had to run to cover, every man of us with his hands on his stomach, in
physical memory of the potato vines. Our guns were not in position,
and all we could do was to ensconce ourselves behind big trees. As the
artillery fire kept up, General Alexander rode to this point of the
lines and ordered up three batteries of rifled cannon; by the time they
had finished their little controversy with the enemy, we had recovered
from the potato tops sufficiently to go to sleep. So Griffith’s story
was to be “continued in our next.”
Our “next” came only after we got to Petersburg. There our battery
took charge of the mortars of the army. Griffith was one of the men I
selected when asked to volunteer for a particularly perilous mortar
service. He might or might not be able to tell a story, but he could
stand fire as well as any man I ever knew.
About four o’clock one morning, when we had been engaged in a fierce
bombardment all night, the fire ceased for a time, and Billy Goodwin
demanded the rest of that bear story.
“You see I’ve got seven bets on that story,” said Billy, “and I don’t
want to win any man’s money unfairly. One bet is that he won’t ever get
to the bear, and I don’t want to take any man’s money without givin’
him a chance.”
“Well, wait a minute,” I replied, “till I start up the fire; we’ve got
to have some breakfast.”
The fire was out.
“Somebody must go up,” I said, “to the next fort and get a chunk of
fire. It won’t do to get fire by shooting a mortar,”--which was our
usual way,--“because if we do that, we’ll start this bombardment again.”
“I’ll go,” said Griffith, “and then I’ll tell the rest of that story.”
There was a fearful hail of bullets between the two forts. The cannon
were silent, but the musketry fire was incessant. Griffith started off,
crouching as he went up the path so as to expose as little as possible
of his person.
That was the last I ever saw of him.
As he was borne off on the litter, he sent word to me that he “hoped I
hadn’t any bets on that bear story.”
A CHEERFUL SUPPER OF CHEERS
As Commissary it was Haskell’s business to see to it that we had plenty
to eat; but the seven days’ fights below Richmond were on, and Haskell
was, first of all, a fighter,--a thing uncommon in Commissaries and
Quartermasters.
Instead of attending to his pork and meal wagons in the rear, he went
to the front.
There he was active in a degree that commanded the respect of his
general. He interested himself so much in the movements of troops, and
in the controversy with the enemy, that he forgot all about the wagons.
In this service he had his right arm shot off by a cannon-ball.
When night came, and we wanted something to eat, there was a good deal
of growling because we had nothing. But when the story was told of how
our Commissary had fought, and how he had lost an arm in the fighting,
a fellow with more humor than appetite got up and cried: “I move that
we sup on three cheers and a tiger for the Commissary that fights.”
The three cheers were given.
As soon as his wound was healed, Haskell was made a major and placed in
command of the battalion.
There may have been many better Commissaries than Haskell, but there
were no better fighting majors.
HOW THE TAR HEELS STUCK
The sergeant-major sat there on his horse in the drenching rain.
There was nothing to do but to endure. The three days of fighting in
the Wilderness in that early summer of 1864, and the three nights of
sleeplessness had considerably undone his nerves.
But for the first time in his life he realized that he had a hope at
least for an opportunity. He had a lieutenant’s command. He hoped for a
chance to make himself a lieutenant, in fact. With two guns, twenty-six
men, and twenty-four horses under his command, and wholly detached from
his battery, he had hope, that gray foggy morning, that he might have
an opportunity. Yet here he was, standing behind a hill, soaking wet,
and with no apparent prospect.
Three times the infantry had been ordered forward to the top of that
hill. Three times they had been swept away as with a broom.
The hill was clearly untenable.
Then came General Alexander.
“Have you nerve, courage, backbone? Do you want an opportunity?”
The sergeant-major answered, “Yes.”
“Then take your guns to the top of that hill and STAY THERE.”
The sergeant-major gave the necessary orders, and advanced at once,
feeling that he and his men were lambs sent to the slaughter.
When he appeared on top of the hill, twenty batteries and ten thousand
riflemen opened upon him. But his orders were to “stay there,” and the
sergeant-major wanted to be a lieutenant.
His horse sank under him at the first fire. His men went down like
grass before the scythe.
But he STAYED THERE.
About that time a North Carolina general rode up to his brigade and
called aloud: “Men, are you going to allow these guns to be captured?
