Buckingham Ferry. Wait with the pickets there till the fleet comes
within sight. Then send a man to Bluffton to announce the fact. Stay
yourself till the fleet has passed, observing which creek it takes.
As soon as you satisfy yourself on that point, ride to Bluffton and
report.”
Then turning to the other, I said: “You go to Hunting Island and do the
same thing. Tell the sergeants there to follow their standing orders
in all other regards. Be quick, now, both of you. I’ll expect you at
Bluffton at the right time.”
As the men galloped away, I walked to the place where the sergeant was
still standing, and said: “Sergeant, you and I will stay here till the
fleet leaves. Then we’ll ride straight to Bluffton on a full run and
give the alarm in time.”
“It’s already leaving,” he replied. “And look! it’s steaming straight
up the creek.”
Looking, I saw that it was as he said. The two gun-boats abreast led
the column, the three transports following.
“It’s time for us to be riding, then,” I said, hastily springing into
my saddle. “But we can beat them by two hours, as the creek is crooked
and they must sound all the way for want of buoys.”
We galloped across the island; but when we came to the little creek we
found an unexpected obstacle in our way. The tide had risen well-nigh
to the flood, and was exceedingly high in consequence of a strong
wind that had been blowing on shore all day. The strip of marsh which
separated the island from the mainland was completely covered with
water, and even the causeway leading across it was submerged. The two
men sent to alarm the pickets had reached the place only a little while
earlier than we. We found them hunting for some landmark or other by
which to find out where the causeway lay.
The sergeant thought he knew its locality and direction. He boldly
plunged in. The rest of us followed.
Just what we did, or where we went, or how it all happened, none of
us ever knew. But we rode off the submerged track, about midway the
stream, and found ourselves floundering in the water, some of us on
our horses, and some of us under them. It was the darkest night I ever
knew. Once in the water we could see no shore anywhere. Naturally, each
took the direction in which he thought the desired bank lay. And it
seemed that no two of us agreed in our views on this point except by
accident.
My horse swam pretty well and finally made the edge of the water. But
the bottom was a quagmire, and sinking in it he could not extricate
himself. To relieve him I slipped off his back and into the water, but
it proved too late. With every frantic struggle the poor beast sank
deeper, and within a minute he lay lifeless in the water, half buried
in the mud of the bottom.
My own situation was a perilous one. My feet sank at once in the slimy
ooze. To save myself I threw my body forwards. Succeeding in freeing my
feet, I swam until the water was too shallow for swimming. After that,
by crawling on my belly, I managed to avoid sinking and smothering in
the mud.
It was half an hour, however, before I stood upon firm ground again,
and then I did not know which side of the marsh I had reached.
I was covered with slime, stiff with cold, and utterly exhausted by
my exertions. Of myself, however, I thought little. I was anxious
only about the sleeping battery at Bluffton. If the alarm were not
given,--and unless some one or other of our party had succeeded in
getting across with his horse, it could not be,--Bluffton would be
taken completely by surprise. The battery would be captured. A rapid
march would take the enemy to the railroad, either at Grahamville or at
Hardeeville, before any force could be sent to oppose. Our defence of
an essential line of communication would fail. Even if the two men from
the picket post had got out on the other side, they would go not to
Bluffton, but to Buckingham Ferry and Hunting Island, as I had ordered.
It was not at all certain that the fleet would pass either of those
points. It could sail up other creeks quite as easily, particularly on
such a tide as that.
With these thoughts in my mind I felt the need of bestirring myself. I
was not long in discovering that we were still on the island, and not
on the mainland. Following the margin of the water, I presently came
to the two men who had been with the sergeant on picket. One of them
was stuck in the mud, and the other was trying to draw him out with a
pole. Both of them had lost their horses. The sergeant and my guide had
escaped with their steeds, and I found both of them on the island, a
little further up the shore.
The guide was utterly demoralized with fright, or cold, or both. So I
took his horse and ordered him to wait on the island till morning, and
then to make his way to whatever point he should find it easiest to
reach. The sergeant and I determined to make another effort to get to
Bluffton and give the alarm.
