When assembled in Hibernia Hall, in Char_The Boys of '61 or, Four Years of Fighting, Personal Observations with the Army and Navy

Hall, the delegates gave free utterance to their sentiments.

Said Mr. Parker:--

"It is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us; it has been

gradually culminating for a long period of thirty years. At last it

has come to that point where one may say the matter is entirely

right."

"I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political

life," said Lawrence M. Keitt.

"It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election or by the

non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It has been a matter which

has been gathering head for thirty years," said R. Barnwell Rhett.

It was the fire of 1832 flaming anew. No rights had been invaded. That

Secession was inaugurated without cause must ever be the verdict of

history. And history will forever hold John C. Calhoun, R. Barnwell

Rhett, Right Rev. Bishop Elliott, Rev. Dr. Thornwell, and other

statesmen, editors, ministers,--members of the slaveholding forum,

bar, and pulpit,--responsible for all the suffering, bloodshed, and

desolation which have come to the country.

Proud in spirit was South Carolina just then. The cotton crop was

luxuriant. Planters were plethoric with money. The internal

slave-trade established its marts of human flesh all through the

South. Virginia became slave-breeding, and South Carolina

slave-consuming. In former years slavery was deemed an evil, a curse;

but the call for cotton, its rise in market value, with increased

profit of culture and a consequent demand for labor, transformed it

into a blessing, to be perpetuated for the best good of the human

race.

It was found to be in perfect accordance with the teachings of the

Bible. The system itself was right; the abuse of the good was only

evil. Rev. Dr. Thornwell, Professor of Theology in the Presbyterian

Seminary at Columbia, came boldly forward to advocate slavery as a

Divine institution, ordained of God for the welfare of the human race.

He preached thus:--

"Our slaves are our solemn trust, and while we have a right to

use and direct their labors, we are bound to feed, clothe, and

protect them, to give them the comforts of this life, and to

introduce them to the hope of a blessed immortality. They are

moral beings, and it will be found that in the culture of their

moral nature we reap the largest reward from their service. _The

relation itself is moral_, and in the tender affections and

endearing sympathies it evokes it gives scope for the most

attractive graces of human character. Strange as it may sound to

those who are not familiar with the system, slavery is a school

of _virtue_, and no class of men have furnished sublimer

instances of heroic devotion than slaves in their loyalty and

love to their masters. We have seen them rejoice at the cradle of

the infant, and weep at the bier of the dead; and there are few

among us who have not drawn their nourishment from their generous

breasts."[81]

[Footnote 81: Southern _Presbyterian Review_, January, 1861.]

Such was the teaching from those who called themselves appointed of

God to preach the Gospel of purity and peace. Church and State, morals

and religion, everything that could give strength and respectability

to their cause, were brought in to aid the work of the conspirators.

So thorough were the teachings, that South Carolina became almost a

unit on the question of Secession.

The people of the South charge the Union army with desecrating their

church edifices. Is it a wonder that soldiers, reasoning from cause to

effect, concluded that the religion which was foremost in

precipitating a Rebellion which sustained such an inhuman system was

not worth serious consideration? Is it a wonder that, after

experiencing the horrors of Rebel prisons, they lost reverence for a

religion which could uphold a government guilty of such fiendish

cruelties?

Slavery was the corner-stone and foundation of the Confederacy. Never

was the trade in slaves between States so thriving as during the

winter of 1860. And the leaders of the Rebellion were looking forward

to the time when the commerce with Africa would be reopened. Mr. Lamar

of Savannah, who during the Rebellion was agent of the Confederacy in

London for the purchase of army supplies, imported in the bark

Wanderer a cargo of native Africans, some of whom were sold in

Charleston. There was a large party in the Confederate Congress which

advocated the resumption of the foreign trade, the abolition of which

in 1808 was set down as one of the grievances of the South.

It is the province of history to make a record of the bad as well as

the good, shameful and humiliating though it may be. Sin and

wickedness are horrible facts. To view them as such, to contemplate

them in contrast with holiness and righteousness, and draw useful

lessons from such contemplation, is far better than to say that they

have no place in history. Posterity will wonder that a Church which

called itself Christian ever gave its support and advocacy to an

institution which daily brought its victims, like cattle, to the

auction-block, which made no distinction of age, which was remorseless

as death, and which from the cradle to the grave held its victim as

with a tiger's gripe.

On the opposite page is presented a sample of an auctioneer's

handbill, which I found upon the floor of the slave-mart, with the

prices paid by the buyers marked in pencil against the names of the

"chattels," and now appearing in parentheses.

Administrator's Sale, by Order of the Ordinary.

A PRIME AND ORDERLY GANG OF

68 Long Cotton Field Negroes,

Belonging to the Estate of the late Christopher J. Whaley.

WILBUR & SON

Will sell at PUBLIC AUCTION in Charleston,

At the Mart in Chalmers Street,

On Thursday, Feb. 2d, 1860,

COMMENCING AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK,

THE FOLLOWING GANG OF LONG COTTON NEGROES,

Who are said to be remarkably prime, and will be sold as per Catalogue.

NAMES. AGES.

Jimmy, driver, 30

Flora, seamstress, 24

James, 5

Charles, ($125,) 1

August, 52

Mathias, ($1,220,) 18

Sandy, 16

John, 13

Tom, 70

Jack, 38

James, 6

Leah, 5

Flora, 2

Andrew, 42

Binah, 40

Phillis, 20

Mary, 15

Lymus, 10

Abram, ($275,) 2

Binah, 2 mos.

Andrew, 29

Hagar, 25

Dayman, 4

Cuffy, 21

Hagar, ($1,320,) 20

Margaret, 85

Lucy, cripple, 60

John, 22

Ellick, ($1,160,) 18

Libby, 19

Carter, 36

Taffy, 13

Rachel, ($720,) 8

Jannett, 18

Phebe, ($860,) 40

Judy, 8

Major, 40

Lavinia, 30

Billy, ($550,) 10

Tamor, 6

Jimmy, 52

Kate, 46

Susan, 25

Thomas, ($380,) 6

Kate, 1

Edward, coachman, 49

Amey, 22

Teneh, washer, 30

Josephine, 9

Sam, 11

Isaac, 5

William, 1

Amey, 27

Louisa, ($750,) 8

Joe, 3

Sam, ruptured, 65

Andrew, dropsical, 61

Daniel, 70

Lymus, 30

Lucy, nurse, 58

TERMS.

One-third Cash; balance in one and two years, secured by bond, and

mortgage of the negroes, with approved personal security. Purchasers

to pay us for papers.

The Charleston _Mercury_ was the organ of the Secessionists from the

start. It not only advocated Secession as a political principle, but

filled its columns with articles holding up to ridicule and contempt

the people of the North. The spirit of hate seemed to seize the whole

community, in which women even exceeded their husbands. Thus wrote a

Southern lady:--

"I would rather die than hold a position of inferiority and vassalage

to the North, and the dominant feeling of my heart is to leave a State

where men are too cowardly to protect their women and too mercenary to

risk their money."[82]

[Footnote 82: Charleston _Mercury_, November 3, 1860.]

"The question has thrust itself into our domestic fireside, and you

find all classes,--men, women, and children,--asking what they must do

to be saved," said W. F. Cullock, Collector of Charleston, in a speech

at the Pulaski House, Savannah, on the opening of the Charleston and

Savannah Railroad.

"Fight! Secede!" was the response from the drunken crowd.

The South Carolina Muse tuned her lyre and sang,--

"We'll unfurl the Lone-Star banner,

And we'll keep it waving high;

For Secession we are pledged,

For Secession we will die."

The city of Charleston was foremost for Secession. When the news was

received that Mr. Lincoln was elected President, a red flag, with the

palmetto-tree and a lone star wrought upon it, was raised. Says the

_Mercury_: "A shout and twice three cheers greeted its appearance. The

Association of 1860 assembled. The feeling was for prompt action."

The Legislature was in session at Columbia. On the 11th of the month a

bill was passed calling a State convention.

"Gentlemen, hats off!" said the _Mercury_. "Then

hip-hip-hip-hurrah!--and

hip-hip-hip-hurrah--hurrah--hurrah--hurrah--for the homes we

love!"[83]

[Footnote 83: _Mercury_, November 12, 1860.]

Then more soberly the editor added:--

"The news of the passage of the convention resolutions by an

almost unanimous vote, at Columbia, was received in this city on

Saturday night with demonstrations which have, perhaps, never

been equalled in the political history of the country. Our whole

community seemed to breathe freer and deeper, and upon every brow

sat confidence and hope. It was as though the glorious sun had

suddenly dispersed cloud and mist and vapor, and sent its

illuminating rays to every heart and home. Men looked each other

in the face as men should do who feel that under God their

destinies are in their own hands."

Thus a "daughter of South Carolina" inflamed her sisters:--

"Listen, daughters of South Carolina, to the voice of a faithful

sister. Should our State back out now she would be disgraced

forever.... Shrink now, and we are crushed forever. Then there

will be no end of the trouble you fear. Abolition emissaries will

be at work all over the South, inciting the negroes in every

direction. Trials must come, but let them come in the right way,

and all will be well. Secede, put ourselves in a state of

defence; be ready for any emergency. Should the government

coerce, our sister States will come to the rescue. Let it be so.

Better perish beneath the shock than to live degraded.... O women

of South Carolina! Mothers, sisters, wives! do not wear the white

feather now, unless, like that gallant king of old, it waves on

our men to the war."[84]

[Footnote 84: _Mercury_, November 9, 1860.]

Said another:--

"Let us women of Carolina prove that the same noble spirit which

visited the mothers and maidens of '76 is alive, and glowing in

the spirits of their descendants. I am myself a widowed mother,

but I have said to my three sons, that if any one of them shall

be craven enough to desert the State now, to temporize in her

councils, or be backward if her honor calls them to the field,

let him never look upon my face again."[85]

[Footnote 85: Charleston _Mercury_, November 17, 1860.]

What had transpired to produce this white heat of passion? Simply that

a party was coming into power opposed to the extension of slavery over

free territory. True this party had also disavowed any intention of

interference with slavery in the States; but restriction was loss of

power,--paralysis and death at last. The grievance of South Carolina

arose wholly from slavery. She claimed the right to traffic in human

beings. She believed it was a natural right, authorized by the

Creator of the universe, having the sanction and solemnity of the

patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and Christ himself. It was a natural,

moral, and scriptural right for a master to rob his brother in the

Lord of his earnings during the week, commune with him on Sunday, whip

him on Monday, and sell him on Tuesday. The institution being

missionary in its nature, and designed to carry the Gospel to Africa,

he had a right to separate husbands and wives, parents and children,

break the marriage relation, and establish new alliances at will. No

doubt they were sincere in their belief that the system was not only

good in itself, but that it was a beneficent arrangement for the

well-being of the human race. Certainly it was beneficial to the

master; why should it not be to the slave? Men can be as sincerely

zealous for Wrong as for Right. Eighteen hundred years ago a man

zealous for the truth filled the prisons of Syria with Christians, and

thought he was doing righteously in the sight of God; and human nature

is the same now as then. Men and women who advocated the righteousness

of slavery were scrupulous to a penny in their dealings with one

another, and with colored people who were free,--but the loss of

freedom gave the right to commit robbery! Strange, also, the confusion

and delusion of moral ideas. Society prided itself on its virtue. Men

and women of Caucasian blood departing from morality found the door of

society shut against them; but slavery being patriarchal it was not a

crime, not even an offence against morality, for a planter to choose a

Hagar from his slaves. Society placed no bar in his way, the Church no

ban upon his action. Hagar could be taken into the master's household,

appear in silks and satins, with Ishmael for the pet of the family, or

both could be knocked off to the highest bidder in the mart, separated

and sent one to the rice-swamps of Georgia and the other to the

cane-brakes of Louisiana, Hagar weeping and mourning for her child,

and the planter, with the price of blood in his pocket, be received in

any parlor in Charleston, or made Governor of the State! There were

patriarchs in the convention which carried South Carolina out of the

Union, who were urged on to treason by the women of the South. Ishmael

would not rise in insurrection, even if his brother Isaac and father

Abraham went to war.

Said another "daughter of South Carolina":--

"Arming the State will keep the negroes in check. They are arrant

cowards, those dear dark friends of ours.[?] Some of you can

remember how in '22 they would shrink away at the gleam of their

master's sword as he armed for the nightly patrol, and the

creaking of the horseman's saddles as they paraded the streets

sent them hiding in every hole and corner."[86]

[Footnote 86: Charleston _Mercury_, November 9, 1860.]