They say we North Carolinians have tar on our heels; let’s show them
that tar _sticks_. Forward! March!”
Five minutes later that hill was occupied by three thousand North
Carolinians, the tar on whose heels STUCK. Half a dozen more batteries
were ordered up, and the young sergeant-major was directed to move his
guns by hand to the rear.
_By hand._ Because of his twenty-four horses only two remained alive;
while there were only thirteen left out of his twenty-six men to handle
the guns by hand. This is what we called “life” in the Confederate
army.
“LITTLE LAMKIN’S BATTERY”
For twenty-four hours I had had a man on my mind.
He had been court-martialled and was sentenced to be shot. He was in
the guardhouse.
I know of no good reason why I should have objected to his execution;
he certainly deserved all that he was to get. But I had been his
counsel before the court-martial, and it is never a pleasant thing for
a lawyer to have his client executed.
He belonged officially to me. I had assumed a responsibility for him,
and I felt that it would not be fully discharged if he should be led
out and shot.
I had known Beavers for a very brief time; but as his counsel I had
learned much from him in confidence as to his career. He was a person
of elective affinities. It was his habit to desert. He had served on
both sides and in many capacities. He always fought well on whichever
side he might happen to be serving. As a gambler, he always “played his
game for all it was worth.”
Why he had deserted back and forth in this way without any cogent
reason, I never knew. I used to think sometimes that he had done so at
first just to try how a new style and color of uniform might suit his
particular kind of beauty. His beauty was not in itself conspicuous.
I learned from him incidentally that his various reasons for desertion
from one side to the other had not been of a kind that would have
controlled the action of a less fastidious man.
On one occasion he had deserted because he smelt mutton from the
camp-kettles of the enemy. He had a predilection for mutton.
I learned that he returned to us once, because one night, when he was
not quite himself, a comrade had put him to bed and reversed the order
of his blankets. Beavers explained to me with great particularity
that a certain gray blanket had been placed on top of a certain brown
one. He could not be expected to remain with a regiment under such
conditions.
At last he had been caught in the act of deserting. He had been tried,
and, in spite of such legal acumen as I could bring to bear, had been
convicted, sentenced, and the next day but one was to be shot.
Now that he was sure to die, he seemed to make no more of the fact than
of any other indifferent thing. I do not mean that he was careless of
his fate. He took everything seriously. But facts were to him facts,
and he did not worry over them. He did not think it worth while.
So when he was sentenced to death, he adjusted his blankets in the
proper order so that he might not have a nightmare, and slept the sleep
of the contented.
With all my contempt for Beavers I was sorry that he was to die. There
was something in the reckless character of the man that appealed to me.
Something that made me feel that it was a pity that this abundant life
should be extinguished by a rifle shot.
I had been thinking all night. I had thought of every argument in his
favor. I had searched my mind to see if any point had been neglected.
Early in the night I had gone to Beavers, and asked him for the aid of
suggestion--suggestion that might lead to information. But here again
his habits balked me. He said: “I’m gambling in this case on your
brains.”
I might myself have been willing to do that, but I was gambling with
Beavers’s life for a stake.
Beavers was of course just that kind of man, whom a self-respecting
person feels it his duty to despise; but somehow I could not quite
despise Beavers. His coolness appealed to me strongly. His bravado
seemed a sort of bravery. His readiness to meet the consequences, and
pay the penalties of his own misdeeds, was a thing hard to distinguish
from heroism.
He had no principles, of course. He did not pretend to have any. But
he had certain methods of thought which seemed to serve him in lieu of
principles.
It was just before dawn. I had not slept. As I lay in my tent with
the flaps thrown back, all that was discernible was the rather
spectral-looking tented city with its precise white rows. I had become
so nervous, staring through the dark at the place where I knew the tent
pole to be, that at last I turned out for good. I tightened my belt. It
was our habit to sleep in our clothes--for reasons.
The first gray of the morning touched the camp, and looking down the
row I saw a fragile figure moving from one tent to another, and pausing
occasionally in uncertainty. At first I could not be certain whether
it was a woman or not. Finally the figure straightened up and stood
looking towards the guardhouse; it was that of a woman.
I had not seen a woman in two months.
The camp was silent with that quietude that is so impressive just
before the dawn.
