They are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time.--HAMLET.
[Sidenote: AN INTERVIEW WITH GENERAL SHERMAN.]
General Sherman was very violent toward the Press. Some newspapers had
treated him unjustly early in the war. While he commanded in Kentucky,
his eccentricities were very remarkable, and a journalist started the
report that Sherman was crazy, which obtained wide credence. There
was, at least, method in his madness; for his supposed insanity which
declared that the Government required two hundred thousand troops in
the West, though hooted at the time, proved wisdom and prophecy.
Nevertheless, he was very erratic. When I first saw him in Missouri,
during Fremont's administration, his eye had a half-wild expression,
probably the result of excessive smoking. From morning till night he
was never without his cigar. To the nervous-sanguine temperament,
indicated by his blonde hair, light eyes, and fair complexion, tobacco
is peculiarly injurious.
While many insisted that no correspondent could meet Sherman without
being insulted, I sought him at his tent in the field; he was absent
with a scouting party, but soon returned, with one hand bandaged from
his Shiloh wound. A staff-officer introduced me:
"General, this is Mr. ----."
"How do you do, Mr. ----?" inquired Sherman, with great suavity,
offering me his uninjured hand.
"Correspondent of _The New York Tribune_," added the lieutenant.
[Sidenote: HIS COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE PRESS.]
The general's manner changed from Indian summer to a Texas norther, and
he asked, in freezing tones:
"Have you not come to the wrong place, sir?"
"I think not. I want to learn some facts about the late battle from
your own lips. You complain that journalists misrepresent you. How
can they avoid it, when you refuse to give them proper information?
Some officers are drunkards and charlatans; but you would think it
unjust if we condemned all on that account. Is it not equally absurd to
anathematize every man of my profession for the sins of a few unworthy
members?"
"Perhaps it is. Sit down. Will you have a cigar? The trouble is, that
you of the Press have no responsibilities. Some worthless fellow,
wielding a quill, may send falsehoods about me to thousands of people
who can never hear them refuted. What can I do? His readers do not know
that he is without character. It would be useless to prosecute him. If
he would even fight there would be some satisfaction in that; but a
slanderer is likely to be a coward as well."
"True; but when some private citizen slanders you on the street or
in a drinking-saloon, you do not find it necessary to pull the nose
of every civilian whom you meet. Reputable journalists have just as
much pride in their profession as you have in yours. This tendency to
treat them superciliously and harshly, which encourages flippant young
staff-officers to insult them, tends to drive them home in disgust, and
leave their places to be supplied by a less worthy class; so you only
aggravate the evil you complain of."
[Sidenote: SHERMAN'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE.]
After further conversation on this subject, Sherman gave me a very
entertaining account of the battle. Since I first saw him, his eye had
grown much calmer, and his nervous system healthier. He is tall, of
bony frame, spare in flesh, with thin, wrinkled face, sandy beard and
hair, and bright, restless eyes. His face indicates great vitality and
activity; his manner is restless; his discourse rapid and earnest. He
looks rather like an anxious man of business than an ideal soldier,
suggesting the exchange, and not the camp.
He has great capacity for labor--sometimes working for twenty
consecutive hours. He sleeps little, nor do the most powerful opiates
relieve his terrible cerebral excitement. Indifferent to dress and to
fare, he can live on hard bread and water, and fancies any one else
can do so. Often irritable, and sometimes rude, he is a man of great
originality and daring, and a most valuable lieutenant for a general
of coolness and judgment, like Grant or Thomas. With one of them to
plan or modify, he is emphatically the man to execute. His purity
and patriotism are beyond all question. He did not enter the army to
speculate in cotton, or to secure a seat in the United States Senate,
but to serve the country.
Military weaknesses are often amusing. A prominent officer on Halleck's
staff, who had served with Scott in Mexico, had something to do with
fortifying Island Number Ten, after its capture. An obscure country
newspaper gave another officer the credit. Seeking the agent of the
Associated Press at Halleck's head-quarters, the aggrieved engineer
remarked:
"By the way, Mr. Weir, I have been carrying a paper in my pocket for
several days, but have forgotten to hand it to you. Here it is."