Isaac was eager for the fray; he burned to fight the Yankees. Hence

the consummation of the treason.

[Illustration: Cooper shop volunteer refreshment saloon.]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SUMTER.

[Sidenote: Feb., 1865.]

Fort Sumter was evacuated by the Rebels and occupied by the Union

troops on the 18th of February, 1865; but before entering upon the

events of that ever-memorable morning it will give breadth and color

to the picture to glance at the scenes witnessed there at the

beginning and during the Rebellion.

On the 17th of December, 1860, Governor Pickens sent a strictly

confidential letter to President Buchanan.

"To spare the effusion of blood," said he, "which no human power

may be able to prevent, I earnestly beg your immediate

consideration of all the points I call your attention to.... I

would most respectfully, and from a sincere devotion to the

public peace, request that you will allow me to send a small

force, not exceeding twenty-five men and an officer, to take

possession of Fort Sumter immediately, in order to give a feeling

of safety to the community. There are no United States troops in

that fort whatever, or perhaps only four or five at present,

besides some additional workmen or laborers lately employed to

put the guns in order.... If Fort Sumter could be given to me as

Governor, I think the public mind would be quieted, under a

feeling of safety."

The State seceded on the 20th. Major Anderson with a handful of men

was at Fort Moultrie. "The garrison will not be strengthened. The

people will obey the call for war, and take the forts," said the

Charleston _Mercury_ of the 22d.

Five days later, on the 27th, the people of Charleston looked seaward

and saw Moultrie in flames, and the stars and stripes waving over

Sumter. They were indignant. They considered it a breach of faith.

"Anderson has opened civil war," said the _Courier_.[87]

[Footnote 87: _Courier_, December 29, 1860.]

"His act must be repudiated by the government," said the

_Mercury_.[88]

[Footnote 88: _Mercury_, December 29, 1860.]

"Unless you order Anderson back, I cannot, under my convictions of

patriotism and honor, continue to hold office," said the Secretary of

War, John B. Floyd, of Virginia.[89]

[Footnote 89: Floyd's Letter to Buchanan.]

Charleston was intensely excited.

"Assemble the Light Infantry and the Meagher Guards at the Citadel.

Arm them and take possession of Castle Pinckney. Proceed immediately

to Fort Moultrie; send troops to Morris Island," were the orders of

Governor Pickens to Colonel Pettigrew.

"Our line of operations embraces four points: Fort Moultrie, Castle

Pinckney, Fort Johnson, and Morris Island. You are indebted to the

forbearance of the enemy for the liberty of transporting the

reinforcements and supplies, which you ordered at midnight, and which

are to be sent to your battery now in course of erection on Morris

Island. A single gun from Fort Sumter would sink your transports and

destroy your troops and supplies," reported General Simmons to the

Governor on the 1st of January.

It was the language of war. The United States was an enemy. The guns

of Moultrie were already trained on Sumter. The battery on Morris

Island was for the destruction of that fort. South Carolina had begun

the war in intention and in fact. The erection of the battery was war.

On the 9th of January the same battery opened fire on the Star of the

West, steaming into the harbor, bearing the United States flag.

"You are asked to surrender the fort to the constituted authorities of

South Carolina," was the demand of Governor Pickens on the 11th.

"I cannot comply with your request," was the response from Anderson.

Then came the negotiations between Charleston and Washington,--the

demands upon Buchanan, the shuffling and indecision of the two-faced,

unprincipled politician, who had written himself down as an "Old

Public Functionary." Major Anderson was watched day and night, cut off

from intercourse with the shore, deprived of fresh provisions, treated

as an enemy, and compelled to see the preparations on Morris Island

and on the floating battery for the reduction of the fort. Thus

February and March passed away. His provisions were nearly gone.

Troops were pouring into Charleston from all parts of the State and

from other States. Savannah sent a company early in December. They

were under the command of General Beauregard,--a small, brown, thin,

wiry man, forty years old, born upon the banks of the Mississippi, in

Louisiana, yet more of a Frenchman than an American.

Mr. Lincoln could not consent that Major Anderson should starve. The

people of the North would not permit it. Its sentiment was for

sustaining an officer who had been true to his oath, amid a general

breaking down of loyalty.

Sunday dawned, the 7th of April, and Major Anderson, looking out from

his prison, saw the Rebels hard at work to complete the batteries on

Morris Island.

"An attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only,"

was the official notice from President Lincoln to Pickens on the 8th.

"Demand the surrender of the fort; if refused, reduce it," was the

order from Montgomery.

"Surrender," was the message of Beauregard to Anderson. "I cannot; but

I shall soon be starved out unless relieved," was the courteous reply.

"When will you evacuate?"

"At noon on the 15th, if I receive no supplies," wrote Anderson on the

11th.

"I shall open fire in one hour," was the last message of Beauregard,

at twenty minutes past three on the morning of the 12th.

Then came the roar of the first gun, fired by old Mr. Ruffin,

gray-haired, nearly fourscore. Not the young bloods of the South

alone, but men and women of all ages and classes were crazy for the

contest.

Shells burst in the fort, plunging through the wooden barracks and

officers' quarters. Solid shot from Morris Island were hurled

point-blank against the walls. All day the batteries flamed, and

Sumter leisurely replied.

[Illustration: Defence of Fort Sumter.]

When darkness came on Sumter closed its port-holes and rested, but the

Rebels, like spirits of evil, were at work through the night.

The second day dawned, and all the cannon were roaring again. The

barracks were on fire, the smoke curling into the casemates, the hot

stifling air reaching the gunners, who, wrapping themselves in wet

cloths, and covering their faces, crept along the passages, rolling

casks of powder into the sea. What delight on shore to see the flames

mount above the walls! With what energy Moultrie, Pinckney, and Morris

Island and the floating battery redoubled their fire. All but three of

Anderson's cartridges were gone. The flagstaff was shot away. "The

flag is down!" is the cry within the fort. Up into the storm, where

the shot and shell are falling, walks Lieutenant Hall, planting the

flag upon the parapet, where it waves till Wigfall appears at a

port-hole. Then the parley,--the surrender,--and Charleston was

excited as never before or since. Men and women on the house-tops, and

gathered in church-steeples; business at a stand still, champagne

flowing like water, costliest wines quaffed at the expense of

merchants of New York; bells ringing, guns firing, ladies waving their

handkerchiefs,--the city all aglow with bonfires in the evening;

crowds surging through the streets, or drinking whiskey in the

bar-rooms: Beauregard the Napoleon of the new era. Governor Pickens

addressed the mob from the balcony of the Charleston Hotel:--

"It is a glorious and exultant occasion. Fellow-citizens, I

clearly saw that the day was coming when we would triumph beyond

the power of man to put us down. Thank God the day has

come,--thank God the war is open, and we will conquer or perish!

We have defeated their twenty millions, and we have made the

proud flag of the stars and stripes, that never was lowered

before to any nation on this earth,--we have lowered it in

humility before the glorious little State of South Carolina!"[90]

[Footnote 90: Speech of Governor Pickens.]

Intoxicated with wine and whiskey, delirious with success, insane with

Secession, the jubilant crowd cheer and drink, and shout again,

bidding defiance to the government, and cursing the Yankees.

Four years pass, and Sumter is repossessed by the troops of the Union.

How cheering the sight to behold once more the crimson folds and

fadeless stars of our country's flag waving in the sunlight over the

crumbled walls!

Early in the morning we entered the harbor,--General Gillmore and

staff, General Webster, chief of General Sherman's staff, with several

gentlemen and ladies from Port Royal. The blockading fleet and the

monitors were steaming in, their long watch through the sweltering

days of summer and the stormy nights of winter at an end. They were

feeling their way up the channel searching for torpedoes.

The steamer Deer, built on the Clyde, a few hours from Nassau, with an

assorted cargo,--a low, rakish, fast-running craft, with steam

escaping from her pipes,--was lying under the guns of a monitor. She

had worked her way in during the night. The crestfallen captain was

chewing the cud of disappointment on the quarter-deck, looking

gloomily seaward the while, and doubtless wishing himself in the

harbor of Nassau. Two nights before the Syren had passed in. The wreck

of a third blockade-runner was lying on the sands of Sullivan's

Island, near Moultrie, which months before had been run ashore by the

fleet. The tide was surging through the cabin windows. Barnacles had

fastened upon the hull, and long tresses of green, dank seaweed hung

trailing from the iron paddle-wheels. It was a satisfaction to know

that the time was at hand when Englishmen at Nassau would have to shut

up shop.

We glided along the shore of Morris Island, white with tents. What

heroic valor on those sands,--the assault upon Wagner, the slow,

persistent excavation of the trenches, the unremitting vigilance and

energy, the endurance which had forced the evacuation of Morris

Island,--the turning of the guns of Wagner upon Sumter, the planting

of the "Swamp-Angel" battery,--the first shell sent streaming into the

city, startling the inhabitants, and awaking the unpleasant conviction

that the Yankees were at their doors! So memory ran over the historic

events, as we swept up the channel.

The steamer could not approach near the landing, and we were taken to

the fort in small boats. We reached the interior through a low,

narrow passage.

The fort bore little resemblance to its former appearance, externally

or internally. None of the original face of the wall was to be seen,

except on the side towards Charleston and a portion of that facing

Moultrie. From the harbor and from Wagner it appeared only a

tumulus,--the _debris_ of an old ruin. All the casemates, arches,

pillars, and parapets were torn up and utterly demolished. The great

guns which two years before kept the monitors at bay, which flamed and

thundered awhile upon Wagner, were dismounted, broken, and partially

buried beneath the mountain of brick, dust, concrete, sand, and

mortar. After Dupont's attack, in April, 1863, a reinforcement of

palmetto-logs was made on the harbor side, and against half of the

wall facing Moultrie, and the lower casemates were filled with

sand-bags; but when General Gillmore obtained possession of Wagner,

his fire began to crumble the parapet. The Rebels endeavored to

maintain its original height by gabions filled with sand, but this

compelled a widening of the base inside by sand-bags, thousands of

which were brought to the fort at night. Day after day, week after

week, the pounding from Wagner was maintained so effectually that it

was impossible to keep a gun in position on the side of Sumter

fronting it, and the only guns remaining mounted were five or six on

the side towards Moultrie, in the middle tier of casemates. Five

howitzers were kept on the walls to repel an attack by small boats,

the garrison keeping under cover, or seeking shelter whenever the

lookout cried, "A shot!"

_Cheveaux-de-frise_ of pointed sticks protected the fort from a

scaling party. At the base outside was a barrier of interlaced wire,

supported by iron posts. There was also a submerged network of wire

and chains, kept in place by floating buoys.

I had the curiosity to make an inspection of the wall nearest

Moultrie, to see what had been the effect of the fire of the ironclads

in Dupont's attack. With my glass at that time I could see that the

wall was badly honeycombed; a close inspection now proved that the

fire was very damaging. There were seams in the masonry, and great

gashes where the solid bolts crumbled the bricks to dust. It was

evident that if the fire had been continued any considerable length of

time the wall would have fallen. Its effect suggested the necessity of

filling up the lower casemates.

An hour was passed in the fort, the band playing national airs, and

the party inspecting the ruins and gathering relics.

Captain James of the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth, aide to General

Gillmore, was wounded in the assault on Wagner. He gazed at the ruins

with a satisfaction not unmixed with melancholy, for beneath the sands

of Morris Island was lying his beloved commander, Colonel Shaw.

The Rebels had refused to give up his body. "Let him lie buried

beneath his niggers," was their answer to the request. And there he

lies beside the brave men who followed him to death and glory, having

won an immortal name no less as the commander of the first negro

regiment sent to the war than by his gentle bearing as a man and

bravery as a soldier. His acceptance of the command of the despised

men who gladly enlisted when called to the field required at the time

a devotion to principle and a decision of character, to face the gibes

and sneers flung at him by negro-haters in his rear, greater than the

courage to meet the enemy at the front. But he nobly led the way, and

silenced every carping tongue.