After staring at the guardhouse for a moment, while I stood staring
at her, the woman turned her eyes and we stood looking at each other.
After halting a moment she came staggering up the narrow lane between
the two rows of tents, making a peculiar, nervous movement with her
hands, but saying nothing. She stood for a few moments a little way
from the tent door, clasping and unclasping her hands.
I saw that she was ill. She reeled up against the tent pole, and would
have fallen had I not caught her by the arm. I seated her on a log, all
the seat there was. After a moment she revived a little, and said in a
faint voice, “Beavers.”
At that moment reveille sounded. The woman was too evidently ill for me
to leave her. I sent a sergeant to attend the roll-call. I directed our
cook to provide the woman with coffee and food.
Then I questioned her a little. She had walked twenty-two miles over
railroad ties.
She was Beavers’s wife.
She said to me: “You are his counsel, I believe?”
“Yes,” I replied, “and I have done everything I could to save him.”
“No, you have not,” she answered. “You have not made the point that
he was never legally enlisted as a soldier, I’ll warrant! He’s over
forty-five and can’t be conscribed. He was pardoned out of the
penitentiary on condition that he should enlist, but the court-martial
had no proof of that. There’s nothing whatever to show that he’s a
soldier; and if he ain’t a soldier, he can’t be punished for desertion.
I’ve come to tell you, for he would never think of it.”
I jumped to my feet. I called a sentinel, and told him to take the
woman to the guardhouse and make her as comfortable as possible. I
mounted my horse and galloped to the station. I roused the telegraph
operator two hours before his time. He was a sleepy fellow, but he was
accustomed to taking imperative messages out of hours. I gave him this
one to the war department:--
Beavers to be shot to-morrow morning. No proof whatever he was
ever soldier. If not soldier, could not have deserted. Too old for
conscript law, and no proof of enlistment except Governor Letcher’s
telegram. Telegram not under oath, not legal testimony. Witness not
subjected to cross-examination. As counsel, I demand stay in this
man’s case.
I rode back to the guardhouse, and found that a new member had been
added to the battery. The company was known as Lamkin’s Battery.
We named the new member “_Little_ Lamkin’s Battery,” to distinguish it,
I suppose, from the big one.
Beavers sat all that morning with his wife’s hand in his, and Little
Lamkin’s Battery in his arms.
He said it looked like its mother. He’d “gamble on that.”
Not until within an hour of the time appointed for Beavers’s execution
did there come a reply from the war department. But when it came it was
thoroughly satisfactory. It read thus:--
Legal points conclusive. Release Beavers and restore him to duty.
Duplicate sent to General Walker.
Soon after that Beavers deserted, blankets and all, to “the other
enemy”--that was his form of speech, not mine.
The next time I saw him was under peculiar circumstances.
In July, 1865, I went on board the steamer _Morning Star_, at Portland,
four miles below Louisville, Kentucky.
I was two or three hours in advance of the sailing of the boat. Only
a few people were scattered about the front of the cabin. I went to
the clerk, paid for my room and passage, and pocketed thirty dollars
in change. A moment later the porter came in with my trunk. I put my
hand in my vest pocket to get the dollar due him, but found my thirty
dollars gone.
I had all the feelings which a man always has when he finds that his
pocket has been picked--which include the feeling of helplessness.
There was on board a brigade of troops going South. They were late
enlisters, who had seen none of the fighting. The men were on the deck
below, of course. The officers, though their transportation orders
called only for deck passage, were by courtesy permitted in the cabin.
There were a dozen or twenty of them, mainly rough lumbermen, or
something of that kind. They evidently wanted to see a fight. So they
concluded to pick that fight with me.
One of them came up to me where I was reading a novel, and began the
trouble by saying: “You’re a rebel.”
“No,” I replied. “I was a rebel while the rebellion lasted, but I have
taken the oath of allegiance, and am at present a loyal citizen of the
United States.”
“Well, you _were_ a rebel,” he said, with more offence in his tone than
in his words; “and I want to know what you are doing here in the North.”
“I’m not in the North,” I replied; “but in the middle of a river that
separates the North from the South.”
By this time half a dozen others of the crowd had gathered in front of
me with angry faces. It was manifestly their purpose to make trouble,
and I saw no use in trying to ward it off. They were planning a fight;
and whether it was to be a safe one or not, it seemed to me a good time
to begin it.