And he produced a letter page of denial, upon which the ink was not
yet dry, stating that the island had been fortified under the immediate
direction of General ----, the well-known officer of the regular army,
who served upon the staff of Lieutenant-General Scott during the
Mexican war, and was at present ----, ----, and ---- upon the staff of
General Halleck.
"I rely upon your sense of justice," said this ornament of the staff,
"to give this proper publicity."
[Sidenote: HUMORS OF THE TELEGRAPH.]
Mr. Weir, with a keen sense of the ridiculous, sent the long dispatch
word for word to the Associated Press, adding: "You may rest assured
that this is perfectly reliable, because every word of it was written
by the old fool himself!" All the newspaper readers in the country had
the formal dispatch, and all the telegraph corps had their merriment
over this confidential addendum.
Halleck's command contained eighty thousand effective men, who were
nearly all veterans. His line was ten miles in length, with Grant on
the right, Buell in the center, and Pope on the left.
The grand army was like a huge serpent, with its head pinned on our
left, and its tail sweeping slowly around toward Corinth. Its majestic
march was so slow that the Rebels had ample warning. It was large
enough to eat up Beauregard at one mouthful; but Halleck crept forward
at the rate of about three-quarters of a mile per day. Thousands and
thousands of his men died from fevers and diarrh[oe]a.
There was great dissatisfaction at his slow progress. Pope was
particularly impatient. One day he had a very sharp skirmish with the
enemy. Our position was strong. General Palmer, who commanded on the
front, reported that he could hold it against the world, the flesh, and
the devil; but Halleck telegraphed to Pope three times within an hour
not to be drawn into a general engagement. After the last dispatch,
Pope retired, leaving the enemy in possession of the field. How he did
storm about it!
The little army which Pope had brought from the capture of Island
Number Ten was perfectly drilled and disciplined, and he handled it
with rare ability. Much of his subsequent unpopularity arose from his
imprudent and violent language. He sometimes indulged in the most
unseemly profanity and billingsgate within hearing of a hundred people.
[Sidenote: WEAKNESSES OF SUNDRY GENERALS.]
But his personal weaknesses were pardonable compared with those of some
other prominent officers. During Fremont's Missouri campaign, I knew
one general who afterward enjoyed a well-earned national reputation
for skill and gallantry. His head-quarters were the scenes of nightly
orgies, where whisky punches and draw-poker reigned from dark until
dawn. In the morning his tent was a strange museum of bottles, glasses,
sugar-bowls, playing-cards, gold, silver, and bank-notes. I knew
another western officer, who, during the heat of a Missouri battle,
according to the newspaper reports, inspirited his men by shouting:
"Go in, boys! Remember Lyon! Remember the old flag!"
He did use those words, but no enemy was within half a mile, and he was
lying drunk on the ground, flat upon his back. Afterward, repenting in
sackcloth and ashes, he did the State some service, and his delinquency
was never made public.
At Antietam, a general, well known both in Europe and America, was
reported disabled by a spent shell, which struck him in the breast.
The next morning, he gave me a minute history of it, assuring me that
he still breathed with difficulty and suffered greatly from internal
soreness. The fact was that he was disabled by a bottle of whisky,
having been too hospitable to that seductive friend!
[Sidenote: "JOHN POPE, MAJOR-GENERAL COMMANDING."]
After the evacuation of Corinth, Pope's reputation suffered greatly
from a false dispatch, asserting that he had captured ten thousand
prisoners. Halleck alone was responsible for the report. Pope was
in the rear. One of his subordinates on the front telegraphed him
substantially as follows:
"The woods are full of demoralized and flying Rebels. Some of
my officers estimate their number as high as ten thousand.
Many of them have already come into my lines."
Pope forwarded this message, which said nothing about taking prisoners,
to Halleck, without erasing or adding a line; and Halleck, smarting
under his mortifying failure at Corinth, telegraphed that Pope reported
the capture of ten thousand Rebels. Pope's reputation for veracity was
fatally wounded, and the newspapers burlesqued him mercilessly.
One of my comrades lay sick and wounded at the residence of General
Clinton B. Fisk, of St. Louis. On a Sunday afternoon the general was
reading to him from the Bible an account of the first contraband. This
historic precedent was the servant of an Amalekite, who came into
David's camp and proposed, if assured of freedom, to show the King of
Israel a route which would enable him to surprise his foes. The promise
was given, and the king fell upon the enemy, whom he utterly destroyed.
