the door of an old mill while the command was slowly crossing the
antiquated bridge over the Tallahatchie, when I was awakened by
Grierson's riding up in great alarm, calling upon me "for God's sake"
to use the ford as well as the bridge, for Hepburn was being cut to
pieces in the rear, and I must give him the full road for his retreat.
I had always been a respectful subordinate, but none of us were then
in the best temper; I did not believe a word of it, and I frankly
told him so. Even old Max pricked up his ears and snorted as if in
derision. Almost as we were talking, there came an aid from Hepburn
saying that he had found a good supply of forage and would be glad to
go into camp for the night. But there was no camp to be thought of for
that tired crew; the bogey of incessant pursuit loomed up portentously
close upon our rear-guard, and sent its shadow deep into the bowels
of our commander, who was miles away in the advance, and who would
allow us only the fewest possible hours in the very dead of night for
hasty cooking and scant repose. We were a worn and weary lot as we
finally went into camp at the rear of the town; worn and weary, sadly
demoralized, and almost dismounted. I had lost fifteen hundred good
horses, and my men, who had been eager and ready for a successful
campaign, were broken in spirit and sadly weakened in discipline.
All who had been compelled to bear the brunt of the hard work now
needed for themselves and their horses absolute rest for days; but
being called into the city the morning after our arrival, my eyes were
greeted with the spectacle of General Sooy Smith, no longer ill, and
with no trace of shame or annoyance on his face. He had shed his modest
and prudent attire, and shone out with all the brass radiance of a
full-fledged major-general. From this time until the Fourth Missouri
cavalry was mustered out of service, our headquarters were in the
immediate neighborhood of Memphis, and our life was much more active
than it had been at Union City.
Not very much is to be said for Max during this time, except in
connection with the Sturgis expedition, beyond the fact that we lay
long in the immediate vicinity of the race-course, which we repaired
and used faithfully, and, so far as he was concerned, with eminent
success. The more frequent necessity for duty, the great labor of
remounting, reorganizing, and redrilling the command, united with
the greater publicity of our position to lay some restraint on our
mode of life, and to make our conduct more circumspect. Still we
were not miserable, and the neighborhood of a large town has, to a
well-regulated headquarters' mess, its compensations as well as its
drawbacks.
Sturgis's expedition to Guntown and back--especially back--has passed
into history, and its unwritten memories will always remain with those
who took part in it.
Guntown is far away in Northeastern Mississippi. It is not laid down on
the map of the country, but it lies just across the Tishamingo Creek,
and it consists mainly of two plantation houses and a school-house.
Our stay there was not long, and we were too much occupied to study
the locality minutely, but it is my impression that the most important
incident in its history was connected with our visit.
We were a force of about nine thousand infantry, cavalry, and
artillery,--some black and some white, some good and some bad,--sent
out by Sherman as a tub to the Forrest whale; a diversion to keep this
commander from joining Hood in Northern Georgia; though I doubt if
even General Sherman in his moments of wildest enthusiasm anticipated
just the issue that followed. Our march out was not rapid, and it was
well ordered. We were allowed to take our train, and old John Ellard's
four stupendous mules drew our headquarters' wagon, well laden with
the comforts we had accumulated during a long service, including a
brand-new, well-furnished, and abundantly stored camp-chest that had
just arrived from St. Louis. So far as the comforts of a home for five
youngsters can be stored in one mule-wagon, we were well supplied for
a campaign of any length; and judging from the mess-tables to which we
were invited, others of the command were no less well provided. In due
time we reached the town of Ripley, a rather pretty New-England-looking
village, but, like all Southern towns at that time, entirely devoid of
men and overflowing with women of the most venomous and spiteful sort,
who did all in their power to add to the interest of the Sunday evening
we passed in their company.
We had some light skirmishing on our arrival, but whoever it was that
attacked us withdrew and left us in undisturbed possession of the
comfortable rooms and fireplaces of the town. Our next day's march
brought us to a large open plantation on a commanding hill, whence our
evening scouting-parties soon found the enemy posted in some force and
apparently disposed for an engagement.