“Run back to the other side of the island,” said he to one of his men,
“and see if the fleet is still in sight and what it is doing. We must
let our horses blow a little, and you can get back by the time we are
ready to start.”
The man went, and his comrade, having nothing better to do, went with
him. Presently one of them returned, bringing the news that the fleet
was making its way up a narrow creek from which, as we knew, neither
the Buckingham Ferry nor the Hunting Island picket could see it. As
those were the only posts from which after seeing it a man could get
to Bluffton in time to give the alarm, the sergeant and I were more
than ever determined to make our way thither at all hazards. Luckily
the road from Bear’s Island to Bluffton was the easiest one in all that
country to find, and the one I happened to know best. So that even if
the sergeant should not get across the marsh, I was confident of my
ability to make the journey alone.
“Now,” said the sergeant, “if I get across I won’t wait for you, but
will go right on; if you succeed, don’t wait for me. It’s no time for
ceremony. It’s better one of us should drown than that the other should
be delayed.”
“Spoken like a man and a soldier, sergeant,” said I. “Now for it.”
And with that we again essayed to follow the submerged track. About
midway the sergeant’s horse went down as before; and just as I was
about to call out something encouraging to him the guide’s horse, which
I was riding, plunged headforemost into the salt water, throwing me
completely over his head.
For a moment I was senseless from a blow received either from the hoof
of the sergeant’s horse, or by falling against one of the timbers of
the causeway. When I came to myself I was clinging to the tail of the
sergeant’s horse, while the sergeant, as I presently discovered, was
holding by one of the stirrups.
How long we remained in the water, I do not know, but it must have been
nearly an hour. The poor horse swam around in a purposeless way, not
knowing where to go, until finally he sank exhausted beneath the tide.
Cool as the night was the salt water was tepid as it always is on that
coast. Otherwise I should not now be alive to tell of that Christmas
Eve.
We got out at last and found ourselves on the island again. Despairing
now--for without horses it was simply impossible to get to Bluffton
until long after the time when our coming would be of any use--we
trudged doggedly across the island, that we might wait and listen at
the water’s edge for the booming of the cannon.
Two more utterly wretched young men no Christmas morning ever dawned
upon.
“See there,” said the sergeant, halting suddenly. “There’s the fleet,
and bless my soul it’s putting to sea.”
It was true enough. No attack was to be made after all. We had spent
the night drowning horses, and nearly drowning ourselves for nothing.
Why the fleet had steamed several miles up the creek before putting to
sea, I have never been able to guess. But I vividly remember that its
prank subjected me to a twelve miles’ walk that morning, and compelled
me to substitute quinine and dogwood-root-bark bitters that day for the
Christmas dinner I had planned.
THE WOMEN OF PETERSBURG
We went into Petersburg in June, 1864, with the horses at a brisk trot,
and the men on foot at a double quick.
The enemy’s battalions were already at the other end of Sycamore
Street, and it was our task to drive them back before they should be
reinforced.
Nevertheless those good women of Petersburg ministered to us. They
knew that we had been marching all night and that we were in a
famishing condition. They knew also that we must not waste a moment if
Petersburg, the key to Richmond, was not to be lost.
So they formed themselves in platoons--God bless them!--bearing gifts
of sandwiches and coffee.
We could not stop even to take, much less to eat, the food they
offered, so they thrust their platoons between ours and marched
backward as fast as we marched forward, serving their food and drink to
us as we went.
Every now and then a Federal shell would come bowling down the street,
but these alert women would jump it as nimbly as if its passage
had been a prearranged figure in the dance. Not one of them showed
the slightest fear. Not one of them faltered for a moment in her
ministrations in consideration of herself. There was not one of them,
I think, who would not have gone with us into the crash of the battle
itself; but by the time we had refreshed ourselves a little, we were
so near to the aggressive enemy’s lines, that we cried aloud with one
voice the order for the womenkind to go back.
A minute later we were in the thick of the struggle for Petersburg. The
enemy was not in such force as we had supposed, and we had fortunately
arrived some hours in advance of General Grant’s ponderous divisions.