For four long years the cannon of Sumter had hurled defiance at the

rights of man; but the contest now was ended. Eternal principles had

prevailed against every effort of Rebel hate to crush them. The strong

earthworks on Sullivan's and Johnson's islands, the batteries in the

harbor, Castle Pinckney and Fort Ripley, and those in the city erected

by slaves, were useless forever, except as monuments of folly and

wickedness. As I stood there upon the ruins of Sumter, looking down

into the crater, the past like a panorama was unrolled, exhibiting the

mighty events which will forever make it memorable. The silent landing

of Major Anderson at the postern gate, the midnight prayer and solemn

consecration of the little band to defend the flag till the last, the

long weeks of preparation by the Rebels, the Star of the West turning

her bow seaward, the 12th of April, the barracks on fire, the supplies

exhausted, the hopelessness of success, the surrender, and all that

had followed, were vivid memories of the moment.

How inspiring to hear the music of the band, to behold the numerous

vessels of the fleet decorated from bowsprit to yardarm and topmast

with flags and streamers, to recall the heroic sacrifices of those who

had fought through the weary years, to know that Sumter, Moultrie, the

city, and the State were redeemed from the worst system of vassalage,

that our country was still a nation, renewed and regenerated by its

baptism of fire and blood, that truth and right were vindicated before

the world; and to look down the coming years, and know that Freedom

was secured to all beneath the folds of the flag that had withstood

the intrigues of cabals and the shock of battle, and that Christianity

and civilization, twin agents of human progress, had received an

impetus that would forever keep us in the van of nations.

[Illustration: For our Flag.]

Looking at that flag, involuntarily I repeated the words of the song

which I heard when the shadows of night fell upon the gory field of

Antietam, sung by our wounded in one of the hospitals:--

"Our flag is there! our flag is there!

We hail it with three loud huzzas!

Our flag is there! our flag is there!

Behold the glorious stripes and stars!

Stout hearts have fought for that bright flag,

Strong hands sustained it masthead high,

And O, to see how proud it waves,

Brings tears of joy to every eye!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHARLESTON.

[Sidenote: Feb., 1865.]

A city of ruins,--silent, mournful, in deepest humiliation. It was

early morning when we reached the wharf, piled with merchandise, not

busy with commercial activity as in other days, but deserted, its

timbers rotting, its planks decayed, its sheds tumbling in and reeling

earthward. The slips, once crowded with steam and sailing vessels,

were now vacant, except that an old sloop with a worm-eaten gunwale,

tattered sails, and rigging hanging in shreds, alone remained.

A few fishermen's dories only were rocking on the waves, tethered to

the wharves by rotten ropes, where the great cotton Argosies in former

years had shipped or landed their cargoes.

Before the sailors had time to make fast the steamer, myself and

friend[91] were up the pier. The band was playing "Hail, Columbia,"

and the strains floated through the desolate city, awakening wild

enthusiasm in the hearts of the colored people, who came rushing down

the grass-grown streets to welcome us.

[Footnote 91: James Redpath.]

When near the upper end of the pier we encountered an old man bending

beneath the weight of seventy years,--such years as slavery alone can

pile upon the soul. He bowed very low.

"Are you not afraid of us Yankees?"

"No, massa, God bless you. I have prayed many a night for you to come,

and now you are here. Bless the Lord! Bless the Lord!"

He kneeled, clasped my hand, and with streaming eyes poured out his

thanks to God.

Let us, before entering upon a narrative of military incidents, look

at Charleston as she was at the beginning of the Rebellion, when the

great cotton mart of the Atlantic coast, with lines of steamships to

New York and Boston. Then her wharves not only were piled with bales

of cotton and tierces of rice, or with goods from the warehouses and

manufactories of New England and Great Britain, but, next to New

Orleans, she was the most populous city of the South, and, in

proportion to the number of inhabitants, the wealthiest. Her banks and

insurance offices were as stable as those of Wall Street. She aspired

to be the commercial emporium of the South. The newspapers of

Charleston taught the people to believe that Secession and

non-intercourse with the North would make the city the rival of New

York. She first adopted the vagaries of her own son, Calhoun, on the

rights of States. She proclaimed cotton king, not of America, but of

the world, and in her pride believed that all nations could be brought

to do her homage. She was rich and aristocratic, and looked upon the

people of the North with contempt.

"The Cavaliers, Jacobites, and Huguenots," wrote De Bow, "who settled

the South, naturally hate, contemn, and despise the Puritans, who

settled the North. The former are master races; the latter a slave

race, descendants of the Anglo-Saxon serfs."

Through ignorance and vanity such assertions were accepted as truths.

Boys and girls of the common schools of the North could have shown

that, in the contests between the Cavaliers and Puritans, the

Cavaliers were defeated; that the Jacobites went down before the party

which placed William of Orange on the throne.

Charleston called the people of South Carolina into council. The

_Mercury_--that able but wicked advocate of Secession--threw out from

its windows this motto: "One voice and millions of strong arms to

uphold the honor of South Carolina!" Not the honor of the nation or of

the people, but of South Carolina,--the Mephistopheles of the

Confederacy, the seducer of States. With honeyed words, and well-timed

flattery she detached State after State from the Union.

"Whilst constituting a portion of the United States," said South

Carolina, in her address to the slaveholding States, "it has been

_your_ statesmanship which has guided it in its mighty strides to

power and expansion. In the field and in the cabinet _you_ have led

the way to renown and grandeur."

The ministers of her churches were foremost in abetting the Rebellion.

Church and State, merchant and planter, all from high to low of the

white population, brought themselves to believe that their influence

was world-wide, through King Cotton and his prime minister, African

Slavery. Hence the arrogance, fierce intolerance, and mad hate which

had their only prototypes in the Rebellion of the Devil and his angels

against Beneficent Goodness.

The siege of Charleston was commenced on the 21st of August, 1863, by

the opening of the "Swamp-Angel" battery. On the 7th of September Fort

Wagner was taken, and other guns were trained upon the city,

compelling the evacuation of the lower half. For fourteen months it

had been continued; not a furious bombardment, but a slow, steady fire

from day to day. About thirteen thousand shells had been thrown into

the town,--nearly a thousand a month.

They were fired at a great elevation, and were plunging

shots,--striking houses on the roof and passing down from attic to

basement, exploding in the chambers, cellars, or in the walls. The

effect was a complete riddling of the houses. Brick walls were blown

into millions of fragments, roofs were torn to pieces; rafters, beams,

braces, scantlings, were splintered into jack-straws. Churches,

hotels, stores, dwellings, public buildings, and stables, all were

shattered. There were great holes in the ground, where cart-loads of

earth had been excavated in a twinkling.

In 1860 the population of the city was 48,509,--26,969 whites, 17,655

slaves, and 3,885 free colored. The first flight from the city was in

December, 1861, when Port Royal fell into the hands of Dupont; but

when it was found that the opportunity afforded at that time for an

advance inland was not improved, most of those who had moved away

returned. The attack of Dupont upon Sumter sent some flying again; but

not till the messengers of the "Swamp Angel" dropped among them did

the inhabitants think seriously of leaving. Some went to Augusta,

others to Columbia, others to Cheraw. Many wealthy men bought homes

in the country. The upper part of the city was crowded. Men of fortune

who had lived in princely style were compelled to put up with one

room. Desolation had been coming on apace. The city grew old rapidly,

and had become the completest ruin on the continent. There were from

ten to fifteen thousand people still remaining in it, two thirds of

whom were colored.

When Sherman flanked Orangeburg, Hardee, who commanded the Rebels in

Charleston, saw that he must evacuate the place. There was no

alternative; he must give up Sumter, Moultrie, and the proud old city

to the Yankees. It was bitter as death! A few of the heavy guns were

sent off to North Carolina, all the trains which could be run on the

railroad were loaded with ammunition and commissary supplies, the guns

in the forts were spiked, and the troops withdrawn.

The inhabitants had been assured that the place should be defended to

the last; and in the _Courier_ office we found the following sentence

in type, which had been set up not twenty-four hours before the

evacuation: "There are no indications that our authorities have the

first intention of abandoning Charleston, as I have ascertained from

careful inquiry!" Duplicity to the end.

The Rebellion was inaugurated through deception, and had been

sustained by an utter disregard of truth.

Friday and Saturday were terrible days. Carts, carriages, wagons,

horses, mules, all were brought into use. The railroad trains were

crowded. Men, women, and children fled, terror-stricken,

broken-hearted, humbled in spirit, from their homes. How different

from the 12th of April, 1861, when they stood upon the esplanade of

the battery, sat upon the house-tops, clustered in the steeples,

looking seaward, shouting and waving their handkerchiefs as the clouds

of smoke and forked flames rolled up from Sumter!

"God don't pay at the end of every week, but he pays at last, my Lord

Cardinal," said Anne of Austria.

General Hardee remained in the city till Friday night, the 17th

instant, when he retired with the army, leaving a detachment of

cavalry to destroy what he could not remove. Every building and shed

in which cotton had been stored was fired on Saturday morning. The

ironclads "Palmetto State," "Chicora," and "Charleston" were also

given to the flames. They lay at the wharves, and had each large

quantities of powder and shell on board. General Hardee knew that the

explosions of the magazines would send a storm of fire upon the city.

He knew it would endanger the lives of thousands; but what cared he?

Governor McGrath called upon the people to destroy their houses. The

newspapers pointed to Moscow as a sublime instance of heroic devotion.

Human life, the wailing of infants, the feebleness of old age, weighed

nothing with Hampton, Hardee, McGrath, General Lee, or Jeff Davis.

The torch was applied early on the morning of the 18th. The citizens

sprang to the fire-engines and succeeded in extinguishing the flames

in several places; but in other parts of the city the fire had its own

way, burning till there was nothing more to devour. On the wharf of

the Savannah Railroad depot were several hundred bales of cotton and

several thousand bushels of rice. On Lucas Street, in a shed, were

twelve hundred bales of cotton. There were numerous other sheds all

filled. Near by was the Lucas mill, containing thirty thousand bushels

of rice, and Walker's warehouse, with a large amount of commissary

stores, all of which were licked up by the fire so remorselessly

kindled.

At the Northeastern Railroad depot there was an immense amount of

cotton which was fired. The depot was full of commissary supplies and

ammunition, powder in kegs, shells, and cartridges. The people rushed

in to obtain the supplies. Several hundred men, women, and children

were in the building when the flames reached the ammunition and the

fearful explosion took place, lifting up the roof and bursting out the

walls, and scattering bricks, timbers, tiles, beams, through the air;

shells crashed through the panic-stricken crowd, followed by the

shrieks and groans of the mangled victims lying helpless in the

flames, burning to cinders in the all-devouring element. Nor was this

all. At the wharves were the ironclads, burning, torn, rent, scattered

over the water and land,--their shells and solid shot, iron braces,

red-hot iron plates, falling in an infernal shower, firing the

wharves, the buildings, and all that could burn.

There was more than this. Two magnificent Blakely guns--one at the

battery, the other near the gas-works on Cooper River--were loaded to

the muzzle and trains laid to burst them. The concussion shattered all

the houses in the immediate vicinity.

The buildings near the Northeastern depot were swept away. All the

houses embraced in the area of four squares disappeared. The new

bridge leading to James Island was destroyed, the fire eating its way

slowly from pier to pier through the day. The citizens did their

utmost to stay the flames, but from sunrise to sunset on Saturday, all

through Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday, the fire burned. How

fearful this retribution for crime! Abandoned by those who had cajoled

and deceived them, who had brought about their calamity, while

swearing to defend them to the last, humbled, reduced from affluence

to poverty, the people of Charleston were compelled to endure the

indescribable agony of those days.

Colonel Bennett, commanding the Twenty-First United States Colored

Troops on Morris Island, seeing signs of evacuation on Saturday

morning, the 18th, hastened up the harbor in boats with his regiment,

landing at the South Atlantic wharf.

"In the name of the United States government," was his note to the

Mayor, "I demand the surrender of the city of which you are the

executive officer. Until further orders, all citizens will remain in

their houses."

The mayor, meanwhile, had despatched a deputation to Morris Island

with formal intelligence of the evacuation.

"My command," wrote Colonel Bennett, "will render every possible

assistance to your well-disposed citizens in extinguishing the

flames."

The Twenty-First United States Colored Troops was made up of the old

Third and Fourth South Carolina regiments, and many of them were

formerly slaves in the city of Charleston. They were enlisted at a

time when public sentiment was against them, in the winter of 1862-63.