I sprang to my feet and faced them. I was utterly unarmed, while they
carried their weapons. I grasped a chair as the only means of defence
at hand, and with remarks which are better not repeated, perhaps, told
them to come on.
Just at that moment a stateroom door opened behind me, and two warm
hands thrust two pistols into my grasp. The next moment a stalwart
figure, armed in the same way, stood beside me, and, presenting two
pistols, called out: “Hands up, gentlemen! The first man that moves
dies. You’re twenty to two of us, but--”
Some language followed.
The men threw up their hands.
Without taking his eyes off his adversaries or lowering his weapons, my
comrade called out: “Mr. Clerk, send for the captain.”
When the captain came, my comrade reported that these men had made an
unwarranted assault upon an inoffensive passenger, and said: “They have
no business in the cabin, anyway. As a first-class passenger, I call on
you to send ’em below, where they belong.”
The captain was willing enough. He had been three times arrested during
the war for aiding “rebel sympathizers.” A minute later these officers
had become deck passengers.
Then I turned to my deliverer, and to my astonishment he was Beavers.
He had grown stout, and was resplendent in a suit of clothes with
checks so broad that it might easily have taken two persons to show the
pattern; otherwise he was the same old nonchalant, reckless Beavers,
ready to gamble upon any chance and to pay his losses though the
payment might be with his life.
I made my identity known to him of course. He replied immediately:
“Why, of course, I reckonized you long before this thing occurred, and
I have been trying to get an excuse for speaking to you. Because you
see when you came aboard in mufti I didn’t know who you was, and so I
lifted thirty dollars out of your clothes. I wouldn’t have done it if
I’d a’ known it was you, and now I want to hand it back. I could just
as easily have picked that other fellow’s pocket--the one that picked
the quarrel with you. I never go back on my friends, never! And I’ve
never forgot how you got me out of that scrape.”
He handed me back the thirty dollars and I thanked him. He said: “Don’t
mention it.” He added, though I never knew what he meant by it: “I’ll
square the whole thing with that other feller. He’s got more’n thirty
dollars in _his_ wad.”
I naturally felt a little warm towards Beavers. I owed him my life.
Therefore when he suggested some alcoholic celebration of the incident
I compromised on a cigar. However little you may esteem a man, it is
difficult to snub him a few minutes after he has saved your life.
Beavers went to the baggage-master and said something to him which I
didn’t hear. The baggage-master shook his head in dissent.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Beavers; “it’s five dollars to you, old
man.”
“Oh, well, that’s different,” said the baggage-master, and two minutes
later Beavers was searching one of his trunks. Presently he came up
with a wad of papers in his hand and we returned to the cabin. There
he spread out some architectural designs for a gorgeous monument, and
said: “Look at that. That’s the design of the monument I’ve just put up
over that wife of mine. She was a mighty good sort, and I’ve spent good
money to give her a proper send-off. I’ve paid five thousand dollars to
the architect for the design, and fifteen thousand dollars to have it
built. You see business is good with me just now. I’ve got a faro bank
at Louisville and another at Evansville and two at Cairo, and another
at St. Louis, and three at Memphis and one at Vicksburg, and two at New
Orleans. As for me I _run the river and make what there is in it_.”
Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
“By the way,” he said, “you remember about Little Lamkin’s Battery?
Well, he’s on board.” Beckoning to a negro nurse, he said: “Bring that
little rascal here.”
A few minutes later the nurse returned, having a peculiarly bright,
three-year-old boy in charge, whom I greeted as an old friend. After
talking with the little chap for a few moments I turned to Beavers and
said: “What are you going to make out of him, Beavers?”
“Something better than his father is,” he replied, “for his mothers
sake; and that reminds me you’re just out of the war and you’ve got
your way to make. It won’t do for you to know _me_. If you ever meet
me goin’ up and down the river, I’ll cut you dead and don’t you say
nothing.”
CURRY
Curry was our mess cook.
He was a great rascal, but one of the best cooks in the world. And
besides he was discriminative in his rascality. He never did any
dishonest thing towards us; but he was capable of any conceivable
crime, if he could commit it in our behalf.