After fifteen minutes of hard fighting the enemy retired beyond the
Jerusalem turnpike and we spent the night in beginning that thin line
of earthworks which was destined for eight months to come to hold at
bay a force two or three times as strong in numbers as our own.
At any hour during all that eight months the Federal forces could have
broken through our lines at any point they pleased, if they had been
resolute.
Anybody who will look at the old works to-day, as I have recently
done, and consider the facts dispassionately, can see this clearly for
himself. Our enemies had behind them, and running parallel with their
lines, a system of roads that was out of our sight. They had resources
practically illimitable. They had in front of them an attenuated line
of men, stretched out for twenty miles, and without the possibility of
reinforcement from any source. They could have concentrated any force
they pleased at any point they pleased and at any time they pleased,
without the possibility of our discovering what they were doing. They
could have made an irresistible attack upon any point of our line at
will. They did not do it. And so the fight went on.
During all those weary months the good women of Petersburg went about
their household affairs with fifteen-inch shells dropping occasionally
into their boudoirs or uncomfortably near to their kitchen ranges. Yet
they paid no attention to any danger that threatened themselves.
Their deeds of mercy will never be adequately recorded until the angels
report. But this much I want to say of them--they were “war women”
of the most daring and devoted type. When there was need of their
ministrations on the line, they were sure to be promptly there; and
once, as I have recorded elsewhere in print, a bevy of them came out to
the lines only to encourage us, and, under a fearful fire, sang Bayard
Taylor’s “Song of the Camp,” giving us as an encore the lines:--
“Ah, soldiers, to your honored rest,
Your truth and valor bearing,
The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring.”
With inspiration such as these women gave us, it was no wonder that,
as I heard General Sherman say soon after the war: “It took us four
years, with all our enormous superiority in resources, to overcome the
stubborn resistance of those men.”
HAM SEAY
Ham Seay had a hæmorrhage that morning--a hæmorrhage from the lungs.
But Ham Seay had the fastest horse in the company, and he knew how to
ride a horse for all that was in him of achievement.
When the news came that Stuart wanted to communicate as quickly as
possible with the commandant at Fredericksburg, Ham Seay volunteered to
carry the message.
“But you’re ill,” said Stuart.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Ham. “I can ride my horse, and my horse is
a good one.”
“But you’re ill,” said Stuart again. “And I don’t want to send an ill
man on such a journey as this.”
Then Ham Seay rose in the majesty of his manhood.
“General,” he said, “I am a doomed man. I cannot live long to render
service in the war. I want to render what service I can. I want to
carry this message. It will do me no harm. It will not shorten the few
days I have yet to live. It will make my life worth something.”
So Stuart gave him the message to a general fifty miles away.
Ham Seay mounted, and said to his comrades: “Good-by, boys. I may never
see you again; but I’ll do this errand all right, or die trying.”
He rode his horse with urgency, but with discretion. He had but one
object in view, and that was to get the message to its destination in
the briefest possible number of hours.
He delivered his communication. He died half an hour afterwards. His
horse had died before Ham did. But both had done their duty.
OLD JONES’S DASH
Old Jones was a queer character. He was also a queer figure. He never
had a uniform. He wore a yellow coat and a pair of light blue trousers.
He wore a pot hat of the fashion, I should say at a guess, of the year
1812.
He was a graduate of West Point, but he had resigned from the army
twelve years before the war began, and therefore was not entitled to
what they called “relative rank.”
He was a cynic and a misanthrope. He was still more pronouncedly a
misogynist. He did not believe in men. He positively disbelieved in
women. He was ready at any time to affront a man and to treat a woman
with conspicuous contempt. He hated life, and was ready to give it up
at any moment which might suit the decrees or the aspirations of Fate.
He was ready to fight anything in the world, or anybody, under any
circumstances, or upon any issue.
That is why he got himself cashiered toward the end of the war.