While our host was reading the list of the spoils, the prisoners,
slaves, women, flocks and herds captured by David, the sick journalist
lifted his attenuated finger, and in his weak, piping voice, said:
"Stop, General; just look down to the bottom of that list, and see if
it is not signed John Pope, Major-General commanding!"
[Sidenote: HALLECK'S FAUX PAS AT CORINTH.]
At last, Halleck's army reached Corinth, but the bird had flown. No
event of the war reflected so much credit upon the Rebels and so much
discredit upon the Unionists as Beauregard's evacuation. He did not
disturb himself until Halleck's Parrott guns had thrown shots within
fourteen feet of his own head-quarters. Then, keeping up a vigorous
show of resistance on his front, he deserted the town, leaving behind
not a single gun, or ambulance, or even a sick or wounded man in the
hospital.
Halleck lost thenceforth the name of "Old Brains," which some
imaginative person had given him, and which tickled for a time the ears
of his soldiers. The only good thing he ever did, in public, was to
make two brief speeches. When he first reached St. Louis, upon being
called out by the people, he said:
"With your help, I will drive the enemy out of Missouri."
Called upon again, on leaving St. Louis for Washington, to assume the
duties of general-in-chief, he made an equally brief response:
"Gentlemen: I promised to drive the enemy out of Missouri; I have done
it!"
HALLECK'S ARMY, BEFORE CORINTH, }
_April 23, 1862_. }
Heavy re-enforcements are arriving. The woods, in luxuriant foliage,
are spiced with
"----a dream of forest sweets,
Of odorous blooms and sweet contents,"
and the deserted orchards are fragrant with apple and
cherry blossoms.
[Sidenote: OUT ON THE FRONT.]
_May 11._
Still we creep slowly along. Pope's head-quarters are now within the
borders of Mississippi. Out on his front you find several hundred
acres of cotton-field and sward, ridged with graves from a recent hot
skirmish. Carcasses of a hundred horses, killed during the battle, are
slowly burning under piles of rails, covered with a layer of earth,
that their decay may not taint the atmosphere.
Beyond, our infantry pickets present muskets and order you to halt.
If you are accompanied by a field-officer, or bear a pass "by order
of Major-General Halleck," you can cross this Rubicon. A third of a
mile farther are our vedettes, some mounted, others lying in the shade
beside their grazing horses, but keeping a sharp look-out in front.
In a little rift of the woods, half a mile away, you see through your
field-glass a solitary horseman clad in butternut. Two or three more,
and sometimes forty or fifty, come out of the woods and join him,
but they keep very near their cover, and soon go back. Those are the
enemy's pickets. You hear the drum beat in the Rebel lines, and the
shrill whistle of the locomotives at Corinth, which is three miles
distant.
_May 19._
Along our entire front, almost daily, the long roll is sounded, and the
ground jarred by the dull rumble of cannonade. The little attention
paid to these skirmishes, where we lose from fifty to one hundred men,
illustrates the magnitude of the war.
We feel the earth vibrate, and look inquiringly into the office of the
telegraph which accompanies every corps.
"It is on Buell's center, or on Grant's right," the operator replies.
If it does not become rapid and prolonged, no further questions are
asked. At night, awakened by the sharp rattle of musketry, we raise our
heads, listen for the alarm-drum, and, not hearing it, roll over in our
blankets, to court again the drowsy god.
Ride out with me to the front, five miles from Halleck's head-quarters.
The country is undulating and woody, with a few cotton-fields and
planters' houses. The beautiful groves open into delicious vistas of
green grass or rolling wheat; luxuriant flowers perfume the vernal air,
and the rich foliage already seems to display--
----"The tintings and the fingerings of June,
As she blossoms into beauty and sings her Summer tune!"
Here is a deserted camp of a division which has moved forward. Three or
four adjacent farmers are gathering up the barrels, boxes, provisions,
and other _débris_, left behind by the troops.
[Sidenote: DRILLING, DIGGING, AND SKIRMISHING.]