It seemed always Forrest's plan to select his own fighting-ground, and
the plan of our commanders to gratify him. Sturgis committed the usual
folly of trying to hold every inch he had gained, and of forming his
line of battle on the head of the column and under fire.
We breakfasted at three in the morning, and marched at half past
four. My command had the advance. The enemy allowed himself to be
easily driven until half past eight, when he made some show of
resistance. At this time the last of our regiments could hardly have
left the camping-ground, and probably a judicious retreat would have
drawn Forrest's whole force back to the open country we had left.
But "retreat" was not yet written on our banners (of that day), and
orders came from our general to support the advance-guard, form line
of battle, and hold our position. So far as the cavalry brigade was
concerned this was easily done, and we got into good line near the
edge of a wood without difficulty. Here, for four mortal hours, or
until half past twelve, we carried on a tolerably equal warfare, both
sides blazing away at each other with little effect across the six
hundred yards of cleared valley that lay between two skirts of wood.
So far as the endurance of our troops was concerned, this engagement
could have been kept up until nightfall, though our ranks were slowly
thinning. Several desperate charges were made on our position, and were
repulsed with considerable loss to both sides. Pending the arrival
of the infantry it would have been folly for us to attempt a further
advance, but had we been properly supported, or, better, had we at once
fallen back upon our support, we might have given, as the _post bellum_
reports of Forrest's officers show, a better ending to the day's work.
It was only at half past twelve, when our ammunition was reduced to
five rounds per man, and when our battery had fired its last shot, that
the infantry began to arrive, and then they came a regiment at a time,
or only so fast as the Forrest mill could grind them up in detail.
They had taken our place, and we had withdrawn to their rear, where
we were joined by one after another of the defeated or exhausted
infantry regiments. Little by little the enemy pressed upon us,
gaining rod after rod of our position, until finally our last arriving
troops, a splendid colored regiment, reached the field of battle at
double-quick, breathless and beaten by their own speed, barely in time
to check the assault until we could cross the creek and move toward
the rear. The retreat was but fairly begun when we came upon our train
of two hundred wagons piled pell-mell in a small field and blocked in
beyond the possibility of removal. With sad eyes we saw John Ellard
cut his traces and leave all that was dear to us--tents, camp-chest,
poker-table, and all that we cherished--to inevitable capture. The
train was _our_ tub to the whale; and while Forrest's men were sacking
our treasures, and refilling the caissons of all our batteries, which
they had captured, we had time to form for the retreat, more or less
orderly according as we had come early or late off the field. The
demoralizing roar of our own guns, and the howling over our heads of
our own shells, together with the sharp rattle of musketry in our rear,
hastened and saddened the ignominious flight of the head of our column,
though, for some reason, the enemy's advance upon us was slow.
All that long night we marched on, without food and without rest. At
early dawn we reached Ripley, where we paused for breath. Max had been
ridden almost uninterruptedly for twenty-four hours, and for four hours
had done the constant hard work that the supervision of a long line in
active engagement had made necessary; and he was glad to be unsaddled
and turned for fifteen minutes into a scantily grown paddock, where he
rolled and nibbled and refreshed himself as much as ordinary horses do
with a whole night's rest. The ambulances with our groaning wounded
men came pouring into the village, and to our surprise, those women,
who had so recently given only evidence of a horrified hatred, pressed
round to offer every aid that lay in their power, and to comfort our
suffering men as only kind-hearted women can.
