ON TO RICHMOND.
Yorktown lies twenty-one miles northwestward from Old Point, and thither
I turned my face at noon, resolving to delay my journey to "White
House," till next day morning. Crossing an estuary of the bay upon a
narrow causeway, I passed Hampton,--half burned, half desolate,--and at
three o'clock came to "Big Bethel," the scene of the battle of June 11,
1861. A small earthwork marks the site of Magruder's field-pieces, and
hard by the slain were buried. The spot was noteworthy to me, since
Lieutenant Greble, a fellow alumnus, had perished here, and likewise,
Theodore Winthrop, the gifted author of "Cecil Dreeme" and "John Brent."
The latter did not live to know his exaltation. That morning never came
whereon he "woke, and found himself famous."
The road ran parallel with the deserted defences of the Confederates for
some distance. The country was flat and full of swamps, but marked at
intervals by relics of camps. The farm-houses were untenanted, the
fences laid flat or destroyed, the fields strewn with discarded
clothing, arms, and utensils. By and by, we entered the outer line of
Federal parallels, and wound among lunettes, cremailleres, redoubts, and
rifle-pits. Marks of shell and ball were frequent, in furrows and holes,
where the clay had been upheaved. Every foot of ground, for fifteen
miles henceforward, had been touched by the shovel and the pick. My
companion suggested that as much digging, concentred upon one point,
would have taken the Federals to China. The sappers and miners had made
their stealthy trenches, rod by rod, each morning appearing closer to
their adversaries, and finally, completed their work, at less than a
hundred yards from the Confederate defences. Three minutes would have
sufficed from the final position, to hurl columns upon the opposing
outworks, and sweep them with the bayonet. Ten days only had elapsed
since the evacuation (May 4), and the siege guns still remained in some
of the batteries. McClellan worshipped great ordnance, and some of his
columbiads, that were mounted in the water battery, yawned cavernously
through their embrasures, and might have furnished sleeping
accommodations to the gunners. A few mortars stood in position by the
river side, and there were Parrott, Griffin, and Dahlgren pieces in the
shore batteries.
However numerous and powerful were the Federal fortifications, they bore
no comparison, in either respect, to those relinquished by the
revolutionists. Miniature mountain ranges they seemed, deeply ditched,
and revetted with sods, fascines, hurdles, gabions or sand bags. Along
the York riverside there were water batteries of surpassing beauty, that
seemed, at a little distance, successions of gentle terraces. Their
pieces were likewise of enormous calibre, and their number almost
incredible. The advanced line of fortifications, sketched from the mouth
of Warwick creek, on the South, to a point fifteen miles distant on the
York: one hundred and forty guns were planted along this chain of
defences; but there were two other concentric lines, mounting, each, one
hundred and twenty, and two hundred and forty guns. The remote series
consisted of six forts of massive size and height, fronted by swamps and
flooded meadows, with frequent creeks and ravines interposing; sharp
_fraise_ and _abattis_ planted against scarp and slope, pointed cruelly
eastward. There were two water batteries, of six and four thirty-two
columbiads respectively, and the town itself, which stands upon a red
clay bluff, was encircled by a series of immense rifled and smooth-bore
pieces, including a powerful pivot-gun, that one of McClellan's shells
struck during the first day's bombardment, and split it into fragments.
At Gloucester Point, across the York river, the great guns of the
_Merrimac_ were planted, it is said, and a fleet of fire-rafts and
torpedo-ships were moored in the stream. By all accounts, there could
have been no less than five hundred guns behind the Confederate
entrenchments, the greater portion, of course, field-pieces, and, as the
defending army was composed of one hundred thousand men, we must add
that number of small arms to the list of ordnance. If we compute the
Federals at so high a figure,--and they could scarcely have had less
than a hundred thousand men afield,--we must increase the enormous
amount of their field, siege, and small ordnance, by the naval guns of
the fleet, that stood anchored in the bay. It is probable that a
thousand cannon and two hundred thousand muskets were assembled in and
around Yorktown during this memorable siege. The mind shudders to see
the terrible deductions of these statistics. The monster, who wished
that the world had but one neck, that he might sever it, would have
gloated at such realization! How many days or hours would have here
sufficed to annihilate all the races of men? Happily, the world was
spared the spectacle of these deadly mouths at once aflame. Beautiful
but awful must have been the scene, and the earth must have staggered
with the shock. One might almost have imagined that man, in his
ambition, had shut his God in heaven, and besieged him there.
While the fortifications defending it amazed me, the village of Yorktown
disappointed me. I marvelled that so paltry a settlement should have
been twice made historic. Here, in the year 1783, Lord Cornwallis
surrendered his starving command to the American colonists and their
French allies. But the entrenchments of that earlier day had been
almost obliterated by these recent labors. The field, where the Earl
delivered up his sword, was trodden bare, and dotted with ditches and
ramparts; while a small monument, that marked the event, had been hacked
to fragments by the Southerners, and carried away piecemeal. Yet,
strange to say, relics of the first bombardment had just been
discovered, and, among them, a gold-hilted sword.