I was at Port Royal then, and they were employed in the

quartermaster's department. They were sneered at and abused by

officers and men belonging to white regiments; but Colonel Bennett

continued steadfast in his determination, obtained arms after a long

struggle, in which he was seconded by Colonel Littlefield,

Inspector-General of colored troops in the department. Colonel Bennett

had organized four companies of the Third and Colonel Littlefield four

companies of the Fourth. The two commands were united and numbered as

the Twenty-First United States Colored Troops. They went to Morris

Island in 1863, took part in two or three engagements, and proved

themselves good soldiers of the Union. It was their high privilege to

be first in the city. The stone which the builders rejected once in

the history of the world became the head stone of the corner; and in

like manner the poor, despised, rejected African race, which had no

rights, against whom the city of Charleston plotted iniquity and

inaugurated treason, marched into the city to save it from

destruction! Following the Twenty-First was a detachment of the

Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts.

"Let him lie buried beneath his niggers!" Stung by the insult to the

memory of their lamented commander and by the sneer at themselves,

will they not now wreak their vengeance on the ill-fated city? It is

their hour for retaliation. But they harbor in their hearts no malice

or revenge. Conscious of their manhood, they are glad of another

opportunity of showing it.

The soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth have proved their prowess on the

field of battle; they have met the chivalry of South Carolina face to

face, and shown their equality in courage and heroism, and on this

ever-memorable day they make manifest to the world their superiority

in honor and humanity.

Let the painter picture it. Let the poet rehearse it. With the old

flag above them, keeping step to freedom's drum-beat, up the

grass-grown streets, past the slave-marts where their families and

themselves have been sold in the public shambles, laying aside their

arms, working the fire-engines to extinguish the flames, and, in the

spirit of the Redeemer of men, saving that which was lost.

"It was the intention of some of our officers to destroy the city,"

said one of the citizens; "they not only set it on fire, but they

double-shotted the guns of the ironclads, and turned them upon the

town, but fortunately no one was injured when they exploded."

The lower half of the city was called Gillmore's town by the

inhabitants.

We visited the old office of the _Mercury_, in Broad Street. A

messenger sent by the "Swamp Angel" had preceded us, entering the

roof, exploding within the chimney, dumping several cart-loads of

brickbats and soot into the editorial room, breaking the windows and

splintering the doors. It was the room in which Secession had its

incubation. The leading rebellious spirits once sat there in their

arm-chairs and enthroned King Cotton. They demanded homage to his

majesty from all nations. The first shell sent the _Mercury_ up town

to a safer locality, but when Sherman began his march into the

interior, the _Mercury_ fled into the country to Cheraw, right into

his line of advance!

The _Courier_ office in Bay Street had not escaped damage. A shell

went down through the floors, ripping up the boards, jarring the

plaster from the walls, and exploded in the second story, rattling all

the tiles from the roof, bursting out the windows, smashing the

composing-stone, opening the whole building to the winds. Another

shell had dashed the sidewalk to pieces and blown a passage into the

cellar, wide enough to admit a six-horse wagon. Near the _Courier_

office were the Union Bank, Farmers' and Exchange Bank, and Charleston

Bank, costly buildings, fitted up with marble mantels, floors of

terra-cotta tiles, counters elaborate in carved work, and with

gorgeous frescoing on the walls. There, five years ago, the merchants

of the city, the planters of the country, the slave-traders, assembled

on exchange, talked treason, and indulged in extravagant day-dreams of

the future glory of Charleston.

The rooms were silent now, the oaken doors splintered, the frescoing

washed from the walls by the rains which dripped from the shattered

roof; the desks were kindling-wood, the highly-wrought cornice-work had

dropped to the ground, the tiles were ploughed up, the marble mantles

shivered, the beautiful plate-glass of the windows was in fragments upon

the floor. The banks helped on the Rebellion,--contributed their funds

to inaugurate it, and invested largely in the State securities to place

the State on a war footing. The three banks named held on January 6,

1862, six hundred and ten thousand dollars' worth of the seven per cent

State stock, issued under the act of December, 1861.

The entire amount of the State loan of one million eight hundred

thousand dollars issued under that act was taken by the banks of the

State. Every bank with the exception of the Bank of Camden and the

Commercial Bank of Columbia subscribed to the stock. The seven

Charleston banks at this early stage of the war had loaned the State

permanently eleven hundred and forty-two thousand dollars.[92]

[Footnote 92: Report of Treasurer and Finance, South

Carolina, 1862.]

At this period of the war the State had twenty-seven thousand three

hundred and sixty-two troops[93] in the field, out of a white

population of two hundred and ninety-one thousand, by the census of

1860,--nearly one half of the voting population, so fiercely burned

the fires of Secession. But the flames had reached their whitest heat.

Even at that time the people had grown weary of the war, and refused

to enlist.

[Footnote 93: Report of James Chestnut, Chief Military

Department, South Carolina, January 1, 1862, p. 47.]

"The activity and energy had been already abstracted," writes the

chief of the Military Department of the State; "they had stricken at

the sovereignty of the State; ignorance, indolence, selfishness,

disaffection, and to some extent disappointed ambition, were combined

and made unwittingly to aid and abet the enemy, and to become the

coadjutors of Lincoln and all the hosts of abolition myrmidons."[94]

[Footnote 94: Ibid., p. 24.]

Passing from the banks to the hotels, we found a like scene of

destruction. The doors of the Mills House were open. The windows had

lost their glazing and were boarded up. Sixteen shots had struck the

building. The rooms where Secession had been rampant in the beginning,

where bottles of wine had been drunk over the fall of Sumter, echoed

only to our footsteps. The Charleston Hotel, where Governor Pickens

had uttered his proud, exultant, defiant words, was pierced in many

places. Dining-halls, parlors, and chambers had been visited by

messengers from Wagner. I gathered strawberry flowers and dandelions

from the grass-green pavement in front of the hotel, trodden by the

drunken multitude on that night when the flag of the Union was humbled

in the dust.

No wild, tumultuous shoutings now, but silence deep, painful,

sorrowful. Our own voices only echoed along the corridors and

balconies where surged the lunatics of that hour. We passed at will

along the streets, wanderers in a desolate city. Along the Battery, a

beautiful promenade of the city, shaded by magnolias, and fragrant

with the bloom of roses and syringas, overlooking the harbor, stood

the residences of the "chivalric" men of South Carolina. From their

balconies and windows the occupants had watched the first bombardment

of Sumter. They had seen with joyful eyes the flames lick up the

barracks, and the lowering of the flag of the Union. But now their

palatial homes were wrecks, and they were fugitives. Doorless and

windowless the houses. The elaborate centre pieces of stucco-work in

the drawing-rooms crumbled; the bedrooms filled with bricks, the white

marble steps and mahogany balusters shattered; owls and bats might

build their nests in the coming spring-time undisturbed in the

deserted mansions, the esplanade of the Battery, the pleasure-ground

of the Charlestonians, their delight and pride, was now merely a huge

embankment of earth,--a magazine of shot and shell.

The churches--where slavery had been preached as a missionary

institution, where Secession had been prayed for, where _Te Deums_ had

been sung over the fall of Sumter and hosannas shouted for the great

victory of Manassas--were, like the houses, wrecks. The pavements were

strewn with the glass shattered from the windows of old St. Michael's,

the pride and reverence of Charleston; and St. Philip's, where

worshipped the rich men, where the great apostle of Secession and

devotee of slavery, Calhoun, lies in his narrow cell, resembled an

ancient ruin. His grave, marked by a white marble slab, was unharmed,

but the bones of his fellow-sleepers had been disturbed by the shells.

The yard was overrun with weeds and briers. Bombs had torn through the

church. Pigeons had free access. Buzzards might roost there

undisturbed.

In 1861 the heart of the city was burned out by a great fire, which

swept from the Cooper River to the Ashley. How it ignited no one has

told. The colored people are fully imbued with the belief that it was

sent of the Lord. No attempt had been made to rebuild the waste. All

the energy of the people had been given to prosecuting the war. There

had been no sound of trowel, hammer, or saw, except upon the

ironclads.

The blackened area was overgrown with fire-weeds. Lean and hungry curs

barked at us from the tenantless houses. Cats which once purred by

pleasant firesides ran from their old haunts at our approach. The rats

had deserted the wharves and moved up town with the people. The

buzzards, which once picked up the garbage of the markets, had

disappeared. A solitary rook cawed to us, perched on the vane of the

court-house steeple. Spiders were spinning their webs in the

counting-houses.

It was an indescribable scene of desolation,--of roofless houses,

cannon-battered walls, crumbling ruins, upheaved pavement, and

grass-grown streets; silent to all sounds of business, voiceless only

to a few haggard men and women wandering amid the ruins, reflecting

upon a jubilant past, a disappointed present, and a hopeless future!

"Her merchants were the great men of the earth; for by their sorceries

were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of the

prophets and of the saints."

Charleston was one of the great slave-marts of the South. She was the

boldest advocate for the reopening of the slave-trade. Her statesmen

legislated for it; her ministers of the Gospel upheld it as the best

means for Christianizing Africa and for the ultimate benefit of the

whole human race. Being thus sustained, the slave-traders set up their

auction-block in no out-of-the-way place. A score of men opened

offices and dealt in the bodies and souls of men. Among them were T.

Ryan & Son, M. M. McBride, J. E. Bowers, J. B. Oaks, J. B. Baker,

Wilbur & Son, on State and Chalmers Streets. Twenty paces distant from

Baker's was a building bearing the sign, "Theological Library,

Protestant Episcopal Church." Standing by Baker's door, and looking up

Chalmers Street to King Street, I read another sign, "Sunday-School

Depository." Also, "Hibernian Hall," the building in which the

ordinance of Secession was signed. In another building on the opposite

corner was the Registry of Deeds. Near by was the guard-house with its

grated windows, its iron bars being an appropriate design of

double-edged swords and spears. Thousands of slaves had been

incarcerated there for no crime whatever, except for being out after

nine o'clock, or for meeting in some secret chamber to tell God their

wrongs, with no white man present. They disobeyed the law by not

listening to the bell of old St. Michael's, which at half past eight

in the evening, in its high and venerable tower, opened its trembling

lips and shouted, "Get you home! Get you home!" Always that; always of

command; always of arrogance, superiority, and caste; never of love,

good-will, and fellowship. On Sunday morning it said, "Come and sit in

your old-fashioned, velvet-cushioned pews, you rich ones! Go up

stairs, you niggers!"

The guard-house doors were wide open. The jailer had lost his

occupation. The last slave had been immured within its walls, and St.

Michael's curfew was to be sweetest music thenceforth and forever. It

shall ring the glad chimes of freedom,--freedom to come, to go, or to

tarry by the way; freedom from sad partings of wife and husband,

father and son, mother and child.

The brokers in flesh and blood took good care to be well buttressed.

They set up their market in a reputable quarter, with St. Michael's

and the guard-house, the Registry of Deeds and the Sunday-School

Depository, the Court-House and the Theological Library around them to

make their calling respectable.

But the "Swamp Angel" had splintered the pews of St. Michael's,

demolished the pulpit, and made a record of its doings in the Registry

building. At one stroke it opened the entire front of the

Sunday-School Depository to the light of heaven. There was also a mass

of evidence in the courtroom--several cart-loads of brick and plaster,

introduced by General Gillmore--against the right of a State to

secede.

I entered the Theological Library building through a window from which

General Gillmore had removed the sash by a solid shot. A pile of old

rubbish lay upon the floor,--sermons, tracts, magazines, books,

papers, musty and mouldy, turning into pulp beneath the rain-drops

which came down through the shattered roof.

Amid these surroundings was the Slave-Mart,--a building with a large

iron gate in front, above which, in large gilt letters, was the word

MART.

The outer iron gate opened into a hall about sixty feet long by

twenty broad, flanked on one side by a long table running the entire

length of the hall, and on the other by benches. At the farther end a

door, opening through a brick wall, gave entrance to a yard. The door

was locked. I tried my boot-heel, but it would not yield. I called a

freedman to my aid. Unitedly we took up a great stone, and gave a

blow. Another, and the door of the Bastile went into splinters. Across

the yard was a four-story brick building, with grated windows and iron

doors,--a prison. The yard was walled by high buildings. He who

entered there left all hope behind. A small room adjoining the hall

was the place where women were subjected to the lascivious gaze of

brutal men. There were the steps, up which thousands of men, women,

and children had walked to their places on the table, to be knocked

off to the highest bidder. The thought occurred to me that perhaps

Governor Andrew, or Wendell Phillips, or William Lloyd Garrison would

like to make a speech from those steps. I determined to secure them.

While there a colored woman came into the hall to see the two Yankees.

"I was sold there upon that table two years ago," said she.

"You never will be sold again; you are free now and forever!" I

replied.