With the increasing daylight the pursuit was reopened with vigor, and
on we went, and ever on, marching all that day, our rear-guard being
constantly engaged, and hundreds of our men being captured, thousands
more scattering into the woods. My lieutenant-colonel, Von Helmrich,
who had been for twenty-eight years a cavalry officer in Germany, and
who, after thirteen months in Libby Prison, had overtaken us as we were
leaving Memphis, was recaptured and carried back to Richmond,--to die
of a good dinner on his second release, ten months later. At nightfall,
the pursuit growing weak, we halted to collect together our stragglers,
but not to rest, and after a short half-hour pushed on again; and all
that interminable night, and until half past ten the next morning,
when we reached Colliersville and the railroad, reinforcements, and
supplies, we marched, marched, marched, without rest, without sleep,
and without food. The cavalrymen were mainly dismounted and driving
their tired jades before them, only Max and a few others carrying their
riders to the very end, and coming in with a whinny of content to the
familiar stables and back-yards of the little town.
Most other officers whose service had been as constant as mine had had
extra horses to ride for relief; but I had never yet found march too
long for Max's wiry sinews, and trusted to him alone. He had now been
ridden almost absolutely without intermission, and much of the time
at a gallop or a rapid trot, for fifty-four hours. I had had for my
own support the excitement and then the anxious despair of responsible
service, and Ike had filled his haversack with hard-bread from John
Ellard's abandoned wagon; an occasional nibble at this, and unlimited
pipes of tobacco, had fortified me in my endurance of the work; but Max
had had in the whole time not the half of what he would have made light
of for a single meal. I have known and have written about brilliant
feats of other horses, but as I look over the whole range of all the
best animals I have seen, I bow with respect to the wonderful courage,
endurance, and fidelity of this superbly useful brute.
There is an elasticity in youth and health, trained and hardened by
years of active field-service, which asserts itself under the most
depressing circumstances. Even this shameful and horrible defeat and
flight had their ludicrous incidents, which we were permitted to
appreciate. Thus, for instance, during a lull in the engagement at
Guntown, I had seated myself in a rush-bottomed chair under the lee of
a broad tree-trunk; a prudent pig, suspecting danger, had taken shelter
between the legs of the chair, leaving, however, his rear unprotected.
Random bullets have an odd way of finding weak places, and it was due
to one of these that I was unseated, with an accompaniment of squeal,
by the rapid and articulate flight of my companion.
During our last night's march, my brigade having the advance, and I
being at its rear, Grierson ordered me to prevent the pushing ahead
of the stragglers of the other brigades, who were to be recognized,
he reminded me, by their wearing hats (mine wore caps). The order
was peremptory, and was to be enforced even at the cost of cutting
the offenders down. Grierson's adjutant was at my side; we were all
sleeping more or less of the time, but constantly some hatted straggler
was detected pushing toward the front, and ordered back,--the adjutant
being especially sharp-eyed in detecting the mutilated sugar-loaves
through the gloom. Finally, close to my right and pushing slowly to
the front, in a long-strided walk, came a gray horse with a hatted
rider,--an india-rubber poncho covering his uniform. I ordered
him back; the adjutant, eager for the enforcement of the order,
remonstrated at the man's disobedience; I ordered again, but without
result; the adjutant ejaculated, "Damn him, cut him down!" I drew my
sabre and laid its flat in one long, stinging welt across that black
poncho: "----! who are you hitting?" Then we both remembered that
Grierson too wore a hat; and I tender him here my public acknowledgment
of a good-nature so great that an evening reunion in Memphis over a
dozen of wine won his generous silence.
One might go on with interminable gossip over incidents of camp and
field for which at this late day only scant interest is felt; but
nothing that I could say more would probably aid my purpose, which has
been simply by a trifling sketch to recall the jollity, the comfort,
the suffering, and the misery of campaign life, and to show how in the
field more than anywhere else one learns to cherish and to depend upon
a faithful and honest and willing comrade like my royal old Max.
HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT.
(CIRCUMSTANTIALLY TRUE.)
The war was not quite over, but my regiment was old enough to have
grown too small for a colonel, and I sat, the dismalest of all men,
a "mustered-out" officer, sated with such good things as a suddenly
arrested income had allowed me, over an after-dinner table in a little
room at the Athenæum Club. My coffee was gone to its dregs; the closing
day was shutting down gloomily in such a weary rain as only a New York
back-yard ever knows; and I was wondering what was to become of a man
whom four years of cavalry service had estranged from every good and
useful thing in life. The only career that then seemed worth running
was run out for me; and, worst of all, my pay had been finally stopped.