But we are dealing with the beginning of the war. At the beginning of
the war he organized a company of cavalry and got himself elected its
captain. In the regular order of promotion he soon came to be colonel
of the regiment. It was at this time that the events recorded in the
present story occurred.
When McClellan took command of the Army of the Potomac, after the
stampede at Manassas, it was under the demoralization of the fearful
panic. It was a part of McClellan’s program to send his men out on
expeditions of attack in order to accustom them to the idea of standing
fire. As the end of the summer of 1861 drew near, he had begun,
seriously, to threaten our position at Centreville.
He would send out men in considerable force and compel us to meet them
with serious intent. Usually Stuart was able very quickly to discover
the sham character of these advances. But once in a while they were so
well disguised as to be mistaken for serious attacks.
One day in the autumn the greatest of all these advances began. The
enemy came forward with every possible appearance of intending an
assault on the Confederate position at Centreville.
There were cavalry, infantry, and artillery in the column; and when
they reached our picket lines there was every appearance of serious
conflict in prospect.
As we sat there on our horses in front of the line, Stuart came along
and said to Colonel Jones: “Colonel, I wish you’d take a dozen or
twenty men, get into the rear of that force, and find out how much it
means.”
Jones detailed the requisite number of us from the right of our
company, with Captain Irving in command of them. By riding three or
four miles to the right, we were able to get in rear of the Federal
force. We soon found that there was no baggage train, no commissary
train, no quartermaster’s train, and no ammunition train--in short,
that the advance was not intended as a serious attack.
By the time that we had found out all this, we were within fifty yards
of the rear of the Federal lines, and almost immediately opposite the
point where we had left our own command. We were pretty well hidden by
the underbrush of the woods, as we stood there and looked.
Presently old Jones turned to Charlie Irving and said: “The whole
thing’s an egg-shell, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Charlie; “an egg-shell easily crushed.”
Jones thought a moment, and then said, with his nasal drawl: “I wish I
could communicate with Stuart. I’d break through that line and save the
trouble of the ride around.”
The young captain’s eyes snapped with that peculiar sense of humor
and that daring which were his principal characteristics, as he said:
“Why not break through anyhow, colonel? Don’t you think Stuart would
understand? I’ve never found him slow in getting to windward of things.”
“Well, if you say so, captain, I guess we’ll do it. It’ll save the
horses, anyhow. Attention, men!” with a slow drawl. “Draw--sabres!
Forward--march! Trot--march! Gallop--march! CHARGE!”
We went through that egg-shell with an enthusiasm which was _not_ a
reflection of the drawling commands of our colonel.
Captain Irving was right: Stuart was not slow in getting to windward
of things. He ordered a charge and doubled up that column like a
telescope.
A WOMAN’S HAIR
After the battle of Manassas or Bull Run, fought July 21, 1861, Stuart
made his headquarters in the neighborhood of Fairfax Court House, with
pickets at Falls Church, Vienna, and other points ten miles or so to
the front.
Suddenly, with a strong force, he occupied Mason’s and Munson’s hills,
almost under the guns of the Washington fortifications, and very much
farther in advance than outposts generally are.
It has since been a puzzle to many military critics to guess why he
did this unusual thing. Perhaps this story may throw some light on the
problem.
Our company was on picket at Falls Church. Half a dozen of us kept
watch at the edge of the woods on the top of the hill, while the rest
of the boys took their ease in rear.
It was in that early stage of the war when to shoot at men seemed to
many civilians a species of sport--a sort of pursuit of big game.
This Falls Church post was a favorite rendezvous for this species of
sportsmen from Washington. Our position was an exposed one. Men not
in the army, and even women, liked to ride out from Washington, crouch
behind a pile of logs, and “take a crack” at the rebels.
Now and then they made a widow and some orphans, and since this was
merely a matter of diversion and entertainment for them, with no other
principle involved, it seemed almost too bad.
Finally Charlie Irving got “tired,” as he put it, of “playing partridge
for those people to shoot at.” Charlie Irving was our captain. He was a
man who never said much, but always meant a good deal.