"Thank God! O the blessed Jesus, he has heard my prayer. I am so glad;

only I wish I could see my husband. He was sold at the same time into

the country, and has gone I don't know where."

Thus spake Dinah More.

In front of the mart was a gilt star. I climbed the post and wrenched

it from its spike to secure it as a trophy. A freedman took down the

gilt letters for me, and knocked off the great lock from the outer

iron gate, and the smaller lock from the inner door. The key of the

French Bastile hangs at Mount Vernon; and as relics of the American

prison-house then being broken up, I secured these.

Entering the brokers' offices,--prisons rather,--we walked along the

grated corridors, looked into the rooms where the slaves had been

kept. In the cellar was the dungeon for the refractory,--bolts and

staples in the floors, manacles for the hands and feet, chains to

make all sure. There had evidently been a sudden evacuation of the

premises. Books, letters, bills of sale, were lying on the floor.

Let us take our last look of the Divine missionary institution. Thus

writes James H. Whiteside to Z. B. Oakes:--

"I know of five very likely young negroes for sale. They are held

at high prices, but I know the owner is compelled to sell next

week, and they maybe bought low enough so as to pay. Four of the

negroes are young men, about twenty years old, and the other a

very likely young woman about twenty-two. I have never stripped

them, but they seem to be all right."

C. A. Merrill writes from Franklin:--

"If I can I will come and buy some of your fancy girls and other

negroes, if I can get them at a discount."

A. J. McElveen writes from Sumterville:--

"I send a woman, age twenty-two. She leaves two children, and her

owner will not let her have them. She will run away. I pay for

her in notes, $650. She is a house woman, handy with the needle,

in fact she does nothing but sew and knit, and attend to house

business."

Another letter from the same:--

"I met a man who offered me four negroes,--one woman and three

girls, all likely and fine size for the ages,--thirty-six,

thirteen, twelve, and nine. The two oldest girls are the same

size; all right as to teeth and person."

I cannot transfer to these pages what follows; decency forbids.

Thomas Otey writes from Richmond:--

"This market is fine. They are selling from twenty-five to fifty

per day, and at fine prices. A yellow girl sold this morning for

$1,320. No qualifications; black ones at $1,150; men at $1,400.

Small ones in the ratio."

There was no longer a manifestation of lordly insolence and assumed

superiority over the Yankees on the part of the whites. They spoke

respectfully, but were reticent except when questioned. Once they

asked questions of Yankees: "What is your occupation? What brought you

to the South? What are you doing here? I believe you are a

---- Abolitionist, and the quicker you get out of this town the

better." Such was formerly their language. So they talked to Judge

Hoar, a citizen of Massachusetts. So they talked to Colonel Woodford

in 1860.

In 1860, in the month of December, Lieutenant-Colonel Woodford, of the

One Hundred and Twenty-Seventh New York volunteers, was in Charleston

on business. He was waited on one day by a committee of citizens and

informed that he had better leave the city, inasmuch as he was a

Northerner, and besides was suspected of being an Abolitionist. He was

put on board a steamer, and compelled to go North. He was now Provost

Marshal of the Department. On the morning of the 20th he visited the

office of the Charleston _Courier_. The editors had fled the city, but

the business man of the establishment remained to protect it. Colonel

Woodford was received very graciously. The following conversation

passed between them:--

_Colonel W._ "Whom have I the pleasure of addressing?"

_Business man._ "Mr. L----, sir."

_Col. W._ "Will you do me the favor to loan me a piece of paper?"

_Mr. L._ "Certainly, certainly, sir."

_Col. W._ "Shall I also trouble you for a pen and ink?"

_Mr. L._ "With pleasure, sir."

The ink was muddy and the pen poor, but the business man, with great

alacrity, obtained another bottle and a better pen. Colonel W.

commenced writing again:--

"OFFICE PROVOST MARSHAL,

CHARLESTON, February 20, 1865.

"Special Order, No. 1.

"The Charleston Courier establishment is hereby taken possession

of by the United States."

Mr. L. had been overlooking the writing, forgetful of courtesy in his

curiosity. He could hold in no longer.

"Colonel, surely you don't mean to confiscate my property! _Why, I

opposed nullification in 1830!_"

"That may be, sir, but you have done what you could to oppose the

United States since 1860. If you will show me by your files that you

have uttered one loyal word since January 1, 1865, I will take your

case into consideration."

He could not, and the _Courier_ passed into other hands.

The rich men of the city--those who had begun and sustained the

Rebellion--fled when they saw that the place was to fall into the

hands of the Yankees. But how bitter the humiliation! On the Sunday

preceding, Rev. Dr. Porter, of the Church of the Holy Communion,

preached upon the duty of fighting the Yankees to the last. "Fight!

fight, my friends, till the streets run blood! Perish in the last

ditch rather than permit the enemy to obtain possession of your

homes!"

But on Monday morning Dr. Porter was hastening to Cheraw, to avoid

being caught in Sherman's trap. The people of Charleston expected that

Sherman would swing round upon Branchville, and come into the city,

and therefore hastened to Columbia, Cheraw, and other northern towns

of the interior, where not a few of them became acquainted with the

"Bummers."

Rev. Dr. Porter owned a fine residence, which he turned over to an

English lady. As there were no hotel accommodations, my friend and I

were obliged to find private lodgings, and were directed to the house

of the Rev. Doctor. We were courteously received by Mrs. ----, a lady

in middle life, still wearing the bloom of old England on her cheeks,

although several years a resident of the sunny South. Rising early in

the morning, for a stroll through the city before breakfast, I found

the cook and chambermaid breaking out in boisterous laughter. The cook

danced, clapped her hands, sat down in a chair, and reeled backward

and forward in unrestrained ecstasy.

"What pleases you, Aunty?" I asked.

"O massa! I's tickled to tink dat massa Dr. Porter, who said dat no

Yankee eber would set his foot in dis yar city, had to cut for his

life, and dat a Yankee slept in his bed last night! Bless de Lord for

dat!"

The white women manifested their hatred to the bitter end.

"I'll set fire to my house before the Yankees shall have possession of

the city!" was the exclamation of one excited lady, when it was

whispered that the place was to be evacuated; but her Rebel friends

saved her the trouble by applying the torch themselves.

The colored people looked upon the Yankees as their deliverers

from bondage. They spoke of their coming as the advent of the

Messiah. Passing along King Street, near the citadel, with my

fellow-correspondent, we met an old negress with a basket on her

arm, a broad-brimmed straw hat on her head, wearing a brown dress

and roundabout. She saw that we were Yankees, and made a profound

courtesy.

"How do you do, Aunty?"

"O bless de Lord, I's very well, tank you," grasping my hand, and

dancing for joy. "I am sixty-nine years old, but I feel as if I wan't

but sixteen." She broke into a chant--

"Ye's long been a-comin,

Ye's long been a-comin,

For to take de land

"And now ye's a-comin,

And now ye's a-comin,

For to rule de land."

And then, clapping her hands, said, "Bless de Lord! Bless de dear

Jesus!"

"Then you are glad the Yankees are here?"

"O chile! I can't bress de Lord enough; but I doesn't call you

Yankees."

"What do you call us?"

"I call you Jesus's aids, and I call you head man de Messiah." She

burst out into a rhapsody of hallelujah and thanksgivings. "I can't

bress de Lord enough; and bress you, chile: I can't love you enough

for comin."

"Were you not afraid, Aunty, when the shells fell into the town?"

She straightened up, raised her eyes, and with a look of triumphant

joy, exclaimed,--

"When Mr. Gillmore fired de big gun and I hear de shell a-rushin ober

my head, I say, Come dear Jesus, and I feel nearer to Heaben dan I

eber feel before!"

My laundress at Port Royal was Rosa, a young colored woman, who

escaped from Charleston in 1862, with her husband and four other

persons, in a small boat. On that occasion Rosa dressed herself in

men's clothes, and the whole party early one morning rowed past

Sumter, and made for the gunboats.

"If you go to Charleston I wish you would see if my mother is there,"

said Rosa. "Governor Aiken's head man knows where she lives."

We went up King Street to Governor Aiken's. We found his "head man" in

the yard,--a courteous black, who, as soon as he learned that we were

Yankees, and had a message from Rosa to her mother, dropped all work

and started with us, eager to do anything for a Yankee. A walk to John

Street, an entrance through a yard to the rear of a dwelling-house,

brought us to the mother, in a small room, cluttered with pots,

kettles, tables, and chairs. She was sitting on a stool before the

fire, cooking her scanty breakfast of corn-cake. She had a little rice

meal in a bag given her by a Rebel officer. She was past sixty years

of age,--a large, strong woman, with a wide, high forehead and

intellectual features. She was clothed in a skirt of dingy negro

cloth, a sack of old red carpeting, and poor, thin canvas shoes of her

own make. Such an introduction!

"Here comes de great Messiah, wid news of Rosa!" said my introducer,

with an indescribable dramatic flourish.

The mother sprang from the stool with a cry of joy. "From Rosa? From

Rosa? O, thank the Lord!" She took hold of my hands, looked at me with

intense earnestness and joy, and yet with a shade of doubt, as if it

could not be true.

"From Rosa?"

"Yes, Aunty."

She kneeled upon the floor and looked up to heaven. She saw not us,

but God and Jesus. The tears streamed from her eyes. She recounted in

prayer all her long years of slavery, of suffering, of unrequited

toil, and achings of the heart. "You have heard me, dear Jesus! O

blessed Lamb!"

It was a conversation between herself and the Saviour. She told him

the story of her life, of all its sorrows, of his goodness, kindness,

and love, the tears rolling down her cheeks the while and falling in

great drops upon the floor. She wanted us to stay and partake of her

humble fare, pressed my hands again and again; and when we told her we

must go, she asked for God's best blessing and for Jesus' love to

news that she was free, and that her Rosa was still alive. The long

looked-for jubilee morning had dawned, and we were to her God's

messengers, bringing the glad tidings. It was one of the most

thrilling moments I ever experienced.

This woman had been a slave, had been sold, exposed to insult, had no

rights which a white man was bound to respect. So said the Chief

Justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney. God ordained her, in his

beneficent goodness, to be a slave. So preached Rev. Dr. Thornwell,

the great South Carolina theologian; so said the Southern

Presbyteries, by solemn resolutions. Remembering these things, I went

out from that humble dwelling with my convictions deepened that it was

God's war, and that the nation was passing through the fire in just

punishment for its crimes against humanity.

The 22d of February, Washington's birthday, was celebrated in

Charleston as never before. In the afternoon a small party of

gentlemen from the North sat down to a dinner. Among them were Colonel

Webster, Chief of General Sherman's staff, Colonel Markland of the

Post-Office Department, several officers of the army and navy, and

four journalists, all guests of a patriotic gentleman from

Philadelphia, Mr. Getty.

Our table was spread in the house of a caterer who formerly had

provided sumptuous dinners for the Charlestonians. He was a mulatto,

and well understood his art; for, notwithstanding the scarcity of

provisions in the city, he was able to provide an excellent

entertainment, set off with canned fruits, which had been put up in

England, and had run the gauntlet of the blockade.

[Illustration: "John Brown" in Charleston.]

Sentiments were offered and speeches made, which in other days would

have been called incendiary. Five years before if they had been

uttered there the speakers would have made the acquaintance of Judge

Lynch, and been treated to a gratuitous coat of tar and feathers, or

received some such chivalric attention, if they had not dangled from a

lamp-post or the nearest tree. Lloyd's Concert Band, colored

musicians, were in attendance, and "Hail Columbia," the "Star-Spangled

Banner," and "Yankee Doodle,"--songs which had not been heard for

years in that city,--were sung with enthusiasm. To stand there, with

open doors and windows, and speak freely without fear of mob

violence, was worth all the precious boon had cost,--to feel that our

words, our actions, our thoughts even, were not subject to the

misinterpretation of irresponsible inquisitors,--that we were not

under Venetian espionage, but in _free_ America, answerable to God

alone for our thoughts, and to no man for our actions, so long as they

did not infringe the rights of others.

Henceforth there shall be free speech in Charleston. A party of twenty

gentlemen began the new era on the 22d of February, and to me it will

ever be a pleasant reflection that I was one of the privileged number.

While dining we heard the sound of drums and a chorus of voices.

Looking down the broad avenue we saw a column of troops advancing with

steady step and even ranks. It was nearly sunset, and their bayonets

were gleaming in the level rays. It was General Potter's brigade, led

by the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts,--a regiment recruited from the ranks

of slavery. Sharp and shrill the notes of the fife, stirring the

drum-beat, deep and resonant the thousand voices singing their most

soul-thrilling war-song,--

"John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave."