He was a pure-blooded negro of the brown or semi-copper-colored
variety. He was without a trace of beard, as that variety of negro
usually is. His voice was a falsetto.
His devotion was dog-like. If the state of South Carolina held anything
that his mess needed, and there was any conceivable way in which it
could be got, he got it. Frankly without morals,--unless devotion to
his mess was a moral sentiment,--and illimitable in resource as he was,
he generally so managed matters that we should live well.
We would buy a pig or a lamb, and have a fore quarter for dinner. The
next day Curry would give us a hind quarter. The next day another fore
quarter; and so on until that member of the mess who had a statistical
mind would begin to reflect that there are really only four quarters to
an animal, while we had had from fifteen to twenty quarters from this
one. Then Curry would be summoned, and indignantly asked: “Where have
you been getting all this meat we have been eating?”
The question never disturbed Curry in the least. He was always ready
with the answer: “I buyed it from one man, sir.”
When asked who the man was, he never knew. And when questioned as to
payment, he always assured us that the “one man, sir,” was coming that
afternoon for his money.
The “one man, sir,” always came that afternoon. His charge was always
the same: $2.50 in Confederate currency, or something less than
twenty-five cents in real money.
The pretence was a bit flimsy, but it answered Curry’s purpose. His
mess was well fed, and he was not caught in his raids upon the pig-pens
and sheep-folds thereabouts.
Curry was a slave, and we hired him from the estate to which he
belonged as a chattel. One day we were ordered to move from South
Carolina to Virginia. Curry came to us and asked to be taken with us.
When we explained to him that we could not legally take him out of the
state, he deliberately proposed to run away in order to go with us.
Having no alert perception of the difference between crime and good
conduct, he could not see why we should not abet him in this proposed
violation of law. But when we made it clear to him that, for reasons
inscrutable to his mind, we could not permit him to go with us out of
the state, he fell into melancholy.
That night we had some roast pig for dinner; and Curry had not “buyed
it from one man, sir.”
The only reply he would make to our questionings was: “I done got it
fur de mess, sir. De mess has been good to me.”
* * * * *
Early next morning--the day on which we were to leave--the enemy landed
below, and we were ordered forward to meet them. As we unlimbered in
battery and opened fire, Curry rode up on an antique mule, stolen for
the occasion from the battery blacksmith. Leaping from his steed he
went to the gun that was most short-handed, took a vacant place, and
began fighting like an artilleryman. When the head of the mess rode up
to him and said: “What are you doing here, Curry?”
His reply was: “Ise takin’ a hand.”
The fight was hot for ten minutes. At the end of it poor Curry lay
stretched upon the grass--a bullet through his chest. One of us went
to him and said something--no matter what. He looked up and said: “I
can’t go wi’ de mess to Virginy. You’ll have to take some no ’count
nigger. But Ise fought wi’ de mess anyhow, and you’ll find de res’ o’
dat pig hangin’ up de chimbly.”
GUN-BOATS
A gun-boat went aground one night in an inlet off Chisholm’s Island,
near Port Royal, South Carolina.
As soon as the news came to us, we set out to attack her.
We marched all night, and in the early gray of the dawn we reached the
palmetto-studded island. The gun-boat had, in the meantime, got off the
bar on the high tide, and was riding quietly at anchor, four hundred
yards from the nearest available point on the shore.
I had command of two field pieces. Captain Elliot, the chief of
artillery, ordered me to inspect the vessel and “act according to
circumstances.” He said: “If you find her too strong to be attacked
with field guns, retire quietly across the island. If you find her
not too strong, attack her, and I will send you any reinforcements
necessary.”
I took Joe with me.
We crawled up to the brink of the stream, and took a good look in the
gray morning light.
But that look didn’t tell either of us anything. Neither of us knew
enough about naval architecture and armament to have the slightest
idea whether the boat out there in the stream was formidable or
otherwise.
“Well, what do you think, Joe?” I asked. “I don’t think,” he answered;
“I don’t know anything about it; but my notion is that we’d better give
her a shot or two, anyhow.”
“Well, the way I look at it,” said I, “is this: Elliot and those other
fellows know, and we don’t. They’ll see her from some point of view.
If they think her not formidable, and we don’t attack, they’ll blame
us. If we attack, and she proves too formidable--well, we’ve got good
horses and we can run. Order up the guns, Joe.”