The world was before me for a choice, but I had no choice. The only
thing I could do was to command mounted troops, and commanders of
mounted troops were not in demand. Ages ago I had known how to do other
things, but the knowledge had gone from me, and was not to be recalled
so long as I had enough money left with which to be unhappy in idle
foreboding. I had not laid down my life in the war, but during its
wonderful four years I had laid down, so completely, the ways of life
of a sober and industrious citizen, and had soaked my whole nature so
full of the subtile ether of idleness and vagabondism, that it seemed
as easy and as natural to become the Aladdin I might have dreamed
myself to be as the delver I had really been. With a heavy heart, then,
and a full stomach, I sat in a half-disconsolate, half-reminiscent,
not wholly unhappy mood, relapsing with post-prandial ease into that
befogged intellectual condition in which even the drizzle against the
window-panes can confuse itself with the patter on a tent roof; and
the charm of the old wanderings came over me again, filling my table
with the old comrades, even elevating my cigar to a brier-wood, and
recalling such fellowship as only tent-life ever knows.
Such dreaming is always interrupted, else it would never end; mine was
disturbed by a small card on a small salver, held meekly across the
table by the meekest of waiters.
The card bore the name "Adolf zu Dohna-Schlodien," and a count's
coronet,--a count's coronet and "zu" (a touch above "von")! I
remembered to have seen a letter from my adjutant to the Prussian
Consul in Philadelphia, asking him to obtain information about a
handsome young musical "Graf zu" something, who was creating a
sensation in St. Louis society, and the "zu" seemed to indicate this as
the party in question; he had spoken of him as having defective front
teeth, which seemed to be pointing to the "color and distinguishing
marks," known in Herd Book pedigrees, and human passports,--a means of
identification I resolved to make use of; for my experience with the
German nobility in America had been rather wide than remunerative.
The "Herr zu" had waited in the hall, and was standing under the full
light of the lamp. He was very tall, very slight, and very young,
apparently not more than twenty, modestly dressed, and quiet in his
manner. He was not strikingly handsome, though very well looking. His
hands were the most perfect I ever saw, and the ungloved one showed
careful attention. There was no defect noticeable in his front teeth.
He bowed slightly and handed me a letter. It was from Voisin, my former
adjutant, but it was not exactly a letter of introduction. At least,
it was less cordial than Voisin's letters of introduction were wont to
be. Yet it was kind. Without commending the Count as a bosom friend, he
still said he was much interested in him, had reason to believe in him,
was sorry for him, had given him material aid, and was very desirous
that he should pull through some pecuniary troubles, which he could do
only by enlisting in the Regular Army, and receiving his bounty. From
this he would give me money to release his baggage, which was valuable,
from some inconveniences that were then attending it in St. Louis.
Would I get him enlisted? He said he would enlist, and would prefer to
be known under the name Adolph Danforth. The gentleman himself took
early occasion to express this preference.
I debated a little what to do. He was not introduced as a friend, only
as a person in need of help; yet Voisin believed in him, and he had
asked a service that he would not have asked for an unworthy man. I
engaged him in conversation and got him to smile. It was a very frank
smile, but it displayed a singular defect far up on the front teeth.
This decided me. He was the same Graf zu whose position had been asked
of the Prussian Consul, and I knew he had learned that the Graf zu
Dohna-Schlodien, an officer in the Gardecorps Kürassier, was of the
highest nobility and of a family of great wealth. There was evidently
no technical reason why the poor fellow should not be received
cordially and well treated. So we went back to the smoking-room, and
with fresh coffee and cigars opened an acquaintance which resulted not
altogether uneventfully.