Mingling with the chorus were cheers for Governor Andrew and Abraham

Lincoln!

They raised their caps, hung them upon their bayonets. Proud their

bearing. They came as conquerors. Some of them had walked those

streets before as slaves. Now they were freemen,--soldiers of the

Union, defenders of its flag.

Around them gathered a dusky crowd of men, women, and children,

dancing, shouting, mad with very joy. Mothers held up their little

ones to see the men in blue, to catch a sight of the starry flag, with

its crimson folds and tassels of gold.

"O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb,

Waiting for God, your hour at last has come,

And freedom's song

Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong."

Up the avenue, past the citadel, with unbroken ranks, they marched,

offering no insult, uttering no epithet, manifesting no revenge, for

all the wrongs of centuries heaped upon them by a people now humbled

and at their mercy.

While walking down the street an hour later I inquired my way of a

white woman. She was going in the same direction, and kindly

volunteered to direct me.

"How do the Yankees behave?" I asked.

"O, they behave well enough, but the niggers are dreadful sassy."

"They have not insulted you, I hope."

"O no, they haven't insulted me, but they have other folks. They don't

turn out when we meet them; they smoke cigars and go right up to a

gentleman and ask him for a light!"

The deepest humiliation to the Charlestonians was the presence of

negro soldiers. They were the provost guard of the city, with their

head-quarters in the citadel. Whoever desired protection papers or

passes, whoever had business with the marshal or the general

commanding the city, rich or poor, high-born or low-born, white or

black, man or woman, must meet a colored sentinel face to face and

obtain from a colored sergeant permission to enter the gate. They were

first in the city, and it was their privilege to guard it, their duty

to maintain law and order.

A Rebel officer who had given his parole, but who was indiscreet

enough to curse the Yankees, was quietly marched off to the

guard-house by these colored soldiers. It was galling to his pride,

and he walked with downcast eyes and subdued demeanor.

The gorgeous spectacle of the numerous war vessels in the harbor

flaming with bunting from yardarm and topmast, and thundering forth a

national salute in double honor of the day and the victory, deeply

impressed the minds of the colored population with the invincibility

of the Yankees.

"O gosh a mighty! It is no use for de Rebs to think of standing out

against de Yankees any longer. I'll go home and bring Dinah down to

see de sight!" cried an old freedman as he beheld the fleet. Bright

colors are the delight of the African race, and a grand display of any

kind has a wonderful effect on their imagination.

Neither the white nor the colored people comprehended the change

which had taken place in their fortunes. The whites forgot that they

were no longer slave-drivers. Passing down Rutledge Street one morning

I saw a crowd around the door of a building. A friend who was there in

advance of me said that he heard an outcry, looked in, and found a

white man whipping a colored woman. Her outcries brought a colored

sergeant of the Provost Guard and a squad of men, who quietly took the

woman away, told her to go where she pleased, and informed the man

that that sort of thing was "played out." Two white women were passing

at the time. "O my God! To think that we should ever come to this!"

was the exclamation of one. "Yes, madam, you have come to it, and will

have to come to a good deal more," was the reply of my friend.

There were a few Union men in the city, who through the long struggle

had been true to the old flag. They were mostly Germans. Many Union

officers escaping from prison had been kindly cared for by these

faithful friends, who had been subjected to such close surveillance

that secretiveness had become a marked trait of character.

I saw a small flag waving from a window, and wishing to find out what

sort of a Union man resided there, rang the bell. A man came to the

door, of middle age, light hair, and an honest German face.

"I saw the stars and stripes thrown out from your window, and have

called to shake hands with a Union man, for I am a Yankee."

He grasped my proffered hand and shook it till it ached.

"Come in, sir. God bless you, sir!"

Then suddenly checking himself, he lowered his voice, looked into the

adjoining rooms, peeped behind doors, to see if there were a listener

near.

"We have to be careful; spies all about us," said he, not fully

realizing that the soldiers of the Union had possession of the city.

He showed me a large flag.

"Since the fall of Sumter," said he, "my wife and I have slept on it

every night. We have had it sewed into a feather-bed."

He gazed upon it as if it were the most blessed thing in the world.

He had aided several soldiers in escaping from prison; and on one

occasion had kept two officers secreted several weeks, till an

opportunity offered to send them out to the blockading fleet.

During the bombardment of the city, the newspapers had published their

daily bulletins,--"So many shells fired. No damage." From the proud

beginning to the humiliating breaking up of the rule of Secession, the

people were cheated, deluded, and deceived by false promises and lying

reports. It was sad to walk amid the ruins of what had been once so

fair. It seemed a city of a past age and of an extinct generation. And

it was. The Charleston of former days was dead as Palmyra. Old things

had passed away; a new generation will behold a wondrous change.

"Along that dreary waste where lately rung

The festal lay which smiling virgins sung,

Where rapture echoed from the warbling lute,

And the gay dance resounded, all was mute."

[Illustration: Citizens' volunteer hospital.]

CHAPTER XXX.

THE LAST CAMPAIGN.

[Sidenote: March, 1865.]

Hastening northward, I joined the Army of the Potomac in season to be

an observer of Grant's last campaign. It was evident that the power of

the Rebellion to resist was rapidly on the wane. In the West there

were several small Rebel forces, but no large organized body. Hood's

defeat at Nashville had paralyzed operations east of the Mississippi.

Johnston was falling back before Sherman, without ability to check his

advance.

Grant had strengthened his own army. Schofield was at Wilmington,

preparing to co-operate with Sherman. Sheridan was in the Valley, at

Winchester,--his cavalry in excellent condition for a move. The

cavalry arm of the service had been growing in importance. Grant had

fostered it, and now held it in his hand, as Jove his thunderbolts.

His letter to Sheridan, written on the 20th of February, shows how

thoroughly he had prepared for the finishing work.

"As soon as it is possible to travel," he writes, "I think you will

have no difficulty about reaching Lynchburg with a cavalry force

alone. From thence you could destroy the railroad and canal in every

direction, so as to be of no further use to the Rebellion. Sufficient

cavalry should be left behind to look after Mosby's gang. From

Lynchburg, if information you might get there would justify it, you

could strike south, heading the streams in Virginia to the westward of

Danville, and push on and join Sherman. This additional raid, with one

now about starting from East Tennessee, under Stoneman, numbering four

or five thousand cavalry; one from Eastport, Mississippi, numbering

ten thousand cavalry; Canby from Mobile Bay, numbering thirty-eight

thousand mixed troops,--these three latter pushing for Tuscaloosa,

Selma, and Montgomery, and Sherman with a large army eating out the

vitals of South Carolina, is all that will be wanted to leave nothing

for the Rebellion to stand upon. I would advise you to overcome great

obstacles to accomplish this. Charleston was evacuated on Tuesday

last."

Sheridan started on the 27th of February with two divisions of

cavalry, numbering about ten thousand men, reached Staunton on the 2d

of March, fell upon Early at Waynesboro', capturing sixteen hundred

prisoners, eleven guns, seventeen battle-flags, and two hundred

wagons; occupied Charlottesville on the 3d, destroyed the railroad,

and burned the bridge on the Rivanna River. A rain-storm delaying his

trains, and obliging him to wait two days, he abandoned the attempt to

reach Sherman; then dividing his force, he sent one division towards

Lynchburg, which broke up the railroad, while the other went down

James River, cutting the canal. He intended to cross the James at New

Market, move southeast to Appomattox Court-House, strike the South

Side Railroad, tear it up, and join Grant's left flank; but a freshet

on the James prevented the accomplishment of his purpose. He therefore

sent scouts through the Rebel lines to Grant, to inform him of the

difficulties he had encountered and consequent change of plan.

"I am going to White House, and shall want supplies at that point,"

said he. The scouts left him on the 10th at Columbia, and reached

Grant on the 12th. Sheridan made a rapid march, passing quite near

Richmond on the north, and raising a midnight alarm in the Rebel

capital.

"Couriers reported that the enemy were at the outer fortifications,

and had burned Ben Green's house," writes a citizen of Richmond.

"Mr. Secretary Mallory and Postmaster-General Regan were in the

saddle, and rumor says the President and the remainder of the cabinet

had their horses saddled, in readiness for flight."[95]

[Footnote 95: Rebel War Clerk's Diary, Vol. II. p. 446.]

[Illustration: Troops destroying a railroad.]

Sheridan was not quite so near, and had no thought of attacking the

city. He passed quietly down the north bank of the Pamunkey to the

White House, where supplies were in waiting. He rested his horses a

day or two, and then moved to Petersburg.

At daylight on the morning of the 25th of March Lee made his last

offensive movement.

He conceived the idea of breaking Grant's line east of Petersburg, and

destroying his supplies at City Point. The first part he successfully

accomplished, but the last could not have been carried out. He massed

Gordon's and Bushrod Johnson's divisions in front of the Ninth Corps,

for an attack upon Fort Steadman and the batteries adjoining. The fort

was held by the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery. It was a square

redoubt, covering about one acre, and mounted nine guns, and was not

more than five hundred feet from the Rebel line. The Rebels tore away

their own abatis, and in less than a minute were inside the fort.

Almost the whole garrison was captured, and the guns turned upon the

batteries.

Colonel Tidball, commanding the artillery in the Ninth Corps, quickly

had his men at work. General Parke, commanding the Ninth, threw

Hartranft's and Wilcox's divisions in rear of Fort Steadman. They fell

like a thunderbolt upon Gordon's front line, taking eighteen hundred

prisoners, forcing the enemy out of the fort, and recapturing the

guns.

Long and loud the huzzas which went up when the guns were wheeled once

more upon the discomfited foe. President Lincoln saw the battle from

the high ground near the house of Mr. Dunn. During the forenoon Gordon

sent in a flag of truce, asking permission to bury his dead, which was

granted. The Union loss was not far from eight hundred and thirty,

mostly in prisoners, while Lee's exceeded three thousand.

General Meade ordered a general attack. He thought that there must be

a weak place in some portion of the Rebel line. The Second and Sixth

Corps succeeded in taking the intrenched picket line, and holding it.

Great efforts were made by Lee to regain it, but in vain. Nine hundred

prisoners were captured during the afternoon.

I rode to City Point in the evening, and visited Grant's

head-quarters. General Grant was well satisfied with the results of

the day.

"It will tell upon the next great battle," said he. "Lee has made a

desperate attempt and failed. The new recruits fought like veterans."

He had already issued his order for the grand movement which was to

give the finishing blow to the Rebellion. He had been impelled to this

by various causes, not the least of which was the unjust course

pursued by some of the newspapers of the West, which lauded Sherman

and his men, but sneered at the Army of the Potomac. The soldiers of

the East had accomplished nothing, they said, and the soldiers of the

West would have to finish the Rebellion. Sherman had fought his way

from Chattanooga to the sea. He was driving all before him. He would

come in on Grant's left flank and rout Lee. These taunts and inuendoes

were keenly felt by the men who had won the fields of Gettysburg,

Antietam, Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and who had lost eighty thousand

of their comrades in forty days. Grant felt it. He saw the dangerous

tendency of such jealousy. He knew what the Eastern soldiers could do;

that they had fought with unsurpassed bravery and heroism. To avoid

sectional animosity between the East and the West, he determined to

strike Lee before Sherman's arrival, and accordingly issued his order

on the 24th.

But Sherman meanwhile visited Grant in person. I was sitting in the

office of General Grant's Adjutant-General on the morning of the 28th

of March, and saw President Lincoln, with Generals Grant, Sherman,

Meade, and Sheridan, coming up the walk. Look at the men whose names

are to have a conspicuous place in the annals of America. Lincoln,

tall, round-shouldered, loose-jointed, large-featured, deep-eyed, with

a smile upon his face. He is dressed in black, and wears a fashionable

silk hat. Grant is at Lincoln's right, shorter, stouter, more compact;

wears a military hat with a stiff, broad brim, has his hands in his

pantaloons' pockets, and is puffing away at a cigar while listening to

Sherman. Sherman, tall, with high, commanding forehead, is almost as

loosely built as Lincoln; has sandy whiskers, closely cropped, and

sharp, twinkling eyes, long arms and legs, shabby coat, slouch hat,

his pants tucked into his boots. He is talking hurriedly,

gesticulating now to Lincoln, now to Grant, his eyes wandering

everywhere. Meade, also tall, with thin, sharp features, a gray

beard, and spectacles, is a little stooping in his gait. Sheridan, the

shortest of all, quick and energetic in all his movements, with a face

bronzed by sun and wind; courteous, affable, a thorough soldier. I had

not met him for many months, but he at once remembered me, and spoke

of Pittsburg Landing, where I first made his acquaintance. The plan of

the Lieutenant-General was then made known to his subordinates, and

each departed during the day, to carry into execution the respective

parts assigned them.