Here is a division on drill, advancing in line of battle, the
skirmishers thrown out in front, deploying, gathering in groups, or
falling on their faces at the word of command.
Beyond those white tents our soldiers, in gray shirts and blue pants,
are busily plying the spade. They throw up a long rampart notched with
embrasures for cannon. We have already built fifty miles of breastworks.
A little in the rear are the heavy siege-guns, where they can be
brought up quickly; a little in front, the field artillery, with the
horses harnessed and tied to trees, ready for use at a moment's notice.
Near the workmen, their comrades, who do the more legitimate duty of
the soldier, are standing on their arms, to repel any _sortie_ from the
enemy. Their guns, with the burnished barrels and bayonets glistening
in the sun, are stacked in long rows, while the men stand in little
groups, or sit under the trees, playing cards, reading letters or
newspapers. More than twenty thousand copies of the daily papers of the
western cities and New York are sold in the army at ten cents each. The
number of letters which go out from the camps in each day's mail is
nearly as large.
When this parapet is completed, we shall go forward a few hundred
yards, and throw up another; and thus we advance slowly toward Corinth.
Ride still farther, and you find the infantry pickets. The vedettes
are drawn in, if there is any skirmishing going on. From the extreme
front, you catch an occasional glimpse of the Rebels--"Butternuts," as
they are termed in camp, from their cinnamon-hued homespun, dyed with
butternut extract. They are dodging among the trees, and, if you are
wise, you will get behind a tree yourself, and beware how you show your
head.
[Sidenote: EXPERIENCES AMONG THE SHARP-SHOOTERS.]
Already one of their sharp-shooters notices you. Puff, comes a cloud
of smoke from his rifle; in the same breath you hear the explosion,
and the sharp, ringing "ping" of the bullet through the air! Capital
shots are many of these long, lank, loose-jointed Mississippians and
Texans, whose rifles are sometimes effective at ten and twelve hundred
yards. Yesterday, one of them concealed himself in the dense foliage of
a tree-branch, and picked off several of our soldiers. At last, one of
our own sharp-shooters took him in hand, and, at the sixth discharge,
brought him down to the ground. This sharp-shooting is a needless
aggravation of the horrors of war; but if the enemy indulges in it, you
have no recourse but to do likewise.
[Sidenote: HORSES STOLEN EVERY DAY.]
Stealing is the inevitable accompaniment of camp life--"convey, the
wise" call it. I have a steed, cadaverous and bony, but with good
locomotive powers. There was profound policy in my selection. For
five consecutive nights that horse was stolen, but no thief ever kept
him after seeing him by day-light. In the morning, he would always
come browsing back. My friend and tent-mate "Carlton," of _The Boston
Journal_, had a more vaulting ambition. He procured a showy horse,
which proved the most expensive luxury in all his varied experience.
The special aptitude of the animal was to be stolen. Regularly, seven
mornings in the week, our African factotum would thrust his woolly head
into the tent, and awaken us with this salutation:
"Breakfast is ready. Mr. Coffin, your horse is gone again."
By hard search and liberal rewards, he would be reclaimed during
the day from some cavalry soldier, who averred that he had found
him running loose. After being impaled and nearly killed upon a
rake-handle, the poor brute, hardly able to walk ten paces, was stolen
again, and never re-appeared. My friend now remembered his showy steed,
and the last five-dollar note which he sent in fruitless pursuit, among
blessings which brightened as they took their flight.
CAIRO, ILL., _May 21_.
[Sidenote: HALLECK EXPELS THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS.]
General Halleck has expelled all the correspondents from the army,
on the plea that he must exclude "unauthorized hangers-on," to keep
spies out of his camps. His refusal to accept _any_ guaranties of their
loyalty and prudence, even from the President himself, proves that this
plea was a shallow subterfuge. The real trouble is, that Halleck is not
willing to have his conduct exhibited to the country through any other
medium than official reports. "As false as a bulletin," has passed into
a proverb.
The journalists received invitations to remain, from friends holding
commissions in the army, from major-generals down to lieutenants; but,
believing their presence just as legitimate and needful as that of
any soldier or officer, they determined not to skulk about camps like
felons, but all left in a body. Their individual grievances are nothing
to the public; but this is a grave issue between the Military Power and
the rights of the Press and the People.