newspapers which fell
into my hands made a big thing of the so-called capture of Sherman's
cavalry leader."
Once, as the General rose and stood directly in front of us, I was
astonished to see how small he seemed. I had seen Grant before, but on
horseback or in battle, and, somehow, I had always regarded him as a
rather large, solidly built man. To-day in the little back room of his
cabin, talking with him, I saw how mistaken I had been. General Grant,
as I now saw him, was, in fact, a little man. Several times he rose and
walked about the room. He was not more than five feet seven or eight
inches high, and he could not have weighed more than one hundred and
forty or fifty pounds. He wore a simple fatigue uniform, and his coat
thrown open gave him the appearance of being larger chested than he
really was. His brown hair was neither short nor long, and he wore a
full beard, well trimmed. Had I not known to whom I was talking, or had
I not seen the three stars on his shoulders, I would have supposed
myself in the presence of some simple army captain. There was nothing
whatever about him to announce the presence of genius or extraordinary
ability of any kind. He was in no sense a striking-looking man. His
manner and words to me were kind and earnest. There was an agreeable
look about his mouth and eyes that made him seem very sincere. Indeed,
if any one thing about him impressed me more than another, it was his
apparent sincerity and earnestness. And he looked to me like a man of
great common sense. Of vanity, pretence, or power there was not a single
sign. He could not have looked very greatly different when he was hewing
logs for his house at his father-in-law's farm ten years before, from
what he looked just now, quietly directing a million soldiers in the
greatest war of modern times.
Like General Sherman, he repeatedly expressed his interest concerning
the terrible experiences I had undergone in Southern prisons.
"I suppose you will want to get home as quickly as possible, won't you?"
he inquired, "or would you rather remain here awhile and look about the
army?" A steamer was to leave for the North in an hour. Privately, I was
fearing a sudden break-down of my health, and longed for a home that I
had visited but eight days during four long years of war. Then I thought
of my letter to Mr. Lincoln. The General seemed to anticipate my
thought. "Leave the President's letter with me," he said, "if you
choose, and I will give it to him, or stay over and give it to him
yourself."
There was no man living I was so anxious to see as Abraham Lincoln. And
this was my opportunity. But something like a premonition said, "Go
home." When I expressed my feeling General Grant stepped to the door of
the office room and directed General Rawlins to see that I be provided
with leave of absence and transportation. That little order, signed by
Rawlins, I still possess.
With an earnest handshake and good-by General Grant thanked me for
bringing him the dispatches. I was not to see him again for many
years.[C]
[C] At the town of Lucerne in Switzerland there is in front of the
Schweizerhof a quay lined with castanien trees. It overlooks the
beautiful lake. Long years after the war General Grant sat there on a
bench one quiet summer night and talked to me of the time I brought
the news to him from Sherman in the Carolinas. In a few weeks from
that night by the lakeside I had the honor of entertaining my old
commander at my own home, in the city of Zurich, where I was now
representing the government as one of his appointees. The order
naming me to go to Zurich had, on a certain time, been written by his
own hand.
This night at Zurich proved to be almost the last time I was ever to
see the great commander. His presence and words that evening are
among the treasured memories of my life.