Grant's line was nearly forty miles long, extending from the north

side of the James to Hatcher's Run. General Ord, who had succeeded

Butler in command of the Army of the James, left Weitzel to maintain

the position north of James River, and moved with two divisions of the

Twenty-Fourth Corps under Gibbon, and one of the Twenty-Fifth under

Birney, with a division of cavalry under McKenzie, to Hatcher's Run,

arriving there on the morning of the 29th.

On the afternoon of the 28th Sheridan started with Crook's and

Merritt's divisions of cavalry for Dinwiddie Court-House, while Warren

with the Fifth Corps crossed Hatcher's Run, and marched towards the

same point.

"We have four days' rations in our haversacks, and twelve days' in our

wagons," said Colonel Batchelder, Quartermaster-in-chief of the Army

of the Potomac.

Lee discovered the movement, and during the evening of the 29th made a

diversion against the Ninth Corps. Precisely at ten o'clock there was

a signal-gun, a yell, a volley of musketry as the Rebels attacked

Parke's picket-line. Then came the roar of the cannonade. The Ninth

Corps was prepared. Through the afternoon there had been suspicious

movements along the Rebel lines, and Parke was on the watch. It was

surmised that Lee would endeavor to compel Grant to recall the Fifth

and Second Corps. Parke strengthened his picket-line, and brought up

his reserve artillery, to be ready in case of emergency. In three

minutes nearly two hundred guns and mortars were in play. The night

was dark, the wind south, and rain falling, but the battle increased

in intensity. I stood upon the hill in rear of the Ninth Corps, and

witnessed the display. Thirty shells were in the air at the same

instant. The horizon was bright with fiery arches, crossing each other

at all angles, cut horizontally by streams of fire from rifled cannon.

Beneath the arches thousands of muskets were flashing. It surpassed in

sublimity anything I had witnessed during the war. The slightly

wounded in the hospitals of the Ninth Corps who could walk went out

with me to see the fight.

"I wish I was down there with the boys," said one who the day before

had received a bullet through his right hand.

After two hours of terrific cannonade the uproar ceased, Lee having

found that Grant's lines were as strong as ever. The demonstration

cost him several hundred soldiers. I talked with one of the wounded

Rebels.

"You can't subdue us even if you take Richmond," said he; "we'll fight

it out in the mountains."

"Undoubtedly you feel like fighting it out, but you may think better

of it one of these days."

A delegate of the Christian Commission sat down to write a letter for

him to his wife, to be sent by a flag of truce.

"Tell her," said he, "that I am kindly treated."

His voice choked and tears rolled down his cheeks. A nurse stood over

him bathing his wounds to cool the fever, combing his hair, and

anticipating all his wants. I recalled the words of a citizen of

Savannah, who said, "I went to the stockade when your prisoners were

brought down from Millen, with a basket of oranges to give to the sick

and dying, but was told by the officer in command that his orders were

imperative to allow no one to give anything to the prisoners."

Observe the contrast. Here were good beds, nourishing food, delicacies

from the stores of the Christian and Sanitary Commissions, and kind

attention. There see a crowd of wretches in rags, exposed to the

winds, the rains, the broiling heat or the biting cold, eating

corn-meal and water, and meat alive with maggots,--stinted till

starved, held captive till hope died, till the mind wandered, and the

victims became drivelling imbeciles or walking skeletons, and greeted

death as a welcome release from the horrors of their prison-pen. But I

have adverted to this before; still commentary is ever provoked.

Hatcher's Run, an affluent of Rowanty Creek, has a general southeast

course. It is crossed by three main highways, which lead out of

Petersburg towards the southwest,--the Vaughn road farthest east,

Squirrel Level road next, and last the Boydtown plank-road. The

Squirrel Level road forks seven miles out, one fork running to the

Vaughn road and the other to the plank-road. It is nine miles from

Petersburg to the toll gate on the plank-road, which is situated a few

rods south of the run. The stream above this crossing of the

plank-road tends west and southwest, so that if a fisherman with his

rod and fly were to start at the head-waters of the creek he would

travel northeast, then east, then at the bridge on the plank-road

southeast, and after reaching the Vaughn road, south.

Were we to stand upon the bridge where the plank-road crosses the

stream, and look northeast, we would obtain a view of the inside of

the Rebel lines. The bridge was in Lee's possession, also the

toll-gate on the south side, also a portion of the White Oak road,

which branches from the plank road, near the toll-gate, and leads

west, midway between the run and the plank-road.

The country is densely wooded, mostly with pine, with occasional

clearings. Several steam saw-mills have been erected in this vicinity,

which cut timber for the Petersburg market. The plank-road leads to

Dinwiddie Court-House, which is fifteen miles from Petersburg. Just

beyond the Court-House is Stony Creek, which has a southeast course,

with a branch called Chamberlain's Bed, coming down from the north,

having its rise in a swamp near the head of Hatcher's Run.

Now to understand the direction of the Rebel line of fortifications,

let us in imagination start from Petersburg and walk down the

plank-road. We face southwest, and walk in rear of fort after fort

nine miles to Hatcher's Run, where a strong work has been erected on

the north bank of the stream. We cross the bridge and find another on

the south bank near the toll-house and Burgess's tavern. Here we leave

the plank-road, and turning west walk along the White Oak road with

Hatcher's Run north of us a mile distant. Four miles from the town we

come to "Five Forks," where five roads meet, midway the head of

Chamberlain's Bed and Hatcher's Run. This is an important point,--the

key of Petersburg,--which, although so far away from the town, and

apparently of no importance, is in reality the most vital point of

all. There is no stream immediately behind or before it, but a mile

south is the swamp of Chamberlain's Run; a mile north the low lands of

Hatcher's Run, but here firm, hard ground. If Grant can break through

this gateway he can tear up the rails of the South Side road, have

unobstructed passage to the Danville road, and Richmond and Petersburg

are his. It is six miles from the Forks, north, to the railroad, but

that is the best place for Lee to fight, and there he establishes a

strong line of works.

Grant's movement was that of fishermen stretching a seine. He kept one

end of the net firmly fastened to the bank of the Appomattox, while

Sheridan drew the other past Dinwiddie Court-House to Five Forks, with

the intention of reaching the railroad west of Petersburg, to enclose,

if possible, Lee's entire army. Such the plan,--noble in conception,

grand in execution.

Sheridan had started to cut the South Side road at Burkesville, but

Grant, upon deliberation, decided to strike nearer.

"I feel like ending the matter, if it is possible to do so, before

going back," wrote Grant, from Gravelly Run,--three miles west of

Hatcher's Run. "I do not want you to cut loose and go after the

enemy's roads at present. In the morning push round the enemy if you

can, and get on to his right rear."

The rain which commenced falling at midnight on the 29th continued

through the 30th and the forenoon of the 31st, but Sheridan kept in

motion, reached Dinwiddie at five o'clock on the 29th, where he

bivouacked.

On the morning of the 30th he came in contact with the Rebels a mile

beyond the Court-House, posted on the west bank of Chamberlain's Run.

W. H. F. Lee's cavalry held the right of the Rebel line, with

Pickett's division of infantry on the left. During the forenoon

Bushrod Johnson's division of infantry came down from Five Forks and

formed on Pickett's left.

Sheridan reconnoitred the position during the forenoon, and began the

attack about two P. M., but the ground was marshy, and his horses

could not be used. Johnson's and Pickett's divisions, and Wise's

brigade, which also had arrived, crossed the run about half past two.

The fight was severe. Sheridan dismounted his men, deployed them as

infantry, and contested the ground, falling back on Dinwiddie

Court-House, where the battle ended at eight o'clock in the evening.

Meade ordered McKenzie's division of cavalry to hasten to the

assistance of Sheridan, and at five o'clock directed Warren to push a

small force down the White Oak road to communicate with that officer,

and Bartlett's brigade was sent. During the night Warren's whole force

moved towards Dinwiddie to attack Pickett and Johnson in the rear, and

at daylight was ready for the assault; but the Rebels had decamped,

and were once more in position at Five Forks.

On the morning of the 1st of April, Sheridan, having command of the

Fifth Corps, as well as the cavalry, moved cautiously towards Five

Forks. The forenoon was passed in reconnoitring the position, which

was defended by the whole of Pickett's division, Wise's independent

brigade of infantry, Fitz Hugh Lee's, W. H. Lee's, and Ross's

divisions of cavalry, and Johnson's division of infantry.

Sheridan's order was to form the whole corps before advancing, so that

all the troops should move simultaneously.

[Sidenote: April, 1865.]

Following the Fifth Corps, we came to the Gravelly Run church, which

is about one and a half miles southeast of Five Forks. A quarter of a

mile northwest of the church is the house of Mr. Bass, a landmark for

the future historian, for there Sheridan's line turned a right angle.

Ayers's division of the Fifth marching past the church, wheeled on the

north side of the house and faced west. Crawford's division passed on,

and came into line north of Ayers's, while Griffin's stood in reserve

on the White Oak road, in rear of Ayers's. McKenzie's cavalry, which

had been some time on the ground, deflected to the right and held the

ground to Hatcher's Run, which here has a course due east. McKenzie,

Crawford, Ayers, and Griffin therefore faced west. Taking the other

leg of the angle, we find Stagg's division of cavalry nearest the

house of Mr. Bass, then Gibbs's and Fitzhugh's, Pennington's and

Wells's, all facing north, and on the extreme left, Coppinger's facing

northeast. Fitzhugh's division was directly south of Five Forks. This

powerful body of cavalry was all under the command of Major-General

Merritt.

The woods were dense, with here and there an opening.

"Keep the sun shining over your left shoulders," was Warren's order to

his troops. The length of his front was about one thousand yards, and

his divisions were in three lines,--numbering about twelve thousand.

While the troops were forming he drew a sketch of the enemy's position

for each division commander, and instructed them to explain it to each

brigade commander, that there might be no mistake in the movement.

The cavalry, through the afternoon, while Warren was getting into

position, kept up a skirmish fire.

Sheridan was impatient. The sun was going down and he must attack at

once or retire. He could not think of doing the latter, as it would

give Pickett and Johnson time to make their intrenchments exceedingly

strong. He ordered Merritt to make a demonstration. That officer

advanced Wells and Coppinger against Johnson's extreme right.

"I am going to strike their left flank with the Fifth Corps, and when

you hear the musketry, assault all along the line," were his

instructions to Merritt.

The Fifth advanced in excellent order, sweeping round Pickett's left

flank, and falling on his rear. For a half-hour there was a heavy

fire, but the woods being dense the loss was not very great. When the

order to charge bayonet was given, the men rushed forward, leaped over

the intrenchments, and captured Pickett's front line. Pickett formed a

new line, which he endeavored to hold against the Fifth. Warren

ordered Crawford to take them once more in flank, and sent one of

McKenzie's brigades to aid him. Ayers's and Griffin's divisions had

become disorganized by the success, but reforming they advanced along

the White Oak road, but were checked by Pickett's new line. Officers

were urging the men forward, but there was faltering. Warren,

accompanied by Captain Benvaud, rode to the front, and called upon his

officers to follow his example. Quick the response. Officers of all

ranks, from generals to subalterns and the color-bearers, sprang

forward. In an instant the line rallied, and with fixed bayonets

leaped upon the enemy and captured the whole force opposing them.

Warren's horse fell, fatally shot, and an orderly by his side was

killed, within a few paces of the intrenchment. When Merritt heard the

roll of musketry he ordered the attack. His cavalrymen rode fearlessly

through the woods, dashed up to the intrenchments, leaped over them

and carried the entire line along his front in the first grand charge.

"The enemy," says Sheridan, "were driven from their strong line of

works, completely routed; the Fifth Corps doubling up their left flank

in confusion, and the cavalry of General Merritt dashing on to the

White Oak road, capturing their artillery, turning it upon them, and

riding into their broken ranks, so demoralized them that they made no

serious stand after their line was carried, but took flight in

disorder."[96]

[Footnote 96: Sheridan's Report.]