I visited, in the evening, the late quarters of General Hill, a small
white house with green shutters, and also the famous "Nelson House," a
roomy mansion where, of old, Cornwallis slept, and where, a few days
past, Jefferson Davis and General Lee had held with Magruder, and his
associates, a council of war. It had been also used for hospital
purposes, but some negroes were now the only occupants.
The Confederates left behind them seventy spiked and shattered cannon,
some powder, and a few splintered wagons; but in all material respects,
their evacuation was thorough and creditable. Some deserters took the
first tidings of the retreat to the astonished Federals, and they raised
the national flag within the fortifications, in the gray of the morning
of the 4th of May. Many negroes also escaped the vigilance of their
taskmasters, and remained to welcome the victors. The fine works of
Yorktown are monuments to negro labor, for _they_ were the hewers and
the diggers. Every slave-owner in Eastern Virginia was obliged to send
one half of his male servants between the ages of sixteen and fifty to
the Confederate camps, and they were organized into gangs and set to
work. In some cases they were put to military service and made excellent
sharpshooters. The last gun discharged from the town was said to have
been fired by a negro.
I slept on board a barge at the wharf that evening, and my dreams ran
upon a thousand themes. To every American this was hallowed ground. It
had been celebrated by the pencil of Trumbull, the pen of Franklin, and
the eloquence of Jefferson. Scarce eighty years had elapsed since those
great minds established a fraternal government; but the site of their
crowning glory was now the scene of their children's shame. Discord had
stolen upon their councils and blood had profaned their shrine.
I visited next day a bomb-proof postern, or subterranean passage,
connecting the citadel with the outworks, and loitered about the
fortifications till noon, when I took passage on the mail steamer, which
left the Fortress at eleven o'clock, and reached White House at dusk the
same evening. The whole river as I ascended was filled with merchant and
naval craft. They made a continuous line from Old Point to the mouth of
York River, and the masts and spars environing Yorktown and Gloucester,
reminded one of a scene on the Mersey or the Clyde. At West Point, there
was an array of shipping scarcely less formidable, and the windings of
the interminably crooked Pamunkey were marked for leagues by sails,
smoke-stacks, and masts. The landings and wharves were besieged by
flat-boats and sloops, and Zouaves were hoisting forage and commissary
stores up the red bluffs at every turn of our vessel.
The Pamunkey was a beautiful stream, densely wooded, and occasional
vistas opened up along its borders of wheat-fields and meadows, with
Virginia farm-houses and negro quarters on the hilltops. Some of the
houses on the river banks appeared to be tenanted by white people, but
the majority had a haunted, desolate appearance, the only signs of life
being strolling soldiers, who thrust their legs through the second story
windows, or contemplated the river from the chimney-tops, and groups of
negroes who sunned themselves on the piazza, or rushed to the margin to
gaze and grin at the passing steamers. There were occasional residences
not unworthy of old manorial and baronial times, and these were attended
at a little distance by negro quarters of logs, arranged in rows, and
provided with mud chimneys built against their gables. Few of the
Northern navigable rivers were so picturesque and varied.
We passed two Confederate gunboats, that had been half completed, and
burned on the stocks. Their charred elbows and ribs, stared out, like
the remains of some extinct monsters; a little delay might have found
each of them armed and manned, and carrying havoc upon the rivers and
the seas. West Point was simply a tongue, or spit of land, dividing the
Mattapony from the Pamunkey river at their junction; a few houses were
built upon the shallow, and some wharves, half demolished, marked the
terminus of the York and Richmond railroad. A paltry water-battery was
the sole defence. Below Cumberland (a collection of huts and a wharf), a
number of schooners had been sunk across the river, and, with the aid of
an island in the middle, these constituted a rather rigid blockade. The
steamboat passed through, steering carefully, but some sailing vessels
that followed required to be towed between the narrow apertures. The
tops only of the sunken masts could be discerned above the surface, and
much time and labor must have been required to place the boats in line
and sink them. Vessels were counted by scores above and below this
blockade, and at Cumberland the masts were like a forest; clusters of
pontoons were here anchored in the river, and a short distance below we
found three of the light-draught Federal gunboats moored in the stream.
It was growing dark as we rounded to at "White House;" the camp fires of
the grand army lit up the sky, and edged the tree-boughs on the margin
with ribands of silver. Some drums beat in the distance; sentries paced
the strand; the hum of men, and the lowing of commissary cattle, were
borne towards us confusedly; soldiers were bathing in the river;
team-horses were drinking at the brink; a throng of motley people were
crowding about the landing to receive the papers and mails. I had at
last arrived at the seat of war, and my ambition to chronicle battles
and bloodshed was about to be gratified.