He was not obtrusive. His story was not forced upon me; but as I
already had its thread, I was able to draw it from him in a natural
way, and he told it very frankly, though halting a little at its more
important turnings, as if wondering how its development would strike
me. There was just enough of hesitancy over a harrowing tale to throw
on myself the responsibility of learning it.
He had been brought up by the tenderest of mothers at the castle of
Schlodien (I think in Silesia), had early joined the Cuirassiers of the
Body Guard, had fought a fatal duel in which he had been the aggressor,
and had been condemned to the Fortress of Spandau. Only his mother's
great influence (exercised without the knowledge of his stern and much
older father, who was then on his distant estates) had secured for him
an opportunity to escape. He had come directly to America, and had
remained near Boston until he received intimation (again the result
of his mother's influence with Baron Gerolt, the Prussian Minister at
Washington) that his return under the Extradition Treaty was being
urged at the solicitation of the family of his fallen antagonist. He
had then taken refuge in a remote town in South Missouri, where he
amused himself with shooting. His mother had written to him but once,
and had not been able to send him money. He had at last returned to
St. Louis, where he had contracted some small debts which Voisin and
another kind friend had assumed. To reimburse them and to gain more
perfect seclusion, he had resolved to enlist in the Regular Army. It
was a sad conclusion of his career, but as an honorable man (and a
pursued one) he had no choice but to accept it.
It was the old story,--_noblesse oblige_. There was but one way out
of a sad affair, and--like a very Graf zu--this stripling, who had been
born and bred to a better fate, faced the penalty of his misfortune
without flinching. I tried infinite suggestions, but nothing else
offered the immediate money which alone could relieve him of debt and
restore him his wardrobe and the portraits of his mother and sister,
which with a few well-worn letters, were all he had to cheer him in his
exile. We sat till far into the night and until my kindest sympathies
were fully aroused by the utter and almost childlike simplicity and
frankness with which the poor boy told of his sorrows. I had been
taught by a very ample experience to look with much caution on German
counts and barons,--an experience that, if it was worth what it had
cost, I could not prize too highly; but here was an entirely new type,
a combination of the gentlest breeding with an unsophistication that
argued more of a mother's care than of garrison influences, and an
utter absence of the devil-may-care manner that army life in Germany
had hitherto seemed to give. With the improvidence of one who had
never known the lack of money, he had lodged himself at the Everett
House; and as I left him at its door, I resolved to lose no time in
getting him enlisted and stopping an expense that would only add to
his troubles. The next day I saw the official who had charge of the
making up of the city's quota, and easily arranged for the examination
of my candidate. Dohna begged me to secure his admission to a command
whose officers would be able to appreciate his difficult position, and
a weary time I had of it. At last it was all arranged; he had passed,
with much shock to his sensibilities, the surgeon's examination, and
had been enrolled in a company of Regular Infantry, whose captain
(then serving on the general staff of the department) had acquired a
sympathy for him not less than my own. His bounty (over seven hundred
dollars) he put into my hands, and he went with me to Adams's Express
office, where we sent more than half the sum to St. Louis,--the full
amount of his indebtedness. One specified trunk was to be sent to the
Everett House, and the rest of his luggage--which Voisin had described
as valuable--to me. I received by an early mail the receipt of the St.
Louis express-office for it, and found it most convenient to let it lie
for the present, addressed to me personally, at the office in New York.
It would be useless to Dohna in the army, and I was to take care of it
for him.
The captain of the company in which he was enlisted secured him a
furlough for ten days, and, to show his gratitude, he invited us both
to dine with him at the Everett. We sat down at seven, and we sat long.
The best that either cellar or kitchen afforded was spread before us in
wasteful profusion, and our host, temperate in his sipping, but eating
with the appetite of youth, seemed only to regret the limit of our
capacity. As we walked across the square, filled and with the kindest
emotions, we planned means for so occupying the remaining days of the
furlough as to allow but little opportunity for money-spending. His
company was at Fort Trumbull, and after he joined he would be safe.