It was now nearly dark, but Merritt and McKenzie followed the enemy,

who threw away their guns and knapsacks, and sought safety in flight,

or finding themselves hard pressed, surrendered.

Between five and six thousand prisoners and eighteen pieces of

artillery were captured. The way was open to the South Side Railroad.

Grant determined to turn the success to quick account. "Attack along

the whole line," was his message to the corps commanders.

At ten o'clock Saturday evening the cannonade began. All the batteries

joined, all the forts, the gunboats in the Appomattox, the batteries

west of Bermuda Hundred, and the monitors by the Howlet House. There

was a continual succession of flashes and an unbroken roll of thunder.

The Rebels had no peace during the night.

"Send up the provost brigade," was Grant's despatch sent to City

Point. The Sixty-First Massachusetts, One Hundred and Fourteenth New

York, and other regiments, and Sheridan's dismounted cavalry, were out

at daybreak and on the march.

"Send up the marines to guard the prisoners," was his second despatch,

and the blue-jackets from the gunboats, with carbines, were sent

ashore. The time had come for the mustering of every available man.

The sailors took cars at City Point, and sang all the way to Hatcher's

Run, as if they were having a lark.

Lee was in trouble. He sent a message to Longstreet, who was north of

the James, to hurry to Petersburg. Longstreet put Ewell in command and

hastened across the James, with Fields's division. Lee had three

bridges, besides those in Richmond,--one at Warwick's, another at

Knight's farm, and the third at Chaffin's Bluff. Longstreet, Lee's

ablest general, stout, robust, with heavy black whiskers, with his

staff, galloped across the middle bridge toward Petersburg, leaving

his troops to follow.

The Richmond bells were ringing, not the paean of victory, as after

some of their successful battles, but for the assembling of the

militia to man the fortifications from which Longstreet's troops were

retiring.

"The beat of the alarming drum

Roused up the soldier ere the morning star,

While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,

Or whispering, with white lips, 'The foe! They come! they come!'"

Let us look at Lee's lines at midnight, Saturday, April 1st. Johnson,

Pickett, Wise, and W. H. F. Lee's cavalry are fleeing towards the

Appomattox, beyond Hatcher's Run; A. P. Hill is holding the line east

of the Run; Gordon occupies the fortifications from the Jerusalem road

to the Appomattox; Longstreet is hastening down from Richmond; Ewell

is north of the James, and the citizens of Richmond are jumping from

their beds to shoulder muskets for service in the trenches. Lee has

not yet decided to evacuate Petersburg. He will wait and see what a

day may bring forth.

He had not long to wait. Parke, commanding the Ninth Corps, during the

night, prepared to assault. It was precisely four o'clock when the

divisions leaped from their intrenchments, and with bayonets fixed,

without firing a gun, tore away the abatis in front of the forts,

swarmed over the embankments, crawled into the embrasures, and climbed

the parapet. It was the work of five minutes only, but four forts,

mounting between twenty and thirty guns, were taken, with seven

hundred prisoners.

Grant began early on Sunday morning to draw the farther end of the net

toward Petersburg. Sheridan, with the cavalry and two divisions of the

Fifth, moved upon Sutherland's Station on the South Side Railroad,

eleven miles from Petersburg. Grant sent him Miles's division of the

Second Corps. Wright and Ord, east of the run, at nine o'clock

assaulted the works in their front, and after a severe struggle

carried them, capturing all the guns and several thousand prisoners.

Humphrey, who was west of the run, now was able to leave his position

and join Wright and Ord. By noon we see the net drawn close. Sheridan

at Sutherland's, with the Fifth Corps, then Humphrey, Ord, and Wright;

all swinging towards the city, taking fort after fort and contracting

the lines.

In the morning I watched the movements on the left, but as the line

advanced, hastened east in season to see the last attack on Forts

Mahone and Gregg, the two Rebel strongholds south of the town. These

forts were in rear of the main Rebel line, on higher ground.

The troops, in columns of brigades, moved steadily over the field,

drove in the Rebel pickets, received the fire of the batteries without

breaking, leaped over the breastworks with a huzza, which rang shrill

and clear above the cannonade. Mahone was an embrasured battery of

three guns; Gregg, a strong fort with sally-ports, embrasures for six

guns, and surrounded by a deep ditch. Mahone was carried with a rush,

the men mounting the escarpment and jumping into it, regardless of the

fire poured upon them by the Rebels.

There was a long struggle for the possession of Gregg. Heth and Wilcox

were there, animating the garrison. The attacking columns moved in

excellent order over the field swept by the guns of the fort, and even

received the canister without staggering. The fort was enveloped in

smoke, showing that the defence was heroic, as well as the assault.

The lines move on. The soldiers spring into the ditch and climb the

embankment. The foremost, as they reach the top, roll back upon their

comrades. They are lost from sight in smoke and flame; but from the

cloud there comes a hurrah, and the old flag waves in the sunlight

above the stronghold which, through all the weary months, has

thundered defiance.

Lee's line was broken at the centre, and Petersburg was no longer

tenable.

It was inspiriting to stand there, and watch the tide of victory

rolling up the hill. With that Sunday's sun the hopes of the Rebels

set, never to rise again. The C. S. A.,--the Confederate Slave

Argosy,--freighted with blood and groans and tears, the death's-head

and cross-bones at her masthead, hailed as a rightful belligerent,

furnished with guns, ammunition, and all needful supplies by

sympathetic England and France, was a shattered, helpless wreck.

[Illustration: Fire ambulance.]

CHAPTER XXXI.

RICHMOND.

[Sidenote: April, 1865.]

There was no longer the semblance of a Confederacy. Jeff Davis and

Breckenridge were fugitives, without country or home. The Rebel army

was flying. Richmond was in flames. The Rebellion had gone down in a

night,--in darkness as it originated, and as it ought to die.

At three o'clock, Monday morning, an explosion took place which shook

Richmond to its foundations, and made even the beds in the hospital at

City Point heave as if by an earthquake. It was occasioned by the

blowing up of the Rebel ironclads. Semmes was again without a command,

for the Rebel navy was no more. If not swept from the ocean by Union

cruisers, as the Alabama was by the Kearsarge, it was crushed by the

ponderous blows of Grant and his victorious legions, as the result of

his successes in the field. The shock roused the army from slumber.

The hosts surrounding Petersburg needed no other reveille. The

soldiers were on their feet in an instant, and General Wilcox

(commanding the first division of the Ninth Corps) accepted it as a

signal to advance. He was lying east of the city, his right resting on

the Appomattox. His men sprang forward, but found only deserted works.

The last body of Rebels--the lingerers who were remaining to plunder

the people of Petersburg--took to their heels, and the division

entered the town without opposition.

The entire army was in motion. Engineers hurried up with pontoons,

strung them across the Appomattox, and Grant began the pursuit. I

entered the town soon after sunrise, and found troops pouring in from

all quarters, cheering, swinging their caps, helping themselves to

tobacco, rushing upon the double-quick, eager to overtake Lee.

The colored population thronged the streets, swinging their old hats,

bowing low, and shouting "Glory!" "Bless de Lord!" "I's been a praying

for dis yere to happen, but didn't 'spect it quite so soon." "It is

ges like a clap of thunder," said an old negro.

"I's glad to see you. I'm been trying and wishing and praying dat de

Lord would help me get to de Yankees, and now dey has come into dis

yere city," said another. The citizens of the place, also, were in the

streets, amazed and confounded at what had happened. Provost General

Macy, of Massachusetts, established a guard to prevent depredations

and to save the army from demoralization. The Rebels, before

retreating, destroyed their commissary stores and set all the tobacco

warehouses on fire. I took a hurried survey of the Rebel works in

front of Fort Steadman, and found them very strong. The ground was

honeycombed by the shells which had been thrown from the mortars of

the Ninth Corps.

General Grant was early in the town, cool, calm, and evidently well

pleased with the aspect of affairs; and President Lincoln, who was at

City Point, visited Petersburg during the day. He went up in a special

car. The soldiers at Meade Station caught a sight of him, and cheered

most heartily. He acknowledged the enthusiasm and devotion of the

soldiers by bowing and thanking them for the glorious achievement of

their arms. On Friday he looked care-worn, but the great victory had

smoothed the deep wrinkles on his brow.

Reaching City Point at noon, I was soon in the saddle, galloping

towards Richmond; crossing the Appomattox at Broadway, riding to

Varina, crossing the James on the pontoons, and approaching the city

by the New Market road, overtaking a division of the Twenty-Fifth

Corps on the outskirts of the city. It was a hard, exhausting ride.

Two miles out from the city my horse fell, and I found myself turning

a summersault into the ditch; without broken bones, however, but I was

obliged to moderate my speed for the remainder of the distance.

Before entering upon the narrative of my own observations, let us take

a look at events transpiring in the city on Sunday.

"We are," said the _Sentinel_ of Saturday evening, "very hopeful of

the campaign which is opening, and trust that we are to reap a large

advantage from the operations evidently near at hand.... We have only

to resolve that we never will surrender, and it will be impossible

that we shall ever be taken."

"My line is broken in three places, and Richmond must be evacuated,"

was Lee's despatch to Jeff Davis. The messenger found him in Rev. Dr.

Minnegerode's church. He read the despatch, hurried to the Executive

Mansion, passed up the winding stairway to his business apartment, sat

down by a small table, wrote an order for the removal of the coin in

the banks to Danville, for the burning of the public documents, and

for the evacuation of the city. Mrs. Davis had left the city several

days previous.

Rev. Dr. Minnegerode, before closing the forenoon service, gave notice

that General Ewell desired the local forces to assemble at 3 P. M.

There was no evening service. Ministers and congregations were

otherwise employed. Rev. Mr. Hoge, a fierce advocate for slavery as a

beneficent institution, packed his carpet-bag. Rev. Mr. Duncan was

moved to do likewise. Mr. Lumpkin, who for many years had kept a

slave-trader's jail, had a work of necessity on this Lord's day,--the

temporal salvation of fifty men, women, and children! He made up his

coffle in the jail-yard, within pistol-shot of Jeff Davis's parlor

window, and a stone's throw from the Monumental Church. The poor

creatures were hurried to the Danville depot. This sad and weeping

fifty, in handcuffs and chains, was the last slave coffle that shall

tread the soil of America.

Slavery being the corner-stone of the Confederacy, it was fitting that

this gang, keeping step to the music of their clanking chains, should

accompany Jeff Davis, his secretaries Benjamin and Trenholm, and the

Reverend Messrs. Hoge and Duncan, in their flight. The whole Rebel

government was on the move, and all Richmond desired to be. No

thoughts now of taking Washington, or of the flag of the Confederacy

flaunting in the breeze from the dome of the national Capitol!

Hundreds of officials were at the depot, waiting to get away from the

doomed city. Public documents, the archives of the Confederacy, were

hastily gathered up, tumbled into boxes and barrels, and taken to the

trains, or carried into the streets and set on fire. Coaches,

carriages, wagons, carts, wheelbarrows, everything in the shape of a

vehicle, was pressed into use. There was a jumble of boxes, chests,

trunks, valises, carpet-bags,--a crowd of excited men sweating as

never before: women with dishevelled hair, unmindful of their

wardrobes, wringing their hands, children crying in the crowd,

sentinels guarding each entrance to the train, pushing back at the

point of the bayonet the panic-stricken multitude, giving precedence

to Davis and the high officials, and informing Mr. Lumpkin that his

niggers could not be taken. O, what a loss was there! It would have

been fifty thousand dollars out of somebody's pocket in 1861, and

millions now of Confederate promises to pay, which the hurrying

multitude and that chained slave gang were treading under

foot,--trampling the bonds of the Confederate States of America in the

mire, as they marched to the station; for the oozy streets were as

thickly strewn with four per cents, six per cents, eight per cents, as

forest streams with autumn leaves.

"The faith of the Confederate States is pledged to provide and

establish sufficient revenues for the regular payment of the interest,

and for the redemption of the principal," read the bonds; but there

was a sudden eclipse of faith, a collapse of confidence, a shrivelling

up like a parched scroll of the entire Confederacy, which was a base

counterfeit of the American Union it sought to overturn and supplant,

now an exploded concern, and wound up by Grant's orders, its bonds,

notes, and certificates of indebtedness worth less than the paper on

which they were printed.

The Boys of '61 or, Four Years of Fighting, Personal Observations with the Army and Navy · 第 42 / 43 章

When assembled in Hibernia Hall, in Charleston, since called Secession