At first, I was troubled to make my way; the tents had just been
pitched; none knew the location of divisions other than their own, and
it was now so dark that I did not care to venture far. After a vain
attempt to find some flat-boats where there were lodgings and meals to
be had, I struck out for general head-quarters, and, undergoing repeated
snubbings from pert members of staff, fell in at length, with a very
tall, spare, and angular young officer, who spoke broken English, and
who heard my inquiries, courteously; he stepped into General Marcy's
tent, but the Chief of Staff did not know the direction of Smith's
division; he then repaired to Gen. Van Vleet, the chief Quartermaster,
but with ill success. A party of officers were smoking under a "fly,"
and some of these called to him, thus--
"Captain! Duke! De Chartres! What do you wish?"
It was, then, the Orleans Prince who had befriended me, and I had the
good fortune to hear that the division, of which I was in search, lay a
half mile up the river. I never spoke to the Bourbon afterward, but saw
him often; and that he was as chivalrous as he was kind, all testimony
proved.
A private escorted me to a Captain Mott's tent, and this officer
introduced me to General Hancock. I was at once invited to mess with the
General's staff, and in the course of an hour felt perfectly at home.
Hancock was one of the handsomest officers in the army; he had served in
the Mexican war, and was subsequently a Captain in the Quartermaster's
department. But the Rebellion placed stars in many shoulder-bars, and
few were more worthily designated than this young Pennsylvanian. His
first laurels were gained at Williamsburg; but the story of a celebrated
charge that won him the day's applause, and McClellan's encomium of the
"Superb Hancock," was altogether fictitious. The musket, not the
bayonet, gave him the victory. I may doubt, in this place, that any
extensive bayonet charge has been known during the war. Some have gone
so far as to deny that the bayonet has ever been used at all.
Hancock's regiments were the 5th Wisconsin, 49th Pennsylvanian, 43d New
York, and 6th Maine. They represented widely different characteristics,
and I esteemed myself fortunate to obtain a position where I could so
eligibly study men, habits, and warfare. During the evening I fell in
with the Colonel of each of these regiments, and from the conversation
that ensued, I gleaned a fair idea of them all.
The Wisconsin regiment was from a new and ambitious State of the
Northwest. The men were rough-mannered, great-hearted farmers,
wood-choppers, and tradesmen. They had all the impulsiveness of the
Yankee, with less selfishness, and quite as much bravery. The Colonel
was named Cobb, and he had held some leading offices in Wisconsin. A
part of his life had been adventurously spent, and he had participated
in the Mexican war. He was an ardent Republican in politics, and had
been Speaker of a branch of the State Legislature. He was an attorney in
a small county town when the war commenced, and his name had been
broached for the Governorship. In person he was small, lithe, and
capable of enduring great fatigue. His hair was a little gray, and he
had no beard. He did not respect appearances, and his sword, as I saw,
was antique and quite different in shape from the regulation weapon. He
had penetrating gray eyes, and his manners were generally reserved. One
had not to regard him twice to see that he was both cautious and
resolute. He was too ambitious to be frank, and too passionate not to be
brave. In the formula of learning he was not always correct; but few
were of quicker perception or more practical and philosophic. He might
not, in an emergency, be nicely scrupulous as to means, but he never
wavered in respect to objects. His will was the written law to his
regiment, and I believed his executive abilities superior to those of
any officer in the brigade, not excepting the General's.
The New York regiment was commanded by a young officer named Vinton. He
was not more than thirty-five years of age, and was a graduate of the
United States Military Academy. Passionately devoted to engineering, he
withdrew from the army, and passed five years in Paris, at the study of
his art. Returning homeward by way of the West Indies, he visited
Honduras, and projected a filibustering expedition to its shores from
the States. While perfecting the design, the Rebellion commenced, and
his old patron, General Scott, secured him the colonelcy of a volunteer
regiment. He still cherished his scheme of "Colonization," and half of
his men were promised to accompany him. Personally, Colonel Vinton was
straight, dark, and handsome. He was courteous, affable, and brave,--but
wedded to his peculiar views, and, as I thought, a thorough "Young
American."
The Maine regiment was fathered by Colonel Burnham, a staunch old yeoman
and soldier, who has since been made a General. His probity and
good-nature were adjuncts of his valor, and his men were of the better
class of New Englanders. The fourth regiment fell into the hands of a
lawyer from Lewistown, Pennsylvania. He had been also in the Mexican
war, and was remarkable mainly for strictness with regard to the
sanitary regulations of his camps. He had wells dug at every stoppage,
and his tents were generally fenced and canopied with cedar arbors.
General Hancock's staff was composed of a number of young men, most of
whom had been called from civil life. His brigade constituted one of
three commanded by General Smith. Four batteries were annexed to the
division so formed; the entire number of muskets was perhaps eight
thousand. The Chief of Artillery was a Captain Ayres, whose battery
saved the three months' army at Bull Run. It so happened that he came
into the General's during the evening, and recited the particulars of a
gunboat excursion, thirty miles up the Pamunkey, wherein he had landed
his men, and burned a quantity of grain, some warehouses, and shipping.
I pencilled the facts at once, made up my letter, and mailed it early in
the morning.