The next morning he made the detail for post duty at the front upon a
new principle. We had been nine days on picket, and it had been his
custom to detail the men for post duty in front in alphabetical order.
This morning he selected us without reference to our “turns,” and with
sole reference to the speed and endurance of our horses.
“Now, boys,” he said, with that easy familiarity which made us call him
“Charlie,” because we had all gone hunting together as comrades before
the war; “now, boys, we’re going to capture that picket post to-day,
and if I find a civilian among them, I’m going to hang him to that
chestnut tree for murder.”
We knew that he would do what he said, and we were all in hearty
sympathy with his purpose.
About ten o’clock in the morning the sharp-shooting began. Our captain
instantly divided us into two squads, and without military formalities
said: “Now, boys, ride to the right and left and corner ’em.”
That was the only command we received, but we obeyed it with a will.
The two sharp-shooting citizens who were there that morning escaped on
good horses, but we captured the pickets.
Among them was a woman--a Juno in appearance, with a wealth of raven
black hair twisted carelessly into a loose knot under the jockey cap
she wore.
She was mounted on a superb chestnut mare, and she knew how to ride.
She might easily have escaped, and at one time seemed about to do so,
but at the critical moment she seemed to lose her head and so fell into
our hands.
When we brought her to Charlie Irving she was all smiles and
graciousness, and Charlie was all blushes.
“You’d hang me to a tree, if I were a man, I suppose,” she said. “And
serve me right, too. As I’m only a woman, you’d better send me to
General Stuart, instead.”
This seemed so obviously the right way out of it that Charlie ordered
Ham Seay and me to escort her to Stuart’s headquarters, which were
under a tree some miles in the rear.
When we got there Stuart seemed to recognize the young woman. Or
perhaps it was only his habitual and constitutional gallantry that made
him come forward with every manifestation of welcome, and himself help
her off her horse, taking her by the waist for that purpose.
Ham Seay and I being mere privates were ordered to another tree. But we
could not help seeing that cordial relations were quickly established
between our commander and this young woman. We saw her presently take
down her magnificent back hair and remove from it some papers. They
were not “curl papers,” or that sort of stuffing which women call
“rats.” Stuart was a very gallant man, and he received the papers with
much fervor. He spread them out carefully on the ground, and seemed to
be reading what was written or drawn upon them.
Then he talked long and earnestly with the young woman and seemed to be
coming to some definite sort of understanding with her.
Then she dined with him on some fried salt pork and some hopelessly
indigestible fried paste which we called bread.
Then he mounted her on her mare again and summoned Ham Seay and me.
“Escort this young lady back to Captain Irving,” he said. “Tell him to
send her to the Federal lines under flag of truce, with the message
that she was inadvertently captured in a picket charge, and that as
General Stuart does not make war on women or children, he begs to
return her to her home and friends.”
We did all this.
The next day, Stuart with a strong force advanced to Mason’s and
Munson’s hills.
From there we could clearly see a certain house in Washington. It had
many windows, and each had a dark Holland shade.
When we stood guard we were ordered to observe minutely and report
accurately the slidings up and down of those Holland shades.
We never knew what three shades up, two half up, and five down might
signify. But we had to report it, nevertheless, and Stuart seemed from
that time to have an almost preternatural advance perception of the
enemy’s movements.
That young woman certainly had a superb shock of hair.
A MIDNIGHT CRIME
THE CRIMINAL’S OWN ACCOUNT OF IT
As there is no law that can now reach my crime, I may as well tell all
about it.
Soon after we sat down before Petersburg, in the summer of 1864, I
was sent on a little military mission accompanied by Johnny Garrett,
into the land of desolation--that part of Northern Virginia which lay
sometimes in the possession of one army, sometimes in possession of the
other, but was mostly left in nobody’s possession at all, and open to
raids from both sides.
That region had been swept by fire and sword for nearly four years. It
had been tramped over by both armies, and latterly had been subjected
to that process of destruction which Sheridan had in mind when he said
of another region that “the crow that flies over it must carry his
rations with him.”
How anybody managed to live at all in such a region has always been a
puzzle, but a few people did.